Always Have Many Thoughts About Pre-gorillaz Stuart, The Most Average British Lad There Is. (2D With

currently crying over talking frogs

Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue.

Reblog this picture of me holding a Family Size box of Honey Nut Cheerios? I’d really appreciate it.

I did something awful today

LOST MEDIA: Gorillaz - Plastic Beach Web Games

I come to you tonight with one request: I want help in tracking down the Plastic Beach point-and-click adventure game from the Phase 3 (2010-2012) Gorillaz website.

In 2010, coinciding with the release of their third studio album, British virtual band Gorillaz gave their website a huge overhaul, including the release of several new flash games. The centerpiece was a point-and-click adventure game (untitled, usually just referred to as "Plastic Beach") in which the player was able to explore the island of Plastic Beach, similar to the games available on earlier websites where the player was able to explore Gorillaz HQ Kong Studios.

Along with this game were a few others: Escape to Plastic Beach, a three chapter long action/adventure game (the third chapter of which cost €1.50 to play, and was available both for PC and iPhones.) Just recently the developer, Matmi, hinted at trying to re-release these, but they went silent regarding it and nothing has come of it so far.

There were also two smaller Flash titles, Submatronic and Gorillaz Fishing. Not entirely sure what these two entailed but they were listed on the website and, like the adventure game and Escape are not playable via the Wayback Machine nor are they archived elsewhere.

From my research, it seems the website had some kind of DRM software that the older websites (which have been archived over at zombiehiphop.xyz) didn't, since the Plastic Beach game used full tracks from the album and EMI was worried about piracy. Before anyone suggests it like was done in other places where I've asked about this, no, the game was not released on a CD or DVD. Because of this, all four games unique to the Plastic Beach era website are lost. The iPhone port of Escape to Plastic Beach was also removed from the App Store years ago, and as such is also completely lost.

As of right now, all that still exists are low-quality videos of the adventure game in action, a few screenshots, and a handful of Flash files I've dug up from the Wayback Machine.

The loss of this game represents not just a loss for Flash preservation, but a huge loss for Gorillaz fans as it was an integral element of the story of the Plastic Beach era. Without it and much of the other content from the old website, the already incomplete story that Jamie Hewlett and the rest of the Zombie Flesh Eaters team were trying to tell lives on almost wholly through secondary accounts. While recordings exist, it is simply not the same as having access to the full experience.

I ask of you all to please consider my words and help me do something about this, instead of wallowing in hopelessness as it seems the community has been doing for oh so long now.

Thank You.

Footage of the adventure game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUnvkZFPu1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmAo_POMRHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW6KHLLgBss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWIkwVDIJNQ

The handful of Flash files I dug up via the Wayback Machine: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RKpP9o-j-4jFkdQEDN54ye5LGZIrBd_7

art exam surprisingly made me more motivated to draw haaiiii have my wife

Oh yeah. I'm tired and feel a bit out of body from morning to night dance moves pat and immfeelingalright right now but I had an idea about why Murdoc got like that with 2-D to begin with. Like yes okay I understand that once the stone is kicked down the road there's no way of stopping it; I always accepted that Murdoc was just never gonna be normal about him, but I also can't... Recall any one moment when we were ever told why, like. Why.

Why what? Why everything, why the core question at the centerpoint of everything, why is Murdoc so fucking angry with him all the time. Cos it sure as Hell isn't because he hates him; we're way beyond that now, and we know that that's a lie and most likely always has been. But Murdoc really likes Noodle too, she's his kid after all, his little girl, and he's never treated her the same way even remotely. If the reasons why he's always bullying 2-D is simply "well he's a control freak and gets affection mixed up with beating people half to death because that's what his dad did so he does this to everyone" then why doesn't he ever act this way with anybody else?

Well, the reason I accepted up until now is because Noodle and Russel can't be pushed around as easily. You try to hit either of them and they hit you back way harder and you crumple to the floor like a sack of wet rags. Obviously the logical next move after that is to try to suck up to them instead so you can get them to at least tolerate you, and maybe decide to stay and not set off the ole' abandonment issues as bad. Russel states at one point that 2-D is the only person Murdoc can reliably win a fight against, presumably because he'd never have the idea to swing back. It's not that he's that weak or whatever. He's just, well. Not a fighter.

I had another idea though. A real devious one, this one. Evil shit cooking. I'm an angst wizard where was I going with this

Ever notice how when Murdoc opens up to someone emotionally it's somehow always 2-D? Like, without fail? Okay, sometimes he has full scale mental breakdowns and opens up to Literally Everybody (see; Pirate Radio) because lord knows he isn't very good at keeping secrets, or at pretending to be cool. But also remember that comment he makes about making 2-D dictate his autobiography during, like... YouTube comment section impromptu QnA, space between Song Machine and Cracker Island, I believe. We never got that autobiography. We probably never will get it to be honest. All I remember is 2-D broke his fuckin hands writing it all down.

And, okay, time to beat the same dead horse again, I'm about to bring up arguably some of the most infamous 2-D Moments™ in GZ history but behold;

the other two times. I'm not sure how to put this objectively. Whenever Murdoc ends up crying and spilling his whole tragic backstory in someone's arms it's, like, 2-D 90% of the time. Coincidence? Gods no 2-D is just the person who's around him the most. Because he can't leave. He's also just more... Compassionate and forgiving. At the risk of making him sound like a dumb little baby again #let2dsayfuck he's been shown to be very empathetic and quick to forgive and all. If someone's having a mental breakdown, you try to comfort them. Isn't that how it works? But Noodle is too practical (and doesn't deserve to deal with her own shit father's mental breakdowns, trust me, speaking from experience, it sucks ten times more when it's your parent, especially if they do it often, you do NOT wanna parent your parent it's the most unfun experience I've had period, and I think or at least hope and headcanon that she's resilient enough to go no I am not dealing with this why are you crying get the fuck off the floor) and Russel possibly too mad at Murdoc to even get himself into this situation, so if there's any one person in the band you *want* to be crying in the arms of, it's probably 2-D, right? At least if you're Murdoc.

But. That's a bit annoying, isn't it. You slip up one time and suddenly you wake up the next morning and realise that this... This little fucking twerp has suddenly got immense power over you. Last night you took a Floor Pill off the dance boards of a shady nightclub and it made you think you were legitimately dying, and he was the only person technically in the band at the time, and you'd only first met him a couple weeks ago, but he was the person to go looking for you. Nobody's ever really done that before. And then he tries to help you, shit, he even gets on his knees on the pavement to help peel you off it, and you can't recall anybody ever being that kind to you in your life, and you break down completely, and you cry and hold onto him so hard he complains you're gonna break his spine and you make him promise to never ever ever leave you et-cetera. And instead of going "fuck off man" and disappearing into the night like everyone else you've done this with he actually does promise. Which has also never happened before. And then you wake up the next morning and have to deal with the fact that, on pure god damn accident, you gave that skinny little fucker your whole heart, and you can't take it back.

What's worse, 2-D doesn't understand the weight of what's just happened. Nor does he understand it the next time, or the next time, or the time after that. He doesn't think he's special, he doesn't understand what he's got and that you can't take it back. He's not malicious. He's not laughing at you. He's just confused, confused and very, very open. He's practically parading around your biggest secret like it means nothing.

And don't get me wrong: Murdoc is fine telling people about his past, in fact he seems to like it; he tells Cass Browne about his childhood so he can put it into Rise of The Ogre. He slips in that bit about the lunch lady iykyk as a joke, mid-interview. It's not about the backstory itself. It's about the emotional distance he has from it. And when you're fresh off an acid flashback I don't think you've got any emotional distance from it at all.

2-D doesn't connect the dots at least not until specifically Song Machine If Murdoc thought he was special he wouldn't be hitting him, right? He probably isn't even in the top ten of his favourite people. That's why the times where he's suddenly so familiar, and on top of that so vulnerable, just confuses him. He tells the story about the strawberries as a "weird thing that happened on tour," and the subtext (which we can quite easily spot from an outside perspective, like, come on,) flies completely over his head.

Can you imagine being Murdoc, and reading that interview after it was posted? Skimming through 2-D's synth article in the G-mag while editing because it's probably just stupid anyway, missing the bit about the acid flashbacks, and only noticing it two months later and everybody acts surprised you even care in the first place?

I think if I was Murdoc and I accidentally laid bare the depths of my soul (got a normal amount of vulnerable) and the mother fucker I did it to just started telling random people about it I would become the Joker immediately.

DO NOT DO THIS!!!

If a website has a paywall, like New York Times, DO NOT use the ctrl+A shortcut then the ctrl+c shortcut as fast as you can because then you may accidentally copy the entire article before the paywall comes up. And definitely don't do ctrl+v into the next google doc or whatever you open because then you will accidentally paste the entire article into a google doc or something!!!! I repeat DO NOT do this because it is piracy which is absolutely totally wrong!!!

hey artists just in case you feel despair at the rise of ai art please remember that the talking points of pro-ai people are as genuinely “ai art bad? but what if there was a PUCK girl who had Steampunk Tube Arm Prosthetic No Hand Syndrome that couldn’t draw because of no hands and you poured a biiiig vat of pencils in front of her really big and made her look at it sadddd style and she can’t just Pick Up Pencil and draw because No Hand ? what if that happened? then ai art… goood😃😄?”

It’s, uh, something I did on the, uh, iPad initially. (...) So, some of it was, uh, recorded in dressing rooms, some in the mountains, some in the back of the bus, going through all of the towns. (...) It’s more like a scrapbook with, some cuttin’s and sketches in, a diary! Yeah, it-it’s a tour diary, uh, I mean, someone’s said it’s like a sketchbook full of doodles you find lyin’ about on the pavement.

(will always have a soft spot for The Fall)