Apocalypse Now

Yes, it's about Rock Band. We are impatient beasts, and can't hold a good joke in for too long. Or a bad one.

Ferrett and I have been Rock Band buddies for awhile now--he shreds like nobody's business and I butcher Nine Inch Nails. It's an extraordinary game, not so much in its conception, which is simple, but in how it manages like almost no other game to bring people together. Especially if one of them has a 50" TV and surround sound.

People like us, who peer into the screen and yell "What the hell do you mean we earned 8,000 fans? Because we played 70% of Fall Out Boy? We got a solid C- in Emo Studies! What kind of messed up world is this?"

And thus, an idea is born. A glimmer of golden space between the utterly absurd and the deadly serious, where the universe glimpsed through the cracks of a glorified karaoke video game shows not mute avatars bobbing in time to the music, but a flattened landscape where firestorms rage and cities wither like corn on the stalk, and those stupid, overwrought songs are psalms and laments.

Is it a ridiculous story? Yep. Are we vaguely ashamed to want to tell it as much as we do? No doubt.

Weren't you ever vaguely embarrassed about loving some idiotic little thing? Maybe, say, a plastic guitar with big colored buttons and a fake whammy bar?

Sometimes, you've got to own your stupid, and ride it as far as it will go.

All the way to the apocalypse.

It's Not The Apocalypse, It's The A-Rock-alypse

And just to clarify: Our goal with this strip is twofold:

First, we will explain Rock Band. You want to know why you can get 8,000 fans in the door and still only make $30? We have an answer. You wanna know why the fans go nuts for 86% of Gimme Shelter? We will explain. We will knit these strange and disparate things - concepts you thought happened only because this was just a game - and tie them together into a coherent universe. In the end, you will look at the fun, happy rock music on your screen and understand every facet of this game as it is from these poor, benighted souls who must live it.

But second, we have A Story to tell. If this was just whacky concepts, Cat and I would have divvied up an LJ post and be done with it. No, even if you know nothing of Rock Band, this is something with a narrative. Even if you know nothing about the meta-story underneath it, this is going to be an actual plot, with people we care about, and a tale worth telling on its own. The origin's strange, but we believe in it.

It's so tragic, what happens to Pete. So sad for them all.

Just watch the pretty notes, my friend. We're gonna try to five-star this one hard.