The first of my Deep Dives, and arguably WHY I wanted to make this blog in the first place! (TW: Mentions of suicidal themes)
I've been wanting to write about this one for some time!
So, Sewerslidal Idol is, as the name suggests, a song about an idol who wants to perhaps not be alive. If this song concept sounds familiar to you, it's because three months after I posted it, FLAVOR FOLEY came out with "Spoken For," a song that arguably does the concept way better (and given how much effort they put into their music and videos, was almost certainly in production before Sewerslidal Idol was even a thing).
*By the way, i LOOOVE Spoken For, go listen to it if you haven't!
Production on Sewerslidal Idol officially began on May 5th, 2025 at around 9:50 PM; when FL Studio prompted me to name my .flp and folder, I originally just called it "Depression pop"-- not that that was ever meant to be a final name, but I usually tend to give my files names that convey the vibe of a song before I actually name it.
However, by the first WIP render, I had already come up with the name "Sewerslidal Idol," poking fun at internet self-censorship, though this name led to at least one misunderstanding.
As gingerly implied by the YouTube description, the song was a way to express some stress I was feeling. I remember that by the time I initially started the song, my 23rd birthday was a few hours away, but I had mixed feelings. For one, the obvious passage of time, but also, I was really angry, because Donald Trump had been elected again, and between that, the various wars and genocides across the earth, the worsening of climate change, and feelings of guilt I had for being excited to go to a big convention that same month when suffering abounded, I had a lot of intrusive thoughts, usually to the tune of "If the world's so terrible, why bother trying? Why not just wither away?"
While I would get myself together not long after that, I decided to channel some of how I was feeling into a song, using the idea of Teto as an idol as a conduit. It made sense to me; being an idol is an INCREDIBLY taxing line of work unless you play every card right and get a support team that cares about you as a person, and given that Teto herself was facing an explosion of popularity, it made sense to use her as the face of this song, a thought process I'm sure also guided Spoken For.
Anyways, production of the song: Production began just a little after the 1-year anniversary of the 32ki song "Mesmerizer", which served as a major inspiration for the sound of the song. However, I actually tried to lean away from this sound with my first WIP:
At this point, the sound was a LOT lighter sounding, and rather than the chiefly four-on-the-floor, happy hardcore-inspired drum pattern the final version had, this early version of the song instead had a more artcore/modern DNB inspired drum pattern. Even though the BPM's the same as the final, listening to this again threw me off as it sounded so much slower??
Also different was the entire chorus. I actually have very little recall of the chorus ever sounding like this, probably because it's just.. not very good. I do remember at the time I was concerned about making the song too dark, so the chorus instead is about Teto struggling with suicidal thoughts. I don't have the lyrics for this saved anymore, so I've tried to transcribe them. Emphasis on the word "Tried."
But I realized I didn't want to censor myself here, and at this point I had already written songs about slutty gay italian priests, a fortune telling prostitute who lets her married clients destroy their lives because they don't ever think things through, and literally the day before I started making this song, I had finished a song where the girlfriend of a mecha pilot has to completely reinvent herself and become his mecha's new pilot to fight the war, so like... I might as well trust my audience to understand that this was a song where Teto had made up her mind about ending her life w/o assuming I'm endorsing doing that. Thankfully, I have yet to see anyone interpret the song through a pro-suicide lens yet.
By May 9th, I had rendered my 3rd wip (very helpfully named "sewerslidalidol (wip1c).mp3" because i'm so good at naming conventions), and it's here that the song started resembling its final incarnation.
I began leaning more into the Mesmerizer influence, but the overall sound was still pretty lightweight by this point. Oh, and I had completely redone the chorus, though I kept the very end of it because it was the only part from the original that felt "right." That weird "blehhh" I recorded before the chorus was still a part of the song.. for some reason. On May 12th, 12:18 AM, I completed the final render of the song. It was done.
So, what about the video? Production on that actually began not too long after I started writing the song, with the .VEG file for it having a creation date of May 6th, 2:58 AM thereabouts. (Which means, I actually started making the video just a few hours after I started making the song...
I knew pretty early on I wanted to do two things: One, have flashing lights. Two, have a warning for said flashing lights inspired by the warning screens of Dance Dance Revolution 5th Mix. Comparison below.
Oh yeah, fun fact: The NicoNico upload actually had this warning in Japanese. I'll share that too:
The video's general style was heavily inspired by the shows Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist and Home Movies, which used the Squigglevision technique pioneered by Tom Snyder.
(Hey, when is there gonna be an indie cartoon based on this style???)
I also pulled inspiration from the old-school, maximalist Flash animations I grew up on; this is probably most obvious with the part where Teto just straight up does the Peanut Butter Jelly Time Dance. I actually made a joke out of this not long after I finished the song.
For some reason, I made the animations predominately in paint.net, which worked well for simple shots, but was actually, genuinely very terrible for when I decided it'd be soooooo smart to add a dance section. It might not have been so bad if I had made a proper storyboard. I completed exactly one board, and this is it.
An idea I had to make doing the dance easier was to create parts I could sort of collage onto each frame to save me time when I didn't necessarily have to completely redraw something for a pose. I don't think I ended up using it all that much.
In order to do the "dancing silhouettes" that accompany Teto in the chorus, I rendered just the dance as an AVI for reasons I forgot.. I think I thought if I did that, I could keep the pixelly look but it just... ended up being a 3 gb video that didn't look all that good. I still used it though.
During the prechorus, there's a detailed drawing of Teto with a gun in her mouth. I actually still have some of the art files for that handy, so you get to see how how that particular drawing progressed. Lucky you!
The 2nd verse is kind of where I lost steam, so I resorted to that weird Metropolis dance and repeating some stuff to get the whole thing finished. While it's not a choice I'd quickly repeat, at the very least, people seemed to enjoy the video. I think it actually became my first original to breach 1k views, which was pretty big news to me.
I think my crowning accomplishment with that song, however, was that it became the first song I made to be used in an edit-- specifically, a K-Pop Demon Hunters edit:
I finally watched this film back in December while visiting a relative, and honestly I'm surprised more people haven't done more stuff with this song and movie combo. Although, that might be because due to the name, it keeps getting drowned out by both "Your Idol" and Sewerslvt's stuff. I don't mind terribly, though, because 1k was still a big thing for me, and I ultimately had a MUCH more successful song down the line... But that's a Deep Dive for another time.
Lastly, I want everyone to know that rendering the video was a big pain in the ass. It was SUCH a big pain, in fact, that out of frustration, I named the video file this:
The official filename for the Sewerslidal Idol music video is "dont toy with me bitch.mp4", everybody.
the 10 page pitch preview i made for my original comic, Hunky-Dory:) if you want to follow the process and read more, i'm uploading it as i go to patreon.com/jadenvargen !
What is 999 Week? Well, for a “week” in September, the Zero Escape fandom comes together to celebrate the first game in the series, 999! Want to participate? Simply create and upload any kind of fanwork (fanfiction, fanmixes, fanart, cosplay pics, etc.) for a character from 999 on a specific date! You don’t have to do all the characters, of course; any that you can is appreciated.
Each character gets a specific day in September, corresponding to their bracelet numbers! So they’d be as follows: Ace (9/1), Snake (9/2), Santa (9/3), Clover (9/4), Junpei (9/5), June (9/6), Seven (9/7), Lotus (9/8), and 9th Man (9/9).
September 10th is reserved for any extra characters (“Zero,” Nijisaki, Musashidou, Nona, Funyarinpa, Science Boy, etc.). We can’t leave these guys out! Also, here are some guidelines:
If you are late on any day, feel free to upload it the day(s) after!
Feel free to just make content for as many or as few characters as you like! Any and all posts will be reblogged and appreciated!
Tag everything as #999 week so everyone can track the tag! Also: make sure you tag spoilers! (#999 spoilers should do!)
I’ll be reblogging every work I see on the tag to this blog (@999week), so if you want to see a collective of everything, follow us here!
Any kind of support, or even a signal boost, is appreciated! This started back in 2012, so we’ve been going for quite some time. We love and appreciate all the fans and their hard work to celebrate the games!
As always, we hope everyone has a great time this year!
janainaart
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
dededos
