Josh. Weird Appalachian ND. I make game shows for the art of it and share the notes I write on them. Radicalized in the gutter. Interact with me if you wanna. Life's too short to tolerate bullshit.
"I Got a Great Idea for a Game Show, How Can I Turn it Into a Million Dollars?"
First of all, if you have any way to produce it yourself, it's going to be a lot easier that way. That's not a dig on anybody who already makes game shows, it's just that the people who generally get sent game show ideas already have their own portfolio that they pull from and contribute towards when it comes time to actually producing the show part of game shows.
But the reasons why I encourage doing it yourself runs a little more complicated than that and are some things that not a lot of people think about, and I'll talk about that below the fold:
Hell, I'm a nobody-- Let's hear from the guy everybody blames for Black Mirror and see what had to offer on the broader question of how to get any idea on TV:
I will grant you that the clip was hyper-specific to a particular segment of the European market, but you're looking at roughly the same processes as you would find in any common slaughterhouse or sausage factory operating within these United States. Charlie's advice still applies no matter the bounds in which an audience exists: "If you can do it yourself, for God's sake, do it that way. If it's any good, they will beat a path to your door."
Quite simply, there is just no fast track for stardom like popular culture has inferred exists for screenplays-- that's not how formats work in This Business. It's not that your idea is good or bad, the actual quality of your idea has never entered into the equation at all: part of it is that they got plenty of their own ideas, and another part being the reality of people's understanding of intellectual property laws are, quite simply, buttock-clenchingly piss poor. Hell, the professionals don't quite understand the intellectual property laws around game shows and nobody wants to be a party, neither plaintiff nor defendant, to set a precedent on That Kind of Thing.
The practical problem is that it really doesn't take much for somebody who thinks they can declare exclusivity on an already intangible, protection-less process to get a lawyer on the phone. And lawsuits that get tossed out of a court are still lawsuits that cost production companies money even if they win, sometimes especially when they win. So that's why all of the professional, actually-on-commercial-television production companies have an "Unsolicited Submissions" policy that generally follow the same boilerplate: "We don't take 'em, but if you send us something anyway, you can't use it as grounds to sue us if something similar comes up, and you sending us this will be interpreted as your not having just read this policy, but agreeing with it."
Let's just go ahead and get the car analogy out of the way now, as I was an auto parts salesman for years before: Lots of people work on cars for different reasons. Some because they race them professionally, some because they use them for a paycheck, some because they like having something to do with their hands.
Every one of those mechanics are too busy building or re-machining or tuning their own projects to hear about the tool you think you can sell them. Mechanics know other mechanics are set when it comes to tools (except for 10mm sockets. No commonplace beast or singular, otherworldly horror can keep a hold of a 10mm socket. I can't keep hold of a 10mm socket. Point is if I had a 10mm socket, I would be putting it to use, myself, and not trying to sell it off). There's plenty of work focusing on your own engine, your energies are better spent there.
Your ideas aren't trash, just your approach in their implementation. Ideas are not the goal, ideas are the ignition coil; there's more to an engine than just the ignition coil, there's more to a game show than just the idea.
For the record, I do not share my ideas because I think they are worthless, but because I am the kinda dude who lends tools out to people who ask. Yes, it has got me bitten before, but being in a position to help someone and actively refusing to help them is not something I would ever want to do. I value my tools as I do my ideas, either way, they're only as good as the sweat, tears, blood, and foul language I have expressed in the course of using them otherwise why the hell did I just put my knuckles all through that?
This is a list of references that I have found particularly useful in making my field notes on #HowToProduceAGameShow. Almost-APA formatted, I've had to convert it over to a bulleted list for it to look somewhat organized below the fold:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation. (2008 - ). Gruen. whole. A long-running series on how advertising works "and how it works on us,” Gruen is a weekly roundtable discussion with advertising executives on the topics of advertising, marketing, public relations, and the consequences surrounding them all. Entire seasons of the program have devoted attention towards particular sectors of the field, with topics like the environment, athletics, and political campaigns.
Basin, K. (2019). The business of television. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. "A comprehensive overview of the business, financial, and legal structure of the US television industry, as well as its deal-making norms."
BBC Four. (2006 - 2009). Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe. whole. A series on explaining how television is made, from idea to production to reruns. Presented by Charlie Brooker (“Black Mirror”).
BBC Four. (2009 - 2010). Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. whole. A companion series to his previous 'Screenwipe' program, Charlie Brooker focuses his attention on the practices and conventions of modern television journalism demonstrated in recent headlines across twelve episodes.
BBC Two. (2011). How TV Ruined Your Life. whole. A primer on media literacy in the trappings of a cynical, almost despondent prosecution of the medium, Charlie Brooker examines how messaging in media can distort perspectives across all demographics over the topics of fear, the human life cycle, love, aspiration, knowledge, and progress.
Blumenthal, H., & Boden, B. (Eds.). (2024, February 8). Oral Histories. The Strong National Museum of Play. https://www.museumofplay.org/collections/national-archives-of-game-show-history/oral-histories/ A collection of interviews with people involved in the making of game shows, both above and below the line.
Blumenthal, H. J., & Goodenough, O. R. (2006). This Business of Television. Billboard Books. A reference book describing many aspects of commercial television production and intellectual property from image clearances to cable agreements to residual negotiations.
Brooks, T., & Marsh, E. (1992). The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV shows: 1946 - Present. Ballantine Books. General reference.
Channel 4. (1988). The Secret Life of Machines. whole.. Exploring the history and function of common household goods, and the changes made to the average person and how they live, work, and play. The episodes dealing with the television, the radio, the video cassette recorder, the fax machine, and the word processor all come especially recommended as primers on the underlying broadcasting technology that helped make productions possible.
Foust, J. C., Fink, E. J., & Gross, L. S. (2018). Video Production Disciplines and Techniques. (12th ed.). Routledge. A comprehensive and accessible overview of the operations in a video production, this book explains the roles of every member of a production crew; their responsibilities before, during, and after a production; as well as standard practices for both production in a studio as well as in the field.
Frank, L. (2023). Real-Time Video Content for Virtual Production & Live Entertainment: a Learning Roadmap for an Evolving Practice. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Live-to-tape processes and technologies are discussed in this text, explaining ways technology can produce effects in-production, from augmented reality to keying a colored background.
Kisseloff, J. (1997). The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920-1961. Penguin. . A collection of interviews between the author and multiple people who worked in television from its conception to its maturation as a mass medium, organized by topics from cities of origination, genre, the medium’s notable names and events.
Nedeff, A. (2018). Game Shows FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About the Pioneers, the Scandals, the Hosts, and the Jackpots. Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, an imprint of Hal Leonard LLC. “An unprecedented look at how the genre has evolved over the past hundred years.”
Schwartz, D., Ryan, S., & Wostbrock, F. (1999). The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows (3rd ed.). Facts On File. General reference detailing the game shows of American television, the people who made them, where they aired, as well as who appeared on them as compiled by three veterans of the industry.
A body of production as a body at play; imperfection as both limitation and liberty
In my years of (well, not just watching them but) observing game shows, it seems to me the common denominator for successful franchises arise from the idea of putting people in an artificial situation in order for them to be best themselves, their true unvarnished souls underneath the facade and masks we build up in the course of our life.
I find that to be a vital, if rarely considered craft and worth a look at. And that's why I've been doing this whole #How To Produce a Game Show schtick/series/thing.
So I guess when it comes to making them, there are first principles to consider when creating them. When it comes to producing a game show, it helps to understand a production as a corpus, a body, a beast. A four-legged animal whose work is multiplied by the people in the production company. four essential components that contribute towards the final corporeal form of the game show as a deliverable product to a customer's specifications. if you wanna make them yourself, you need to think about them strategically. Below the fold are the four strategic areas I have found to help me in organizing my own productions.
Format -- The game being played. The reason we're turning cameras on and pointing them at your friends and/or pre-screened members of the public in the first place. Not just the patter the emcee gives before the game begins, this is the platform by which contestants should be able to be themselves (even if what they are is just smart as hell). The artificiality, the constraints a person finds themselves in probably every day but perhaps never was cognizant of it before the point they're on a stage and under spotlights.
Material -- Not just in terms of adequate research-- being able to defend a choice in the acceptance / refusal of a particular answer as the trivia questions are written (and all of that is considering a five-year federal minimum if you half-ass any part of that to the point where it gets in front of a judge)-- Material is what the game is being played with, the fuel and lubrication and cooling system of the engine. the puzzles, the riddles, the stunts, the stakes being played for (beyond material compensation ["Hey, Todman, ya dropped ya script!"])
Execution -- The separation between a game that is fun to play and a game that is fun to watch. The 'shows' part of "game shows" that the commercial side of it has to deal with. How the game looks, sounds, reads as it is played, the pace at which action takes place. the actual stuff that gets protected by IP law because a physical product results at the end of it.
It's also who conducts the game and in what manner? A traffic cop keeping the system flowing (Trebek/Jeopardy, Tom Kennedy on Split Second or Whew), a minister conducting services (Bob Barker, Drew Carey on The Price is Right), a coworker commentating on the baseball game playing on the tv at the local bar (Dick Clark on Pyramid), the last sane man trying to conduct during the apocalypse (Tom Bergeron on Hollywood Squares), a jaded professional clearly there for the paycheck but still there to entertain the audience (Les Dawson on Blankety Blank, Pat Sajak as he neared his retirement from Wheel of Fortune), a monarch holding a jolly audience (Groucho Marx and You Bet Your Life) or even a monarch pronouncing sentence (Simon Munnery's weirdly brilliant, one-series "Either/Or" in the UK-- ten anonymous contestants are polled on ridiculous binary choices, with Simon arbitrarily deciding who gave the worst justification for their answer and eliminating them from play one-by-one by revealing the identity of that contestant. it's notoriety as a punishment. the winner keeping their privacy intact).
the consistency at which a known quality and quantity is generated and maintained.
Audience relationship -- how the presentation is presented and how often you present it beyond cutting promos and marketing strategies. is the audience's role as a spectator, as a friend, jury, or is the audience even to be acknowledged at all? Truth or Consequences worked because half the show was letting the audience in on the joke that the suc--contestants weren't told about. The original "People are Funny" worked a lot like "America's Funniest Home Videos;" Art Linkletter didn't ask you to keep a completely random stranger in a phone call for three whole minutes without them hanging up for $500 just like it's not your nuts getting hit with that pinata stick, but for the grace of God there could be you trying to keep somebody on a phone line and about to feel a stick connect when you hear a 'click.'
This is what the production intends to establish as the relationship between their work and the people watching it. This is another one of those "this is complicated because different levels have different definitions" things; commercial productions' audience are their commissioning patrons who are operating on guidance from their advertisers, whose primary audience are their investors. For those working on the art of it, you can focus just on the people you imagine would watch it and if nothing else, make it the kind of content you would want to watch.
NOTE OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE: any truth to the adage on whether or not anyone has lost money in underestimating the public should not be interpreted as sign, suggestion, instruction, permission, or even a blessing to be disrespectful or contemptuous of your audience. the quiz show scandals happened chiefly because Herb Stemple felt he had been disrespected by Dan Enright in not keeping up his end of the bargain when he agreed to take a dive against Charles Van Doren, and the public responded in the way they did because that same disrespect had been felt on a personal level.
nobody cares if wrestling is fake because no promoter alive would stage an open brawl, and there is still an implicit consent to the spectacle on the part of the audience. But spectacle arguably open to public participation must be honest in its operation. "If anybody could play, then anybody should be able to win. If it could happen to anyone, it could happen to me. We're not having that." An audience's capacity for patience can run deep, but one finds out the hard way that it is still ultimately a finite, non-renewable resource when one realizes they have squandered it.
Blatant, sincere contempt is the fanfare heralding a career in stillbirth. Be as honest with your audience as you would hope others would be with you. Treat your audience like you would want yourself to be treated, cut them the slack you'll certainly need from them one day. any assumption on the existence of marks in the producer-audience relationship is correct, but one need only look as far as the nearest mirror to find the closest sucker ready for fleecing.
if you trust your audience, you'll let them know it's fake on the get-go, as that was what literally happened with Chuck Barris' "The $1.98 Beauty Show." But as that one lasted, what, two seasons? It still requires the production giving the audience something to come back to.
This is not saying that all four are important, so much as suggesting the idea of balancing a wobbly table- a longer or stronger leg can make up for a shorter/weaker leg but a missing leg entirely collapses the entire platform. Less emphasis on one aspect would arguably mean more attention to pay on others. Gene Rayburn himself said that Match Game itself was a silly idea for a game, but the game was entirely an excuse for witty (and after lunch, slightly marinated) people to crack wise at the show, the writers, the studio audience when they give a rotten answer during the audience match during the production break at TattleTales or Password for celebrities in the orbit of the Goodson/Todman Grist Mill. Contrast that with one of the rare missteps from Goodson/Todman: the live-remote panel game "What's Going On?" -- the tech was conceivably there but not perfected, and the moderator was an actor of the get-script-read-lines school of performance. It was imagined with the novelty of live television but with none of the considerations. Deal or No Deal as well as (The New) Treasure Hunt both involve the same binary choice (with Deal or No Deal actually involving multiple passes at that same choice), but where one directed their execution towards grandeur of a big-budget Vegas floor show, the other decided to pull their contestants through seven shades of absolute hell in order to make someone who is actually winning a speedboat think they were going to leave with a head of cabbage before noticing it had a captain's hat on it. sometimes a production succeeds because the wobble is the point. there's no guarantee for success, better ideas stalled out at the pilot for reasons other, worse shows get renewed. The guarantee is just that it's possible to make them, not that it'll be a success.
It helps to understand other productions in this kind of framework in order to understand a production's priorities, the goals they hope were met with this production now existing. Obviously money is an important factor, but the more motivations that there are going into a project, the better the odds of that project being seen through to completion and as an achievement, rather than an ordeal to be forgotten. If somebody is doing this because of the art of it and not necessarily for the money it never hurts to keep at least one or two handy in a back pocket.
This is not saying your idea is unimportant, there's going to be more to than just the rule set if you want it to be A Thing What Is and not merely A Thing What Could Be. A spark plug is not the only component to a car's engine, but its absence makes a noticeable difference in how things run. An openness to inspiration from anything is what Shigeru Miyamoto credits for his own successes in game development and that liberty is just as accessible to the field of game shows.
The BBC made a long-running series out of experts in classical music trying to name a tune by just watching the silent(ish) motions of the pianist and host playing a keyboard with its hammers disconnected. Our version of Face the Music was completely different (MST3K fans will immediately know who Sandy Frank is. Watch the US "Face the Music" and it'll make sense). i think even something like cybernetics, the study of how systems are developed and operate, can be a rich source of ideas if you can gamify a point of friction in common interactions.
if you want this to happen (and as somebody who thinks good game shows are something worth encouraging, I would want it, too) this is something of a starting point for what you need to build in order to take it from a napkin to a collectors box set. If you want a homework assignment, randomly look up an old game show from the 1970s or 1980s, one you never heard of, and break down what you see by those four categories, find what works, what doesn't.
So in reading up on what all I wrote before life called me away to more pressing matters, i noticed that a lot of this whole #HowToProduceAGameShow project under which I've been posting my nonsense involves me hammering away at an idea: that even if you think something you make is shit, make it anyway. a poor craftsman blames his tools, but the thing is i am not a poor craftsman-- i am a shit one. A shit craftsman knows they're shit, but as they keep up they go from knowing they're shit to just straight up knowing their shit.
so this shit craftsman finished a project well enough to be okay with sharing with the world. those pictograms I made in my last post? this is the game related to the pictogram of the marksman aiming at a line of card suits (and they're not card suits here but abstract shapes because I am shit at that kind of pixel art. but it's the same principle at play: five options with two traits each, generate clues from four of the cards using one trait from each, see if the player(s) can pick the one that's left.). for solo players, you use the keys 1-5. if you have enough kindred spirits around you that would be weird enough to multiplayer this, you can go for local (up to) 4-player multiplayer action ("just like the real [fake] show!") with gamepads (buzzing in with left, up, right, A, and B).
only i ain't found my usb pad to test out multiplayer. but i can run a standard playloop well enough that I am not immediately ashamed of my sloth and inattention to detail. I also still haven't got deep enough into the TIC-80 platform to be able to make sfx or music yet. So that's why it's uploaded as a work-in-progress.
i tried to comment code as best as i could on stuff i thought needed commenting. if anybody wanna gripe over it, they can catch this apathy. i didn't make it for approval, i made it for me. i also did it because it don't do any good to preach "make your shit even if you think it sucks" if one ain't willing to subject themselves to the mortification of becoming a known quantity in the eyes of others. Nor does it good to preach "don't complain about shit that exists, make the shit you think oughtta exist" like fred rogers if I don't belly up to the blind and make my own contribution.
so here we are. so here's the game. based on a round from a german format ("schlag den raab," nowadays "schalg den star"). this is being billed as "the home game from a parallel universe," one round from a set of five, a show whose press releases make use of the phrase "modern mental pentathlon"
I purposely included a 'colorblind' option that incorporates distinct patterns into the colors (especially as red and green are two colors that I use for this), and the pattern-color combinations stay consistent between trials; it will reassign combinations on the next game. i've had too much trouble with my own problems to not try and think about anybody else who might be interested in this game but would otherwise be at a disadvantage through no fault of their own.
i've got four more of these to make, but i wanted to post something i've been working on as proof of life on my part. the hurdles pictogram is for an event i'm calling "counter-intuitive reasoning"
so the nice thing about getting treated for ADHD is that you can actually focus on your plans long enough to actually accomplish things. These are some athletic pictograms I went and made for each round of one of my formats --billing it as a 'modern mental pentathlon.' It's five tests of mental acuity/reasoning/agility, three played as group events (players can buzz in if they solve a particular trial), two as individual events (each plays their particular challenge separately, as they're about the fastest time to complete each challenge)
Part of a broader taxonomy i'm calling 'cognitive athletics,' not as a replacement for the category of 'game show' but as a sub-genre within it; revolving around any sort of competition centered around thinking skills. centered on the participants, it's trying to give thinking skills the gravitas of a sports presentation.
I mean, the whole thing is planned as a deliberate exploration between a game show and a sports presentation, the boundary we all know exists but nobody ever particularly surveyed. the level of play expected vs the extent participants are members of the public, contestants wearing numbered runners' bibs, you know, that kinda claptrap.
At the risk of sounding like a jaded first-period teacher who walked in just in time to find the usual crowd of sitcom protagonists trying to light something on fire: "The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" was originally about hardware protocols (specifically, TCP/IP nodes). What we see with TokSpeak is the social implementation of that axiom.
Newspeak was a top-down directive to curb subversion by gradually robbing people of their ability to articulate the problems they were experiencing. Newspeak was not an emergent, bottom-up conspiracy formed because nobody older than 30 will be able to understand 'unalived' means 'killed.'
Sounds to me like people need to quit being such goddamned snobs about the kids these days and realize that language evolves as an adaptation to the environments in which it is spoken. The OP-OP's skills issue with the concept of "main ideas" has given me a headache too early in the damned morning for me to just mind my business when I ain't even had my goddamned coffee yet. Mother of gawd.
Adding text to the quadmeshes was a hell of a lot easier than I was first a-feared of:
Turns out there's an actual Mesh Object ("New TextMesh," specifically) that takes whatever parameters, font, and text you give it and it turns it into 3D objects you can then slap onto whatever you need to.
It's usually gonna be one line of text on the longer trilons (the one showing "an answer here"), with maybe two lines at most on the taller, stouter ones ("a pithy category name").
Now, the question is, can I get the code to do everything I need it to do?
A Status Report, Plus More Singing the Praises of this Cesspit (Affectionate)
There have been a number of World Heritage Posts from Tumblr that have made both an indelible impression on my mind and dent in my skull since I first read of them: Pukicho finding out that furry artists are liked more than doctors; "terrible job, everyone!" ; "well crunchity munchity do you think that'll stop me?" ; and a bunch of other stuff that would take entirely too long to list here for all the laughs and entertainment I have taken from this wellspring of intrusive thoughts.
But there were also a few that stuck with me for inspirational reasons, and god forgive me for "looking up who originally said this on tumblr.com" being too low on my personal depth chart given everything else currently on my plate:
This also gives me a little additional wiggle room on paraphrasing the message I took from those quotes, too, so... yeah.
"If you feel like a solution to a problem is stupid, just remember a computer is a rock we tricked into thinking. [...] Not to oversimplify things, I mean we had to flatten the rocks first and then carve runes in them to channel the lightning."
You know that problem I've been having with trying to subdivide the UV map so that only a certain portion of an atlas image shows up on it? I've been making the problem entirely too complicated. Turns out you can just add an extra quadmesh in the dimensions you need, and that way the shader can just focus on showing the correct index at the correct face. "Obsoive!" he cried in poor imitation of Curly Howard as he drew attention to the video he attached to the post:
The uniforms I've set up with this should give me an easy way to change the graphics through code, passing While I'm at it, I've gotten the whole "putting 3D objects in a 2D scene" down pat:
Next steps: Setting up the logic to change faces as needed by the game (e.g. covers for the prize board, text to the faces that need it, the logic surrounding the idea of shuffling three prize graphics plus a stop sign three times and distributing three of those shuffles across the three rows), as well as building the players' lower-thirds showing name, point total, trophies earned, and the associated animations involved thereof. Much later comes setting everything up in OBS to fix the shots and progression of the game. Much much later comes populating the CSV with the material I've written (and yet to write) to actually put everything together.
"If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." -- the original poster was recounting something their college professor told them, and it's been the biggest motivator for wanting to get something like this going. yes, it's gonna be shit, i'm gonna make it anyway and learn to make it better next time.
"Nobody remembers that the wright brothers built the worst airplane ever flown."
Fun fact I always love to mention every time I remember Tucker Carlson exists: there is a primetime game show that he hosted for CBS in 2007 called 'Do You Trust Me?' that was your typical early-ought, big-money bunkum after The Weakest Link hit the scene-- it had chrome, girders, vari-lights, snide condescension, the works.
It was also around the time when everybody and their cousins were doing prisoners dilemma bonus rounds because it fits with the snide condescension while also being a really handy way for producers to boast about the jackpot in promos while actually paying out a fraction of it, if at all.
There's a lot of reasons why a game show doesn't make it from pilot to air, and a lot of them come down to pure, dumb chance. But this wasn't a pilot that wasn't purchased, this was a series already pitched, paid for, and delivered.
Not having seen any of it (why would I? I wouldn't even watch that as a goof), I would lay money on the idea that this was his first attempt in a television genre legally obligated to a higher ethical standard than he ever worked before and CBS, in seeing his performance, felt they would make more money from the venture by sealing the masters off in concrete, scrying sigils all over the sarcophagus, and renting it out as a source of dark mana.
"Right. Obviously, we made a wrong turn somewhere."
Texture issue is still an issue, which leads me to think something is busted in the UV itself. Given that Godot 4 doesn't have any way of editing the UV mesh "in-house," the most common suggestion for this was to open it in Blender and fix it that way.
Which would be all well and good, but the version of blender (2.7.9) that will actually work for my computer (graphics-on-motherboard setup, it's a refurbished desktop) predates support .gLTF.
So now the back-up-and-punt play is to make three individual 3D mesh planes to size, and have them orbit the center. The thing I was trying to prevent it from doing when I first started this. I could try and maybe make the mesh in Blender first, but given the difficulty i'm having in one piece of creativity software, i don't think adding a another suite to my "let's learn this" pile right now would be the play here.
Oh well, but that's how learning works I guess.
I should have some better news on my next update.
The Dems still control the legislature, but thank God they threw trans people and first responders under the fucking bus in order to make that happen.
If you still intend to support the party as they are right now you're missing the fucking point and deserve everything you have ever wished on a fucking MAGA chud because you are fucking indistinguishable from them, you stupid fucking douchebags.
Joe Biden and Democrats delivered an amazing economy, better than the world/G8, and were addressing housing, price gouging, gas prices, student debt, and expanding safety net policies.
In walks Trump and his misogynistic 'Kamala has no idea' bullshit, the media can't hold Trump to a standard, and here we are now with Trump so much less than Kamala with the White House.
An inferior conservative man is given so many advantages, it's our national disgrace.
Another day, another scumbag Democrat blaming voters for the piece of shit nobody chose as their candidate. Y'all shoulda took the hint that she was garbage when she got fewer delegates than that racist piece of shit sociopath Pete Buttigieg, but I guess your plan was to just eliminate the pretense of democracy entirely in order to protect it from trump.
LiberalsAreCool is a piece of shit and I hope they get everything they have ever wished on a poor person.
I notice alot of my followers on here skipping these posts just to mess with my lgbt ones, suspiciously the white popular ones.
Heres a not so friendly reminder, as an lgbt metis person, i dont give a single fuck what your blog is themed or if this is too painful for you to look at. Reblog this post. Reblog this post with the sources of the 751 children who were found.
Your compliance and silence as well as the compliance and silence of your ancestors is what allowed these schools to open and kill first nations children. The children of MY people.
Dont follow me if you cant reblog this post or the one with sources to your political blog or your most popular blog. Add trigger warnings if you must but if your political blog is only focused on the harms you personally face like being lgbt then you need to see some bigger pictures and stop being afraid of angering your racist mutural or actually saying some shit about racism. If you can reblog some antifa graphics or add blm to your bio to be a surface level ally, you can reblog some sources on the genocide first nations people faced and still face today.
I’d like to add this photo I took last night in Victoria of the statue of Captain Cook. Though I myself am not indigenous, I 100% agree that these murderers, kidnappers and rapists shouldn’t have huge statues and plaques that decorate them and say how “great” they were.
Here’s another photo of the legislative assembly from yesterday. Later on there were more items, candles and signs at the memorial, as well as a big poster with 1505 painted on it but I didn’t get a picture
People need to see this. Not just quickly glance at the photos and keep on scrolling. They need to see this.
I had seen the first picture of the church, but not the second.
I went to a “Cancel Canada Day” event and burst into tears - not because I was surprised to learn of the unmarked graves (survivors told us they were there. Our government pushed it aside, and we let them), but because seeing all the people gathered in mourning drove it home: They. Were. Children.
This is my country’s legacy - and it’s not history. The last schools closed during my lifetime. My Father went to school with students who lived at the local residential school, after it was changed to a boarding house (read: holding centre) for indigenous youth who went to local schools.
They were all children, injured, abused, and killed in my country’s attempt to erase them. I want the world to see this and hold the state accountable to *active* reconciliation> I mean we could at least truly adopt UNDRIP in action instead of words for god’s sake.
here you can read an article about a survivor of the church and some of the things he experienced to help put into perspective how awful and just how recent it was
