23:46 <tom> Willie's phone buzzes just after sunset. 23:47 <tom> BG: <you totally thought itd be more fruit threats lmao> 23:48 <VoxPVoxD> Willie has a spike of panic when her text notification goes off. 23:49 <tom> BG: <got ur ass> 23:49 <VoxPVoxD> It's five minutes before she can bring herself to check the phone and <you did. you did Get my Arse> 23:49 <tom> BG: <crazy ivans personal safety policy requires there to be at least 2 people at a shoot so one of us can dial 9/11 if i blow up> 23:50 <VoxPVoxD> Anger and fear evaporate immediately. <!> 23:50 <tom> BG: <can you handle a camera tripod> 23:51 <VoxPVoxD> <yes! i'm not an Expert - cf Aaron's Very Complicated DSLR - but photography is something of a hobby of mine> 23:52 <tom> Bob mercifully declines to offer his interpretation of what DSLR might stand for. 23:53 <tom> BG: <at the greybox, gonna film it at the tintwistle farm in like an hour, meet there? i got all the setup stuff> 23:53 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's supposed to be spending her evenings around Sergio for security's sake... but he's working at Inchcape tonight. Surely not the spirit of the policy. <ok! what should i bring> 23:57 <tom> BG: <kaga might like to run around and we cant rule out needing him in case some weirdos are invisibly following us everywhere i guess but i got the cams and rockets with me so nothing else> 23:58 <VoxPVoxD> <no food! understood> :( 23:58 <VoxPVoxD> Still! What fun! 00:00 <tom> The drive up to the farmhouse is wet gravel, the kind that crunches pleasantly under the tires as Willie pulls to a stop next to Bob's truck. The farmhouse itself is still dark, plastic tarps over the remodeling work billowing in the gusts rolling down off the hills flanking the property. Even in the dark, it feels... wide open. 00:00 <tom> Bob's rubbing his hand for warmth next to a pile of crap in the wet grass. 00:02 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's in winter clothes; even Kaga is wearing a two-toned blue scarf with a coat of arms on it. She waves. 00:03 <tom> Bob: "Hello sir, and Willie. Oh man, does he flip the fuck out around fireworks? That could be a problem." 00:05 <VoxPVoxD> Kagemenauch the Flayed: <Fire plays.> 00:05 <VoxPVoxD> Willie, slightly muffled: "He'll be fine! What's the plan, Mr. Director?" 00:06 <tom> "Alright so," Bob applies chapstick, wipes some rain from his jacket. "You saw a few of the videos, yeah?" 00:06 <tom> He pulls a tripod out of its case and delicately retrieves an expensive-looking camera from the truck's cab. 00:07 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I saw all of them." 00:08 <tom> "Oh man, sorry about the really bad post-2010 series. After Obama get elected my life got almost as bad as things got after 2016. Those were the nadir for real." 00:09 <tom> "Anyway you get the gist. We're going for a sort of post-ironic feel here." 00:10 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "It was a fascinating time capsule! But yeah, I think I get it. Is that still the intended tone, or are we post-post-irony now?" 00:10 <tom> He stands up the camera on its tripod and goes to the pile of crap. He snaps a few glowsticks and tosses them into the grass, revealing a pile of angular tubes, about a meter in length each, capped with fuses. 00:11 <VoxPVoxD> Willie will, for Bob's sake, not point out she was 13 when Obama was elected. 00:11 <tom> "Post-post irony is just New Sincerity, which is an unattainable ideal that we all have to strive for." 00:11 <tom> "Anyway, we'll be doing a lot of shaky-cam shots, real rapid cuts, gotta keep the pig viewers off balance." 00:12 <tom> "I hope you don't actually know Russian because this shit is real offensive or so I've heard." 00:12 <VoxPVoxD> Willie, who is sincere to an extreme fault: "That's fine. The facts don't care about my feelings. Casual racism is 'based', et cetera." 00:14 <tom> "The key to getting the widest audience is to play both sides like a coward. You play a character who thinks it's based, and then everyone gets to read in whatever they want." 00:15 <tom> He slicks back his hair and puffs his jacket. "Okay, so, like the other videos, no shots of my face, because this is super illegal even in America. Rockets this size require F.A.A. preclearance and licensing. You literally need more licensing to make these than to own an AR-15." 00:15 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Keep talking like that and you'll be Prime Minister before you're through." 00:15 <VoxPVoxD> Willie nods. 00:15 <VoxPVoxD> "Is the accent natural or do you edit it in post?" 00:15 <tom> "Under no circumstances do you or the camera go in front of anything that can go boom." 00:16 <VoxPVoxD> "Safety is paramount," says the least safe person in Manchester to the second-least-safe. 00:17 <tom> Bob is taking out a can of spraypaint and laying down a pair of red parallels in the direction the tubular rockets are aligned toward. The camera shouldn't pick it up, but if Willie has her phone out it'll be clear where she shouldn't step. 00:17 <tom> At the question about his accent, Bob reaches into the pile and produces an unlabeled bottle of clear fluid. 00:17 <tom> He knocks it back. 00:17 <tom> "Is natural. Just think, what is most stupid cave-man way of speech." 00:18 <tom> "Then put in some Hans Gruber. Vague euro-trash." 00:18 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Ah, first AD and designated driver. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Chesnokov." 00:18 <VoxPVoxD> That makes Willie sigh. Alan Rickman... 00:19 <tom> "Chesnokov is fraud," he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Final post is proofs. Refers to systema of Gatling as Gatling even though all Russian knows weapon is brought to Russia by man named Gorlov and called Gorlov gun by all." 00:19 <tom> "Okay one sec I gotta dial up the coherence a bit," he coughs. 00:20 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Maybe it was a different person! Did someone check the tripcodes?" 00:20 <tom> "This way of thinking makes no-one happy." He's back. 00:20 <tom> Okay. 00:22 <tom> He steps back to the truck and flips on a floodlight, illuminating the rockets lying in their pile while neatly leaving the red paint block markers in the dark. The effect is to create a shot framed by the shadows, into which a jacketed man steps, his face pointed away from the camera while he gestures wildly. 00:22 <tom> "Roll camera." 00:22 <tom> "Fuck you ATF! Fuck you FBI! You never find me in trackless swamp of Long Island wilderness!" 00:23 <tom> "You try to delete my video, you delete my video from the Facebook! But no! Is not enough!" 00:24 <VoxPVoxD> Once he starts talking she wonders if she's been casually hoodwinked into making sure he's in frame for some kind of actual active shooter manifesto. That was quite an alarming shift. But no; she trusts Bob. 00:25 <tom> The man on camera takes another swig of a different unlabeled bottle. This one is water, Bob would've mentioned if he'd thought to say it. 00:25 <VoxPVoxD> If he starts staggering Willie will cut the tape. But right now he's just vamping. 00:25 <tom> "Today's topic of video comes from commenter LGBrandon, who can't see this because is banned from youtubes from of racism." 00:27 <tom> "LGBrandon ask, "Fuck you, fake Russian boooooop-" he'll edit the actual censor in post so it sounds more real. "Where your videos go? You drink self to death you hack fuck?" 00:27 <tom> "Good question Brandon! Tonight we address topic of Rocketry system in warfare." 00:28 <tom> The man steps forward into the frame, revealing a heavy jacket over a tracksuit. He makes sure to reach into his pockets so the viewers see dozens of cigarette butts spill out before he produces a lighter. 00:30 <VoxPVoxD> If Willie were looking at Bob directly she'd struggle not to laugh at that, but seeing him through the viewfinder adds a layer of voyeuristic distance that, while it doesn't erase the humour, does suppress it. 00:30 <tom> "American action movies of Hollywood construction give dumb idiots dumb ideas." He crouches, angling the steel tube at a forty-five degree angle and spiking it into the ground on a guiding rod. 00:32 <tom> "Example. Rockets. Weapon of future. Usually fired from stupid obsolete helicopter in great big volley of noise and fire. Very cinematic!" 00:32 <tom> "Is older than gun by wide margin." 00:33 <VoxPVoxD> That's right. Willie learned that by inference from Disney's Mulan. 00:33 <tom> He steps back, revealing a sparking fuse racing up toward the rocket's base. He gives Willie a thumbs-up as he steps out of frame. 00:33 <tom> He plugs his ears. 00:33 <VoxPVoxD> She prepares to track the flight. 00:36 <tom> The frame is blinded by the sudden shift in brightness; it's fine, it'll add to the jankiness, which is the whole Feel, as Willie understands. She's tracking the meter-long rocket, now a rapidly retreating blaze of screaming smoky fire ascending as it climbs skyward on a wide parabola. 00:37 <tom> "Rocket is system of India. Mysore." 00:37 <tom> "Well." 00:37 <VoxPVoxD> It makes her think of the video of the fight with the Hound. That flash is all that came through of the laser rifle. It looked a lot different in person. 00:37 <tom> The rocket has descended enough that bob (Ivan) can step back into the same frame. It impacts the distant hillside, scattering apart into a plume of burning wreckage. 00:37 <tom> "Obviously is no charge of explosive. C'mon." 00:38 <tom> "First rocket likely is invention of very surprised dead Chinese man." 00:38 <tom> "But rockets of military systema come from Mysore, in fifteenth century." 00:38 <tom> Audible glugging of his (water) bottle. 00:39 <tom> He's walking back into the frame, reset to the few meters of grass around the 'launchpad' illuminated by the truck's light. 00:41 <VoxPVoxD> She really wishes it were raining a little. Or snow flurries. It'd look so good in the hi-beams. 00:42 <tom> "Is fun idea, really. What is step up from Hwacha- See Episode of forty-three, Gunfucking Through Time." 00:42 <tom> "Well, next step is logical. You take a firework, and you add a knife." 00:42 <VoxPVoxD> A classic. 00:42 <VoxPVoxD> ...is that logical? 00:43 <tom> "Is general understood that explosives before modern detonators is idea of bad quality. Wonder why every army of Europe has 'Grenadiers' that never use grenades? Is because they explode all the time until they stop using them." 00:43 <tom> "Much easier to add knife, safer even." 00:44 <tom> Ivan crouches- Willie can see Bob actually has some sort of protractor, with the little bubble floating in a plastic tube, and is angling the next rocket accordingly. 00:45 <tom> As he lifts the rocket skyward, Willie can see this one has a fucking scythe welded to the nose. 00:45 <VoxPVoxD> Bob's good at maths... 00:46 <tom> "Rockets of Mysore use no explosive head, because Rocketeers of Mysore do not worship death." 00:46 <tom> The rocket lifts off- 00:46 <tom> Sputters- 00:46 <tom> "Nyet! NYET!" Don't break character! Bob is off-frame, urging the camerawoman to move, move! 00:48 <tom> -And comes back down on the launch site, the rocket still pulsing as the heavy knife drags the steel tube off-balance, skittering across the grass wildly, cutting and bouncing. 00:48 <tom> "FUCK!" 00:49 <tom> The rocket spins wildly, throwing sparks in all directions. 00:49 <tom> The blade drags through the dirt, plowing up a trail of mud. 00:49 <VoxPVoxD> The scythe blade actually shears off in the rotation; Willie has to duck to let it go clear of her head. 00:49 <tom> "Hoooly shit! Cut! Cut!!" 00:50 <VoxPVoxD> Willie cuts... once she's centered the camera on the rocket in the dirt. 00:50 <tom> Bob is instantly staggering up toward Willie. "Shit! You okay!?" 00:51 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's eyes are sparkling. She looks a bit flushed. "I'm fine! What a rush! Where did you get that blade?" 00:51 <tom> "Oh, haha, that's another project, I beat it out of an old wrought iron pan for reasons, you know- don't dwell on it." 00:51 <tom> "We're gonna keep that shot, okay? Nobody watches NASCAR for the driving." 00:51 <tom> "Half my audience only watches this shit because they wanna see me die." 00:52 <VoxPVoxD> Ah, Faerie Business. "That would be true if your audience was just you and me." 00:52 <tom> He roars with laughter. "You're starting to get it!" 00:52 <tom> He smacks himself. "Woo, okay, back in character- you good?" 00:53 <tom> The next shot shows the man kick the smoking rocket with his adidas. 00:53 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Cushty." 00:54 <tom> In post, this is where the montage will start, set to one of Bob's personal favorites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGk9MkePLgY 00:55 <tom> "Mysorean rockets have problem of stability." 00:55 <tom> "Blade adds many fucky properties of aeronautics that are poorly understood in sixteenth century." 00:55 <tom> "Is major problem! But good for causing problems to enemy when they land." 00:56 <tom> "First use of rockets of Mysore is against British East India company." 00:57 <tom> "American textbook fuck up thinking of history same way Saving of Private Ryan make dumb hamburger men think Great Patriotic War begin with Normandy and End with also Normandy." 00:57 <tom> "Is not so simple as idiot Pedophile with good musket blowing away native. Sometimes native fuck back." 00:58 <tom> "Duke of Wellington almost lose leg to Mysorean Rocket in Fourth Mysore War." 00:59 <tom> "Is favored weapon of Tipu Sultan, and sometimes actually work. Famous battle in Second Mysore War hit British powder stores, killing many Nigel." 00:59 <VoxPVoxD> He wasn't the Duke of Wellington then! He was just an Irish colonel. Whatever. 01:00 <tom> "You may notice is many Mysore war." 01:01 <tom> The man (still out of frame save for his leg and now the arm reach out to pour out the rest of the bottle on the grass next to the smoking rocket. "They did not make it." 01:02 <tom> "Anyway! What defines Empire is sufficient scope of stealing. After mopping up last resistance, East India Company take rocket and patent it." 01:02 <tom> He's swishing back through the wet foliage to the launchpad, which now is quite denuded of grass. 01:03 <tom> The next rocket looks like a child's concept of the idealized Rocket- capped, red, and featureless. He lights it and steps back. 01:05 <tom> The fuse just fizzles out. Bob makes an annoyed noise. "Cut! cut. Fuck." 01:05 <tom> "Okay, okay, what we'll do is we'll just cut to the launch and play it off for irony reasons." 01:05 <tom> "Like yeah of course he fucked it up, don't worry about it." 01:05 <VoxPVoxD> Willie cuts. "Do you need a minute?" 01:06 <tom> "You okay with that?" 01:06 <VoxPVoxD> "Obviously." 01:06 <tom> Bob goes to sit down on the open door of the truckbed and reaches into his shirt pocket for his pack of cigarettes. 01:07 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga's taken up residence inside a shrub near the truck. When Bob gets close, he does that weird, chuffing laugh of his. 01:07 <tom> "So the basic structure I've got is, we'll move on to Congreves next, and make fun of the shithead who wrote the national anthem." 01:07 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "The rockets' red glare, and so on." 01:08 <VoxPVoxD> "Is America the only country with bombs in its national anthem?" 01:08 <tom> "Yeah. Guy just could not get enough of slavery." 01:08 <VoxPVoxD> "There's not really a happy medium with slavery. You have to either do all of it or none of it." 01:08 <tom> He lights his cigarette and puffs thoughtfully. "I know Angola's got a Kalashnikov on their flag, which is better." 01:08 <tom> "No, wait..." 01:09 <tom> He pulls up his visor and does some googling. 01:09 <tom> "Mozambique. God I'm racist." 01:09 <VoxPVoxD> "La Marseillaise is quite violent, Throat-cutting and so forth. But those are a different genre of violence." 01:10 <tom> He offers her the burning cigarette. "Hey Kaga, you find any sleeping birds to stomp lifeless for fun yet, lil guy?" 01:12 <VoxPVoxD> While Willie smokes, Kaga responds, "I'm saving room for your shrapnel-riddled bodies." 01:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "If you can't think of anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." 01:13 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "Nice by whose lights? I find the thought quite cheering." 01:14 <tom> "It is pretty funny." 01:14 <tom> "Last night we beat up an elder and tonight I could blow myself up making a shitpost video." 01:14 <tom> He lets her keep the cigarette. "Okay, let's wrap this up before it gets too late." 01:14 <VoxPVoxD> Kaga: "William is right. This is not the way you expected to die when you woke up this morning. Find joy in that." 01:14 <tom> He wades back into frame. 01:15 <VoxPVoxD> Willie ignores the demon and returns to the camera. 01:15 <tom> Bob beams: "Ready, okay." 01:16 <tom> He'll cut out the re-fusing so the camera cuts from the failure jarringly straight into the rocket mid-flight. 01:17 <tom> "Congreve rocket is British theft of Mysore design, with less care for safety. Is first use of high explosive systema in artillery rocket." 01:17 <VoxPVoxD> Willie avoids snickering. 01:17 <tom> The rocket slams into the opposite hillside next to the still faintly-burning remnants of the first. 01:17 <tom> This time, there is a boom. 01:18 <tom> Ivan raises both fists in a cheer. "за Родину!" 01:19 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's wide-eyed face is briefly illuminated by the explosion. 01:20 <tom> He visibly struggles not to turn back to the camera and give a thumbs up. Instead, the 'Russian' drinks, continuing: "Is first modern rocket. Mostly used for bombing Maori villages." 01:21 <tom> "Safety fuze is invention of hundred years afterward. Is most remembered for featuring in National Anthem of hamburgertardland." 01:22 <tom> "In between beating his slave for learning to read, drunk southern lawyer is in prison ship watching Royal Navy blow up countrymen with many rocket of Congreve systema." 01:23 <tom> "He is struck with strong notion- to write corny fuck song for corny fuck country." 01:24 <tom> He goes to the final rocket. 01:24 <tom> This time, Ivan kneels at the rocket for quite a long time with his protractor. 01:25 <tom> The final rocket is- actually, huh. It's two tubes connected by a tuba-shaped curve at one end, one smaller than the other. There are two nozzles? 01:26 <tom> It sounds like a puttering automobile engine, only much much louder as it lifts off and immediately curves with gravity to fly parallel with the ground. 01:26 <tom> "Okay, okay, we cheat." 01:26 <VoxPVoxD> ?! 01:26 <tom> "Is not actually rocket, is jet engine." 01:27 <tom> It sounds like some sort of weird doodling insect as it goes. 01:28 <VoxPVoxD> Willie doesn't flash back to the Blitz, because she's not 90. 01:28 <tom> The man is almost whispering, malicious, conspiratory: "Is retirement home of World War 2 veterans over next hill." There isn't. 01:29 <tom> "V-1 Flying bomb is first cruise missile of modern design, made by Nazi on three week bender of Pervitin." 01:30 <tom> Willie's camera can only follow the missile so far; this one veers off into what a map search will show is entirely unpopulated backcountry hills. 01:30 <VoxPVoxD> Not bad work product. The best Willie ever managed on three weeks of amphetamine was a first in History. 01:30 <tom> He'll add in police sirens in post. "Blyat! BLYAT! FBI!" 01:30 <tom> He gives her the signal to cut. 01:30 <VoxPVoxD> She does. 01:31 <VoxPVoxD> "Did you build that?" 01:32 <tom> "I got some help. Did you know the biggest pulsejet hobbyist on earth lives in Leeds?" 01:32 <tom> He winces. "Shit, I gotta go fish that outta the hills before people start wondering why someone's bombing them." 01:33 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "No, I didn't!" 01:33 <VoxPVoxD> "I'll come help." 01:34 <tom> He beams: "Hey Kaga, want upsies into the truck? If you're good I won't make you ride in the back like a fucking animal."