“Still Alive”, two versions for your viewing pleasure
Here is “Still Alive“, my take on what that song (originally written by Jonathan Coulton for the game Portal) would be like if it were written for WoW instead.
I never thought I’d ever do this video. The song is so perfectly suited for Portal and the “villain” in that game, GLaDOS, that I couldn’t see it ever fitting anywhere else. But then the idea hit me — who in WoW would sing a song gloating about being still alive? And the rest fell into place.
Or did it? When I posted this video, the YouTube comments were mostly positive, but there was a higher-than-usual percentage of comments saying I’d blown it. Mostly they seemed to hate the audio, with GLaDOS singing, and they wished I’d used the version of the song with Jonathan Coulton himself singing. Honestly, I’d never seriously considered the idea of using JoCo’s version for two reasons: firstly, my video is a reference to Portal and GLaDOS. JoCo’s version of the song is a reference to the original GLaDOS version of the song. If I used JoCo’s version, I’d be using a reference to something in my reference to something, and I thought it just wouldn’t work well. Secondly, I’m not a fan of JoCo’s version and I always liked GLaDOS’ version better. But the Internet has a different opinion, and I aim to please, to I made a different version.
Here is “Still Alive” with Jonathan Coulton singing instead of GLaDOS. As soon as I posted this, the Internet calmed back down. It’s a mystery to me, but the comments are now back to being nearly universally positive (which I prefer), and they loves them some JoCo version, which is fine with me.
There’s actually one more version of that song out on the Netterwebs, a duet that features both GLaDOS and JoCo singing together (two different versions here and here). I considered putting out a third version of the video using that audio, just to capture every possible combination of GLaDOS/JoCo fan that exists. But I’m too chicken. The Internets have calmed down now about the video and I don’t want to re-enrage the beast by putting out a new version that they can say makes even less sense than the GLaDOS version did because it’s not only a girl singing Arthas’ part, but it’s both a guy and a girl. And they’d be right. So I’m not gonna do it.