Mission to Transcryptss!
We're so excited to announce that all episodes from seasons 1-5 of Mission to Zyxx are now fully transcribed for accessibility, intelligibility and FUN. To read along, head over to missiontozyxx.space, where transcripts are embedded in every episode page!
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[Intro music is a triumphant version of the Zyxx theme]
ALDEN: Hey, everybody. Alden here! I just wanted to give you a quick non-Derf update on a project that we've been working on here at Mission to Zyxx, which is very close to my heart. As of this very moment, we have completed and uploaded full transcripts of all 135 mainline Mission to Zyxx episodes to make our show more accessible for the Deaf, hard-of-hearing, non-native English speakers, listeners who might have specific cognitive or attention needs, listeners who might just like to read along as they listen to see bits of dialogue or catch jokes that they may not have heard on the first listen through, and of course the countless millions of us that prefer our podcasts exclusively in text form because print is the future.
All transcripts for these episodes are available in three places: First, they're embedded in each episode page at missiontozyxx.space. Second, they're available as transcript files on our show page over on maximumfun.org. And finally, we've uploaded and embedded those transcripts into the episodes themselves over on our YouTube channel, where every episode is available now as well!
Now, this was a huge effort for a lot of reasons. One, obviously it's impossible to take a show like Mission to Zyxx and feed it through a speech-to-text algorithm and get anything usable. [laughs] There are so many made-up names and insane sounds that don't register on apps like that. Not to mention the hundreds of terrible accents we were constantly doing. So, it was something that really needed to be done by real people. And ideally, people who listen to the show and understand all the nonsense that's happening and how to parse all the different characters out and all of the various nuances that make our show interesting to listen to. So years ago, we started this project, and initially, because it seemed like such a big lift, I was sending episodes of the show to professional transcriptionists, which was fine and worked, but understandably, we ended up with a lot of episodes that needed some fixing, whether it was for spelling or continuity stuff or just context. Ultimately, I decided maybe the best way to do this was to pass the project off to listeners of the show who might have a good time going through re-listening and coming up with fun ways to describe and transcribe all of the things that happen in the show.
So, with the help of numerous amazing contributors on our Mission to Zyxx Discord, for the last four years now, we have been dissecting episodes, [laughs] trying to unpack dialogue, trying to figure out how best to communicate certain passages that might not be easy to understand in text form. And not only are these episodes fully transcribed, but our transcriptionists have added sound design notes, and stage directions, and performance notes to really bring out the details and the nuance of every part of the show. And to me, that's what gives it such an important human touch. It's not just the text, it's the show. And reading that, whether I'm listening along or not, is just really satisfying to me and I'm so proud of what everybody has accomplished.
So I just want to call out everybody who worked on the show, in no particular order, and I'm realizing now as I'm about to read them that fully a third of them I'm not positive I'm pronouncing correctly.
● nini
● Photos of Dragons
● Dave
● Dariel
● Bonesae
● Tex McAdoo
● Becca Paintmore
● Alice, Pervert for Friendship
● Reddit user Shrimp_Heaven_N-O-W, who submitted the first couple episodes to our wiki
● Chevythelittlecat
● Maxtheaxe
● Cosmaline
● Keelor
● Lemons Today
● Plint-DM-2121
● Sarah Ellis
● Anna Stimpson
● theandoriryn
● Stevie
● Santeria
● Wormtastic
● Rain
● Sammi
● Mills
● Spathi
● Palimpsest
● Potato Pete
● The Wizard Mordecai
● Cortjstr
● Redfist661
● dontstophernow
● Space
● Octo
● Osito SurfShirt
● Dr. Pickle
● Powerline
● Stellanautical aka Kajj Celsius
● Robin
● Noelle
And, it should be noted: Noelle, by the way, was a real hero in the last leg of this transcription project, finishing a whopping forty-seven episodes just in the last few months to get us over the finish line. So thank you, Noelle, and thank you, everyone else.
I also want to give a huge shout out to EnigmaFish on Discord, who not only transcribed several of the episodes, but also was the mastermind of organization, and delegation, and note keeping over in our transcription channel and is now in fact hard at work on Phase Two of the transcription project, which will include standardization on formatting and spelling across the entire transcription catalog, as well as all the transcripts that are coming next with Derf and everything else we release. So again, thank you EnigmaFish for all of your amazing work. We never could have done this without you.
So, all of that is to say: if these transcriptions help make the show more accessible to you, or someone you know or love, or someone you think would appreciate Mission to Zyxx and would appreciate it more now that it's fully transcribed, let them know. And let them know that the project was completed by fans of the show, for fans of the show, and I really hope that you enjoy it.
And one more thing I just want to say: it was also really important to me and to all of us at Mission to Zyxx that everyone who worked on this project was compensated in some way. So as soon as we stopped submitting these to professional transcriptionists, we continued to pay our Discord transcribers a commensurate rate for what a professional transcription costs. And doing that, paying for all of that work, is something that is only possible—as we say all the time—because of the support from listeners just like you over on maximumfun.org. So, although we've said many times that if you like the show and want to support the show, go to maximumfun.org/join, but if the transcription project is important to you, then throw the show and our transcriptionists a little bit of support over at maximumfun.org/join. We will continue to transcribe upcoming episodes and make sure they are fully and lovingly completed for you and anyone else who would benefit from them. [Outro music begins in background] So thanks so much for listening to this; thanks so much for listening to the show. We really hope that you enjoy the transcripts, and thanks again to everyone who worked on this amazing project.
Stay tuned, and we'll see you soon.
[Triumphant outro music swells to full volume.]