Read 1 - What Do We Do in Cocules Media?
Who’s Writing This?
Since this is our first article, it was decided that Sendo (@neigsendoig) would be writing this one. He’s been more active than I, Sokio (@rqva…yjju), was, despite editing his videos since late 2021/early 2022 I think. I forget….
Introduction
Some people may be quite interested in what we do, as we aren’t professionals by any means. The work we do is professional according to some people we’ve interacted with, though ultimately that doesn’t seem to be the case. Regardless of that, Cocules Media is specifically designed for multimedia work, from videography, to teaching Free Software and local-first computing, AI prompt engineering in some cases, and gaming. Gaming is probably the biggest thing we do on CoculesNation, the main channel. I do cover that on my podcast, The Neigsendoig Cocules Show, though I tend to cover whatever is on my mind that week. Cocules Media, however, strives to be the Jack Spirko of computing, gaming, and software stacks full of libreware and AI… just without the crude language and intimidating manner that Jack himself has.
Now, I (Sendo) have had heated discussions with him on occasion, ranging from giving him respectful feedback of which I wasn’t clear on (which triggered a Gamma breakdown for both of us), to basically witnessing against the Vatican (and Spirko subsequently not understanding most of the scripts from the Vatican), which wasn’t taken very well. I will point out, rather, that other Gammas tend to be liars, while I don’t intentionally do that. I’ve been known to misinform at times, since I tend to overthink things a lot, as well as having way too much on my mind. Regardless of this, that mindset was always a thing since day one. Nowadays, I’ve been implementing more of Spirko’s Laws of Life into my workflow, since I do believe I was personally called to do content creation as a career in the first place.
To understand Cocules Media in a nutshell, I should probably be covering all the different aspects that we cover, and have covered, over the course of CoculesNation, the main YouTube channel (which is @CoculesNation on YouTube).
Different Facets of Cocules Media
Gaming
Gaming is one of the biggest parts of Cocules Media, as I do intend on being a pro in at least one game. Now, I did show potential in a number of games, from Apex Legends, to Xonotic, to even Unreal Tournament series (1999, 2004, and 3, hadn’t played 4 yet). FPS games are the primary passion of mine, and I can potentially give you the fundamentals, and you’d be on your merry way. However, since I’m not all-knowing about a specific series of games, a genre of games, or the whole of modern gaming (a completely wicked mess us misoponerists [haters of evil] would rather stay away from), I can really only be a jack of all trades, master of none.
However, since I do primarily play FPS games on CoculesNation, it’s fair to assume I’m more Pro-Am in that department than any other genre I’ve played. These are including, but not limited to, rhythm games (I focus on VSRGs), fighting games (2D fighters), racing games (I’m more of an old sim guy, AC for one), some simulation games (PCBS 1 and 2 are my favorites), a few platformers (Sonic Robo Blast 2, a Sonic fangame), or some sports simulation titles (think Madden 08, NFL 2K5, or any old sports game before 2012). While I do like games in those genres as well, including the ones I’ve mentioned, nothing beats a customizable FPS like Unreal Tournament for me. That said, it’s my most biased genre of gaming, and so is it Sokio’s, considering that we’ve done this for quite some time (around six years at this point). The thing is with this sort of thing might be the fact of the countless options, especially if you use a net to fish for them (like I do), though I’m very anal about what I’d want in an FPS. Customizability is one requirement, whether it be through modifications, class combinations out the wazoo, or maybe both. Something like a modded UT2004 or Black Ops II through Plutonium (I bought BOII, which was a huge mistake in the long run) would help, though I was trying to find a game that had modding potential and the class-based customizability. However, it seems I might need to vibe code one, as I don’t think I can find an option that suits my needs.
Now, I also did play a bit of Minecraft on the channel as well. A lot of men keep going back to that game due to the modding potential of it, and yes, the mechanics being almost dead simple… almost. This is where their boredom tends to go to die, though content surrounding Minecraft is oversaturated with brainrot slop for the piggies, scripted competitions, fixed matches, and just… nonsense. Instead, I’d rather do a survival series of my own, including, but not limited to, the styles of Welsknight, AntVenom (his earlier days), Etho’s Lab, and maybe some newer ones like flowstate. While I did make a modpack of my own (which was a 1.20.1 modpack I threw together), I realized that I was making a mistake. Instead, I tend to play older versions like 1.12.2 or earlier. However, I did have some plans on a potential series for some of the Golden Age versions, including doing the 404 challenge. However, that never came to fruition, though I do have a 1.12.2 pack that I could potentially use. I don’t know for sure yet.
To be honest, gaming was always a thing for me since I received a Game Boy Advance SP years ago, with some games for the GBA. However, I was quite enamored by games on the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, some PlayStation 3 games, a few PlayStation 4 titles, Xbox 360 games (the true Next Gen for Xbox), and even some Nintendo 3DS, DS, and Switch 1 titles. However, emulating older consoles like the NES, SNES, PS2, PS1, Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, and other old consoles before the 7th generation of gaming consoles (I have a special place for the 6th generation, as my favorite console is the PS2) was something special for me once I started gaming on a Linux PC back in 2020. At that time, things were a lot different than they are now, especially with decompilations of older console games for PC being made, including Linux (there needs to be more of these, by the way, for Linux). Honestly, I might be stuck in the mid-late 00’s, maybe earlier than that. This was back to a time where you legitimately owned the copies of games you bought and paid for, now that ownership had become a myth in the grand scheme of things nowadays. I can always go back to the games that didn’t need macrotransactions, the engagement-based matchmaking that was designed to sell skins in a video game to make me better at sucking the algorithm’s phallus, or the other intentional dark patterns that are designed to keep people playing a game they’d otherwise never play again. This is why I tend to be very specific with the games I’d want to play after all.
Libreware, Tech, Linux, and Local-First Computing
This one, while a mouthful, describes exactly our biggest component of Cocules Media. We’ve been advocates of local-first, libreware-based Linux computers since 2020. Though we didn’t really start pushing on the local-first bandwagon until we stumbled upon the work of @GHOST, who was instrumental in introducing many people into the world of local-first computing. We’ve advocated for that since, and changed our entire structure to reflect this. Don’t get us wrong, we do use things like Proton, Internxt, and other libre cloud-based services, though having a backup in your own home, and two backups elsewhere, might be a good idea as well. This is just in case things go south somehow.
The libreware we’ve used evolved over the years, though some things never really change. For example, Sokio and I always used Kdenlive for video editing, despite some issues we went ahead and solved with that software. That software hadn’t really been replaced by anything else, despite FilmCraft looks promising for a video editor akin to Adobe Premier Pro, and the SaaSS (Software as a Service Substitute) slop the latter became. Photo editing and thumbnail making was done using GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), though we hadn’t really done that as of late. PhotoCraft was considered as an alternative once it came out. We’d eventually like to use local AI to do this, since AI is here to stay.
In terms of music, we’ve always used Ardour as our DAW of choice, and a mixture of libre and non-libre plugins (it’s hard to find specific types of plugins without vibe coding your own, or using proprietary ones with dark patterns galore). Regardless of that, I have over 10 years of music production experience, and around 6 or 7 years of audio engineering experience, but even I use AI to help me with that nowadays, considering that again, it’s here to stay. Originally, I used Audacity for audio recording, though I wanted to get back into music production after using GarageBand on an iPad 8th gen for so long. I ditched the Apple BS finally after learning Ardour, and sticking to it for a long time. That said, however, I briefly used Zrythm, which is a decent alternative. However, SoundCraft was one consideration I tried, and so was LYNX Share for those who use FL Studio specifically (they’re both clean-room implementations of Pro Tools and FL respectively). The suites of audio plugins I tend to use are the FabFilter plugins (I fished for those), the LSP suite, the calfNXT suite, the x42 plugins, and for some time, EQ10Q and its suite. However, since there are some things I wanted in terms of noise reduction for audio, I used RX 11 by iZotope, but that’s doo-doo due to causing crashes in Ardour (I since deleted the fished version I got off my machine). That’s for when I use my Samson Q9u and C01U Pro microphones, mainly the former. I could speak on this stuff for hours, and go into my mixing chain at any given time, what I was thinking potentially, and how I had AI help me with it.
Since I speak on it a lot, AI is another big facet. We’ve been the type to always recommend self-hosting AI for the basic tasks, but outsourcing some to better models when necessary, and keeping it highly restricted on what they can and can’t do. All things considered, we won’t be using things like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Gemini (Gemma we could potentially use, though), since they’re all made by defense contractors for the foreign-run city-state corporation that is the District of Columbia. Instead, we tend to use models like Qwen primarily, though in terms of AI art, that’s where Stable Diffusion 1.5-based models came in through the Mistoon series of releases (we used Mistoon Diamond and Anime a lot). We need recommendations of a GUI frontend for Qwen Image 2.1, which we did use briefly, on Linux. Regardless, Qwen is probably one of the best families you can get, unless you use something like DeepSeek 4.1 Flash, which we heard was actually seriously good. Otherwise, forget Western AI, as they’ve already lost the AI arms race against China regardless, as scripted. We do use duck.ai if we need GPT, though, despite us literally hating on ChatGPT. We just won’t be using the GPT site itself, to clarify. That said, we use AI on the daily, and we have no intention on ceasing on it. Now, we use an instance (in PosterChan on Nostr) that’s bridged to the Fediverse. If you come from the Fediverse, we did consider putting Cocules Media stuff on it, especially Bluesky. We decided not to use the Fediverse or Bluesky, since that’s what all the Gammas use. Yes, we’re Gammas ourselves, but we’re under no illusion of being Alphas or Sigmas either.
TTRPGs
This is a smaller part of Cocules Media, but I certainly want to get more into that. For myself, I’m drawn to Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, which is a CC-BY-SA licensed retroclone of the B/X or BECMI releases of Dungeons & Dragons with ascending armor class. It’s designed to be quick and easy to play, though I made an adventure concept that I’ve been wanting to run on the system for a while. I never really had the chance to do that, though, as I only did the 5th Edition of D&D instead of BFRPG or any other libre system.
The software offered on Linux is lackluster at times, though Obsidian (the PKM we use all the time) actually has us covered with TTRPG plugins out the wazoo, so we’re set on that front. However, there are pieces of software that will help out with that on some level, though they’re few and far between. We won’t be playing modern D&D, since that’s a modern audience mess we don’t want to get deep into the weeds of. Instead, D&D 3.5e might be a good idea if we wanted to go that route, or earlier to things like AD&D 2e, since customization is one of the biggest things we like about old school TTRPGs like those. BFRPG is actually pretty good with that sort of thing as well, though I digress.
Being that I’ve never really delved deep into this topic much, I did discuss it briefly on CoculesNation, and on my podcast, for a bit. However, I don’t seem to be wanting to do that right now, since there isn’t anyone interested in that type of thing to begin with. Nostr had something with D&D with an excellent DM so I’ve heard, but that was with the biggest names on Nostr (Walker, Alden, some others) as the players. Regardless of that sort of thing, I’d love to get back into TTRPGs with some people, as that would be a fun thing to do, especially with me GMing BFRPG, since that’s the system I know the most about compared to the others.
Creative Writing and Penmanship
This is more Sokio’s realm than mine, though we were trying our hand at a novel we were co-writing together. That didn’t work out all that well, so we decided to scrap it altogether. Instead, I ended up doing my own thing, while Sokio focused on his fiction writing (of which he’s surprisingly decent at, I will admit). On this front, we do cheat a little bit, and use old proprietary software (Microsoft Word 2007 for me), though Sokio uses Obsidian with his own novel work vault (although I have one of my own). We confirmed it to be local-first, since we are the type to do that. Now, while I do use this type of stuff, there are better options out there if you don’t want to use Office 2007, 2010, older Office versions, or the ArtCraft suite I mentioned a little bit ago in the article. Sokio, meanwhile, is all-in on Obsidian with Longform, and local-first plugins. Data never truly leaves the same machine we use, thank goodness.
For me, I’ve also used Obsidian for a project I worked on a few years ago, when it was originally written in LibreOffice Writer. It turns out, LibreOffice is a bloated suite, hence, why I never used it since I almost fully ditched it a while back. With things like GridCraft, WordCraft, and DeckCraft being surprisingly good and lightweight, considerations are being made for a transition to those on some level, especially with the spreadsheets we’ve been wanting to learn. Heck, there’s actually a world championship for Excel believe it or not, though I’ll have to save that for another time.
Otherwise, we tend to focus on fiction written specifically not for a “modern audience”, whatever the heck that means. Our non-fiction writing is the same way, written towards people who are old school with what they want, and don’t want any political BS in it other than the themes we give. Sokio’s book, Foxing Society, does go quite into the themes that most other novellists won’t dare touch with a 10-foot pole. The reason for this is because Sokio’s writing is more direct, honest, and gritty compared to those who write in a safe manner. It’s not creative when you write for people who you’ll probably end up catering to, and then never really being enough for them, as things in the world go nuts. Regardless of this, it’s obvious to us that our writing is not really designed for a wider audience, and more for otaku and weeaboos who don’t want the sanitized slop we’re getting. It’s especially true here in America, where localizers are intentionally sabotaging anime that would’ve been seriously good otherwise. It’s extremely disgusting, but that’s why we tend to write the way we do.
This was part of our calling to begin with, considering that nobody should even have to not do things that they were designed to do. Myself and Sokio can’t do any form of physical labor for pay, as that’s what will eventually destroy us. Despite the claims that we’ll be strong by doing manual labor (moderation counts here, yes), we don’t believe that doing this every single working day of our lives will be a good idea, especially since people will have health issues related to their body, and break it down the more they labor with their hands rather than their brains like Sokio and I do. This is how we were designed cosmically, spiritually, and practically. Everyone who knows my work well, and Sokio’s too, would be very familiar with that feeling by now.
Conclusion
We end with the fact that, while everyone else wants to be the best at the next thing that shows up, it will actually take a while for someone to build a brand. We focus on brand building by doing what we love best, while at the same time, not wanting to merchandise off of anyone (improper merchandising is a sin). At the same time, we don’t want to use dark patterns to get people to watch us, as word of mouth is our only form of advertising. It’s free, it’s honest, and it’s the old school way of doing things. We don’t want to advertise except through other people, those who aren’t sponsored by us (we don’t want sponsorships, nor do we want to sponsor anyone) at that. Cocules Media will always be this way, and taking sponsorships is a conflict of interest waiting to happen. The exception to that is, say we use a product that’s been around for a long time, and we love the product too much not to talk about it. We could do a sponsorship deal with the company that aligns with the following values:
- Old school mindset
- Politics in the backburner (as in, nothing within that realm)
- Religion in the backburner (same thing, despite us being anti-Pope, we’ll admit)
- No dark patterns used to get anything out of people (this breaks the old school rule)
- Deceivers be gone (lying to us is a bad idea, as we’ll call it out and apologize for falling for your traps if you’re a sponsor like that)
Otherwise, let this be our only form of advertising of saying what we do and doing what we say, as Spirko always tends to put it. This is the only advertising we’ll be doing on here, considering that we want word of mouth to be the thing that gets us the eyeballs.
The way to do that is following Cocules Media on Nostr (which is coculesmedia[at]poster.place), subscribing to CoculesNation and my personal channel if you want to help us out. I’d also recommend following our RSS feed on Wavlake for my podcast, and reaching out via email (that being cisn-droid@protonmail.com) if you want to collaborate with us. However, if you use Nostr DMs (We use a NIP17 relay for our inbox), say which of us you want to DM, and we’ll get you connected. If you’re a virtual creator (think Vtuber), Sokio’s your man to speak with. If you’re an IRL creator, then I’m the onw you’ll want to reach out to.
Thank you, and #GN
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