#toddposting

For as many memes as SiIva creates or helps popularize, be it Grand Dad, We Are Number One, Totino's Mania, and so on - there's just as many, if not more jokes that wholly eclipse SiIva in terms of popularity. A meme legend in the gaming community, shitposts of Todd Howard have been around long before SiIva's creation, yet only truly took off in 2015 thanks to his presence at Bethesda's E3 show. E3 in general is a holiday of sorts for the gaming community, not just because its home to a bevvy of announcements and trailers for upcoming games, but also for its unavoidable memetic quality - there's just so much SILLY shit that happens at E3, be it awkward live speeches, technical mishaps, ill-timed reveals, or the inevitable barrage of Phil Spence saying the word "gamer". The SiIvaGunner team are not ones to leave such fresh meme produce out to rot, and are always immensely quick on the draw when it comes to each year's E3 highlights.

But lets be real - out of all memes and jokes that spawn out of E3, I don't think there are any that even come close to being as timeless and eternally funny as Toddposting. Year after year, Bethesda show after Bethesda show, Todd is always there, always pushing and promising that THIS time will be different, THIS time the game will truly let you do all of those things that were promised last time. Coupled with the company's insistence on having you purchase Skyrim over and over, and its no wonder his name is so well known. And though Todd took over the entire channel for a brief bit in Season 3, it would take yet one more year for the magnum opus to be released.

Take Me Home, Country Snow is such a perfect instillation of everything SiIvaGunner is capable of doing, and of everything that SiIvaGunner IS. 2018 already solidified Fallout 76 as a complete catastrophy of a game, a symbol for just how many empty promises Todd Howard will do in order to get his game sold. By E3 next year, Todd's infamy was put front and center as he was made to step out on stage and admit the faults of his game. Take Me Home, Country Roads, as the anthem to Fallout 76, became laced in a sort of ironic melancholy, the realization that its idealized game was never going to truly happen...and yet here, its celebrated - mashed up with Snow Halation of all things. I discussed in Snow halocean that much of what makes Snow Halation rips so special is that they feel like a sort of inauguration ceremony for individual memes - a seal of approval that a meme has truly "made it" on the SiIvaGunner channel. The ever-consistent visuals, the insistence of having them only feature one joke at a time, and of course the per-rip "speeches" each joke provides near the last quarter of the runtime - it all gives these rips a sort of celebratory vibe. By this point, Todd Howard's meme status was wholly, unavoidably, cemented as part of SiIvaGunner.

All of this isn't even to mention the quality of the rip itself - the self-titled "Nuclear Winter" mix of American country vocals paired with cheerful, snow-clad idol pop creates a vibe wholly unique to this rip - Take Me Home, Country Snow creates an image of optimism and celebration that otherwise seems so foreign to Bethesda games within the wider gaming sphere. Yet that's just the thing - Todd Howard isn't on this stage for his achievements as a game developer, but for his legendary status within online shitposting. This rip celebrates everything we love about E3, and at this point feels like a farewell to the event as a whole.