Episode VII – Heir to the Keystrokes
More than meets the Eye
Kuki: Good evening Billy! For the people who don’t know you’re also bigtime into Transformers.
Billy Keystrokes: As a kid I kind of missed the craze. I got Ultra Magnus at about six years of age for Christmas and it was a pain because of all the parts that had to be added or removed between alternate modes. So I kind of fell out of love with Transformers toys. As a kid I was always trying to get all the Star Wars stuff. I was born in ’79, so I did catch the end of that craze and saw the commercials for Return of the Jedi at a young age. I got the Millennium Falcon and was always looking out for more Star Wars toys. Then of course Kenner discontinued them, but they still showed the films maybe once or twice a year, which is kind of torture for a kid, since you couldn’t get the toys anymore! My Christmas listings never came in (which is quite funny really). When I was 10 years old my dad bought me and my 5 year old brother a VHS of Transformers, which featured the ‘Key To Vector Sigma’ and ‘WarDawn’ episodes. Both these episodes touched on the history of Cybertron. That Christmas my brother also got the Stunticon set. The combination of those two events got me back into Transformers. I began to realize there was a particularly deep mythos behind the franchise. As you go into season 3 (which has its faults… a lot of faults) you realize a bit of the backstory in the G1 [ed. Generation 1]. It intrigued me how everything had occurred. Of course the writers at Sunbow Productions never really planned any story arc to go on as it did. They never realized they were creating such a legacy. They thought they were just gonna get paid for the TV show and no one was ever gonna remember it afterwards as it would get aired once with at the most one re-run.
Kuki: Though I enjoy the nostalgy, the art, the characters and the music, it’s no secret the producers basically tried to cram as many characters as possible in there to sell more toys. When did you start collecting robots in disguise?
Billy Keystrokes: You’ve got it all. Thanks to Reagan for changing the law. The toy companies could now make animated tv shows on the brands they were selling and the media firms jumped into it, bringing cartoons, comics, and everything had to be pushed through.
Around 2007, when the first movie came out, my wife bought me the black Ironhide truck. It’s still in its box, never opened, sitting in my mom’s attic. Around the same time I was out shopping with my wife and there was this Classics G1 styled Starscream and Hot Rod at around 10 GBP at Tesco. So I thought: “I’m gonna treat myself and get them”. That kind of begun the downward spiral going back through that childhood era. I heard there were Transformers conventions going off in the UK and in the US, but I had a few rough years in between jobs so I couldn’t get there. Around 2015 I got myself to the last Auto Assembly (Europes biggest Transformers convention, set in Birmingham, England). As I walked to the Hilton Hotel entrance I was greeted by some fellow Transformers fans having cigarettes and chatting with the iconic Peter Spellos (who has worked with Mark Hamill amongst many other legends). I made a lot of friends and there were good people. It was nice to meet people in the flesh rather than just via email or on Facebook groups.
It never turned into a full time hobby if you know what I mean. It was more occasional purchases, admiring new technical ideas for transformations, or just applying some old school stickers. Something to scratch that odd itch. COVID lockdown gave me the opportunity to get my hands on some G1 styled releases … which of course led to a number of questions from my wife. At this point I need to give praise and special thanks to her for putting up with me and tolerating my hobby. In my defense, I made sure she knew I still loved these shows when I met her!
I enjoy watching the shows back more than I actually do buying the toys. I admire the work that the people in the background performed and love hearing the behind-the-scenes stories about the development of certain episodes. Conversations between writers, reasons why a scene happened or was deleted, even the laughs the voice actors had recording their lines. My mindset never was that way until in my teenage years. Sky 1 began showing different 80’s cartoons again on the weekends. I think it was half past 7 in the morning and I sat watching G1 Transformers episodes (we’re talking first season) and my dad asked “Are you watching this in case you want to send some of your artwork to the studios?”. I had never thought of it like that before. I wasn’t good at school academically, but I wasn’t bad at drawing. My dad always positively pushed me at the things I was good at. He would often say “can you do me a favor and draw me this or that?” It’s probably something I would have fallen into, had I listened to my dad instead of to my art teacher. I was always drawing pop-art, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Go-Bots, M.A.S.K. and the rest of the 80’s cheesy stuff. When I asked my art teacher about pursuing my interests he just turned and said “No-one will ever buy that again. It’s a lost cause, so don’t bother doing it”. I look back now, and I can think of several comic book artists that had the same conversations with their art teachers. Only they chose to ignore their teachers and followed their hearts and are now working for comic book companies drawing Transformers etc. My dad asked me to make a book of different art types I could do, so I did a lot of stuff. There was a battle scene from a G2 Transformers comic, I did pictures of Spiderman with some webbing in an alley on a street light, Dick Dastardly & Muttley (with Clunk and Zilly), some anime stuff with a couple of naughty girls - dressed - just in revealing items. It didn’t show anything, but you let the imagination go there if you know what I mean. My dad took the book and showed it to people at his work and at the pub on several occasions. He got the idea after bumping into one of the creators of Danger Mouse. He said “keep pushing on what you’re doing and get yourself a portfolio, so you can show the companies what you can do”. As I got older, I thought: “Eh, that’s never gonna happen” so I kind of left it. I haven’t drawn anything in about 25 years now. I have no regrets… but the chance was possibly there at one time. Then again… when I look at freelance artists, not knowing when the next job and paycheck are coming in, it’s quite unstable. Also there’s the tuition fees, the materials, ink, papers, whatever you use for the processing of your artwork. It’s a big investment if you wanna go for that.
Kuki: Do you still have any works we could share with TRA?
Billy Keystrokes: I don’t mate, they’ve been lost. I put a few of the pictures up at my desk at work at a time. Being young lads, we were messing around, throwing hot wet tea bags at each other and a few got hit with that stuff. [FAMILY FRIENDLY DISCLAIMER: TRA DOES NOT ENDORSE THE THROWING OF HOT TEA BAGS AT FRIENDS AND WORK COLLEAGUES… THEY ARE HOT AND CAN BURN.] We WERE lads in our late teens and early 20’s … but we were a great team with a boyish sort of comradery. Maybe some drawings are still tucked away on my mom and dad’s attic, but I have no idea if they’re in any good shape.
From 80’s Pop-Art to Medical Schematics
Kuki: So you what did you end up doing for a living?
Billy Keystrokes: I left school at 16 and began to approach everybody for a job. Again, like I said, I was never the academic one. I was good at mathematics and always kept my head down, but on paper I never had the best grades. The only noticeable one I got was a B in drama for an improvisation exam titled “the journey”. Me and my assigned partner ended up kind of copying the Disney film “One of our dinosaurs is missing” which is about a bunch of nannies stealing a dinosaur to stop the Chinese from acquiring a microfilm that contains the recipe for Wonton soup. I took that story and rather than stealing a dinosaur I made my friend act as pompous British businessman travelling to India to discover the recipe for “I feel like Chicken tonight”, which was a commercial thing at the time. I was doing various voices and personas of people from different origins including Indian and Middle Eastern. Everyone thought it was hilarious, but looking back, I can see straight away this would not be deemed acceptable in this day and age.
Kuki: Nowadays hardly anything is considered acceptable anymore.
Billy Keystrokes: It’s such a sorry and sad state of affairs in a lot of ways. Of course I never intended upholding stereotypes or racial slurs. I purely wanted to insinuate to the viewer what part of the world a scene was happening in.
So in 1996 I got a job making air-conditioning units. The big industrial ones, so basically metal boxes with fans, a few cardboard/fiberglass filters and a bit of heating. I began working in sales. To a degree I sucked at it because of the way they were training me. They then moved me into the drawing office where I really got into technical drawings and I really started thriving when my colleague took over as manager. We were a good team. There was about four of us and we had a good laugh. We worked hard and we played hard. It was good fun. In the late 90’s my dad wanted to leave from Manchester and retire in Derbyshire. We moved in 2000. I got given the option to move with them and I thought “well yeah, I owe you for what you’ve done for me so far and I’ll come with you and help you settle down. Make sure you get no problems”. I began working for two architects for about a year and a half. The pay was not good and I was often doing 12 hour days (but only getting paid for 8 hours). I hurt myself playing soccer and they started only paying me the minimum sick pay. Luckily I received an annual bonus which saw me nearly even, but after all the unpaid hours I had given, it still felt a kick in the balls. I had a few arguments with them and they weren’t the nicest of people with the younger apprentices either so I gave them my two months’ notice. I finished on the Monday and got a phone call to begin working for this medical gas company that same Friday. I worked there for about 5 years, before jumping ship and changing companies again. I did a lot of work drawing technical layouts for the prison sector, went through a few more jobs and a few periods of unemployment until nearly losing my youngest son in 2013 brought me back to working at the medical gas company again. It was kind of nice to come back with a lot of the old people that had also left and come back in the meantime. I’ve been there for 10 years now and I enjoy it. I produce drawings and designs for piped medical gas systems mainly for UK hospitals but also for dentists and veterinary surgeons. It’s challenging sometimes, no design is ever the same. They’ll throw all sorts of stuff at us and we’ve got to cycle through it, check it to certain standards and do the drawings for it, make sure the script is all in place, size it all, flow rate it all up and price it. Then we do the submission and send it off to the sales person to send it in. There’s a bit more complexity to it at times, but that’s my job in a nutshell really.
The Dark Times
Kuki: You mentioned nearly losing your son? What happened?
Billy Keystrokes: I’ve got two sons. My eldest was born in 2009 and my youngest was born in April 2013. With the youngest we immediately noticed that he wasn’t breathing right. We raised it with the midwife and she stuck by us despite several doctors telling us there was nothing wrong with him. By chance the top Consultant from SCBU [Ed. Special Care Baby Unit] called by and decided to do an echo scan. She discovered a hole in his heart, panicked and got in touch with Leeds who have a proper cardiac team. There they didn’t want to operate until he got bigger. Three weeks later we were going out for a meal at our local Carvery Restaurant (Pub Restaurant where they serve a buffet style offering of cooked chicken, beef, pork or gammon, vegetables & gravy at a fixed price). As we were having a meal and a few drinks we noticed his breathing was exceptionally quick. He was like 90 breaths per minute (bpm). As adults we take 8 to 20 bpm but kids should be doing about 40 to 60 top end. So 90 is quite extreme. We took him to Sheffield Children’s Hospital. We had an argument with the consultant who thought it was just a bronchitis and nothing more… but the kid was not in a good way. My mother-in-law came over. She’s a retired former sister herself and she does not mess around. She had a stern but professional word with the doctor and instructed him to contact Leeds’ cardiac team. After some protest he did. Five Minutes later we were informed to get the kid into the ambulance to Leeds. My wife went with him and I drove up there. We were living in Leeds Hospital for months. In and out of emergency care, numerous procedures tried and failed. Eventually we were taken to a quiet room to discuss final options: either a heart transplant or palliative care. We both chose palliative care because it felt like the best thing to do at the time. [Please understand that a sick baby undergoing a heart transplant is not easy and there are bigger complications with the necessary medications taking aggressive tolls on the other organs.] One cardiologist took the case to his mentor in London. The GOSH team reviewed his case the following day in a London based conference of top cardiologists. They said “We think we can do this procedure and he could pull through, but we’ve never done that on a child this young”. He was flown by Air Ambulance to Great Ormond Street where they performed an operation called the Ross procedure. It’s quite a common technique in America with older middle aged patients. They removed his pulmonary valve (low pressure side from his lungs to his heart) and replaced it with a cows neck vain. They then took out his aortic valve (high pressure side pumping blood to his body and brain) and replaced it with the removed pulmonary valve. Forgive me if anyone is squeamish! They finished the surgery and it were the 8 most nerve wrecking hours of my life.
After the surgery I was prepared to see him in a bad way, but I wasn’t ready to walk into this single room, into the incubator and see him there breathing with a sort of ventilator. What got me the most is that though his chest was covered from the atmosphere, they had put a heart shaped window in through which you could see the heart and the lungs working, all pumping and breathing. Because of the surgery, the body needs to expand so they had to open the chest up for the dispelling expansion. He stayed in London for two weeks, then in Leeds for another two months, a few weeks in Chersterfield and then he got discharged and we could bring him home. We had our hands full with medical appointments, medications and administering 5 or 6 syringes at a time. We were told to anticipate that he would need another three or four surgeries in the first couple of years of his life. He’s 11 now. He has not required any additional surgeries since … By pure chance, the cow’s neck vein has grown with him (which was not expected). I need to touch wood here. His success appears to have paved the way for other children in similar scenarios to get the same surgery. He is still medically classified as child with heart failure and he will require at least 1 future surgery where they will need to relocate his pulmonary valve back to its original location and probably place a mechanical valve where his aortic valve should be. However, the longer we can put this off, the more medical breakthroughs are achieved. Some recent Ross procedures have now been pulled off through keyhole surgery instead of the traditional open heart techniques. We have a lot of people we owe our thanks to and we’re very grateful he’s doing alright at the moment.
The Birth of Billy Keystrokes
Billy Keystrokes: Oddly enough the journey is where my inspiration for playing keyboard came from. In that dark time, in the pediatric HDU ward you had a playroom and it was really the only room you could go to. In that room there was a keyboard which had been kindly donated by the loving family of a child that had passed over and didn’t make it. It was just right there. So I began tapping around, trying to learn a few things. There’s this piano piece by Arthur Rubinstein called ‘Ride with the Angels’ near the end of the film Blue Thunder with Roy Schneider and I began to practice it. Suddenly this young cheeky kid came up to me with an NG tube up his nose and chest drain tubes taped to his stomach (to drain away fluids) and he just pressed a key on the keyboard. He looked at me with a little naughty smile, laughed and walked away. I asked him “do you wanna play?”. The kid just smiled and carried on playing with some other toy.
It was at that point I thought “I’m going to start learning to play some songs and put a smile on these faces”. I began to do a little bit of a jingle here and there. It was a slow process. When I went home I got a proper keyboard and began playing a bit more with the intention that next time I had to come back I was gonna throw it out there and put a bit of life into some kids’ faces and make them smile. In the end, luckily, we didn’t have to go back, but that’s where the Keystrokes thing started.
A few months after we finally got home, I went and purchased a keyboard that had a light-up keys and a self-tutoring program on it to teach you. It was the biggest sales con ever. Because there was a lot of time with the kid around where I had to take care of him, I stopped playing video games, which wouldn’t always be appropriate for him to watch and began doing keyboard stuff. Then I started doing keyboard lessons learning the Keyboard Syllabus rather than the classical piano side. If you like stuff by Bob Dylan, ABBA and Coldplay, these books are great. Unfortunately I can’t stand that shit! It’s Depression Central to me. I wanted to play other stuff.
Luckily my Keyboard/Piano Teacher, Jim, shares the same 80’s and 90’s music interests that I have, as well as the Star Wars soundtracks. So we soon began doing our own thing. Though he grew up playing as a child prodigy on the church organ and in Local Music Shops, he agreed to go through an 80’s cartoon catalogue of background music: Transformers, GI JOE, M.A.S.K, Centurions, Challenge of the Go-Bots, … From 2013 to 2018 I spent most evenings (once the kids went to bed) practicing and didn’t really play videogames at all. You pick up an instrument and you just keep playing. I would learning ‘The Touch’ by Stan Bush. I knew the song but I was constantly getting it wrong at certain points. My left hand was not configured with my right hand yet. I just couldn’t get it right. It took me forever… I remember this one time when I was driving to work, tapping the steering wheel, going and playing the song in my head. Suddenly it just clicked in and at this point I knew that I’d gotten it.
I was going down that rabbit hole with cartoon music for a while until one day (middle 2018) a work colleague told me that his dad and brother were in a band and the keyboard player had just left. I met them in a local bar which turned out to be a music venue that was holding an open mic night. So I rocked up, met the band and began chatting. We then got called on stage and we played ‘Road to Hell’ by Chris Rea. I made mistakes but it went alright. They then did a few slow indie rock type songs ( Blackberry Smoke or something). As we left the stage, they offered me a place in the band. It was a nervous experience, turning up to a venue and playing live for the first time in front of nearly a hundred experienced and talented musicians. The band’s guitarist left a month or two later after we did a charity gig and I got a fellow work colleague to join us and replace him. Naturally when you change people, you inherit new interests and ideas. We dropped half of our setlist, which I didn’t mind as there were quite a few old fashioned 60’s and 70’s fillers. We were lacking some killer material: crowd pleasers and feel good energizers. We spent another six months developing a better setlist but it still wasn’t my jam (no Paul Weller pun intended). The band was enjoying it and we began to sound good(ish). The drummer always called me “The Keys”, but it didn’t sound right. Billy was far more clear than Bill to pick up when the singer introduced me during gigs, but Billy Keys still wasn’t it. Finally the name Billy KeyStrokes came to me a month or two before my last gig with the band. That’s how I was introduced on my last gig last with the band at a minor’s welfare in a former mining town’s public house. Before Thatcher closed the pits in the 80’s, it was where the close community would gather for drinks after a week in the mines. These were tough people who had to endure some hard times after the pits closed. They enjoy a drink, they still hold grudges after all this time and they are not afraid to throw a punch to win an argument … on top of this, they don’t appreciate new faces … a bit like the Mos Eisley Cantina … [Ed. Luckily] we played a good gig and ended up playing three encores. Finishing with “Roadhouse Blues” by The Doors and “Old Time Rock’n Roll” by Bob Seger. The place loved us and the Land lord was dancing on the tables. I wasn’t happy with how ‘Roadhouse Blues’ went and brought an ‘A’ Major harmonica (Harp) to practice to change things around. The band was impressed and thought it sounded really good. They immediately wanted to add some Bob Dylan hits to the set, which I declined immediately! We had just began honing our craft when COVID arrived and the restrictions caused our tight set list to slip. I had also just moved houses. After a while the drummer began trying to apply pressure to start turning up. One day I’d had a few beers and was tired of his “you’re going to get left behind” warnings. My favorite Decepticon [ed. the bad guys in Transformers] is the G1 Stunticon DeadEnd and one of his care-free lines “Big deal, so beat me!” popped in my head. “Big deal… leave me behind” was the opening line of my reply, before I backed it up with a longer and more polite response to the group. After a 30 minute phone call with the bass player (who was a legend), he fully understood and I left the band. Ironically my old band is providing the evening entertainment at my annual work party at the end of June … so it’s a good job I didn’t leave on bad terms … ha ha!
I had just properly joined TRA and oddly enough … approximately 30 minutes after leaving the band I received a DM from Scorer and Toad asking if I needed help with DJO and Battlestats.
Stumbling into the rebellion with the accidental push of a button
Kuki: How did you find your way to the TRA server?
When the Squadrons game trailers began dropping I reactivated my Playstation account. I decided to use my musician’s name as my gaming tag. I pre ordered Squadrons as soon as it became available. I still remember downloading it when it dropped on the 2nd of October of 2020 and I began playing on launch day. We were all very new to the game then weren’t we? At some point trying to get a game was getting a little more difficult. Stacks and seal clubbers began to surface, as well as the regular Ren W who would spawn in a A-Wing and spend every match doing nothing else but flying around the outer perimeter. It was around April or May, when I began to look into discords to try and get better… there was this black kid who used to do Twitch and Youtube.
Kuki: Michael Davis?
Billy Keystrokes: Focus420gaming! That’s him, he was called Focus, but Michael Davis [ AKA Drakhar] was in his squad! I was gonna join Focus Squadron, but I had also noticed a few really good posts from TRA. I put a request out to both discord groups and TRA responded first. I am so thankful someone in TRA was on their A-game and I have never looked back. I remember Scorer messaging me “Hey, you’re not logged into this yet, is everything OK?”. He was really helpful. Bless Scorer and Toad for showing up and helping me out and trying to get me on. I was not computer savvy at the time and was using a phone. I joined Battlestats and so on. These apps were really terrible for phones a few years ago. [Scorer note: They still are, and always will be xD] It was all a bit confusing but I got there thanks to Toad and Scorer. I want to really push praise and thanks to them for putting up with me, because I must have been a nightmare.
So then after a week or two I was messing around and by accident entered the voice chat. I heard a mighty cheer and welcome… I think it was Sharper, you might have been there, I remember Dirty Ary’s voice clearly. I think Twigs and Mith were there too. I felt a little embarrassed and stupid … so I said “Hi guys, I pressed this button by mistake and I’ve got a few things on at the minute, but thank you and I’ll be here tomorrow”. After that I couldn’t back down on my word… so I had to jump in the next day. So that was my baptism into TRA.
Kuki: I think I remember that! I also definitely remember you struggling with your phone!
Billy Keystrokes: Yeah it’s only in the last year that I got a computer sorted out. It took some time to build up, but it happened! I remember beginning to fly with you guys and Sharper. I had no idea Sharper was Grey Squadron Leader. I didn’t really look at the structures as it was all very new. It was only when I looked through old documents I realized members were supposed to fill in weekly reports. So I started submitting a quick paragraph here and there. Of course I don’t think anyone submits these anymore, but in my infancy, I was still submitting them. I remember a few evenings where Sharper would stay up and fly with me after 23:30 or 00:30, helping me out with Power Management bits and other stuff. I regularly wondered “how does he know I asked for help with that?”. Of course, it was a few more weeks before he revealed he was my Squadron Leader and was reading my reports [laughs]… Sharper was a lot more skilled at the game than me, yet he was happy to sit back and help out. It wasn’t just Sharper too, Twigs, Mith, everyone was doing it. It was such a great community. Going that extra mile and doing that… it really shows TRA has some good people here. It's the little things like this, that you don’t forget.
Kuki: It was similar for me. Sharper was always around and he was very friendly and open to newcomers, always helping out and nothing was ever too much. That way you just end up having fun together.
Billy Keystrokes: Such a great guy. There’s also the fact he does have that taste for a bit of chaos here and there - but it’s always in a spirit of friendly banter. Did you see the other week, the discord on Friday was full of Sharpers?
I was one of the culprits! I think there was me, Twigs, Omothi and Dathka. So we all turned up in Voice Chat with Sharper’s profile picture and variants of Sharpers gaming tag. He expressed a selection of chosen words … some suitable of promotion and demotion for all us. Of course he also saw the funny side and changed his own profile to imitate Scorer’s, which I cannot do. It’s those innocent moments of camaraderie that make it memorable, when everyone has a good laugh. It kind of breaks the ice and we’ve never changed that attitude. Everyone’s always up for some good fun and a good laugh.
Cookie Monsters, Radio Tra Tra, Rebel Yell and It’s a TRAp!
Kuki: Do you remember what the first events were you played in when you joined TRA?
Billy Keystrokes: What do you know … The earliest memory I have is having Sharper and you message me to play with you guys in the Cookie Monsters team. I still have that discord channel in my phone. I sucked balls at it back then. You guys were phenomenal and patient because I must have been frustrating at times.
Kuki: I think we had good fun. I remember you were mainly flying bombers and at some point we did pretty well with coordinated efforts. Some of those teams had a way higher skill level than the tournament was advertised for.
Billy Keystrokes: Yes, that’s correct!
Kuki: I remember playing against some Italian group who really handed our asses to us.
Billy Keystrokes: Oh yeah! Though they were great guys as well! It was Cocco Di Mama and Fluvius (who sounds 4 octaves lower than anyone else!). Cocco Di Mama was very competitive and as soon as he got killed once or twice he just saw red and didn’t listen to anyone anymore. He just went into player kills the whole time. As I discovered that Achilles heel, we definitely exploited it. But they were nice guys and very skilled.
Kuki: What other competitions did you play?
Billy Keystrokes: At one point our A-Team came back and went into SCL as Remnant Squadron. Some of the regular guys moved in with them and began playing at the level they are now. EvilGrin and Mitharan encouraged me and asked me if I’d be interesting in captaining a second TRA team for SCL. That’s how we spawned Radio TraTra (back when Jake ran it).
Then we got involved in 3PO. Radio TraTra was fun, but it was SCL. I remember asking Scorer if anyone had ever used “Rebel Yell”. I’m born in 1979, so around ’84, ’85, I shouldn’t really remember watching Top of the Pops on TV. My cousins were 8 and 10 years older though and lived across the street, so I’d often end up watching that stuff anyway … Michael Jackson, Wham, Boy George, Culture Club, … and Billy Idol was another icon. I remember going to playground once at 5 or 6 years of age. “Did you see Queen last night?”. The other kids had no idea what I was talking about. They were still watching Thomas the Tank Engine or singing Wheels on the Bus. You don’t forget watching stuff like Rebel Yell at that age.
Low and behold, no one had ever used that team name. Next, we needed a logo. If you have a look at the logo of Rebel Yell, it’s a picture of Billy Idol’s face diagonally split, with a black and white perspective. I had the idea to use the same thing with Squadrons’ helmets and began drawing something in CAD. Then Scorer just turned it around and made it a piece of art. He really did. [Scorer note: =') Thanks buddy!]
Rebel Yell has come back numerous times in 3PO, SCFL and a brief season or two in SCL. I’d like to thank everyone who participated including Scorer, Boba, Nomad, Intrepid, Nejaah, Lando and the list goes on. Later we resurfaced again thanks to Sharper, Twigs, Ghost, Dathka, TK9274, Mitharan, & EvilGrin who came along to fly in the last 3PO season which was an unexpected pleasure. We never went in to play to win, only to have fun and mess around.
We also had this team called “It’s a TRAp!” with which we ended up playing against Honsou. He later complimented us: “Absolutely love the name. It’s probably the best name in the tournament!”, which was a really nice thing for him to say. We all love Honsou.
Kuki: What’s your favorite TRA memory?
Billy Keystrokes: Here’s the thing. So every time I look at a name or I think of a person in TRA, I have at least one fond memory come back of things we've done, jokes we played, an event that happened or something in the voice chat and uh … there’s a lot of happy memories with every person. I always have the intention to make at least one person laugh or smile in my day. Call it a silly superstition, but it’s what I aim to do. Shine a little bit of sunshine on someone’s day.
One of the more fond memories I have is when Sharper sat with me till silly o’clock at night helping me with my flight stick controls and giving me really big pointers on how to fly the bomber. mikesk8s also put a lot of effort into teaching me how to fly support because we didn’t have anyone in the team doing that. Let’s not forget EvilGrin, going to exceptional lengths to set up the Merchandise page so we could all have TRA related fanny packs and other items of chosen attire.
At one point, Sharper approached me with the sad news that Thorloke wished to step away from the position of Keg Flight Leader and asked me if I would be interested. I was both honored and hesitant. At the time it was mainly me, Starfury and Thorloke flying anyway, with the exception of the odd recruit who would come and then leave. I said I’d be happy to take the role but I didn’t know what I could bring to the flight. Sharper was honest and said “don’t worry, the flight has been very quiet and we were debating the reassignment of its pilots to other Grey flights and closing it. Just give it a go and see if you can push some life into it”. I slept on it and woke up the following day thinking of a song called “Friday” I had previously written as an energizer for the band (which never gave it a chance). This gave me an idea. I accepted the position respectfully and when Friday arrived I put GiF Friday into action. It soon caught on with Sharper, Thorloke, NomadWarrior and others joining in and it has never stopped! Myself, Boba, Sharper, Nomad, Satake and our new addition DecoyTango are regular contributors. Even Scorer joins in … (well kind of … lols)… Grey Squadron is certainly very active...
Ship Talk and Expanded Universe
Kuki: What’s your favorite rebel ship?
Billy Keystrokes: For me it’s always been the B-Wing. I remember as a child there was a kid who had a toy catalog for Return of the Jedi and there was a poster with three B-Wings blowing up the Death Star with all the Kenner toys around it in their little displays. I remember not seeing that bit in the film. I got fixated on this B-Wing and learning more about it in books, as I got older. Do you remember that terrible game Rebel Assault II? It was a bad game, especially the video cutscenes with bad acting. But you started off with your partner, instructor, senior, whatever he was and you were both in B-Wings and you’re flying around taking out these new TIE Defenders. [Scorer note: TIE Phantom] Then obviously your partner gets killed and your ship get shot and a cutscene opens where the B-Wing ejects the cockpit to become an escape pod. I thought that was quite novel.
Kuki: What about on the imperial side?
Billy Keystrokes: That would be the TIE Bomber… one shot of them bombing asteroids in The Empire Strikes Back and I wanted to learn more.
Here’s a funny thing, I remember seeing the video commercial advertisement for Return of the Jedi and I always wanted a speeder bike as a child. Then I remember watching Star Wars Episode IV and I loved it. I watched it all the time. My dad would sometimes go to rent out VHS tapes on the way to work, so he would ask me what movies he should borrow this week. I always asked for Return of the Jedi. So my upbringing was A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, which I watched countless times… then one day my dad came home with Empire Strikes Back… which then filled in “oh that’s how he ends up in carbonite!”.
Kuki: That’s so funny! I grew up watching Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi in French, borrowed from a colleague of my mom and then later taped the English version from TV, but it took me about 10 years to see A New Hope. For me it was “Ah! That’s where that Obi-Wan guy comes from!”. Nowadays you can stream anything in order when you want, but in that time it was a little bit different!
Any Star Wars books you like?
Billy Keystrokes: I’m a little bit lazy and though I have read the odd Star Wars book before. I now enjoy the audio books a lot more. Of course it’s the Stackpole stuff voiced by Marc Thompson. The joy of listening to the audio books is it brings in the official Star Wars score music. It also has the official sound effects, so you actually hear the proper laser blasts, the sound effects of the actual ships. I listened to Rogue Squadron book 1 so many times. I can be driving to work and back and have other things to focus on, yet I’m still discovering new things on the tenth read/listen. Took me about a year or two before I actually got book two which is Wedge’s Gamble and then 3 was Bacta Wars [ ed. It’s actually the Krytos trap] … the first four are absolutely lovely.
Kuki: What’s your favorite non- Star Wars video game?
Billy Keystrokes: As a teenager I was a massive fan of the Road Rash series. I remember going to the shop to get some game on the Commodore Amiga and I saw Road Rash was there for Christmas. My dad bought it me along with Zool for my sister and Joe & Mac Cavemen Ninja for my little brother. He also let us try each game out when we got home before putting them away for Christmas. I still have an old favorite which used to be called Rock’n Roll Racing, an isometric racing game from the 90’s that was only on the Super Nintendo & Sega Genesis, Mega Drive. The last one I’m picking is about 2010, I had the Transformers War for Cybertron game on Playstation 3, which had a good story mode and great multiplayer games.
Kuki: What was your first Star Wars game?
Billy Keystrokes: That must have been Super Return of the Jedi on the SNES. That would have been the first game where I realized there were cheat codes. One in particular would let you select Wicket with infinite thermal detonators to fight against the Emperor. Then we got the N64 Rogue Squadron on the PC back in 2000 and I remember getting the gold medal on the last mission. Absolutely loved it. I loved playing Rogue Squadron II on GameCube. It was a joy because you could eventually unlock so many ships and do the missions with them. You could actually take Darth Vader’s TIE Interceptor Advance, Slave 1 and ships like that. There’s also a black car that you can fly in based off the film American Graffiti snuck in there with a ridiculous amount of rockets. Third one, this is gonna sound really silly but I had Star Wars Battlefront Renegade or Elite Squadron on the PSP. The back story entwined a bit with what happened after Return of the Jedi. I think Boba Fett was also in the story arc. The amazing part was the space battles. You could fly into your enemy ‘s mothership, dock & swap ships. You could also disable power, shields etc. either from the outside in a ship or on foot from the inside …
Kuki: Who’s your favorite Star Wars Character?
Billy Keystrokes: Let's go with Dash Rendar. That game [Ed. Shadows of the Empire] is really like a sub-story between Empire Strikes Back and Return Of the Jedi. I kind of really dig that. I also got the audio book and now granted, it's not as good a production as the Rogue Squadron audio books… but the effort is there. Maybe it's a guilty pleasure thing. I kind of feel sorry despite the efforts of the game, the Steve Perry Novel, and the toys, that it's been smudged out of the way… but I still want to remember that character I quite enjoyed. He had his moments where his character shone brightly, like where he felt guilty and responsible for failing Luke. Interesting character.
Kuki: What’s your favorite Headcannon Moment:
Billy Keystrokes: Do you remember the video game “The Force Unleashed” and its cutscenes? Darth Vader appears so arrogant and wanting to kill the Emperor. He’s having a chat with Starkiller there and having him do things to overthrow the Emperor. I think I had the book as well, the wife got it for me for Christmas. Return of the Jedi was on TV and I remember rewatching it and the exchange between Vader and the Emperor when he's like “he will come to me” … it just changed my perception of Vader from being this loyal lapdog to being this cynical, sarcastic, ***** ****.
The way it's been written purely depends on how each person interpretates how Vader is coming across. This opened my eyes a lot. After 20 odd years I found myself watching one of my favorite movies from a completely different angle.
Staying with Return of The Jedi: I still love the original Return of the Jedi ending over the modernized versions. I still prefer the Jim Henson creatures over the CGI stuff and I still prefer the original Ewok village music and celebration at the end. I'm probably gonna cause a bit of controversy with this.
Crawling through the undergrowth on the forest moon of Matlock
Kuki: Do you have more hobbies outside of TRA, Transformers and music?
Billy Keystrokes: I began doing airsoft with my son about two or three months ago. I went to one place which was an old quarry full of hills, mud and ponds. We have since found a better venue which is more forest based. My eldest son uses a M4 full/semi-automatic airsoft machine gun. I use a We-Tech EU17. It’s basically an imitation of a Glock 17.
The matches vary a lot, Team Deathmatch, Zombies, capture the Flag, Defend the base … the list goes on. There are some funny moments. One game I had to heal a shot player. I crawl though this small opening at the back of a shed and exit crawling through some over grown vegetation. A sudden cracking of wooden slats quickly drew my attention and I noticed I was crossing over a wooden grate which was beginning to break. I couldn’t see the ground through the slats, which was concerning in case it’s covering an old underground well or something. So I stopped paying attention to anything else and just focused on getting to safety up this embankment which is covered in brambles. The uphill hedge I’m trying to step over is also giving way on me, when I suddenly hear “snap snap snap” and a voice saying “this is brilliant!” - snap snap - “Can you get through?” snap snap snap “You weren’t expecting me here, were you?” snap. I slowly turned towards the direction of this voice, to find a smiling photographer on the high ground and on opposite side of the thorny shrubbery. My glance of confusion changed to a smile and despite feeling like an idiot, the only funny response that pops in my head is “Does my bum look big in this?”. I looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights as the photographer looks up at me. Just so funny!
Kuki: Is the Airsoft field far from where you live?
Billy Keystrokes: I live in a town where my wife grew up. It's a little on the border of Sheffield, but it's part of Derbyshire. It's about a 10 mile drive from my house to the airsoft field, which is on top of a hill. It takes about 20 minutes to get there. Luckily, where I am I can get onto the highway pretty quick and then after that you are on to country lanes.
Kuki: What do you enjoy about your area
Billy Keystrokes: There’s a number of things. One: it’s a really nice area, I was raised in the flat concrete streets of Manchester. Not many hills, not much on the horizon, very grey and often rainy. However since we moved I can now look out of my windows and look down towards the small housing estate in the lower facing valley with a horizon of green fields and woodland rising up in the distance. It really is beautiful. There's not much trouble. I live in a cul-de-sac. My house is arguably in a strategic position. I have about five houses surrounding my back garden and another five houses that can see my front door. If anyone comes into the square… everyone can see where they’re going. We all wave and say hello, but they rarely talk to us or each other, which is a shame, really. The last street we lived on was more built up, but we knew everybody’s name and talked all the time. That said, everyone still looks out for each other. I'm also a stone’s throw away from the middle of nowhere, so I can take the dog out for a walk into the next village and into the fields or a country lane that leads to the moors. Again, I think we’re lucky. I just like it.
Not giving up drinking just to kick people
Billy Keystrokes: I did Taekwondo for a couple years in Manchester. We trained with the British Champion for low weights (below 65 kg) Paul Green. He was a really nice guy and he was fast… really fast …
Where’s Willy?
There he is…
↓
One night me and my friend had just finished a gym session and noticed him through the door window into the training hall where he was training with the Manchester Aces, which was the local county team. He opened the door and said we should join the session, just knock off the drinking. “Both of you two, you got potential. You could be here as an Ace”. At the time, me and my friend didn't drive so it was a big commitment. We would be expected to train at classes every day and travel to all the matches and events … it wasn't really feasible.
When I moved to Chesterfield, I began doing Hapkido for a few years, which is the same martial art practiced by one of our former TRA members [ Ed. Thanks for all the fish!]. It was all the joint locks, break falls, weapons work, bo staffs and stuff like that (Korean Thuggery), The moto was ‘We’re A Drinking Club With A Martial Arts Problem’.
I also did a bit of boxing here and there as well, but that's been about it, mate.
You know how it goes, you start doing these things, then you get into a relationship and things go south and you stop training and doing other stuff and then start repeating the cycle. It’s about priorities. I do remember a great piece of advice from a Hapkido Master “Never ruin a good apology with a poor excuse”.
Kuki: What's your favorite drink?
Billy Keystrokes: Oh I've not been to a pub properly in a long time, mate, so it varies, it really does Kuki. I'm not a massive drinker like I used to be really. I can drink. I can drink whiskey. I enjoy lagers, bitters, ciders, Guinness, Whisky… but it just purely depends on the mood I'm in at that time. For the sake of the question I’d probably go for a traditional fruit cider or a traditional ale. Saying this, you just can’t beat a good cup of tea. I always find tea tastes better outside. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of when my dad used to take me fishing when I was young, we’d share a big flask or two of tea throughout the day.
Kuki: What about food?
Billy Keystrokes: It varies, but I’ve got 2 things that ’ll always go. It’s got to be a margarita pizza with jalapenos on it or it’s going to be chicken carbonara, which is Italian. I will quite happily have a bit of cheese on toast for breakfast sometimes.
The Rule of Two
Kuki: What’s your favorite Star Wars movie moment?
Billy Keystrokes: Good question. You got me there. It's difficult because you've always got the “Hello there!” with Alec Guinness and then there’s the one with Admiral Ackbar going “It's a trap” as well. I can't actually give you one right now off the top of my head …
Kuki: You just gave me two!
Billy Keystrokes: Did you watch Rogue One at the cinema or later? I felt like a child in a sweet shop. The ending with Vader? And then again the whole sequence near the end … I just absolutely loved it.
Kuki: [ Ed. Dammit Billy, that’s four! That ruins my gif and my chapter title!] What’s your favorite real life Star Wars memory?
Billy Keystrokes: Uh, it's got to be meeting up with the TRA guys last year at [ ed. Star Wars] Celebration, being with Saywah, Sticks, Twigs, Omothi and of course Sharper. There’s probably someone else I’ve forgotten.
We’re all friends and we just had a great time. Yes, it was like walk-in cattle market but it didn't matter. Yes, everything was expensive and facilities were a bit on the thin side, but the talks were brilliant. I happily did it, though I think it was a bit too big. Listening to Kathleen Kennedy getting booed was a big bonus. The fans’ reaction to her as she made her entrance on that stage was just beautiful. I don’t usually take pleasure in peoples’ discomfort, but that was one of those times.
Kuki: Do you have any Star Wars collection items?
Billy Keystrokes: I have nothing official from Star Wars anymore, I do have the blue beaker Luke is drinking his blue milk out of in A New Hope. It got rereleased in the 90’s range of products for storing tea or coffee or spaghetti or whatever it was in it and inside it I have the mid 90’s Star Wars Micro Machines.
Kuki: Billy, last question: if you had lightsaber, what color would it be? Don’t say red!
Billy Keystrokes: I'm going to say magenta because no one else has said it yet … and it will match my B-Wing.
Kuki: We’re through my questions and I think we had some interesting talks as well. Is there any last thing you want to say to the people of TRA?
Billy Keystrokes: Thank you all of you for being you and thank you for embracing me, welcoming me and putting up with me. Thank you for all the fun and the laughter we’ve shared, and that's credit to each and every one of you. It is every one of you who has made it this far that makes TRA what it is… just f*cking awesome. Every one of you brings a flood of happy memories of moments where we have laughed until we've cried.
Thank you Kuki for taking the time to do these interviews!
This is Billy Keystrokes, thanks for the fish reading. Take care of yourselves!