Trivia / Sincere Engineer

• The Cast Showoff: Part of the point of the "Trust Me" music video, according to Deanna, was to show off her ability to ride a bike while eating a pizza at the same time.
• Colbert Bump: Their biggest one was probably touring with The Lawrence Arms and Alkaline Trio in 2018. They also got a minor one in 2019 when Deanna sang on on Signals Midwest's "Your New Old Apartment" (feat. Sincere Engineer), and a bigger one when they performed on Audiotree Live that same year, leading up to them finally "making it" by signing a deal with Hopeless Records to make Bless My Psyche.
• Creator Backlash: Minor example, but Deanna has talked about how she was surprised that "Overbite" was one of the most popular tracks on Rhombithian since she thought it was very musically "boring" when she wrote it, but that fans seemed to respond very strongly to how detailed and specific the lyrics were about her past life story. This inspired her to write "Recluse in the Making" to be a similarly simple, unadorned song that depends on its lyrics' naked sincerity.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Many fans who identify strongly with Deanna's story in "Overbite" find the line "I'm not basing my intelligence on some fucking letters!" an exultant, defiant battle cry on behalf of every former gifted kid who found their self-image and self-esteem shattered by Genius Burnout.
• Directed by Cast Member: At least half of Sincere Engineer's music videos are extremely low-budget to No Budget affairs directed by Deanna herself, and tend to show off her sense of humor based heavily in Self-Deprecation. (The ultimate example of this is the video for "Corn Dog Sonnet No. 7", filmed entirely on Deanna's phone and consisting of her writing the lyrics on objects around her house with yellow mustard.) The heavier and more dramatic ones tend to be the ones done by other people.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Technically, the first "Sincere Engineer album" is the self-titled EP Deanna self-published as a solo act in 2015, a very small print run of CDs she paid for out-of-pocket that was only purchased by her friends, of which no known digital copies exist, and which for fans is now an ultimate collectible rarity. She's said she considers this EP an Old Shame and would rather people not hear it.
• No Budget: Sincere Engineer has a surprisingly large number of music videos for a band at their level, thanks to their willingness to make extremely cheap and quirky videos like a Machinima made in The Sims 4 ("Recluse in the Making") or a Limited Animation video consisting of Deanna's freehand doodles ("Library of Broken Bindings").
• Throw It In!: The "Dragged Across the Finish Line" music video was entirely inspired by Deanna getting a package in a large cardboard box from Amazon, getting her head briefly stuck in it, and goofing around stumbling blindly around the room and thinking it would be a hilarious idea for a music video. Much of the comedy of the video comes from the sheer Enforced Method Acting of making everyone in it wear trash cans on their head with no cutout for them to see.
• Troubled Production: The production of Bless My Psyche ran directly into the COVID-19 Pandemic, forcing the band to record many of the tracks separately alone in the studio, which Deanna said made it a big challenge to keep up the energy expected from a punk record (and inspired her to start branching out into Bedroom Pop).
  • Before then, there'd already been talk about the long delay after the production of Rhombithian, since Deanna had used up all the music she'd written in college on that album and had a difficult time putting together new music with all the band members still working at day jobs.