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Constant Companions Closeup #1: DYAD

(also on spotify!)

Hello everyone!! It's been a couple weeks and change since Constant Companions, my newest album, was released unto the world, and I've been genuinely blown away by the response. Genuinely, thank you to everyone who's been streaming, commenting, making mashups, changing their pfps and usernames - it means the world to me!

I wanted to give some of that love back with something people have been asking me a lot about - and, admittedly, something I love doing. Song explanations! Deep dives! Dropping the lore! Welcome... to the Constant Companions Closeups...

For the next eleven days, I'll be going into each track one by one and babbling about the process, inspiration, details, feelings, and thoughts behind each one! We're getting sappy. We're bearing our hearts. We're telling unfunny jokes. And we're starting with track one - DYAD (featuring unit.0)!

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Naturally, since this is the first track, it also serves as a great point to talk about my intention with this album as a whole!

I'll elaborate more on this with future tracks, but to me, there are really two main things that define the sonic progression of this album versus my previous work - guitars and vocal synths. Obviously, these things have been present in my work since I first started calling myself Jamie Paige, but Constant Companions is intended to be my overwrought, sappy confession of love to these two things that time and time again have made me simply want to make music. I love rock and I love Hatsune Miku dammit!!!

I had originally written this song in February of 2023 for a game-jam-esque online festival hosted by my friend Loni called HAPPY PARTY TRI, and at that time, I had found myself at a major crossroads. I had put out People Posture Play Pretend and :women_wrestling: the previous year, and while the response was nice, I was feeling listless and lost.

I love singing. I like my voice well enough. I certainly love writing music with lyrics!! But... there was something uniquely electrifying about using vocal synths. Amidst a lot of insecurity and emotional turmoil surrounding the process of making art and putting myself out into the world, it was one of the few things that just made everything feel right. Suddenly, I was making the same kind of music that had touched my heart so many times over.

Would it alienate people, though? Would I lose longtime listeners? Yes, that weighed on my mind more than I'd like to admit, but even more than that... I was worried I'd lose some part of myself, as silly as it sounds. Maybe what I thought was a bridge would become a barrier, and the messages I wanted to send across the gap would never find their way.

Ultimately, I felt that Dyad was the only kind of opener I could've possibly given this album, and a perfect fit for the album's motif. A dialogue between myself, stricken with loneliness and a lack of inertia running in circles, and that synthesized voice (ANRI Arcane my darling), grabbing the outstretched hand and asking a question I already know the answer to -

"Baby, do you know what you wanna hear?"

Yes, it's a love song, but it's not just for a person - it's a love song for the creative impulse, and for the places I wanted it to take me.

im resisting the urge to be jokingly dismissive of myself to diffuse tension but i still need to signal that the emotionally bare part of this is over so pretend im doing a funny little dance Anyways let's talk more technical stuff

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Like many of my songs, Dyad came together from a patchwork of different snippets and ideas I had laying around. The back half of the chorus - "dream together, we can dream together" - originally came from this idea I had jotted down something like 9 months prior, but ended up being a perfect fit for Dyad in basically every way. The verse snippet that I'd written to go with it got reused for a later song on Constant Companions as well! (I say without naming it, as if it isn't literally lifted wholesale from this demo and thus incredibly obvious)

I wasn't originally planning on brazenly quoting the bridge of a Tally Hall song when I set out to write this song, but while toying around with a bridge idea involving a shortened version of the pre-chorus melody, I realized I had inadvertently copied it anyways. I was going to scrap it... but at the request of my dear friend and certified Tally Hall lover Marcy Nabors, I made it an explicit reference. Which I'm fine with, personally! The first CD I ever owned was a copy of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum my sister bought me all the way back in 2006 - You can pry that sentimental attachment from my cold, dead hands, TikTok kiddies.

Lastly - not really behind the scenes so much as just a shoutout - thank you to unit.0 for the lovely lead guitar work on this song!! He's been a beloved collaborator of mine for many, many years now, and one of the people who ultimately convinced me this direction was the right one to go in, so it means a lot to share this song with him. Go listen to his music!!! Now!!!!!!

That's about it for this song! Not to sound like a fucking YouTuber, but genuinely, if there are any details you'd like to hear more about, let me know and I might made a bonus post at the end of all this. Otherwise, thank you for listening! Tomorrow: Not Quite There, featuring telebasher!

❤️💚

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telamon x dusekkar

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Adminvirus but as a "knight" and "king", honestly it's just their milestone's

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VOTE DAD N7 OR DIE

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ALAS IT IS HERE, MY PLAYABLE 2X2 CONCEPT

🦜 Design and lore

Basically this is a timeline of my 1x headcanon where he got sealed in a limbo bc of admins and met 2x whose been confined to the mindscape ever since he got corrupted. Glitch family ensues (the dynamic is still the same from my last post)

But then something different happens than in the original ending where 2x gets deleted by the Spectre, they are merely wounded and left alone in the mindscape. 2x finds a way to escape and falls into the Forsaken realm. Sheneginans ensue

Lots of cool art and trivia under cut ⬇️

🦜 Their sword is larger than them and EXTREMELY HEAVY. Due to being young they cant handle it very well. During rounds Spectre takes away their flight wings which completely throws off their balance, it's why they can't stun. It's also just heavy as fuck its like Thor's mjolnir, only they can pick it up

🦜 They are the second survivor to smile all the time except its not creepy! (Looking at Two time) they have a very heroic attitude and will to help and save people. Sometimes the braveness is their biggest detriment (weakest out of all the survivors health wise)

🦜 Bonded with 07 due to being in a similiar situation (his dad wants to kill him instead)and also just likes to imagine what would his life been like had he had a normal affectionate father

🦜 Besties with Guest, he's like her cool military uncle PARRY DUO PROPAGANDA PARRY DUO PROPAGANDA PARRY DUO PROPAGANDA

🦜 Fishing skin by my friend Fungerfan69. Loves to fish! They've been locked away in the mindscape for so long they forgot how real grass feels. They're just a very happy boye who loves nature.

🦜 Is actually quite authorative in the cabin, likes to take charge and people just listen because it's so hard to deny their puppy eyes

🦜 Their kit actually synergizes gameplay wise with Taph and Dussekar, they really boost their relevance. Man I wish 2x2 was real

🦜 1x (pre forsaken) was actually very protective of 2x, he didn't know how to be affectionate and wouldn't even admit to loving them, due to his nature of being pure hatred. But that kindness has always stuck with 2x. Unlike Telamon, 1x gently guided his swordsmanship, strict but motivating, always giving a helping hand to stand. Nowdays after rounds with 1x, someone has to stay with them to console them, sometimes everyone gathers and they watch disney movies while 2x falls asleep between cushions.

🦜 There's a lot of bad blood between Shedletsky and 2x. On one hand 2x can recognize that Shedletsky is basically a stranger but thats also what pisses them off so much. He's everything they wanted from their father - Telamon, this is what he could've been, they just weren't worth changing for ig. And they're also 11 years old and don't have many coping mechanisms, they're just angry and bitter. This guy who bears the face of a man who cursed them with all his hatred, abandoned them, never truly loved them it felt like. How can they not be uncomfortable?

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“he’d be disappointed”

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"I named you"

first time drawing them and i had fun drawing them ngl i think you know where this reference comes from fmdshk

designs of them or how they're drawn are a bit inspried by @cuppochino . i like their art :) also credits to @microknifeyuri for doing the dialogue thus why i did this cuz i found it funny

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Baby I don't know when I'm supposed to stop

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Baby, I don't think my head is coming off!

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i hurt myself to hurt you. because you deserve it.

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so, just for the record, staff's blatantly discriminatory rules enforcement practices are only half the story. like, if you ever find yourself wondering why trans women are always getting termed right after their posts about transmisogyny start getting numbers (and mysteriously start getting mature content flagged for seemingly no reason), its bc there are a couple of specific circles of people who mass report tgirls who talk about that sort of thing too loudly (or, y'know, they're just generally annoyed by). there's at least one discord server more or less dedicated to the practice to my knowledge and i wouldn't be surprised if there were more.

staff, of course, can perform the tied hands routine bc of this - they're just responding to reports! and now that the first ban is served, any subsequent attempts to rebuild one's social life are read as Ban Evasion. girls are left with the non-choice of permanent exile or starting over from scratch, trying to be quieter this time so they don't get found. this is the point, and its being done with purpose by people who, funnily enough, spend most of their time talking about the importance of Community. lol and lmao

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weird kids best friends

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o,o

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Theyre called draculas because they drank u. La