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lyrepyre · 18 days

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analysis of another level i weird think about a lot, except this time i fully enjoy it, despite its rather abrasive nature for those with "good taste", despite it being relatively conventional seeming, except this time almost no one's heard of it. i think instead of a preview image this time you should probably watch it first. this is Sailor of the Sun by YungBelll

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ok did you finish watching it? cool

so depending on your tastes and/or experience in gd history and its various styles you may or may not understand why this of all levels i'm showcasing as especially unique. it's a combination of factors for me, the most immediately obvious being the whiplash between parts and the song choice

the song choice because it's cheesy possibly to an unpleasant degree (depending on your tastes) in a way very few songs used in gd are, and the most immediate warning i give any time i send someone this on discord. but the real reason i love it is its genuinely incredibly unique almost dreamlike outsider-y mashing of styles. if we're going superlatives, this is one of the most psychedelic levels in gd in my opinion, weird in a similar way as maze of justice, but with a completely different bag of tricks. i mean when's the last time you've seen a level with obvious influence from both culuc and crohn44? that's what i wanna focus on here

i think the best place to start is that apparently since i first saw this, the channel of the creator has metamorphized into a shitty minecraft shorts channel. i think that sets the tone pretty well. in art in general, a wellspring of creativity is found in the idea of a corruption of something commonplace, what you might call psychedelic, surreal, dreamlike, or hypnagogic. in gd, there's two main ways you get that. you either have a creator who understands what signs to mash together to achieve a mutant new result, or you have a creator who's an incompetent teenager with little idea of what they're doing. i think this level safely falls into the second category, between the title of the official showcase being very ambiguous clickbait, the current state of the channel, and the influences present on it. a good example of the former is devin, though he certainly tows the line, and the almost careless but still internally coherent mishmash of styles here feels a million times more like someone else's (likely accidental) take on devin than the unfortunate number of people who think they can make a 'devin styled level'. maybe a kinder way to say incompetence here, closer to what i really mean, is a unique perspective due to some fundamental gap of knowledge or experience between the artist and the relatively learned, uh, consumer? what's the fancy art philosophy word for the person who contentiously takes in the art that isn't too pretentious like 'aesthete'. that word. it's what people find so fascinating in outsider artists such as terry davis, a fundamentally different set of biases and experiences from the norm, but them still having an unwavering commitment to them, often resulting in something raw, speaking to deep, mysterious realms of the psyche. back on gd, it's what makes tidal wave so fascinating to me, one of the best analogs to this level, a level made explicitly for clout, but not sanitized and cleaned up attempting to create a masterpiece of some kind. it's what doesn't work about a tidal wave redecoration or further, more polished onilink levels, abandoning the incompetent roughness that makes it genuinely interesting in the first place. but whereas tidal wave wishes to garner attention pushing difficulty boundaries, ignoring a typical path of refinement until breakthrough that most well known creators follow, sailor of the sun *is* attempting to be that masterpiece, an aspiration of most levels of the 'art' style, your hyperdetailed megacollabs where everyone spends months on like 6 seconds each, refinement without consideration of if it's worth it, leaning on trust that it having taken so long surely means it's a masterpiece, more worthy of reverence and analysis than levels that took less time. but from a solo effort by a totally unknown creator, the result of this style is usually something fascinatingly uncanny, and when combined with the jarring stylistic changes, this level like firmly lands in exactly my kinda thing, resulting in it def being my top 100 levels at time of writing. i think the best way to analyze this is going roughly part by part then, given it's the progression and subversion of expectations that makes it work for me

the first part is not the most interesting one but sets up a lot of the themes and techniques used in general. the internal tensions start here with some details being incredibly object heavy and others just a couple of objects thrown together creatively, both common in art levels since their inception but not usually to this level of having both, clearly working from a mindset of filling up space on the screen with something, regardless of how long it took or inspired it is (see how much more detailed the red of the two mushroom platforms is than the green.) also worth mentioning is the incredibly awkward looking gameplay that stays for the entire level, simple obstacles buffed to needless levels or not even buffed at all as some kind of filler, and weird subtle gimmicks that often don't really represent the song

and then the second part, the contrast of which kind of acts as a microcosm of the whole thing for me, and what got me interested in this level in the first place. it uses a few similar techniques but a lot of completely different ones, from a space that does generally look like it could exist in some sense into a completely abstract surreal storybook thing, the influence in specific i can't really pin down. surreal is definitely what they're going for (gd creators aren't exactly subtle and the distorted clock in this part is almost definitely the overdone reference to the dali one), and in general the story of this level (as many 'art masterpiece' levels are wont to have) is the alternation between the high fantasy 'reality' and the psychedelic stylized parts, but what exactly this means, beyond having to do something with the sun, is spared in an act of merciful ambiguity. also incredibly geometry dash is the text 'walt dont lie to me walt you sussy baka' scrolling in the background, if it wasn't clear enough already this was made by some 15 year old. i didnt notice that until i decided to start writing this

a little transition which again looks nothing like anything before it, back into reality with the gameplay having a double click of all things, before the purple castle area, where the distinction between the parts they decided to be detailed and the parts they decided not divides even further, the set of armor with 5 frames animated for the helmet going down vs some of the block design not even having any extra detail to it beyond colored standard blocks

and then another part which looks nothing like anything else prior, where the culuc realistic style had texture, and the storybook was flat but had line art, most of the art here is totally flat, the structuring breaking down even further to simple pillars sparsely placed. this level's recent enough to have a distinct neodesign influence and that comes through here the strongest, as again geometry dash creators are not subtle and if they wanna evoke neodesign, they put big star shapes because overdefo levels have star shapes so that means that's how you do it. what this means story wise is another layer of abstraction, finally on the sea (it's called sailor of the sun after all) but clearly in an unreal state, i always took it as the ambiguous protagonist taking an order from the royalty of the castle to go out and do something but no kind of goal or bounty is ever hinted at, the rest of the level is just things happening

after a very rough but very cool transition telling us the sun is doing something to our mind (i love how shitty the expanding eyes look), or something, the chorus part is another stylistic shift being the closest to design but also by far the most overtly psychedelic part, always giving me vrymer for some reason so that's another random influence. the gameplay style is totally different too, still dispensing one weird obstacle at a time but looks much more like typical gameplay than the weird timing gameplay in the rest. the hand that lifts you out i always thought was maybe stolen from the ones at the start of the terminator by skywalker14, but they're not exactly the same. level definitely has strong stolen object energy so i wouldn't be surprised if there's some, but it might just be a bunch of "references" to a bunch of other levels scattered about

next part is the least interesting, just helps pacing as a return to the style from the start, but that devin ass dual, the traced vomit emoji(???) and whatever's happening with the invisible size portals at the end are all pretty weird

i have no clue what the part after is meant to represent, real or surreal, a bunch of neurons(?) in the background, a rocky block design, and giant text screaming DARKNESS at you it's just. yeah. nothing really more to say than it looks cool and feels right somehow

and the second chorus which is why i say crohn cuz this part always felt like a sunset sandstorm drop thing to me, an influence which pervades the whole thing (probably why the gameplay's like that) despite yknow, sunset sandstorm being pretty weird and unconventional and the art influences this takes from are like culuc shit. it's a blindness to the reasons why the things it takes influence from are famous, beyond that they're famous, that gives this (and a lot of other gd levels) the outsider energy it has

last little part which like that one transition looks like some echonox, darwin glow effect stuff. theres a bird, a dude with a weird head thing, and that one really easy to make helix effect plastered all over the background. and then the end cutscene/endscreen which is an entire 15% of the level, always interpreted it as the sailor succumbing to the effects of whatevers happening and dying, probably due to bodily neglect from the psychedelic adventures or being out at sea or both. but the hand rly looks like one of the white space hands (which now watching that back, also has a bunch of custom text plastered all over the place like this does so i guess that's probably why that's there). and the endscreen which is an endscreen. thats it i already stated my theses early on bye

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