#disc: this is my interpretation and opinion

[meimei-bunnie]

Was thinking about Jiang Cheng last night, and what I understood of his character– and especially of his relationship with Wei Wuxian, because obviously, every aspect of his character is shown through the lens of their relationship owing to the fact that Wei Wuxian is the main character.

I don't think it's a bad thing, but I do wish that we could have got some serious in-depth of a lot of characters from their own perspectives, but it works for me and my overactive brain to fill in the gaps.

I genuinely feel heartbroken over their relationship because I know that the love is there, and always will be. Even if it's now tainted with too many harsh words and spilt blood, the love is still there. The problem lies in how Jiang Cheng was raised.

At first, I used to think that Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan are not that bad of parents but after thinking over it, I have realised that they are not good either. In fact, when it comes to Jiang Cheng, they did a terrible job. JFM essentially neglected JC because of his similarity to his mother, leaving him craving for love. YZY on the other hand, constantly put him down by comparing him to WWX.

Both of these things became a core part of how JC thinks and feels. He never received unconditional love from his parents, and his relationship was strained with WWX, but he still loves them all. He is a classic Slytherin, in my opinion. He is definitely ambitious and loves his cultivation but another thing that I characterize Slytherins by is the difference in which they treat those inside their circle and outside their circle.

So, for JC, the people inside this circle are: JFM, YZY, WWX & JYL (and afterwards JL, but that's inconsequential to this post since I'm focusing more on the JC before WWX's resurrection). Even if they treat him badly, he loves them to death. He would go to the world's end for them, and all he wants in return is for them to be by his side.

Which is what WWX fails to do after the Wen situation. (I'm not blaming him, I totally support WWX's decision; I'm just painting it from JC's pov.) At a time when he had lost his parents and JYL was getting married and going away, the only tether for him was WWX– so when he chose the Wens (outsiders, for JC) and demonic cultivation over him, it was betrayal for him.

I believe there are 3 feelings that ruined their relationship, from JC's side: ① betrayal ② jealousy ③ loneliness.

The feeling of betrayal ties in to the loneliness heavily. At the root of everything is the fact that JC struggles with love; he loves deeply, but doesn't quite know how to express it at times because his own parents were lousy at doing that. (I wanna give him a tight hug so bad ugh.)

The jealousy... Well, that's the factor that ruined it the most. And I believe that if only JFM had looked past the fact that JC's mother is YZY, and had loved him as freely as he did WWX, and if YZY had not constantly compared them, then JC could have grown up without the compulsive need to constantly compare himself to WWX. It's not that he does it on purpose, but something that's wired in him because of the glaring difference in them that his parents keep pointing out, whether it's with his actions or her words.

The thing is... WWX was literally the worst person to compare himself to. He was literally a genius, a prodigy, a once-in-a-generation kind of cultivator. And also a classic Gryffindor example. Brave, reckless and strong sense of justice. That's what marks the main difference between them.

JC would choose his family/inner circle over justice. WWX would choose justice over his family/inner circle.

Those feelings of betrayal, jealousy and loneliness come out in the form of misplaced anger and hatred in the 13 years WWX is gone on every person who does demonic cultivation. I feel like JC was trying to find him too, but it was in equal parts love and equal parts hatred.

The point in the climax when he gets angry at WWX and mocks him about how good he is, and constantly better than JC that he even gives away his golden core– that scene hurt me so much. I was really upset with him, but well, his words struck me. Even now, he is still comparing himself to WWX. He has always tried to catch up to the image of WWX, in hopes of gaining his mother's pride and his father's love and even long after they are gone, he feels the need to prove himself to the rest of the world that he is Jiang Cheng. He is Jiang Wanyin, heir to the Yunmeng Jiang clan and worthy of leading them.

It's literally no secret how much he despises that everyone sees him as someone 'not Jiang like'. Their motto doesn't match him. But WWX does. WWX gets his father's love freely. WWX is the talented cultivator that everyone praises and sees, and it's never him. Never JC.

He spent his entire life trying to catch up to WWX, then chasing him in hatred, only to realise that he never could. No matter what he did, he would never measure up to WWX. And he is grateful, he is thankful for what WWX did, but it came out in the usual way all his feelings do: anger and derision. That scene hurts, but it made me finally understand JC.

Honestly, my biggest takeaway from all this was that JC deserved better parents. I love him and I love WWX and I want their relationship to be better desperately but knowing that with all that has happened, I also know it's going to be really really hard. I still want to believe in my own hc that post-canon, they sit down and talk like mature adults and get all this out of the way.

Be the brothers they always should have been, even if they can't be the Twin Heroes of Yunmeng anymore.

(Sorry this got a little long hahaha~)

Edit: And I just want to add that JC never needed to compare himself or 'catch up' to WWX. That's where his parents failed him. Nobody telling him that he is enough and wonderful and loved as he is. I would love to jump in and just, give him a tight hug and say all these things to the younger JC. That I'm proud of him. That's he's enough.

[szethsmom]

See the thing is. It’s really hard to full-on *disagree* with Ludinus. The gods are pretty fucking cruel most of the time, and I too hate the idea of human lives as game pieces. But he’s also so reckless, fanatical, and intense about it that you also can’t really *agree* with him either, and thus are shoehorned into working against him. I really feel that frustration from a lot of Bell’s Hells. It sucks that there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground at the moment. Do you let a madman release something that could potentially end all life on Exandria? Or do you side with your sometimes-oppressors-sometimes-tenuous-allies and stop him?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Exandria’s gods are overdue for a reckoning. Just… hopefully it will be a reckoning with a lower body count than what Ludinus has planned. Sure, save the gods I guess, but make sure they know we will be having a Very Serious Talk with them afterwards.

[crimeboys]

It wasnt mourninglamby :( but honestly mourninglamby doesnt know what they’re talking about so if they have the same opinions it doesnt even matter what they think tbh……. I just wish I was better at showing them evidence you know? I keep talking about the yes very selfish love cwilbur has for ctommy was still love for ctommy and there aint no way the mental turmoil cdream caused ctommy is worse than cwilbur being mentally ill and a bad role model… they called cwilbur a groomer ffs???? I wish I could tell them that’s wrong without losing again due to my lack of evidence because they can just shut it down by calling my interpretations of crimeboys fanon……. I’m honestly just rambling sorry cyrus

my bad that may have been my own personal demons... although it does make me desolate to know more people share this take. but im not exactly unfamiliar with media illiteracy in this fandom.

but tbh it's like fine you dont have to debate people online about their interpretations of characters i personally love to block and stew (and occasionally lose my cool or swagever) and write private metas bc well im not a super articulate person so i hate posting them online. but yeah listen if you see people making dumbass takes that are wildly insane such as c!wilbur groomed tommy, you never have to like. debate that person bc frankly they've gone to a level of reading into shit that you are probably not going to be able to unravel. write your own meta or complain to your friends. i personally do the second one bc i hate writing. but i can attempt a little bit.

cwilbur is a complicated man who a lot of people like to make simple, be that in a negative or positive way. there are far extremes of both interpretations of the character and they both drive me insane. he is a character who requires a lot of criticism and a lot of compassion, otherwise he gets lost in the extremes of "terrorist monster who wants to hurt everyone" or "big brother who wuvs his little brother and would never do anything to hurt him".

cdream is also a complex character but he has a simple goal. power. whether that power come from land or disc or a teenager all on his own, his goal is to be on top. things take an obvious shift from just being obsessed with power to being obsessed with having power over tommy, which dream has always had to some degree but that's bc he fixated on tommy's "troublemaking" ruining the server in the beginning. exile is where he began to just Enjoy fucking with tommy and lets himself want power over tommy for the sake of having power over tommy, nothing to do with control of the server.

both of them meant to hurt tommy. i dont disagree with the notion that wilbur was abusive toward tommy. i just think there is a very clear difference in the way wilbur treated him vs. the way dream treated him. specifically i think situationally, it is very clear that wilbur was in a godawful place when he started treating tommy and everyone else terribly. i think the notion that his abuse started before pogtopia is bullshit and an incredibly dumb read of the characters. wilbur was not secretly fucking evil during l'manburg. he was an asshole often because wilbur's an asshole (but so is tommy, which people who dont actually like his character but adore the fanon version of it like to ignore), but he didn't create l'manburg just to destroy it. he didn't created l'manburg just to hurt tommy and everyone he loves. he made a home for them and when that home was taken, he had a really fucking bad reaction to it.

there is no question that wilbur during this time period hurt the people he loves. but i also think acting like every single thing he did during this period of time was malicious is fucking strange. there is a very clear, obvious fucking steady decline from the moment eret betrays them in the final control room, to wilbur and tommy being exiled from the home they built together for each other, to wilbur and tommy trying to get their nation back, to wilbur watching schlatt onstage and realizing (thinking) he never can in a way that matters, to wilbur becoming a shaken up bottle of paranoia set to explode the second someone opens it. even the fucking pit, which was shitty and gross and makes me yell at the screen every time i watch it, had a cause and effect. wilbur who genuinely thinks technoblade is on their side and trusts not to kill tubbo, to running back to pogtopia and indignant about techno trying to come back, to realizing this reinforces his paranoia and that he was right all along isn't that amazing tommy he was right they can't trust anyone, to putting tommy and techno in the pit.

this isn't the most indepth bc well like i said i don't write meta. but i think my point is clear that overall, there is a very clear difference between isolating and hurting someone literally for fucking fun vs. being isolated by the country you built and having a paranoid episode that your brother is in the front lines for that irrevocably changes both of you.

i think not liking cwilbur is fair enough, he has done undeniably shit things and hurt a lot of people without really making up for it, but i think refusing to engage with his character outside of the surface level is incredibly annoying, especially when you refuse to do that but include your own personal hcs and pretend they're honest interpretations of what you actually watched instead of separate characters you invented in your head.

dsmp might be a mess and people might think they "did more heavy lifting than the creators" but at the end of the day, they gave us very clear groundwork and tons of content and i don't think any of the lifting we have done is actually all that revolutionary to the characters outside of like. fanart. usually the people who do aren't writing the characters anymore. or maybe it's their first fandom and they don't realize it's very normal to have a bunch of hcs and character reworkings. but that's a little off topic.

anyway i could ramble about all this forever so i'm gonna go before i'm too mean and late to work byeee.

[swordfright]

What do you think is your most controversial dsmp take?

I got this ask a while ago and I've been wracking my brains trying to come up with something, but honestly...I don't think I really have many hot takes? At least, not ones that I'd consider controversial. Most of my controversial takes are about fanon/how the fandom interacts with the source material, which I assume isn't what you're looking for (but BOY DO I HAVE A LOT OF THOSE.) I also have likes and dislikes when it comes to duos and shipping stuff, but that's subjective obviously and more opinion than lore interpretation.

I guess if you put a gun to my head, I might say these are my most controversial Actual Lore Takes, but they're not all that interesting imo:

The experiments in the revival lab happened AFTER c!Dream's incarceration, not before it. My understanding is that most people interpret that sequence as occurring prior to the incarceration because...why would c!Dream let himself be locked up, relying on his knowledge of the book to be his life insurance, if he hadn't tested the damn thing out yet?! This logic tracks, but I think you could also flip it to argue the opposite: that he also could have conceivably waited to fully test the book until after escaping. During the run-up to the Disc Finale, c!Dream was incredibly busy with the fallout from Dethronement + Exile + Manburg related stuff etc, as well as busy preparing for the confrontation with c!Clingys, plus arranging the staged finale with Punz. The guy was busy as hell and he was also like...still kinda in the midst of a manic episode. Also, keep in mind that while the book was his life insurance for the finale and its immediate aftermath, he had no idea that c!Sam was going to betray him. Considering all that, I don't think it's inconceivable that c!Dream may not have had time to thoroughly test the limits of the revive book beforehand, and he likely didn't realize quite how vital his knowledge of revival would become during his incarceration period. So yeah. I'm open to either interpretation, but I am partial to the possibility that the Vikk and Lazar necromancy montage happened after the prison era. And the exact date/location of the lab are never specified either, which makes me even more open to the post-prison necromancy option. Not a hill I'd be willing to die on, but a hill I like to sit on and admire the view from.

End of Las Nevadas is the weakest stream of the Las Nevadas series. I found it narratively unsatisfying, and not in a clever way. I don't hate that stream, I think it had some really interesting moments, but overall I'd say its messaging was convoluted and the tension was pretty poorly mismanaged. I'd be willing to go on about this if you want, but I think a lot of other folks have probably already articulated it better than I can. Oh, I'll add that I also have complicated thoughts about c!Slime as a character. Don't hate him, don't love him...but I am puzzled about the role he was presumably meant to play in the story vs. the role he actually ends up playing. I could go on about this in detail but it's late and I'm sleepy.

c!Quackity has very simple goals and motives, but his pursuit of those goals is oftentimes way more convoluted than necessary, which ends up making him read as a more complex and dynamic character than he really is (I like this btw!) Another way to put it would be that Q is not a terribly complex character in terms of motivations and ambitions (dr3 has rly good meta on this btw), but he does tend to needlessly complicate his own life and the lives of the people around him in pursuit of simple goals. I think one of his big failings is that he sees violence as an easy solution to his problems but in reality it just creates more problems for him. It's like he keeps failing some sort of foresight check, over and over again. Take the formation of Las Nevadas, for instance. Most of the country's members were intimidated/threatened into joining, not because they're people Q particularly wants to hang around with, but because they're people Q sees as either strong (i.e. they are capable of contributing to LN) or directionless (i.e. they're in need of an owner a leader.) Quackity doesn't really forge alliances, he just...buys people, basically? And then he's shocked when this backfires. His relationship with Purpled is the most obvious example of this, but also LN as a whole: in LN5 (?), Quackity's angry and offended and hurt that only a tiny handful of people show up to the opening ceremony, even though by all accounts the reason the turn-out isn't bigger is because the server has by this point become a chaotic and violent place where anything can happen to anyone for any reason and most inhabitants feel safer sticking to their own turf...and that atmosphere of chaos and violence is something Q has ostensibly contributed to, even before Pandora. c!Quackity creates a country that no one is truly loyal to, inhabited by people who are closer to employees than allies...and then his solution, when he realizes nobody really gives a shit, isn't to try recruiting people in a more equitable way, it's to bioengineer a slime army. That is insane. That is an insane way to solve your problems. In no way is bioengineering a slime army a normal or well-adjusted solution to any conceivable problem. This is what I mean when I say he's a relatively uncomplicated character who complicates everything - he's constantly jumping through hoops of fire to avoid changing his behavior and taking any kind of accountability whatsoever.

I have tons more takes but they're mostly about silly subjective stuff and/or fanon, so I'll leave that for another day if anyone's interested.

[cdroloisms]

c!Dream and early aid for Pogtopia

(i promised this post so long ago rip)

There is a lot to say about c!Dream and the Pogtopia/Manberg era, especially because so many events in this period of time define the future of his character in very long-lasting ways. Much discussion has been focused particularly on the Vassal discussion and c!Dream's loyalties after--today, though, I want to focus on c!Dream's priorities before that discussion and what they might reveal about his goals.

First, I want to quickly link my post I made on c!Dream during the L'manburg Revolution, which establishes a few of the key c!Dreamisms that influence my read of him particularly pre-November 16th. Second, I want to point to a clip in the drodcast that emphasizes that the reason why c!Dream switched sides to Manberg was for the story's sake and in-universe therefore only happened because of the revive book deal, further indicating that the character had no prior intentions to turn against Pogtopia.

All that being said, there are a couple main points I want to make about (how I interpret) c!Dream in early Pogtopia.

c!Dream was already pretty obviously acting alone/isolated at the beginning of this arc

c!Dream was always genuine in his support for Pogtopia

There is more reason to believe in c!Dream's assertion that he wanted "L'manburg to be something" than the opposite

Starting wth point one, I think it's important to acknowledge how c!Dream emphasizes the idea of secrecy repeatedly during the beginnng of the Manberg/Pogtopia arc. He talks about how he has to provide support "from the shadows" in the Tyrant book, and he expresses similar sentiments when he gives supplies to c!Techno around this time as well. At the very least, when he was supplying aid at this point in time, he was pretty damn obviously acting alone--we see this as the arc progresses as well, when c!Dream helps c!Tommy in the Battle of the Lake and when he meets with Pogtopia during Vassal, for example.

Of course, acting alone doesn't necessarily mean isolation, although taking on a big + potentially dangerous task alone can lead to feelings of isolation regardless of that fact, but if we take a look at c!Dream at this time...sure he has friends, and people he's friendly with. But in terms of actual allies, he's kinda been on his own? c!George was decidedly part of Manberg due to the coalition at the start of the arc, and as far back as the Elections we see him claiming that he was "under Dream's rule" to explain that the decisions weren't his own in the Revolution.

Even though c!George obviously does not have high opinions of Wilbur and Tommy and their whole deal re: independence, we also see that no one really protests when c!Dream is called the "leader of tyranny."

And outside of this one debate, when we look at the actual events of the server...c!Dream enters into a few conflicts after the Revolution, all of which were not initiated by him. In these conflicts, he repeatedly has his items used as blackmail against him w/ the discs being the cited justification in a lot of cases (discs that were, once again, legally traded to him). And as far as these conflicts go, in terms of actual allies? There's really no one consistent at all? c!Sapnap outright teams with c!Tommy to get Dream's stuff until he turns on c!Tommy when he realizes opposing Dream isn't a good idea for him. c!Dream gets pulled into c!Sapnap's mess with the Pet Wars and therefore helps him hide their pets when the fight escalates--but at no point does c!Sapnap really outright support c!Dream in a conflict that involves him. c!Skeppy is also out here mostly in it for his own gain and was the one to steal Spirit's leather (from his. grave 😭) in the first place, like. Consistently, when c!Dream is involved in an actual conflict, he acts alone--before the Manberg/Pogtopia arc even begins. Mix in the fact that L'manburg was largely seen as an independent entity despite its technically being a part of the Dream SMP (and therefore Dream having to act accordingly) and the way that like the fandom, the L'manburg Revolution's aftermath brought in a lot of new members that further solidified the narrative in-universe (just like how a lot of new fans joined after the L'manburg Revolution, especially bc of the SAD-ist animation, which all served to solidify the l'manburg = heroes connection in the fandom as well) and the idea of c!Dream as the "bad guy" of the Revolution went relatively unchallenged (along with c!Eret, who obviously never shook the title of traitor.)

c!Dream was lacking in consistent allies and largely dealt with conflicts involving himself alone pre-Manberg/Pogtopia (gestures at how it's me and you against Dream was reiterated repeatedly), and when Manberg/Pogtopia began he had even more reason to act by himself. He was acting against the peace treaty by helping Wilbur and Tommy in Pogtopia, and a lot of the people he knew were friendly with or outright were a part of Manberg (George was a literal part of the government at the beginning, Karl was looking for wherever he could get an advantage, Sapnap is. Sapnap and shit was happening like the Battle of the Lake which literally involved kidnapping Niki, as well as other things)--c!Dream, at this point, is already used to working alone and had many reasons to continue doing so.

Onto point two: c!Dream was genuine in his support of Pogtopia throughout the arc until the point of the revive book deal. I want to point to the clip again from the drodcast, specifically how Dream says that before the conception of the revive book, c!Dream "literally switched for no reason we had no reason for me to switch [outside of the revive book]." This, plus the fact that what canonically does end up driving the decision to "switch sides" by publicly supporting c!Schlatt on November 16th is the literal revive book, all points to how c!Dream wasn't exactly going to side with c!Schlatt easily. It literally takes the whole ass revive book, the item that shatters his view of reality with its implications and was one of the central reasons why he had a paranoid spiral that involved him cooking up the prison for him to consider being on Schlatt's side.

Oftentimes, the arguments around c!Dream in this era and how he was manipulating the situation for his own gain boil down to two main moments where an assertion is made that c!Dream was playing both sides to make them destroy each other, those being Vassal and his speech to c!Eret on November 16th.

The first excerpt, Vassal, happened in early October, and the latter comes from the famous conversation c!Dream has with c!Eret on November 16th. And from these two excerpts, it can seem reasonable to believe that c!Dream's intentions were in the realm of helping both sides destroy each other, especially considering his saying that his plan is "there is no Manberg, there's no L'manburg, there's no Pogtopia, there's just Dream SMP an there's Dream SMP everywhere." But--regardless of whether or not you believe this statement, regardless of whether or not he wanted L'manburg gone from the beginning of this arc, it's undeniable that his actions do not support the claim that he was always planning to help Manberg to sabotage both sides.

The only reason why c!Dream helps c!Schlatt, and by extension Manberg, was the revive book. And this is made quite explicit both in and out of character. This man was calling Manberg L'manburg to Manberg's goddamn cabinet, for god's sake. As soon as the deal with the Election results go down, c!Dream aligns himself with Pogtopia. He supplies Manberg no aid until after the revive book deal and literally warns Pogtopia when he switches sides???? Even the claim that he wanted the two entities to destroy each other doesn't reflect the reality of him knowing that destruction would come at c!Wilbur's hands from the TNT, not from the fight between Manberg/Pogtopia in itself.

Even if you proceed with the reading that c!Dream wanted L'manburg dead and gone and wanted that from the beginning, he quite clearly was helping Pogtopia against Manberg in order to facilitate his goals and was not helping c!Schlatt until the revive book forced his hand.

The third point is the one most up for debate/based on interpretation, but I believe that, based on the information we have, it is more reasonable to believe that at the beginning of Manberg/Pogtopia c!Dream had no plans for the total destruction of L'manburg and didn't necessarily see that as one of his end goals for the server than to say that the opposite is true.

For one, going back to the revolution, c!Dream--even then--didn't have total annihilation of L'manburg as his end goal. He goes into that war knowing that he would give them "technical independence"--allowing them to exist as an entity, hell, allowing them to have 'independence' in some form (although obviously he finds the whole "we are our own server now actually" situation ridiculous). If there was ever any time to pursue the total destruction of L'manburg as an entity, it would've been then, before L'manburg was ever firmly established.

If we take c!Dream purely at his word (a dubious thing to do for sure, obviously, mans is a liar--but at the same time, c!Dream at that time was also a man that was known to generally keep his end of the deal) then c!Dream's motives at the beginning of Pogtopia are quite clear: the Tyrant book establishes the reasons why he opposes c!Schlatt, that he was able to maintain peace with L'manburg but did not feel that the same could be true as long as c!Schlatt was leader, and that "Schlatt is no Wilbur."

Later on, in Vassal, he reiterates these points, openly mocking c!Schlatt in connection with democracy and once again stating that he doesn't see Pogtopia as the bad guys + stating that c!Schlatt, unlike c!Wilbur, is unfit as a ruler because of his ambition.

Later on, when outright questioned about why he supports L'manburg now when he was the one that famously opposed them in the Revolution, he says this:

and obviously, right, he could be lying. I'm not discounting that. But it's rather notable, I think, that when it comes to c!Dream agreeing to give c!Wilibur TNT, that's in response to "I want to rig the city"--a city that, at that minute, was in enemy hands and a force that they were planning on fighting. c!Dream had pledged his allegiance to Pogtopia and specifically set a precedent of himself as an ally that would provide military aid and items (see: the gear he gives c!Techno and c!Tommy, Battle of the Lake, hell, he gives c!Tommy TNT literal minutes before Vassal while all but guarding him when c!Tommy is trying to antagonize Manberg in order to bring them back and keep them from discovering Pogtopia)--his support in this area does not, in my opinion, show clear support for the actual ideological reasons behind why c!Wilbur concludes he has to blow up L'manburg (and in Vassal, we actually see him push against those reasons several times, as shown below.)

And again, whether or not you think his disagreement is genuine or if you believe he was just fishing for information/how serious c!Wilbur actually was, I'd say that his words and action in this scene do, repeatedly, indicate a level of hesitance. He is not jumping the gun as soon as the opportunity presents itself for him to get rid of L'manburg once and for all--he's being cautious. Assessing. So much so that c!Wilbur picks up on it and outright threatens him, which is also the point in the conversation where c!Dream stops arguing back against any of the points that he makes:

And the point I'm making here isn't that c!Dream didn't want L'manburg to be destroyed when he agreed to give c!Wilbur the TNT. I think there does exist proof for this point, including whatever the hell Dream knew that Plan B had to happen...I'm so proud was supposed to mean, but that's not the point I'm specifically trying to make here. Rather, I think that until L'manburg's destruction is specifically brought up by c!Wilbur, there is little proof that shows c!Dream as specifically pursuing it/planning to get rid of it for the sake of a factionless server.

Sure, you can say that c!Dream's ideal server would've been a server without L'manburg on it. You could also say that c!Dream's ideal server at the time was a server where c!Tommy shut up abt the damn discs alread and a server where c!Sapnap stopped rampaging through the pet population on the server--there's a difference between "the ideal" and what he was specifically working towards. And the fact of the matter is, after the Revolution, c!Dream really doesn't have any conflicts with L'manburg itself. c!Tommy? Certainly--largely initiated by c!Tommy for the discs that he literally traded c!Dream during the revolutionary war. But c!Dream is hardly entering into faction conflict--he even says, in Tyrant, that they had peace between their two nations, and that it was C!SCHLATT'S election that disrupted that peace.

And c!Dream's particular dislike of factions is also something that I think has a tendency to get...overexaggerated? Especially because it's one of the foundational tenets of the L'manburg mythos--c!Dream is a control freak that opposed the idea of people getting together to make a "country" without him, etc etc. This is even something that is addressed in the Mexican L'manburg debates:

c!Dream doesn't like factions, true. He'd prefer a united server without them, true. But c!Dream being pushed into taking action against any particular faction really didn't start from him just, hating factions in the first place? There always was some kind of inciting incident. By the time of post-Nov 16th, he quite evidently recognizes that factions are going to continue to be a Thing--he never has any outright conflict with the Badlands, for example, because they don't really engage in conflict with him--and later he practically ignores El Rapids even after the whole debacle that was Mexican L'manburg. When c!Dream says "look you guys were fine because you were just existing" in the Tyrant book and in Vassal, that fits the pattern of how he deals with faction conflict on this server? (See, also, how he generally doesn't go after factions post-prison, despite making some implicit threats: the only faction that he goes after is LN, and even if you consider the fact that he probably had bigger fish to fry with the whole, world reset thing, once again factions don't really matter to him until he's registering them as an explicit threat.)

The Revolution was meant to prove a point, the point being don't fuck with me--a point that c!Wilbur clearly understood and abided by. And after the Revolution, c!Dream really never shows any inclinations of wanting conflict with L'manburg or wanting it gone the way that we see that as more consistent trait later on by the time we get to things like the revive book deal, and Nov. 16th, and especially in his dealings with NLM leading up to Doomsday the unfinished symphony, right?

And, you know, all of this makes sense. c!Dream knows that L'manburg isn't just about L'manburg itself, considering the damn story of L'manburg was established by c!Wilbur in like, what, a day? c!Dream and the Americans (tm) were established as the Enemy even though half of them literally weren't involved at all in the drug van conflict (and members of L'manburg had. Literally fought with c!Sapnap in said conflict??) and L'manburg grew out of that story in almost no time at all. c!Dream has zero reason to believe that the destruction of L'manburg in entirety is even possible--he literally didn't think it was possible in the Revolution! c!Dream's priorities for the server isn't a factionless server, it's a peaceful server--not to mention how he literally saw L'manburg as part of the Dream SMP anyway? As long as L'manburg the entity wasn't starting shit (which they weren't, not until Schlatt got elected and everything went to hell) c!Dream really doesn't have a motive to try and Start A Conflict against them (which is antithetical to the whole peaceful coexistence schtick that he was trying to get at) and really doesn't have much of a reason to think that any of that would even work either, considering how he was quite confident that the L'manburgians would never give up when L'manburg was like. A week old.

Of course, with Vassal and with c!Wilbur going "let me destroy it all" it's obviously perfectly possible that c!Dream was thinking hey, the guy that all of L'manburg respects and sees as leader wants L'manburg gone, this could possibly lead to L'manburg being fully dissolved and the server going back to being factionless and united and for that to motivate his later actions in the arc and his support of c!Wilbur. But Vassal still has to happen first. There really isn't any reason to believe that c!Dream was gunning for L'manburg's destruction at the start of the arc, and c!Dream really had every reason to believe that that wouldn't even be possible (and I mean, NLM had rebuilt itself literally like. In the span of a week? So.) Based on what we see, the most that can really be said imo about c!Dream here is that he's being opportunistic, and even then he expresses a level of hesitance throughout Vassal.

Considering how c!Dream supported Pogtopia from the beginning and only ends that alliance because of the revive book deal and considering how he acted in the time period between the Revolution and Manberg/Pogtopia, I think it's fair to state that c!Dream's statements of his end goal being to return to the "peace" that had existed pre-Manberg through the coexistence of L'manburg and DreamSMP, one side believing themselves independent and the other side believing that they're all part of the same server, was. His original end goal when Manberg/Pogtopia began. He had every reason to support Pogtopia over Manberg (and by extension, Wilbur over Schlatt) when you consider how Wilbur generally was willing to play nice with c!Dream post-revolution, a sentiment rather clearly not shared by c!Schlatt and his expansionist ideals. Even if c!Dream would've preferred a server without L'manburg, his actions as far back as the Revolution indicate to me that the likelihood of his actually creating any plans in that direction is rather small and that his sentiments of returning the server back to how it was in its pre-Manberg state are close to the truth. c!Dream isn't stupid enough to think that destroying L'manburg outright would've suddenly resulted in server peace--destabilizing shit by making everyone mad at him at that point in time really seems antithetical to his goals? It seems more likely to me that c!Dream, in alignment with his goals, at this point would prioritize a peaceful server over a factionless one, especially at a time pre-Manberg nonsense when the whole "L'manburg is an independent nation that Matters A Lot To Everyone" is just so deeply entrenched.

And obviously quite a few important changes happen to his character around this time, especially due to 1) Vassal and 2) the Revive Book Deal. I think that these two in particular have a lot to do with the character that we see in November 16th (when c!Dream is already acting quite a lot more like how he will continue to act over the next two months up until staged finale, and when he's already a little bit more, uh. Unhinged than we've seen him, looks at his laughter when c!Wilbur detonates the TNT.) And obviously a lot of the important development that happens at this time (such as his spending time with c!Wilbur in Pogtopia + the. Everything with c!Schlatt, the book deal, shakes everyone about the book deal again) happens off-screen, so we have to speculate a bit. But at the end of the day, when c!Dream is considered in the context of who he was before Manberg/Pogtopia began as well as who he ends up being at the end of the arc, it definitely feels to me that these early moments shouldn't be as wholly dismissed as an act/front/lies what have you as they commonly are.

[tadbitsketch]

I haven't done one of these in forever but welcome back to Sketch Rambles About MCSM Stuff at an Unreasonable Hour of the Night 🎉🎉🎉

Tonight, I'm gonna discuss one of my favorite songs from the Minecraft: Story Mode OST, "Redstone Baby," and the potential lore that it holds. And why that's very Sorengaard related.

Disclaimer: this is me interpreting silly block people. Unless otherwise stated (or in the game), it ain't actually canon. Also, I am a teenage girl. I am not versed very well in the specifics of how music theory works and how it's used in media. Also also, I wrote most of this like two months ago and completely forgot about it.

(In case you needed a reminder of how it sounds)

This song appears twice in the season 1 episode 3: when you arrive in Soren's lab area, and again in the end credits. It can also be heard through the closed secret entrance wall in the Wool World™, and it gradually becomes clearer as you approach the door to Soren's lab, where a music disc is playing the song inside.

The instrumentation of "Redstone Baby" consists of guitar, piano, and violin. It feels comforting and cozy, whilst also giving a sad, longing sort of vibe. According to a comment written 6 years ago by Antimo on the linked video, they were going for a sorta "Fallout: New Vegas" vibe when they wrote it. The song holds an air of nostalgia, of better times. An idealized dream of how the world could be.

To get to the point: it's cute, it's cozy, and it's a love song in a game where they weren't allowed to explicitly write any canon ships (if I'm remembering correctly). Also one of the few songs in this game to be given lyrics. So, of course, we're gonna talk about this. Or rather I'm gonna write about it and you're gonna read it.

The lyrics go as follows:

In a marshmallow world, you're my sweetheart.

In a marshmallow world, you're my sweetheart.

You're the bed to my rock,

The flint to my steel.

My redstone baby doll...

My redstone baby doll.

(music)

In a marshmallow world, you're my sweetheart.

In a marshmallow world, you're my sweetheart.

My sugar baby...

aaaah ladada, awoah...

The lyrics are pretty strange, right? It seems nonsensical at first, but I (and many others) believe that it has more meaning than meets the eye.

This is a love song addressed to a someone proficient with redstone. Funnily enough, Soren's old friend group did have one of those. A brilliant Redstone Engineer: Ellegaard. And quite interestingly, these two were pretty close, as is said multiple times in canon. I think Magnus mentions their little "Nerd Club," in episode 3 at some point. Another fact to back me up on this: Soren calls the song "Symphony in E" in-game on the little radio-disk-program-thing.

And for whatever reason, Soren and Ellegaard didn't stay close or end up together. There's not really a way to know for certain what went down between them. All we do know is that Soren wishes it was different.

The "marshmallow world" that is talked about in the song is Soren's perfect world. It's safe, sweet, and fluffy. I am of the opinion that it could possibly be an indirect reference to the wool world that Soren built. It's bright. It's safe. No monsters can get him there. He can just build things and be happy. In a perfect, marshmallow world, Ellegaard is with Soren.

The metaphors Soren uses here, "the bed to my rock, the flint to my steel," they're both iconic, inseparable duos: bedrock, and flint and steel. In Minecraft, bedrock is the unbreakable foundation beneath all else in the Overworld. Flint and steel is used to set things on fire, and is most often used to light Nether portals, which is way less symbolic (unless someone can find something? maybe the whole flaming heart being a metaphor for love thing?) but still iconic and the phrase has a very nice rhythm to it.

When we first hear the song, it feels like normal wishful thinking. It's more just fluff and poetry than full-on wants and desires.

But when we hear it in the end credits of episode 3... We just saw someone die after sacrificing their safety for Jesse's. The monster that they died to help kill isn't even dead. Someone we thought was dead is actually alive and doesn't remember anything. It's loud, dark, and burning. A sickening storm of death and destruction. Anything but the marshmallow world.

Without considering which of the two died, this song is already quite jarring in comparison to what was just witnessed. This "marshmallow world" that seemed somewhat close just a moment ago now feels implausible, and thus it'd be worth so much more if it were real.

I will never not love when something in a piece of media is treated as a good sign or motif or something and then it gets recontextualized and hurts ya right in the feels.

And with Redstone Baby combined with Ellegaard dying, it's just that extra brutal.

Because now it's not just, "in a perfect world, we'd be together." It's "in a perfect world, you wouldn't be dead, and we'd be together."

If only Soren wasn't so much of a coward. How differently things could've gone.

[stagehunt]

more thoughts on aven and topaz and why i don't really interpret them as having the close relationship that i see a lot of in the fandom + his general feelings about her. talking about the checking out quest a little in the beginning.

screenshots from my own transcript but they're still word for word. aven is more than aware that the tb is never going to accept a job offer from the ipc and treats this entire exchange as the joke that is, and an excuse to get under topaz' skin a little. just for fun. interesting then, how topaz immediately starts to get very personal during this little debate — while simultaneously displaying how well she actually knows aven, which is honestly not at all. i wouldn't blame this on a lack of understanding on her part, but on the way aven keeps everyone at arms distance, a distinct lack of trust in her from aven, and radically different outlooks on their work and life.

both of the dialogue excerpts kind of highlight that but i want to focus on the second one here because it immediately reminded me of a personal headcanon when i was playing the quest through.

so. i'd already made the assumption that aven didn't have many staff working under him — both because of his treatment within the ipc / the varying reactions to who he is and his history with the previous aventurine which is pretty much public knowledge, his preference for working solo, and his habits of putting himself in harms way and taking very unreasonable risks. he'd assume that topaz sees these " work habits " she mentions as the main reason that people don't work to him but he also knows that she isn't foolish enough to think that's the only reason anyway. which is why he then immediately reminds her that diamond doesn't particularly care WHAT he does so long as he secures the bag at the end of the day.

it's for things like this, and her general hostility towards him ( which does seem to vary, but her voice line about him is very harsh as opposed to what she tells us about him when she knows he's around / how she acts to his face ) and with the sheer amount of manipulation she's under, the things she genuinely believes about the ipc and her job there, he does personally think that it's impossible for her not to have absorbed at least some of the ipc's common opinions on him, the avgin + avgin extinction event / ipc's involvement on sigonia, and the egyhazo - aventurine case, and allowed them to colour her impression of him before really getting to know him.

however as i mentioned in those disc screenshots, aven is obviously aware of the predatory nature of the ipc. he's been working there for almost a decade now, he was a teenager when he first wound up there, and he understands what happened on topaz' planet very well. he understands that she's naive. he understands that she has been essentially groomed, as well as the fact that she's very dedicated to her work. but he also understands that she's a kind hearted person, and that she does try to do what she thinks is the right thing in most situations. it would be ridiculous for me to say that he doesn't sympathise with topaz, even if he does find her a little obnoxious and annoying to be around.

so while he doesn't necessarily feel enough responsibility towards her to put up with her apparent dislike for him, he does subtly keep an eye out for her. when she first became a stoneheart he figured that she should be able to understand his situation better than anyone and that it would make sense for them both to have each others backs as much as possible. but from what he's observed and how they interact with each other, he just cannot convince himself that it would be safe to trust her. he knows he'd have to be careful with his words around her, and that at least currently, she wouldn't ever choose him over the job. still, he has a feeling that if she were ever to open her eyes to what she is complicit in, she'd despise the truth and herself as much as he does, if not more for being so easily strung along by the likes of jade.

so are they friends? no. but if topaz ever genuinely needed help he would be there. he would understand.

[p-receh]

Care to share some thoughts on the newest episode :3? Personally had an absolute blast, my poor irl tho she was petrified when she saw reramos

Tapi beneran nih, suka BANGET reramos menjadi laba² jadi lebih greget gituh

I've been enjoying this arc a lot more than most have, tapi itu mungkin gara² nonton bareng temen jadi lebih sronok gituh. Tambah lagi kita berdua lebih melihat bbb sebagai comfort show jadi santuy baek

And this is me watching this series alone.

Personally, that episode was a blast! There are soooo many ideas interpreted way more interesting than I thought!

At first, I wanna wait till the final episode aired cuz hey, Monsta directly released a trailer titled "Kemuncak Windara" for their final two episodes before the TV promo for the newest episode launched.

But since next week will be stacked with this and Shadow Gens prologue, I decided to give my thoughts on this episode first so I will do more analysis later.

In my humble opinion, I thought that trailer was for this week's episode. Inner me literally jumped on a bed when I saw that yellow disc showcasing all elements and Oboi(in Taufan's mode) wearing his Windara armor.

Did it turn out to be a disappointment later on?

Huuhh, that was an interesting question.

The whole episode was truly entertaining and it made me almost forget that important part of Windara's comic arc...until the end of the episode.

Now that I think of it, I actually don't mind with just two elementals in action. Sure I was a bit sad not to see all of them on screen :'(. But if this is a chance to give everyone more screen time, then so be it.

And Honestly? Monsta nailed it beyond my expectations!

Right off the bat, I was immediately impressed with how well they animated the airship battle from start to finish smoothly without any frame drops or adding unnecessary effects for animation efficiency. They could do that, but they choose to not do it. It's full of big moving objects from a TV stand point and it left me an awe.

They maximize their limit to the top with the choreographic fight and still find a new way to use Kokotiam's new armor.

One of their surprising elements is the way to utilize Yaya's shield. Instead being treated more less like Cap's shield, Monsta creatively expand her details as more or less inspired by Ironman.

Now I can see why Yaya as a Lady Bug. Her back can be split apart as a shield or her thruster arms. Pretty effective without losing a touch from the comic book.

Oh, speaking of which, Boboiboy's suit up really reminds me of Tony's suit up transformation in Ironman 3!

I kinda didn't recognize Ying's resemblance. Is it Hornet or Dragon fly? Either way, those are perfect for Ying as she essentially zip around the castle with her speed to fight enemies.

Rhino Beetle was an interesting choice for both Fang and Gopal. Sure some people might upset, and I can see why. But at the same time I also understand Monsta's vision with this replacement.

One control the hands, the other controls the feet(oh wait, Gopal have both hands and feet. Only Fang use hands) . And as expected, their big and solid armor could turn into a giant ball and perform a bullseye slingshot to General Karumbang.

I highly appreciate Reramos new entrance. They went bold to not holding back with all that spider look(look at that details!) . I genuinely get some goosebumps with some scenes. The sound design was perfectly encapsulates the ambience.

His voice? Oh, *chef's kiss* 😎👍

Honestly I am really excited but I'm also have to lower my expectations for the final episode. This need to be proceed with caution cause the tide will turn from here.

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Ps: by the time I posted this, surprisingly, these two episodes were not getting more views than I expected.

Different from previous episodes.

Then again, those previous ones were already aired more than two weeks so I shouldn't be surprised if those gained higher than the recent ones :/

[muttfangs]

vent 👍

being autistic is really like. double edged for me in so many different facets and ways. primarily in social circles. I'm an incredibly outspoken, confident, and passionate person in partial thanks to my autism. but like. in western culture this is BAD. rocking the boat is BAD. being loud is BAD. having actual opinions is BAD. being anything other than complacent and nice is BAD. something I've been discussing with my therapist recently is how like.............. i feel as though when I speak to people I'm speaking an entirely different language altogether. I feel like when I attempt to convey something it's almost always interpreted as the worst faith version of what I could have conveyed to the person hearing me speak. and I *don't* want to make myself more digestible or smaller or defang myself because ppl willfully assume the worst of my passions when I speak about them. which is primarily like, leftist politics. last night I got in a fight with a """"moderator"""" on my wow guild's discord because I aired frustrations in the disc's vent channel about how dehumanizing it feels when cis people scoff and act disgusted with me at work when I ask them the "gender identity and pronouns" sections that I ask... literally every patient. and her & her husands response was "well not all cis people are like that" "blanket statements are bad" and people agreed with them, saying shit like "some people make it really hard to be their ally" (AS IF ALLYSHIP IS SOMETHING CISHET PPL WANT TO REVOKE FROM US FOR BEING "BAD" TRANNYFAGS LMFAOOOO I HOPE YOU GET HIT BY A CAR) ??????? it makes me want to fucking go feral and SCREAM. y'all are disgusting and incredibly insensitive. you're CHOOSING to prioritize your fucking hurt feelings over someone expressing grief over systemic oppression every day FROM CIS PEOPLE :) obviously DUH NO FUCKING SHIT I don't mean every cis person on earth. stupid fucking selfish cunts. you do realize you're making the argument in favor of cis people far worse, right? you realize you're making yourselves look like selfish, callous pricks, yes? because you are! it makes me feel fucking legitimately gaslit like this is actually *me* being an unlikable person when I know it isn't. because when I've had a spine about how I feel about my lived experiences as a trans person before (or my politics in general), I've been met with similar animosity from MMO communities that I was a part of claiming i'm "being disruptive" or "causing drama". it's always centralized around cis people's hurt fucking feelings rather than expressing solidarity with someone who feels FUCKING DEHUMANIZED every day. it makes me feel fucking insane. and this is NOT a matter of compromise. I'm not gonna fucking pat a cis person's tears dry after I say "cis people treat my communities like shit" and they scream back "BUH BUH NOT ALL CIS PEOPLE :(" you ARE one of those cis people if your reaction is to respond that way. and you're actively making the world a worse place to exist in. this type of shit makes me NEVER want to engage in online spaces from MMORPGs ever again. it makes me feel incredibly unwelcome. fuck y'all. grow a spine.

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 4,572

[S] Prince of Heart: Rise up.

song used: Time on My Side by Tensei

song commentary:

Tensei:

With the Strife album, I deliberately left a lot of the background to the songs very ambiguous. There are no direct, obvious references as to what song corresponds to which character, though there are quite a few indications: each song uses an instrument that is typically associated with one of the kids in a pretty prominent way: whether it’s the piano lead in Heir Conditioning, the solo violin in Dance of Thorns, the bass and flute (shakuhachi, actually) in Atomic Bonsai, and of course the sampled beats and scratches in Time on my Side. I suppose the titles count as somewhat vague references to the characters as well.

With that said, I’m still not going to explicitly say “This song is actually a strife theme for Dave” or something like that. If Andrew chooses to interpret it as a good backdrop for a fight between Dirk and Jake, I am totally fine with that. Hell, I can totally see it working (And in fact it DID work, since the flash turned out pretty damn awesome)

I always felt like this song was a bit of the odd man out on the album. While I definitely think Dance of Thorns and Atomic Bonsai were awesome in their own right, they also feel a lot more ‘conventional’ compared to this song.

In a lot of ways, this song is actually very minimalistic. The droning bassline and guitar chugs stay on the same chord for almost a full minute while the buildup is mostly done through sound effects and overlayed orchestral sounds.

IMO, this results in giving the :53 point, where the chords finally start switching up, a much bigger impact (though the full Beatdown motif coming in probably helps too).

Something similar happens at 2:04 where after 30 seconds of the Black motif remaining on the same chord again, you get another switch, and everything just sounds huuuuuuge.

Appropriately to the title, this song has a lot of weird time-shit going on. Disc scratching in and of itself can actually be treated as a nice metaphor for time manipulation (the comic itself definitely makes grateful use of it), so it’s no wonder that it’s almost omnipresent here.

By far the neatest thing, in my opinion, is 2:35 though. The effect you hear there is actually the ENTIRE SONG up until that point, played in reverse, and sped up so it fits in a couple of seconds. The idea is literally that it ‘scratches’ and resets the song, much in the same way as happens to the entire universe in the comic, so it can lay down a wicked wah-guitar solo over the ‘scratched’ version of the song.

So yes, this song travels back in time in order to make itself awesomer.

Joking aside, this song, like most other ones I make, does also have some sneaky hidden references.

The guitar riff at 3:18, for example, is cribbed pretty much note for note from the Metallica song Master of Puppets (maybe this is a Dirk song after all?). The background strings at :37 have a very similar ascending chromatic pattern the intro to the James Bond theme. The high staccato strings at 1:50 are supposed to be reminiscent of the theme from Psycho, or really every slasher flick ever. (Black is associated with Jack Noir, Jack Noir likes to show people his stabs, etc.)

The original inspiration for this song probably comes from the least likely source imaginable. It’s not The Prodigy or Goldeneye 64 music, but actually the original score to the movie Space Jam. You probably don’t even know or remember it, but a lot of the songs have a very distinct looped hiphop beat, guitars, and orchestral stabs all over the place, much like a large portion of this song.

Seriously, listen to this from about 0:50 onward and you should hear the resemblance.

That aside, obviously stuff from The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land album bears some resemblance as well, especially with the cheesy bassline. I know that a few Prodigy songs have been used in the otherwise kinda shitty Charlie’s Angels movies whenever shit was about to go down, and that’s really the kind of vibe I was going for as well.

[sxnshxnxxnddxxsxxs-fics]

And your heat, love // has such darkness

desert island discs: man down

here’s the playlist

this song is so sirius black it’s not even funny

the song is literally about being hotheaded and not thinking about the consequences of your actions.

and a key part of sirius’ character in canon especially when he’s young is that he doesn’t regret his actions themselves he regret the consequences that occur that he didn’t have the forethought to predict. (re: the prank, sirius’ emotional turmoil here isn’t that he almost caused snape’s death, it’s the consequences it would have had for remus (which i personally don’t think he ever truly conceptualises the full extent of before his death in canon- but that’s just my opinion))

so much of this song is denial “i didn’t mean to hurt him” and that really speaks to sirius’ character because it’s a way of life for his family to think through every single consequence of every single action. to play life like a game of chess, every action is taken with explicit purpose. and it’s a big thing for sirius to oppose his family in every way he conceivably can both to his benefit and his detriment. and this is an example of it being to his detriment because sirius co-signs his own hotheadedness by viewing it as proof that he’s not like his family. but that leads to him just not thinking things through and doing things he comes to regret (like going after wormtail in 1981) so ultimately he fucks himself over. he has an idea, doesn’t think it through, does it, comes face to face with the consequences of his actions, says i didn’t mean for this to happen, and ultimately suffers for it.

i think this song can also be seen as sirius talking about himself, in terms of it being a metaphor for how he shoots himself in the foot and ultimately brings himself down for it. in this vein this song would definitely be about making wormtail secret keeper and going after him when james and lily die which ends up with him in azkaban.

also the fact that so much of this song is begging to “mama” for absolution only to get no response. well that just really encapsulates sirius’ mummy issues. because while walburga is an abusive mother sirius clings onto her image very tightly he is entirely incapable of letting go of his mother for his entire life. so whether it’s interpreted as sirius actually begging walburga for forgiveness and her just straight knowingly ignoring him. or sirius begging to the air wishing it was his mother but unable to get to her because he left home and tried to rid himself of any connection to her.

[audio-luddite]

1961 recording

Well this is interesting. Mercury Living Presence SR90212 Chabrier by the Detroit Symphony Paul Paray conducting. A Decca Classics pressing.

Not only is everyone involved passed away so is the building the recording was done in. The Cass Technical High School. It was a HIGH SCHOOL and was demolished for a freeway. Hey it was Detroit. A High school with an FN opera house style auditorium! Times have changed. Apparently Charles Lindberg's mom taught science there.

The amazingly simple recording technique is very effective. Look it up if you want details. 3 microphones three tracks no equalization or compression. It works.

My reaction to first listen is a bit ambivalent. Everything is really immediate but I question the sharpness of the violins at full tilt. Woodwinds are spot on, drums are perfect, ambiance is well, real. It could be that the system is still warming up or I need to clean the disc more or it is just too new. Not distortion, just really hot. Or that may be what they wanted in the late 1950s. Tweeters were not so good, or those tube amps from the era.

The good parts are worth every penny. I will see if later listens are better. My system likes to be running for a couple hours to really sing. I was anxious so only one hour warm up.

This is a full orchestra playing in my living room.

OK for the dweebs this is 1/2 speed mastered at Abbey Road Studios, (yes that Abbey Road) with the final mix down from 3 track analog to 2 track digital by the son of the original engineer and producer who were a couple. The family business.

Mr Fremer may forgive that there is a digital step, but purists are wringing their hair out for the impurity. Oh get over it. (maybe that's why the violins are so edgy?) My best CD is from the same label.

Hey it came here all the way from Germany, (why do we call it Germany, but they call it Deutschland ? It's not hard to say.)

Next up Saint-Saens 3rd Symphony (Organ). Also Detroit Symphony Paul Paray with Marcel Dupre' playing the organ. SR90012 so really early in the series, a 1958 recording. I am familiar with this work. I have it on another disc, a London Ffrr twelve years newer and no slouch of a recording. Also a Decca, but Universal had not bought everybody up yet.

Oh I am really tempted to play that London to compare it is right here. That would piss off the missus. "Always the same thing!"

Here comes the organ. Spooky as organs should be as they were intended to scare the crap out of illiterate peasants. It is big and everywhere. Also a bit reserved if that is the right word. Haunting.

I gotta say right now that I think I like the London version better with Zubin Mehta in LA. Maybe I just have to turn up the volume. Ya lets try that. Oh that helps.

The tonal balance shouts 50s to me. Many of my other discs are deeper and richer sounding. Again these are not equalized or compressed according to the legends. New disc and it needs more cleaning.

Side two. Faster tempo, conductor is pushing it.

The timbre of the instruments is very nice. The metal is very metallic and love the woodwinds and brass. The image is good, and spread across my fireplace. The Organ is rich and complex with a definite growl.

Actually the quieter bits are interesting as you get more ambience. Its a good effect.

The very last part the conductor slowed it down just a bit.

This is a first impression, and I will listen again.

I could not resist. I have the last half of side two from Zubin Mehta's version spinning. 1971 issue. I prefer it. I like the interpretation more. The sound is bigger and richer. Of course it is what I have formed my original opinions with. Cool thing the MLP recording sounds like it is high up looking down. This one sounds like you are in front, which is more natural for a real concert situation. Strings not so edgy. It has more body overall. The orchestra is spread across my room properly. The London Ffrr is a good LP.

Though I prefer the way the Detroit organ sounds. I realize that the stops and tunings are set by the organist, and that is part of it for sure. Organs sound the way the performer wants them to. It was just more interesting in the MLP disc.

Again this is all first impression. LPs will sound better after a few plays when flash and tips get knocked off the vinyl. It should settle down. The tiny details of timbre are exceptional. The full orchestra going all out err, not as much fun.

As an historical document it is satisfying. Overall my ambivalence endures.

[amberunit06]

skeuomorphism

Skeumorphism is a design practice in which an item is intentionally designed to resemble another object that serves the same purpose or resembles an earlier incarnation of that same object.

A digital example of this practice in work in through most computer interfaces, more specifically Apple’s UI. It can be argued that Apple normalised and popularised skeuomorphism in software and UI design as they’re one of the earliest computer companies to implement it into their softwares design, this can be seen through hourglasses representing loading or waiting time on a program, the mouse cursor being an arrow to point at what you are seeing but a hand to grab files and other items, how a mobile phone makes a shutter sound when taking a photo when no shutter is present and a rubbish bin to represent deleted items on your desktop. This is a clever and understandable design element to implement into their early UI, as due to early computer and internet users never using the software before, making the digital elements and tools resemble real life counterparts to show how their functions are similar, it made learning and memorising the functions of each tool easier for those starting out, making the new seem familiar.

However, after the introduction of iOS 7 in 2013, skeuomorphism was largely forgotten in Apples UI design and instead should be primarily focused on minimalism in simple shapes and colours. This makes a fair bit of sense, as by that time users had already gotten accustomed to what each icon and tool on their software did, so skeuomorphism used to explain what each tool did was unnecessary. This simplistic interface is the standard for most UI from then, but skeuomorphism is still commonly seen in independent software and apps as to introduce new users to its tools and how they function.

Examples of skeuomorphism in physical design can be seen in maple syrup jugs and tomato ketchup bottles. Maple syrup jugs commonly have a small impractical handle, this isn’t suitable for purpose but is instead a skeuomorphic design choice to mimic how maple syrup jugs used to be huge and unwieldily, requiring a handle to hold them. With tomato shaped ketchup bottles, they obviously mimic tomatoes, as to show that the bottle contains ketchup through depicting itself as an main ingredient of the sauce.

In my personal opinion, I believe skeuomorphism is a really clever, effective and fun design practice as it allows experimentation in how to depict things by using more widely known interpretations of its purpose. It also allows earlier object designs to live on in memory way after they fade out of general use (eg floppy discs, rotary phones, etc).

I believe that skeuomorphism can be used in many unique ways as to make general interfaces and objects more charming and kitchy but appealing. I would like to interpret skeuomorphism into my work and to experiment with the subject more as I believe it’s an interesting design technique which can be explored into further in fun gimmicky ways.

[childrenfuturemind]

Víkingur Ólafsson: the brilliance of the Icelandic pianist's Bach interpretations

Víkingur Ólafsson won the BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year in 2019 with his recording of Bach piano transcriptions. We reflect on these fresh, exciting interpretations and explain what it was that made our jury fall in love with Ólafsson's album

Like a perfect, crisp autumn leaf, Víkingur Ólafsson’s disc of JS Bach dropped onto our desks in September 2018. From its opening seconds, it was clear that this was something exceptional: the programme both familiar yet unexpected, Ólafsson’s performance style delicately balancing fashions old and new, the recorded sound intimate and warm. Everything just so. In the BBC Music Magazine Awards jury meeting, it was the only disc we barely talked about. Because all eight of the jury were in agreement – Johann Sebastian Bach should go straight through to the next round, to be voted on by the public.

Of the words we did use to describe the album, however, ‘fresh’ and ‘exciting’ were among them, so impressed were we that what, on the surface, seemed like just another disc of Bach keyboard music should be so utterly distinguished.

The Icelandic pianist, however, knew only too well the risks involved in releasing material already recorded by the likes of Glenn Gould, Murray Perahia, The best recordings of JS Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier and many more eminent Bachians. ‘People are so specific about what they want in Bach, and often they’ve already formed very strong opinions,’ he admits. ‘I thought that I’d get a little bit more hate because , you know, my Bach is my Bach…’.

From the first track, listeners will be struck by the evenness of Ólafsson’s touch, the immediacy of his articulation and, particularly in the slower tracks, a rich, almost organ-like depth of tone. ‘I really spent many years forming my own ideas about Bach,’ he says, ‘trying to make sense out of his structures and finding the right balance between freedom and discipline, between rubato and strict rhythm. And I tried, too, to play him in a three-dimensional way, giving life to the polyphony, like a theatre director controlling three or four characters at the same time. You have to make sure that they’re all alive, even when they have different roles.’

But it’s Ólafsson’s programme of ‘Best of’ Bach, lesser-known works and fascinating transcriptions that captivates as much as his interpretations. If it comes across as an album concept rather than a recording of a recital programme, then that’s exactly what it is. ‘I don’t want my albums to be merely an extension of my performing activity,’ he insists. ‘I’m not one of those pianists who plays whatever they want to play in concerts for two years and then they record just because they’ve been playing it so much and want to document it.’ Albums should, he explains, consider the listener rather than glorify the artist.

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Ólafsson eventually hit on the idea of focusing on Bach as a master of short narrative. ‘Recently I’d been thinking about Bach on colossal terms so much, playing the Goldbergs and the Partitas and those kinds of works,’ he says. ‘I wanted instead to return to my roots and to pieces I learnt for study purposes, like some of the preludes and fugues, sinfonias and inventions, and smaller items. I wanted to redefine them for myself and not think of them in an academic sense, but to find the poetic cell in each one and get to the essence of each piece.’ Part of that thinking meant banishing the idea of recording complete collections or cycles – the idea was to let each miniature piece stand on its own, helping it to reveal its uniqueness.

But why the transcriptions, in that case? Johann Sebastian Bach includes seven of them – arrangements of chorale preludes, a solo violin movement and a prelude and fugue from the ‘48’ – by Sergei Rachmaninov, Alexander Siloti, Wilhelm Kempff, Ferruccio Busoni and Ólafsson himself. And August Stradal, whose version for piano of the slow movement from Bach’s Trio Sonata No. 4 seems to have somehow emerged as the album’s defining track. Ólafsson talks about Bach being a ‘mirror for each generation’, his album reflecting performance approaches of a more modern era. But the transcriptions are also used as programmatic glue, as part of the album’s pacing. ‘If you look at the opening half of the programme, you’ll see that there’s a prelude and fugue, then a transcription, then a second prelude and fugue and another transcription and so on. At the album’s exact centre I play the Aria Variata and then launch into the longer pieces as the album progresses. It ends with the magisterial, expansive eight-minute A minor Fantasia and Fugue BWV 904

[potatoesandsunshine]

anna’s bad cr opinions under the cut lmao

maybe it’s an unpopular opinion (idk if it is lol) but as much as i like the caleb-essek parallels... parallel arcs do not a mirror make

i think that caleb sees essek as his mirror, understandably so, but. hm. how to say it. caleb’s view on the situation is not an entirely reliable one? like i go back and think of the scene on the balleater where they’re interrogating essek, and like, i can fully see where caleb is coming from: here’s this wizard (like me) who was deeply amoral or even evil (like me) who did a Bad Thing (like i did) but then met These People and was changed (like me). it’s completely understandable. and then his worry about them punishing essek, how you can see it map to ‘what do my friends think of me if they think this about essek, who is me’ is super clear. it’s great character work from liam, seeing some of caleb’s deepest desires; caleb so often sees himself as the bottom of the barrel, he so badly wants to save someone at the bottom to prove that he too can be saved.

i just. have issues with equating caleb and essek from the outside? looking at someone and thinking “this is who i could’ve been” does not make the idea “this person is who i am” true. caleb didn’t steal a beacon (that we know of lol you never know), he didn’t spark a war (and we can talk about how i see the beacon theft as a flashpoint, not a root cause of the conflict some other time), he just. he looks at essek and mixes up ‘that could be me’ with ‘that is me’; it’s interesting to see in the character, but lowkey annoys me to see other places

[apple-but-sour]

Why did Dream do all of those things to Tommy in exile, in your opinion? And how does it fit in with his overall goal of uniting the server etc (I'm actually incredibly curious to know why you think this is, and potentially what purpose it serves, as I don't think I've seen anyone talk about it with a purpose in mind, only ever the fact that he did it because he wanted to)

I'm going to preface this by saying that it's been a while since I've seen Exile, so I'm going off of memory and the few clips I got saved and could be missing some stuff.

From the look of things, everything c!Dream does in Season 2 is done to further his plan of getting imprisoned, with no clear indication of how the imprisonment plays into the larger nebulous goal of uniting the server. The only action we can connect directly to his larger motivation of uniting the server is c!Dream destroying L'Manburg because he sees nations as a source of division and conflict.

My interpretation of c!Dream's motivation behind Exile is that its purpose was keeping c!Tubbo and c!Tommy separated while he built trust with c!Tubbo to get the disc from him. All of his actions in Exile are directed at making sure c!Tommy has no contact with c!Tubbo. He needed the disc to lure c!Tommy into the Vault for the final showdown and get imprisoned. Under the cut is a list of points that make me favor this interpretation.

1. This is a meta thing, but it wasn't cc!Dream who came up with Exile, cc!Tubbo came up with the idea when the obsidian walls around L'Manburg were already up, which was after c!Tommy griefed c!George's house. [clip] c!Dream couldn't have been going around with c!Puffy trying to frame c!Tommy to exile him because the idea of Exile hasn't been conceived yet at that point. He's clearly been trying to frame c!Tommy with some goal in mind though, and that goal was framing c!Tommy as a danger to L'Manburg to drive a wedge between c!Tubbo and c!Tommy. Interestingly, c!Tommy himself at one point in the Exile negotiations tells c!Tubbo that c!Dream is doing all of this to divide the two [timestamp].

2. At one point during the negotiations of Tommy's Exile, Dream abruptly goes "Tubbo, if you don’t wanna Exile him, that’s fine, give me the disc." [timestamp]

??? HUH ???

Throughout the negotiations, Dream upholds a veneer of fairness, so it'd be strange for him to suddenly lie about a deal there. And it's interesting how Dream brings up this alternative right after Tommy yet again tries to turn Tubbo against Dream. Reads to me like Dream worrying his attempts at persuasion aren't successful and trying to cut the negotiations short before Tubbo can change his mind.

The fact that Dream was willing to drop the whole thing if only Tubbo gave him the disc makes it seem very unlikely that his motivation behind exiling Tommy was subduing him by abusing him, which seems to be the most popular interpretation in the fandom.

3. As for Dream's actions in Exile, all of them are directed at keeping Tommy in place and both unwilling and unable to leave. Consistently destroying his items means Tommy can't build up enough equipment to escape since he wouldn't be able to defend himself. Physically punishing Tommy assures his obedience (and Dream's main demand was that Tommy doesn't leave Exile). He also puts plenty of effort into convincing Tommy that nobody back in L'Manburg wants him, that he's alone, that there is nothing for him outside Logstedshire and Dream (sabotaging the invites to Tommy's party + his overarching "I'm your only friend" thing).

4. Parallel to Exile, Dream spends a lot of time with Tubbo just... talking. Hanging out. Building up trust.

5. When Tommy does escape Dream sounds... bummed, but not all that worried. The way he treats Tommy finding refuge at Techno's makes it seem that he was fine with it so long as he knew where Tommy was. He needed Tommy to keep out of L'Manburg and away from Tubbo, and since c!Technoblade wasn't a fan of either, Tommy staying with the anarchist was acceptable.

And this is where it gets interesting because Dream tries to drag Tommy away from Techno right after Tommy and Tubbo interact for the first time. Prior to that, he seemed fine with letting the two be. He only intervened when it became clear that Tommy staying with Techno is not a guarantee that he and his friends won't be in contact.

6. When Dream's attempts to sabotage clingyduo's friendship and build up trust with Tubbo don't pay off the way he needed them to, he frames Tommy again — this time by blowing up the Community House. There we see the same story we saw in the Exile negotiations: Dream pushes the idea that by being affiliated with L'Manburg & Tubbo, Tommy endangers both, and to rid of that affiliation Tubbo has to exile Tommy give Dream the disc. Once he gets the disc, Dream immediately moves onto the next step of the plan: destroying L'Manburg. The previous step of his plan — acquiring both of the discs — has been accomplished. Exile was targeted at achieving that goal.

Some comments: As I've already mentioned, the most popular interpretation seems to be that the goal of Exile was permanently subduing c!Tommy by, well, demolishing his psyche. I think the point was temporarily subduing him to prevent c!Tommy from interacting with c!Tubbo until c!Dream got the disc. c!Dream still needed c!Tommy to follow him into the Vault, and he seemed more or less fine with c!Tommy escaping Exile so long as he kept away from c!Tubbo.

Still not sure whether c!Dream gains some sadistic glee from abusing c!Tommy. The interaction with Lazar makes it seem so, but an alternative interpretation is possible: c!Dream presenting his abuse as something he enjoys puts extra pressure on c!Tommy to be obedient. Their post-prison interaction does give more support in favor of c!Dream being sadistic towards c!Tommy, but whether or not he is sadistic doesn't change all that much about the character in the end. One way or the other, I don't think simple sadism can ever be his primary motive for anything because for that he'd have to start putting his own simpler emotional desires and feelings before his goal.

To reiterate: c!Dream pushed c!Tubbo into exiling c!Tommy to turn c!clingyduo against each other, abused c!Tommy to prevent him from interacting with c!Tubbo, and build up trust with c!Tubbo in the meantime in the hopes of getting the disc from him, which he needed for his plan to get imprisoned.