#not based on any particular continuity or piece of lore. just kind of existing as The Concept of OP

[lord-squiggletits]

Some of ppl's refusal (or inability) to write IDW OP isn't bc of annoyance or cowardice but just bc they like... don't know his personality? Yknow very "only read MTMTE syndrome" that's so common in this fandom.

Maybe it's bc I'm an IDW OP enjoyer/simp but I really don't get what's hard to write about his personality or why ppl feel the need to throw in continuity soup elements with him (while maintaining every other character in the fic meticulously and lovingly accurate to IDW lore). Like dudes IDW OP is already interesting even if you only need him as a side plot or character you just need to know how to write him.

But I guess people trying to write IDW OP and failing/writing an extremely watered down IDW OP is an improvement from not writing him at all and being annoying hating him in every single public space related (or not related) to Optimus, so it's meh

[scrunglepaws]

Tried to fit all my fic ideas on one page, but I still forgot some because they're like... scrawled on random pieces of paper all over my house/in different notebooks/ect. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I tried!

The little branchy-offy things are prequels/sequels of that particular series. Bleeped out things I thought might be spoiler-y to ongoing series. Things with * are super WIP-y titles because I dunno what to call them.

More ramblings under the cut! (Nothing spoilery for the ongoing series; just vague things!)

No Heroes Zone // - I have a lot more generalized worldbuilding, character notes, ect than actual stories. The story ideas are mostly vague/short... Though, I suppose I could stand to write some super short fics. - The exception is an angsty sonighty fic that's basically done, but I just have to fill in all the inbetween, connecty bits. And decide how sonighty-y I really want to go with it. That ship came outta nowhere, I tell ya. - NHZ is really mostly Tails (and Metal) angst, tho. The other day I was thinking about how he tries to latch onto Shadow and even Metal in the absence of having Sonic and was like "Wow, Tails, clingy much? What are you, Nine???" then I felt really bad. T-T; He just misses his brother...!

Kaleidoscope // - The name of this fic is based on an art piece I've been wanting to do for forever: A kaleidoscope of Tails/Nine/Mangey, looking at each other and seeing them each from their own perspective. Because that's the theme of the whole story, funky scifi weirdness aside. But uh, 1) didn't have a decent digital art program for a bit and 2) I'm not good enough at drawing the subtle differences in their appearances to really make it hit how I wanted. Also 3) Tails looks basically the same to all three of them, lmao. - "Mangey Remembers" is Mangey's backstory and "Loneliness*" is... Less of a backstory for Nine, more of a brief showcase of his character in general. Because we already know Nine's whole deal from canon. Same reason Tails doesn't have a backstory- he's supposed to be canon Tails. - "Starless Sky" and "Ruination*" are both poteeeential sequels, but I'm not set on doing them. Ruination would just be a short, noncanon "what if?" bad ending for the heck of it.

Someplace AU (Aquarius) // - Also halfway calling it Aquarius for now because I ended up continuing the first part of the story under that fic name.

- It was originally more focused on Sails, hence Someplace being a play on No Place. But now it's about equally Kit and Sails. I ended up getting SO MANY effing ideas for these dudes, man. ;w;

- "Hollow Existence*" isn't a specific story, but just a sprinkling of scenes/backstory bits that detail why Kit is the way he is. Mostly his relationship with Surge growing up.

- "Sails' Tales" is likewise a collection of random Sails backstory bits. I have a lot more specific/fleshed out things for him, though. BUDDY, did I have fun with the No Place lore. Also, his relationships with Catfish and Black Rose are so cute... ;A;

- The bits to the right are basically going to be chapters in Aquarius. They're vague enough not to be spoilery (other than the blipped ones...)

- "=D?" is a sequel that I'm very excited about. Probably shouldn't say much beyond that.

Everything Else // - CaveTails is a Journey to the Center of the Earth-esque silly, silly thing. That could maybe become a bit more serious? BAsically, I was thinking "Huh, kind of weird that my main kittails fic is with Sails. That'd be funny if I did ones with Nine and Mangey, too. Just for the lulz. Especially the Mangey one." This is the Mangey one. xD Except he's sort of like... Tails AND Mangey at the same time, character-wise? So? :? Also, potentially some wholesome Sonic+Tails moments because I weirdly haven't written any of those yet.

- "Kids" is just a continuation of that goofy Tails Doll+Cream oneshot. Just small ideas for another chapter or two. Cute friendship, fluff, and lots of comfort to make up for the hurt in the first chapter. :3;;

- "Alien*" is what it says on the tin. I have a couple different ideas for how it could go. One of them boots out Silver entirely and had Metal in his place. xD But I might have enough material to write an alien Silver AND alien Metal fic. We'll see whenever I get around to it. :3

- "Nine's Shadow*" is something I've wanted to write ever since I made that joke oc, Stales the Fox aka Zombie Tails variant from the Grim. Probably just a oneshot (or a few short chapters) fic that mostly focuses on Nine being "all alone" after the ending of Sonic Prime.

- "Why is Babies?*" is the second idea I had for a fic. It's just Shadow being awkward and not knowing how to look after a chunk of the main cast that are suddenly tots for unknown reasons. It's very lighthearted, comedic, and cute. Originally a Shadow+Metal fic until I learned more about Eclipse and just HAD to include him. Dude is literally a struggling single parent in canon, how could I not include him in a story about his brother going through something similar? xD Also, I might call this fic "Rascals" as a reference to that one Star Trek episode with a similar premise. Because! Star Trek. 8D

- "The Fifth Element" ... I have put off posting anything about this fic idea for so long because I'm EMBARRASSED IT'S SO STUPID AND CORNY DON'T LOOK AT ME,,, In case you're totally lost, the 1997 film of the same name is my. Favorite movie. So naturally, this was my first idea for a fic. It's so all-over-the-place tonally, though. Obviously, got a LOT of silly, especially the parts that follow the movie almost exactly. But I also added a lot of original bits that help flesh out the characters' relationships. The protag is Shadow, who is very, very soft and introspective in it. Which, like, how did that happen??? But I love it. Metal is his co-lead and is mostly goofy because he's a fish out of water. Sonic is VERY, VERY goofy like goddamn (he's Ruby Rod- if you know, you know). Then there's just the silliest shit ever like Silver. Silver is Shadow's cat. It's stupid, but it's also fun, and maybe even matters to the plot. You don't know. Blaze is the president. Dr. Starline, Surge, Eggman, and The End are in it. Tails has the smallest part of any of my fics, but I think I cast him well. I need to stop now or I never will. Don't look at me. xDD

~

But yeah, as I said, I forgot a lot of other ideas. A few more (still forgetting some, I'm sure): - "Creature from the Black Lagoon" ft. kittails - Steam Powered Giraffe-vibes 50's thing w/ Tails, Cream, and automatons of Kit, Surge, Metal, Belle, Gemerl, ect - Tails Doll trying to be a Real Boy(tm) - Kittails-focused folklore AU with Kit as a kelpie and Tails as a normal mobian. Bunch of other people as fae creatures and villagers, including Starline as the main villain. - Maybe a whispangle oneshot from the above au (Tangle is a mobian, Whisper is. basically a magic wolf? xD) - Knuckles/Tails role-swap

[thefirstknife]

SIGH

Myelin released a video today arguing that Osiris is already dead. I disagree with most of his arguments and also am not a fan of some of them in particular and I want to address this in case people watch and are confused. And I assume people will ask questions about it. I think Myelin himself is also confused about certain things he mentioned and isn't interpreting them properly.

Disclaimer: obviously I am biased when it comes to this. I want Osiris to not die. This isn't an attempt to entirely disprove the theory that he may be dead already. Ultimately I don't know if he's dead. I'll do my best to look at it objectively and also address Myelin's points objectively.

I'll try to summarise Myelin's points and address them but you can always watch his video yourself to make sure I didn't interpret him wrong.

Now, Myelin's main point is that Osiris was possessed by Savathun instead of Savathun making a meat puppet/clone in his image or simply shapeshifting into him. His first proof is the Wolftone Draw bow lore. We've all read the lore and Myelin also reads the lore.

First, he wonders how Osiris is seeing what Savathun is doing. Obviously, we have no answer for this yet. Myelin's position is that this is proof of him being possessed and him trying to break through the possession. He also says that some of it seems like "Osiris views his own body in a third perspective." Which I agree with!

What I disagree with is Myelin saying this could mean Osiris' "physical body was destroyed" and that he may be floating around in some form similar to Toland. I'm not sure why complicate the matter in this way when the most obvious answer to this is simply that Savathun has created a clone or shapeshifted into a form of Osiris and the real Osiris is trapped somewhere. The lore seems to indicate this pretty clearly to me:

I cannot speak, cannot breathe, I reach for Sagira but then I remember… I form a fist but feel nothing, I am bound, and as I thrash the images cut fissures through my mind—

And:

She has stolen my form, my voice, but someone will see my failure and cast her out… they MUST—

These seem to me like he is somewhere and he is seeing through his clone's eyes at certain points. It would fit Savathun's MO to torture him in this way. She assumed his form and the real him is bound elsewhere, somewhere safe. I've said so before, and it turned out to be true: Savathun is using Osiris as a bargaining chip so possessing him would be much riskier to her plan than simply keeping him imprisoned somewhere where we can't get to him and where he can't break free from possession. It would make no sense for her to kill him.

As for how he's seeing things if he's not possessed: Savathun is THE Witch Queen. She has exhibited a wide array of magical and paracausal abilities, including the ability to shapeshift and watch others through objects and living beings. Osiris specifically says that he is "bound" and that the images of what she's doing "cut fissures through his mind" and that he's "thrashing," as well as asserting that Savathun "has stolen his form." If he's bound somewhere in her throne world, she may very well be using some sort of Hive magic to inflict images she wants him to see upon him. Just enough to allow him to know that he is a prisoner.

I'm not sure why Myelin only makes two positions: either he's in third perspective without a body like Toland OR he's possessed. The third option is right there: Savathun assumed his likeness.

That brings both Myelin and me to his next point which he positions as the "real turning point" for him. It's from the Chrysura Melo autorifle:

Savathûn, physical form a twisting instar, emerges from the shadows and crawls over the shattered pieces of the Ghost. She reaches toward the ruined man.

Myelin focuses on the bold part, a specific word: "instar." This is a nice catch btw, something I haven't noticed before. He describes what an "instar" is. Tw bugs for that link, but an instar is "a developmental stage of arthropods, such as insects, between each moult (ecdysis), until sexual maturity is reached." Savathun's physical form is described as a twisting instar at this point and Myelin says that she is in the stage of changing herself into a new form. He also says that in this form she "needs a new skin" and therefore steals the skin of Osiris aka possesses him.

But from all the googling and research I've done, I can't seem to find any examples of insect instars needing to acquire a new outside source to change their forms. They simply exist in one larval form (instar) and then change into another as they outgrow the previous one. They don't have to find another body or a host to inhabit.

Seeing as Myelin bases most of his theory on this specific word, I have to challenge that because this is simply not what that word means. Savathun, in the process of changing from one instar to another, doesn't have to possess Osiris. She simply has to change her form from one instar into another. It's still her and it's more likely that she looks to the real Osiris to use him as a model for what new form she will take.

This is why the Chrysura Melo lore page is describing "Osiris" as being uncertain on his legs and confused by human behaviours and slowly falling apart over months and months of existence: this is Savathun's instar in the shape of Osiris which is reaching the end of its lifespan and at the end of that lifespan, Savathun has to shed that instar and turn into another. Generally, moths have a few instar forms before turning into a cocoon and then later emerging out as moths. This is a nice page with pictures, but again, tw for bugs. She has clearly reached the end of her Osiris-instar and shed it away when Mara trapped her in a chrysalis cocoon where Savathun is continuing to grow, like a moth, to eventually assume the form we see in The Witch Queen. Some examples that, to me, allude to Savathun existing in a Osiris-instar and how that shape is unfamiliar to her:

Osiris takes a shaky step forward.

...

He passes the bottle, and Osiris, hands numb, puzzles at it. His mouth hangs in a half-smile before he takes a long drink, slaking a bone-deep thirst.

...

When Saint places a hand on his forearm, Osiris holds impossibly still just to see what the other man will do.

...

Osiris stumbles as he walks through the Last City.

Savathun is describing her life as Osiris and it's clear, from this and other huge amount of lore, that she was very unfamiliar with the human form and that, at the end, it started falling apart on its own. Which is what would happen to a instar of an insect, forcing it to switch into a new stage. In Ripe, she also specifically states "I am ready earlier than anticipated." In the same lore page, she also mentions a lot of really weird descriptions of how her "form" is dissolving essentially and "I clench the gangling black mass that threatens to unspool recklessly from within this shell of flesh. My new arms are too thin, too weak. My new shell still bound with thick mucus." She's barely holding it together. I'm not sure why Osiris' real human body would've been doing this.

There's another aspect from Ripe and that is that she mentions her worm inside of her:

I feel this form splitting beneath its wrappings, held together weakly by wet strands of sinew. And from deep inside, stirred by that latest scrap of deception, I hear the oily growl of the Worm.

This is how we know that her Osiris-form is her. Otherwise, Osiris' real body would've been possessed by Savathun who also holds her worm and that's more than convoluted. What we're looking at, presumably, is Savathun's instar which always has a worm at the center and evolves into other forms around the worm itself.

I'm sorry if this is rambly, but I just really can't see how possession would be possible, especially when based on insect morphology. As a last addition to the whole "instar" business which seems to be the center of Myelin's theory, I want to take a look at the word itself. It's a Latin word, and well... :

īnstar n sg (indeclinable, no genitive)

image, likeness, resemblance

counterpart

worth, value

an equal form (of)

of equal weight/size/form (to)

By the Traveler this can't be happening. Once again I am caught in the euphoria of analysing Latin words being used in Destiny. By all definitions, except maybe number 3, this alludes to a clone. An image of something. Resembling something. A likeness. Counterpart. An equal form of...

Savathun's insect-instar form fashioned in the likeness of Osiris. Not Savathun infecting Osiris: Savathun morphing herself into a counterpart of his form.

With that whole thing done, Myelin focuses on the infamous sidearm Spoiler Alert. It has a description which is just: "Someone is going to die." Myelin uses this as proof that, well, someone is going to die because the last time this gun was issued, Cayde died.

The problem here, even if we're taking this as a serious lore hint, is the timeline. Originally, Spoiler Alert was issued in Warmind. Cayde-6 died in the expansion after Warmind.

Spoiler Alert being issued in Season of the Lost would then be an equivalent of telling us someone is going to die in The Witch Queen expansion.

What does that have to do with Osiris? The position Myelin takes in this whole video is that Osiris is already dead. Not that he will die in The Witch Queen: that he has already died, perhaps at the start of this season when Savathun transformed off-screen OR even further back, at the end of Immolant, when she possessed him. This makes no sense with his other position, that Osiris is observing what Savathun is doing: how, if he's dead and why would we even get this lore if he's dead?

Most of all, Spoiler Alert, if it's alluding to a future death of a major character, cannot allude to Osiris having died before the gun was re-issued OR to him dying literally on the day the gun was re-issued. What kind of a warning is that? If they really wanted to allude to Osiris dying with this gun, the gun would've had to have been re-issued in Season of the Splicer as the final possible season to "warn us."

If Spoiler Alert is telling us some important character will really die, it's telling us this will happen in The Witch Queen. I can't imagine a situation where we save Osiris in this season and then he dies in the next expansion. Kinda pointless plotline. And it also does not fit with the rest of the video which is telling us that Osiris is already dead and Savathun is bluffing about having him as a bargaining chip. I am also not in favour of the theory that we will not find the real Osiris this season and that this plotline will stretch into The Witch Queen because that would be almost a year of grappling with the same plot of "we have to find Osiris." So whatever happens to Osiris, we will know this season. Which means the Spoiler Alert gun is of no relevance to the outcome of the Osiris plot.

The next point Myelin makes is the cutscene from week 1 of Savathun talking to us. He focuses on the image of Osiris looking kinda dead, with moths flying around him and one moth coming out of his mouth. This image is a better argument than any of the above because the imagery here is very clear. No room to misinterpret this really, we literally see Osiris being half-skeletal with a moth coming from his mouth.

However, if we take the position that Savathun made a clone, then the "dead" Osiris in this image is just that clone being dead after it fell apart and Savathun had to transform. The moth coming out of his mouth is probably what this is supposed to symbolise: Savathun outgrowing her Osiris-instar and assuming a new form, currently cocooned in Mara's chambers.

Not to mention that she literally says she "assumed his shape." Not "took his body." She "assumed his shape" to be "more pleasing to our eyes" so she could "guide our victory" against Xivu Arath. Obviously she couldn't guide us if she looked like the Hive. Instead, she morphed into a shape that looks like Osiris and kept him to herself, possibly for information as well as a bargaining chip.

The next part is something I heavily dislike as a point from Myelin.

He starts by saying how there's a trope in movies where you get attached to a character and you just have a feeling that something bad is going to happen to them because the narrative is making you form a bond with that character. And at first I thought he'll say that the narrative has been doing this with Osiris, which is WEIRD, due to how generally disliked he is in the fandom, mostly due to people misunderstanding him, but also due to other reasons which have resurfaced ever since he's been officially confirmed as a gay man in a relationship with Saint.

And of course, Myelin is not talking about Osiris at all. He's talking about Saint. He's saying that the narrative made us attached to Saint and that "they are setting up Saint-14 to lose Osiris." This is aggravating in several ways.

One, that trope about being attached to a character is generally about the character that is going to die. Bungie didn't make us get attached to Cayde so they can kill off Ikora. They made us attached to Cayde and then killed off Cayde. Making us attached to Saint-14 to kill off Osiris is completely disregarding Osiris as a character in his own right and Osiris is by far THE most powerful and important Guardian that has ever lived. To boil him down to an accessory of Saint's story is not just disrespectful to Osiris, it's just utterly wrong.

And second, essentially fridging Osiris for Saint's manpain is just homophobia. As far as I know, Myelin is not a gay man so him making this point is simply homophobic. We do not need Osiris to die to see Saint's pain and drive for vengeance against Savathun. Bungie has made that clear. It's actually never been clearer just how much Saint suffers right now, in how much pain he is and how angry he is.

It's been shown in the voice lines in the main quest, in the cutscene at the start of the season, in the week 2 radio transmission, in voice lines during various activities, in voice lines from other people talking about him (most notably Ikora saying he's "tearing up the system to find real Osiris") and in various lore tabs. We truly do NOT need more affirmation to how much Saint is suffering. We surely don't need to ramp up the angst by killing Osiris off in order to send Saint into a more of a frenzy. His frenzy is already known and already underway. The man has tried breaking into Savathun's chamber to kick her ass already. He is "tearing the system apart." He is broadcasting live. He went on a mission with Mithrax to find Sagira's remains and the most likely place where Osiris went missing. The man is already on a crusade.

I don't think he needs to learn that Osiris has died somewhere, alone, months ago in order for us to see his pain. Or to cause more pain to us, the players. It's simply a completely insensitive way of looking at a story of two gay men who have been through enough suffering already.

I know people dislike and misunderstand Osiris. I know people absolutely adore Saint. I know people would get a kick out of seeing Saint going feral instead of him behaving in a very trope-shattering way by plugging holes in the Wall and feeding pigeons and singing songs to the children of the City.

I think those people don't understand Saint nor do they appreciate him as he is. They certainly have no respect for the man he loves or for their relationship that transcends time, space and reality. And if Saint knew that, he would definitely go feral on their ass first and foremost.

I'd like to think that Season of the Lost is a direct mirror of Season of Dawn. Two very important turning points in Destiny's story that are led by an undying love between Osiris and Saint-14. Just as Osiris risked it all and we all supported him in getting Saint back, right now we are all supporting Saint and risking it all to get Osiris back.

And as an important note, the story so far has been very clear to explain to us that we're looking for "the real Osiris." This is what this whole season is based on. We want real Osiris back. This alone disproves the theory of possession, but it also highlights that this season is about saving someone we've lost. Ending the season that's based on trying to find Osiris by telling us "oh he's dead" seems to be very much narratively senseless.

Speaking of narratively senseless, Osiris' death would not make sense yet. His arc isn't over. His questions and plotlines aren't over (and he has raised many of them in Immolant, which hasn't been followed up on because he got kidnapped). And speaking of Immolant, there is the following, from Sagira:

"Shut up! Listen to my words!" Her iris is bright with Light. "There are great things still left for you; don't lose hope in the darkness." She is luminant.

Osiris breathes the word, as if he could hold it back: "No." He would understand in time. She had seen it.

This seems like a pretty strong implication that his story is far from over. It would be quite a bummer if this was completely ignored and we're delivered Osiris' dead body at some point during this season.

Of course, I'm not discouting the possibility that Osiris will never be the same after this. It's likely that there will be lasting consequences if he's alive.

I am also not discounting the possibility that Osiris may as well be dead. I want to make that clear. It's possible. But I did my best to make a somewhat coherent analysis of why that is probably not the case and why Myelin's position in particular is flawed. And as I said at the start, I definitely am biased in a way that makes me hope that Osiris is not dead. I fully understand that and would not be opposed to people pointing out flaws in my argument if there are any. I am, genuinely, trying to be as objective as possible with this though, but as always, I could end up being wrong in the end.

And that is my TED talk.

[radramblog]

on Megalovania

This wasn’t what I originally planned to write today, but things change when cool news comes in. Besides, I’m in a pissy mood, and I want to write about something fun to try to change that.

To coincide with the 6th year anniversary of Undertale’s release, Toby Fox has announced the upcoming release of the second chapter of its…sequel?, Deltarune. And in honour of that very sudden and very sick announcement, I thought I’d do a piece on what many would describe as Toby’s iconic song, Megalovania. It’s had a fair few iterations at this point, so there’s plenty of meat to go through.

This may or may not be just an excuse to talk about Homestuck again. But there will be other things! I promise! Mostly those, actually.

Megalovania first appeared as the final boss theme for Toby’s Earthbound Romhack (back when he still went by Radiation), The Halloween Hack. Considering the works that would follow, THH has kind of been buried in history, and in some ways, that’s for the best. It’s very 2000s edgy, if you catch my drift.

Toby has stated that the original intent was for the final boss music to be Megalomania, from the soundtrack to another SNES JRPG, Live a Live (not to be confused with Kill la Kill), but he couldn’t get it to work for whatever reason. In a way, that’s kind of a shame, because Megalomania is an absolute bop, but I’m not going to act like what we got wasn’t also very good.

The original version of Megalovania from THH probably sounds kind of basic to those more used to the modern iterations. Do keep in mind that this was designed to be played by a now 26-year-old game on an even older console, and its not like SNES romhacking was easy at the time. Earthbound (and by extension, the Halloween Hack) are in this weird place where the soundtrack definitely still sounds really limited or bitcrushed at times, but some tracks (such as Pokey Means Business!) manage to sound excellent.

Megalovania is somewhere in between, I think. The guitar riff that drives the whole track sounds absolutely gorgeous, which is good, because I think that’s really the key element of the whole thing. The melodies present from other instruments throughout the whole thing vary in quality, both in the subjective sense and the fidelity sense, but without that riff, the song would be nothing. It’s the one truly consistent thing through every single version of Megalovania, it’s the heart of the track, and it’s surprisingly simple for something that sounds so driving and intense.

The context surrounding Megalovania iteration number one is somewhat more awkward to talk about. Like I said, The Halloween Hack is edgy, and I fucking mean it. The story is (after some preamble) a descent into the mind of Dr. Andonuts from the original game, having been driven mad on account of being in a timeline where Ness and friends don’t come back alive from the confrontation with Giygas. After a long metaphysical journey, the main character (who is Varik from Brandish for some reason) confronts Andonuts’s psyche itself as the final boss, who begs for mercy before flipping his lid with, well. I’ll just quote it. Keep in mind this is what you’re reading as Megalovania starts to play:

               “I HAVE FUCKING HAD IT WITH YOUR SHIT. you little fuckers are going to have your bodies ripped in half. I’ll shove your asses so far down your throats that when you crap you’ll sing fucking beethoven”

“tl;dr: eat shit, [slur redacted]”

 Which if you ask me is a little much. As spooky as the whole romhack is, Andonuts’s dialogue is so utterly over-the-top that it’s hard to take seriously. It’s such a pristine combination of the humour both of the time and of Toby’s likely age at the time. It’s still a fairly impressive piece of work as a whole, but considering where we’re up to, one could call this humble beginnings for Megalovania.

The track’s next big outing was as part of the Homestuck soundtrack. I’d argue that this is really where Toby got his name out there, seeing as much of his early notoriety came from his huge contributions to the webcomic’s lengthy list of albums, and also the fact that apparently Undertale was in part coded in Hussie’s basement. I don’t remember where I heard that first, but I’ve heard it from multiple sources, so.

This version of the song, styled as MeGaLoVania, starts off with a bit of a statement, with the opening notes being very much on a real shreddy-ass electric guitar, but the body of the song is actually largely the same (if cleaned up and with some different instruments) as THH’s version. Of course, this version does have more going on, as evidenced by a few of the guitar lines carrying on new melodies, as well as continuing in the background behind sections from the original piece. Owing a lot to the increased instrumentation and fidelity, this version of Megalovania is easily the rockiest, especially as the final minute of the track brings in Vriska’s banger of a theme (also composed by Fox) and the drums pick up in intensity.

While Homestuck’s soundtrack is incredibly vast, relatively little of it actually ended up being used in the webcomic itself. MeGaLoVania, of course was used, and it was right during what I’d argue was the comic’s peak in Act 5 Act 2. The animation featuring the song, [S] Wake, is such an incredible pair of oh holy FUCK moments, what with the revival of Aradia and her actually being able to (temporarily (heh)) halt the story’s main threat, and also Vriska just fucking murdering Tavros, no biggie. Looking back at it now, the whole thing feels kind of quaint, the animation style in particular (it was just Like That), but it was such a big deal at the time. It doesn’t hurt that this is easily my favourite version of Megalovania, because I’m a sucker for guitar noodling, and also a sucker for Vriska’s theme.

Homestuck (and MeGaLoVania) was pretty big in the early ‘10s, but at the end of the day, the comic and track were still very niche. And then 2015 rolled around, and Undertale came out, and suddenly it was everywhere.

As someone who’s known the song since before the game came out, it is somewhat disappointing to have it so strongly associated with Sans. Especially since A. He already has a much more fitting theme, and B. it’s so clearly the theme of that specific fight, and even moreso that of the Genocide player themselves, but fine, whatever. MEGALOVANIA, as it is styled, is very much a more bombastic version of the theme, one with more experience under the belt, and more control behind the context. After all, in this case, Toby didn’t have to wrangle with the limitations of SNES Romhacking or of featuring the track in someone else’s work. The track still has the base elements of a chiptune and chugging guitars, but the different soundfont used helps a lot to elevate the whole track’s intensity. In particular, I think the verses (do they count as verses? I know very little actual music theory, sorry) sound miles better in this iteration than any of the previous, and the snappy percussion is subtle but also great.

There are a lot of things that make the Sans fight so memorable, and MEGALOVANIA is obviously one of them. I imagine many would cite the sheer difficulty as another, but more important than that is the way it plays with expectations. In the Genocide run, you are the most attuned to the game’s combat system, and you’ve spent enough time wailing on Undyne to have expectations about how fighting Sans is going to be. And then he attacks first with an insane hard-to-dodge combo, he gets to dodge attacks, and he gets to force you onto a time limit. It breaks the rules of the game in such a shocking way that it’s hard not to find it memorable. This is not even mentioning the wild lore implications behind the fight’s dialogue, or that such a silly character goes so fuckin hard during a scrap.

Silly is something Sans is, which people seem to forget considering how much of his associated fan material is based around this one fight. Man spends half the game napping and selling hot dogs and telling awful puns. It does bug me a little, but I completely understand the impact of the scene. Despite most players never seeing it, it has to be one of the most iconic facets of the whole thing.

While hundreds if not thousands of remixes and covers of Megalovania exist at this point, most of them aren’t worth bringing up, because I don’t have infinite time on my hands, and because they’re not official. I do want to quickly bring up Megalo Strike Back, a track Toby made for an Earthbound fan album, because it slaps like hell. It’s clearly got a few of the elements of Megalovania, but the melody is so much more mysterious and eerie, and yet also kinda jaunty. I’m a big fan, and considering how many fan animations and games I’ve heard it in, so are a lot of folks.

The other version I’d like to bring up is, of course, the version that appeared in Smash Ultimate. Considering Nintendo’s typical policy surrounding fan media, having a track that originates from a SNES Romhack in fucking Smash is both incredible and hilarious.

Musically, however, it’s not that notable. The first minute or so, in fact is basically just the Undertale version with a slightly different mix (as it’s styled MEGALOVANIA, that’s the version being referenced here), though I think some of the later parts are in a slightly different key that sounds pretty interesting. I’m not sure how I feel about the piano section- on the one hand, I’m not really a fan of that instrumentation, on the other, it is very Smash, and the violins that come in are great. And then there’s guitar noodling on the back half! I just noticed that! It’s different from the Homestuck version, though.

And that’s all I have to say about Megalovania, I think. It’s a song with a surprisingly storied history, and one that is unlikely to be forgotten as long as people still remember Undertale, Homestuck, or even the Halloween Hack. And considering at the very least the popularity of the former, that’s going to be a long time away.

…okay two more things, one I think battle against a true hero is better than MEGALOVANIA and two James Roach aka probably the biggest lategame Homestuck composer remixed Megalovania for Pesterquest but it’s reaaaaaally subtle until like 3 minutes in and he called it “yeah, it is” and that’s fucking hilarious okay bye

[planetbass]

toons?? Toons?????? Pls tell me about ur toons

heads up,, this boutta be long as fuck!

well,,, if you insist. first of all yes it is a kin thing and no i shan’t elaborate (unless you specifically want me to, then i shall).

so! i have 3. first up… mayhem mania!

mania is a toon that loves mischief and causing problems on purpose. just pure chaotic bastard. but they are very valid and have a big heart which they use to love their friends/found family so goddam much. until some shit happens later on, for a loooong time they don’t realize that like. they forgot an entire portion of their life. to their knowledge, they n the bros have existed for as long as they can remember. but actually ! there’s like. at Least a couple years of their life in toontown prior to that that they forgot about. basically they were pulled through a tv (by swing), dropped into toontown, and forgot their entire life prior to toonification and couldn’t properly retain memories, so they ended up forgetting a lot of their life without realizing it. whoopsie! they end up remembering, tho, after some series of events.

can’t forget the emotional angst, tho! their entire self worth relies on the approval/acceptance/love of others, so on their own they have no idea how to be happy. mania be like feels unwanted all the time! mania the funny talkative jokester not allowed to be sad so will stay in house for days when sad and mute! mania be like i will invite myself into situations and then feel bad about doing so but no it will not stop me from continuing to do that bc i have a desperate need to feel included so it is just a never ending cycle ! coinciding w some events previously mentioned, they get better tho :’)

but they love gags, tend to break the fourth wall a lot, gives everyone nicknames (ex. shortstop, buzzer, pinball, etc), and loves to be as irritating as possible. anvils are their favorite, and their trademark. arson’s also quite fun. think… spencer shay energy. 

well, that’s enough of that. now onto heartie! this one requires a lot of lore for context, so it’s gonna be long.

heartie is an artie. artie stands for uh *goes to look* “artificial replaceable toon-adjacent intelligent entity.” basically “artificial” toons that’re made for specific tasks and filler pieces (testing (possibly life threatening) gags, musical performances, janitor, selling stuff at disney kiosks, personal butler, etc) that have roles based on a poker chip in their neck! (kind of like a computer chip). they are all numbered and referred to only by “artie” or their numbers, unless given a nickname by their owner. they all have the same general appearance, but are slightly different depending on their roles and can be customized for specific look if wanted. arties are made in factories - and that’s where my heartie comes in! heartie is ARTIE#010, the Head Artie of the main artie factory. he runs the place! his nickname is originally hartie, bc h.artie (for head artie). he’s a little bigger than regular arties (who are in general quite small) bc 1. he’s Head Artie, and 2. he’s an earlier model, which are bigger in general. 

arties generally don’t have a lot of freedom. depending on who they’re ‘owned’ by, they have varying levels. heartie didn’t belong to any particular person, more that he belonged To The State. or the company itself, that is. so he had a lot of freedom - when the factory closed, he had his own house that he went home to (v unusual!). however, arties were starting to defect - as you. imagine they would eventually being what they are. this kind of Freaked Out the powerful toons, so what they did was limit them more! so arties couldn’t leave their required workspace. so heartie was stuck in the factory. eventually, when arties were still defecting en masse, they kicked heartie out. can’t trust one of ‘em to be making ‘em, can ya? since he didn’t actually do anything wrong they didn’t recycle him (which is a Whole Other Can Of Worms), but just. fired him? they didn’t really care what he did as long as he wasn’t in charge of the factory. so heartie was left without a purpose/job. eventually he became acquainted with other defected/abandoned arties and became the artie/toon repairman! and his name was changed to Heartie bc he was no longer head artie. someone also gifted him a heart patch that he put over the old company logo on his overalls. 

*exhale* OKAY. so for his ACTUAL PERSONALITY LMAO. he’s a very caring and lovely guy. he knows a lot about arties and is a great handyman! he’s friendly n charismatic but also just like A Normal Guy. he also sounds like fix it felix but with less of a southern twang. after being forcibly defected he becomes more impulsive/off the rails, but not in a bad way. just in a ‘no one can tell me what not to do anymore’ type of thing.

mkay. Finally we get to dawn. if the artie thing wasnt weird enough for ya, well, now we’re gonna talk about Gods. 

basically for some reason toontown has Gods. dawn is one of em, some sort of goddess of the sky. she has a light pink, rose-gold hair, long and wavy. she has freckles of stars across her face. and!! wings!! big white wings. i don’t have a drawing of her yet unfortunately. i tried to yesterday but was about to lose my mind bc it was hard lkdjfjd

i don’t really know yet what it was she Did (i’m thinking of like. similar to the role of Victory/Nike?) but i know for sure that she was Gay. her parter is iris, god of the rainbow. iris created the concepts for the toonbros and most of the toons i think, and also eventually gave color to toontown! 

but basically a. whole slew of things happened and dawn ended up sacrificing herself to save/heal iris, who was basically the god equivalent of bedridden and dying. another god (pinny, who took care of the garden, where each flower represented a soul in toontown and all the alternate universes), took what was Left of dawn after healing iris and put her into a flower and planted it. dawn was reincarnated as a mortal in toontown! her name is summer and i don’t remember much of what happens with her. but eventually iris found her and reminded her of everything, and iris gave up being a god to live as a mortal with summer/dawn. they get married and live out a wonderful gay life as toons.

i made that complicated as shit!!! so if u have any specific questions…………. feel free to ask jdfljdkf tho! probably send em to @mayhem-mania!! that’s m toon blog

[triplerainbowgames]

Representing Diverse Design

Diversity is a word that’s been seeing a substantial increase in usage these days [including on our own website, where it shows up at least half a dozen times!]. It’s for good reason, too - the world is collectively becoming more and more cognizant of how important diversity is, especially in communities with many members that span multiple areas of the world [like the gaming community]. As you may have already seen on the Triple Rainbow Games site, diversity is an integral aspect of both our game design philosophy and our business practices, and this article is going to outline why that is and what it means to us!

Before I dig in, I’ll explain what I mean by diversity so we’re on the same page: 

Diversity is the purposeful recognition and representation of the enormous array of humans that exist on any of myriad spectrums that define who we are, such as race, sexuality, gender identity/expression, religion, political stance, and so on. It’s critical to establish two things regarding representation here: the first is that I’m referring [now and for the rest of the piece] to positive representation of identities, ones that accept and celebrate them. The second is that I feel it’s not enough to mention something in passing or have miniscule side-character representation to display diversity in your game: it needs to be front and center, with meaningful characters and choices. 

Now that the foundation is set, let’s build the rest of the house :)

Diversity is an important and often-overlooked aspect of game and character design, and I feel strongly that it should be focused on more. This isn’t to say there aren’t already a number of games doing great work on the diversity front! It’s definitely been gradually improving over time, but I think we still, collectively - as the global game design community - have a ton of work to do. 

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

Numerous psychological studies show that humans have a universal need for comfort. It’s hardwired into our brains from our evolutionary roots, and comes part and parcel with the need to achieve homeostasis. What creates that comfort is our psychological pull towards things we’re familiar with. When we interact with things that are familiar, it’s like a mental shortcut to achieving that comfort we all seek. 

A personal anecdote that illustrates this is my mobile phone. I’m an avid fan of the Android OS, but that love stemmed from several years of using version 7.1.2. When I had to get a replacement phone a couple years ago, it came with Android 8, and couldn’t be downgraded to 7.1.2. I could’ve just used the phone enough to acclimate to version 8, but grew increasingly frustrated [read: uncomfortable] with various design choices made in the newer version, including some that actively harmed me [the switch away from the dark mode menu to a white-background-dark-icon one was physically painful to my eyes after a time, for example]. In the end, what I ended up doing was researching what phones available could be downgraded to 7.1.2, and selling my new phone to replace it with the 7.1.2-phone. All that trouble, just to get back to familiar [comforting] territory!

This core drive of the human experience, this need to seek comfort, is especially important in the game design industry. Games are many things to many people, but two of the primary functions they serve are being intellectual stimulation and being an escape mechanism. To both these points, it’s more difficult to interact with games on these axes [which makes it more uncomfortable to play them] when you can’t relate to the materials they present.

EMOTIONAL RESONANCE

Many people love social deduction games, like Werewolf and Secret Hitler. I do not. I feel stressed out and alienated when I play them. This isn’t through any fault of their design, but simply how my brain responds to the stimuli and gameplay patterns of social deduction games. I’m on the autism spectrum, and part of what that entails is I’m not a person that can read subtext or tone well, and I have only rudimentary ability to read body language on the best days. Thus, I generally avoid playing social deduction games in general, and instead favor games that involve resource management, worker placement, and economy engines; they suit my brain much better because I’m able to understand those patterns, as that’s how my day-to-day brain functions. It’s what is most familiar to me, and thus, resonates with me more.

That concept - resonation - is a powerful driving force for what games people will continue to seek out, play, and love. The key is that it’s not just mechanics and systems that people resonate with, but also the art, characters, lore, and so on.

Circling back to my point about games being an escape mechanism: the more you can provide an intellectual/emotional safe haven for players, the more emotional resonance they’ll have with your game. That’s what leads to lifelong players and fans; the players that sing your praises from the rooftops, and try to get all their friends to play with them! This is magnified for players in marginalized and underrepresented groups, who often [always] have less privilege and fewer resources to access those “escapes.” Those things that are familiar and comforting, be they games or otherwise, are an integral aspect of feeling safe and cared for. When you see yourself represented in way fewer things than the majority of people, you can’t help but feel like an outsider. 

REPRESENTATION

With the percentage of people who identify as gamers/game-players increasing year after year and representative of many different demographics compared to outdated stereotypes, it’s critical that we as game designers ensure that we’re representing and celebrating as many different demographics through our characters and lore as possible. 

Representation is, at its core, acceptance of the massive range of identities one can possess. Especially concerning those that often feel like outsiders for not being part of the social norms they’re surrounded by, this is also a celebration of their identity. Celebrating those that are different from you is the first step in creating true equality, I feel! This is especially true in media and entertainment, where SO many things are made for and by the most privileged groups of the populace. Speaking from experience as a queer, nonbinary person on the autism spectrum, having any amount of entertainment celebrate your identity that is predominantly shunned elsewhere is a wondrous miracle!

Just like there’s a difference between diversity as token representation and meaningful diversity, so too is there a world of difference between passive and active diversity. A couple of side characters or passing mentions of marginalized peeps is better than nothing, sure, but it rings hollow if every playable character/game piece is a member of a privileged group. The best way to get people to care about your game isn’t just to let them SEE themselves, but let them PLAY themselves!

DIVERSITY BENEFITS EVERYONE

Here’s a slightly-paraphrased quote from Magic: the Gathering’s lead designer, Mark Rosewater, in his 2019 article Why Diversity Matters in Game Design where he talks about all the less-obvious benefits of diversity in game design: 

“It adds variety to your game. It makes things feel more unique. It also allows all of your players be exposed to things they might really enjoy. Everyone likes seeing themselves represented, but most people also find it freeing to see OTHERS represented too. Maybe it can educate them about something they were previously unaware of. [You might even show someone something that teaches them that they identify with this too, or helps them figure out a different aspect of theirself!] Possibly it can entertain them by allowing them to see things through a different lens. Diversity is not just about letting people see themselves, it’s also about allowing other people to see them as well.”

The enemy of understanding is fear, and people fear the unknown. In my time figuring out best practices to promote understanding and inclusion in my personal life after I came out as nonbinary, the primary conclusion I came to regarding diversity is that it must be based on normalization. When it’s the norm for every identity to be represented and none to be marginalized, it naturally creates a culture of acceptance and understanding. 

Media and entertainment that can expose people to genuine representation and celebration of both their own identities [to create that emotional resonance] and those of others [to educate them, and create emotional resonance and a feeling of empowerment for people within those identities] is, in my opinion, the biggest driving factor to promoting diversity in our daily lives. The more we can normalize identities that are currently marginalized and underrepresented, the more we can educate and empower people, create those safe havens for underprivileged demographics, and promote inclusion of, and for, everyone in meaningful ways. 

Games, in particular, are a powerful force for this kind of change; it’s one thing to be able to identify with a character you read about in a book or see on a screen, and it’s an entirely different tier to be able to represent the character in an interactive and repeatable manner. I believe games are one of the most effective tools we have in our culture today to spread this understanding, and Triple Rainbow Games is going to lead by example with their entries into the gaming world to forward our goals of diversity and inclusion.

Living in a more accepting world benefits everyone of every demographic. When the minority among people is disrespect of identities instead of the identities themselves, I’ll feel we’ve achieved our goals. Thanks for reading! <3, Jamie

[rudolf-rokkr]

Heyo. I've been trying to get into more heathenry/norse paganism kinda stuff (what can I say, I love folk metal), but the one thing that's kind of been a damper on the concept for me is the concept of Hel - specifically, how (as I understand it) dying of sickness or old age is a form of cowardice and punishable by eternal torment. Being chronically ill myself, that doesn't really sit right with me. Do you have any thoughts/corrections/resources on this topic in particular?

Thanks for the question. Basically the image of Viking afterlife concepts that has entered popular culture is extremely shallow and not a good representation of what we know believe actually existed. This is a big topic so it’s easy to get lost but I’m gonna try to keep it simple without leaving too much out but feel free to follow up if it seems like I’ve missed something. It’s long so the rest is behind the break.

I’ll start with the major point I want to make and then we’ll fill in the “so what then?” after. The reason you’re disturbed by this is because it’s, at least partially, a recruitment tactic. It’s designed to tempt you to suspend your reason and even if it did apply to your personal situation you’re better off not falling for it.

I know some people find strength in the Valhöll idea and I don’t want to take that away from anyone but my uncensored opinion is that it’s for dupes. It’s full of people who wasted their lives in service to kings who didn’t give a shit about them, who used them to gain rule over them. Óðinn isn’t vetting them for bravery, he’s vetting them for certain personality traits that are bad for self-preservation but good for early proto-state-formation. That’s why it’s the afterlife we find out about from Snorri. He was a court poet, trying to piece back together a cosmology from shreds of court poetry that extolled the virtues of fearlessly taking an axe to the face in defense of your favored tyrant. Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go to an afterlife where you have to die every day. I think this was more of a prestige factor among the living than an actual hope for the afterlife. I could be wrong though since the primary audience of such a myth would have been, like, 18-year-old kids hopped up on adrenaline, having just left the family farm for the first time in their lives, suddenly being adorned in gold and addressed by kings and making their first kills and drinking unending ale. Frat boys to whom the world is suddenly open (note that we’re mostly talking about higher class people anyway because they’re the ones who could afford weapons, so the world was already more open to them than others). Like the primary source for details about Valhöll is Vafþrúðnismál which rather likely was performed before an audience of these young, drunk warriors far from home (see Terry Gunnell for theories about performance of Eddic poetry).

So yeah, I could see them falling for this, or thinking it sounds appealing, or whatever. But at the same time I doubt anyone would have admitted out loud that killing each other all day every day for eternity would be awful (in fact it sounds a bit like the Buddhist hell Sañjīva but with good food). If it’s a real thing its full of people who can’t admit they’ve longed for Niflhel for centuries. 

That isn’t to say it can’t be a legitimate belief as well, just that this is its primary social function from the perspective of our sources. I’m sure that another motivating factor for the preservation and distribution of this belief is that those promising 18-year-olds also had families back home and maybe wives and kids and they were supposed to come home from exploiting the Karelians for the King’s tribute to take care of all this, and the pain of such a loss is made somewhat more mild by believing that these individuals have been called to the higher purpose of preserving the cosmic order. Not saying I agree, just that I get it.

(Note that in reality we have substantial evidence that the actual motivating factor for at least some “Viking” warriors wasn’t a glorious afterlife but rather they were mercenaries and maybe not even locals).

Now onto the next point. In Gylfaginning Snorri says that Óðinn decides where people go when they die and that good (siðaðir, literally more like ‘ethical’ I guess) people go to Vingólf or Gimlé (note: not the same as Valhöll; this might be where Snorri thinks good people who aren’t killed in battle go) and that bad people go first to Hel and then to Nifhel. The problem is that he’s full of shit. This isn’t corroborated anywhere. We can put the “full of shit” onus on Snorri the Christian who believed literally in an all-powerful God and Heaven and Hell, or we can put it Snorri’s depiction of Óðinn as Hárr/Jafnhárr/Þriði lying to Gylfi, but either way it’s obviously wrong and easily refuted.

For one thing there’s nothing moral about it. It’s just down to the manner of death. The greatest hero of Germanic mythology, Sigurðr Fáfnisbani, went to hel because he was killed in his sleep or stabbed in the back. And we know he went to hel because Brynhildr committed suicide in order to follow him. And according to skaldic poetry, King Hákon góði went to Valhöll despite not even being heathen because he died in glorious battle.

Grímnismál says that Freyja gets half the slain warriors; Þorgerðr Egilsdóttir (who is not a warrior) in Egils saga expresses expectation that she’ll spend the afterlife with Freyja. In Hárbarðsljóð Hárbarðr (Óðinn) makes fun of Þórr because he receives slaves into his halls rather than rulers like Óðinn does. Snorri himself tells us that Gefjun receives those who die as unmarried women which doesn’t apply to your situation but is another hole in the Valhöll/Hel paradigm. He also says that Rán (the sea-gýgr) takes those who die by drowning, which is corroborated by Eyrbyggja saga (chapter 54, when the drowned men show up to their own funeral, perpetually dripping wet).

Meanwhile, other than very specific parts of it that might be designated for people marked for obliteration from existence (this is based on lines in Vafþrúðnismál describing Niflhel as the place “whence men die out of hel,” what precisely that means is not obvious), we don’t have much reason to believe Helheimr is really so bad. Hel herself seems to thrive on death and decay and all that but I mean, it’s the world of the dead, that kind of seems to make sense and we can’t frame it according to our perspective as the living. On the other hand though, most of our evidence actually points to the world of the dead having a relatively strong sense of continuity with the world of the living. That seems to be why people were buried with their stuff – they weren’t done using it. 

Whether or not we should place Glæsisvellir or Ódáinsakr in the “world of the dead” (they get an association with Jötunheimar in some sources – it’s not clear if this is part of the Euhemerizing process where mythological places are mapped to geographical locations, or if Jötunheimar was part of the “world of the dead”) is unclear. Glæsisvellir ‘shining fields’ are a sort of “otherworld” more like what you normally see in Gaelic myth and legend that tend to show up a bit later in Norse mythology but seems to possibly play on things that show up as early as Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s description of the Rus’. It’s pretty much Valhöll for peaceful people. Ódáinsakr is a place within Glæsisvellir where there is no death and everything comes back to life. They’re usually ruled over by a very benevolent and hospitable jötunn named Guðmundr or Goðmundr (though split from the same origin, guð is used more for the Christian god and goð more for heathen ones, so calling him Goðmundr is marking him as heathen). Basically it seems to be Norse Elysium.

Finally, the afterlife that has the most support from the Íslendinga sögur, which means it’s probably the best reflection of the day-to-day beliefs of average people during the Viking age is some kind of continued existence in the landscape. The most clear description is in Eyrbyggja saga wherein it’s seen that the mountain Helgafell opens up to receive Þorsteinn þorskabítr and his companions; the mountain contained a whole hall full of people with fires burning and horns blowing and everything to welcome Þorsteinn. It was later discovered that Þorsteinn had drowned (note that this is the same saga I mentioned before where drowned sailors go to Rán).

Some scholars think that this is actually the origin of Hel and Valhöll. That they were just the continued existence of the dead, basically underground or living in rocks or other natural formations (like the elves do in Icelandic folklore). The abstraction of Hel and Valhöll from geographical location might have been part of the universalization/mobilization that some scholars propose for the development of the Óðinn cult (see: Tracing Old Norse Cosmology by Anders Andrén).

We also see a sort of double-afterlife in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II (a.k.a. Völsungakviða in forna) wherein Helgi has some kind of mobility between his burial mound and Valhöll… and then is later reincarnated.

Reincarnation pops up a couple times in Norse lore, this aforementioned poem being one of them. It actually says:

Þat var trúa í forneskju, at menn væri endrbornir, en þat er nú kölluð kerlingavilla.

‘It was a belief in heathen times that men would be reborn, but that is now called an old wives’ tale.’

It’s also implied in Flateyjarbók that Saint Ólafr is the reincarnation of an old heathen king who was worshiped as an elf in death, Ólafr Guðrøðarson (Ólafr Geirstaðaálfr). I did a post about reincarnation on my other blog that covers a lot of the same ground as this post.

Reincarnation is also a more or less fixed part of Urglaawe, a variant of modern heathenism focusing on the experience of the Pennsylvania Dutch (although these other afterlives are as well – just part of a process that ultimately results in reincarnation. To my mind such a view is perfectly compatible with everything else I’ve mentioned above).

The Wild Hunt does not factor much into Norse mythology but we have a pretty good idea that the concept was around based on its appearance in later folklore and its general wide spread across world cultures. It could possibly be related to the Valhöll afterlife concept, perhaps among a different class of people. We are pretty sure, for example, that Óðinn was popular in Denmark before Christianization and we are not able to connect him clearly to a ruling class like we are able to do with Norway (largely because of a general lack of literary sources for heathenism for that time or place). While no evidence compels us to do so, we have room for envisioning an Óðinn-centric afterlife that is not Valhöll, nor restricted to the upper classes. I mean he’s clearly a “god of the upper classes” but he’s no less a wandering hobo.

Anyway, the point so far is that there are lots of alternatives to the “Viking heaven” vs. “Viking hell” bullshit. This is probably not exhaustive and it partially conflicts. That isn’t surprising given that there is no centralized heathen authority and what we’re actually talking about is a huge variety of religious ideas that circulated differently along localities, social classes, time periods, social contexts, etc.

If we can point to something underlying all of this, it’s that there was believed to be some kind of continuity between life, manner of death, and afterlife. People dying in battle and going to Valhöll is, to my mind, an extension of this. “Those who die violently have a violent afterlife.” Whether or not that’s good will depend on the person, I’d imagine. Those who die in illness (and remember that there was a relationship between illness and trolls and elves or other unclean or vengeful spirits) may unfortunately find themselves in an afterlife characterized by fever and coughing and other unpleasant things. However the afterlife also seems negotiable, fluid, and furthermore determined at least partially by the activities of the survivors. When Ahmad ibn Fadlan attended a Rus’ funeral one of the Rus’ made fun of him because to him, the Muslim practice of burying the dead meant that the deceased would have to lie there in the ground while they decomposed, as opposed to the Rus’ who were cremated and thereby went immediately to the gods (by the way both burial and cremation happened under heathenism, so this is clear evidence of discontinuous religious belief among heathens and that we can’t call it “one” “religion.” Snorri associated burial and cremation with the cults of Freyr and Óðinn respectively in Ynglinga saga but of course he didn’t have all the archaeological evidence we do so we shouldn’t take that as necessarily true, but it’s interesting that he knew about both). We also see worship of the dead in the sources as the dead were considered to continue to have contact with the world of the living, for example by influencing crop yields and local weather patterns. Snorri’s Euhemerized history of the kings of Scandinavia exploits this to explain how the human king Freyr became a god – he was a human king who died and was worshiped as an ancestor at first before being reanalyzed as a god in the popular tradition. Though maybe not with Freyr specifically, this probably actually happened, even if more strictly localized, like in Vita Anskarii wherein it’s said that a certain King Erik was accepted by the gods as one of them when he died.

This is why I can’t help but think of Valhöll as “if you spend your life bootlicking you’ll spend death doing the same.” Indeed, even in the old sources, hierarchy in human society is replicated in Valhöll when Helgi Hundingsbani goes there and humiliates Hundingr by ordering him around.

We might also gain some insight by comparing other cultures that share beliefs in common with the pre-Christian Norse.  Though close reading of literature and comparative religion most people believe that the Norse did not believe in a single soul but rather something of a personal complex. We see this in other circumpolar cultures that also recognize things like the World Tree, ancestor worship, nature spirits, etc – that doesn’t mean we can just lift ideas from these other cultures but they do give real-life examples of how these abstract concepts can work in day-to-day life. Personally I have been very inspired by and influenced by Buryat Mongol belief and custom, especially because they themselves are often eager to share (reminder that it not being strictly “closed” does not mean that inappropriate appropriation is not possible). Buryat Mongols recognize three “souls,” each of which go their separate ways at death. One becomes a nature spirit, one which goes to the underworld and is eventually reincarnated, and another which becomes a bird on the world tree which is also eventually reincarnated (but, if I understand correctly, not along with the soul which had gone to the underworld). Among many such cultures going to the gods in the afterlife is a possibility, but a major exception to the norm. The reason I find this so interesting for this conversation is that if the Norse believed something similar, it would explain why our sources are in such conflict, how people can be going to Hel and living in the mound at the same time, how Helgi Hundingsbani can go to Valhöll and be reincarnated, etc. If you’re interested in learning more about Buryat Mongol belief try the site I already linked and also the works of anthropologist Katherine Swancutt (note that the families she stayed with had complete agency in determining what and how she would share what she learned… she talks a lot about this in Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination).

This next part is gonna be even more opinionated than what I’ve already written. I think it’s tempting to believe that people get what they deserve in death. That people who are treated unfairly in life are compensated in death and that those who were unfair themselves get their comeuppance. But to my mind heathenism lacks a mechanism for identifying or producing desert. That means it’s up to us, the living, and maybe those dead who continue to exert an influence on the world of the living, to vindicate those who were oppressed, or robbed of a good death; and to mitigate the legacy of unfairness. I do not believe that “the universe” or “wyrd” or whatever punishes wrongdoing – not because it wouldn’t be nice but because how exactly is that supposed to even happen? Do we really want to rely on gods who often act immorally themselves and use their supernatural abilities to exert their wills, to judge us? We might ask for their help, but we shouldn’t leave it in their hands. It would be great to take the burden off of ourselves but for better or worse, that’s where the burden is. This concept is a major spiritual informant to my belief in social justice, it’s (among many other things) a way to achieve a symbolic (and restorative, rather than retributive) equivalent to the social role of blood vengeance, for people who faced oppression. And what’s more, if we’re prepared to accept the possibility of reincarnation, then it actually is helping ourselves as well as our dearly departed awaiting rebirth in the underworld to make the world a better place for future generations.

Finally the last thing I want to say is that all of this is just theory. Not believing it doesn’t make you not heathen. We don’t have a Bible, there is no centralized authority, nobody living a thousand+ years ago was totally sure what happened in death – the lore we have received is just whatever models they came up with that best explained their experiences (probably especially mystical experiences of religious specialists, but still) and informed their behavior. For that matter, plenty of this shit is probably Christian speculation about what heathens believed anyway. If you have reason to believe otherwise it isn’t “un-heathen” to trust in your own ability to reason. Like, I think I did an alright job of framing my distaste for Valhöll in heathen discourse which just means it’s a productive set of religious beliefs that’s capable of autocritique. A person can’t possibly read the sagas and conclude that everyone agreed with each other all the time; variation, dissent, and creativity are generally speaking all good signs.

Hope this helps.

P.S. I know there are a lot of people who see entrance to Valhöll being granted to anyone engaging in struggle, whether physical or otherwise. I don’t agree, and if you’ve read this far you know I haven’t factored it into my understanding at all. But I don’t necessarily have a problem with it. I think it comes down to the active conception of “violence.” I do not believe that violence is strictly an act of causing physical damage to a person or object in a single event. I think that rearranging Valhöll to conform to a modern conception of violence that also includes systematic oppression is a literally incorrect way to interpret it according to Old Norse religion – but fuck it, my opinion of Valhöll is low as shit, so do whatever you want for all I care.

[eriisaam]

I feel like I bottled up so much about my summoner OCs for a long time. Just recently, I had a “final straw to break the camel’s back” feeling, and I’m just... not sure anymore if I should feel I’m being fair about my feelings and anger or not. I feel like at the very least, this will help me clear some air to maybe move on and re-focus while recovering from other things, but I’m also really sorry to the people following me to dump this out of the blue too. You’ve all been incredibly patient and amazing with me, so whenever I get to the point I need to vent, I feel somewhat guilty of it.

But I’m also incredibly hurt and angry in ways I also don’t feel like I’m fully justified or not in them, for a lot of things well beyond the scope of what is currently setting me off... Maybe it’s best I unbottle it even if only for the sake of clearing the air. 

And then after this, hopefully we can move back to regular light-hearted posts and shitpost art... I’m sorry.

For anyone whose seen me play Fire Emblem Heroes, or even played with me otherwise via friend codes, you know that I go by the handle “my butt” (as for why, Takumi is all too happy to share), and the summoner I send out is Eclair. He’s the only one of the OCs I felt was best able to be represented in-game out of the current summoners selection, so he’s been the one out of the six whose remained ever-present with his dumb little quote and eventually his dumb little gifts to go with. Nobody else in my friend group previously had a summoner named “Eclair” (not to be confused with Eclat), and it’s understandably not a very common name. 

So it came as a surprise to me when one of the FEH friends I had for a very long time, recently changed their summoner (I believe from “Kiran” originally, and with the guy with the brushed-over brown hair) into this:

Any other day, this might’ve been funny, if in poor taste. Maybe I would’ve laughed at it and moved on if I was in a better frame of mind and just ignored it.

But lately, as many of you saw in my past few notes, or even privately, I hadn’t been doing well. I had a lot of frustrations online and off. I’ve been incredibly ill to the point of collapsing a lot, I have a backlog of attempts to work on writing and art that wound up crashing to a halt because of it, in ways that left me even more upset and manic, and pretty much for a long time now, I have felt like I was in constant hell that I tried very hard not to bring up often in public, even when I’ve reached my breaking point multiple times in rapid succession under various circumstances, and I was to a point that a single pin-drop would’ve made me go nuclear.

It wasn’t funny, I didn’t take it well, and I ended up removing them after debating long and hard if I was overreacting to do it or not. And even now, I’m not sure if it was as bad as I make it seem exactly because of how they couldn’t have picked a worse time to try to have a go at me through Eclair.  

And the more I think about it, the more I feel bad that this had been the final straw to a lot of old feelings I’ve had stewing and trying and failing to clear in private, a lot of which were things I didn’t bring up that’s been upsetting me about my summoners for a long time, because I didn’t think ranting about it every single time in the moment was fair, and I feel guilty every time it’s come toit. But seeing this, having all those feelings drum up again, now I wonder if I bottled it up too long, to the point of it being on the opposite extreme and being incredibly unhealthy for me, too.

For a long time, I used the summoner OCs I made for various reasons. Some of them tested waters for like-ideas I wanted to try in some capacity on other works, but wasn’t sure about. (For those who read my other longfics, some of it are a little more obvious than others of the overlap.) Other times, and was one of the biggest pressing things about them, is that I use a lot of them as coping mechanisms. Some of them explored traumas I really did endure, albeit of course theirs might be more extreme, or the same in spirit, or represented or experienced things I myself am still processing. They’re also why I tend to work on them heavily in lulls when I couldn’t properly focus on stuff I otherwise wanted or needed to work on more, or as practice when I needed to figure out how to grasp things in plots or art otherwise, which is why they’re so prevalent on my works so often. 

It’s also why I kept apologizing in realizing that they take over so much, but at the same time, working on them helped better frame things or prepare me for how to continue on other projects I was previously stuck on. They were important to me, and maybe, I got a bit too attached, but without them, I think my productivity and quality in it would be significantly worse if the summoner OCs hadn’t picked me up and carried me through how to figure things out better.

They’ve also, unfortunately, had been the subject of a lot of negativity I’ve sat through and stomached for a good part of the entire pandemic year, and even to this day in this year. I’ve made lore docs for them that got vandalized and littered with comments telling me to “try again” or how wrong I did or how wrong about my ships or shipkids are to come about as they had, to the point that I now deleted them because looking at even my private copy of it drums up the same negative memories and sends me into a panic of whether or not I’ll open it up and see it mass crossed out and littered with even more comments of how terrible and wrong it all is again. It was also partially why I lost heart working on old sketched concepts I initially planned to fully realize, only to drop what I have and post them to share, but would rather redo them (sketch and all) instead of work on them: They are littered with a lot of memories too painful to work on them directly.

I’ve had needlessly hostile messages, telling me off for certain ship combinations, or my OCs being misconstrued into horrible ways and based on their assumptions of what they think my OCs are like, assume the worse of them and me and harass me across multiple messages in my inbox over it. This had even boiled down to harassing me over my design choices of certain OCs, maybe not coincidentally my two female ones, or ones who are short and petite in build compared to their far more larger counterparts, despite every summoner and support all being adults. I’ve had people decide for me they knew the ages of my “minor” OCs better than I do. Despite me being the one who created them.

I’ve had people make not-as-vague-as-they-think-they’re-being comments, shitting on my ideas on the core concept, simply because they’re rooted to either a fandom that’s very subtle and low-key now, a game that seems popular-to-the-point-of-being-a-meme to shit on simply to shit on it and everyone who likes it, and had constantly been made to feel like various ideas other people are ok doing are bad when I do it, solely because I’m doing them. 

They have been through a lot. I’ve been through a lot with them. They still exist because certain people I was very close with, among which Saam had been my rock and pillar through and through, refused to let me give in to the many, many times I found myself in such a dark place and in a really shitty mindset, that I would’ve stopped creating in totality, whether or not it’s related to kiransonas. 

And even now, even when I’ve been trying to pick up the pieces and move past that, there’s still little hints here and there of the damage that’s done that I still haven’t fully gotten over yet to try again. Or I’ve been trying in baby steps, and not in the best ways I wish I could yet.

I don’t draw Erin, Ephrel and Sparrow quite as often anymore, despite wanting to try them again. Ephrel’s and Sparrow’s circle in particular, I felt insecure trying to work on anything to do with them as often, especially if it’s related to Chrom that’s not just with him and Robin. I hesitated to do anything with Sparrow’s and Ephrel’s Robin either, despite having many ideas of what more to share of him. I stopped doing plushies, or being open about plushies anymore, due to still overcoming the feelings fostered from what I’ve been made to feel was bad about them and how I did them. Plush designs and sprite designs I wanted to do as open source were put on hold because I felt more closed off and hesitant to be too open in fandom spaces as much anymore. The Scars of Time, I’ve also hesitated to continue most of all out of my current longfics, because even when it’s been the fic that had the most progress in its latest chapter over the course of the pandemic shoving a wedge across all my longfics, the core elements to it were elements deeply rooted to a lot of the above ill feelings whether directly or by extension of what kiransonas already bore through themselves that hit similar beats. Were it not for incredibly kind commenters who still encouraged me and clearly hoped for other longfics to continue, there have been many, many times I was debating on deleting everything and giving up in totality, but held on because of all of them, and all of you, and people like Saam. 

There’s a lot of things I still had to work through, and it shows.

So I see this dig at Eclair, and I’m torn anymore.

Maybe it was meant to be a harmless joke, and I still have second-guesses that I overreacted and jumped the gun to kick them out of my friend lists over something like this.

But as with how long and scattered my thoughts are in a post like this... It’s been a long time. It’s been a lot of really harsh, unfortunate, hurtful things leading up to this. I see this, and it’s like everything that I listed all came full circle all at once, and it painted all of this in a far worse light than it probably was, but unsurfaced a lot of things that, on top of being sick constantly and stressed out with other major fears, I think I finally cracked.

I don’t know what point I was trying to make of this, and I’m sorry too for all of you having to post this. 

I’m just... tired and confused anymore of if this is fair or when I’m overstepping and overreacting anymore. Or where to go from here.

[andrewuttaro]

Feature: Breakup Revisited

What does it mean to be a fan of a Sports team? How does one breakup with their team? Two years ago I asked these questions in a prolonged blog of grievance. I started with an analysis of fan loyalty I thought was pretty thoughtful at the time before launching off into a diatribe about the awful year of 2017 American Soccer had and New York City Football Club. Quite a bit has changed since then and well I don’t feel inclined to get back with my Ex I think what I wrote is worth revisiting.

Fans and their loyalty

What it means to support a sports team comes down to loyalty. Or at least that’s the first core principle I underlined in my original diatribe. Loyalty in fact works in a few different ways. While we do shun folks we believe are bandwagon fans, unless your parents raised you from childhood in the lore of your team everyone starts out as a bandwagoner. For those of us who are not bred into supporting a team our loyalty is founded on something or someone we’re being loyal to. My family is a great example of this. We grew up solidly in Buffalo Bills territory, but we weren’t indoctrinated as children. My father was a Kansas City Chiefs fan going back to the late 1960s and my mom supported the Indianapolis Colts then the Denver Broncos because she loved Peyton Manning. For us supporting each of those clubs was allegiance originally founded by loyalty to a player or a set of memories associated with a club. When it’s not loyalty to a club you were raised to support it’s loyalty to a person within a club or a set of memories associated with that club.

Then of course there is comradery. In the example of my family my dad didn’t seek out other Chiefs fans locally as much as he looked for other NFL fans to talk about the Chiefs with. My uncle supports the Oakland… Las Vegas Raiders? …never mind, we’ll come back to that. My dad loved pitting his Chiefs against his cousin’s Raiders. That was the fun they had with it. That was the comradery that sports gave them. This is a different comradery then the kind that pulls dozens or hundreds of American Liverpool supporters into bars and pubs to cheer on a team on another continent. For them the comradery is very much about coming together as fans sharing a team. That kind of comradery is why Buffalo Bills fans sing in the midst of the snowstorm games: it’s everyone together supporting the same team. It’s something of a campfire experience. The differences between these two kinds of comradery do exist and have cultural roots but for the way they affect the underlying loyalty they’re not really important here.

This section in my original breakup had one more point: representation. This is where I think the cultural roots and the distinction between kinds of comradery do become important. Let’s go back to the example of my dad. He loves Buffalo Wings. Whenever he visits me in Buffalo he looks for a place to eat Buffalo Wings. He has said to me that he likes that Buffalo is associated with Buffalo Wings more than he likes that Rochester, New York, the City he grew up in, is associated with this dish we call the Garbage Plate. Take that how you will but it’s an interesting example of representation, in this case concerning food. Pretend those two foods are sports teams (like the local baseball affiliates actually did recently) and you have my dad yearning to be a fan of the team an hour down the road over his hometown. If that were the case would we consider him a bandwagoner who betrayed his home team? While the easy answer is Yes I’ve learned since the original blog post here that there is a strong case for No.

My dad feels Buffalo Wings more closely emulate his food tastes, therefore his preference for Wings over Garbage Plates arise. To be fair my dad can throw back a Garbage Plate like nobody’s business but he’s not a disloyal turncoat for preferring Buffalo Wings. Now I realize the metaphor breaks down a little bit when you consider sports teams literally need your money to survive and foods rarely go extinct. We’re blessed in these United States of America to have access to a wide range of top-level sports; more so than any other single nation on earth. We have top level athletes and organizations in all of Basketball, American Football, Baseball and Hockey to just name the most obvious. That’s a unique situation that allowed my dad to support the far-away Kansas City Chiefs back in the 1970s without being chastised by his local peers. This North American uniqueness in sports and the financial dependence of sports teams on their fans places the matter of representation squarely in the hands of the consumers in these parts. As a sports team you craft what your unique taste is. Often that taste involves flavors of the local; but if you grow big enough you’ll inevitably turn into a buffet with fans from far and wide coming to fill up. Even in Europe where Soccer has long been king of the hill there are the super-teams that have managed to grow into sprawling international buffets: Juventus, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Barcelona and yes: Liverpool.

Every sports team dreams of growing to be a buffet that represents I diverse group of people if not for any other reason than to get all their money. The decision always remains in the hands of the consumer when it comes to this growth. Representation, or the degree to which a sports team truly represents you, is up to you. In the age of the internet it’s super easy to try out other tastes. I think some of the angst in my original piece was anger directed at NYCFC and or MLS because I didn’t quite grasp that the Rochester Rhinos are my soccer taste regardless of the fact they are based in the City I was born in. I couldn’t separate those two facts and now I can. The Rhinos are my visual aesthetic on top of historically being in the Top Ten greatest sports underdog stories of all-time. I liked the Rhinos deep down with or without the Rochester part. That’s the deeper reality of the representation point. I’ve also found comradery with other Rhinos fans as well as harboring a real sense of loyalty moored in both being raised on that team and really loving Jochen Graf absolutely chip the ever-loving daylights out of goalkeepers the USL over. Call me cocky but I think I’ve figured out the dynamics of fans and their loyalty a whole lot more since my first sports team Breakup.

Branding: Franchise Issues

That said, NYCFC can still pipe down. I don’t need Nazi-loving smurfs downstate telling me what good soccer is. Five Boroughs this Five Boroughs that, we’re the team that actually plays in New York City. All that crap can disappear right out of my life for all I care. Another part of the original Breakup piece was loosely connected to the representation piece we already discussed. In this case regional rivalry comes into play. Part of what fueled my breakup with NYCFC was something everyone born and raised in this State north of Yonkers can relate to: hating New York City. The joke is when you tell someone from out-of-state you’re from New York they immediately think of Midtown Manhattan. I am not from Midtown Manhattan. I don’t know the difference between Soho and Greenwich Village. I grew up in the Finger Lakes where you’re probably closer to an epic hike than a slice of New York style pizza.

Of course the regionalism in New York State is more than Pizza and Wine, it’s politics, taxes and government. Those palpable differences always made my feelings for NYCFC kinda awkward. Regionalism isn’t the sole reason we broke up but when that club hammered home at every available turn that they cared about the five boroughs of NYC and those five boroughs alone it made me feel a lot less guilty pulling the trigger on the breakup. It’s funny because there were moments following NYCFC felt really authentic. Somethings about the branding didn’t piss me off. The logo in particular is flatly appealing to me. My late grandfather was a very avid New York Yankees fan after growing up in Connecticut. Being exposed to that logo so much as a child may have predisposed me to the way NYCFC put together their badge.

But I don’t need to get into my childhood psychology to nail down why I don’t regret breaking up with NYCFC. In the two years since my breakup they’ve continued to lose in the early rounds of the playoffs and fail to look like anything more than a colony franchise for Manchester City. Those are the competitive realities. The supporter realities are that long before Major League Soccer was cracking down on anti-fascist signage NYCFC was failing to kickout neo-Nazis and their evil chants. That shit is unforgivable. For how long this section was in the original piece I guess the branding issues that pissed me off originally are a foregone conclusion now. Every discussion of soccer in this state has an acute chance of going into the inauthenticity of the two Major League Soccer teams downstate these days. Look at that! I was ahead of the curve!

Aloof: League Issues

Unlike my resolve against NYCFC only becoming firmer since the breakup, my feelings on Major League Soccer are still very conflicted. To say the Rochester Rhinos are in the desperate straits they are now just because the MLS of 2006 decided to play hard ball with owners who were in over their heads financially is a half-truth. Yes, when you spoon feed your supporters MLS berth as an inevitability for a decade then they’re going to be pissed when it doesn’t happen. That miss will always sting. But those owners were in fact in over their heads financially. History is pretty clear on that. In spite of what some may tell you Rob Clark coming along didn’t revitalize the organization. The Rhinos didn’t fall to where they are today because they weren’t fun to watch. Save for 2011 they were in championship form pretty much non-stop. If the Rhinos don’t survive long enough for my kids to be fans as well they’ll always live on as the best professional soccer team in American history to me.

Nonetheless I think Don Garber and the folks who have been running Major League Soccer since the late 90s are guilty of jealousy and being downright uncreative. The jealousy of the National Football League, a league whose owners also own several MLS franchises, has caused the league to have a single-minded focus on a model that works a whole lot better when you’re the only game in town. The NFL has all the best American Football talent and its not even close. NFL is one of the most profitable entertainment products in the world in no small part because of that monopoly on talent. Except for four franchises whom are all being attended to by the Shield, an NFL franchise is guaranteed money. Not a single MLS franchise is making nearly NFL money. We can talk about growth trajectories and demographic shifts all day, but I don’t have an MBA and I don’t do well debating numbers.

MLS has created an environment in soccer in this country where what happened to the Rhinos is the standard. Let me tell you, that shit sucked, even from a distance. If you’re lucky enough to be a top 50 growth market population wise that may work well for you but over the next two years we’ll watch St. Louis FC, a USL club with a whole culture and history unto itself gets buried underneath an avalanche of plastic, ready-made MLS branding that will be viewed as superior by the American consumer just because it’s MLS. Sacramento too. If you’re a soccer team outside of the desirous gaze of MLS in this country your days are numbered unless you’re a two side and in that case what the hell are you really? It all feels very plastic and that’s before we even talk about how even the better MLS organizations still need to speak out of two sides of their mouth because of the ever-present neo-conservative thought police running the league. If MLS isn’t ruining authentic American Soccer than it is certainly making it work hard to keep breathing.

The MLS is uncreative. I believe that. But: I love soccer too much to climb into a hole and ignore the domestic topflight trying to give a shit about the UEFA Champions League. I’m trying really hard to get interested in English Premier League right now but no amount of Christian Pulisic is going to make me care more about the EPL or Serie A or Bundesliga or the friggin Barcelona-Real Madrid La Liga than what’s going on domestically. The MLS product is as exciting as a middle-of-the-road coaches’ challenge in the National Hockey League. That’s mildly rousing at best if you’re not familiar with the hockey reference. MLS is trying so hard to be NFL and appeasing plutocrats with tax incentives that it would never dream of using one of the things that makes the sport of soccer unique: promotion and relegation, to make its plastic ass summer league vastly more interesting! While I don’t think the Save the Crew situation that prompted a lot of this section in my original breakup article is truly a matter of social justice like some Pro/Rel diehards would have you believe, that wrapping up the way it did didn’t help my opinion of Major League Soccer. Just because the NFL can move the Oakland Raiders... *checks Wikipedia* three times, does not mean that it’s the ideal business model. Building loyalty, comradery and representation among a group of potential fans can come across fake very easily. Just ask any fan of Soccer in North Carolina right now as they read rumors of MLS coming to their neck of the woods.

My issues with MLS as a league remain just like the shame I feel as an American Soccer fan about the non-qualification for the 2018 World Cup. There isn’t a neat through line between domestic soccer issues and the national team. I didn’t realize that two years ago when I originally wrote this. Funny enough, the US Men’s National Team hasn’t looked much better while the Women win another World Cup only to be denied equal pay by the same federation. Supporting any club within a league with as many issues as MLS is hard but the old club over league saying cuts both ways. While the Pro/Rel advocates seem to think franchises and clubs cannot be mentioned in the same breath the functionality from a fan perspective isn’t different enough to really matter. Therefore I’ve come to a point of acceptance with MLS, especially this year. While the overall league will continue to be revolting in many ways if the right club *cough* *cough* franchise comes along, I’ve grown open to a new MLS relationship after my breakup with NYCFC.

Breakup: Insert Taylor Swift lyric here

This final section was the briefest in the original Breakup. While my breakup with NYCFC remains Taylor Swift’s “We are never ever getting back together”, there is a new song that you could insert into the header here, this time for a new relationship. This time it’s not a Taylor Swift song at all. It’s Wonderwall. I already listed all the specifics of breaking up with NYCFC, wished them the best and what not like a polite breakup. Now it’s time to talk about how I’ve decided to be happier.

The Rochester Rhinos are... not in great shape. While a second year of haitus was frustrating a third year stands to be outright fatal. The only real example of an American Soccer team going on haitus and coming back better for it is Montreal. Yeah, I know that’s not an American side, but that club went on haitus for a year around the turn of the millennium and came back. Eventually the Impact would find their way to MLS. That hiatus was one year. Most soccer clubs go on haitus before selling or folding. No club has come back from a multi-year haitus like this and been better for it (and no I’m not counting the New York Cosmos and Tampa Bay Rowdies because those are the same organizations in name only). That’s just the history of the sport in this country. I’m very open to the Rhinos coming back into my life. I write a monthly blog about soccer in the City of Rochester after all. I have a place carved out in my bank account for that revival I keep being told will happen oh so soon. But the proverbial afterlife of that club I love so much is also a distinct possibility. As a loyal fan I’ll help usher this club into that afterlife if that’s what it comes to. In that scenario I’ll be carving “greatest soccer club in American history” into the tombstone.

But, and this is a huge but that I was not mature enough for two years ago: I’ve also decided to be happy with domestic soccer for once. I’ve been keeping tabs on several clubs and building memories that could help form the foundation of loyalty. I made a goodwill power ranking that went through 35 iterations this past summer. While I’m not becoming a full-fledged supporter of any other club until I get a death certificate on the Rhinos, some of the points of fondness that made me love the Rhinos are informing the memories I’m building with other clubs. Indy Eleven felt quite alluring but my heart just isn’t there. Certainly the Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC having Bob Lilley and half a dozen other former Rhinos provides for a nice trip down memory lane. But the intangibles that go beyond anyone group of players ring even louder for me: the difficulty of this American Soccer journey, the way soccer up here in the North is more fun as a summer sport because I want to watch Hockey in the winter. The way a good soccer story involves a whole lot of chance and, in it’s purest form, depends on supporters who sing win or lose. The story of a club, the aesthetic of a club, the culture of it, the message of it and well frankly the struggle of it informed where I would go for my next relationship. If I wasn’t such a patriot Hamilton Forge FC of the Canadian Premier League would be an absolute layup in all the categories I’ve described today. But no, the club that’s checked all my boxes is from the States.

In case you didn’t pick up the Wonderwall connection earlier my new MLS club, if I become open to a new relationship, is Minnesota United FC. Ultimately the benefits wrapped up in regional representation fell null with the nearest pro clubs being two to three hours away at best. The closest American Pro Soccer team is the aforementioned Pittsburgh Riverhounds and maybe they’ll find their sugar daddy and make it to MLS one day but as we’ve established that’s not an important criteria for me. Nostalgia wasn’t going to drive my next relationship, that’s part of what misled me in my first breakup. Moreover comradery with Pittsburgh isn’t something that comes naturally to me due to a real hatred for their other sports teams. My taste for representation in a sports team is melodramatic if I’m being honest. The imagery of the dark clouds of MNUFC, the history of being up and down barely surviving as an organization for ten years to then somehow finding a way into the topflight, the near deification of greyness of living in the north while also singing Wonderwall, a melancholy song with very palpable strands of hope; it just all spoke to me on a very visceral level. The mix of gray and blue and black in their aesthetic was more appealing than I remember first seeing them come into MLS when I was a NYCFC supporter back in 2016. All that and Loons are a beautiful, yet annoying animal and I feel that somehow represents me: an annoying bird who is mighty melancholy in his soccer life right now, just looking to flock together with other melancholy Northern Birds. In case you didn’t know, Minnesota sports is full of melancholy.

Right as MNUFC came onto my radar earlier this year they held NYCFC at bay at the opening game of their new stadium Allianz Field. A couple months later they thrashed FC Cincinnati 7-1, a club I had developed a real hatred for when they played the Rhinos in the USL. Then, as if they knew I had started watching, they went on a wicked tear that landed them in the top two of the MLS Western Conference, a feat the club had never come close to in their MLS days. They were then courteous enough to lose the Open Cup Final, look mighty ass down the home stretch to the playoffs and bow out in the first round to the hated LA Galaxy. That sounds like the emotional rollercoaster of a team I support!

But let’s not stray from the meat and potatoes here: MLS is something I do not want to support with my money even after my Rhinos are pushing up daisies. Well that’s part of the benefit of being a fan so far away. I don’t go to games and I don’t buy merchandise. The jersey I got was free through a friend. That said I know through stream and other ways MLS will somehow still benefit from my following of MNUFC. You can’t win all the battles, but I’ve found soccer love again and if my first breakup taught me anything its that you have to grab onto that soccer love while you have it or you may lose it. Our soccer lives are somewhat like real life: messy. And that’s okay, I’ve decided to be happy with messy.

Thanks for reading.

[jansegers]

Simple English Word List

SIMPLE1540 : a simple English wikipedia word list based on the XML export of all articles related to the nine major groups: Everyday life, Geography, History, Knowledge, Language, Literature, People, Religion, and Science and retaining all word forms appearing 7 times or more in this corpus. The total number of words in this corpus is well over the 100.000 words. a A.D. ability able about above absence abstinence abstract academic academy accent accept access accord account across act action active activity actual actually ad add addition adherent adjective adult advance advice affect after again against age agnostic agnosticism ago agree agreement agriculture air alcohol all allow ally almost alone along alphabet also although always amateur amendment among amount an analysis ancient and angel animal annals anonymous another answer anthropomorphism any anyone anything aphasia appear apple apply approach archaeology architecture area argue argument around arrange art article artificial artist ask aspect associate association astronomy at atheism atheist atomic attack attempt attribute audience author authority available average avoid award away B.C. baby back background backpack bad bah balance band baptism base basic basis battle BCE be bear beautiful beauty because become bed bee before begin behavior behind being belief believe believing belong below best better between beyond bias biblical bibliography big billion biological biology birth bit black blind blood blue body book born both bottom boundary box boy brain branch bring brown buffalo build building bull burn business but by c. ca. calendar call can cancer canon capital caption car carbon card carry case cassette cat category cathedral catholic cause cell center central century cerebral certain change chapel chapter character chemical chemistry child china China choice choir choose chronicle church circumcise circumcision cite citizen city civil civilian civilization claim clan class classical cleanup clear clergy click climate close closer clothes clothing coast coauthor code codex cognitive col cold collection college colonization colony color column com come commentary commission common commonly communicate communication communion communist community companion company compare competition complete complex compose composer computer concept conception concern condition confuse confusion congregational connect connection conquer conquest consciousness consider consistent constitution construct construction contain contemporary content context continent continue contrary control convention conversation conversion convert cook cooking copy core correct could council country course court cover covered create creation credit crime critical criticism crop cross crust cultural culture current currently daily damage dark data date day dead death debt decadence decadent decide declaration decline deconstruction deep define definition deity demonstrate denomination department depth describe description design detail determinism developed development device devil diagnosis dialect dictionary die difference different difficult difficulty diphthong dipstick direct directly dirt disagree disambiguation disbelief discipline discover discovery discussion disease disorder distance distinct distinction distinguish distribution divide divine do doctor doctrine document dog don't door down Dr. dream drink drown druid due during dynasty each earlier early earth easier easily easy eat economic economics economy ed edge edit edition editor education effect eight either electric electricity electronic element elevation else emperor empire encyclopedia end energy engine engineering enlightenment enough enter entertainment environment environmental epic episode equal era error especially establish etc. etymology even event eventually ever every everyday everyone everything evidence evil evolution evolve exact exactly example except exchange exist existence expansion experience experiment expert explain explanation express expression external extinct face fact failure fair faith fall false family famous far fast father feature feel feeling female feudal few fiction field fight figure file find finding fire first fish fit five fix flow folk follow food for force foreign foreskin form formal former fortune fought foundation founded four fourth frame framework free freedom frequently friend from front fruit full function functional further future gas general generally generation genre geographer geographic geographical geography geology geometry germ get give glass global go god gold golden good government grammar great greatly green ground group grow growth guide guillotine hair half hall hand handbook handicap handle happen happens happiness happy hard have he head heading health hear heat heaven help hemisphere her here heritage hero high highly him himself his historian historical historiography history hold holy home homo hope hot hour house how however human hundred hunter hypothesis hysteresis I ice icon idea identify identity if illiteracy illiterate illusory image importance important impossible improve in inc. incense include increase indeed independence independent indigenous individual industrial industry influence information inquiry inside instead institute institution instrument instrumentation intellectual intelligence interlinear internal international internet interpretation into introduce introduction invent invention involve iron island issue it IT itself job join journal journalism judge just keep key kill kind king kingdom know knowledge la LA label lack lake lamp land landlocked landscape language large last late later law lead leader leap learn learned least leave legacy legal legend let letter level lexeme library life light lightning like likely limited line linguistic linguistics link liquid list literacy literary literature little liturgy live local location logic logical long longer look lord lore lose lot love low lower mac machine magazine magic magnetic magnum mail main mainly major make male mammal man mankind manuscript many map march March mark market mass material mathematical mathematics matter may May me mean meaning meant measure measurement meat median medical medicine medieval mediterranean medium meet member memory men mental mention mercury message metal method mid middle might migrate migration military millennium million mind minister minute misconception miss model modern modernism modernist moment money monologue monophthong month monument moon moral morality more morning most mostly mother mount mountain mouth move movement much museum music musical musicians must my myth mythology name narrative nation national nationality native natural naturalism naturally nature near nearly necessarily necessary need negative neither neologism network neurogenesis neuron neuroscience never new news newspaper next night nine no non none nor normal normally not note nothing noun novel now nuclear number object objective objectivity observation observe occupation occur ocean octane of off offer office official officially often oil old older on once one online only open opera opposite or oral orbit order org organization organize origin original originally orthography orthology other others our out outer outside over own oxygen p. pack pagan page paint palace paper paradigm parent parish park part participant particular particularly party pas pass past pasta pattern pay peace peer penguin penis people per percent percentage perception performance perhaps period peroxide persecution person personal personality perspective persuasion pet phenomenon philosopher philosophical philosophy phoneme phonetic phonetics photo phrase physic physical picture piece pilgrimage place plan planet plant plat plate play please poem poems poet poetry point pole police policy political politics polytheism polytheistic popular population position positive possession possible possibly post power powerful pp. practical practice praise pray prayer precise predict prediction prehistory present preserve press prevent priest primary principle print printing private probably problem process produce product production professional program project pronounce pronunciation proof property prophet propose prose proselytism protection protein provide province psychological psychology public publication publish publisher publishing punishment pure purpose put pyramid quantum question quickly quite quote race racial rack radiation radio rain range rate rather read reader real realism reality really reason receive recent recently reclamation recognize record recreation red ref refer reference referred reform reformation regard region reign rejection relate relation relationship relatively relativity reliable relic religion religious remain remember remove renaissance replace report republic request require research researcher resource respect response result resurrection retrieve return revelation revert review revision revival revolution rhetoric rich right rise ritual river rock role room royal rule ruled ruler run rural sacred sacrifice safe saga sage saint salad same sample satellite saw say schizophrenia scholar school science scientific scientist scope sea search second secondary section secular see seek seem selection self sense sent sentence separate sequence series service set seven several sexual shall shaman shape share she short should show shrine side sign significant silence similar simple simply since single situation six size skill skin slavery sleep slightly slow small smell smith snake so social society sociology soft soil solar soldier solid soliloquy some someone something sometimes song soon sortable sound source space speak speaker special specie specific speech speed spell spirit spiritual spirituality split sport spread square st. stage stain standard star start state statement station statistic statistical statue status stick still stone stop story strange strap strong structure struggle stub student study stutter style subject successful such sugar suggest sun sung sunlight superior superiority supernatural support suppose supreme sure surface survey surveyor sushi sustainability sustainable sweat symbol symbolic system table take talk tam tan task teach teacher teaching technique technology tectonics teeth tell temperature template temple ten term terminology territory tertiary test testament text textual than thank that the their theism them themselves then theology theoretical theory therapy there therefore thesaurus these they thick thing think third this those though thought thousand three through throughout thumb thus ticket tight time title to today together toilet tolerance toleration tongue too tool top topic total towards tower trade tradition traditional train translation transport travel treat treatment tree trench trial tribe tried trig true truth try turn twentieth twenty two type typical typically ultimate ultraviolet under understand understood union unit united universal universe university unknown unsortable until up upon upper urban urbanization usage use useful usually valley value van vandalism various vassal vegetable verb verbal verse version very video view violence virgin visit vitamin vocabulary voice vol. volume vowel vs. wale wall want war warm warmer wash waste water wave way we weak wealth wear weather web website weight well what when where whether which while white who whole whom whose why wide widely wild wilderness will window wisdom wise witch witchcraft with within without witness woman word work worker world worship would write writer writing wrong yam year yellow you young your

China, March and May made this list because china, march and may are on it and I didn't want to decide in favor of the common noun or the proper noun; all other proper nouns have been omitted (even the ten other months that met the criterium of appearing more then 6 times). #SimpleWikipedia #SimpleEnglish #wordlist #English #words #level1540 #Inli #nimi #selo1540