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poured-my-past-down-the-drain · 5 months

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Character study — Tommy McCraft

My adaption of Tommy for this blog, at least <3

So, obviously. Like with any character, there are base elements that are hard to separate before the character becomes… entirely different, right.

The baseline Tommy qualities that I always see in dsmp Tommy’s character is that he is loud and abrasive — usually just as a personality quirk, but also, as a defense mechanism later on. We’ll get back to that. His mouth moves faster than his brain, he wants to have fun, and he wants to be loved.

BACKGROUND

I touch on his childhood here, and it’s still how my Tommy was raised. Phil was distant but loving. He was a caring father but the immortality just made him not always take more ‘temporary’ problems seem important.

Tommy being sick, though, wasn’t a temporary problem.

He was a very ill child, often staying home. Spending his days watching movies, playing on a little handheld game system, and reading about animals. He’d always loved animals.

He’d get clingy and fussy with his brothers once they’d get home, and latched hard onto Tubbo as his best friend from the very beginning. He and Wilbur were especially close. Wilbur would be the one who most often cuddled him to sleep, who he showed off his projects to, who enabled his trinket-collecting. Wilbur was his person. He didn’t really know life without the promise that if Wilbur wasn’t around, he would be around soon.

It led to some separation anxiety when Wilbur inevitably did, as teenagers do, began drifting away slightly. Never far. The separation anxiety went both ways. But it was enough to notice, especially once Tommy got well enough he could start going to school on a regular basis.

Tommy enjoyed being social, of course. He liked getting to see Tubbo outside of just their homes. But he struggled with his classes and he constantly missed Wilbur. It would feel like ants under his skin if he was too far away for too long. Even up into middle school, he would insist on cuddling with his brother in the evenings.

Which made summer camp hard. Well, summer camp was hard for… multiple reasons, but one big one was being so far away from Wilbur. Phil had said it would do them some good, and that the people watching Tommy would be very nice. Maybe he’d meet some new friends!

(Phil hadn’t known that it was a conversion camp. Just wanted somewhere for Tommy to stay for a month and a half. And Tommy surely did make some… friends… at camp.)

When Tommy hit high school, though — is when we hit the events of the SMP. Tommy would follow Wilbur to the ends of the earth, after all.

Tommy was thrilled at first, of course. Getting to spend his days with his brother, his person, surrounded by a forest full of animals. But as we know that isn’t how it stayed.

How I imagine it, the events of dsmp take place over, give or take, three years. Tommy celebrated his sixteenth as part of the L’manburg soldiers during war. His seventeenth in exile. And, as we see on the blog — his eighteenth in Las Nevadas.

EXILE

In Logsteadshire, Tommy was the most alone he’s ever been.

His best friend had sentenced him to exile. He was without his brother, whose absence felt like the loss of a lung. The only guest he ever got was the what lingered of Wilbur McCraft’s spirit; and the ghost lacked the awareness of what Tommy was going through at that time.

Dream.

Exile was equal parts too much and not enough of Dream’s company.

Tommy needed Dream around. He wanted the presence of another living, breathing person so bad. Ghostbur visited but Ghostbur was cold. Dream was flesh and warm blood, and Tommy had never lived alone before, always surrounded by those who loved him.

And maybe Dream did love him. Maybe he did care about him, in some twisted way. But if he did, his love hurt Tommy.

Dream had so many rules, and Tommy was not allowed to take notes. He couldn’t leave, of course. If he even wandered too far from his home he would be hunted like a deer through the woods. He couldn’t keep items a secret, because secrets led to more secrets, and Dream hated secrets.

Dream wanted Tommy reliant on him. In the birthday post, a bit of the abuse tactics are detailed. Most notably, Dream would feed him wither roses. Withholding things Tommy wanted (food, affection, gifts, shiny things) unless he finished his ‘meal’ that would drain him of any energy that could be used to leave.

Tommy, once, still tried to run away. With his brain full of fuzz and muscles working against him from the roses, he still tried to run, beg for Tubbo to let him back into his life.

If you have been following, you may be aware that Tommy has a prosthetic. This mistake was how he lost that leg. He never made it to L’manburg that night.

Now, I have also touched a little on Tommy’s religious trauma in posts. It certainly didn’t help to be stuck in exile with somebody with a god complex, who demanded to be prayed to, who put it into Tommy’s head that everything he has, had, and will have — Dream allowed him to have. Who broke Tommy’s Prime talisman and called so many mistakes ‘sins’.

This is also why, when referred to, Tommy refers to Dream with capitalized “Him.”

WILBUR’S REVIVAL

When Wilbur was revived, Tommy was no longer in exile.

Tommy himself had been revived, too, now. He’d died at the hands of someone who he believed as a friend, and brought back as a power play.

He was broken and hurt and sad and wanted to get better, he wanted so badly.

Then Wilbur was allowed back.

Dream allowed Wilbur to come back. Just as he had allowed Tommy to come back.

The two became very, very codependent — more than they had been before. Tommy hiccuped and clawed at the walls if he was in a different room. Wilbur would get fussy if Tommy wandered a few feet too far, even if he was still in his line of sight. (Think the ‘by my side, by my side’ from the vod where Tommy and Wilbur take their first tour of Las Nevadas)

Just as they started, they were inseparable. But Wilbur was… different now.

Tommy had learned to make himself smaller and Wilbur was full of fissures and cracks, now. If it meant keeping each other close, nearby, safe, even if it meant they weren’t always happy — it was not a healthy dynamic, but they were willing to make those sacrifices.

Anything to not be alone again. Anything, anything.

USEFUL TAGS

Now, as much as I would like to delve into every single detail — this is… already taking much, much longer than I intended :(

So!! Some useful tags for more information that may not have made the cut <3 I do intend to start, or maybe even go back? And tag certain ‘arcs’ or asks that involve certain backstory, so they’re easier to find. Please note that these can change, and I may add or remove tags, depending on what the future of the blog may fill the custom-tags with. For example, if we got a Phil or a Techno blog, their tags would get full much faster! So they’d need a new tag for that background information.

#mentions dream

#mentions phil

#mentions techno

#mentions kristin

#mentions glatt

#tw: christianity

#long form responses

DETAILS

Again, please note that these may be added to over time <3 this post will be linked on my intro post, so I promise it’ll be easy to find again :)

- “How does Tommy feel about Ossium?”

Oh, he LOVES that horse!! He loves so many animals, of course, but Ossium is especially very important to Tommy. He loves Quackity dearly. He loves any of Quackity’s pets, but Ossium is tied to so much of Quackity’s past — many of which, both Q and Tom were suffering in their own ways.

The fact that Quackity loves Ossium already means Tommy treats it like royalty. But Ossium also was a familiar sight in many stages of Tommy’s life during the DSMP story. A pillar, something to remind Tommy to stay in his own skin. Because if Ossium was around, so was Quackity. And Quackity had shown time and time again how survival and recovery is not always linear.

Quackity with a heart too big for his chest, and Tommy who had been taught to take up minimal space.

And a big fuckoff horse made of bones, just as alive as they were.

- “If Tommy WERE a hybrid of some kind, what would he be?”

I have been thinking about this for a WHILE actually!!!

There is the obvious avian, similar to that of Origins. If Tommy were an avian, my go-to is a hummingbird. Lots of energy, pollinators, fond of sweet and fruity things. Usually with red and bronze and copper wings — it’s actually why his intro post has copper wire and all those orangey colors 🥰 I had intended to have Hummingbird Tom when I started, but got distracted and never implemented it.

One of my recent thoughts bouncing around my head, though, is a shapeshifter :) I’ve been liking it a lot. Something about change symbolism, something about wanting to be just like his heroes.

Plus, it has a lot of potential for both pranks on his end — and angst on ours. Like if at his loneliest, he would shift to sound or look like someone he loved and missed, and pretend to hold a conversation with them to be less “alone.” Chattering to himself in Wilbur’s voice, running his hands along horns that weren’t his own, or hiding under big wings of shadow to block out the world, pretend he was back at his childhood home.

Or, you know. On a happier note, little elementary-age Tom trying to give himself a raccoon tail to look like Tom Nook.

This is one I am considering implementing into the blog — but I’m not sure yet 🤔 it is a shared universe after all, and would be a big decision to make without communication. Oh well. We’ll see <3

- “What are Tommy's three favorite things about Wilbur (can be physical, personality, things Tom associates with him, etc) and Tommy's three least favorite things about Wilbur?”

Well, Tommy the thing is. The same things that he loves can become what he hates about Wilbur and vice versa. Just depends on how they’re feeling or if they’ve had a fight.

In general, though, he loves how guitars always make him think of Wilbur now. He loves how heavy Wilbur’s coat is, and the few times he gets to wear it, he can pretend to be stronger than he feels. Most of all though, he loves how for better or worse, hugging Wilbur feels like coming home.

On the other side, he hates how stifling and how hard it is to get Wilbur to treat him like a person when Wilbur gets too in his head. He hates how he feels like he has to scream to be heard sometimes, and even then — still gets treated like a baby.

And he hates how much he misses him when he’s gone. How he knows how awful they are for each other, and still, he feels like he’s drowning without him.

- “What is Tommy’s least favorite thing about Quackity?”

Quackity can get tunnel vision when he has a goal. It isn’t always a bad thing, of course, especially when it means such amazing results as Las Nevadas. But it does get Tom to worry, and as a result, a bit more clingy.

- “Does Tommy have secrets he hasn’t told Wilbur?”

Oh, a lot. There’s so much he hasn’t divulged about Logsteadshire to Wilbur, of course, but also. A lot of L’manburg, Tom wasn’t exactly in it for the country. He was in it so that Wilbur could have something that was his, not Phil’s. That Wilbur could live for.

Tommy learned to love L’manburg over time, but it started just because he wanted his sister to be happy. Once he started seeing how obsessive Wilbur was over it, though, he began to regret that decision.

And felt awful about it, thinking that he was being selfish.

And, also, he is the one who keeps reverse-pickpocketing buttons and acorns and paper stars into Wilbur’s pockets. Have a sad secret and a wholesome one <3

#dsmp tommy #rp blog #mentions wilbur #mentions phil #mentions tubbo #mentions schlatt #mentions techno #tw: christianity #mentions quackity #tw: trauma #tw: unhealthy behavior #mentions dream #long form responses #mentions ghostbur #tw: injury #tw: violence #tw: codependency

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schismusic · 3 months

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Caterina Barbieri, six years later

After taking my last exam on June 4th I was waiting for the train home to leave. As the carriage I was in decided all of a sudden to piss a good liter of accumulated rainwater out of the ceiling and the walls behind me, I grabbed my earphones to listen to some music — and all of a sudden I was reminded of Information Needed to Create an Entire Body and INTCAEB by Caterina Barbieri. I first found out about Caterina Barbieri about a year and a half after she released Patterns of Consciousness, or right around the time she was releasing her retrospective compilation Born Again in the Voltage. At the time Caterina was a guest at a local electronic music festival, and it was incredibly unexpected for me to find myself more attracted by the two most mundane names in the lineup: hers, just a first name and a last name, exhuding elegant confidence; the other, Ross from Friends, a practical joke that sounded more fitting for some kind of fifth-wave emo band than it did the blissfully nostalgic tech-house act it actually stands for. And while I did love Family Portrait, I actually never listened to it in full in one single sitting. Patterns of Consciousness, on the other hand, immediately became my jam.

As I delved deeper and deeper into Barbieri's ever-looping, never-ending melody-making, I would actually find myself scouring for any and all available information on her work. Not much was available at the time, and I only accidentally stumbled upon her website that also included what I would later find out to be PoC's vinyl liner notes. Basically every melody Barbieri works with is a slow and constant accumulation/substitution of notes played by one monophonic synthesizer, dialed into a sequencer and slapped back and forth through a number of stereo delay lines to simulate counterpoint and even polyphony. The system by which the notes gather together and sort of gravitate into their respective position is, by the artist's own definition, "algorithmic", almost stochastic: eliminating possibilities until a powerful form coalesces and emerges out of nothing. Impossible to find a better soundtrack for my early university days, the 7am walks to Algebra class. And of course Information Needed to Create an Entire Body was exactly the sound I heard when learning how to count the subsets of k elements from a pool of n objects, or learning how to calculate the n-th number in the Bell succession. Little did I know that this record I'd naively stumbled upon would last longer in my memory than any of the classes I was attending at the time (this is regrettable, to an extent, but it also stands as a testament to just how much of an earworm Barbieri's work is).

I saw Caterina Barbieri play live three times, one of which together with Carlo Maria as Punctum (the sole vinyl pressing of Remote Sensing is to this day, speaking not just as a record collector but also as an estimator of that particular album, one of my "white whales": a gaping hole that might very well never be filled). It almost could have been four. I ran into Caterina Barbieri outside the train station of my city, about to catch the train to go back home; starstruck, I approached her, shook her hand. I knew she was going to play that night, and kind of in passing mentioned I would have loved to attend, but hadn't had any luck with the tickets. She was kind enough to offer to put me on a guestlist, which kind of took me aback: I wasn't even aware that that could have been a possibility, and I was so grateful she would offer that. I really did not know how to react to that. Unfortunately, the place she was going to play is pretty hard to get into, so nothing came of it, but even just the gesture was enough to actually make me stop and think. 2018 and 2019 weren't at all good years for me, but looking back it's these small, lacerating moments of kindness that stand out to me: signals that not everything was lost, that I could still become a better person and get better.

When Ecstatic Computation came out in May 2019, I had been religiously waiting for it to drop and the very moment I finally listened to it I knew we had an AOTY contender. It was literally everything I was hoping a sequel to Patterns to Consciousness to be, as someone who wasn't that into Born Again in the Voltage: heavily based on a comparable compositional method, yet somehow more human, more emotional, more ecstatic like the record itself says. I spent hours on end listening to the closing track, Bow of Perception, over and over again; the opener, Fantas, struck every chord it needed to; it was quite interesting and refreshing to hear Barbieri belt out ethereal vocals on Arrows of Time; However, the one that's stayed with me the most throughout all this is track 2: an otherwise unassuming, one-and-a-half-minute vignette striking like lightning with a sore violent melody in some sort of odd time signature (never really counted it out). Spine of Desire injects an inexplicable sense of danger into the entire record, and it never quite leaves, never afraid of its own nakedness, drenched in reverb it provokes the listener out of the analog warmth and into some edgier territories not too far removed from the more Oversteps-esque tracks on Remote Sensing.

Now I'll be completely honest with you all: I wasn't a fan of Spirit Exit when it came out, and I haven't exactly revisited it lately, but I did go to see Caterina Barbieri perform live at the RoBOt festival in October 2022 (on that same night, Ben Frost's show was plagued by performance-crashing issues to the main clock of all of his machines, and he still owned the night, shaking everything in his path right down to the bone). I had some fun, actually. I've met her and seen her so many times I'm convinced she must be terrified of me being some kind of stalker, which I clearly am not — I just like her live shows a lot, and if I had to be a bit of an asshole, they're usually on the cheap side, which makes it easier for me to go see them. At any rate, I went and grabbed a vinyl copy of the then-new album, which is still sitting unplayed on my shelf: not the nicest thing, but oh well. Now on the other hand, I knew what I was waiting for.

Last summer, Barbieri released a record called Myuthafoo, which she refers to as "Ecstatic Computation's sister album". The reason I was so hyped to hear it is that track 2, "Math of You", premiered (played along Pinnacles of You) in Virgil Abloh's Imaginary TV initiative. I was so fucking hyped to hear some new Barbieri tracks at the time — late 2020, I think — and when that track hit I was immediately sold. Spent a whole day reloading the page over and over again just so I could relisten to that new song: ice-fucking-cold. Like Ecstatic Computation, but from a parallel universe that's still in the middle of an ice age (Resident Advisor's review of the full album that featured it very cleverly says it's more or less like Ecstatic Computation, but replacing the human pulse with something more mechanical and computerized — I am paraphrasing, of course, to keep more in line with the tone of this piece and my writing in general). I was hooked. The opening synth swirl became its own track, Memory Leak, and it's as hard-hitting an opener as anything in Barbieri's catalog. Its strength? It is unbearably short. It should last much longer, and yet it doesn't. Cry about it.

youtube

Then what: all of a sudden, on June 4th, 2024, I am standing near the exit door of the train home after my last exam, and I'm listening to these two tracks that in my head have been practically synonymous with fucking discrete mathematics and combinatorics, in what feels like another life yet at the same time all too close for comfort. And I still derive enjoyment from it, and it's still the exact same enjoyment, which to me is the craziest part. Sometimes we find small elements of our past selves, refracted into tangential information, fragmented and forlorn and yet crystallized exactly as they appeared at the time. This entire post is essentially a counterpoint to the OPN one: it's probably not only surprise that I'm looking for. It's also something deeper than that and at the same time much simpler.

In the summer of 2019 I had just gotten my driver's license. I got two friends of mine onto my mother's car and we drove to Fano to see Caterina Barbieri play live in a former church which had lost its ceiling during some 1943 bombings. I was hoping she would play Bow of Perception, but I knew — looking at her other live shows available on YouTube — she wasn't playing that track, and would usually start off with Fantas, move almost to the end of the record, then do an old one (usually Scratches on the Readable Surface). Whatever, anyway, I was still hoping, driving on a highway for the first time in my entire life, trying to remember all of the different bells and whistles you need to consider when you're just starting out behind the wheel. As I was sitting on the grass, now freely growing on what once was the inner floor of the church, I remember watching the opening act (an admittedly very talented guy by the moniker "Aspect Ratio", you can find him here (link Bandcamp)) remove his equipment from the stage and Caterina Barbieri taking position behind her machines. The tension was palpable, for some reason. And then that first staccato line hit me. All of a sudden I knew it was going to turn out okay, as hard as it had been. Six years later, that same old feeling of catharsis runs me over again.

#musica #music #schismusic #schism writing #long form content #caterina barbieri #electronic music #minimalism #techno #Bandcamp #Youtube

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