#the fact that the beast is an in-universe folk monster such that people warn each other about him lest he deceive them

[gloamses]

the beast from over the garden wall as legitimate modern-day fae representation. or otgw fully as a take on fairy folklore. discuss

[mspa-music-analysis]

Beyond Canon - exclusion zone

alright first song in the Beyond Canon album, exclusion zone. lets break it up. 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS/LISTENING EXPERIENCE

I got literal fucking shivers. Holy shit. Holy shit. The first twenty seconds of this song is it’s own fucking experience. When the vocals come in at 00:46 I feel as though I am standing on a craggy cliff face, maybe on a mountain, the sky is grey, there’s mist and magic in the air, and I should be dreading something. I feel like taking a deep breath and preparing to see an army coming up over the adjacent hill. I feel like I’m about to go up against something huge. 

When I first clicked on the new Homestuck album in disbelief, double checking the release date, I wasn’t expecting much. Sure Homestuck music is utterly wonderful, but I’ve never been able to listen to instrumentals very well, they don’t capture my attention without lyrics to focus on. but hearing the first few notes of this song. Holy. Fucking. Shit. I am not the same man. Oh my god. This first minute is what got me to listen to this entire album in one sitting.

At 1:00 you hear a muffled voice and the sound of breaking glass, and it feels like the illusion of nature and magic and dread shatters. A robotic voice chimes in ‘you just made a monster’ and you get it, for just a second. You feel like something terrible has happened and you have no idea how the fuck you’re going to pick up the pieces. This song sets the stage for the album, and it makes anticipation thrum through your bones, especially on the first listen. 

The latter half of the song is letting this feeling sink in, letting your anticipation, your excitement, your dread, grow into a magnificent beast. As the last bit cycles you feel your heartbeat quicken, your breath catch, and you just have to sit there for a second. Holy shit. This song feels like saying ‘holy shit’ in reverence. Over and over again.

The ending feels like you have no idea what the fuck you’re getting into. All you can do is click onto the next song. 

INSTRUMENTAL/VOCAL ANALYSIS

I’m no musical expert, but I’m going to try to explain this as well as I can. Music snobs, sorry, experts, please remember I am but a humble fool who has never taken a music class beyond fifth grade. An amateur if you will. 

I’m going to be using the word synth so fucking much in these, aren’t I. I’m torn between some sort of string, a synth, or an organ playing the opening notes, and I’m fairly sure it’s the synth. Homestuck music wouldn’t be Homestuck music for not the synth. 

The synth, as I am going to call it despite how unsure I am that it is one, immediately gives you an overwhelming cathedral feeling. You get a little while to marinate in this feeling before the vocals chime in. The vocals and the synth meld so beautifully into each other, they feel so natural coming together. There’s a moment where you say ‘yay! vocals in a Homestuck song!’ which will later seem oh so ironic. 

Then, in a change of tone, a muffled, hard to understand, male-sounding voice pops in. It sounds like a frantic report, breaking news, or a call for backup. It could sound to some like officials chasing dangerous dissenters, and to others a discreet warning to fellow rebels that the brass are coming. I tried so fucking hard to get an audio editing program to pick this shit apart, but I have a Chromebook for some godforsaken reason. Sorry, folks, we’ll have to see if anyone replies to my tweet with our answers. For reasons, which are definitely real actual reasons with no attachment to aesthetics, I am going to call this voice ‘the radio’. 

Directly after the infuriating piece of walky-talky Esq vocals, there’s a sound of breaking glass. I think perhaps that is my favorite moment in the entire track, if not the entire album. Not to assign too much meaning to a singular bit of sound, but it feels like every expectation I had for Homestuck music was completely shattered. Like the glass ceiling that prevented Homestuck music from becoming legendary because it was just a shitty web-comic (which was already untrue) is broken through with just the first half of this song. Does that make sense? In short, this album really is on an entire other level of music entirely, and it knows it. This is possibly supported by the album cover, which is Ultimate Dirk sitting in a pile of previous Homestuck album covers. Must I explain this one? (I will if you ask, really. I’m perhaps a bit too eager, in fact.)

Directly after the glass shatters, more instruments join in. I think these are also synths? It sounds techy, it sounds dystopian. You know when people say techno is just beeps and boops? Yeah, there’s a lot of beeps and boops in this, and frankly, I love it. Then, another distorted, techy, mechanical, feminine?, voice pops in saying ‘you just made a monster’. I’m going to call this voice the monster, but not necessarily because I think they are the monster, and I will elaborate on this later. This is my second favorite moment in the track. It’s just. Wow. Breathtaking. The monster repeats for a while, the rest of the song. The third time, an almost more human sounding, but not by much, monster joins in. There’s an air of indignance, of anger, desperation, vengeance. It sounds like there’s another phrase buried under some sounds there, at 1:28? I absolutely can not make it out for the life of me, and it is driving me crazy. 

The monster is chopped up and distributed evenly throughout the rest of the song, quite fucking marvelously. At 1:39 there’s a pause in the instrumental, and for just a second, you’re left with this steady note sung by the monster. It’s haunting. I didn’t notice it my first few listen throughs, but now that I’ve been sitting here looping the track, I can’t help but hear it. It definitely gives me a feeling, but I haven’t decided what that feeling is yet. 

The sound bits that sound like a broken robot, or another voice saying ‘anoyie’ over and over, are quite possibly going to drive me insane. I find myself desperately needing to hear where the fuck these audio bytes came from. I need to hear the originals. I do not care if they are random mouth noises. My curiosity is insatiable. I am fairly sure it is just the monster cut to hell, but there’s just something nagging at me saying otherwise. I don’t know, perhaps I’m finally going insane from looping the robot song for two hours. 

I don’t love the ending? There’s one last monster repeat, a sort of clapping sound (an interesting change of pace), silence for half a second, more of that damned ‘anoyie’ and I am further convinced it is not the monster, and then nothing. It isn’t quite unsatisfying, but it isn’t satisfying either. It is most certainly an ending. I can say for a fact there are instruments in the ending. And that’s all I have to say on that.

HERE’S WHERE SHIT GETS CRAZY

Alright, time to sound like a madman. Here is where I am going to assign arbitrary Homestuck-related, possibly plot-related, meaning. Take all of this with a grain of salt and forgive my overuse of phrases like ‘I feel’ and ‘I think’. 

So, putting the song in the context of the album title ‘Beyond Canon’, and therefore most likely The Epilogues and Homestuck^2, I do indeed have a few theories. Not all make a whole lot of sense, and a few are based quite heavily on ‘feelings’ and ‘vibes’. I hated putting vibes in quotes, never make me do that again. To start with, the beginning, before the radio, reminds me very much of Ultimate Dirk (Ult. Dirk), Terezi, and RoseBot on that new planet. Perhaps because of the air of desolation, not in relation to the note, and foreboding? Perhaps because I have assigned an air of forced serenity to this part, and I very much feel like Ult. Dirk is trying to force serenity onto his section of the narrative, despite what’s coming his way? Hm. Much to think about. 

The radio, I cannot puzzle out exactly. DaveBot, perhaps? Trying to break through from the Candy universe and coming out muffled? I don’t have much to go on, and I am waiting until I have figured out exactly what the radio is actually saying. 

The glass shattering. Oh, the glass shattering. Fenestrated plane, anyone? The fourth wall, anyone? Good god, shattered glass + Homestuck = SHIT IS GOING DOWN. This makes me very excited. It could just be metaphorical, as I was saying before, but I very much have a feeling that things are going to get that particular brand of very Homestuck fucked soon. And I am oh so excited. 

The monster! Oh, how I love the monster. There’s so many things I can see the monster being, as well as referencing. Lets get right the fuck into it. First! The Auto Responder, or Lil’ Hal. You know how every splinter and alternate self combines to create the Ultimate Self? (I have so many theories about this, oh my god, I might make an entire other blog for more Homestuck analysis) Well, what if it isn’t a perfect meld? Dirk is a Prince, after all, a destroyer. There’s no way, however Ultimate he may be, he’s perfect and whole. What if specific splinters find their way to shine through? Like, for instance, Hal accusing Dirk of making a monster out of all his iterations. I know, it’s far fetched, and I took quite a few liberal steps to get there. But just perhaps.

A not so wild theory is an obvious one, I think. The monster is Rosebot. It’s vaguely feminine, robot-y, and references a recent creation. Rose’s consciousness breaking through Dirk’s command? Seems likely to me. 

A third! Perhaps it’s DaveBot? It seems less likely than the RoseBot theory, due simply to the femininity of the voice, but at the same time it seems like DaveBot would be more likely to fight Dirk’s control of his personal narrative, if only because we haven’t seen his robot form be entirely complicit yet. Either way, I doubt this one. I just want it on the record in case I’m right. *wink*. (I refuse to use a winky face in a semi-serious analysis, it just feels wrong.)

And this one isn’t really a theory, but I keep coming back to it. Is anyone else reminded of AradiaBot? Especially that second of the monster just singing with no instrumental. I can give no explanation except for a feeling. I wasn’t going to include this, but, well, trust your gut or something. Maybe she’ll come back and my random thought will be justified. 

Now, do I think this will be used in Homestuck^2 as a flash at some point. Short answer: I don’t know. Long and less shitty answer: I feel as though it could go either way! I can’t really see a song with vocals like this getting a flash, if only because it’s very straightforward and I don’t know if you can jam a whole lot of plot into this song, unlike some of the others. That said, it would be just like Homestuck to completely blow away my expectations and jam the entire ending into it. Hey, Homestuck? Please don’t do that. I love Act 7, I really do, but also just please don’t. Ever again, thank you. 

Maybe Meat Kanaya will liberate RoseBot from Ult. Dirk’s control and this song will play as she beats the shit out of him. I would like that, I think. 

CONCLUSIONS

Personal Rating: Holy Shit 

Objective Musical Rating: Robots Have Never Sounded So Vengeful And I Love It

Plot-Relevance Rating: It’s Possible But The Outlook Isn’t Good, Chief 

Would It Stand On Its Own?: Fuck Yes It Would. I Sang This When I Came Out Of The Womb.

did u nut tho: yuh