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[sgpolter]

I gotta rant about the Mirror Islands

Just a heads up I’m gonna make up my own terminology here to help me explain.

In my head, I view the islands in MSM as one of two types: Band, or Orchestra.

Band islands are those where the individual sounds of its monsters are highlighted. Not every monster if given equal spotlight and some can even end up falling completely under the radar, but as a whole they give as many monsters their chance to shine. Examples of this include Ethereal Workshop, Magical Sanctum, Seasonal Shanty, and Mythical Island.

Orchestra islands are those where every monster comes together to form one complete song. Very few individual monsters are highlighted, as these islands view the overall song as more important that the talents of its monsters. Examples of this include Gold Island, Shugabush Island, Magical Nexus, and Wublin Island.

All of the Natural islands fall under the “orchestra” category. While some individuals do get to shine in some spots, overall the most important part is that they add to the overall song. As a result, some of the individual monster sounds can be a bit minimal, since they just need to add to a whole rather than stand on their own.

What does this have to do with the Mirror islands then?

Simple: the Mirror islands try to be band islands

Every Mirror island tries to highlight the individual merits of each monster, which is a wonderful idea, but that doesn’t work since each monster isn’t composed to do that. They’re trying to take backing monsters and thrust them into the front, which doesn’t work, so they end up having to shove more monsters into the mix until it sounds good, but then the monster they were trying to highlight gets drowned out again.

It’s the same problem that Amber and Light run into, where they both try and do something that their monster’s aren’t written for.

One thing in particular I’ve noticed that they do is that they’ll shove Wubbox into any space that isn’t filled, which is a bad thing to do when the only thing keeping a verse afloat is the very difficult to get monster.

All in all I think the Mirror islands were a good idea, but with bad execution. If the Monster Handlers really want to highlight the individual monsters, they’re gonna have to rewrite and re-record at least a few of them.

[sgpolter]

Some of you motherfuckers wore homestuck horns not so long ago, don’t think I forgot