#Prog 1

[minstrel-in-the-gallery]

Why YOU should get into jethro Tull!!

You’ll never run out of things to listen to, with over 200 songs and 23 studio albums!

Each album has a slightly different genre to the last, you can go from blues to prog to folk to hard rock!

Every single member is so darn cute 😭 that’s like an added extra bonus

They’re pretty too 🥰

They have about 1,034,264 line up changes, so you never run out of new musicians to obsess over!

You gain a new friend (me!) and a close knit community on tumblr of regular Tull posters (again, me!)

No one else knows them, yet somehow they were one of the top ranking bands in the 70s. Flex on your family and friends with your cool knowledge! For example, did you know Jethro Tull is in fact not a the lead band member, but rather the name of the band? Cool stuff right 😎

1979 😐

They have amazing musicianship! They’re insanely talented, and absolutely blow your socks off in live performances. Give “Bursting out”, their live album from 1978 a listen, or chuck on a concert from YouTube!

Where should I start?

Well, that depends on you! Because each album is so different, it can be hard to choose. Here are a few helping notes to consider

The 70s were their peak era, any album from this time is gold! Songs from the wood, Heavy Horses and Stormwatch are known as the folk trio. Thick as a Brick and A Passion Play are proggy concept albums. Aqualung is super rocking, Minstrel is acoustic and This Was is blues. Venturing into the 80s and beyond may not be wise for the first time, unless you really like your synth.

Whose who? What’s all this I hear about lineups?

Jethro Tull went through a lot of personnel. Some names you might keep hearing are

Ian Anderson. He’s the main guy, and he’s on every album. Does the flute, singing and weird faces

Martin Barre. Guitarist for almost every album except the first! (And the last 2 but we don’t talk about that.) literal cutest person in the world. His middle name is Lancelot, for crying out loud

Barriemore Barlow. Drummer from ‘72-‘79, insanely talented, loves his short shorts and singlets (in red). Was favoured as a replacement for Bonham in Zeppelin.

John Evan. Piano player, half insane half beautiful mermaid person thing??? His fursona is a rabbit and has a habit of chucking stoves out the windows.

Basically, you can’t go wrong! Enjoy this train wreck of a band <3 (and if I don’t see any Tull dedicated blogs popping up in the next 24 hours I’m hitting someone over the head with my flute)

[hammill-goes-fogwalking]

16 - Tribute!!

[alistairs-art]

[puppypalice]

Rosa Luxemburg might be my favorite communists theorists because like half of her works feel like they could be modern day ml tumblr posts. Reform or Revolution, that’s just every argument between a social democrat and a “tankie”. Marxist theory and the proletariat, basically all non Marxist sociology is either A, a really poor criticism of marx b, dialectics but bad c, absolutely incoherent. And that’s just to give a few examples. Tbh I think if I could talk to her today she’s probably just be like “has the landscape of politics not changed at all” and I’d be like, well instead of blamquist we have Maoists and instead of Bernstein we have Bernie sanders so honstly no. However the Lenin was right virtually all the time so theirs that. Also I think she’s be chill with transgender puppy girls.

[vanmarkham]

50% of m2s parties are b1 parties and the ones that arent are alarm pheromones 1 parties

[zylphiacrowley]

self indulgent gposing tomorrow. I am too

tonight.

[emotionally-charged-arson]

Vivianposting 2.0

POV your married friends had a kid and won’t shut up about it

I love my happy, canon-combatant little guys

[go-go-devil]

My friend @silenthillmutual inspired me to join in on this tag game with their list, so let's a' go!

For this game, I'm gonna pick 5 of my favorite albums of all time, and see which one you all think is the greatest of the batch. Now, without further ado...

Anyone can join in on the game if they wish, but I'll tag @the-supernatural-atheist, @illusionaryneil, @ratmonsterz, @cloudyishdays, and @pinkiepiebones in particular because I'm curious to see which albums you'll pick for your polls :-)

[lusynthiaa]

the only downside to listening to punk and adjacent music again is that albums are like, 40 minutes max

[verysmallcyborg]

ONSAL DAY TOMORROW. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. catch the butch out in primal frontlines after like 3pm est and living in onsal until battleforged is obtained >:)

[killyjae]

Season 1 Episode 1: The Tearing in one gif

[hammill-goes-fogwalking]

HEAR ME OUT!!!! PLEASE ENJOY MY MASTERPIECE ->

[bedforddanes75]

is betty the sad girl guitar version of paris or am i insane

[dust-n-roses]

✨ the men of prog ✨

man with an open heart

model man

waiting man

lucky man

silent man

banjo man

man on the corner

man of our times

man in the moon

(21st century) schizoid man

working man

cinderella man

digital man

new world man

[alistairs-art]

Let's acknowledge the fact that cliff has kept the same haircut for 50 years

[emotionally-charged-arson]

Character Spotlight: The Chemist (Ayreon's The Source)

Ask and ye shall receive.

In the grand scheme of countless intertwining Ayreon headcanons infesting my brain, I like to have a nice, compact theme to refer back to for each album. Arjen is borderline intentional about not putting themes in his work, but they creep in anyway and you can dig them up and work off of them with a little elbow grease.

For me, The Source is about loss of purpose, which is sort of an overarching theme of the Forever saga anyway, but it shows up on a more intimate level in this album. Especially when you pull traits for characters out of thin air when you're 14 and eventually find a red thread through the lot of them you didn't actually plan for.

I did a really general overview of most of my versions of the Source cast and their whole deal while they're on Alpha. Just a whole mess of science, religion and state all crammed into one, eventually leading to the 'Frame taking over. In some way or another, these people all know each other and support a cause of some sort. When they're forced to leave their home planet, they have to grapple with the fact that their lives there were altogether pointless and figure out how to embrace the sense of rebirth that's a part of the Forever package.

Almost all of their arcs follow the same overall timeline: they had some *thing* they had worked towards for the better part of their lives, it's all ripped away in an instant with Alpha's destruction, and during their time on Starblade, they work their way back up to a new sense of collective self-worth.

There are, however, a few notable outliers. The Captain, The Chemist and TH-1 still have that theme thing going for them at the end, but how they get there is a little different.

So. Chemist. Like I said, pretty much everyone in the cast has an idea of who everyone else is. Not this guy.

Thomas Giles Rogers is an organic chemist with zero personal affiliation with any other character pre-album story. He graduated from the same enormous central university most of them did, but had no interest in tying his research, much less his entire career, to the fate of the planet itself. Not that he was ever offered or cares about politics at all, but still.

His motivations lie on more personal grounds. Giles is prone to stress, nervous breakdowns in academic settings, all that fun stuff. He always has been. His doctoral dissertation and the ten years of his career following it were dedicated to the synthesization of safe alternatives to sensory deprivation drugs. Either supplemental to the process or replacing it entirely. His "big" project for most of that time was an injection meant to temporarily alter the human respiratory system, allowing someone to breathe underwater for therapeutic processes.

The endeavor was a total failure, for all the resources put into it. Giles is forced to abandon the project after years of constantly being denied grants to pursue its production. People not prioritizing what he wants to use it for, his ineffective presentation, him refusing to let people hire him for research to weaponize it, whatever. All that work was for nothing and it takes genuine a toll on him.

It's really just a career slump, but his self-worth is so firmly attached to his perceived academic success that he can't cope. Four years before TDTTWBD, he drops all his research, picks up some entry-level lab tech job and just goes through the motions. No grandiose motivation to save the world like the rest of these yahoos, just surviving.

But anyhow. Russell does his thing, the 'Frame takes over, and one way or another everyone except Giles is crowded in Nils' basement accepting their fate and hopelessly looking for livable planets with no power or digital resources.

Gross oversimplification of Chronicle I, by the way. Russell drags a broken android into the place, Floor shoots Simone's ear off, etc.

The only remotely plausible option is Y, pretty grim given that the surface is uninhabitable and colonization could only occur if everyone somehow grew gills. As Hansi laments when a switch goes off in his brain and he remembers some science expo he went to a few years back, where some guy was presenting prototypes for...pretty much exactly that.

By pure coincidence, Giles is one of Simone's clients, signed onto her private practice she started after quitting her job as the previous president's counselor. She knows where he lives and works, and she and Tommy manage to track him down amidst the literal apocalypse outside (on account of Tommy having no scientific background and pretty much no other use to the group than scavenging for essentials on the surface in this part. Bonus points that he knows how to use a gun and supposedly doesn't care about his own death).

Giles, like a lot of people has basically been hunkered down in his apartment since the 'Frame took power (about three weeks) and is all paranoid and starving when they find him but they find him, take him back and convince him to pick his work back up all the same.

So he's part of the group now, and alternative to everyone else on Starblade who has no point to their lives now, Giles has FAR too much of a point. Using years old notes and limited resources, he has to create the greatest scientific advancement in the history of mankind in the maybe....six months that people onboard are able to live outside of suspended animation. The total extinction of the human race to follow if he fails.

This...does not mix well with

1. his whole self-induced, major-accomplishment based pressure thing since it's a wildly amplified version of it

2. The fact that he killed a woman during Run! Apocalypse! Run! (defending another character but still) and his control to give life and take it away over so many people, existing and prospective, constantly rotating in his brain

3. The more upbeat, hopeful characters unwittingly holding their expectations for their brave new world over him and what Liquid Eternity needs to be to satisfy them

4. Pretty much everyone else involved in the political side of things deliberately ceased contact with friends or family outside the party's inner circle, to prevent distractions or the possibility of blackmail, while they were still on Alpha. That devaluing of personal relationships is what they're conditioned to and this is more the focal point of Tommy, Floor and Tobias' sort of...joint character development situation, but it has an effect on Giles. This much more openly sensitive, emotional guy is surrounded by these jaded assholes who have no sense of the pressure he's feeling in more ways than one. This effect also applies to James (Historian) in a way, and the two actually kind of have a rapport going about it at the end of Chronicle II (syncing up with their little Condemned To Live duet), but the only person who seems to fully get what's happening to Giles is Simone, someone who deliberately separated herself from said jaded political asshole clique and who has prior knowledge of his experiences on account of literally being his therapist.

All in all just. Not having a good time, insisting that he has to do this alone and eventually external assistance from one or more characters being the only thing that solves it.

The other part of this compact theme thing is that our purpose, our humanity, is defined by our relationships and reliance on other people. We need something to strive for in order to feel like a person, and ultimately that 'something' comes down to either the preservation of the self, the other, or of the collective.

Once you resolve that, there is one other thing that defines the human experience and that is death.

Death and a point, a person, to avoid it in the name of. And Liquid Eternity took both of those things away. From there arises stagnation and a lack of purpose with no means of escape, the hallmark of the Forever Race.

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(gosh, I wonder if that ties into members of the party forcing away loved ones in the name of their progress even though it was pointless in the end. Or TH-1's self-preservation being their downfall after all the talk of cooperation and acceptance of emotional openness. Who's to say.)