#So Refreshing Dies

[craftystampin]

You Can Create It - International Challenge & Inspiration - July 2023

You Can Create It I’m so excited to be part of the international “You Can Create It!” group of Stampin’ Up! demonstrators.  The group was started by German demonstrators Anja Luft and Heike Fallwickl as a challenge to see what different and beautiful projects can be created from the same list of just a few materials. Every trimester there are 4 monthly envelopes plus an extras envelope.  Each…

[sealrock]

the major arcana, shuffled: 8/??

DEATH; ⤉ spiritual transformation, endings, transition, sudden or unexpected upheaval ⤈ fear of change, repeating negative patterns, stagnancy, decay

[androgynouspenguinexpert]

if u need a little lovin call on me

[secret-unburnt-guitars]

Hi i don't know much abt styx aside from general prog fandom osmosis but kwh has always intrigued me a little bit. Can you explain it in excruciating detail? (genuinely i'm not being sarcastic)

*cracks knuckles*

on february 22, 1983, styx released their eleventh studio album Kilroy Was Here. it was a concept album/rock opera though dennis deyoung likes to call it more of a "rock theatrical experience" in recent interviews. they even made a minifilm they played before the concert!!!! you can find it and the rest of caught in the act on youtube

it was made partially as a response to the rise of the satanic panic in the early-mid 1980s. people started to believe that rock music was evil and hiding satanic messages. the band was targeted by the public when they were accused in particular by the government of arkansas (i think?) of putting backwards messages (called backmasking) in their song Snowblind (the line "i try so hard to make it so" sounded like "satan moves through our voices" to some people. i own a copy of paradise theatre, that track in particular is damaged.).

and then dennis deyoung had a GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!!

imagine a big ol lightbulb flashing over him while the rest of the members of styx watch in mortal dread

so basically the album follows a sort of loose and vague backstory that's somehow still solid enough for people to follow some sort of a plot in their head (which is slightly backed up by Caught In The Act, the designated KWH "concert," which i'll get to in a second). the basic synopsis (paraphrased but still in excruciating detail) is as such:

set in a futuristic chicago(?) rock and roll has been made illegal under code 672 (prohibits the playing and purveying of rock music). Dr. Everett Righteous (played by JY), who was responsible for this, is the leader of the majority for musical morality or the MMM for short. the MMM is one of the strongest organizations in this universe since you know. they literally convinced congress to criminalize an entire genre of music for the entire country. righteous also hosts a television show where he encourages the public to burn guitars and records in a huge bonfire during “nightly rallies”. he also projects himself onto a big triangle over the skyline which i think is fucking hilarious i haven’t been able to get over it

Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (played by Dennis DeYoung, of course he's the title character), was a prolific rock musician at the time of the ban. he was thrown in prison for breaking the law and after being framed of murder. they accused him of bashing an MMM crusader's head in (which he obviously didn't do) after they raided one of his concerts at the paradise theatre. he then goes to rot in prison and is subjected to attempts of brainwashing by the dr. righteous show with the other “rock n’ roll misfits” they’ve arrested. it doesn’t work lol. i don't understand how it would work BECAUSE IT'S NEVER EXPLAINED

the prison kilroy is rotting in is maintained/monitored by japanese import, mass produced robots dubbed the "robotos," hence the title track. ignore how racist they look, it was 1983, this is not my fault

i mildly dislike them but it sucks how they’re essential to the plot ANYWAYS

here comes Jonathan Chance, (played by Tommy Shaw, albeit reluctantly) who is a rebel that is part of a underground resistance (that's only really mentioned once). with his friend, he breaks into some unknown area that is most likely a recording studio and hijacks the live television recording of the dr. righteous show. he proceeds to namedrop himself and then run off

credit to @mccoys-killer-queen for the gifs!!

kilroy sees this happen, which inspires him to attempt to escape the prison. kilroy incapacitates a roboto that visits his prison cell and disguises himself as it so he can escape without being noticed (i do not like the way he does this)

after kilroy escapes, he goes throughout the city and leaves messages for jonathan, leading him back to the paradise theater which is now the Dr. Righteous Museum for Rock Pathology

it's got a bunch of shitty animatronics that include people like jimi hendrix and elvis presley, but at the very back is an animatronic of kilroy repeatedly bashing in someone's head

this is my favorite part of the minifilm which i've basically explained sorry. you see like what you think is another roboto emerge from the shadows, and then it takes off its mask AND IT'S THE ACTUAL KILROY!!!

(this is taken from the live show, the transition is so goddamn dope)

and then dennis deyoung prances around and has his little pick me theater main character moment and sings mr. roboto and dances and stuff it looks so stupid. the live version of mr. roboto is way funnier than the official music video i don't know. i posted it about here before but i love this part in particular

so that's how kilroy and jonathan meet and that's basically the plot of one of styx's most popular songs!! sorry i gave kind of a play by play of the minifilm

now here's the fun part !!!! (unfinished lore/controversy)

unfortunately the reception of this album was less than satisfactory for most people back in '83, since KWH was way far away from the brand that styx had made for themselves in the 70s. they made art rock and prog, but this was just straight up synthpop. some people liked it though. i read somewhere in an article that it "alienated their male audience" and honestly if you're alienated by a little bit of gay pick me theater bs from your favorite band, that's a you problem

caught in the act was the designated "kilroy concert" that styx did sometime in 1983. the concert, however, doesn't give any. depth. to any additional explanations of multiple plot holes present in the story. as much as i love and cherish dennis deyoung he didn't do a very good job at writing this.

caught in the act felt more like a compromise than a show, seeing as the banter after the performance of mr. roboto was very bare? kilroy explains to jonathan that he was framed for murder, and then he goes in depth on the night it happened. "the crowd was totally psyched," he says, and then it goes to JY performing a guitar solo, which leads into the rest of the concert. the entire concert was portrayed as a flashback and gives no real backstory to any of the established characters. and then at the tail end of the concert they get "raided" by the MMM and you watch as an MMM officer murders one of righteous' own followers with kilroy's guitar. they cut back to kilroy and jonathan, they sing haven't we been before, and then kilroy hands jonathan this sick ass glowing guitar, then they perform the world's worst finale. the dance party ending of caught in the act. it sucks. it's horrible. i hate it. also there is no dennis deyoung in the kilroy was here universe lmfao

i'm still grateful for the concert though don't get me wrong!!! amazing concert

if the rest of styx didn't want to rip dennis deyoung apart for making them do this (i recently learned from a manager that DDY made them turn down an opportunity to perform at one of the largest concerts of the 80s, because he was like "but muh kilroy"), i believe songs off the album like High Time and Double Life would have been performed at Caught in the Act. both extremely lore-heavy songs, especially double life. i really wish they played double life. but c'est la vie, i guess.

literally everyone in the band hated dennis' guts so much while they were making this (justified, he was a stubborn asshole during production) but god was it worth it. for me at least. i imagine one of the conversations about production went like

JY: dennis have you considered that maybe this is a bad idea Dennis: i'm gonna make you the villain of the story if you don't shut the FUCK UP

i still think that JY had a little bit of fun though. he was hamming it tf up as dr. righteous i'm sorry you need to watch the mv's which you can find on youtube as well

but unfortunately tommy shaw wasn't having a good time at all, he literally quit on stage and stormed off and styx split for a while bc of this album i mean LOOK AT HIM HE'S SO PISSED OFF

overall this album is both cheese AND corn, worst album i've ever listened to, and yet it's given me a purpose in life. i've written 7,000+ words in one document about this album just to try and fill in the blanks the lore has, it's got so many. it's a running joke on this blog, i really hope you check out the album, because i think it's wonderful and it's endearing regardless of the controversy, it's too late for me. save yourself

[sylvies-chen]

and what’s so tragic about izzy’s death is exactly what makes it make sense to me which is that izzy was never going to be anything other than a symbol.

so much of izzy’s journey hasn’t even been about himself, especially in season 1. season 2 made him branch out, have to figure out who he is a little bit, but so much of what he does is reactionary and all symbolic of blackbeard.

izzy is at his most frustrated in season 1 because ed is at his most emotionally frustrated as well (i.e. he’s bored, feeling restless, and that rubs off on izzy). he reacts to ed’s crush on stede poorly, tries to destroy their relationship because he sees it as a threat to the persona that they crafted together. in season 2, when ed’s at his lowest point and suicidal, so is izzy. when ed starts to heal, so does izzy. and season 2 lets that be about izzy too, and his own journey, but it is still so unbelievably tethered to ed. in season 1 especially, I read izzy almost as a physical manifestation of ed’s self-loathing or intrusive thoughts.

izzy says it best in the end: “blackbeard was us. you and me.” izzy was a permanent fixture of blackbeard. he was instrumental to what ed was trying to construct, and izzy himself built it too. encouraged it. was the foundational pillar of blackbeard. that identity had higher meaning to him. except then ed didn’t want to be blackbeard anymore, and izzy was the only symbol of that life left. killing him off was, symbolically, killing blackbeard off.

and it sucks because izzy was his own person, he was growing to thrive as his own entity and learning to accept who he was, but he also spent so long being part of someone else’s person. I don’t think he regrets that. I think he quite enjoyed it, in some weird way, for a long time. izzy died before he could really even begin to fathom what he wanted for himself. besides, all he really wanted to be was a pirate.

and it’s a cautionary tale for how it’s so hard to come back from losing yourself in your own idea of somebody else, but it’s also just really sad that his death cements him as someone like that, someone who lived and breathed for other people, who spent so long being invested in a collective and the power structures that enabled it that he never got the chance to discover and embrace the kind of person he was outside of all that. briefly, a glimpse of it, with la vie en rose, but only ever an echo.

like it or not, izzy was a very inherently symbolic character. he was never going to be anything other than a symbol. he died a representation which furthered ed’s story and his journey. I think it’s devastating, I think it makes a lot of sense for ed and for izzy both as individuals and as a duo, and I think it’s the only way izzy ever would have wanted to die anyway.

[supurman]

[baby-xemnas]

bepo "i have to grieve over my brother but my husband is back from his personal little war and I'm way too happy about that so i'm crying out of happiness instead" of the mink tribe

when something happens but you are already entirely occupied with a much bigger thing - and its crazy that law going off on his "i may not return, sorry" mission alone - WAS more important to bepo in the moment than learning about the death of his brother...

because realistically he kinda lost his brother when zepo left when bepo was 8. he just vaguely held onto hope of possibly seeing him again. learning that big mom killed him took away that possibility and that's all that bepo lost

meanwhile law is bepo's whole life....he lived with law for his conscious years as a teen and adult, and even in simple numbers he lived with law for longer that he lived on zou

i'm absolutely reading too much into the bad writing and shoddy development of bepo& zepo's story, filling the giant gap all by myself but i like that it being underwritten aids to lawbepo. and i love the simple brutality of it

[breastmaster64]

catching up on slmccl's qsmp shit is so fun bc like. you can tell that he actually enjoys this server.

[agendratum]

i think i finished tgcf

i say "i think" cause this book has the extras as well, but no specification when the book itself ends and the extras begin, so I'm just guessing based on this giant glaring equivalent of words "THE END" written in the end of the chapter i just read

anyway

good story, man, good story

[butwhypants]

What I love about the titanic sub, is it's like the polar opposite of the Suez boat stuck incident

Where that was a minor inconvenience that no one person was really responsible for but affected just about everyone on the planet equally, this is a great tragedy for a handful of stupid idiots who built the world's shittiest submarine and they are the only ones affected by it in the slightest

[gammija]

only tangentially related to this ep, but - i have an Avatar concept around the cold/freezing water/hypothermia and drowning, and Ive discussed before which Fear that would most closely align with. A lot of people said the Buried or the Lonely, maybe the Vast, mixed with Dark.

Water and cold can be hard to categorise, even aside from how the categories are arbitrary lines drawn between fears etc etc. Cause these motifs have shown up with the Vast, Buried and Lonely, and probably others on occasion too.

But I think the cold an sich, and cold water especially, are most closely related to the Dark. Just like how Manuela describes the darkness as not the opposite of light, but the absence of it, the universe's natural state; so too does she talk in today's ep about how cold is not the opposite of warmth, but the lack of it. Cold is stillness, quiet, numbing. Dark.

...and also;

109, Nightfall: "As soon as my foot hit the water, I fell into it completely. It was colder than anything I had ever experienced, and the torch slipped from my hand as my vision immediately went dark."

140, The Movement of the Heavens: "I gripped the head of my foul adversary, and forced it down, into the dark pool before us. There I held it, the water so cold upon my skin the marks have yet to fade."

143 Heart of Darkness: "... I began submerging the first of the sacrifices in the brackish water it had blessed with its stillness."

143 ,, : "There is another world, a world of still and quiet darkness, where no heat touches..."

Other Fears statements occasionally also feature water, sometimes even cold water (though it's always accompanied of a mention of how dark it is, too), but it's not as much of A Thing as with the Dark. And I think it's a cool motif which they should get more credit for!

@a-mag-a-day

[risingsunresistance]

i went to a con over the weekend and bought a bunch of stuff from a rock shop. love going to cons in this area bc it's like 25% fandom junk (and i dont rlly watch anime), 50% arts and crafts, and another 25% JUST for funko pops hdhfhd

already showed you Apple :]

also got this lil tree

some mushrooms to go with my bigger mushroom that i got at a different convention from different people jdgfkh

and... ROCK PIG !! he is wonderful and also very heavy

also bag update! got the heart pin at the con, everything else has just been added/moved/etc overtime lol. need to space it out better but im tired of stabbing myself so it's fine for now

also ark got me a beetle :D

[suntails]

Hiya!

I saw your SilRuggie post and I feel you on the "Silver and his many boyfriends" part.

Idk what it is about Silver but he's so... Shippable?

Like I ship SilVil, KalimSil and JadeSil which are kinda popular. But it's also stuff like RidSil and LeoSil (oh so much brainrot currently about LeoSil,) Which aren't as popular.

He's probably my most shipped character like... EVER.

(I may have gotten some ship names wrong)

IT’S THE CHEMISTRY IT’S THE WAY HE HAS CHEMISTRY WITH SO SOSOSO MUCH OF THE CAST!!! he’s so deeply just…good, and he cares so earnestly, and he has examples of interactions with almost fuckgng everyone at this point. like i can understand why someone would ship just abt any silver ship, i GET it, bc theres so much potential. i think i have like…3? that im neutral on? maybe?

also hearing u associate silvil with the kinda popular ones, im fuckign weak at the knees. that is incorrect but im pretending ur right bc it makes me oh so happy

[inblackwoods]

I got into this series starting with Together and decided recently to go back and do the adventure mode of the first game. That was difficult. King of Winter led to me making Wilson stand inside a ring of evil flowers holding the divining rod in the middle of the night, waiting to get low enough sanity to get by the obelisks (no green mushrooms in sight). Thought it was Dramatic and Pretty. 

[flovverworks]

gah i need to ramble. i dont know how itd work/how to not make it push things too far/itd be useless anyway since akira knows 0 about fighting/does noooot have the stamina most ppl who end up fighting does<3, but taking the whole "can help oz use magic at night" into a buffer concept.......cuz i dont find a way to use that stuff/the sages book/etc in aus enough T_T something something when akira forms bonds with ppl............. so i was like "ig their evol could be something where i can work around it into that" BUT I DONT WANT THEM TO HAVE ONE........my normal little guy............who somehow can enhance u should the need come......

BUT it means i end up thinking about the time oz killed someone in front of akira. cuz it was at night/dawn. 'have u seen a wizard turn to stone' 'no' and holding them in a way so they wouldnt see auughhhhhh...........->figaro who ALSO has killed someon(something) in front of akira. and how quiet akira is after. no further comment i should reread that spot story now that its voiced

[the-acid-pear]

I swear I'm going to sleep now but i just... Love how genuine everything feels in Pizza Tower. Like everything is so awful yet it's a game injected with So Much Genuine Love. From the way granny and the game itself protects Peppino, to how it's forgiving on its gameplay, and just the way the characters even with their rivalries are just shown to be goofy and able to get along... Like i don't know man it just makes me soft. It feels so rewarding. Like hell yeah. Love wins or something. 🥺💞