#god i love it so much. and god the SOUNDTRACK

[otsanda]

So @sayuri-of-the-valley and I were talking about the music in Good Omens 2 and particularly the similarities and differences in the music that happens 'Before the Beginning' (that's the song title) and at The Kiss (that's not the song title) and I have accidentally developed Theories and had Thoughts, so I’m gonna share them in case anyone else wants to weigh in.

First of all, the general musical structure is similar. They are both dramatic moments that start quietly, grow to a powerful crescendo at the Big Moment, and then resolve more quietly again, but with subtle changes that make them feel very different. Without actually going through and checking it, they sound to be at roughly the same tempo (around 140 BPM) and comparable time signatures.

Now, I'm treating these two dramatic moments and the surrounding music as two songs, although in the soundtrack the music surrounding The Kiss is actually divided into two songs itself: I Forgive You and Don't Bother, so that's. Fine. I'm normal about that. I'm sure dividing that in half doesn't Mean Anything at all. I'm NORMAL about it!!! Ah... anyways.

The instrumentation for both Before the Beginning and The Kiss is also very similar. Both songs start with orchestral winds and strings and add a powerful choral part (on the same pure round vowel sound, no less!) on the big crescendo. Both add orchestral chimes (bells) for that epic religious feel. Both the nebula creation and the kiss were a revelation. Something like a religious experience.

And then both songs resolve featuring wind and strings again, among other instruments. The "after" part of both songs also features more pitched percussion (harp, maybe a celesta, glockenspiel, possibly a dulcimer or some other fun, ethereal pitched percussion in Before the Beginning, but interestingly a piano in Don't Bother). Ouch. That hurts.

Now, to me: the piano is possibly representing the nightingale, Crowley and Aziraphale's love of Earth and humanity, whereas the glockenspiel and etc. may be more representative of heaven. Just a guess. I would have to do more careful listening for a more solid theory.

I don’t have perfect pitch so it’s hard to tell without getting out my instruments or transcribing the piece, but I’m willing to bet ‘I Forgive You’ is in the relative minor key to Before the Beginning’s mostly major key (I *think* ‘Before the Beginning’ might be mostly in the key of C major and ‘I Forgive You’ in A minor, but I could be wrong). Regardless, the former is major and the latter is more minor, but otherwise a lot of the chord structures, especially at the big moment, sound very similar.

More on instrumentation: ‘Before the Beginning’ uses more (ethereal?) flutes in the wind sections and The Kiss uses more reed-based, (earthy?) winds like clarinet, bassoon, oboe, etc. Different feel, but the same kind of structure. Both moments heavily feature a big string section for the nice full orchestral sound.

Before the Beginning has a lot going on musically before the crescendo and it intentionally feels kind of chaotic and unformed bc each instrument family is doing something a little different, building anticipation, etc. and then at the big crescendo, they all come together. Very powerful. Then after the crescendo, we get a subtle, playful reprise/variation of the Good Omens Main Theme. The strings and the winds are no longer entirely together at this point. They’re sort of playing off one another, leaving space. Having a conversation.

By comparison, in ‘I Forgive You’ the wind/strings start off playing together, in a sad version of unison before the crescendo (they both knew the conversation they were having wasn’t going to end well but they fundamentally *understand* one another now; they’ve been talking for millions of years). And AFTER the crescendo of The Kiss, the song ‘Don’t Bother’ DROPS the majority of the string section and gives the melody to a solo violin (alone!!!!). Even worse (better) the strings and the woodwinds and pitched percussion are no longer playing together. This time, they aren’t even having a conversation. They’re musically doing a separate lines. It feels extremely lonely (because it is). The violin is very exposed. The piano is very exposed. Even the chorus sounds exposed (smaller group of singers?). This ALSO includes a reprise/variation on the main GO theme, but instead of being playful it’s extremely sad (as though you didn't notice). The rest of the orchestra is still there, providing background, but it's not the same.

The Biggest Decision (the song after Don't Bother) has a lot more of those ethereally coded instruments again. Harp, pitched percussion. Full string section. Angelic chorus. Aziraphale is making the hardest/worst decision to return to heaven.

And to round it out, once we get to "The End?" we are back to piano. Our duo is separated. Now in place of the solo violin we have solo cello and piano. Gutting. We get notes of the ethereal celesta (I think). The piano keeps us grounded, but cello is a big focus. We also get more of that haunting chorus and violin runs. And then we end with solo piano playing the same 5-note run three times. Alone. After every other instrument has dropped out. Very lonely.

Just for fun, (and to end on a slightly more positive note), I went back and listened to the ox rib music as well, which was surprisingly consistent with some of my theories from up above and also not on the soundtrack so although I'm sure it has a name, I certainly don't know it.

In the ox rib section, there are more instruments before the first big moment (when Aziraphale tries the food) that are going back and forth. Again it sounds to me like they’re having a conversation… tempting and being tempted. Winds and strings (strings are tremoloing like at the kiss for that sweet, sweet tension), but also brass instruments. We have some more ethereal sounding pitched percussion, especially *before* he tries the food but afterwards it... switches to piano! Like I said: Earth!!!

The choir is on a different vowel altogether for this part (more aggressive and ominous, a taller Ah instead of a round Oh/Aw like the first two musical moments). The choir is also much more rhythmic. Again, increasing tension. And, of course, after he tries the food the music supports the tension of the scene by gradually building, getting louder and bigger after the key moment has already passed. It's super interesting that Aziraphale trying the food is actually quite quiet, but the music grows quickly afterwards. Sort of the inverse of how the other two scenes play out musically! Fascinating!!

Anyways, let me know what you think I got wrong and what I missed and if I thought something was a celesta when it was actually a glockenspiel or something. I am thrilled and devastated by this incredible music.

[gothsuguru]

this man has no fucking right to be THIS beautiful… jinshi my LOVE.

[melhekhelmurkun]

said it before and will say it again, Padme and Anakin’s love theme is one of the best songs in the entire series

[caluupin]

Finished TGAAC around 2 1/2 weeks ago but only finished the doodles today. but still, here ya go!

[drunkonduty]

Its 4:45 am rn rewatching ew

Transgender real

[salty-dracon]

What the hell. They shut down the studio behind Hi-Fi Rush. What the hell. What the actual fuck.

[ghoulwings]

The signalis soundtrack is haunting me and I need to talk about this or I’m gonna explode

So. Orrery. The track that plays in. Well. The room with the orrery. Now I don’t know much about the military but I’m assuming this room is where things are planned it in relation to the different planets (attacks, current conditions ect)

The track itself has a sort of static in the background, faded noises and a distant piano.

At exactly 1:08 you hear the sound of a jet starting up

Then, at 1:24 you hear marching. But it’s not like a the type of marching that we have in the military, there’s a pause between each step, and then a sudden two steps, before repeating again.

What we’re hearing is the vinetan army.

The fact that we can here all of these things relating to the military, that we know elster couldn’t have heard, along with the static and fadedness of the track, and the fact that interacting with vineta elster literally says “The Ocean World ravaged by war, I can hear the sound of the sea” means that what we’re hearing is from elsters memories. Of Lilith. The track is representative of Elster memories from her gestalt life returning.

[zylphiacrowley]

What is Suikoden about? :>

Ohhhhh hohohohoho Meg, you have no idea what you've done (I'm sorry this is going to get wordy... I just really love this series so so much).

So all the mainline Suikoden games (plus Suikogaiden I&II which are visual novels) take place in the same universe, some years apart. All the games have war as a main central conflict, but you usually play as a young "unnamed" protagonist (technically all the heros have like manga canon names iirc), with the exception of Suikoden III which took on a tritagonist situation where you switch between three main heros and then you make a decision about halfway through the game which one you want to be the "main" hero (as a bonus you also get to play the story from the "villain's" perspective as well if certain conditions are met). The series is based on the classic Chinese novel, The Water Margin (perhaps rather losely. I own the novel but I haven't actually ever gotten that far into reading it OTL).

One major important part of the story is the runes system, which is essentially the magic system. There's many runes that you can just straight up buy from vendors in the game, but then there are also 27 "True" runes, which are super powerful, and usually come with built in immortality (except the Rune of Punishment which.... Does not :)) and a lot of them also come with fun and horrible Extra "Perks":tm:! Each game also has at least one of the 27 True Runes that your protagonist ends up wielding. The in-game legend about the origins of the True Runes goes as follows (pulled this direct from the wiki):

In the beginning, there was "darkness." Then finally, the "darkness" shed a "tear." From that "tear," the brothers Sword and Shield were born. Sword Bragged that he can cut anything. Shield replied that he could protect anything. Then the brothers began a legendary battle for seven days and seven nights. At the end, Sword cut Shield and Shield smashed Sword. Sword became the sky, Shield became the earth, and the sparks from the battle became the stars. And the jewels that adorn Sword and Shield Became the True Runes-- The runes that all other runes were born from.

Each game has a "base" that your hero finds at some point that gets built up not only as the story progresses, but also as you recruit characters to your army. Which is another thing all the games share! There is a collection of 108 recruitable characters in each game (give-or-take as III is kind of different in that it includes antagonists, and also the other games have some characters that will take other's places depending on certain conditions e.g. there's one character, who if you make certain decisions, will die in battle, and his son will join your army in his place, taking his place in the roster, but if you don't make those decisions, you keep the father and never meet his son). Not all the recruitable characters are playable in battle however, some of them are there as either battle support, offering you different benefits to your combat party, and some are there to add things to your base such as minigames, shops, or entertainment (The Suikoden II Iron chef style minigame is still my all time favorite videogame minigame, although some of that might be nostalgia talking lol). It's incredibly rewarding to return to your base after recruiting people and then find another wing added onto it and sometimes with more fun minigames to play. It really starts to feel so lively! Also if you recruit all 108 characters and fill your roster (known in-game as the Tablet of Stars) usually before the final major tactical battle, you unlock different really cool extras (like the aforementioned ability in III where you get to play through parts of the game from the "antagonist's" PoV)

Oh gosh, another thing all the games have in common is there are three battle systems. 1) your typical turn-based system (6 characters):

2) a duel system where it's 1v1 in a sort of rock-paper-scissors style thing where you have to read your oppenent's dialogue to determine how they're going to attack and react accordingly or take massive damage

and 3) the large-scale "tactical" battles, where you set up battle units with the characters you've recruited and then you essentially play a semi-chance based version of chess and fling them at each other on the field and try to reduce the enemy to a certain number, hold out until a certain amount of moves/time has passed, or just all out reduce their army to zero.

(also lol this video has the joke about Viktor's Lion flag)

Along with all the war, there's a bunch of deeper underlying themes like companionship, loyalty, hope, grief, loss, guilt, you know all the happy fun JRPG style storytelling elements! And honestly that's what really elevates the games. I think it's a lot like some of XIV, especially StB and HW in that respect. Like yes, war is going on, and it's the main big central conflict, but there's always more to keep you engaged and interested in the heroes and their journeys. I was going to go on and explain a synopsis of each game specifically, but lol just this is already soooooo long. There's also a villain (he's not the main villian.... ohhhhh no) in the first two games who's a vampire, his name is Neclord (fuckin lol), and he has a bangin battle soundtrack:

There is literally so much more I could say about the series, but like literally if it sounds even slightly interesting to you, I implore you to pick up the remasters when they come out in March (I believe on multiple platforms, including Steam and Switch iirc?)

Also a special mention about the creator Yoshitaka Murayama, who passed away in February of this year. He created his own game studio, Rabbit & Bear Studios which developed the Spiritual successor series to the Suikoden series, Eiyuden Chronicle (which had an incredibly successful kickstarter campaign and is available to play to the public right now, and I own but have not yet played).

[gatzbright]

george as max from:

GeorgeNotFound & Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

[averlym]

some very very quick costume shorthands!

[fog-n-dance]

Season 1 Episode 8

(Yes the rewatch continues. I'm averaging 1h05 per episode as I keep rewinding and losing my mind.)

You know that scene where Crosshair is half conscious, being patched up after having gotten fried by the engine, and the stormtrooper reports that ground forces have the Batch on the run ? See the way Crosshair’s eyes shoot open ? The way he jumps on his feet despite being in atrocious pain and covered in bandages ? In this very moment, as he says "Get me on the shuttle", I want to believe that he is not meaning it as "I have to arrest them", but rather as "I need to get the fuck out of here with them".

Look at it : his chip just got destroyed, or at the very least heavily damaged, his own thoughts are now pouring and covering the Empire's humming, yelling at him what's happening and what happened and what he's done under its influence. He is suffering in his entire body, his strong points as a sniper have been completely neutralised (face = seeing ; right arm = stabilising ; left leg = anchoring) and by definition so has he. He is waking up from a nightmare and the very first thing he hears is that the people he's been associating with safety his entire life are leaving, without him, I mean- In this moment, his tone and demeanour are completely spontaneous, there is not an ounce of his usual control and carefulness : he is deep into survival mode, like one would, and the instinctive reaction is to find his brothers.

Hell you could even say that there is a moment of panic when he realises he is surrounded by enemies : as he is now slowly getting back to himself, seeing stormtroopers and clones (that since Order 66 are not considered allies anymore -not that they were that much before-) all around him, there is that split second of fight or flight kicking in and telling him he needs to get far away from enemy territory. He knows that he is in no condition to make a run for it and that those are his real enemies, you can tell by the way he pushes the troopers away before remembering who he is to them here and now, and decides to use it to his advantage in asking for transport to the Batch’s location.

So imagine that : you just got second and third degrees burns on your entire body, are powerless as a sharp shooter, are surrounded by hostiles, the voices in your head are fading away and are slowly being replaced by your own, screaming at you everything that’s been happening while you were in mental jail, the weight of the realisation spreading in your limbs and drowning your heart, the guilt, the hurt, the not understanding… Where would the reptilian part of your brain want to take you upon the second you realise your life has collapsed ? If you answered "to the only place I’ve ever felt safe and loved", fear not for I did too.

So having to watch it leave without you, leave you behind even, would not only be soul crushing : it would make anyone dissociate.

As we all know, Crosshair is going to have A Lot of time between him and himself in the coming months ; the sewing back of his two fragmented minds (the echoes of the chip and the pleas of his heart) is going to be an incredibly challenging task and will leave many shards and splinters behind, ones that only the hardly won back love, patience and understanding of his family will help remove.

Rant over.

[doux-amer]

I can't believe the girls are back. I always dreamed of them reuniting because the way they broke up was so unfair to them and out of their hands. None of them wanted it to happen and now look at them get their flowers! Everyone screaming their heads off, singing the lyrics to every song, going wild like it's a festival, not a concert. Celebs of all sorts showing up, music acts from different generations giving their messages of love and gratitude, etc. People of all genders in the audience (what girl group gets so many guys yelling/screaming girl anthem songs like this especially in Korea? You know 2NE1 and BB were the special groups where they had more of a gender balance amongst their base than any other group)??!?!?! The girls belting out everything live and just. HIT AFTER HIT AFTER HIT AFTER HIT. Their discography is amazing.

Most of all, I love seeing them together, having fun. I teared up watching how emotional they were, with Minji crying and Chaerin trying SO hard not to cry. Bommie just....so much happier than we've seen her in a long time and soaking up the love we have for her. Dara having her dreams come true because there's no bigger Blackjack in the world than her. Them jumping around the stage together.

There's never been a girl group like them before, and there's never been a girl group like them since. Irreplaceable and impossible to imitate. No one has the charisma, the charm, the everything.

[thethingost]

god i love watching The Thing with people who haven’t seen it or have watched it like once or twice and dont remember all the scenes. like im watching it rn with 2 friends, one of whom has never seen it and one has seen it before(who has also said it’s his fave horror movie RAAAAHHHHHH) and watching them react to the movie OOOHHHHH they both got startled at the norris-chest chomp and good god did it make me feel like an ape IDK WHY i Live for these reactions THEY FUCKING RULE!!!!!!! yeesss you got scared at a big moment like you should have been when it was Way quieter before and it was not obvious norris was a thing(then again we aren’t really Supposed to know like how the guys in the film don’t know) and holyyy moly BALLAAKRKAKLAYAWMSKBWAAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

i read part of the first chapter of sea glass gardens a while ago but decided to come back once I knew more about the characters and world building of jjk. Anyways and I watched jjk 0 and your telling me he actually blew up the school with the power of love??? Like full on textually the power of love??? He straight up used the power of love to nuke Geto and subsequently the school??? Are you kidding me?? I'm losing my mind. What the fuck

my boy has powerful love within him and also incredible and indiscriminate violence. what more could you want from a character.

[undefeatablesin]

In other news, I finally acquired my Platinum trophy for LoP today and I feel deeply accomplished lmao ✨

[eir-trixa]

For a moment, I can shine ✨

Got a grin and a fin that works fine 🧡🩵

Got a bit of inspiration for Melody’s design from her Auntie Indira since their tails are a little close in color. Honestly all the mer designs in the new TLM movie slapped so hard its a shame we only got to see them for a sparse few moments. Holding on tight to the possibility of a sequel so we can see more of them and (eventually, maybe) Melody herself.