#in which I ramble too much

[elvensorceress]

You know how the music team literally never misses? Obviously, this choice is because of the episode title, but take a look at the lyrics because we’re going to talk about them lol

Some of this is me digging into my musical theater background, but generally? When you perform a song, you want to do it in character. Music like this is telling a story and lyrics are basically poetry. You can be playing yourself and your own thoughts, feelings, history, etc, but singing is done for an audience. At the very least, you want to convey the meaning of the lyrics through phrasing and styling and emphasis and expression and etc etc…

You want your audience to feel the emotion, to understand the story and the intentions of the music and lyrics. It’s theatrical. Which means you want to analyze what your interpretation of the lyrics are, what you think the story is conveying, what you are going to portray as you sing.

Love is in the air Everywhere I look around Love is in the air Every sight and every sound

And I don't know if I'm being foolish Don't know if I'm being wise But it's something that I must believe in And it's there when I look in your eyes

Love is in the air In the whisper of the trees Love is in the air In the thunder of the sea 

And I don't know if I'm just dreaming Don't know if I feel sane But it's something that I must believe in And it's there when you call out my name 

Love is in the air In the rising of the sun Love is in the air When the day is nearly done

And I don't know if you're an illusion Don't know if I see it true But you're something that I must believe in And you're there when I reach out for you 

Love is in the air Everywhere I look around Love is in the air Every sight and every sound 

And I don't know if I'm being foolish Don't know if I'm being wise But it's something that I must believe in And it's there when I look in your eyes

Love is in the air

Now, if we break it down and consider the message as a whole as well as in the context of the episode… 

For this song, imo? These lyrics are primarily describing Uncertainty and Confusion. Capitalized, italicized, bolded Uncertainty. The POV of this song is someone who is trying to understand love but is absolutely not understanding it at all. 

The verses are all structured, ���I don’t know, I don’t know, but I must believe.” The chorus is, “[what I am perceiving as] love is externally around me.” It has nothing of true emotion other than, “I must believe.” What this character has, if they have it, is minimal and barely noticed.

This is not a love song you would want to sing as someone who is deeply, confidently, happily in love. This is not a song where someone is saying, “I am so in love I’m bursting with it and I need to tell everyone how much I am in love.” It’s not a song I would sing to someone I actually love. There’s no actual feeling of love in it. 

This is someone looking around at the world (every sight, every sound, in the trees, the sea, the sun, the air) and deciding they have to believe in this. Maybe because they are surrounded by it and want to have it? Maybe because it seems like it’s everywhere so they have to have it since everyone else does? Maybe because they feel Something but don’t know what that Something is other than confused. 

Putting the rest under a cut because I talk a lot sorry. 😘

If I were performing this? I would say this character is desperate to convince themself or desperate to convince someone they are talking to that they know for sure what love is because they can see it. See it, not feel it. Nothing in these lyrics describe actually feeling any sort of emotions. It’s primarily external and conceptual and overwhelmingly, “I am confused / I don’t know if this is real / I don’t know if I’m sane.” 

You can say falling in love (for real) makes you feel foolish and crazy and whatnot. That is likely the song’s original purpose. But the lyric story still comes from a very unsure, doubtful sort of place. It doesn’t read as a love song the way we would typically think of something categorized as, Love Song. It’s not really an expression or declaration of love. It’s one of, “I don’t know what is happening, I’m making a guess.”

I think it could be a good character soliloquy for Anna from Frozen when she’s just met Hans and thinks he’s the one and she’s in love and they have to get married. You know? That is the feeling I get from this. 

The singer POV character is picking out random surroundings while they are mired in confusion and saying that they MUST BELIEVE in love because of these things… things that are not connected to their person/relationship.

For the most part, the “love” that this person is seeing is described through vague setting imagery. Whisper of trees, thunder of the sea, the sunrise, the sunset. Which is cool and fine if you are talking about love for the world, or love in general, or love that isn’t for another person. 

If you are expressing love for another person, you are probably not going to talk about the sound of the sea. You’re going to talk about how the person is funny or pretty or kind or how happy they make you. Something about them or your relationship or how they have affected you. 

Sure, you can say the world around you looks different and brighter and more beautiful but that’s not what this song is doing. (I suppose you could interpret and perform it that way if you wanted but given the lyrics as a whole, I’m not sure why you would.) 

The descriptions here aren’t someone looking at the world differently. It’s someone seeing things and wanting to believe they are what they think they are. 

This song is someone seeing “love” all around them (and misunderstanding the assignment) and making the assumption that what they are seeing has to be love. 

It has a very repetitive, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” emphasized with foolishness, dreaming, insanity, illusions. All things used to describe a rather negatively skewed perspective on falling in love, or are typically used to describe pining and sudden infatuation. You feel crazy for someone, you feel different from normal, you feel like it can’t possibly be true. It’s all firmly in the, “this is a fantasy / this is not solid concrete fact or foundation / these are not necessarily happy or beneficial occurrences.” And it’s all concluded with, “I must believe, I must believe, I must believe.” 

Idk about you, but it makes me think of “trying too hard / the idea of us / I want love so badly I will take anyone who says they want me and love me and will stay with me / clinging and settling Evan Buckley / stick it out Eddie Diaz.” 

It could also be describing initial attraction and the rush of meeting someone and developing a crush on them. Which might lead to something like real actual Love. Because there is a bit of hidden potential. There are three little pieces that speak to something real and something that might hold or turn into love. 

when I look in your eyes / when you call out my name / when I reach out for you

These are the only solid tiny snippets that actually illustrate this character’s relationship and the person they are saying they love. But they are kind of flimsy without context. And also easily misinterpreted. Case in point -

What is the person actually seeing when they share a look? Is it accurate to describe it as love from the other person’s perspective? If so, what kind of love? What kind of look is it? Is the other person feeling the same as the narrator? How is the person calling out their name? Is it in fear? Is it in joy? Is it sexual? Why are they calling out? Why are they reaching out? Is it for attention? Is it for affection? Is it for help? Is the person they love reaching back? In what way are they reaching or accepting?  

The song doesn’t answer any of these questions. It says, “the love is there,” but we don’t know how reliable our narrator character is especially because what they are seeing as “love” is not anything that is associated with their person or their emotions. Except those little lines that have no context or depth and come out as an afterthought. 

The fact that there is any potential in this relationship and that there are any references to this supposed love is coincidental. It is something the character is not paying attention to and is not understanding as love until after the fact. The whole song is essentially saying, “I think I am seeing love everywhere around me but I don’t know for sure so I have to believe, and by the way, this happens and it [might be] is love.” It feels like someone who is so close to getting it but still so far from actually getting it.

If love is “in the air” and in everything around someone, it’s not something yet possessed by this character. They are seeing and wanting (and might have it somewhere they are not quite focused on?) but this is not love that is, “when you’re at your worst and they’re at their worst and you try anyway.” This is still, “I found something and it’s probably readymade or at that stage where it isn’t real yet.” Not, “I built this with blood, sweat, tears, and hard work.” It could be a beginning, but it is a long long way off from anything of substance and doesn’t even hold much emotion or attachment. It is very disconnected from the supposed love the character might have. 

This is, “love is everywhere and I want it, but I’m distracted and don’t know what I’m feeling and I’m missing what I do have.” 

If you know what I mean?

[ilikerosesalot]

* Despite everything....it's still you

Few days late (work....it never ends..) but happy birthday in stars and time!! I finished the game right in time for the anniversary so I had to dedicate my first fanart to it. I remember when I first booted up the game I made a video of me watching the opening scene and I added the Undertale track "Memory" to it. I didn't even know it was an inspiration for the game the music just felt...fitting. Then siffrin responded to the friendship doodle by going "it's you!". The idea just sprung. That statement just kept spinning in my head the entire time I played the game. So it's only fitting that an indie game that changed the trajectory of my life completely just like that Undertale to get this sort of fanart yk?

Textless versions and some more ramblings provided under the cut!!

Kinda proud of how loop-frin and bigfrin turned out...and the expression of mal du pays and "say its name" siffrin too (may or may not like drawing terrified expressions- new discovery!). I wanted to add more (if I upload the timelasp you can see there were some other sif sketches that never got lined) and i wanted to include the fam in act6 picture but....time. Oh well, I just needed to express my love for this game *somehow*. Siffrin and everyone else mean the world to me and just....honestly not enough words. Just, thank you @insertdisc5 for creating this wonderful game. I wish you and everyone else good luck on whatever lies ahead on our journey <3

EDIT: Timelasp uploaded!!

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[bloobydabloob]

Holy shit I love your Dirk interpretations, it's so true and I could talk about this shit forever. I feel like another part of his character that people seem to forget (along with Roxy for some reason) is that he's from the future in solitude in an apocalyptic wasteland. I just see that part of his character always removed which is disappointing because I feel like that's a pretty big part, especially regarding his themes around technology, his brother's theme of Time, his own isolation, and how he plays in the vastness of the universe and spacetime.

Art I drew related to the subject because I like to respond to asks with art.

But absolutely. I certainly understand where the lack of discussion over his isolation + upbringing comes from, considering a majority of the fanbase that I have seen builds their ideas based on their own version of postcanon. I’m not entirely sure how that would be fixed, but certainly even in the somewhat recent past I would see a lot more content regarding his upbringing both literally and symbolically. I don’t have much to add regarding the things you’ve mentioned, because they just are what they are. Dirk being confined to a singular room left to him by a father figure he never met, in a future where the only other person left on the planet is someone he cannot pursue a relationship of because of himself, with purely 3 robots to keep him companion, one being an exact replica of his own brain who is *also* trapped inside a pair of glasses, is about as literal as it gets to me.

The contrast to me involving the flooded, organic world in comparison to the little speckle of Dirk’s apartment packed with the dude and his technics is not only a representation of his isolation and entrapment within himself, but also of his lack of control. I think his obsession with & themes of control are a direct product in the case of Dirk specifically *of* this kind of upbringing. His themes of technology are also related to his themes around control. So much of his character is actually revolved around this to me like so much. Dirk is so deeply disconnected from humanity in every way and so much of his character + symbolism is based around that.

It doesn’t even have to be about the symbolism or anything though. It’s just pretty *interesting* in the literal sense that he lives in the middle of the ocean in the future. There’s not only a lot to theorise on to do with his young life there, but on how it might affect him in the way he acts for the rest of his life. The latter part is probably what I see mentioned the most by people talking about Dirk regarding this, I’m surprised I don’t see more discussion on the former too though. I really ought to actually talk more about Homestuck stuff on here. I will do it myself.

Roxy & Dirk’s relationship is largely ignored though because there is a narrative a certain demographic spreads that Dirk resented and blamed Roxy for her interest in him, and thus too many people believe that their relationship was or would continue to be an abusive one. Realistically, I believe it’s important to acknowledge that the way Roxy treated Dirk regarding his homosexuality wasn’t right while still acknowledging the obvious amount of respect and admiration Dirk had for Roxy. I mean we have a huge piece of dialogue from their post trickster mode conversations on the quest beds from Dirk purely stating how he feels about Roxy that people completely ignore somehow. I think this usually happens to characters that are women though. I know everyone says it, but it is true. Jane gets the exact same treatment of boiling her down to solely her negative aspects. The things I see completely mischaracterising both of them are horrific.

I mean how much more explicit can it get that their relationship is obviously very important to Dirk? But I digress. I think the best or I should say “most interesting” interpretations of their relationship usually come from DirkRoxy shippers actually.

I would be interested to hear about Dirk’s relation to his brother’s theme of time though. I don’t have any thoughts on this and I don’t recall ever hearing anyone talk about it before. If you or anyone else would be willing to enlighten me I’d be thrilled.

[sunnymainecoon]

I know damn well I misunderstood the assignment but we roll, I'll understand it some day

It's killer and dust btw. If you couldn't tell. Which you probably couldn't.. forgor to say but shhh 🤫 Killers having a convo with himself..

..I kinda wanna change my url but idk to what

[orb-weaving]

Recognition

[littlefankingdom]

Some folks: Actually, Bruce was more like an older brother to Dick when they started.

Bruce, written by Bob Kane in the 40s, aka the early Robin days: Dick is my ward, he is like a son to me. I love him, I play with him like a father would with his son and I parent him like a father would (in the 1940s). If he cries or if he is scared, I open my arms to held him close. If someone blood related to him shows up to take him, I will fight them. Finders keepers, he's my boy now.

[anna-scribbles]

they should've been at the club(infertility treatment centers)

[evercelle]

2024 art summary! it sure has been a year

[waddles-ex-machina]

some more comic panels I liked :>

[dootznbootz]

Fascinating how Polites, the character who is the personification of Odysseus' optimism and is only in 5 songs, is more grieved and appreciated than Eurylochus, a character who is his own person and is in 11 songs.

[comatosebunny09]

She’s beautiful. And despite how much you’ve tried to hate her, you just…can’t. Understandable why Sylus fell for her charms so quickly. She’s a sweetheart. And it’s infuriating. But—

“Hey,” you interject in a low tone. Stir the contents of your glass, projecting an air of boredom as the partygoers prattle on around you.

She blinks, all bright-eyed and straight-backed in the chair across. Mouth clamps shut, the last vestiges of her story vanishing in the air. Your lips quirk. God, you want to pat her head. Shove her in your pocket for safekeeping.

You motion for her to come closer with two fingers. Angle yourself closer until your breath stirs the pretty bangs adorning her forehead.

“You’re too pretty. Too nice. But you fit him, I guess,” a little forlornness creeping into your voice. “So I’ll bite.”

You ignore how your belly gnarls and twists as you sit back. Cross your legs, banishing those green-eyed monsters poking around in your head. Blame it on the champagne you’ve consumed, making your mind all fuzzy and your stomach feel weird.

“I’ll protect you or whatever,” you mumble before dumping the final contents of your flute down your throat. Fix her with a look that leaves no room for objection after you’ve placed the glass on the table, crossing your arms.

She can do nothing but smile nervously under your gaze, fidgeting with the straps of her dress, searching the tide of partygoers for a familiar shock of white.

Of course she didn’t ask. But it’s your duty to protect what belongs to him.

Any girl of Sylus’ is an temporary ally of yours, no matter how much it pains you to see him entangled with someone who isn't you.

[smiuffzo]

didnt plan on posting this today originally but decided that it actually fits really well with the beginning of the spooky season, so!

a fake doai movie poster inspired by posters for movies 'a short film about love' and 'on the silver globe', both by andrzej pągowski! and just for fun i also made a version with a shoddy polish title, how authentic am i right

[sideblogdotjpeg]

ive been thinking about the red string superstition recently and also sol bufo always and it makes me sick how uncannily caldwell tanner has made sol to perfectly target me personally

(+ cropped versions !)

[juaneloriginal]

A dream and a nightmare

@blackkatdraws's silly!

i just want him to be happy bro

by himself not only with black, honestly i like their relationship but most of the time (i think early in their relationship) he always comes out injured or dead and the fact that he doesnt even care about his own safety most of the time just to (me thinks) make black happy makes me so sad/pos

i like the fact that they are being more cute now but im not sure how much that its going to last

[sanatomis]

let’s go read fluff !

smut “aw, dang it!”

smut “aw, dang it!”

smut “aw, dang it!”

smut “aw, dang it!”

fluff . . . with smut “aw, dang it!”