#its okay the tango lore is worth it

[stygiansauce]

CRAZY PROGRESS TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!

[baroquepopcorn]

Leprechaun Romance

Welp, I hate to admit it. I'm a cringe degenerate who likes homestuck. But I also hate it! Unsatisying ambiguous conclusions! Wasted character arcs! Bad social commentary! Inconsistency! Overcomplication! But I also can't resist it. So I'm going to do something immensely tumblr right now:

Display my leprechaun romance headcanon!

Okay, I know it was intended as a joke making fun of homestuck's worldbuilding and based on lucky charms and that Hussie himself probably hasn't even come up with an answer, but I don't care. This still seems like something worth examination. And some of it just fits so well that it makes me think there's more to this than meets the eye. so first of all the easy part:

Hearts: confirmed to be equivalent to human love/matespritship. Maybe instead of admiration or pity, it's based on a mutual sense of humor and inside jokes. The dance could be vigorous and passionate, yet gentle and slow, somewhere in between ballroom and tango

Diamonds: diamond symbol therefore its most likely equivalent to troll moiralligence, maybe the diamonds prevent eachother from going too far with pranks and getting too full of themselves in addition to balancing out eachother's tempers. Maybe they use japes, jokes, and chicanery to calm eachother down. The dance could be a sort of mirrored peanuts-esque jig ending in a hug

Now for the hard part:

I feel like we can actually infer a lot of the deeper meanings of the charms via their shape. Think of it. Kismessisitude's symbol, the spade, is an inverted heart. Both it, and auspisticism have those "thorns" at the bottom, maybe indicating negative emotions. The Auspisticism symbol is the same as the Kissmessisitude symbol, except there is a third node (third party) interfering and preventing it from being kissmesitude.

Balloons:

Now in the "inaugural death of Mr. Seven" paradox space comic (which is of course typically of dubious canonicity, however this particular one was written by Hussie himself so the world mechanics and lore must be canon even if these events never happened) crowbar walks into clover and itchy doing a dance (which probably has the same dirty implications that buckets do with trolls, but less traumatic because no one's getting culled):

He mentions that they're all wrong for balloons (indicating he would be open to ballooning around with them but recognizes it wouldn't work out). The balloon symbol has that blackrom thorn, it's based on negative emotions, but it's also rounder, redder, less pointy, more --- jovial. Now my headcanon for balloons. It's like kissmessitude but with pranks. The two balloons are engaged in a constant prank war, egged on by the feelings of annoyance, spite, revenge, schadenfreude, and humiliation, but also a subtle and mutual undercurrent of enjoyment. Where it differs from kissmessitude is it is less of a rivalry, more of a two-sided bullying situation, maybe it's a bit more patronizing, teasing, pitying. Additionally it's a lot more lighthearted, there's a certain understanding that a balloon is all in the name of fun and japes, and like with kissmessitude you never actually want to get rid of the other person, just mess with them. As such, it is inherently a delicate charm; when one balloon takes a prank way too far and seriously hurts the other, it is "popped" and the charm is lost. If one of the members loses interest and stops pranking back, the balloon "floats away". When interpreted like this, it becomes obvious why Clover and Itchy are "all wrong for balloons". Clover is extremely lucky (that's his power) any prank attempted on him would either fail or backfire. He also is very good natured and probably not smart enough to pull off effective pranks. As balloons require effort and humiliation from both sides, it would be impossible to solicit him with the charm. Itchy is very irritable and snarky, he probably would take a prank way too hard and go too far with his own, so while he'd probably get quite into balloons (and would be quite a skilled prankster owing to his experiencing time slower powers), he would be kinda toxic and frequently pop them (maybe pitch is more his speed [get it, speed]). Crowbar, by contrast is very competent, he probably takes immense pleasure in setting up pranks and seeing the payoff. Although he is quite serious, he seems quite interested in this charm, maybe it's the only way he can really let loose and joke around. Shame his team is full of idiots and indelicate brutes. I'd imagine this jig to be slower paced, the two ballooneers approaching eachother reminiscent of west side story, ever so often making lunges forward to get the other to flinch

Horseshoes:

We actually see this charm quite a lot from the infamous hearts, stars, horseshoes trove:

Gross! Clover! get a room!

And here, after Karkat beat him in a fight and hog-tied him. This post:

https://pixie-styx.tumblr.com/post/142497372552/from-clovers-perspective-the-fight-between

from compulsiveAnalyst explains how the fight was interpreted by Clover to be a solicitation/mating dance. Thus being bested in a fight by Karkat was not a faliure of his luck, but rather some good old fashioned horseshoeing which clover was really into

We interpret this trove by seperating its components. Obviously there is an element of hearts (love), and I have a seperate theory for stars that we'll get to later, but there is also an element of domination, of power, of subjugation. Caliborn just conquered a planet, Karkat beat clover's ass, and the horsehoe itself has connotations of kicking, of domestication, of ownership. So it is my interpretation that horseshoes is all kinky dom sub stuff. What I mean by that is that a horseshoe has two distinct roles; the master and servant, the dominant and submissive, the "kicker" and the "kicked", which leads to a sort of asymmetric romance, similar to how the auspistice between the two would-be pitch lovers is the only one who bears the ashen feelings of exasperation and peacekeeping, or how the two moirails take on different roles as the pacifier and the violent, the "kicked" is the only one that bears the horseshoe feelings. I'd imagine the dance to be very fast-past and violent, involving a lot of kicking, starting off like a cancan or prisyada, but with one horseshoer slowly taking the dominant position, culminating with a victorious kick-stomping on the back of the other.

Stars:

Same basis as above. When we seperate love and kinky shit from the hearts stars horsehoe equation, what are we left with? Awe, devotion --- stanning. When someone is faced with a celebrity they deeply admire, they are said to be startstruck (shown in emojis and cartoons as stars in the eyes). Thus stars could represent a sort of celebrity worship of another person but as a form of romance, which again would function asymmetrically. One person in a star relationship idolizes another, puts them on a pedastal, and constantly praises them with a fervor bordering on the religious. The star hearts horseshoe trove is then revealed to be a sort of kinky, subby, romantic relationship, one a loyal servant may feel towards his master, with the master reciprocating the affection with displays of dominance. Which would fill Caliborn perfectly if not for the fact that cherubs are only biologically pre-disposed to feeling kissmessitude and Caliborn regardless is incapable of any sort of compassion or affection.

Alas, we have analyzed every charm that has been mentioned in the story. Everything from here on out will need to be filled in purely by headcanon. So let's take a step back and observe that 9-square chart along with the familiar quadrant diagram

The 2 by 2 column has a specific function, dividing the quadrants based on their properties. concupscient on the left, concilliatory on the right, redrom on top, blackrom on bottom. There is a clear logic here. Thus, there must be some logic behind the way the charms are arranged as well. Well what does our 3 by 3 array look like?

An alignment chart! lawful good to chaotic evil. Using our current datapoints we can get a feel for what "lawful - chaotic" and "good - evil" actually mean. hearts is lawful good, basically what we'd expect. diamonds is true neutral, again --- feels about right. But what about the other ones? balloons is lawful evil, stars is chaotic good, horseshoes is chaotic neutral (which also feels about right). Along the top we have two forms of intense red rom (matespritish hearts and parasocial celeb obsession stars). At the bottom we have what seems like black rom (balloons) and in the middle we have diamonds and horseshoes. Now horseshoes mixes pleasure and pain, submission, fear, and grovelling. It definitely does feel somewhere in between red and black rom, but moirallegence is considered red rom, so then, shouldn't diamonds be in the top row? Wait. Didn't Aranea specifically say that "There is no division 8etween 8lack or red, concupiscent or conciliatory." Maybe instead we have a similar concept of malicious intent behind the charms, with diamonds being understood as a charm somewhat motivated by a sense of duty and social interest instead of pure positive emotions. Maybe leprechuans, being a less violent race, have a different social purpose for their moirallegence; preventing their fellow diamonds from destroying not through just violence, but through reckless, careless abandon. The one who knocks them on the head and tells them to act serious. Maybe the way these species organize their relationships into charts are more of a cultural construct that obfuscates a deeper underlying universal theory of romance... (next post). We're getting off topic here. The point is, in the context of this chart, good=unmalicious, evil=malicious intent, and neutral=mixed emotions. The lawful to chaotic axis may by contrast represent how balanced a relationship (ideally) should be, with reciprocal, balanced hearts and balloons (lawful), diamonds with their two distinct roles but shared emotions (neutral), and asymmetric, one-sided, and somewhat vitrolic stars and horseshoes (chaotic). With this newfound context we can begin tackling moons, shamrocks, rainbows, and pots o' gold.

Moons:

neutral good. It is a form of red rom, solidly based in positive emotions, and as a neutral relationship on the lawful to chaotic axis, it has two distinct roles but the two members share in the emotion and it isn't quite so polarized. Now, when we think of moons in homestuck, there is one thing that should immediately come to mind and a place where this symbol shows up very plainly:

That's right! The moons! Dreamself pajamas! And specifically prospit. Mayhaps some exotic culture has an inverted form of moons, much like how kissmesistude is the inversion of matespritship, that looks like grunkle stan's old hat symbol from gravity falls and is colored derse purple. I think our best angle to analyze this is in the context of the prospit moon, and dreams themselves. Maybe this form of romance consists of an ache directed to another individual, a deep sense of importance and fate that one attaches to another. It could be the feeling of locking eyes with a beautiful stranger on the bus, and then running into them again and again. It is said that moonmates are the key to the other's destiny, the perfect complement, the one who lives in their dreams. Now this feeling is seperated from hearts by subtle nuance. While hearts make the heart ache, and they seek to get as close to eachother as possible, moons could be more like a passive awe and observance of one to another, the sort of awe one might feel at a beautiful sunset redirected to a person. Mystery and secrets are vital to this charm, often riddles and queries are exchanged as a sort of intellectual probing. Indeed mind games are central to this charm as a way of simultaneously trying to get into the other person’s head and preserving that intrigue. Moons frequently acts as eachother's creative muses. They tend to follow cycles of waxing and waning interest with the moongazers switching roles ever so often. They encircle eachother in a delicate dance to try and get the other to reveal their soul and importance. The dance could be a sort of sweeping, encircling motion, similar to a circle dance but only two people, with the feel of a tentative ballroom, mimicking the motions of the planets

TBC

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 6th October 2019

Now it may not seem like a busy week to cover today since we have barely three new arrivals this week, but it is a pretty important one as I think we’ve finally reached the Winter season in terms of our UK Top 40 chart, with new hits that debuted during the Autumn season becoming smash hits and potential success are just now starting to gain traction. This should be most evident in our top 10.

Top 10

We finally have a new #1 this week and it’s exactly the song I predicted would reach this spot last week, Tones and I’s first #1 hit on the UK Singles Chart, “Dance Monkey”, up six spots from last week to reach this spot. In my opinion, the song’s relatively underwhelming and is just okay, but congratulations to Tones and I for her first #1 hit regardless, although without another hit bubbling under this song or even on the rise, I do have doubts about her future longevity on the singles chart... but we’ll see.

Another potential #1 hit from a new and unexpected artist is “Ride It” by DJ Regard, up three spaces to number-two, featuring a heavily-remixed vocal sample of Jay Sean. I really hope this hits the top but “Dance Monkey” is incredibly dominant right now so time will tell.

When I said change is most evident in the top ten, maybe I should have said top two as the highest songs in the chart are still pretty stagnant right now, although most of it has increased in its chart performance thanks to the collapse of last week’s #1. “Ladbroke Grove” by AJ Tracey is up a spot to number-three.

At number-four, we have “Taste (Make it Shake)” by Aitch down two spots from last week. Its longevity still surprises and impresses me.

Also down two positions from last week is “Higher Love” by Kygo and the late Whitney Houston at number-five, unfortunately making me quite doubtful for its chance to hit #1 as I expected.

Interesting, “Circles” by Post Malone has rebounded three spaces up to number-six.

“Sorry” by Joel Corry featuring uncredited vocals from Hayley May is somehow still here, down only a single space to number-seven.

Dominic Fike’s “3 Nights” isn’t moving at number-eight.

Re-peaking at number-nine is “Strike a Pose” by Young T & Bugsey with Aitch, up a position from last week.

Finally, rounding off our top 10 is Lil Tecca, with “RAN$OM”, up one space to #10.

Climbers

There are very few climbers here and what few songs there are that climbed are either irrelevant and not notable or just plain bad, with “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi inexplicably returning to the top 20, jumping five spots up to #19, fitting tightly into both of those categories pretty well. Thanks to a music video release, Aitch’s “Buss Down” featuring ZieZie is also up 10 spaces to #25, amongst “God is a Dancer” by Tiesto and Mabel grooving up four chart positions off of the debut to #33, which means this may as well become a hit, and I am not pleased about that prospect at all.

Fallers

We have a couple spoonfuls of fallers here though and a quite a bit more than the gains as this has been one of many cool-down weeks recently on the UK Top 40 Singles Chart, especially recently where we have undergone a week without a single new arrival (Although this is not the case for this week, I feel I should clarify, as we have three to discuss). Those fallers, from reverse order, are: “Wiley Flow” by Stormzy down a whopping 17 spaces to #39, “Lalala” by Y2K and bbno$ knocking back down after a surge last week, down six to #38, the underperforming “boyfriend” by Social House featuring Ariana Grande down five to #34, “Harder” by Jax Jones featuring Bebe Rexha is down six to #32, “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee from the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse soundtrack is down four to #31, “Senorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello is also down four to #24, “Goodbyes” by Post Malone featuring Young Thug takes a five-space hit to #23, “Don’t Call Me Angel” by Ariana Grande, Miley Cyrus and Lana Del Rey from the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack is down six to #18, only TWO weeks after its debut at #2, and finally, evidently thanks to streaming cuts that would damage British rap heavily, “Take Me Back to London” by Ed Sheeran featuring Stormzy and remixed by Sir Spyro featuring Aitch and Jaykae, is down 12 spaces to #13, after its sixth week at #1, which is a pretty big drop but far from the biggest drop from #1.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

Lewis Capaldi is pushing “Bruises” as his next single, which is fine, and complimented with a video meant it returned to #11 on this week’s chart, however the BBC website claims that the song is by Lil Tecca and has an amateur cover art that looks very much NOT like either Tecca or Lewis Capaldi, but does remind me of Blueface’s original “Thotiana” artwork, despite the man on the cover not looking like Blueface at all. Huh.

In terms of drop-outs we actually have quite a few important exits, such as “I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran featuring Justin Bieber dropping out finally from #34 and even “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X featuring Billy Ray Cyrus out from #36, as well as “Location” by Dave featuring Burna Boy once again dropping out from #39. Oh, yeah, and “Sounds of the Skeng” by Stormzy is out from #40 but it’ll probably be back soon.

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “South of the Border” – Ed Sheeran featuring Camila Cabello and Cardi B

Produced  by Ed Sheeran, Fred Gibson and Steve Mac – Peaked at #7 in Finland and #53 in the US

Ed Sheeran has released another single from his No. 6 Collaborations Project as soon as “Take Me Back to London” fell off the #1, perhaps in an attempt to attract more US success with Cardi and Cabello’s contributions, and it comes with a video, and it’s Ed Sheeran’s 41st UK Top 40 hit (which is insane), and  it’s Camila Cabello’s 11th UK Top 40 hit, and it’s Cardi B’s 11th too, and it’s not worth your time... at all. The pathetic Latin guitar compared with some MIDI-ass flute makes for a pretty generic tropical house beat from 2015, so making Ed Sheeran sing about bilingual sex over it doesn’t exactly scream for the best combination and yeah, it’s awful. “Come south of the border with me”? Jesus Christ. Camila Cabello is barely keeping words in to fit the meter, and her squealing triplet flow is intensely annoying, which is unfortunate because I do like her “rrrr!” ad-libs and the melody in the chorus, while not particularly innovative, is catchy. Cardi B exists here too, and her verse sounds like Wiz Khalifa on “Payphone”, with just as much as empty space yet a tad more actual rhyme. Her last line here about dropping babies and albums but never dropping the ball was kind of cool though. Otherwise, yeah, this is worthless.

#37 – “Turn Me On” – Riton and Oliver Heldens featuring Vula

Produced by Riton and Oliver Heldens

Who and who featuring who? Good question, let’s go through them. Riton is an English Grammy-nominated house producer with a close working relationship with Mark Ronson, who actually had his song “Rinse & Repeat” with Kah-lo peak at #13 back in 2016, meaning this is his second UK Top 40 hit. Oliver Heldens is probably the biggest artist here, as he released the massive hit “Gecko (Overdrive)” with Becky Hill that debuted at #1 way back in 2014, becoming the last sales-only UK #1. It also had a really strange music video. He had a two other hits in 2014 and 2016, including the #5 hit “Last All Night (Koala)” with KStewart, but since 2016’s “The Right Song” with Tiesto and Natalie La Rose, the well ran dry for Heldens until 2019, where he both collaborated with Nile Rodgers and made this song. I’m pretty sure this Zula guy is Ledri Zula, who has had a couple minor EDM successes in the past solo and with G4SHI, but he doesn’t have a chart history of even Wikipedia page. I may be completely wrong about that by the way, so I’ll edit that in later if I am (Edit: Ledri Zula’s a dude, this singer sounds like a woman. I think I’m wrong). Regardless, it’s Riton’s second UK Top 40 hit, Heldens’ fourth and Zula’s first. An interesting fact about this song is its sample of “Don’t Go” by Yazoo, which was a worldwide hit in 1982. Yazoo themselves are a duo of Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke of Depeche Mode, and from what I’ve heard, they’re pretty good, with “Don’t Go” having a particularly memorable synth riff that even those who have never heard of the song or Yazoo will know, mostly because it’s featured in the film Tango & Cash, as well as Grand Theft Auto and Dance Dance Revolution... and a Family Guy episode, which is where I vaguely recalled it from, which is kind of sad. Ritton and Heldens incorporate the synth riff as a replacement of the vocaloid drop of sorts... oh, yeah, and the song’s pretty good. I’m not usually a fan of the derivative house-pop that appears on the charts ever so often by acts like Sigala and Jax Jones but I’m not going to lie: that synth riff bangs in any context, especially with the plodding bassline behind it. Vula’s vocals are pretty sweet and include a lot of necessary sass to ride the groove here, and that’s all I can say really. I can see this shrinking on me because it could grow annoying but for now, this is pretty cool. Check it out.

#21 – “Playing for Keeps” – D-Block Europe featuring Dave

Produced by ???

Ah, D-Block Europe, back again, once again collaborating with a rapper who’s definitely of slightly high calibre, although keeping it local with Dave instead of Lil Baby like last time. Now it might seem like I really hate these guys but I actually love whenever these guys show up because they just give me all of the ammo themselves. I don’t need to make any observations because they’re so blatantly awful in a way I never need to analyse... hence I overanalyse. On the surface level this is just pretty generic British melodic trap-rap but once you dig into the lyrics of their 28-song long album that debuted at #4 this week on the albums chart, you really get into the D-Block Europe lore. Yeah, no, but this is D-Block Europe’s fifth top 40 hit on the chart and Dave’s 14th, and well, I think they might perhaps be improving as this isn’t that bad of a song, at least in comparison to last week’s confusing trainwreck that was “Nookie” with Lil Baby, with a vague, minimalistic guitar-lead beat produced by... someone. Although the vocals do come in incredibly abruptly after what sounds an avant-garde sound collage intro, with a pre-chorus that just... shrivels up into itself for one measure before the beat comes back and it just sounds really odd. Young Adz’s flow is melodic and could sound better if the beat was either competent or equally melodic as there’s barely another instrument here that isn’t an 808 or a drum. Dave sounds... stilted, as he really can’t translate his style to this beat. He also sounds jarring against Dirtbike LB who is really quiet in the mix and also in the unconfident sense, with a pretty non-existent flow, in fact, he might have the worst verse here, but overall, this is a really dreary single, it’s really dull and I’m honestly disputing the fact that it exists.

Oh, yeah, it’s D-Block Europe, so let’s talk about some of the worst lyrics here, except Young Adz doesn’t deliver the awful lyrics this time. In fact, his verse is probably the best here, with a pretty fun opening line:

.44 bells, you can’t go to war with a stun gun / We all spilt blood for these cunch-blocks, hella dumb-dumbs

If you’re wondering what “cunch-block” means, it literally means “D-block”, as in places where they sold drugs. Although he ends the verse with a misguided attempt at being intimidating, which was abandoned soon after.

When you catch a case or you go to jail, they’ll never miss you / Broski, I love you like cooked food, swear on mummy, I’ll never diss you

“I love you like cooked food” is about as sweet as “I love you like a fat kid loves cake”. Dave sounds really awkward here as well, and his usually fast-paced yet bluntly delivered flow allows for the nonsensical or cringeworthy puns to be a lot more digestible, but here, he slows down and the inexplicable wordplay is just... confusing.

I’m in D2, that’s Dan on deen, nothing to do with a mosque

Huh? Also, is Dirtbike LB okay? Like, Young Adz doesn’t exactly sound ecstatic but LB’s verse here is delivered in the saddest way imaginable and his lyrics aren’t happy at all, in fact, his verse sounds the worst but you could argue he has the best content here.

Scars all over my body like I went to war with the devil himself / I have a [gnarly dude] put one in your head, have your neighbours say, “Get him some help!” / Hard to be focused and righteous when you feel like you’re living in Hell / Just put a brick on the scales, wish me well

This is actually a good half of the verse and while short, it’s quite poignant, it’s just that the first half is this:

Girl, I waited all night just to taste this / Tell the truth, I’m faded

Sigh... never change, D-Block. Never change. Also, why the hell is the video for this over nine minutes?

Conclusion

You know what? I’ll give the benefit of me not expecting anything at all of quality to D-Block Europe, as they’re somehow staying safe and not gaining the title of Worst of the Week, as that’s going to Ed Sheeran, Camila Cabello and Cardi B for the waste of time that is “South of the Border”, and I guess Best of the Week has to go to the nobodies with the relatively decent song, as Riton, Oliver Heldens and the Vula who I still don’t have a face to match with, get it for “Turn Me On”. You’re lucky that Yazoo let you clear that sample. Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank and I’ll see you next week!