#the song choice was key

[culperscomet]

you guys are gonna have to use your critical thinking skills for this one.

so many ppl were missing the point when i first made this edit back in january i wanted to cry and throw up. hopefully after actually adding the lyrics to the song it’ll make more sense 😭 if it doesn’t i will be deleting this out of pure embarrassment

[lovers-instead]

Whisper Me A Love Song volume 7 / Whisper Me A Love Song volume 8

[smtown-tourist]

Ever since Taemin came out with his own lightstick, I’ve been fantasizing about what the other SHINee members’ lightsticks would look like 🤔💎

[cottagesapphic]

somehow i feel like im betraying shinee because my spotify wrapped statistic on being in which percent of top shinee listeners globally has gone down each year, my first year on spotify i was in the top 0.01% of shinee listeners, then 0.1%, now 0.5% this year…. they literally do not know but i feel like im losing my badge of honor…. i am not immune to the parasocial relationship…

my first year on spotify (it was actually only like march to december) i literally only listened to shinee lmao

[ghostbonezzz]

So my spotify will randomly close itself in the middle of a song, and for some reason, every time I open it again, it's playing "good luck, babe" by chappell roan every. time. ×-×

[uhohbestie]

Hello :D I’m a newer reader to your fic (saw some awesome fan art and had to investigate) and I’d just like to start out by saying HOLY SHIT IT’S JUST SO INSANELY GOOD AND IM ONLY ON CHAPTER 20

Y’all should be so proud of yourselves TAMN is honestly one of the best written aus I’ve ever had the pleasure of stumbling onto across all the fandoms I’ve ever been a part of. Kudos kudos kudos and more kudos!

Anyways, the crux of why I’m even writing this in the first place (other than an excuse to sing y’all’s praise) is I recently found a song that just reminds me so much of this fic and I wanted to share with y’all :)

I haven’t had a chance to look at the playlist made for TAMN, so if it’s on there my bad, but the songs called Grandma Became a Zombie, by Kriill. And I know, one could claim it’s a bit on the nose with how much they say zombie in it, and this is literally a zombie apocalypse au, but I honestly think like 95% of the lyrics are scarily close to how I interpret this fic.

Anywho, thought I’d put this gem on y’all’s radar if it hasn’t been already. Once again I’m only on Chapter 20, so I have no idea if this song reflects later chapters, but if you see a random animatic pop up using this song, chances are it’s probably me lol.

Thanks y’all again for writing and illustrating such an amazing story <3

-E

Aaaa thank you thank you so much!! We're always so thrilled to hear that our fic is being enjoyed! (Also oh my goodness, i just checked and chapter 20 is right before you really Get In It hahaha, what a fun little precipice you left yourself on!!)

I gotta tell u, I looked up this song and have been listening to it non-stop since. ( here's the link to it - for those who want to go on the same emotional journey I'm on.)

The lyric "silence is your way to speak your mind" has got me in a vice grip. That's it, that's the fic. That's TAMN reduced to its most basic, fundamental parts. Aaaugh, Scar... Grian... what are we going to DO with you..........

Thanks for sharing this song aaaaaa, I'm obsessed. <3 <3 🔒

[mythrae]

There has to be a reason why Borislav Slavov made Down By the River, The Power, AND The Nightsong all very similar. And I am going to get to the bottom of this if it’s the last thing I do!!!

[theoldandnewfirm]

The music world has to come up with better song choice options for adult learners. I'm almost 40, I do not want to be sitting here playing "Hot Cross Buns."

[designernishiki]

shout out to my poor unfortunate mother having to listen to me record and re-record rouge of love on the piano 3000 times because we live in a small house and i can’t find my usb drive to record via midi instead and use headphones right now

[paperlovesadness]

I do believe that checking setlists has now become very unhealthy for me.

This whole experience really went: 🎢 🔥

Because just look:

just keep looking

(is this actually real??? Is setlists dot fm messing with me?)

Like... What is this??? NOT ONLY TBHC BACK

NOT ONLY an entire setlist of their songs

EDIT TIME

[well I stand corrected because no covers. Just actual recordings being played] [but these are still interesting and exciting choices tbh]

but also TWO BONUS COVERS?

Barry White and THE BEATLES???? ExCUSE ME? [btw, do we have any recordings of that? 😩]

... but oh - you thought we could just have a nice moment of full-on-envy towards these lucky Indonesian folks? Nahhhh

Because WHERE - I am asking - IS ONE POINT PERSPECTIVE???????

Why. Why is my only question. Just why is it the TBHC songs that have to suffer most for that amount of AM songs to be in there ❤️‍🩹

(I suppose I still will take the win of TBHC not completely disappearing. WE'VE GOT HOPE TO HOLD ONTO)

[qomrades]

all these different jobs we put stobin in and i've yet to see a radio hosts one. where's their shared segment that's batshit and makes no sense so they were put on the 12-3am slot and they fill almost the whole 3 hours with just the most inane bullshit you've ever heard. they don't even hide the upside down stuff they just talk about it on live radio and it's fine because no one listens to their fucking show. where is it

[blackwaxidol]

Is ur destiny username a reference to mazohyst of decadence? :o

it is, yes.

[wewontbesleeping]

booked plane tickets to Seattle and my first thought was Hello Seattle by Owl City, who I was obsessed with for a very short period of time around 2008, and it’s just. Amazing what things stick around in that noggin

[kuromi-hoemie]

i can't believe i used all my tags on this. i have MORE TO SAY. honorable mentions i will not elaborate on: pikmin, runescape, OG animal crossing.

the reason for all my tags is because there's a difference between "most fun" and "most important" and feel like if they're important u should at least say why :3

[tohrinha]

There are two ways the last area of Dawntrail is bothering me-

1. Living Memory as capstone of Wuk Lamat's growth as a leader and diplomat

The entire first half of Dawntrail, and the vast majority of Wuk Lamat (aka DT's protagonist)'s arc, is learning to serve her people by understanding their ways and developing solutions that are driven by those people

Hanu Hanu - revitalizes a major festival by working closely with the festival leader and a local expert. Spreads forgotten knowledge about the festival's importance as a side effect of working with said expert. Changes the society. Driven by Hanu Hanu.

Pelupelu - fosters a young up-and-coming Pelupelu through her internship to become a valued role in her society. Changes one person. Requested by Pelupelu.

Moblins - generates new business connections to prevent a specialized industry being lost due to hurricane damage. Changes one person. Requested by Moblins.

Yok Huy - solves game of hide-and-seek by engaging with local historians and visiting important cultural sites. Permanently defeats long-standing threat to the Yok Huy. Changes the society. Requested by Yok Huy.

(Bonus) Chirwagur - negotiates temporary passage to a sacred site. Negotiated with Chirwagur.

Xbr'aal - participates in a cultural tradition by engaging with local practitioners and historians. Changes nothing. Requested by Xbr'aal.

Mamool Ja - reduces harmful cultural practice by finding the core unmet need, develops alternative solution to said need that would allow the Mamool Ja additional control over their current home, and proposing, not forcing, the alternative to the people as a whole. Changes the society. Negotiated with Mamool Ja.

When we got to Heritage Found, I assumed it would focus on understanding the Alexandrian's use of regulators and memory upload, and finding a way to restore contact with Tural and coexist in a way that respected their way of life (with or without changes to it).

We did the first part, then the situation changed due to actions of their queen. Fair enough.

Living Memory, however... as soon as we step in and establish that Sphene is no longer available for discussion, Cahciua approaches us and asks that we shut the city down. And we're on a strict time limit. We get chances to see the Endless's way of life on the way to the terminals, but at no point do we approach them to ask what they think about our actions or see if they've come up with alternatives during their five hundred year existence. We change everything about their society, on the request of a single junior member. We don't even give them the courtesy of a heads-up.

I agree it's better to attempt understanding and remember a people than forget them. But. They're still alive when we're here. They're not artifacts or museum pieces. We can learn about them and talk to them at the same time!

2. Living Memory as a parallel to Amaurot

I am a sucker for Amaurot. In general, I'm a sucker for doomed city-states that play an active hand in their own destruction. *cough*Numenor*cough* (I know Amaurot wasn't a city-state but the presentation in Shadowbringers is close enough.) The Amaurotines didn't start the Final Days, but they did decide to go ahead with the Zodiark plan, which at best would have removed half their population and caused societal trauma. In practice, it removed half their population, caused societal trauma, led one of their former government leaders to split reality, and set three of their current government leaders on an endless quest to recover their fallen. I would say they played a pretty active role in their fate.

Living Memory's only role in their shutdown was inaction. They didn't use their five hundred years to come up with alternative energy sources or brainstorm scalability solutions. So sure, they can fit into the "resource-sucking utopia hoist by their own petard" archetype, but I'm not as into that trope. And even then, the people I'm still mad at are Preservation and AI!Sphene for, again, not changing anything in the past five hundred years. This issue was entirely foreseeable! This is bad data/conservation/government practice!

So my emotional reaction is less "ah, a once-thriving society now only ghosts due to a Tragic Flaw, how sad~" and more "okay, time to shut off everyone's life support due to poor hospital management".

Also, if we're paralleling Amaurot, and I'm not saying the writing team intended the parallel, then I come down on a very different side in terms of "who is truly alive". With the Ancients and us, Emet's argument was that due to the sundering, modern people are fundamentally less people than his own. And I see his argument! I disagree with his argument, but it is a reasonable conclusion to come to given his background.

With Living Memory, there's uncertainty among our characters as to whether the computer-assisted memories are actually "alive" (are they actually people). I am 100% of the opinion that yep, the Endless are alive, the Endless are people, the Endless are, in fact, barring data corruption, the same people they were before they died. We have textual evidence that a person is a continuity of soul and memory. We have additional textual evidence from this expansion that the specific soul isn't super important, as long as it's a sapient one (i.e. not a feral/beast soul; though if they put the beast souls through the same processing as sapients, maybe they could!). Therefore a set of memories instantiated with a soul is a person.*

(Without the metaphysical evidence, I still lean alive and person. They have the ability to form new memories and make decisions; they're persons. Heck, my personal definition of person doesn't even require those two, they're just relevant arguing points given the situation.)

The problem with Living Memory is not that the lifestream is being used to power ghosts; the problem is that the lifestream is being used unsustainably and its leadership is uninterested in different solutions.

(Rejoinings are also a case of leadership being uninterested in different solutions.)

(Unlike. Say. The Mamool Ja. From five levels ago.)

---

I don't have a conclusion paragraph to this, I just found it really difficult to engage with the story and themes on their terms. Also Sphene. Sphene, I am disappointed in you. Take a data management course.

---

*This implies that with a little more innovation, we could have a FFXIV/SOMA crossover. (With Otis... maybe we already do.)

---

Count of Endless who knew we were going to shut down the terminals:

Cahciua (natch, the instigator)

Otis (figured it out)

Robor and Alayla (figured it out, have been trying to do so themselves; also, Krile, the time to ask "is there an alternative" was two terminals ago, but better two deep than four deep)

Count of Endless we voluntarily consulted about shutting down the terminals: 0