#this show y'all

[choosingwhatmatters]

Music in The Loyal Pin, Episode 4

Welcome back to my music rambles. Buckle up, creampuffs, this is going to be a long one. Luckily, it was very easy to structure. Let me tell you about four different types of kisses.

Handkiss – Big emotions

Last week I talked about a piece I call “Big emotions.” It is connected to situations in which our princesses (Pin is the princess of my heart, and nobody can take that title away from her) have a lot of feelings. Snake bites. Tears on letters. Happy reunions. And, in this episode, giddy memories of a kiss to the cheek, as well as the angry chuckage of rocks into a pond.

Although this piece sounds relatively tame, there’s a lot going on in the music, especially the harmonies. A harmony consists of all the notes that accompany the melody at any given time of a piece, plus the notes of the melody itself. Harmonies are the melody’s clothing. They are the bed in which the melody stretches and writhes.

Usually, there is one harmony that everything comes back to. Some call it first chord; some call it tonic. I call it home. Our piece starts out at home in D major. So far, so snug. But then, suddenly, there’s a c in the accompaniment and the first music theorists are already raising their eyebrows: there’s no c in the D major scale. The music is trying to throw us off balance. The whole phrase is repeated and then there’s even more shenanigans in the harmonies. First we greet a chord that is a welcome guest in the house of D major: B minor, its sad little sibling. But suddenly, B flat major appears. A foreigner! Not one, but two notes that do not belong to the D major scale. B flat major waves through the open door before the melody comes to rest in A major, another regular in the household, and there it stays without ever going back to D major.

The whole thing happens in the span of seconds, but it leaves us with several instances of startled surprise and a quality of unfinished-ness. Much like a character grappling with a big emotion, our ears must come to terms with what we’ve just heard.

We hear the melody of the piece one last time at the end of the episode, when Anil is kissing Pin’s hand. It’s only the beginning of the melody, and there’s hardly any accompaniment. No harmonies to throw us off guard. The piece only lasts for a few seconds, hinting at big emotions to come before it floats away.

Butterfly kiss – Anil’s theme

Anil’s theme has undergone a lot of changes in the course of the first four episode. It starts out as a sweet, playful melody that matches Pin’s wistful one. It is often played by a glockenspiel but is fully orchestrated in moments in which Anil twirls for her family. Or sneakily returns from the UK without anyone knowing.

Anil brings back with her a new version of her motif. This one we can hear when she is plotting against the men in Pin’s life or manipulating those around her. Instead of the usual, cheery major scale we’re used to, we can hear the melody in a minor scale. Minor scales tend to sound melancholic or sad. In the piece at hand, the melody sounds sinister which, again, goes back to the harmonies underneath. Harmonies are powerful allies and even more formidable foes.

In episode 4, we can hear the minor version of Anil’s motif when she schemes against Kuea, shortly after being interrupted at the pond with Pin. We hear it again when Pin remembers Pranot trying to kiss Anil’s hand.

And then there’s a brand-new version of the motif when Pin learns about the butterfly kiss.

The time signature is different now. Instead of our usual 4/4 time, we are in 3/4 time. This time measure often has a waltz-y, swaying quality to it. Together with an airy keyboard sound I cannot identify, the whole thing sounds whimsical and innocent. Anil’s theme glistens in silvery glockenspiel notes above this soundscape in a high octave. We are putting a pin (heh) in this fact, namely the use of the glockenspiel and the high pitch.

Lip kiss – Pin’s theme

Pin’s theme is a constant in the first four episodes. Sometimes we can hear the whole piece, sometimes it’s just the first three notes, but it’s everywhere. It hardly changes.

Up until that fateful moment in episode 3, when Pin becomes aware of her heartbeat when she is massaging Anil. The melody evolves. There are more notes and shorter note values. The same thing happens when Anil kisses Pin’s lips.

Y’all, I don’t even know where to start gushing because this is so beautiful. As Pin has these life-changing experiences, her melody expands. It’s played by a glockenspiel now, the same instrument that has been mostly Anil’s up until that point. The tempo is off, restless. It doesn’t fit the accompaniment. Yet. Something shook Pin’s world, and she has yet to regain balance.

French kiss – Pentatonic flourish

In my last post, I promised to take a look at the pentatonic shenanigans that happen every time Anil and Pin are close. When Pin massages Anil. When Anil smells Pin’s hair. When Anil draws Pin close at the pond. When Anil kisses Pin in a way from which there is no return. Semi-quavers are drizzling on our eardrums, the measure is almost undeterminable.

Pin’s theme is back to its usual piano, but it's off beat now. Accomplished, less tame. Then Anil explains the French kiss to her and leans in a second time. The accompaniment narrows to one sequence that is repeated time and again, and once more there's Pin's theme, off beat. She has found her confidence. She is part of the music, and part of something even more beautiful.

Remember the other pin I was talking about earlier? How, during the butterfly kiss, Anil’s theme is played on the glockenspiel in a high octave? Well, during the French kiss, we can hear the first three notes of Anil’s theme, on the piano. Just as Pin has borrowed Anil’s instrument, Anil is now borrowing Pin’s, and even more importantly: they're on the same instrument now. Both of their themes are reduced to the first few notes, Anil's in a low octave that we haven't heard before. The low pitch has a calming quality. It provides the foundation for the last two high piano notes: the first note of Pin's theme, played twice. In my head, Pin is saying "I ... I ...," without even knowing how to finish that sentence, and instead giving up. Giving in.

Dear friends ... this show is so bloody beautiful! I don’t even know what to do with myself. I’ve spent way too much time revelling in the soundscape of this episode, and I regret nothing. If the show ended now, there would still be heaps of things to talk about. But it's not ending. It's just starting out and that is making my undescribably happy.

The fact that the premise of the show seems designed for me (sapphic, historical, South-East Asian) tells me that The Loyal Pin is not the most lucrative story to tell. To have hundreds of people dedicating time, work and skill into telling this story, supported by the Ministry of Commerce, no less, leaves me in tears. What a journey! Thank you for travelling with me!

[royalarmyofoz]

omgfhkgjfsdjhk

[jaynaneeya]

Mary Kate Wiles as Kat Van Tassel in Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story Episode 6: The Distractions at Dinner

[waxscoralpants]

So you climb in it? Close the lid and... bang?

[cryptidvoidwritings]

Happy Closing to Cats in Sandy Springs, GA.

source

instagram story: May 21, 2023

[jinkieswouldyoulookatthis]

The fact that it goes from Dean realizing that his mom had sex in the Impala...

right to Sam being given a literal cold shower...

[daisywords]

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[insteading]

This show honors the impact of big emotions like despair without also treating those emotions as permanent, and without treating what those emotions sometimes tell us as if it's necessarily factual.

So much of OFMD is about hope.

Stede left to become a pirate and it was silly and dramatic but - it was also the only way he could think of where he'd want to live, and he fucking did it, because he wasn't even sure he wanted to live but he kept hoping that maybe someone would just play with him and meet him where he's at. The entire crew in s1 start out just jaded and hardened and they slowly become the kind of people who look out for each other and have hope. Ed has so much hope that even at his absolute lowest, even after he's forced people who care about him to kill him, he's still hoping that there might be a reason he should keep living. Over and over again, it's just hope, that the world might be kinder tomorrow, that they can become people they're prouder and happier being, that you're not alone and you're more loved and you know.

And I think that's why OFMD hits so many of us so good. The world can be cruel and unkind and it can be hard to be yourself. And OFMD takes your hand and it says "yeah, but maybe tomorrow's gonna be better than you could ever dream of."

[socialistexan]

[dorothywonderland]

Is it considered plagiarism if you're copying your own comic?

╮ (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.) ╭

[timelessbian]

actually that ao3 post about calculating kudos-to-hits ratios to decide if a fic is worth reading has me so pissed off. someone put real time and energy into something they are SHARING WITH YOU FOR FREE on a site where you can quite literally filter and search by anything you want and you're STILL trying to find a foolproof method to find stuff that's "good enough to read"???

YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR EVERYTHING

you don't have to like or read everything in a given fandom or tag, but you also don't have to be a cunt about it and imply that it's not worth reading. this is the kind of shit that moves people to stop creating altogether, and to see people agreeing in the tags is so disheartening. absolutely unserious behavior.

[rythyme]

a lot of the popular "queerbait" ships are just "these two characters are friends / they stood close together once" but every once in a while i'll stumble into an unfamiliar ship tag and see shit like "in episode 169 Scrungko gives Blorbis multiple prostate orgasms with an anal vibrator while pretending to date him" and like. idk what the hell is going on there. but if it's not queerbait then they just invented something even more insane. maybe y'all are right sometimes.

[greeter1987]

NOT AGAIN

[bluegiragi]

negotiations.

early access + nsfw on patreon

[rhupi]

Au where obito got a crush on the new guy (sukea) and is just a guy failure abt it.

[hvnnigrvhm]

which could mean nothing