#who is this for exactly???

[ohwolfling]

Hi, welcome to Galeposting with a sound design drop out who never seriously learned composition but can pick up on vibes and has a lot of feelings. I'll be linking to blog posts by composers and every musical piece I talk about.

Gale's introduction music has this instrumentation that feels like the wind, then these mournful swells above it and under it. I'll dig around more but I think the most consistent things in Gale's theme, the Gale-ness of it, is this soft, curious, playful sort of bouncing thing. Some of the more wind-like instrumentation I think is just... the Weave, it goes between comforting and foreboding in every Gale scene. The more sinister and haunting pieces you hear less and less in your romance with Gale (though I think all romance has the same variation to Down by the River to a certain extent - I need to go through all of them to track where it DOES shift- there's a lot of natural sound with Gale for sure and the Act II romance scene has the same sort of playful plodding and adds string, lmk if it's the same in any other act ii romances), so those to me feel decidedly Mystra?

I have a few pieces that I listen to as a sort of IDEA of what Gale's theme would be without the influence of Mystra or his conflicted emotions about the Weave, still a little playful, still deadly curious, and ultimately mournful. Our inescapable sad boy...

The French Library by Franz Gordon jumps around minor chords in a way that threatens to become triumphant or whimsical but ultimately returns to the same melancholic steps, sort of folding in on itself. It sort of reminds me of Mozart's Symphony 40 having a depressive episode instead of a bit of rage.

If you want these things but in a way that feels like a lullaby, a clumsy attempt at comfort, another Gale staple for me right now is Midwayer by Joep Beving. Beving has spoken about his music being a way for him to re-engage with his humanity, which I think you can FEEL on this entire album, but especially here. This quote in particular I really love in thinking about my little Gale playlist-

“We are either trained or we’re designed to respond to particular stimulants. For me it’s rediscovering the human skill in things so for me the message would be we have a common or shared understanding of what it’s like to be human. And we should not lose that connection.”

This brings me to a favorite fictional parallel I've found with Gale - Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica. Composer Bear McCreary stayed away from themes in a traditional sense with a focus on music that world builds, establishes stakes/settings, over traditional sci fi theme/motif spamming, HOWEVER, you can track all major players through the show, which includes Gaius... I'm gonna go into these character parallels mostly by digging into the score for Battlestar Galactica below the cut here.

Gaius, a mortal plucked up by a God via a Six Cylon. The Six Cylons were designed for love- in this case, while God's feelings towards Gaius seem ever changing, focused on his PURPOSE over his comfort or happiness or anything else (SOUND FAMILIAR), Caprica Six very genuinely loves Gaius & they get what I think is one of the most beautiful endings in the show (arguably happy, although I don't think "happy" was the goal of any of those endings). Gaius' Folly is instead of loving Caprica as equals he walks right into the hands of the Cylons by handing her his ego instead and giving her access to a defense mainframe for "journalism" (she ended the world, oops). Anyway, in Gaius' pieces, you always have mournful swells, ominous things above and below him, the conflict of a man chosen by God, tortured by God, loved by something and someone who borders the line between a demi god AND is the fruit of man's attempt to play God.

Bear McCreary on the earliest interations of Gaius Baltar's theme, starting properly in season 2 (blog post here):

Dark Unions is on my work-in-progress Gale Dekarios playlist and I didn't realize it until I sat down to try and pull pieces unique to Gale that it is almost, sonically and structurally, a dark echo of how Gale is introduced. If you listen to one into the other with no knowledge of the work they're from, it feels like they could be manifestations of the same piece.

When Gaius Baltar accidentally wields his relationship to God and stumbles into creating a cult (I mean, THE PARALLELS), his theme evolves to a kind of chant, The Cult of Baltar. Bear McCreary describes it as a drone, but the same whimsy and desperation remains. Here's what Bear McCreary has to say about the dichotomy of spiritual, cult leader, hand of God Gaius, sonically and thematically (McCreary's blog post here):

And here is the prayer, translated to Anglo-Saxon, that the cult says to Baltar, and some thoughts about the two sides of Gaius Baltar still warring with one another, showing up sometimes where the other should instead:

Are there any pieces of music in Baldur's Gate that define a Mystra theme more concretely? For those of you who have done multiple romances all the way through (I still haven't finished a play through, I'm TERRIBLE), is there anything unique to Gale that I should pick at more?

The Shape of Things to Come isn't technically a theme for Gaius or any one character, but it's so pivotal to how he transcends himself at the same time that he is forced to acknowledge his own frailty as compared to god(s). If you're unfamiliar with the show, the scene it first appears in is worth gazing at... (spoilers obv but trust me, you'll be confused & it will still be worth watching the show) it inhabits, along with Gaius, a kind of liminal space that Gale does in the story of Baldur's Gate I'd argue, and this sort of sweeping piece is the kind of piece Gale DESERVES in a world where this game gets to be even longer and about every origin character as individuals.

anyway...

[mearchy]

my favorite genre of fictional character is like "i am terrifying to almost everyone, i'm very good at killing, i can endure anything, i've become exceptionally good at playing into my reputation, and if you try to give me positive social interaction i will react with confusion and cower in a corner like an abused animal. and i may try to shoot you. but there is also a chance i may imprint on you like a feral dog receiving its first loving touch! good luck."

[tuttle-did-it]

David Tennant for Prime Minister, please.

edit- Since this is getting so much attention, edited to include descriptions of screenshots.

This woman has lost her fucking mind.

Jo, are you okay?

[mumblesplash]

reaction image

[hinamie]

mentor

[morganbritton132]

The funniest thing Stranger Things could do is reveal that Steve’s parents are like, really liberal. They donate to AIDs research. They were arrested protesting the Vietnam War. They campaigned for Mondale. Steve tells them that Nancy broke up with him and they’re like, “Thank god, that family believes in Reaganomics.”

[proxycrit]

Day 26- Lanayru Mountain

Perhaps dragon song sounds familiar. No matter; it’s time to get to business.

On that note, magnesis is reacquired! Purah’s still working on the other glyphs.

(“We’ll find a cure by the end of this year, I promise.”

“I hope we do, Mimi. I really, really hope we do.”)

((This is a totk au called familiar familiar! Zelda doesn’t go back in time, history is forever changed, and link is beset by ghost memories from his magic arm as per usual.))

(Want to throw a coin to an exhausted art hermit? Check out my patreon!)

[goatsandgangsters]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

[pidgydraws]

🤎 never let go 🤎

[eurodynamic]

Michael Bryan meeting Dorian Pavus while playing Dragon Age: Inquisition for the first time (via YouTube)

[me-beef]

@strangeravatar made a great point

i was gonna focus on the spike-hotboxing-celestia aspect but i got distracted somewhere along the way and i think i forgot what joke i was trying to make

but dont you think its interesting how many guards of the exact same color/body type she's managed to accrue?? i do

ooohh you want to go look at our stickers so bad

[bluegiragi]

trapdoor.

early access + nsfw on patreon monster!AU masterpost

[starcurtain]

Please someone redraw this with Dr. Ratio and Aventurine because this is the exact vibe they have in my head post-Penacony.

[lynnlyrae]

something something Jinx cutting her hair and Vi growing it out Jinx dyeing her hair even more colorful and Vi hiding her pink hair under layers or black dye I’m so not okay about it-

[egophiliac]

(looks at upcoming card releases)

I'm in danger :)