Relationships That Have Real King/lionheart Energy, That Whole “I Have Sworn Myself Wholly To You,

Classical Pieces You've Probably Heard but Might Not Remember the Name

William Tell Overture- Rossini (Most famous part at 8:45, but why not listen to the whole thing?) I’m adding hints, at least to the ones I recognized culturally. This one is “go, horsey, go!”

Also Sprach Zarathustra- Strauss Slow, dramatic entry scene, IN SPAAACE.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik- Mozart People running out of a fancy wedding or something. Also known as DUN, dun DUN, dun DUN dun DUN dun DUUUUN.

Symphony 94, Mvt. 2 “Surprise Symphony”- Haydn ?

Toccata and Fugue in d Minor-Bach Halloween organ!

Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2- Chopin Picture a tiny old woman playing piano in a sunlit room with lots of flower vases, about the spill the tragic secrets of her past to some timid young visitor.

Rondo alla Turca- Mozart the babysitter from The Incredibles: “Time for some COGNITIVE ENRICHMENT!”

Sinfonie de Fanfares: Rondeau- Jean-Joseph Mouret Royalty is coming. Or someone is getting married. Or royalty is getting married. Also the PBS Masterpieces theme.

The Four Seasons: Spring- Vivaldi (I just linked to the whole thing because it’s great) Again, someone is getting married, but this one is strings instead and a lot less frumpy.

Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring- Bach That one that amateur guitarists love where the notes are all up and down but all the same length. Also used in movie weddings.

O Fortuna (from Carmina Burana)- Carl Orff SONG OF DOOM. Also song of “baby on fire!” in The Incredibles.

Funeral March- Chopin ?

Orpheus in the Underworld: Infernal Galop (A.K.A. Can Can)- Offenbach Well, “aka can-can” says it all.

Pomp and Circumstance (You probably graduated to this)- Elgar Oh yes, Baaaa dun dun dun duun duuuuun… Also if you were a bandie you had to play it for 3 years before graduating to it.

Gayane: Sabre Dance- Aram Khachaturian Comically hectic productivity, a circus clown juggling while standing on a ball, or perhaps a rapidly-approaching termite infestation. Could go any way, really.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Wedding March- Mendelssohn The song movies play right AFTER they both say “I do.”

Carmen: Les Toreadors- Bizet I can’t be the only one who remembers when ‘Hey Arnold’ did this. “Bullfights and swordfights, rolling in manuuure!”

The Ride of the Valkyries- Wagner Good song for a naval battle I guess? I can only think of the mini golf course I went to as a kid with the creepy castle on Hole 18 that played this.

Für Elise- Beethoven That one every amateur piano player loves to play because the beginning is just E and E-flat over and over. Also ballet and piano recital scenes in movies.

Dance of the Hours- Ponchielli Hello mudda, hello fadda, here I am at, Camp Granada…

Rigotello: La Donna e Mobile- Verdi More than a few sophisticated movie villains (or snobby good guys) have this playing on a Victrola. Also, tell me you don’t picture Pavaroti no matter who’s actually singing.

Night on Bald Mountain- Mussorgsky ?

Romeo and Juliet: Love Theme- Tchaikovsky More movie-love, usually building up to admitting they live each other.

Entry of the Gladiators- Julius Fucik I have one word for you: CIRCUS.

Lakmé: Flower Duet- Delibes OMG ALIAS. Nadia’s spy  backstory in Film Noir!

Peer Gynt: In the Hall of the Mountain King- Greig Mischievous Tiptoeing in Movies song. Also something growing out of control, slowly at first and then quickly, and (comically) exploding.

Rodeo: Hoedown- Copland The title says it all tbh.

Peer Gynt: Morning Mood- Greig Sunrise/waking up Movie Song du jour.

New World Symphony Mov. [2][4]- Dvorak Well now I’m thinking of “An American Tail” and I’m crying…

Ave Maria (You knew this, but did you know that it was by Schubert?) Nothing to add. I’m not a music snob, really, but if you didn’t know this, YOU SHOULD.

Canon in D- Pachelbel This is the one that the pretty Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas song comes from. :-)

Add others if you want! Have fun!

The votes are in!

The main story of the fangame rpg will be focused on rebuilding the Isles, but little tidbits of the second storyline will be interspersed! @jumpyrope brought up the fact that it'd probably be a massive undertaking to try and combine all of the storylines, so I'll focus more on the other two ideas as side-quests/side plots.

Demo release date TBD. Considering I'm a college student and will be working as a camp counselor this summer, the time I have to work is limited. In the best case scenario, the demo will drop by the end of August 2023. (But I'm not that hopeful.)

This will be a sort of development blog? I'll periodically post updates here, just to have someone to share my accomplishments with.

I'm currently working on Sprite sheets for the hexsquad. So far, I only have Luz and Hunter's animations finished up and King's expression sheet- but i see that as monumental progress so far! I'm still very new to RPG Maker and game development in general, so if anyone has any advice, let me know!

I'll post some progress shots tomorrow, once I have the basic walking animations set up! I fear for the day I will have to work on custom tilesets...

shoutout to kal cabbagegunk for providing me the screenshot

Simon: A Relic of Time

I'm pretty sure I'm just becoming an AT/FC account, and y'know what? I'm just gonna roll with it. I was going to do a more thematic analysis today, but since it's my birthday and I only have so much time, I'm just doing a short one. I think it's interesting how Simon was once an archeologist/antiquities collector; and his character arc began in FC with him on display like the very same artifacts that he once collected. As an anthropology major, the whole idea of taking artifacts of long-gone civilizations to study is seen as normal, but it's also a hot button issue in the field. What right does one human have for the sake of science, yknow? Specifically, though, I find it interesting because it seems that the scene was meant to be taken less literally? Maybe I'm over thinking it, but I think the very idea of being put on display for the whole world to see, like a caged-up animal in a zoo, goes to show just how disconnected Simon felt with Ooo at the start of the series. He didn't feel like he belonged in anything other than a museum. Perhaps he tells himself that it's purely for the sake of authenticity and preserving the history of humanity as much as possible; but really, it's just another way that his past has left him chained and trapped in despair. The crown was never Simon's biggest threat, he was.

Desirée: I feel in love with my Ronnie at first sight because he came to defend me and he saved me even though he was a stranger.

Phoenix:

when I was around twelve I used to sit at the family computer and send hatemail to a white french dude named Jacques who was a self proclaimed communist on Tumblr. This was back in the day when you didn't need a blog to send anon hate. I had no real beef with him but I just didn't like his tone. used to send him "SHUT UP Jacques" periodically. and he'd answer every single one of my asks like "who is this?? show your face or I'll fucking kill you" and I'd be like "now now, that doesn't make sense, jacques" all haughty and he'd get so fucking mad at me. One time he posted a selfie and I sent him an ask claiming I was a psychologist and that his hair parting suggested that he wasn't a communist at all. and he took it deliriously serious and went off on a 2,000 word rant. I can remember going to stay at my grandparents over that weekend, so I didn't even respond to the rant until I came back. I could've chosen to end it there, but when I returned, I sent him another ask which was like "psychologist here again: if you were a communist your hair parting would be in the middle. evenly distributed. All behavioural signs point to someone who doesn't take their own values seriously." and he went ballistic. really swearing at me. all caps type beat. he never turned the asks off, btw. which always made me wonder if he didn't know how to, or if he didn't want to cause he was convinced he was fighting a war, and this action would ensure he lost it. anyway this went on for weeks until one day I completely forgot about him like he was some kind of childhood imaginary friend I'd conjured up in my loneliness. but yesterday I happened to recall the whole scenario, because my buddy was like "remember when you were twelve and I came over to your house, and you showed me on the computer how you'd been terrorizing this random French guy for days on end. And you were laughing like fucking crazy. and I said it wasn't funny because he probably had problems, and you were like 'oh.' and you looked a bit guilty for a second, but then you went and got a grapefruit from the kitchen and threw it out of the second story window at my kid brother, who was playing in the street, and then you started laughing again?" Well. when she put it like that, needless to say I felt bad. so Jacques if you're out there I'm sorry I was such a little shit. you had totally normal hair, and you only wanted people to share stuff. If it's any consolation I know every day of my life that I'm probably going to hell for the sick things I have done

Rewatching gravity falls rn and this is one of my favorite jokes in the entire show

not a big fan of AI but this is a top 10 video of all time for me

in the mansion. straight up “blanching it”. and by “it”. haha, well. let’s justr say. girl we blanchin.

I think this is a really valuable take, and it definitely did feel a little strange for that to be the final test. There's definitely a little underlying misogyny there, and whether it was intentionally written to show Lumons values or incidental on the show-writers part, I think it should be analyzed. I really hope next season they're able to develop all of the female characters more- especially Gemma. But, with the direction the story is going into, I really do think the female characters will carry the next season. I see a lot of Checkovs guns being loaded, so I can only hope.

However, I think the reason why the (disassembled) cradle was her final test was because her miscarriage had been the reason she came to Lumon in the first place. And, if I remember correctly, wasn't her fight with Mark over the broken cradle what caused her to seek help from Lumon? Having her take apart something that had meant enough to her to take part in Lumon's experiments (until it no longer was a choice) was the final way of destroying her will to leave. This was something that had been a source of so much of Gemma's pain, anger, fear, and, well, hope- all four tempers- yet it was something else that caused her to fail the test. Maybe, too, her taking it apart could be framed as a form of empowerment? No longer is her greatest worry or concern tied to motherhood - she has something else to fight for. Her own freedom and happiness.

And hell, if my theories are right, I think girlie is gonna take down Lumon with Cobel or Devon. Like, stick her in the birthing cabin, get all the details from each separate Gemma, reintergrate that girl, and she'll destroy that whole company. Do I know how that'll work? A different Gemma per room??? Who knows. Tldr- I think we've only seen a fraction (haha) of Gemma so far, and that season 3 will focus a lot more on who she really is.

Cause it's not like you can't do a story involving miscarriage without it being sexist. That's a real and traumatic experience that many people go through that can and should be thoughtfully explored in fiction.

The thing that makes it feel sexist with Gemma is that it's the only new thing we learn about her as a person in Chikhai Bardo. There's all the plot stuff happening to modern Gemma of course, but that's stuff happening to her, it's not who she is. Everything we see about her outside of Lumon in that episode is either stuff that Mark has already told us about her and the miscarriage, which was also already alluded to. Which makes it feel like prior to Lumon kidnapping her, she didn't exist as her own person but rather as Mark's Wife who wanted to be The Mother of Mark's Children. Which, would suck as a way to write any woman, but feels like a particularly egregious way to write an Asian woman given the whole submissive China Doll stereotype (I know she's not Chinese, that's just what the trope is called).

And it's reinforced in Cold Harbor with the revelation that what Cold Harbor is is a test to see if her strongest, most fundamental memories can break through severance. And what Lumon has determined to be her core self that they're so worried about whether or not they can separate her from it, is maternity. And yes, you can argue that that is Lumon's perspective of her, not the show's, and that Lumon viewing her that way is meant to be viewed critically as more of the Eagan's patriarchal, white supremacist bullshit. But if it's just Lumon's view of her and not the show itself, then why didn't we learn anything else about her in the episode ostensibly about her?