Happy birthday, Robert Plant!

Begging you to unmute this please

Holy shit holy shit this song rewired my DNA and jumbled my molecules... The cellist is named Abel Selaocoe. The full song's on YouTube and Spotify

A New Day for Women in Beat’Em Ups: Marian and River City Girls 2

I think the thing that surprises me the most about playing Marian is how... liberating it really feels.

Marian is, put plainly, a brute.  Marian hits people like her fists are made out of tanker trucks and they’re breaking the speed limit.  Marian can punch her enemies across the screen with her basic Heavy attacks- not even a Special!  Just a good old Heavy Attack, and she can send them across the screen with a punch that doesn’t look like she’s putting all that much effort into it.

Marian has elbow drops for her “hit them on the ground” move.  Marian can grab people and bash their skulls together.  She has almost unparalleled ability to crush faces, and her combo strings are all punches- no fancy kicks or twirls here.  Marian can make her uppercuts combo into each other, but she can’t flipkick anybody.

She’s also kind of slow!  Marian’s a bit of a tank.  She’s not one of the faster characters; she’s not greased lightning like Provie or Kyoko.  Marian’s a bruiser, not a cruiser.  She can cross the screen quickly with her default Special, but that’s a wind-up punch that takes time and leaves her vulnerable- though when it’s at full charge, she just plows her opponents down in a massive punch that would be more commonly seen on a big, strong dude.

Which leads me to my next point: Marian?  Is a surprisingly feminist character, in a lot of ways. 

It’s not Ra Ra Girl Power like we’re used to seeing, which often emphasizes femininity.  Marian’s about as feminine as a knuckleduster; yet the game manages this without emphasizing her as “boyish.”  No one ever accuses her of being a man, or questions her as a woman, nor is her lack of relative girlishness treated as a problem for attracting others.  Even her very introduction, beyond having Kyoko and Misako both lusting after her “legendary abs”, firmly establishes that she had a relationship with both the Lee brothers of Double Dragon fame (through hilarious eyebrow waggling, of all things.)

Girls in beat’em up games fall into only one category, usually, since there’s almost never more than one you can play: the speedy, fragile character.  Marian is the exact opposite; her beat’em up predecessors in playstyle are people like Max Thunder or Floyd Iraia of Streets of Rage, Bullova of The Combatribes, and Mike Haggar of Final Fight.  She‘s a one-woman wrecking crew, a bulldozer in first gear, slow but steady.

Even Marian’s theme in her boss fight is intimidating- and her fighting style during that boss fight is quite unique!  She doesn’t summon goons or minions, like most bosses in beat’em ups do- no, the threat in her fight is just Marian herself, and she’s more than enough.  She shakes the ground in her fight with her bare hands, throws exploding barrels at you, lunges across the screen with her giant punches- it’s quite the throwdown!

All of this to say that in a lot of ways, Marian is treated as powerful in a way that video games of all stripes, and beat’em ups in particular, have never treated women.  Marian is an absurdly present physical threat, and none of it detracts from her womanly nature- she’s just a powerhouse and everybody has to deal with it.

Honestly her closest counterpart might be Martha Splatterhead, the final boss of Combatribes, more than any actually playable character- which makes it particularly amusing that Martha herself is in the game as a powerful, rare enemy type.

It’s neat to see a game treat a female character with both this much respect and this much sheer asskicking power without trying to lessen it in some way or use it as a slight against her, and I love seeing it.

Also Mega McDuffee deserves an award, the game’s musici s incredibly solid.

going crazy over the latest woe.begone music. going insane, actually. I'm so honest when I say this is my favorite song right now. I recorded the mp3 and put it on my phone so I can have it on loop, and it's been going for hours.

I clean between their teeth

we preserve the legacy

that none of us will live to see

he's waiting for me

I clean between their teeth

you can feign your agency

but I dare you to move your feet.

I'm going to scream I'm going to cry I'm going to make fanart and it's gonna look so gd cool please this is the best thing I've ever heard in my life

Something I noticed today is that the melodies for Roll the Dice and The Devil’s Song have a same beat/melody. But for Roll the Dice it’s very slower and jazzier fitting king Dice, while with The Devil’s Song it’s faster and deeper fitting the Devil. It was kinda hard to notice at first but then a friend of mine pointed it out. I have to admit it I didn’t think the Devil and King Dice would have songs that sounded similar I thought that was a cool detail that I wanted to share. Here’s the songs side-by-side so you can hear for yourself. 

Cock Robin - The Promise You Made (Moreno J Remix)

it would be really helpful to know so that I can improve my music and my style and also get feedback from you and your taste :D

my SoundCloud account

This has been an ear worm for...*checks time*...just shy of 24 hours.

Seriously.

I've been playing it almost non-stop on loop when in the house.

My cat is probably sick of it. Then again, he's probably used to Mommy's ear worms.

I blame three things:

a) It's a genuinely catchy song.

b) Colm McGuiness is just amazing. Period. End stop. No seriously - this guy has a range down to low bass and can do a flawless American accent on top of this. *points to link*

c) @o-rchidae YOU AND YOUR FLOODING MY DASHBOARD WITH TERROR STUFF YOU! I WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SO DRAWN TO LISTEN TO THIS NEW SONG IF IT WEREN'T FOR YOU! I HOPE YOU FEEL SUFFICIENTLY GUILTY!

The Music of The Musketeers

Part One: Title Sequence and Closing Credits

[I know, I know... I'm terribly late to this party (only managed to watch in Dec 2022 despite having known about it since 2014) but thanks for allowing me to share this with you! 😃]

♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯

There's a whole lot to love about The Musketeers, especially the cast 💕, but the MUSIC is definitely near the top of my list. It was a treat to get a title sequence from this epic series as they are pretty rare these days.

♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ ♭ ♮ ♯

Series One Ryan Gage having no direct corresponding image is minor compared to Hugo Speer, whose sequence only consists of a silhouette with a shiny fleur-de-lis. I know Treville all but formed the Musketeers here but c'mon! 🤦‍♀️

Also, check out Athos' smirk around 0:15, lol.

Series Two Still no corresponding sequence for Ryan Gage but hey, at least we can now see Hugo Speer. Progress!

Series Three At last! Everyone has (more or less) their own sequence, although Aramis popping out from behind Athos at Tom Burke's credit cracks me up each time. Perhaps it's keeping with how Tom is introduced throughout the series but I prefer to think of it as a validation of what we all know, that Athos and Aramis are #two sides of the same coin! 😆

I also liked how they sequenced Matthew McNulty's credit here. And they replaced the silhouette of the three (and not even the original three musketeers) raising their swords/rapiers together with one showing all four of the boys. About time! #the inseparables

This video has the closing credits as well, but I'm just here for the music. 😬

Final Thoughts How great is that (most?) British (Merlin, Miss Scarlet and the Duke) and Canadian (Murdoch Mysteries, Hudson & Rex) series still have title sequences? Oh, have a listen, if you haven't yet, to the title theme from Star Trek: Picard Season One. #pretty good

Next: The Musketeers' Theme Part Two | Three | Four | Five

Was watching my favorite movie, Almost Famous, like a week or two ago. First of all, I'd just like to say, I could blog about this movie all fucking day, every fucking day, and intend to eventually (because I'm a masochist and like a challenge, damnit) do a post on every single Led Zeppelin reference that I could find in the movie (and there. Are. A lot. Probably literally more than there is of any other band or artist. For realsies), as well as an entire post of its own doing a character analysis of Vic, the Led Zeppelin fan (because I feel like he matters a lot more than his maybe two minutes of total screentime might suggest). But anyway...

So, I'm watching the director's cut, like I usually do (the theatrical cut just doesn't do it for me anymore), and there's one scene that (I'm pretty sure?) didn't make it into the regular cut of the film, but...like...

So, it's near the end of the movie, and Russell, the lead guitarist of the fictional band Stillwater, is having a conversation with the band's lead singer, Jeff, after butting heads with him for the entire movie and both of them coming to terms with the fact that...well...they don't like each other very much. And they're discussing whether it really matters if they like each other or not, and I think it's Jeff who says something like he thinks them liking each other might have been a detriment to the band, if anything, and how he's heard that all of the great duos hate each other or don't like each other or don't get along or whatever. Which, you know, cool, is true for maybe some of the most highly regarded rock groups (the Davies brothers in The Kinks, Joey Ramone and Johnny Ramone, and even Lennon and McCartney by the time The Beatles ended), clearly not all of them, though, but you know, hyperbole and all that. The real kicker, though? The fucking irony in that assertion, that none of the great duos in music get along? You know what song is playing in the background while they're talking about this?

"The [motherfucking] Rain Song", that's what. Like...uh...Jeff...you hear that song that's playing right now? Actually, probably not, since it might not be playing in-universe at that moment, though in Almost Famous it's sometimes hard to tell the diagetic (sp?) from non-diagetic music. But...like..."The Rain Song" is playing. Your argument is invalid, Jeff. Do you have any idea. Any fucking idea, Jeff, how much the duo responsible for that song (both in the writing and, quite possibly, the subject matter itself) don't hate each other? Like, pretty much the polar opposite of hate each other? Like, whether or not you believe that Page and Plant ever touched each other's no-no bits, what's not really up for debate is that those two men love each other like woah, whatever the nature of that love may be, doesn't matter, they are, for all intents and purposes, fucking married, they've both said so themselves. Yes, even James Patrick "No-Homo" Page.

I think Cameron Crowe definitely did that on purpose, and I appreciate the irony in the juxtaposition between the dialogue and the background music, is I guess what I'm saying. Listen, he was given special permission from the guys themselves to use a handful of Led Zeppelin's songs in his movie, he wasn't just going to slap them on any old scene all willy-nilly.

trying not to break down crying at work because i heard this for the first time just now 🥺

We are proud to present the first original composition for the Undertale Accessibility Project, made by Moonchill. Where does it play? You'll just have to wait and find out.

You can see a teaser, a trailer, and experience the playtest now! They are posted on our channel.

Today in "places I wasn't expecting to find a banger theme song"...

Samblr Club - genuine query...

Do you guys have any opinions on Jack Antonoff or his band Bleachers?

I am becoming mildly (moderately) obsessed with his music and wondered if Sam Fender fans also liked his music?

The reason I ask is because holy WOW I would just highly recommend listening to Modern Girl if I were you because the song is ACE but also-

What if they did a collaboration? Do they even know each other exist? Because Jack could produce music (he is a producer as well, done work for Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey) for Sam maybe, and then help him make a new album and I genuinely think it would be the best fucking collab ever

The funny thing is I knew of Bleachers when they first released I Wanna Get Better in 2014, but then until now, I had low key forgotten them? And now I'm going through their discography and they have a new abum coming out and yeah, their vibes (sam's and bleachers) I think would BLOSSOM and would be awesome!

If you don't know what Bleachers sound like, I would suggest going on Spotify. They are very heavily 80s influenced and it's *chef's kiss*

For those of you who do know: what do you think?

Maybe we could manifest it and pray? XD

That's all (hehe) x

The link below to the song in case you were interested:

Playlists and stuff for writing - Dungeon Synth's gold mine pt.1

No need for introduction with Dungeon Synth Archives and their awesome mix xD This one works well if what you need is neat, "Bach-esque" background music playing while you work at your last Medieval flavoured adventure. Also, great stuff for studying and planning, too. Enjoy!