I go by Rain or Endo, and I'm a lurker/tag rambler who's trying to come out of her shell and talk on Tumblr. I'm a huge fan of Stray and Hollow Knight/Silksong, and those are really the only fandoms you should expect me to post about!
I really enjoy character exploration and dissection. Pondering The Character and The Story in the footnotes. Sometimes I share those thoughts.
I'm learning how to make Image IDs and descriptions! Some reblogs won't have them, but I'm trying my best to make them where needed, and will always include them in my own posts. Please tell me if there's a way I can improve.
My AO3 <-Currently empty, butāfingers crossedāsome fics will be on there soon! I have many projects in the works, but finishing them is its own animal.
Thanks for giving my little blog a visit. <3
Tag guide under the cut.
Rain's Rambles: Any of my text posts, mostly fandom related! All fandom posts are tagged accordingly.
Rain's Asks: My asks. Please chat with me. Ask me things, share your thoughts. Yap away. :]
Endothermic Writing: I talk about writing way more than I actually write, but sometimes I write things! Here's hoping this tag gets some love soon.
Rain Analyzes: Any analysis post of mine. I have quite a few in the works.
Rainy OCs: My OCs!!! Currently, it features my Stray OCs, Chi-Chi, Kori, and Zuri. Character-specific tags will look like this: "Rainy OCs: Zuri"
Rain's Archive: Posts I want to save/revisit.
Moot's art: Art made by my dear friends and mutuals! I'm very loose with the word art. Includes drawings, writings, fan mixes, and anything else these creative fellas I have the pleasure to talk to whip up.
Stray Rains: My personal Stray game tag. Main tagging is scary.
š„š„: My hater tag. Usually added to reblogs about fanon stuff I don't care for. Please filter this out if you don't want to hear me complain.
(I'm still losing my mind over the fact there is a motif between Secret Lab and Raft..)
Hey there. š«µ (Right?? It's so awesome! I've been meaning to reply to the addition you sent.. I'll get to it eventually.)
6. Favorite track from the OST
Okay, I know I made a whole "What's Your Favorite This?" game, but I'm terrible at picking favorites. Different things make me feel different ways, and I have so much appreciation for each and every one! I can't pick just one.. It's even harder now that I have access to each track and not just the official mixes.
Secret Lab and Raft are definitely up thereāthey're the most replayed by far. To yell them out and not explain what I love about them (said sadly), I also really love Guardian, Town Square, Dead End, Ant Village, and Outlaws (especially the part that plays at the elevator sleeping spot. Very, very special to me).
As an honorable mention, I absolutely adore this one part of the Sewers. It only plays for two minutes in the OST, but it's six and a half minutes long in-game! Love it to bits.
I could go on for just as long about tracks outside of the OST, but I want to share this one in particular: Inside_pipes. It's one of the only tracks I haven't been able to find in-game! And one of my favorites. I linked it with the timestamp below.
It's so exciting! Adventurous, upbeat yet comforting, a little foreboding.. It's like..exploring something long abandoned. It's a little scary, but the lights are bright and you've got a friend by your side, so you're not that scared anymore! Water drips from the ceiling, old pipes hum in the distance, twists and turns lead to even bigger spaces.. So immersive. It also has a bit of a Rain World feel, which I really enjoy.
Doesn't the celeste-sounding part sound a little like Secret Lab/Raft? Grins at you.
You know that little area you walk into when you're leaving the Slums? There's a little nook of sorts behind Momo's raft. A sleeping spot with this track would've been perfect there!
It's a good soundtrack, I'm surprised there isn't anything on it.
I did find a video about identifying the Cat motif and Outsiders motif (motif = a theme that appears through multiple sections), but I need... more....
Like I wanna know about key signatures, time signatures, motifs, where they appear, if they appear upside down, sped up, in the bass rather than the melody, how these effect the mood of the scene, how these represent the story, and just overall WHY these musical choices are made. I think it's cool!
I'd do it since I technically have a background in music theory, but it's not a very good one. I failed the class. Twice.
So yeah this post is mainly just a rant about how I haven't found any music theory analysis videos on the Stray soundtrack... originally it was going to be a question about the OST, "What motif is this?" but in an attempt to explain it I answered my own question: there is no motif (that I am aware of).
You can hear me ramble and rage at it below cut (yay story time)
My favorite track is Secret Lab. It's mysterious, sad, like reminiscing the memory of an assumed-to-be-dead Doc. I liked it, but didn't think too much about it on my first play through.
Second playthrough I get to Antvillage and once I'm done talking to Zbaltazar I hear the mysterious motif (it's not a motif). I immediately do some digging to find stuff about the Stray soundtrack but didn't find much outside of just the audio and some piano tutorials.
My "motif" of interest is "included" in the tracks Communication, Secret Lab, Raft, and Antvillage. As much as I diss myself for my pathetic music theory skills, Communication and Antvillage actually DO share a motif. I dunno, maybe it's like, Zbaltazar's theme or something.
However, as I was making this post I decided to create some sheet music by listening to the tracks to analyze the notes.
And as you can see... THERE IS NO MOTIF shared between Secret Lab, Raft, and Communication/Antvillage. I thought those tracks sounded the same but my ears were DECIEVING ME.
My ears deceive me a lot in fact. The reason Antvillage/Communication isn't on there is because not only was I unable to identify a particular pitch, I couldn't even identify whether each note was higher or lower than the notes next to it.
Not only that, I tried to at least get a layout of how many notes there were, and then fill them in with pitches later. The section I wanted was nine notes, so I put down nine null-notes. However as I kept relistening to the track, I kept on hearing thirteen notes? Fifteen??
I'm so bad at music theory I sat there for an hour replaying that one section of Antvillage just for me to not only be unable to identify the notes, but I don't even know how many notes I'm SUPPOSED to identify. AND it didn't even match the motif I THOUGHT existed with Secret Lab and Raft. š
If no one else does a soundtrack analysis, it would be really funny if I did one as a shitpost or something. I mean, I managed to mention a Zbaltazar theme, and I mentioned Blazer + Midtown in a previous post... hm...
Iām beating @endothermic-rain to this one bc Iām too excited to share this
This isnāt exactly what youāre looking for, but this video has EVERY SINGLE SONG, including ones not found on the soundtrack or even in the game- and Endo went through in the comments and detailed where/when to find each one, AS WELL AS detailing where you can find motifs!! Shoutout Endo the GOAT!!!
And another thing; something else you may find interesting about Communication and Antvillage is that the baseline for both songs, starting at about 1:43 for the former and 2:20 for the latter on the OST, actually spells out Zbaltazar in Morse code!! Probably one of the most fun things to pick out when listening, and it makes me wonder if any other songs are hiding anythingā¦..
Before I begin, I'd like to share this interview with Yann Van Der Cruyssen himself. I think you'll appreciate it.
The multidisciplinary creator known as Morusque details some of the thinking, tricks, and trade-offs behind the audio for feline adventure S
Let's start yapping.
I'm so glad you mentioned Secret Lab and Raft, because I love to think of Raft as a response to Secret Lab. Both, before you add the sound effects and distortions, strike me as something you would play to comfort a child, like a music box or a mobile (Raft especially, as Secret Lab becomes a bit more foreboding in the second half). It's so meaningful in the context of the story! Secret Lab plays as a son discovers a part of his presumably dead father that he's never seen before, and Raft plays at a sleeping spot where said father's just around the corner, as if he were reaching out to comfort him.
Now, that being said, Yann Van Der Cruyssen mentions both in the article above.
"Contrasted against the mechanistic structure of "Rikonium," "Raft" presents a strong, emotionally evocative melody. "This was initially one of the generic tunes that I put in the playlist for the Slums," says Van der Cruyssen, "and I observed people playing the Slums and getting this 'Raft' tune at various points. Sometimes they would get that when there was dialog, or when they discovered something. And the player didn't know that the song was not made on purpose for that particular moment."
[...] he initially did not have plans for a pivotal scene that allows the player to progress beyond the Sewers to be attached to an emotional piece of music. "I thought I would make a dark, strange tune," he recalls.
"But having a soft tune playing actually made a lot of sense because there was this character who discovers there was this lab in his father's home... It was a choice that I made because it randomly appeared here during the playtest."
It's a little hard to tell, but I think they're talking about Secret Lab in the second half, and meant to say the Slums where it says "beyond the Sewers." If that's true, that means both tracks weren't initially made for their places in-game, but they were created with the Slums in mind, which explains the similar feel. Isn't that interesting?
Even though they weren't initially made to be a connection between Doc and Seamus, Raft's placement in-game feels very significant, and I believe it was intentionally placed for a narrative purpose. Yann Van Der Cruyssen figured a soft tune would fit for the lab scene, so perhaps he figured Raft's similar tune would work well near Doc (Trust me bro I'm a hobby analyst).
I think the reason they sound like they and the other two tracks are connected is because of their unique softness. I don't know the musical term for it, but they have a certain music box feel.
While we're talking about Secret Lab, I wanted to point out something else. The track ends on an unresolved/suspenseful note/tone, and a pitched-up version of it plays when Seamus turns on the Tracker (which is included at the start of the Dead End OST). Not only that, but directly after it, the Communication intro plays again, which is so narratively significant!!
One of the reoccurring themes of Stray is..I don't know how to say it eloquently. The hope in seemingly hopeless waiting? How everything can seem impossible before it suddenly falls into place. Time and time again, we encounter people who are simply waiting, holding out hope that something will change, that something will save them. B-12, Doc, and Clementine all trapped in their flats, Momo waiting to hear back from his friends, Zbaltazar waiting to answer and direct someone to Clementine..
And then we have Seamus, someone who's given up entirely, but there's still hope for him. This little intro, tying Communication, Secret Lab, and Dead End together, acknowledges it: Had Seamus not been at the bar when we got that call, and had he not spoken up, he wouldn't have been reunited with his Papa. How it was all by mere chance, how it almost didn't happen. It's so poignant and even acknowledged in the soundtrack!
Now, about Communication and Ant Village (specifically Zbaltazar's part) (which is called Zbaltazar in the files) (hi Zbaltazar), I believe they're connected to B-12's motif. It's only included in the OST once, starting at 4:14 in Control Room, but it also plays in the first scene with him, and after the Zurk chase in the Sewers (they play at 1:56:13 and 3:27:56 respectively in the video linked above). They're too similar for me to think it's a coincidence. I would love if you dissected them!
As for what they could mean within the story, I believe they have multiple meanings! I initially assumed it couldn't be a Zbaltazar motif and instead focused on it's connection to B-12 before concluding that it's a motif for hope. Walk with me.
In Communication, Momo finally gets proof that his friends are alive, and finds out that there may be a weapon that can help him get to them. In Ant Village, B-12 processes the heavy truth of being The Last Human. He puts his hope in finding a way Outside and restoring his memories in the process. Communication's motif is faster, more exciting, while Ant Village's motif is slower, more peaceful. Perhaps, while not really recognized by the characters themselves, B-12 is a symbol of hope to the City.
I still believe this to be true, however, now that I know Zbaltazar's morse code bass line plays in both of these B-12 motif'd tracks (which further supports the idea that Zbaltazar is projecting himself), I believe a connection and possible parallel could be drawn from them. I don't believe Zbaltazar is canonically connected to the Network (at least, not to the extent B-12 was), but he's definitely connected to something beyond his body and is able to communicate from itājust like B-12 was. This makes him the most similar character to B-12, and the motif may be a subtle nod to it.
You also mentioned the rendition of Midtown's track during the Blazer betrayal scene. I like that detail a lotāit's like the dark underbelly of this already predatory place is being revealed to usābut there's another thing! The intro to Midtown is used again (well, a pitched down version) in the Credits! It's really fascinating that Midtown's motif is in thatāMidtown was the closest (populated) area to the Outside, but it was also the most against finding it. Opening the Credits, the scene directly after the cat steps out into freedom, with a pitched down but more hopeful rendition of that track, is incredible.
I'd love to say more, but I think I'm going to stop for now. Thanks for giving me a chance to ramble about this game's wonderful story and soundtrack. <3
if I ever tell you ālmk what you think if you read/play/watch it!ā I am firmly inviting you to send me a play by play minute by minute cataloguing of your thoughts about The Thing
Get an ask in my inbox -> read it -> "oh, that's nice; I need to think of a good response" -> "this deservea more attention than I can give it rn; I'll take another look at it later" -> close inbox until later -> "later" never really comes -> forget -> repeat
occasionally, you will discover an artist who drew roughly 300 beautiful pictures of your favorite characters over the course of a month and then never touched them again. you must accept this as a gift.
new game for mutuals friends followers friends romans countrymen etc. can yāall reply/reblog and put in the tags One (1) creative project youāve got going on currently? it can be for class, for fun, for work, literally any type of art/craft at all, doesnāt matter what stage of the process itās currently in. i love hearing people talk about their projects it sustains me
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
More!!
Probably In Stars And Time.. I usually commit to games in their entirety, but that one got away from me. Getting back into it is going to be harderāI'd like to restart my save just in case I forgot something, but what if I remember more than I thought and get stuck in the loop for even longer than I'm supposed to?? Dilemma.
I know I'll get back to it eventually. I really enjoyed what I played. <3
