Hi, I'm Syl. On Thursday, I was hit by another car while at a stop. My car is⊠Sylvia Christy needs your support for Help Syl Recover and Ge
So I didn't walk away from the accident unscathed, after all. I have a mild concussion. Between that and my poor broken car, my ability to work and support myself until insurance pays out is... yikes. I know we're all feeling the economic hit. But if you can't donate, maybe you can share? Not gonna lie, I'm scared. I need to pay utilities and eat.
Well I don't know what I was expecting this Saturday of finals week, but it sure wasn't a guy I've been crushing on and talking with for two years suddenly confessing his own feelings for me. It apparently can happen, who knew?!
Depending on how good you are at Deltarune, you might have missed this short, yet soulful piece from Chapter 2. It's stayed in my head longer than Attack of the Killer Queen or Big Shot or even Field of Hopes and Dreams from Chapter 1.
If you have a minute (literally), it's worth a listen.
Anyway, I just got done going through my music library and re-tagging it (since apparently in the switch from Google Play Music to YouTube Music, Google decided to not keep most of my music file tags). Was not expecting the gigantic wave of nostalgia from the 2010s. Not sure why, as that's when I put most of it together, but it was fun to realize that even though I haven't listened to many of these artists or albums for a decade I can still hum along.
Also, apparently I actually bought the first few seasons of Glee's music? That puts me in a weird headspace, going back to when I was actively enjoying that show. The early 2010s feel like an entirely different era.
Oh, and in case anyone is curious, it came out to about 5700 tracks total, with game soundtracks taking up much of that count. The Uematsu and Shimomura folders alone probably have 1500, lol!
I must not explain the joke. Explaining the joke is the joke-killer. I will face my followers who did not get the joke. I will permit them to pass over me and through me
*Slams awake after five years of not posting anything* Weâre posting Shimomura tracks on Tumblr? Love both of these! Iâm a sucker for her Kingdom Hearts stuff in particular.
I have THOUGHTS about this, and theyâre below the cut. I know I havenât posted in like two years, but I really need to shout into the void about this.
So, this got released as a part of a series of short animations to promote World of Warcraftâs upcoming expansion, Battle for Azeroth, and I just CAN. NOT. STOP. WATCHING. The director, artists, and writer behind this short animation have basically created one of the most concise, yet immediately understandable character stories in their entire history (to an extent). Itâs timed incredibly well, the lyrics arenât filled with jargon beyond the two Named Locations (Kalimdor, the western continent and Theramore, a major city on said continent), and the symbolism fills in a LOT OF SUBTEXT that just makes this work. If you havenât watched it yet, stop reading and go do that. Then watch it again while paying close attention to the lyrics and the imagery.
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Done now? Letâs walk through some of the initial understanding you probably have of this, even if youâve never touched Warcraft. First, the daughter of the sea the song references is the woman the short focuses on (who is Jaina, by the way). Second, she stood aside and allowed her father to be killed, which estranged her from her family and her people. Third, the skeleton moving her boat is either a stand-in for her father or is her father. Finally, by the end of the short, she seems to be accepting what the song bestows on her, claiming the title of âDaughter of the Seaâ who one should beware of.
And thatâs what you can grab from the song lyrics alone. What about the imagery alone? We start the short in what appears to be a kind of graveyard, where Jaina picks up a pendant and gives it to the skeleton for passage. Throughout this ride, when we can see Jaina, she is withdrawn, hidden, and almost appears ashamed of something (we can guess this is in reference to âThe Admiral fell at Theramore because she left his side,â the last line Jaina herself sings). Following this, we get the ship graveyard, which along with the wisps and Jaina touching the water but avoiding the skull, seems to imply itâs connected to her shame. Then we get the story of the admiral, which I donât really want to focus on, but then... OH THEN we get to some good stuff. For the first time since this has started, Jaina lifts her head out of her shame and her face is lit by sunlight after her fatherâs death fades out above her head. You donât need any context, I think, to recognize a shift in perspective there. Jaina stands in sunlight, her shame behind her, facing the judgement of the sun. She also is facing judgement from the clouds that form faces, but letâs skip that for now. The judgement morphs then, as Jaina raises the very ship we saw earlier out of the waves, her fatherâs ship. The judgement she faced she turns into atonement by resurrecting what she allowed to die, or at least the symbol of it. Taking her place on the ship, which, since itâs her fatherâs, is indeed her ship now, the full claim of her title âDaughter of the Seaâ is finished, and she no longer sees any need to be ashamed; sheâs faced judgement for what she did and is atoning now.
Note, we have still not pulled any context from the game itself, and we still havenât asked an important question when working in this type of art. How do the lyrics and imagery work together? There are plenty of properly timed moments in the lyrics which are surface-level. For example, the entirety of the second verse up to the line âAnd buried deep beneath the wavesâ does an excellent job of matching the story moments with the lyrics. There are three additional moments that I find excellent, though! First, when Jaina stops singing, and the sea shanty begins, notice that sheâs surrounded by the ruins of several ships; the voices of the dead sailors that came with her father, the admiral, asking her âWhy this? Why this? Oh Daughter of the Sea? Why this? Did you forget your seaside days?â reminding her that she didnât just let her father die that day, but all the sailors he brought with him. Her choice did not just affect her father, and that is a part of the shame she carries, and must be a part of her judgement. Second, letâs go back to right after Jaina lifts her head out of shame. Remember how we skipped the clouds? Thatâs because the lyrics immediately tell you exactly who they are! âBetrayed by family!â While the lyric is clearly still speaking of the âDaughter of the Seaâ betraying her father, the juxtaposition shows that at this moment, Jaina is facing the perceived judgement of her family, her people, the ones she betrayed by standing aside. Third, immediately after this we get the line âTo his nation, with his last breath cried, Beware the Daughter of the Seaâ right as Jainaâs eyes open and we see her use magic to raise her fatherâs ship from the sea. Sheâs not in shame anymore at this point, as weâve already discussed; itâs something else now. While the lyric at the end of the short and her position on her fatherâs ship cement her complete acceptance of her title, you donât really need those because of this moment right here. She already has accepted it, and raising her fatherâs ship from beneath the waves while her title rings out in the lyrics makes sure you know it before they make it even more obvious.
The only thing left that I havenât really talked about is what prevents the âshame, judgement, atonement arcâ from conflicting with the âBeware, beware the Daughter of the Sea. Beware, beware... of meâ line at the end. This is cleared up with the only spoken line in the whole short: âIâm listening now. Father.â In the past, she stood aside and let her father be killed; sheâs listening now though, which implies she would not stand aside now. His enemies that she stood aside for are now her enemies. The final lines are not sung to caution her people, like the song itself is. They are sung to caution the âsavage foesâ that killed her father.
Itâs beautiful, itâs concise, itâs well-timed, itâs got symbolism everywhere, and I note again that this didnât require any in-game knowledge. Obviously there is more stuff that what Iâve written (hello, clear River of the Dead imagery), but this is what stuck out to me when I watched it. I just wanted to write this all out somewhere, so if you did decide to read this, thanks, and I hope the reading and the short itself resonates with you as it did with me!
Oh, and while Iâm here, I should probably give at least a tiny bit of context:
Jaina had forged a peace with the orcs before her father arrived to âsave his daughterâs lifeâ and immediately started killing the orcs (for reasons that are understandable, though bad) without allowing Jaina to explain that peace was an option. To try and get that peace back, she helped a small force of orcs get to her father and they killed him. Thereafter, she was the primary force for peace between the two major powers of the world, the Horde (led by the orcs) and the Alliance (led by the humans). Eventually, the Horde got new leadership which was a bit more warmonger-y than the leader she had forged peace with, and so the Alliance got a bit more warmonger-y as well, stationing troops and military equipment in her city, which led to the Horde leader developing and deploying a weapon of total destruction on the city (the city was left a crater). Those wiped out included her lover and her apprentice, and the leader she had forged peace with had consistently ignored her pleas to restrain or remove the other leader from power prior to the bomb being deployed. From that point forward, she became increasingly anti-Horde, to the point where (as you see in the video) she understood her fatherâs decision to immediately kill the âsavage foes.â
So anyway, that additional context should help fill in some stuff if you feel Iâm pulling too much from the imagery and lyrics alone. Again, if youâve read all this I really appreciate it. Sorry for the wall of text, but thatâs why itâs hidden behind a Read More!
Donât get me wrong, I love teaching, and grading is an important (if annoying part of that), but it REALLY rubs me the wrong way when a student essentially accuses you of not writing a test that corresponds to the test review, claiming that thereâs no way they could be at fault because they skipped other classes and did the review 10 times over to study and be prepared for the test.
Thanks Jimothy (name changed to protect the person and, of course, me), but perhaps instead of writing that paragraph, you could have checked your work or actually attempted one of the questions you left blank? Especially since there were 2-7 corresponding questions in the review for every single question on the test.
Ah well. Hey, at least the average/median were both better for this test than the last one! :D Even Jimothyâs score improved! Sadly his score did not improve enough to bring him out of a mid-range F.
Complaining about family and politics under the cut. Needed a bit of a vent.
Gotta love when your mother tells you youâve âbeen deceivedâ about a political candidate even though the conversation this phrase was uttered in started with her asking the question âSo why is Trump all over the news today? You know I donât know anything about politics.â
Iâd just fucking love it if she would listen and absorb new information, rather than repeating the same 20-year-old talking points the Republicans have been screaming about Clinton. Thatâs the same courtesy I extend her; when she tells me new shit I fucking go and look it up to properly integrate it in my knowledge base and update my evaluation of the world.
But sure, whatever. I guess she can keep her old worldview. Itâs not like Iâm the âson that knows everything about politics.â (her words)
Iâm going to be so fucking happy when this electionâs over.
