nolshru

hey, it's been a while since we posted anything on tumblr, so I wanted to just... speak a bit about developments as to who we are and what's going on

so, wrt plurality stuff, we've decided to be a lot less secretive about it? like, yeah, hi, my name is Emily and I'm a person, the others are all people too, and they're awesome, I like them a lot, just, yeah, they're cool people and I'm happy to have them around and stuff

there are 8 known members of us as a system, Twig, Fern, Emily (hi), River, bug, Art, Clover, and Katie - we are a system with fairly high separation between the members, not especially so in terms of personality, but like, "barriers" as some people put it are fairly high - we practically exist in different modes of consciousness, and while we have the ability to exist simultaneously, we primarily engage with each other asynchronously and like, due to memory weirdness, it's largely done through written messages to each other in a private discord server, just, yeah, it's weird - our identities are all fairly fluid still, a lot of the genderfluid stuff seems to be universal, but ye

in other news, other cool stuff has happened to us, we - started HRT and have been on it for 6 months, although we don't actually seem to be absorbing the E and it's because of our body's own production of E that we're feminising, which is... suspicious, but the T blockers do seem to be working - were visited by our girlfriends twice - we're in a long distance relationship, and just, yeah, visits weren't especially practical before, but I'm glad that they're working now, just, hugging people is so fun, I like it a lot, we should hug more people, people are cool and hugging is cool - have now played games in the Fire Emblem franchise, specifically Path of Radiance, and Blazing Blade, and if you know what that means, I'm really sorry, I know those 2 are generally seen as some of the worst ones in terms of gameplay, just, yeah, Nintendo Switch Online emulation is cool and I don't speak Japanese yet - have not had our medication refilled properly - they gave us the wrong prescription, and our brain is screaming at us, I'm scared !

within that song, there's a lyric that details Bowser's sister

"you remind me of my kid sister she read so much she got a blister a big one, I mean big on her brain, what a shnook"

and like, yeah, this is very fun to read as like, a tragic backstory for bowser? his sister got a tumor in her brain and just... died - given that this line is in the context of expressing why Bowser has a distaste for Peach's reading, and the song earlier explains that the spells of the koopa kingdom are written down in spellbooks, I like to imagine that Bowser's sister was an experienced mage of some sort - probably an apprentice of Kamek/Kammy or something

the song has some really clever lyrics - like, I love the pun in "this bird, expert in the absurd" (song uses absurdist themes sometimes, and like, the idea of a philosophical bird is absurd, it's very very fun :D ) and is an entry in the "pop rock with extremely strong lyricism and a heavy focus on mental health issues" genre

the song also makes use of the vocaloid (used as genericised trademark - I am aware that it is not operated by Yamaha for use in Vocaloid) Kasane Teto for much of its lyrical delivery (as is common within Paige's music) - in this song, it's largely used to distance the speaker from the reader - we cannot help the speaker here, and are just.... observers - she asks us for help, but yeah, there are layers between us; I do think that a lot of the idea with use of Teto is lost to some extent though, just because Paige uses Teto so often - it's really hard to parse that Teto's use is significant to this song

I'm also not massive on the joke of Teto's lyrics coming in one bar early "by mistake" - I think it's meant to be like, "Teto was only allowed to do a single take of this song - the speaker just... couldn't bear to listen to more of it to perfect it" - contrasting with the lyrics of the song that seem to be about persistence through crushing despair - meaning to suggest that the speaker just... cannot do that here, but like, I just don't feel this works with the idea that it's being performed using a mechanical tool to create distance - like, those 2 feel like they just don't work that well together

I do like the song overall though, it's neat - I like when good lyricism, and I do have to stress that it is INCREDIBLY strong lyricism - I just wanted to criticise some things about it that I wasn't as big on, but know that this song is incredible otherwise, like, holy fuck, it's so clever, listen to this song :D