Some New Wonder

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“I got a fan letter from a young lady. It was a suicide note.

So I called her, and I said, “Hey, this is Jimmy Doohan. Scotty, from Star Trek.” I said, “I’m doing a convention in Indianapolis. I wanna see you there.”

I saw her – boy, I’m telling you, I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was definitely suicide. Somebody had to help her, somehow. And obviously she wasn’t going to the right people.

I said to her, “I’m doing a convention two weeks from now in St. Louis.” And two weeks from then, in somewhere else, you know? She also came to New York - she was able to afford to got to these places. That went on for two or three years, maybe eighteen times. And all I did was talk positive things to her.

And then all of the sudden – nothing. I didn’t hear anything. I had no idea what had happened to her because I never really saved her address.

Eight years later, I get a letter saying, “I do want to thank you so much for what you did for me, because I just got my Master’s degree in electronic engineering.”

but, you really can't separate Kisara and the Blue Eyes White Dragon. The whole thing with Kisara is that her ka is atypical; her ka and ba are both the White Dragon. This is why it can only be summoned when she's unconscious, because it is literally her consciousness.

This is why I use "Kisara" and "BEWD" interchangeably in a way I wouldn't do for, say, Mahaad and the Dark Magician. In YGO's worldbuilding as it pertains to Ancient Egyptian beliefs, people like Mahaad will have a ka that corresponds to whatever monster represents them. The ka is one's "life force," and actually it's normal for the ka to separate from the rest of the soul after death. The ba is one's personality, or what makes their 'self' unique. So while you can separate Mahaad and his personality/self from the Dark Magician, you can't do the same for Kisara and BEWD.

There's lots of interesting thematic stuff to dig into here with Kaiba (how Kisara and Seto both relate to the concepts of humanity vs. monstrousness, how that ties into power vs. inclusion vs. acceptance, etc.) and with death in general. Kisara's death is in fact a reunion and actualization, which is closer to the real Egyptian beliefs around what happened to the soul - the ka and ba were supposed to reunite after death to form the akh. This is also why I don't think Kisara being "fridged" in the narrative is the only interpretation. She's onscreen all the time and communicates with Seto frequently! If you can reconcile a giant swag ass lizard with a pretty waifish anime girl and hold them in your head as the same thing.

woke: Seto/Kisara is thematically fascinating when you throw in a dash of Egyptology and reframe the BEWD as Kisara's actual 'self'

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you see one on the street,

For decorum is essential when a lobster you must greet.

You may comment on the weather, compliment his choice of hat,

But crustaceans like their space if one should stop them for a chat.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you’re strolling down the coast,

Simply nod and give a greeting, or a handshake at the most,

For a lobster’s first priority is formal social graces,

And one seemes over-familiar if a lobster one embraces.

Don’t ever hug a lobster when you meet one in the sea,

For a lobster’s spines and chitin make it difficult, you see,

And he might become self-conscious if you bring that fact to light,

FIRST THING TO UNDERSTAND: Baroque music is really really fucking cool. You could see it as a reaction to more constrained medieval/renaissance music, which was often obsessive about certain musical rules. Baroque comes from the Portuguese barroco, "an irregularly-shaped pearl", and was actually used as a criticism meaning something very weird, dissonant, overly extravagant, etc. It's seen as very structured but is in fact a collection of big ol' "fuck yous" to the previous era of musical structure. SECOND THING TO UNDERSTAND: Vivaldi was really really fucking cool. He was nicknamed "The Red Priest" as a young spicey ginger, and for many years he was the violin maestro at a combo orphanage/music school for girls. He wrote a zillion works specifically for the girls to perform, coached them in music theory and instruments, and helped many of them launch esteemed careers abroad. Also the board of directors hated him and kept firing him and then realizing they needed him and bringing him back, for reasons completely lost to history, but probably related to his spiciness. THIRD THING TO UNDERSTAND: "The Four Seasons" is really really fucking cool. It's written to accompany four sonnets with super vivid imagery including sudden spring/summer storms ("Thunderstorms, those heralds of Spring, roar, casting their dark mantle over heaven!"), mad drunken revelry, the chase of hunting dogs, slipping on ice and eating shit, etc. When you hear it played properly it's very much not "this pretty song kinda reminds me of spring" but "oh wow I can hear dogs barking in the viola section, chirping birds in the violins, a summer storm wrecking the fuck out of my grain, and dangerously crackling ice!" FOURTH THING TO UNDERSTAND: "The Four Seasons" is rarely played in the spirit of its time. This is Mozart's fault. Well, not really, he didn't tell anyone to play it wrong. But he did give rise to a cult of strings players who play in a very "Mozartian" style - light, pretty, clean, effortless. And for some reason (ahem. some reason i won't go into as this is long enough), this playing style has become the predominant mode for The Four Seasons. Which makes it sound like light, pretty, clean, fancy music.

As we covered above, it is baroque music, so it is not any those things! It's weird and crunchy and extravagant, with musical affectations that would have been considered revolutionary at the time. If you're playing it in the baroque tradition you're also going to be adding your own ornamentations and expressions. Bringing your own weirdness is encouraged in baroque music.

Basically, it's a crime that everyone sees Four Seasons as "fancy music that plays in movies when rich people are onscreen" when it was written by The Red Priest Who Ran A Girls School For Orphans When That Was Very Much Not The Done Thing And Pissed Off the Board At Every Opportunity, and written during a musical period that history has classified specifically as a fuck-you to "pretty and clean and fancy."

For some real crunchy Four Seasons, I will always recommend Adrian Chandler & the Serenissima. BUCKLE UP TO GET YOUR SHIT WRECKED AND YOUR WHEAT CROPS MURDERED BY A SUMMER STORM!!