Random Thougts About My Niche Interests

This is a blog where I will post my thoughts about things I’m interested in. These currently include:

The Magnus Archives (podcast)

The Mechanisms (space pirate band. Yes, it’s as wacky as it sounds.)

Team Starkid (indie theatre group)

The Moomintroll series (a series of Finnish children’s books from the 40s - 70s).

A few Shakespeare plays (I’ve only read three, but I plan to read more)

Jane Austen novels (mostly pride and prejudice)

Other interesting books I read.

Other things may be included but that’s the main stuff.

The format of this blog is probably just gonna be ridiculously long essays/rants, hopefully demonstrating some intellectual depth and wisdom, or at the very least just saying interesting stuff. I will post stuff a) when I have spare time and b) when I have thoughts to post. There is no schedule. I don’t really want to go into a whole “no hate, be respectful” spiel, but obviously, be nice to each other, treat others like you’d want to be treated, etc.

Edit: I’ve just noticed a lot of other introductory posts like this actually give a bit of info about the blogger. So, my name is Willow/Willoc (the Willoc thing is cause once I misspelt my signature and thought it would be a cool nickname) and my pronouns are she/her. My interests are the stuff mentioned above.

I also have an alternate account for posting silly drawings I do, mostly of characters I make up. Don’t know if you can link to a profile, so here’s a link to a random post.

Obviously she made a bargain with the lords in black at some point, (I can’t remember if it’s been explicitly stated what the deal was or not) but the price is that no one will ever remember who she was/her story. And this makes sooooo much sense now with her being an 80s pop star. Like in Npmd, the characters are tasked with giving up what they cherish most, so it stands to reason that Miss Holloway had to do the same thing. And being a pop star, what she cherished most was probably the fame, stardom, everyone knowing who she was etc. And because the lords in black are sneaky little bastards, she it wasn’t just her fame. She had to give up being remembered at all, by anyone, including friends/family. I just think it’s really cool.

Jack Bauer/father from trail to Oregon is actually the founder of PEIP, and is General John McNamara’s great great great etc grandfather.

My reasoning:

1. Both characters are played by Jeff Blim. If everyone can go around saying Paul is Richie’s uncle, I can have this!

2. Jack Bauer had a paranormal encounter with “the watchers with a thousand eyes,” likely Blinklotep, meaning it’s very possible for both musicals to be in the same universe. It’s also possible that Jack Bauer, after arriving in Oregon with his family, decided to investigate this phenomenon further, setting up PEIP.

3. It seems to be custom that when PEIP is introduced, a pun or “dad joke” is also given, in regards to the unit. This feels like exactly the kind of thing Jack Bauer would initiate.

4. In addition to the whole “watchers” thing, the different endings in each performance of Trail to Oregon, and how each characters name is different in every performance, could be indicative of multi-timeline shenanigans, as present in Hachetfield. (I know this one is a stretch, the alternate timelines probably don’t start happening until after 2004, because homeless Ted is in all of them, but whatever!)

5. Probably worth mentioning that Jack Bauer and General MacNamara are pretty much the only morally good characters Jeff Blim has played in StarKid, and despite this sentiment both characters have a similar sense of chaos to them (although that’s just Jeff Blim lol).

6. Although PEIP is technically a unit of the military, and I can’t exactly see Jack Bauer getting involved in that, I like to think that he set up the unit as a solo thing, which was later incorporated into the military or something.

Ok, so I touched on this a bit in one of my other posts about the parallels between High Noon Over Camelot and King Lear. But I kind of wanted to make a whole post specifically on hnoc and how this theme is present.

The lack of vision/foresight drives most of the conflict in the album, with the main hamartia of the characters being their naivety, or inability to see something. For instance, Mordred’s naive belief that he can bring peace between the Saxon’s and townsfolk of Camelot. Similarly, Arthur fails to recognise Mordred as his son, leading to their tragic end. Even the pendragon’s inability to check the captains logs, thus failing to learn vital information about the GRAIL fits under this theme. But something significant I noticed is how the characters who claim to “see” more than others are often blind in their own ways. This is mainly evident in the characters of Gawain and Galahad.

The closing song The Once and Future King states: “Galahad’s blind faith, Gawain’s blind hate, could overcome [Arthur’s] might.” (I’m assuming that Arthur’s might refers to his attempts at protecting the town of Camelot, and Galahad and Gawain’s blindness led to the failure of this.) As Galahad and Gawain both claim to “see” multiple times throughout the album, referring to them as blind at the end creates a sort of paradox.

Perhaps the most iconic reference to “seeing” comes from Galahad’s spoken interlude in Hellfire: “I have seen damnation my brothers!” However he uses a similar phrase when addressing Drumbot Brian in The Hanged Man Rusts: “I know what it’s like when those bastards just don’t see.” In both instances he is positioning him above other characters, who supposedly don’t see the things he does. And in some sense, he does know more than the other characters, having experienced the effects of the “siege seat” and thus seeing the fate of Fort Galfridian - falling into the sun. However he is still blinded by his religious faith, and his assumption that humanity’s sins are the cause of this is wildly inaccurate. And it is ultimately this faith and the beliefs of his destiny that lead to his death.

Similarly, Gawain also claims to see more than other characters, despite him being clearly blinded by his own prejudices. In The Hanged Man Rusts, he is warned of the dangers of his hatred towards the saxons. However he dismisses said warning, claiming “if you’d looked in their eyes, you’d have seen it; barbarity pure and intense”. However Gawain’s claim is shown to be false: in the narration track Judgement, the narrator describes the saxons and townsfolk as “[looking] each other in the eyes for perhaps the first time”.

Gawain’s uses the word “see” one other time in the album. During his battle with the saxons, he states: “my vision blurs with crimson but I finally see: hold brutality near, and release the coiled violence that’s inside of me.” Except, he does not actually “see” anything. Gawain is simply giving in to his blind hatred and prejudice. Ok, something I just realised as I’m typing this, is that this line contrasts with Mordred’s line in the same song “I see that hope for unity made me a fool.” The lines are even in the same section of the song- the second line of each characters chorus. This emphasises how the different characters have developed - both have come to terms with their fatal flaws (naivety and hatred) but while Mordred is now regretting his actions, Gawain has simply embraced his prejudice.

That’s pretty much it. Now I just have to write like this in my literature exam 😅

But that doesn’t matter.

I always think of the song Red Signal as “Jonny goes all demonic, while Raphaëlla la Cognizi does awesome harmonies”. For some reason I’ve never really considered the song as diegetic, and assumed it was just a way to convey The Horrors to the audience through an audio-only means.

It only occurred to me yesterday that the characters within the universe could be hearing this demonic chanting, presumably from The Void (although I saw an animatic a while back that had Kvasiar’s body rise up from the altar and chant). And then if the characters can hear the demonic chanting, what about the harmonising? I always just assumed the song has Raphaëlla harmonising cause it sounds sick, but the more I think about it, it’s probably very lore-relevant. Maybe it’s meant to be Odin, calling out to the gods, summoning them, and ultimately being transformed. She literally said she was going to “answer [the void’s] call”.

This post will probably be a bit shorter than my others, as I don’t have a lot to say about this. Basically, I read “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” yesterday, and thought there was some sapphic vibes featured, whether intentional or not, mainly in the relationship between Hermia and Helena.

The first time these two characters interact, Helena basically goes on a massive spiel about how beautiful and fair Hermia is. And, I know it’s meant to represent how Helena is jealous, because Demetrius loves Hermia. But some of the lines really seem to reflect some sense of attraction. “Sickness is catching: O, were favour so yours I would catch, fair Hermia.” So, this probably just mean she wants to catch Hermia’s beauty. Sure. She also mentions tongues, like twice in this monologue - “your eyes are lode-stars and your tongue’s sweet air,” “My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody.” I don’t think I need to spell this out.

In addition to this, there’s another monologue by Helena, specifically about her relationship with Hermia. In this the idea of union, or being joined as one is repeated in a bunch of different metaphors and imagery. “Both warbling one song, both in one key; as if our hands, our sides, our voice and minds had been incorporated.” She even describes them as “with two seeming bodies, but one heart.” So you know, just two very close friends. This whole soliloquy would be pretty solid evidence on its own, but it literally mirrors a speech Lysander says to Hermia when proffesing his love: “That my heart unto yours is knit; so that but one heart we can make of it”.

Of course Shakespeare may not have intended this work to be interpreted in this sense, but that’s how I’m interpreting it.

Something else interesting I read in this article:

https://sites.psu.edu/amidsummernightsdream/queer-theory/

The character Titania discusses one of her very close female friends which could come across as a bit of a spousal type relationship, especially as Titania adopts/raises the woman’s child after said woman dies.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR TIN CAN BROS MUSICAL GROSS PROPHETS. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THIS MUSICAL LIVE/WATCHED THE DIGITAL TICKET, PROBABLY DON’T READ THIS.

Introducing post number two on this blog. The fact that zero people liked, commented or reblogged my last post has left me completely unfazed - however I have decided to (mostly) stick with one niche fandom in this rant, instead of two niche fandoms with hardly any overlap. Without further ado, here are my thoughts:

Brechtian Theatre, summarised

Brechtian theatre is a type of theatre pioneered by Bertolt Brecht, a German playwright in the 20th century. His main idea was that theatre should be used for social commentary, and to “teach” the audience, as opposed to simple entertainment. One way he did this in plays was by using various techniques, such as breaking the fourth wall, satire/humour, or narration, to alienate the audience from the story and the characters, thus preventing them from forming an emotional attachment and therefore think more critically about the message being portrayed. This post is going to be discussing how the tin can bros use this technique of alienation in their production Gross Prophets.

Ambiguity of "The Company" and "Product"

Throughout the entire play, the characters are referred to as working for "The Company". "The Company" has all the stereotypes of a pyramid scheme: a high emphasis on recruiting new members, lots of levels of recruitment to work towards/move up, a almost cult-like sense of commitment from the members, and questionable morals. Very little information is given about what "The Company" actually does, other than that they sell "The Product". A similar amount of information is given about "The Product" as well. This vagueness is also a common trait of pyramid schemes, however the musical exagerates this to an extremely humorous extent. The audience is given an oportunity to ask questions about the product, however respond to all questions, including ones like "What is it?" or "What is it used for?" with a synchronised "Yes" or "No". The intentional vagueness alienates the audience, as it draws the attention away from the actual story and characters, allowing them to be a representation of all pyramid schemes, or products, as opposed to a specific story about a specific company. Furthermore, the exagerated humour also acts as an alienation technique. (more on that later.)

Use of direct adress/breaking fourth wall

Throughout the performance, the audience is actually part of the play, being the newly recruited members of The Company.  The whole play is literally just the characters presenting to the audience the benefits of The Company, and giving their personal tips on how to work by selling The Product. There are many instances of the audience having the oportunity to interact with the characters, ask questions, etc. Characters also react to the audience's reactions, e.g. thanking them for applauding. Furthermore, there are many references to the cast/characters being from america, which they make light of to the Australian audience. e.g. "have you heard of [some american supermarket]. nah, probably not. They're this bougie market in America where they put three raisins in a bag and sell it for twenty bucks. that's, what, 10,000 AUD?" (That is not the exact quote but it was something along those lines). Having the actors play characters who are also presenting to an audience blurs the lines between what is actually the play, and what is really just the actors just talking to the audience. This serves in alienating the audience by reminding them that they are, in fact, an audience watching a play, and are then less likely to become engaged in the story, and more like to think about the messages being portrayed.

Projections and Lighting Effects

PowerPoints projections are part of the show, used by the characters in their presentations. Several gags include the slides "not working," or having the "wrong photos" on them (this turned out to be a good cover for one time when the slides actually stopped working). Lighting effects are used in a similar manner: one musical number features the singer frequently "forgetting" where the spotlights are going to appear, and sprinting across the stage. Lighting and projections are usually used to enhance the show, by providing drama, or portraying backdrops for the scene to take place. By directly referencing these, and having them "malfunction" does the oposite, reminding the audience that a play is taking place.

Humorous Characters

there is lots of humour in the play - it's a comedy musical. One main way this is used to alienate the audience is through the characters. The three main, and only, characters are named "Bachman Turner-Underwood," "April May June" and "Todd Ankle." These names were known to the audience before the show via posters in the theatre. (the posters also had elements of humourous alienation, with slogans such as "Insert quote here. please don't print it this way!")  This immediately sets the play up as having a light-hearted and silly tone, which contrasts with the serious nature of the issues it adresses. By making the characters names ridiculous, the audience is already alienated before the play has even started - nobody is going to go into play prepared to care about a character named "Todd Ankle." Furthermore, the characters themselves are humourous stereotypes, with no character development or qualities that allow the audience to emotionally connect with them. Thier advice on selling the product is generally morally questionable or useless.

Bachman Turner-Underwood takes the form of a hip, young man obssesed with his physicue. His advice to the audeince is that they, like him, can use thier atractiveness to advertise "The Product". He claims to "Bio-mechanically alter" his body in humourously obscure ways to increase this atractiveness. (There was a whole song about this, though the only specifics I can remember is that his "abs are made of gold" and he has the "blood of a pre-teen".)

April May June speaks in an exagerated southern accent, frequently talks about how much she worships god, and presents with an exagerated feminist attitude. (e.g. April May June: "there's only one gender identity I recognise and that's us girls!" It’s a woman’s world soundbite plays, while April May June dances. female audience cheers. my male friend sitting next to me remarks that he should leave.) However she also has very confined ideas of gender roles, as often associated with southern christians. For instance, she acknowledges when speaking to the women in the audience audience that they're probably going to have trouble finding the time to sell the product, as they're too busy cleaning, cooking, and being on their period. Her advice to sell the product is to gain the trust and friendship of people who can help you move up in the bussiness world by helping them while they are vulnerable - essentially just manipulating and exploiting them for personal gain.

Todd Ankle takes the apearance of a stereotypical mystic-hippee-guru, with long hair, crystal necklaces and beaded bracelets. Personality-wise, he is basically just a weak pushover, who is prone to bad luck. (he's the character who keeps forgetting where the stage spotlights are, and has his powerpoint presentation malfunction.) Todd is probably the character who comes closest to illiciting an emotional response from the audience. However even this emotional response is not genuine. The character is portrayed to be pathetic and sad, and thus draws sympathy from the audience. however the reason people "feel sad" for the character is more out of humour than genuine sadness - it's funny to feel sorry for him because he’s so pathetic. His advice is in line with his personaltiy - changing the way you think about things to make your misfortune seem less bad than it actually is. e.g. "If all this horrible stuff hadn't happened to me and messed up my life, I wouldn't have found The Company!" - (not a direct quote.) His main solo in the musical features the lyrics "I'm no broken ankle . . . you can walk on me". which, in adition to being absurdly hillarious, also is a great use of irony. the concept of "being walked on" generally reffers being weak/lacking self advocacy, whereas Todd says this with a sense of melodramatic pride, reflecting the characters phillosphy of viewing his misfortune and weakness as being a positive occurence. (it is not.)

By having such ridiculous characters that no one cares about, makes the ending (which Im about to talk about) incredibly powerful and clever.

Ending

Towards the end of the show, the characters recieve a video call from the head of The Company, "Dr Cheeseman" (again, with the silly names!). He informs them that they will be able to move from their current level of "Model-executive-specialist" to the "Coporate Level", presumably the highest level of the company. however at the end of the play, they discover that they have been given the role of "Mail Collector" on the Coporate Level, and there are still hundreds more roles within the coporate level for them to move up through. This then follows a cheery ending song about the need to be constantly working to move up the levels of The Company. This is very in line with the humorous tone of the rest of the play. However, during a sort of bridge or middle eight  of the song, the tone completely changes to become much more genuine, as the characters sing about their motivations/reasons for being in The Company - to be revered, loved, and accepted. the lighting also changes to match the more serious tone - the only time it's used to add to the mood of the actual play. The song then quickly switches back to the cheery satirical tone, as the musical ends. This brief, yet signficant change in tone is possibly the only moment in the musical where the audience is expected to feel an emotional connection to the characters, who are finally shown as something more than their humourous stereotypes. The motivations they declare are all universal insecurities and even match up with the each character’s stereotype as previously described (Bachman wants to be revered, April wants to be loved, and Todd wants to be accepted) the fact that these characters have been portrayed as ridiculous/silly throughout the play has a real “biting effect,” often associated with Brechtian theatre, as the characters are revealed to all be just regular people who are seeking affirmation through The Company. Like, I was just sitting in the theatre thinking Jesus Christ, who put up the fourth wall??? I believe this does a really good job in conveying a message of how pyramid schemes can take advantage of vulnerable people.

Ok, here is my first actual post, and I’ve managed to choose the nichest topic ever. I don’t even know who this is aimed at. I mean, surely there’s someone besides me who loves the mechanisms and at least knows of King Lear? I’m really just posting this cause I’m sick of sitting in literature class and thinking oh my god, this is just like the mechanisms. Also my Lit mock exam is in 3 days so I’m pretending this counts as study. So anyway, here are my thoughts on the topic:

(Before I start I should probs just explain that High Noon Over Camelot is a concept album that retells stories of King Arthur in the format of a western (but also set in space) and king Lear is one of Shakespeare’s tragedy plays.)

More information here: https://mechanisms.fandom.com/wiki/High_Noon_Over_Camelot?so=search

And here: https://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/lear/summary/

Both pieces of literature (yes, the mechanisms count as literature now) fit pretty neatly into the tragedy genre. They both have a character of a high status (Lear/Arthur) who suffers great loss, most of the death/destruction comes about from misunderstandings and the characters’ fatal flaws, and of course, everyone dies horribly. (I know there’s more to tragedy than that but I wanted to keep this simpleish.)

However there are also a lot of parallels between characters. For instance Lear and Arthur have a bit ok common, in the sense that they both fail to see or understand their child, leading to their downfall. I feel like the song “The Once and Future King” could just apply to Lear and Cordelia, as well as Arthur and Mordred. e.g. “I fought to gain your love, yet you could not see.” “Arthur didn’t see, and now he’ll be the once and future king.”

Blindness in general is a pretty big theme in both stories, with “Galahad’s blind faith” and “Gawain’s blind hate,” in HNOC, and Lear and Gloucester’s inability to see the true nature of their children, or the consequences of their actions in King Lear. (BONUS SPECIAL INTEREST PARALLEL: the theme of blindness is more literally shown in King Lear when Gloucester gets his eyes gouged out. You know, like in the Magnus Archives.)

Interestingly, it is demonstrated in King Lear that the crazy or mad characters are sometimes the ones with the most insight. For instance, it is when Lear is driven to madness that he finally understands the consequences of his actions, and the true nature of his eldest daughters, Gonneril and Reagan. Additionally, he expresses sympathy for the poor, something he is never shown as doing when king. (Especially as his main flaw is his arrogance.) Furthermore, The Fool frequently tries to impart wisdom to Lear in the form of silly rhymes and jokes.

Similarly, when The Hanged Man gives prophecies to Galahad, Gawain, and Arthur, it is only Galahad who believes him and understands him. Technically, Galahad only really goes mad after experiencing the information overload from the “siege seat” of Fort Galfridian, however I think this still adds to my theory. He is the one character who actually knows/sees what’s going on with the station, the cause of the oppressive heat, and how to fix it, however as seen in the song “Hellfire”, he wasn’t exactly in the right mind. (“I have seen damnation, my brothers”). So yeah, Lears madness and Galahad’s madness parallel each other. I could even argue that “Hellfire” is Galahad’s version of Lear’s Act 3 scene 2 soliloquy.

(Here: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/king-lear/read/3/2/

And here: https://genius.com/The-mechanisms-hellfire-lyrics)

Both monologues represent the characters madness, discuss the destruction of the world while referencing extreme weather and making a bunch of biblical allusions. Also the fact that Lear rages about rain, storms, and floods, while Galahad discusses fire and drought just feels so perfect I wonder if The Mechanisms did it intentionally.

I could go on, and talk about how the hanged man could parallel the fool, but I think this post is already way to long as it is.