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Right, I'm back from a wonderful two-week music camp in the mountains, and now that I've caught up with everything, I'd like to share a little music theory and other musings with regards to soundtracks. To keep this post from getting long, I'm only going to present one analysis, and it's one that I think no one else has done before, so here you go.

Tritones are Scary
A tritone is an interval that splits the scale in half, or is essentially a fifth except the top note is flat (C and F#, D and G#, B and F, etc.) In the era of classical music, the tritone was said to be a musical manifestation of the devil, and was thus never used. Nowadays, people aren't quite as superstitious, but we still know that a tritone brings tension to music.

Take a look (er, listen) at the following examples from the soundtracks of Wolfenstein 3D and Lichtspeer (ironically using tritones on the same notes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jVUqzoSlpc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td09zQOb6uA&t=3m17sec
Here's a little analysis:

The first, called "The Ultimate Challenge", is the second boss track of Wolfenstein 3D, and it is used for the fights against General Fettgesicht (the hardest boss) and Adolf Hitler (for similar obvious reasons). The song sets up tension by beginning with the combination of a tritone interval and a seemingly uneven rhythm, then goes back and forth between clearer-sounding and dissonant chords. The B major chords feel heroic to me, and the dissonance very tense, and the song as a whole creates a nice serious contrast to the other boss theme, which is basically just a very catchy-fied Nazi Party anthem. Knowing that the iD Software of the 90s were definitely a bunch of goofballs, they could very well have known that the tritone is "the devil's interval" and been using it to very subtly compare Hitler to Satan. Who knows? All I know is that this song definitely didn't calm my nerves when fighting either of these bosses.

The second piece is, if I'm understanding footage from boss fight compilations correctly, the theme for Lichtspeer's first boss, Das Viking Pirate King. Like "The Ultimate Challenge", it constantly goes back and forth between harmony and discord (in this case, from a fifth to a tritone), but in a much simpler manner. Combined with the fact that these notes are at first played on a synth I find similar to the type of sound that's normally only reserved for aliens and ghosts, this song makes the blatant establishment that you are up against a greater threat than what you have previously seen. As with most of the boss themes, but here especially, it heavily draws on the track before it that (if I have this right) represents the levels that precede the boss. Overall, especially considering how Das Viking Pirate King himself is rather vanilla among bosses, this does a pretty good job of introducing the presence of bosses to Lichtspeer.

So now, what do you have to say about various soundtracks, for video games, movies, or anything else? Or about musicals, can't leave those out either! Just make sure it stays mostly about music theory and not about lyrics, because otherwise the whole thread will be about lyrics, won't it. Looking forward to your thoughts!

-Twistey, going off to brainwash herself with catchy electronic music... some more

No need to explain why that's great. ;) Happy birthday.

-Twistey

Currently I'm finishing reading the Original Series as part of my preparation for a Permission attempt, but now that the Wiki has been discovered as miraculously unblocked on my computer, Blank Sprite is going on my list. Just for a fellow PPCer.

I understand your decision and I wish you good luck with whatever you do next.

-Twistey

I decided to make a good few of my pending badfic selves (and one past one, NightmareTwisteyTheDemonFoxAnimatonic) literal alternate universe versions of me, with the explanation that I (as my online self) have been screwing around with interdimensional travel. The Board villain is one of those, from an alternate universe that caused her to turn out... maybe not evil, but at the least the kind of person you don't want to encounter online. (She recognizes that she has no power outside the internet, though, so she wouldn't do any real-world harm.) Basically, she's kinda trying to sabotage the PPC a bit for her particular motivation.

-Twistey

A lot of that down was down to not having any idea what was going on by the time its existence came to my attention, and feeling like I didn't have the time to start at the beginning with various other goings-on and priorities, both life and media-wise.

That being said, I do agree we have a general problem with not reviewing or at least acknowledging we've read stuff around here - so I'm going to make my Nth call for people to at least drop an "I read your thing (nm)" on stuff they read because it's better than cricket noises.

- Tomash

Not bad - I still generally got a sense of the story - just short. I would've liked to actually see the pasta fire, but that might be me.

- Tomash

I must confess I haven't read Blank Sprite. I've wanted to, but there's always been something else to read and I was honestly intimidated by the length.

...OTOH, I don't noticed the drama quite so much. Maybe because I do my best to stay out of it, Maybe for other reasons.

Ah well.

I wish things could have worked out differently. You seem like a cool guy, and I wish I'd been able to get to know you better.

Okay, I know, I had already said I was leaving long time ago, but at the same time it wasn't a properly "final" goodbye as I kept posting chapters of my spinoff's final story.

However, that's what I wanted to talk about. For those who don't know it, I've decided to leave in the aftermath of some really nasty Board drama about one year ago, and I'd leave it at that - especially since a person who doesn't want anything to do anymore with the PPC was involved.

I had hoped things would get better by the time I was done with Blank Sprite, but they didn't - every time I posted a new chapter, I would always find drama going on or drama would pop up right afterwards.

And, of course, that would drown out my releases. The last chapter of Blank Sprite just fell off the Board, with only one person commenting on it, and the other chapters didn't fare much better. And that despite the fact that I know the quality was there - I've had very positive comments from my beta readers, most of them I believe are among the PPC's best (several being even Permission Givers or people who were nominated for the position).

It is disheartening. I've started working on Blank Sprite around 2012 - that is a six years effort, a 77.000 words story (yup, enough for it to qualify as a novel) with possibly hundreds of hours spent working on it. I've strived so much for quality that I even had an old time friend of mine, now working as a professional editor, have a look at it despite the fact that usually we didn't agree on writing matters, just for the sake of seeing if there was anything I could do better.
And this just for one comment for the final chapter while people were eager to throw themselves on the last 'bout of drama.

Okay, I now probably sound like a sour fanbrat, but that's something that saddens me. I did improve a lot as a writer while working on it, that's right, but was it any different than writing for the drawer at this point?

That is why I want to officially say that my PPC spinoffs are officially over. Not only the main Wings Of Canon one, but Keiko's spinoff as well - I'll update the pages accordingly.

While I had Keiko's fourth mission in the works, I'm thinking finishing it might not be worth the time and effort if it is going to end up not being read as Blank Sprite was - I could be using that time and effort for my book instead.

And... yes. I'm working on a fully original book of mine. The plot and characters will be loosely based on that of Blank Sprite (can't let all that work go to waste, right?), but otherwise it will be a new story. It won't have, for obvious reasons, "Sergio Turbo" on the cover, but if any of you will ever get it in their hands and read it they will probably notice.

So... that's it, pretty much. Goodbye guys and gals, it has been an honor but this place isn't working for me anymore. I wish all the best for the community, as I'm saddened to see a lot of drama going on - that is not the PPC I knew, and I hope it will be back to the way it was.

(Okay, I'll technically stay around a few days more to read some answers. But not for long. Once this thread falls off the first place, I'll be gone from here)

in that Basque doesn't have a linguistic connection to any other European language, while Wymysorys is a branch of West Germanic.

But yeah, that's a cool thing to link.

(On a trivial meta note, could I ask why you start your subject lines with lowercase letters?)

- Tomash

I'm reminded of the Basque language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language

Well, kid, I… I know about the the Gem Homeworld only incidentally...
While "I… I" obviously is intentional, "the the" probably isn’t.

HG

So far, it's an even split between all three. That doesn't help my decision on which one to work on, but at least I know people are interested! :P

I'm glad you liked the tentacles! There is not an overarching plot, at the moment, but I have a few ideas that I could develop more.

Glad you asked! G.U.A.R.D. stands for Guardians against Unseemly Atrocities and Relics Division. It's rather unwieldy, but it is what it says it is, and guarding is what they do, so I think it works (?).

This here's an interesting article about Wymysorys/Wilamowicean, a West Germanic language spoken in basically one down in Poland, and its history/the culture.

- Tomash

She was carrying a rather fruity drink.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked.

I like the "friendly tentacles they can't seem to evict from the kitchen sink" - I think it does a good job communicating a feel for this world. Is there an overarching plot growing behind their various misadventures or is it more of a series of episodic stories?

Also out of curiosity, what does G.U.A.R.D. stand for?

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*crickets*
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*thumbleweed strolling by*
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Nobody? Ronnie James Dio? The King of Metal?
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"Killing the Dragon"! I was referencing the dragon attack from Should I Major in Chemistry, or Alchemy? for which I voted!
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*sigh* Those are the jokes, people!

As much as I love Deapool: Genesis The Cycle of Worlds, I had to vote for the Pureblades. Sounds like the Shadowhunters done right (although the name's equally as silly. No offence).

I'm glad you like them, The Bastion Walls especially, as it's sort of my flagship project. It's basically my love letter to military history and fiction wrapped up in fantasy trappings. A bit niche, perhaps, but it works for me.

is that Logo and the Mobiles are probably going to be disappointed they weren't responsible for the local quicklife waking up. XD

(It might also be plausible that Dairine and other tech-savvy wizards just end up missing the whole Internet-turns-sentient thing, at first - especially if there's time between the dawning of consciousness and it taking the Oath. It's not as if there's a sensor looking out on all possible paths to digital sentience...)