(no subject)
Jun. 22nd, 2026 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
malyminOk... of the castle shells I've downloaded so far, "Castle Shell Challenge 2" by lordcloss76 meets a lot of my personal standards for house shells. I'm fine with using moveobjects and a bajillion (totally legitimately acquired) packs on my own terms, but I like a relatively "clean slate" if I want to move into a home.
- no (or minimal) moveobjects cheat
- not overloaded with debug scenery
- uses as few packs as possible (in this case Castle Estate Kit)
It is, admittedly, a bit small for a "castle" (fits on a 30x20 lot), but that at least gives room for building on, or makes it easier to fit into a world with limited lots.
I like Maxis' own "grand castle estate" shell fine... except for the fact it has no predefined rooms. Even unfurnished, it's currently outside of this save file's budget. Lilsimsie's wedding venue version of it is nice, and easy enough to convert into a house, but is like... over 650k simoleons furnished. For the record, my wealthiest sims at the moment are sitting at like... 75k simoleons.
I tried looking for a good wood lodge shell for Moonwood Mill (Werewolves pack world) also, but the only one I found that met my third criterion failed my first and second criteria.
The thing about moveobjects spam is that it makes it hard to know if a sim can actually, uh... access things.
YOU MUST FREE YOURSELF FROM THE TYRANNY OF "MEANINGFUL CHOICES"
Jun. 22nd, 2026 08:20 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
azdarchid_feedSo as I start writing this piece, I have just finished (remotely) watching Nicholas O'Brien's talk at Narrascope, "I know narrative designers who use branching dialog and they’re all cowards". I'm not going to get into summarizing the exact contents of the talk itself, I think Nicholas can do that in his own words, but here's the summary as given on the conference schedule:
Branching narrative is widely used in indies and AAA games, but does it inherently increase player agency? I argue that if employed too casually, it can create a wedge between user and story. I propose that contemporary games overuses choice-based dialog as a crutch, off-loading storytelling onto the player. “Flavor paths” – low/no-stakes choice-based narrative – have neutered the power that choice-based mechanics can have within narrative gameplay. Games that forgo flavor paths in favor of linear story or “consequential design” will hopefully inspire narrative designers to reclaim their stories from the (cowardly) branching paradigm. (Important note: I too am a coward.)
(Emphasis mine)
I'll be completely honest: I picked this talk to watch in its time slot specifically because I already thought I was going to want to push back on this idea, and so here I am pushing back. Obviously there's more to the actual material presented than this central argument here, and Nicholas presented both a few examples of what he's talking about and some instances of what he thinks are ways forward outside this perceived overuse of branching choices.
In truth, this article isn't really a specific response to specific points in the talk so much as it's me wanting to bring some missing context to bear on the underlying rules of engagement of this discussion. The talk is now available on YouTube if you're curious.
So: I think when we talk about "flavor choices" in these terms and we place them in inherent opposition to "meaningful" or "consequential" choices we're actually building a very different type of mental scaffold than the one that would actually be useful to us. I think we need to be thinking of choices in branching narratives are a structural tool that has multiple overlapping functions.
Branching choices have a structural dimension; they take part in literally defining the shape of the narrative from the standpoint of which textual fragments are or aren't included. But they also have a rhetorical dimension; choices say things, in themselves. I tend to make an analogy to the role of editing in cinema, where edits similarly act both as a broad organizing system for a film narrative and as immediate components of its rhetorical or aesthetic content.
And importantly, choice and branching are distinct and independent things. They're often closely coupled and even conflated, of course. But examples of choice without branching are common; many false choices merge immediately, not even including a single line of acknowledgement of the player's choice. However, this doesn't mean that they are necessarily narratively empty. Consider this toy example:
The therapist idly stretches his fingers, not really looking at you.
"And when your father found out, how did he react?"
* "He was angry. Read me the riot act."
* "Didn't really react at all, at first. But he wouldn't look or talk
to me for days afterwards."
* "He said a few things about how disappointed he was, but I don't
think his heart was in it."
-
"I see." He jots something down on that notebook of his. "And how
did that make you feel?"
It's very clear, narratively, that what the player character says here matters not one iota to the therapist, and has no unique response at all. And yet, by taking one of these choices, the story has materially changed. A choice is ultimately a question you're asking the player, and sometimes the function of a question is to let the player hear their own answer. This example has a purely rhetorical function;1 Most choices in traditional branching narratives have both rhetorical and structural components.
A more functional-in-place example of a purely rhetorical choice is this classic moment from Pathologic 2:
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<p class='syndicationauthor'>Posted by azhdarchid</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://azhdarchid.com/you-must-free-yourself-from-the-tyranny-of-meaningful-choices/">https://azhdarchid.com/you-must-free-yourself-from-the-tyranny-of-meaningful-choices/</a></p><p>So as I start writing this piece, I have just finished (remotely) watching <a href='https://essay-games.com/'>Nicholas O'Brien</a>'s talk at Narrascope, "I know narrative designers who use branching dialog and they’re all cowards". I'm not going to get into summarizing the exact contents of the talk itself, I think Nicholas can do that in his own words, but here's the summary as given on the conference schedule:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Branching narrative is widely used in indies and AAA games, but does it inherently increase player agency? I argue that if employed too casually, it can create a wedge between user and story. I propose that contemporary games overuses choice-based dialog as a crutch, off-loading storytelling onto the player. <strong>“Flavor paths” – low/no-stakes choice-based narrative – have neutered the power that choice-based mechanics can have within narrative gameplay.</strong> Games that forgo flavor paths in favor of linear story or “consequential design” will hopefully inspire narrative designers to reclaim their stories from the (cowardly) branching paradigm. (Important note: I too am a coward.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(Emphasis mine)</p>
<p>I'll be completely honest: I picked this talk to watch in its time slot specifically because I already thought I was going to want to push back on this idea, and so here I am pushing back. Obviously there's more to the actual material presented than this central argument here, and Nicholas presented both a few examples of what he's talking about and some instances of what he thinks are ways forward outside this perceived overuse of branching choices.</p>
<p>In truth, this article isn't really a specific response to specific points in the talk so much as it's me wanting to bring some missing context to bear on the underlying rules of engagement of this discussion. The talk is now <a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zRElyJdy3c&t=397s'>available on YouTube</a> if you're curious.</p>
<p>So: I think when we talk about "flavor choices" in these terms and we place them in inherent opposition to "meaningful" or "consequential" choices we're actually building a very different type of mental scaffold than the one that would actually be useful to us. I think we need to be thinking of choices in branching narratives are a structural tool that has multiple overlapping functions.</p>
<p>Branching choices have a structural dimension; they take part in literally defining the shape of the narrative from the standpoint of which textual fragments are or aren't included. But they also have a rhetorical dimension; choices <em>say things,</em> in themselves. I tend to make an analogy to the role of editing in cinema, where edits similarly act both as a broad organizing system for a film narrative and as immediate components of its rhetorical or aesthetic content.</p>
<p>And importantly, <em>choice and branching are distinct and independent things.</em> They're often closely coupled and even conflated, of course. But examples of choice without branching are common; many false choices merge immediately, not even including a single line of acknowledgement of the player's choice. However, this doesn't mean that they are necessarily narratively empty. Consider this toy example:</p>
<div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>The therapist idly stretches his fingers, not really looking at you.
"And when your father found out, how did he react?"
* "He was angry. Read me the riot act."
* "Didn't really react at all, at first. But he wouldn't look or talk
to me for days afterwards."
* "He said a few things about how disappointed he was, but I don't
think his heart was in it."
-
"I see." He jots something down on that notebook of his. "And how
did that make you feel?"
</pre></div>
<p>It's very clear, narratively, that what the player character says here matters not one iota to the therapist, and has no unique response at all. And yet, by taking one of these choices, the story <em>has</em> materially changed. A choice is ultimately a question you're asking the player, and sometimes the function of a question is to let the player hear their own answer. This example has a purely rhetorical function;<sup class="footnote-ref" id="fnref-1"><a href="https://azhdarchid.com/you-must-free-yourself-from-the-tyranny-of-meaningful-choices/#fn-1">1</a></sup> Most choices in traditional branching narratives have both rhetorical and structural components.</p>
<p>A more functional-in-place example of a purely rhetorical choice is this classic moment from <em>Pathologic 2:</em></p>
<p><img src="https://bear-images.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/azhdarchid/patho-baby.webp" alt="A dialog choice in Pathologic 3, in which the options are "You thought I brought in a baby?", "You thought I brought in a baby?", and "You thought I brought in a baby?"." /></p>
<p>Here, the rhetorical function is that of a joke. The joke can only exist not only <em>as</em> a choice beat, but <em>in</em> a narrative that has a large number of them, where most are in fact quite inconsequential—but certainly not all. <em>Pathologic,</em> in general, lives in the ambiguity of how much your choices "matter". NPCs in those games will lie to you, get offended if you say the wrong thing to them, or simply not deliver information you need if you guide the conversation away from the topic. Players are, then, asked to make a judgement call about how to navigate each conversation. I really think this demand for close reading is a big driver of how much <em>Pathologic</em> sticks with people and why the games have such a loyal following.</p>
<p>For many games, dialogue choices are a core mechanic (sometimes the only core mechanic), and so they are a means to many different narrative ends. That they don't uniformly have the same level of stakes or "consequence" is, for those games, a feature and not a bug. We shouldn't treat this as a problem to be solved any more than platformer level designers should view it as a problem that there are easy jumps and hard jumps, that some jumps are over a death pit and others are only required to get an optional collectible.</p>
<p>When I talk about the rhetorical function of choices, then, I'm really putting a broad umbrella over a world of different lines of storytelling. Sets of choices always create an implicit boundary—why do I have an option to yell at this character, but not punch them in the face? And that boundary then takes part in communicating, to the player, about the boundaries of the milieu or the player character's freedom of action. Choices can act as an extra line of internal monologue, surfacing what the player character might be thinking without a more conventional device like interior monologue.</p>
<p>Choices can enable player fantasy and alignment. There's a particular moment in <em>Star Trek: Resurgence</em> that I think is really illustrative of this. In the <em>Star Trek</em> setting, characters often give commands to computers or space ships by using a "voice authorization," a sort of pseudo-password with a defined format. In <em>Resurgence,</em> when the player character is about to give their voice authorization code, the player is actually asked to choose what that authorization code is.</p>
<p>This is a complete non-choice, even from an in-universe perspective—those codes aren't chosen, they're assigned, and the character is merely recalling theirs. What the player choses here affects not at all what happens; there's no way to be wrong or misremember the code. But of course, <em>the act of choosing</em> creates alignment; of <em>course</em> you know the code, you're the damn captain, and so that you are deciding to say "alpha" instead of "delta" is significant to a degree that merely pushing a button to advance the dialogue without choosing wouldn't be.</p>
<p>The player in this moment has absolutely no agency, their choice is entirely and explicitly not a "real" choice. And yet it's still completely effective interactive storytelling and is a nice touch over not having a choice there at all.</p>
<p>Which brings me to the important point that <em>agency, too, is just a rhetorical device.</em> You cannot treat "more agency" as a goal in itself, especially because "agency" is more <a href='https://heterogenoustasks.wordpress.com/2014/09/22/a-bestiary-of-player-agency/'>a family of distinct things</a> and not one clearly-defined thing. Some games are purposefully low-agency or even actively push back on player agency; this is well-trod territory in interactive fiction, with examples like <em>Rameses</em> and <em>Depression Quest</em> being canonical.</p>
<p>Some games are high-agency but not necessarily in the direction of big, consequential choices. <em>007 First Light</em> deploys dialogue choices in many clever ways. At one point, you're tasked with riling up the villain who's keeping Bond hostage so that he'll stick around long enough for his phone to be hacked. At other times, the dialogue choices are essential to the player fantasy because the fantasy of "playing" Bond is, of course, also a fantasy of putting your own spin on the character; choosing how to treat the material in a way analogous to how all the actors who have played the character gave him their own interpretation.</p>
<p>Ultimately my point here is to reclaim the key idea that "agency" and "meaningful choice" are rhetorical tools or possible experiential directions and not universal goals; and to also surface a bit of the history of this conversation, which stretches way back. In games we're often condemned to rehash the same debates over and over, but I also can't necessarily fault people for not being intimately familiar with conversations happening largely internally to the interactive fiction community <a href='https://emshort.blog/2015/11/17/a-couple-examples-of-dynamic-fiction-and-why-they-work/'>over ten years ago</a>. The theory exists, but there's definitely a lack of accessible entry points—maybe one day I'll compile a "Narrative Design Theory Reader" of sorts.</p>
<p>This is not to say that players can't get frustrated at "false" choices or that it's not possible to misuse dialogue choices as a mechanic—of course you can misuse them, they wouldn't be much use if they didn't hold the potential for misuse. And it absolutely is true that sometimes narrative designs reach for dialogue choice as a way of filling space without really thinking about what it's doing for a given game.</p>
<p>But every narrative structure can give unsatisfying results. It's possible to make linear, choiceless game narratives that are unsatisfying and juiceless. It's possible to structure a narrative strictly around "meaningful" choices and have it fall flat. There is no universally correct way to deploy a tool. I always view narrative design as a process of identifying structures that will give a backbone to the experience that you want to create and the story you want to tell. When we try to constrain structural choices by making an aesthetic claim that some direction ("more agency", eg) is better, we therefore limit ourselves to solving for stories that are served by moving in that direction.</p>
<p>However, I don't want to leave the impression that I'm making some special-case argument about niche uses of choice narrative. I think that game stories which deploy choice as their primary mode of interaction and fluidly move between different agency models with those choices are good, actually. It's a design pattern that's enduring and widespread for a reason. Games that use it are often successful, both artistically and commercially. <em>It works.</em></p>
<p>That this line of criticism exists is itself symptomatic of this success, because anything that is frequently done well will also be done badly even more often. But beyond that, the idea of "meaningful choices" can't really be observed outside the context of how the industry has marketed and promoted game narratives for a generation at this point; it is, really, a marketing term more so than a narrative design one. "Choices that matter" is a back of the box feature, or a Steam tag.</p>
<p><img src="https://bear-images.sfo2.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/azhdarchid/2026-06-22_15-54.webp" alt="A shot of the "choices matter" tag on the steam store, incongruously showing a trailer for the casual first-person puzzler Bombanana." /></p>
<p>As narrative designers though, it behooves us to see through this fog. Ultimately the job is about maximizing the potential of the game and story we're actually making, not about trying to meet an arbitrary, external standard that was more or less invented by marketers to sell other people's games.</p>
<p>This is not, to be clear, an anti-anti argument; I don't think you have to abandon the idea of consequential or "meaningful" choice—but you don't have to let it rule you, either. It is <em>one</em> thing you can do. Some games have different experiential goals (while still having a lot of use for choice-based narrative). And even in games with big consequential choices, they often only want to use those as part of a palette of different techniques.</p>
<p>For narrative design to be a field, it can't have "a direction". We can't treat this process as trying to convince everyone to move with you. It has to have both well-trod territory—I wish we didn't forget the maps so much—and unexplored frontiers. And those, necessarily, splay out in all directions from wherever you might be standing.</p>
<section class="footnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn-1"><p>In reality, all choices also serve a rhythmic function by acting as interruptions in the simple flow of narrative that prompt the player to interact. As a practical matter I tend to think of this as a third, distinct element from the structural and rhetorical systems that I'm talking about in this article, although you could also argue that rhythm and structure are just micro/macro-scale manifestations of the same phenomena.<a href="https://azhdarchid.com/you-must-free-yourself-from-the-tyranny-of-meaningful-choices/#fnref-1" class="footnote">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>
</section><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://azhdarchid.com/you-must-free-yourself-from-the-tyranny-of-meaningful-choices/">https://azhdarchid.com/you-must-free-yourself-from-the-tyranny-of-meaningful-choices/</a></p>
concert review: Garden of Memory
Jun. 22nd, 2026 08:35 amcalimacOwing to scheduling glitches, I missed last year's edition of the annual walk-through avant-garde concert held at Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland's ornate columbarium and mausoleum. But I got there this year, nabbing a nearby parking space by arriving 2.5 hours early, with my lunch packed in my car.
Unfortunately many of my favorite performers didn't get there this year. So instead of focusing on them, I decided to emphasize the walk-through aspect and prowl around until I found things worth sitting and listening to for a while.
Garden of Memory always begins at 5 pm rather unpopulated, but although the organizers limit attendance, it tends to get more and more crowded over its four-hour length until it becomes deucedly uncomfortable. So I figured I'd start at the part of the building that gets the most crowded later on, the east end of the old wing, and I headed straight for the room designated the Garden of St. Matthew. Instead of being a niche like many of the "garden" rooms, it's along a major pathway. When I've been there before, interesting music was always going on, but I could never stop and listen to it but had to proceed directly towards the exit on the other side of the room, and the reason was that the room was so crowded that, if you stopped, you were blocking the only (and invariably busy) pathway.
So this time I got there early to get a spot where I could stop and listen, and found singer-songwriter Majel Connery on double-tracked vocals and electronic keyboard, accompanied by Felix Fan on electronic cello. I'd actually heard Connery here before, and was impressed with what I heard, but I'd never sealed her down as one of my favorites. I have now. I found this stuff enrapturing; unfortunately nothing of hers online really sounds like what I heard, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.
Proceeding onward, I wound up in Laura Inserra's old stomping grounds (she's not there this year), the Garden of Eternal Wisdom, where I found violinist Shira Kammen, hammer dulcimer player Robin Petrie, and Celtic harpist Shelley Phillips playing what sounded like Celtic folk music with a Middle Eastern edge to it. I was able to grab the only chair in the room and sat in comfort for quite a while to listen to this charming stuff. Getting lost in the building is part of the experience, the publicity says, and as always in this room I noticed someone starting at the event map trying to figure out which room they were in. (I whispered it to them.) When I left, I found the twisty passage leading to the room was packed with people waiting for an opportunity to enter and listen, so again I had been wise to get there fairly early.
At this point, I found it was time for a set I wanted to hear in the largest venue, the Chimes Chapel, customarily shared by 3 or 4 performers. This was a contemporary classical art song recital, mezzo Silvie Jensen accompanied by pianist Sarah Cahill (founder of this concert series and a regular performer here) in songs by Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and some other younger composers whose names I didn't know and didn't catch. The Glass and Monk sounded very typical of their composers although I hadn't heard these particular pieces before.
I then hung around for the next set, which was the women's chorus Kitka - which I first encountered here, many years ago - applying their standard nasal vocals to their usual repertoire of obscure Eastern European and Central Asian folk music. As always, a half hour set by Kitka is easier to take than a whole concert. Talking with the people next to me beforehand, I found they'd never heard Kitka before. This is going to be unusual, I warned them.
By this time it was 7:30 and I moved onward to the new wing, which I'd avoided earlier in the day, as it's more spacious and is consequently better saved for later when things are more crowded. Here I passed by a lot of performers of ambient noodling, none of which attracted me enough to make me want to sit down and listen for a while. So eventually I meandered back down to the entrance and left just before the closing time of 9 pm.
Unfortunately many of my favorite performers didn't get there this year. So instead of focusing on them, I decided to emphasize the walk-through aspect and prowl around until I found things worth sitting and listening to for a while.
Garden of Memory always begins at 5 pm rather unpopulated, but although the organizers limit attendance, it tends to get more and more crowded over its four-hour length until it becomes deucedly uncomfortable. So I figured I'd start at the part of the building that gets the most crowded later on, the east end of the old wing, and I headed straight for the room designated the Garden of St. Matthew. Instead of being a niche like many of the "garden" rooms, it's along a major pathway. When I've been there before, interesting music was always going on, but I could never stop and listen to it but had to proceed directly towards the exit on the other side of the room, and the reason was that the room was so crowded that, if you stopped, you were blocking the only (and invariably busy) pathway.
So this time I got there early to get a spot where I could stop and listen, and found singer-songwriter Majel Connery on double-tracked vocals and electronic keyboard, accompanied by Felix Fan on electronic cello. I'd actually heard Connery here before, and was impressed with what I heard, but I'd never sealed her down as one of my favorites. I have now. I found this stuff enrapturing; unfortunately nothing of hers online really sounds like what I heard, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.
Proceeding onward, I wound up in Laura Inserra's old stomping grounds (she's not there this year), the Garden of Eternal Wisdom, where I found violinist Shira Kammen, hammer dulcimer player Robin Petrie, and Celtic harpist Shelley Phillips playing what sounded like Celtic folk music with a Middle Eastern edge to it. I was able to grab the only chair in the room and sat in comfort for quite a while to listen to this charming stuff. Getting lost in the building is part of the experience, the publicity says, and as always in this room I noticed someone starting at the event map trying to figure out which room they were in. (I whispered it to them.) When I left, I found the twisty passage leading to the room was packed with people waiting for an opportunity to enter and listen, so again I had been wise to get there fairly early.
At this point, I found it was time for a set I wanted to hear in the largest venue, the Chimes Chapel, customarily shared by 3 or 4 performers. This was a contemporary classical art song recital, mezzo Silvie Jensen accompanied by pianist Sarah Cahill (founder of this concert series and a regular performer here) in songs by Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, and some other younger composers whose names I didn't know and didn't catch. The Glass and Monk sounded very typical of their composers although I hadn't heard these particular pieces before.
I then hung around for the next set, which was the women's chorus Kitka - which I first encountered here, many years ago - applying their standard nasal vocals to their usual repertoire of obscure Eastern European and Central Asian folk music. As always, a half hour set by Kitka is easier to take than a whole concert. Talking with the people next to me beforehand, I found they'd never heard Kitka before. This is going to be unusual, I warned them.
By this time it was 7:30 and I moved onward to the new wing, which I'd avoided earlier in the day, as it's more spacious and is consequently better saved for later when things are more crowded. Here I passed by a lot of performers of ambient noodling, none of which attracted me enough to make me want to sit down and listen for a while. So eventually I meandered back down to the entrance and left just before the closing time of 9 pm.
Nothingburger post
Jun. 21st, 2026 03:05 pmmalyminYea this about sums it up my experiences with popular tumblr users lmao.
lots of supposedly left-wing people online who seem to think that being queer and corny and being an outright bigot are equal crimes
"remember the 2010s when gay 20-somethings were SO embarrassing and cringe online? thank god we're all jaded irony-poisoned cynics now. SO much better"
It's exhausting!
There's this thing that happens when you're autistic and have experienced a lot of abuse by peers from a young age. People tell you to open up and stop being scared in order to heal, but you constantly receive messages from the world around you that it's not safe to be earnest, it's not safe to speak up, that people will give you weird looks and talk about how stupid and gross you are if you're enthusiastic about the wrong things, or enthusiastic in the wrong way. You retreated from the real world to the internet to find 'your people', but seeing the harassment online made you clam up more. (Did anyone else give up on creative writing as a kid because they were terrified they 'deserved' to be sporked?) The tone and dressing of the harassment changed, over the years, but the harassment never went away. Even when it never targeted you, you felt like maybe you deserved to die for being annoying. And the best way to not be annoying is to make yourself small. Don't speak up, don't have any opinions. Earnestness is annoying. Enthusiasm is annoying. Cynicism and mockery make you funny and cool to your peers, but if you do it wrong you'll get mocked in turn, and you always do things wrong. And as an autistic person, doing what comes naturally to you is always annoying - even other autistic people will tell you this. "I learned to be normal, why can't you?"
I don't think this is an autism-exclusive experience, for what it's worth. Autism is just one of the factors that can contribute to having the experience.
MTT memorial, pt 2
Jun. 21st, 2026 11:12 amcalimacThe second MTT memorial was the annual Pride Concert of the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony, a group of LGBTQIA+ and allies, held at the SF Conservatory's concert hall. It was pretty well packed.
The highlight of the concert was the local premiere of a song cycle by Jake Heggie, titled "Good Morning, Beauty," to poems by the performance artist Taylor Mac, who refers to the poems as "a present to queers in long-term relationships," and they're about the long-termness of it. It says: "Good morning, beauty / How are you here? / How has it happened? / Year after year?" The art song settings with elaborate orchestration was conducted by music director Robert Mollicone and sung by mezzo Nikola Printz, who went ambigender in an outfit that was a man's black suit on the right and a woman's white dress on the left. And the dedication in the program book read "to the memory of Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Robison, whose fifty years together embodied everything the piece celebrates."
Also on the program, a suite reconstruction of the orchestral music for the 1939 Wizard of Oz, a movie with iconic status in this community, composed by Herbert Stothart (who won an Oscar for doing so), based partly on the song melodies by Harold Arlen (who also won an Oscar for that).
And Brahms's Third Symphony. Why Brahms, who as far as we know was straight? Let Mellicone explain: "This felt like a great tie-in for Pride not only due to the broad spectrum of emotions involved, but also because of the musical code embedded in the opening (and recurrent) statement of the work: Frei aber Froh, or 'Free yet Joyful.'" It was a somewhat hairy performance, with things oddly sticking out of Brahms's mellow texture, but nicely and passionately performed.
The highlight of the concert was the local premiere of a song cycle by Jake Heggie, titled "Good Morning, Beauty," to poems by the performance artist Taylor Mac, who refers to the poems as "a present to queers in long-term relationships," and they're about the long-termness of it. It says: "Good morning, beauty / How are you here? / How has it happened? / Year after year?" The art song settings with elaborate orchestration was conducted by music director Robert Mollicone and sung by mezzo Nikola Printz, who went ambigender in an outfit that was a man's black suit on the right and a woman's white dress on the left. And the dedication in the program book read "to the memory of Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Robison, whose fifty years together embodied everything the piece celebrates."
Also on the program, a suite reconstruction of the orchestral music for the 1939 Wizard of Oz, a movie with iconic status in this community, composed by Herbert Stothart (who won an Oscar for doing so), based partly on the song melodies by Harold Arlen (who also won an Oscar for that).
And Brahms's Third Symphony. Why Brahms, who as far as we know was straight? Let Mellicone explain: "This felt like a great tie-in for Pride not only due to the broad spectrum of emotions involved, but also because of the musical code embedded in the opening (and recurrent) statement of the work: Frei aber Froh, or 'Free yet Joyful.'" It was a somewhat hairy performance, with things oddly sticking out of Brahms's mellow texture, but nicely and passionately performed.
Code push shortly
Jun. 21st, 2026 01:50 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
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dw_maintenanceOlá de Lisboa! (I'm in Lisbon right now for work...)
Thank you everybody who has tested on canary - I'm about to push the code up to stable. I know that not everything has been tested and there's a lot in this deploy, so I expect some things to break or be weird. We have ported a lot more of the "older" pages to the newer formats, so there will be some UI changes in a few places, but it shouldn't be anything too major.
Watch for: One thing I know will require tuning, we now have added rate limits (which basically allows us to control how rapidly DW pages are loaded.) This is a protection mostly designed against bots, but any time in my career I've rolled out new rate limits, I've learned someone is hitting them and they have to be tuned. So if you see them, please let me know!
Anyway please do comment and I'll work to fix things today. We also have a rollback ready in case we need to (and I'll be honest, I expect we may need to... we really should do more frequent deploys.)
Known Issues
- Fixed: Search has gone walkabout.
- Fixed: Some UI weirdness with Manage Tags.
- Fixed: Login redirects are not working.
- Fixed: Login page sometimes returning 'invalid form submission.'
- Fixed: Rename keywords checkbox on icons page also gone walkabout.
- Fixed: Uploading large icon files erroring / not going to the image editor.
As always, thank you for your patience and supporting our scrappy little service!
MTT memorial, pt 1
Jun. 19th, 2026 10:48 amcalimac(pt 1? Yes, pt 2 is coming along in a couple of days)
Regular San Francisco Symphony guest conductor James Gaffigan was scheduled to lead Beethoven's Ninth this week. After former music director Michael Tilson Thomas died two months ago, management decided to repurpose this concert as a memorial to him.
This was appropriate, as the Ninth was a signature work for MTT. He performed it in his inaugural concert as music director in 1995, and I heard him conduct it at least twice - when he recorded it in 2013, and in the last concert by him I ever heard, in 2023.
To the Ninth - which was originally scheduled as the whole concert - management added new material as a first half. It began with brief appreciation/reminiscences by representatives of the orchestra, the chorus, and the symphony board - all women, by the way. I particularly enjoyed the chorus member talking about the time that MTT, with a combination of curiosity and whimsical joy, scheduled a fiendishly difficult choral work by the Italian ultra-modernist Giacinto Scelsi. Thanks to MTT's attitude, both performers and audience had a great time.
Then, three brief works - a lullaby movement from Brahms's German Requiem, done just as a memorial, I guess; Ives' The Unanswered Question, because it was a favorite of MTT's; and a raucously Bernsteinian squib by MTT himself, titled Agnegram.
Gaffigan took the three instrumental movements of the Ninth with broad imperturbability, satisfying without trying to dazzle. The Ode to Joy was bolder and busier in its instrumental presentation. The chorus burned through the score with unspeakable power, towering over everything Beethoven forced them to do. Principal soloist bass Peixin Chen gave an impressively deep sound, with a hollow tone that sounded as if he were singing from within a very large cave. Tenor Thomas Cooley was lighter and fleetier, with a pleasing strong tone quality. The two women don't get enough solo material to judge, but soprano Jessica Faselt and mezzo Kelley O'Connor were both strong and clear in voice, topping each other in turn as they sang together.
Regular San Francisco Symphony guest conductor James Gaffigan was scheduled to lead Beethoven's Ninth this week. After former music director Michael Tilson Thomas died two months ago, management decided to repurpose this concert as a memorial to him.
This was appropriate, as the Ninth was a signature work for MTT. He performed it in his inaugural concert as music director in 1995, and I heard him conduct it at least twice - when he recorded it in 2013, and in the last concert by him I ever heard, in 2023.
To the Ninth - which was originally scheduled as the whole concert - management added new material as a first half. It began with brief appreciation/reminiscences by representatives of the orchestra, the chorus, and the symphony board - all women, by the way. I particularly enjoyed the chorus member talking about the time that MTT, with a combination of curiosity and whimsical joy, scheduled a fiendishly difficult choral work by the Italian ultra-modernist Giacinto Scelsi. Thanks to MTT's attitude, both performers and audience had a great time.
Then, three brief works - a lullaby movement from Brahms's German Requiem, done just as a memorial, I guess; Ives' The Unanswered Question, because it was a favorite of MTT's; and a raucously Bernsteinian squib by MTT himself, titled Agnegram.
Gaffigan took the three instrumental movements of the Ninth with broad imperturbability, satisfying without trying to dazzle. The Ode to Joy was bolder and busier in its instrumental presentation. The chorus burned through the score with unspeakable power, towering over everything Beethoven forced them to do. Principal soloist bass Peixin Chen gave an impressively deep sound, with a hollow tone that sounded as if he were singing from within a very large cave. Tenor Thomas Cooley was lighter and fleetier, with a pleasing strong tone quality. The two women don't get enough solo material to judge, but soprano Jessica Faselt and mezzo Kelley O'Connor were both strong and clear in voice, topping each other in turn as they sang together.
that was strange
Jun. 17th, 2026 10:29 amcalimacI was up in the middle of the night, and occupying my time watching a YouTube clip of a John Oliver segment, when all of a sudden the picture froze, though the sound kept sailing on. As this went on for a while, I force-closed the browser, re-started it - the tab was cued to just before the picture stopped - but it only played for a couple of minutes before this happened again. Repeat, rinse, and again.
I got through the entire video eventually, but then the browser - I use Firefox - started freezing whenever I tried doing something else. Rebooting the computer didn't help. I'd start Firefox, it'd work fine for a couple minutes, then it'd freeze - and it wouldn't unfreeze; at one point I left it alone for an hour to see what would happen.
Then it got to the point where it was freezing as soon as I'd start it. Before it got that far, I'd searched for help, and the only clear advice was to uncheck something called hardware acceleration, which I'd already done to solve some other problem. Beyond that was things I couldn't do, and I was thinking about taking the computer in to the software wizards when they opened in the morning, when all of a sudden the problem stopped, and the browser works fine again.
Well, this computer is nearing the end of its lifespan anyway, so sooner or later I'll have to do something, but in the meantime I'm just going to hope this doesn't recur. If I'd been asleep when I should have been, I'd never have noticed anything.
I got through the entire video eventually, but then the browser - I use Firefox - started freezing whenever I tried doing something else. Rebooting the computer didn't help. I'd start Firefox, it'd work fine for a couple minutes, then it'd freeze - and it wouldn't unfreeze; at one point I left it alone for an hour to see what would happen.
Then it got to the point where it was freezing as soon as I'd start it. Before it got that far, I'd searched for help, and the only clear advice was to uncheck something called hardware acceleration, which I'd already done to solve some other problem. Beyond that was things I couldn't do, and I was thinking about taking the computer in to the software wizards when they opened in the morning, when all of a sudden the problem stopped, and the browser works fine again.
Well, this computer is nearing the end of its lifespan anyway, so sooner or later I'll have to do something, but in the meantime I'm just going to hope this doesn't recur. If I'd been asleep when I should have been, I'd never have noticed anything.
another day
Jun. 16th, 2026 08:47 pmcalimacLast week's searing temperatures have calmed down, and we're back to the merely uncomfortably warm. B. runs the fans in the bedroom all night, and this enables us to sleep - in fact, I need to keep a heavy robe on because of the moving air.
All we have to worry about locally right now is the World Cup. My interest in this is best measured with a zero, but I do have to worry that when a game is scheduled at the big local stadium, the traffic closures can extend as far as the passing highways, which I sometimes use. So I've put little "avoid 237" stickers on my pocket calendar for days that games are scheduled, one of which is today. But I don't think I'll have to go that way any time soon.
All we have to worry about locally right now is the World Cup. My interest in this is best measured with a zero, but I do have to worry that when a game is scheduled at the big local stadium, the traffic closures can extend as far as the passing highways, which I sometimes use. So I've put little "avoid 237" stickers on my pocket calendar for days that games are scheduled, one of which is today. But I don't think I'll have to go that way any time soon.
listen to Elim Chan conduct
Jun. 14th, 2026 09:41 pmcalimacIn search of online interviews and other such publicity material about Elim Chan, the San Francisco Symphony's new music director, I found a number of full-length concert videos of her conducting various European orchestras in standard classics of the repertoire. They were all good performances - I listened to the bunch of them with full appreciation - but two struck me as particularly outstanding. They captured the fervor and intensity that these pieces had when new and bold, they were led and played with full commitment to the music, and they had me captivated on the edge of my seat throughout - an experience I find rare enough in concert and even rarer in recordings. But this is the amazing conducting that I heard in person when she led Holst's The Planets in a guest appearance at SFS a few years ago.
One of these particularly outstanding renditions was of Brahms's Fourth Symphony, his last and most experimental essay in the form, and my long-time favorite of his. Compelling and urgent.
The other was the monster itself, Beethoven's Fifth, the work that originally sold me on the heavy classics. If bad performances have led you to find this work dull and routine, just listen to this fiery attack.
The other full-length recordings I listened to of Elim Chan conducting included:
Tchaikovsky's Fifth
Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade
Shostakovich's Fifth
Shostakovich's Tenth
Beethoven's First
One of these particularly outstanding renditions was of Brahms's Fourth Symphony, his last and most experimental essay in the form, and my long-time favorite of his. Compelling and urgent.
The other was the monster itself, Beethoven's Fifth, the work that originally sold me on the heavy classics. If bad performances have led you to find this work dull and routine, just listen to this fiery attack.
The other full-length recordings I listened to of Elim Chan conducting included:
Tchaikovsky's Fifth
Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade
Shostakovich's Fifth
Shostakovich's Tenth
Beethoven's First
Safe In Mother's Arms
Jun. 13th, 2026 09:10 pmamiserablepileofwordsSorry for the HTML crimes, hope The Vision still comes through.
Content Warning: mass death, loss of agency, of thought, of self
I'm so tired.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen..." The gaunt runner-up of last year's televised Who Could Predict You Had This Talent? competition has a slightly manic look in his eyes as he gazes out over the human sea, hundreds of hungry, expectant faces staring at him. No, at the stage he's currently occupying, an elaborate, patriotic centrepiece ensconsed in scaffolding erected by the Ministry of Plenty just for this occasion.
He chokes.
The giant speakers squeal.
Collective tinnitus, mercifully brief.
He's eternally grateful for this opportunity to be a needless — useless — warm-up act, for he knows he is nothing. Nobody.
The main square of Glorious Prosperity, this small, regional capital on the outskirts of the Empire, it's initial name lost to time, can't contain the arterial blockage of people, spilling out into the streets beyond, the air a constant, electric susurrus of anticipation.
They're not here for him, but he desperately wants to think they are. Cling to the illusion. Delusion. A mangy stray nibbling away at the edges of a greater glory one can only dream of, born of the same desperate, pathetic need that made him sign up for the competition. Jump at this chance.
People hang out of windows surrounding the square, craning their necks to catch a better glimpse.
"... it is my immeasurable honour and privilege to present to you... the valiant she-wolf who prowls the length and breadth of our great and mighty Empire astride her magnificent mount, who protects our proud pastures and bountiful natural riches, who stalks our secure borders and defends you from the vile barbarians beyond who only want to do you harm, the undefeated Hero of the Fatherland! You all know her callsign, and the innumerable tales of her daring exploits! Without further ado, I give you... Mother!"
Please, let me REST.
An unnatural hush descends as the crowd seems to draw a collective breath, and hold it. This is a once in a lifetime event. Something they will remember for the rest of their lives. Something that will give their life meaning. Fulfillment. A tale to tell their children, and their children's children. "I was there," they will crow, over the simmering jealousy of those who weren't. "I saw Her, and was this close." they will embellish for their rapt audience, then lie shamelessly. "I could almost touch Her."
I'm not her.
From backstage, a bulky figure in an impeccable, eye-searingly pristine white pilot's suit appears. Its smoky visor gives away nothing. An intimation of eyes. The shadow of a mouth. She climbs the stairs, each footfall inexorable, precise, ponderous, as if used to navigating hundreds of tons of metal death. A rising flare against the subdued red and blue bunting, until Her tall frame eclipses the little weasel of a man, already forgotten. Her bright presence draws the eye of everyone in the town square, everyone watching at home, for she is truly larger than life.
She is Legend.
I watched her REST COMFORTABLY years ago, during the Fifth Hunt!
The tension builds to an untenable, strained frenzy as agonisingly slowly, still mute, a mailed fist is raised to the sky... then comes crashing down on Her chestplate, the sudden, surprising crack of thunder echoing off the walls. Swallowed by the incoming tide of sheer noise, the tension carried past the breaking point, the crowd unleashed, liberated as they loudly cheer and adore their protector. As the band strikes up a rendition of Our Empire Fair and Bold.
This is all a lie!
Every girl wants to be Her, or at least become one of the Chosen, fight as one of Her Pack. Every boy wants to work hard, so that the arms he toils away at in the factory may one day be used by Her. All for the Glory of the Fatherland.
Wait... what's that?
As cacaphony reigns, an anomaly in the Brownian motion of the teeming mass of humanity. Joyous faces turning in annoyance. Shying away from something moving in their midst. Something that is slowly but surely approaching the front of the audience as it slips through the gaps it creates for itself. By the time Ministry security notices and tries to intervene, it is far too late.
The crowd spits out a blonde youngster who reaches under his oversized infantry jacket. Shouts something at Her, words forever snatched away by the commotion. Suffocated by the swelling cries of people buffeting and trampling each other in a vain attempt to get away from him.
A trembling thumb presses down hard.
People will later insist that they saw Her smile, right before everything went white and the feed cut out.
Another time.
Another square.
Much, much larger this, in the Heart of Empire. Just as full. Grimmer. An older man commands the rostrum this time. Graying. Portlier. A veteran orator. A Ministry of Safety man. His meaty fist smashes down on this, his pulpit, and spittle flies from his lips, his face beet-red as he reaches the full steam of his righteous rage, baring his teeth at the world for its insolence. "... the cowardly and unwarranted foreign provocation last week in Glorious Prosperity, which thankfully only caused minor damage and martyred a bare handful of our fellow compatriots, cannot go unanswered!"
A brief, pregnant pause as he mops his sweaty brow. Looks off to the side. Smiles at something. Someone. Looks straight into the camera.
"Will not go unanswered. It is my great pleasure to officially announce that Our Supreme Leader and the Twelve have decided to call a new Cleansing Hunt, to let Her lead our reply to the world, Her response to the failed attempt on Her own life!"
A pandemonium of cheers as he gestures stage left and a bulky figure in an impeccable, eye-searingly pristine white pilot's suit appears. Its smoky visor gives away nothing. An intimation of eyes. The shadow of a mouth.
This is insane! That wasn't me!
Don't make me do this!
critical mutterings
Jun. 13th, 2026 11:00 amcalimacDave Hurwitz, executive editor of ClassicsToday.com, has over the last several years been publishing literally hundreds of videos on YouTube featuring him talking about various aspects of classical music: reviews, lists of the greatest (or worst) this and that, opinion pieces, and on. He mostly eschews music clips for copyright reasons, and I wish he had transcripts, because it's tiring to listen to him yammer for half an hour where you could read it in five minutes.
Anyway, one of his latest opinion pieces was billed as a praise of the San Francisco Symphony for hiring Elim Chan as its new music director. I say "billed as" because much of it was actually a complaint, and as often when listening to Dave (I call him by his first name because he's so personalized and intimate in his presentations) I begin to think he's yammering more than he can coherently and judiciously talk about.
Let's start with what Dave gets right. First, he's absolutely correct that picking a fairly young and well-regarded conductor like Chan was a wise choice. After Michael Tilson Thomas retired, another senior conductor like Esa-Pekka Salonen was a good idea, because Salonen had the authority and seasoning not to be overshadowed by the long and fabulous reign of his predecessor. But after a fairly short Salonen regime - and we weren't expecting a long one, just perhaps not as short as we actually got - now's the time to raise someone younger, experienced but not encrusted, up from the next tier and see what she can do.
Second, Dave is concerned that ten weeks a year will not be enough time for Chan to really put her stamp on the orchestra. A great music director has to really commit to their post; they can zoom off and guest conduct elsewhere, sure, but they can't be a jet-setter just dropping in for a couple weeks once in a while.
But what Dave didn't note is that Chan's contract says ten weeks only for the first year. Maybe she already has a lot of other commitments for that year. Starting with her second year she'll be here longer; maybe not long enough to meet Dave's standards for commitment, but it's a step in the right direction. Also, even the ten weeks is a contractual minimum; it's possible she could manage more.
My other complaint is his characterization of Esa-Pekka Salonen flouncing off in a huff because he didn't like the orchestra's policies. That's unfair. You have to remember that Salonen didn't need another music director job when he came to SFS; he didn't even want another one; but SFS sold him on it by offering him an irresistible opportunity to do things he really wanted to do. And then, because of budget concerns which really didn't make any sense, they took those things away. And I'm not talking, as Dave is, about the superfluous European tour that got cancelled; I'm talking about special programs like the SoundBox and the Collaborative Partners initiative.
And Salonen didn't flounce off; he didn't renege on his contract. He simply said that this was not what he signed up for and declined to renew his contract when it expired. I think he had every right to do that, no call to be criticized for it, and it was the right thing for him to do considering the circumstances. It was the circumstances - the orchestra's unnecessary retrenchment - which was at fault.
That's where I think Dave Hurwitz is off-base, and Joshua Kosman - former critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, whose judgments heavily informed mine - has a better take on it.
Anyway, one of his latest opinion pieces was billed as a praise of the San Francisco Symphony for hiring Elim Chan as its new music director. I say "billed as" because much of it was actually a complaint, and as often when listening to Dave (I call him by his first name because he's so personalized and intimate in his presentations) I begin to think he's yammering more than he can coherently and judiciously talk about.
Let's start with what Dave gets right. First, he's absolutely correct that picking a fairly young and well-regarded conductor like Chan was a wise choice. After Michael Tilson Thomas retired, another senior conductor like Esa-Pekka Salonen was a good idea, because Salonen had the authority and seasoning not to be overshadowed by the long and fabulous reign of his predecessor. But after a fairly short Salonen regime - and we weren't expecting a long one, just perhaps not as short as we actually got - now's the time to raise someone younger, experienced but not encrusted, up from the next tier and see what she can do.
Second, Dave is concerned that ten weeks a year will not be enough time for Chan to really put her stamp on the orchestra. A great music director has to really commit to their post; they can zoom off and guest conduct elsewhere, sure, but they can't be a jet-setter just dropping in for a couple weeks once in a while.
But what Dave didn't note is that Chan's contract says ten weeks only for the first year. Maybe she already has a lot of other commitments for that year. Starting with her second year she'll be here longer; maybe not long enough to meet Dave's standards for commitment, but it's a step in the right direction. Also, even the ten weeks is a contractual minimum; it's possible she could manage more.
My other complaint is his characterization of Esa-Pekka Salonen flouncing off in a huff because he didn't like the orchestra's policies. That's unfair. You have to remember that Salonen didn't need another music director job when he came to SFS; he didn't even want another one; but SFS sold him on it by offering him an irresistible opportunity to do things he really wanted to do. And then, because of budget concerns which really didn't make any sense, they took those things away. And I'm not talking, as Dave is, about the superfluous European tour that got cancelled; I'm talking about special programs like the SoundBox and the Collaborative Partners initiative.
And Salonen didn't flounce off; he didn't renege on his contract. He simply said that this was not what he signed up for and declined to renew his contract when it expired. I think he had every right to do that, no call to be criticized for it, and it was the right thing for him to do considering the circumstances. It was the circumstances - the orchestra's unnecessary retrenchment - which was at fault.
That's where I think Dave Hurwitz is off-base, and Joshua Kosman - former critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, whose judgments heavily informed mine - has a better take on it.
Video of the Day
Jun. 12th, 2026 04:32 pmmalyminIf history is any indication, A24’s Backrooms movie should have been yet another failed attempt to turn internet folklore into IP. Instead, it has become something much stranger: a horror film about grief, ownership, therapy, and the one space Hollywood can profit from but perhaps never fully own. In this very normal film analysis/short essay, I'll cover a range of topics including but not limited to: art as therapy, the goose that lays the golden eggs, as well as the problems that emerge when one conflates psychology with metaphysics.
Also, did you guys know Kane Parsons is only 20 years old?
Chapters:
0:00 The Backrooms Beat Star Wars
1:15 Why This Movie Shouldn’t Have Worked
7:32 Async and the Horror of an Unmonetizable Space
11:05 The Backrooms Is Really About Two Small Business Owners
17:27 The Backrooms Remembers Everything Wrong
21:51 Mary, Clark, and the Self You Can’t Escape
I used to talk about this a lot more on Cohost, but... I have strong negative opinions on how IP law affects art and storytelling in our culture. I think it has, in its current state, resulted in far more stagnation than innovation. It benefits those who can afford lawyers over those who cannot; where copyright is supposedly about protecting the artist, more often it protects corporations, which artists sell their ideas to in the hopes of seeing them fulfilled. I think the idea of using copyright infringement claims against generative AI is dangerous; as I've said before, companies like Disney own their employee's art and ideas, and would gladly build in-house "non infringing" AI, trained on the work they own, to replace their employees.
The dam disrupts the nutrients that once flowed to the delta. The eels and salmon cannot make their way to the ocean. The ecosystem of ideas has been disrupted for two hundred years. And it only gets worse in terms of enforcement every year - the fluidity of semi-official media such as what we saw in Dr Who's "wilderness years"... do you really think we can get it back, when brand identity compliance is far more severely monitored now?
