How to determine which is your favorite Ayreon album :-)
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Music
- 2.1 Singers
- 3 Catchiness of individual songs
- 4 Story
- 5 My musical tastes
- 6 Conclusion
Okay, so since this is a thing that I have actually thought about qutie a bit, but can't fill in one edit summary, and probably also not 2 or 3, I'll dedicate this blog post to answering the question: "How can I possibly figure out which album is my favorite?"
So to start it off, I'm going to tell you how I do this. What I'm going to do, is to determine the factors that are important for me in music in general, and Ayreon in particular. The categories that I choose are what matter to me, and I would very much like to see a similiar post by you, Taya, and see whether you would choose the same categories as I would.
As I've mentioned before, for me t…
Ayreon Universe
So, I watched the Ayreon Universe show yesterday. I really don't even have to lay it on extra thick. It was literally the best recorded live show I've ever seen in my life. If only I could have been there... I can only image how amazing the live show would have been.
Of course, no use in lamenting it. One thing that stuck out to me in particular was how well performed the Into The Electric Castle songs were. Seriously, the Valley of the Queens performance by Floor Jansen, Anneke van Giersbergen and Marcela Bovio brought me to tears, it was SO good. Castle Hall was amazing as well, and on this DVD in particular, I really enjoyed Mike Mills doing the voice-overs. So it's a shame he won't be there next year. But I'm pretty amped up anyways.
I m…
Song in Timeline order
So, I made some choices for this page. The first was to put the album The Final Experiment behind E=MC2 , even though the album actually takes place before this. This is because the structure of the album 01011001 is not linear, and I tried to keep the structure of the album intact as much as possible. This was already pretty hard because The Sixth Extinction spans the events from Universal Migrator part 1 and 2, and probably also The Human Equation. I made this assumption based on the fact that Forever would want to continue with their research into human emotions, but would need other means after The Sixth Extinction. This would, of course, be the Dream Sequencer.
I put Into The Electric Castle at the end because it happens in a Time Beyond…
Making Progress
I think this is a nice moment to reflect upon our accomplishments so far. We should really congratulate all contributors (so basically you, me, and Ben who edited one page) on our hard work so far. The song pages are in an advanced stage of completion, with most of them being the way we originally set out to make them (layout, information, youtube video). As far as I see it, the only album that's not been made this way is Actual Fantasy, and to be honest I find it hard to care about this.
I've been going through the wiki, cleaning up existing pages and removing links to potential pages that no one is ever going to make. Examples: Gamma Rays, Extremophiles, Moon, etc. They appear in the Ayreon Universe, for sure, but there's barely anything …
Aspects of Morality
I've been thinking about the Prodigy's reaction to finding out his father was secretly drugging him for years. The son immediately distances him from his father, uncompromisingly, because obviously the end doesn't justify the means. But this kinda left me in a split, because although I respect his vision, the secret drugging was the one thing that made is life possible, like, at all.
He was plagued by hazy thoughts and lack of clarity, to the point of being almost catatonic. Moreover, after the clinical trial ends and the supply of drugs stops, he reverts back to his old self. He gets to the point where he's willing to do anything to get the drug, even criminal behavior is justified.
Now how does this compare to the behavior of The Father? …
Theory on creation of The Age of Shadows
Of course, also this piece of speculation, after removal, needs to find a new home in my blog posts.
So my issue with The Age of Shadows, is that it's started by a single android, TH-1. He doesn't have a reason for his existence anymore after arriving on Planet Y, and decides to become the new 'Frame and starts the Age of Shadows on his own. Or maybe aided by the Forevers that don't oppose technological progress.
Either way, there's really not a lot to work with. Planet Y is an untouched planet without any intelligent life, and is completely covered in water. The Forever just swim around a bunch, and maybe go back to the Starblade for a dose of Liquid Eternity every now and then. If they even need that, it's not exactly clear if it's a one-…
Character Page 01011001
So typically I just make a page and let it speak for itself, but this time I'd like to go a bit more into detail on a page I wrote. The page I'm speaking of is the Characters from 01011001 page, of course.
This page was a lot of work to do. Since the Forever are mostly a hive-mind, and many of the songs have many characters woven into them, it was quite difficult to distill individual character aspects from the songs.
The easiest character to do was Jorn Lande's character, Forever (bird). His character is very vocal, easy to recognise, and has a strong opinion on most things. I like this actually, since Jorn is my favorite metal singer, so I liked that I could talk about his character a bit more.
Bob Catley's Forever (windmill) was also easil…
Completion of The Human Equation
I've just completed work on The Human Equation, meaning that I added individual pages for all songs. Now, I've done a lot of work like this before, but during the progression of every album, my work was always in a state of "I'll probably have to go back and improve this later".
For this album, everything is currently in a state of "this is probably how we want it". I've edited all lyrics consistently, all pages are tidy, I've added a navigation bar and a video to each page, and it seems to me that this is, for now, how all pages should be.
Tara, could you review my work? If this is good, I'll go do all 'my' albums this way. (We haven't actually discussed this, but I've only worked on The Human Equation, 01011001, The Theory of Everything a…
The Theory of Everything: Rival Character Analysis (minor rant)
So I've been bothered by The Rival from The Theory of Everything quite a bit. Now, this guy is a relatively minor character, whose sole purpose in the story seems to be providing The Prodigy with an opponent to fight against, and to ultimately tempt him to the dark side, in a sort of ironic twist of fate. Which I like, actually.
Of course, most of the characters from The Theory of Everything aren't really fleshed out. They're a bit bland, but most characters paint a certain picture, and at least that picture is consistent. I could spend days ranting about how The Girl's infatuation with The Prodigy makes no sense whatsoever, but at least she's consistent in her behavior.
The Rival starts out as a plain bully. Typically, bullying stems from i…
We're doing a complete overhaul
Hello!
Since I've received my admin (and bureaucrat) rights, I thought it would be a good idea to make some guidelines for the wiki, since there don't seem to be many right now. I'm planning to do an overhaul of this wiki, especially the main page, because it desperately needs attention.
If you have any suggestions or things you think could be better if done differently, do not hesitate to tell me; after all, being an admin doesn't mean I'm above everyone else, it just means I have some extra buttons. This is still a community project, even if there's not much of a community to begin with.
Once this post is completely approved, I'll set the relevant parts as an 'official' editing manual. And find a way to put it in the automated welcome messa…
The Theory of Everything: Fate of the Father
Now, this is just a minor theory I came up with, based on the theme of the album (all things mathematical, physical, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say quantum), to speculate what happens with The Father in the final scenes of The Theory of Everything.
Now as we know, after being left by The Mother, The Father is grief-stricken and concludes there is only one thing left to do. What we know is that we eventually learn about his suicide, so this was probably the conclusion he drew. But we also know that The Prodigy actually saw his father and completed The Theory of Everything with him. And essentially, apart from the fact that The Teacher was the only one who knew where The Prodigy was hiding (which is a major hole in my theory, I h…
The Biologist Rant
So basically, Ayreon's latest album The Source has been my newest Greatest Thing Ever for a few weeks or maybe months now. It's so easy to get completely sucked into the story, the music, all the amazing singers, the world-building. I also love how it just flows perfectly into 01011001, it's really hard to find anything wrong with it.
Of course, there is one thing. Let's talk about the characters. I tend to get pretty invested when all characters are so well adjusted to their roles, lyrically anyways. We've got The President and The Opposition Leader, who argue about the 'Frame, the Chemist who invents Liquid Eternity, we've got The Captain who made and pilots the Starblade, everyone's got their role, and they sing about this.
And then there…
New user says hi
b-b-badges? you're kidding me? lol I'd have made this account way before adding the lyrics for the entire album The Source, most of 01011001, and some other stuff to this wiki. Well no worries.
I've been pretty bored at work, and I've also been pretty obsessed with the albums The Source, 01011001 and The Theory of Everything lately, so I came to this wiki to look up some in depth discussion of stuff that happens, but unfortunately, it didn't exist. So I figured, why not be the change I wish to see, and add it myself? So I did.
In case anyone cares, the 'subjective commentary' on The Biologist was also mine. This wiki felt pretty abandoned, and I'd decided to have a bit of a giggle. Sorry if I offended anyone.
Hello everyone, I'm trying to become an admin
Hello all,
I am writing this blog post for two reasons:
- I'd like to see if anyone will respond, as there has been little to no activity from users on this wiki for almost a year
- I am trying to become an admin, and I do believe I have to write this blog post in order to be eligible
I have slowly been adding the lyrics to all the songs of the Final Experiment. I'm finished, now, though I do have to add the plot and 'crew' members to all of them. I'm planning to eventually do this for all the songs on this wiki.
If there is anyone reading this who has an objection of any kind to me becoming an admin, you can just comment it on here and we'll see where we go from there.
Regards, Taya
Mystery solved
I figured out how to add soft returns. In the source editor add
in-between lines that shouldn't have any space. So:
"Don’t let him deceive you(br /)He’s nothing but a fake" in the source editor (with around the br /) will look like:
Don’t let him deceive you
He’s nothing but a fake
Soft return?
Are there any ways to do soft returns? This is mostly so that when writing song lyrics you can write them out properly, not like a standard prose paragraph.