Write a controversial opinion

[Erozetta]

Congrats to the tawny frogmouth, Australia's official Bird of the Year: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/tawny-frogmouth-2025-australian-bird-year-winner

Looked them up and my god if there were ever a bird to embody 2025 this is it.

 

[SimonDoom]

Bird feet are not real feet.

I could have used those feet back in my swimming days.

 

[SimonDoom]

The greatest musical work of all time is Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde.

The composition was completed around 1859, and the music is way, way ahead of its time. It sounds weirdly modern for a work of its day, but the music is also lush and romantic and beautiful.

It's not the most "fun" opera. Dramatically, not that much happens, and all the action is drawn out interminably. But that forces concentration on the music, and the music is sublime.

It features what's often called the most famous chord in music -- the atonal and unsettling "Tristan chord" in the amazing prelude.

It's highly erotic, about doomed love-- a man and woman who fall in love with each other after unwittingly drinking a love potion.

The ending, Isolde's great aria "Liebestod," means "love-death" in German, and to me it sounds like the musical rendering of a sexual climax.

Kind of like a very long musical rendering of a Literotica story, with much emphasis on the buildup.

 

[StillStunned]

It's highly erotic, about doomed love-- a man and woman who fall in love with each other after unwittingly drinking a love potion.

I had a professor at uni who called bullshit on the love potion idea. Basically he argued, "You've got a beautiful lady and a handsome knight crossing the Irish Sea at sunset. Who needs a love potion? You could serve them milk and they'd fall in love."

 

[Statius]

What is it with all this anti-feet talk lately?!

That's it. I'm starting a foot-fetishist support group!
#FootRights!
#FootLoversArePeopleToo!

Hey! There's plenty of foot fetish sites and probably threads. We anti feet people should be heard too!

 

[TheRedChamber]

I had a professor at uni who called bullshit on the love potion idea. Basically he argued, "You've got a beautiful lady and a handsome knight crossing the Irish Sea at sunset. Who needs a love potion? You could serve them milk and they'd fall in love."

Somehow the 2006 movie version Tristran + Isolde (yes, with an actual addition sign) managed to be superior to the opera just because the two lovers actually fell in love.

It's fair to say, that Richard Wagner, for all he was a dab hand with the old chords, had no idea how romance worked.

The Ring Cycle has a man who has literally never seen a woman before meet a woman (well, valkyrie) who is cursed to fall in love with the first man she sees. Then he is tricked into drinking a potion to forget his love for her. Fourteen and a half hours and who in the hell cares (except that the last forty minutes of Das Valkyrie is probably longest continuous stretch of pure musical magic ever written)

Still better than Lohengrin which may be the single most sexist story ever told not involving Alf Garnett.

 

[StillStunned]

Somehow the 2006 movie version Tristran + Isolde (yes, with an actual addition sign) managed to be superior to the opera just because the two lovers actually fell in love.

There are some absolutely beautiful versions of the tale out there, including the tiny lay "Chevrefeuille". Gerald Morris takes the piss out of the romance in "The Ballad of Sir Dinadan", told from the POV of Tristan's brother, who's perpetually exasperated by the lovers' deliberate devotion to tragedy and drama.

 

[PennyThompson]

Ooh are we moving into the musical portion of the Controversial Opinions?

Music from your young adult era isn't better than what came after, it's just that your brain crystalized between the ages of 16 and 24 and the emotional attachment you hold for the music you listened to during that period overwhelms all other aesthetic variables. This also includes music from before your 16-24 era that you happened to latch onto during that phase of your life, so don't act like you're cool for liking the Beatles or whatever if they broke up before you were born

 

[NuclearFairy]

Ooh are we moving into the musical portion of the Controversial Opinions?

Music from your young adult era isn't better than what came after, it's just that your brain crystalized between the ages of 16 and 24 and the emotional attachment you hold for the music you listened to during that period overwhelms all other aesthetic variables. This also includes music from before your 16-24 era that you happened to latch onto during that phase of your life, so don't act like you're cool for liking the Beatles or whatever if they broke up before you were born

I didn't find some of my favorite artists until I was in my thirties.

Ignore the fact that most of them were actually making music when I was in my teens. I never actually heard them back then. Although, in one case I listened to the stuff they put out when I was in my teens and didn't like it, just their newer stuff.

 

[Statius]

Hey! There's plenty of foot fetish sites and probably threads. We anti feet people should be heard too!

Help! Help! I'm being repressed! I'm being repressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system! You saw him repressing me, didn't you?

Or something like that

 

[Statius]

Ooh are we moving into the musical portion of the Controversial Opinions?

Music from your young adult era isn't better than what came after, it's just that your brain crystalized between the ages of 16 and 24 and the emotional attachment you hold for the music you listened to during that period overwhelms all other aesthetic variables. This also includes music from before your 16-24 era that you happened to latch onto during that phase of your life, so don't act like you're cool for liking the Beatles or whatever if they broke up before you were born

Oooh new controversial Opinion! There are bands I love who worship the Beatles. I don't like the Beatles. They had moments, but for fucks sake, get over it!

Oh and imma get skewered for this one for sure. Lana Delray is to our current culture what Bob Dylan was to his in his prime. That's right, I said it.

 

[Statius]

I didn't find some of my favorite artists until I was in my thirties.

Ignore the fact that most of them were actually making music when I was in my teens. I never actually heard them back then. Although, in one case I listened to the stuff they put out when I was in my teens and didn't like it, just their newer stuff.

Me with Lana, Florence, and maybe a few others

 

[NuclearFairy]

Oh and imma get skewered for this one for sure. Lana Delray is to our current culture what Bob Dylan was to his in his prime. That's right, I said it.

Whose that?

No but seriously though, that name is familiar but I'm not quite placing it. Is she one of those Celtic music players?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Ooh are we moving into the musical portion of the Controversial Opinions?

Music from your young adult era isn't better than what came after, it's just that your brain crystalized between the ages of 16 and 24 and the emotional attachment you hold for the music you listened to during that period overwhelms all other aesthetic variables. This also includes music from before your 16-24 era that you happened to latch onto during that phase of your life, so don't act like you're cool for liking the Beatles or whatever if they broke up before you were born

Also: a lot of what people think of as "bad music" is actually "music made for people other than me".

 

[SimonDoom]

Hey! There's plenty of foot fetish sites and probably threads. We anti feet people should be heard too!

Please don't tell me you want to turn it into a fetish, however.

 

[Statius]

Whose that?

No but seriously though, that name is familiar but I'm not quite placing it. Is she one of those Celtic music players?

.

Nope. Pop. Fucking fantastic. Most honest song writer I've ever heard. Her mix of personal, politics, pulse of the culture, is just kinda mind blowing. And that voice.... Oh that voice. Not gonna lie though. It's best to listen to her work as a whole rather than individual songs.

 

[Statius]

Please don't tell me you want to turn it into a fetish, however.

Ha! Kinda funny. Nah I don't like feet honestly, but this whole thing is just turning into a very, and probably over long, gag that I started for a laugh. I'm enjoying it though.

 

[Bramblethorn]

There are too many foot fetishists and not enough hand fetishists.

 

[NuclearFairy]

.

Nope. Pop. Fucking fantastic. Most honest song writer I've ever heard. Her mix of personal, politics, pulse of the culture, is just kinda mind blowing. And that voice.... Oh that voice. Not gonna lie though. It's best to listen to her work as a whole rather than individual songs.

My only real exposure to pop music is the Trolls movie. o.o

 

[Statius]

Whose that?

No but seriously though, that name is familiar but I'm not quite placing it. Is she one of those Celtic music players?

Oh forwarning. Don't know how you are about music around little ones, but her lyrics can be a bit graphic. So maybe with headphones at first. Not just swearing, but sex as well. Example.

'My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola' from Cola. Just saying.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Oh forwarning. Don't know how you are about music around little ones, but her lyrics can be a bit graphic. So maybe with headphones at first. Not just swearing, but sex as well. Example.

'My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola' from Cola. Just saying.

Steven Lynch is not listened to while the children are about.

 

[Statius]

My only real exposure to pop music is the Trolls movie. o.o

Pop/ rock/ alt. Less pop, more alt.

 

[PennyThompson]

'My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola'

Trying to picture Bob Dylan singing that at the Newport Folk Festival...

 

[iwatchus]

.

Nope. Pop. Fucking fantastic. Most honest song writer I've ever heard. Her mix of personal, politics, pulse of the culture, is just kinda mind blowing. And that voice.... Oh that voice. Not gonna lie though. It's best to listen to her work as a whole rather than individual songs.

I like her (and some of her songs would make for good entries in the music event) but she is no Dylan. He had such an influence that is hard to overstate. And I;m not a hard core dylan fan. Not like my first spouse.

 

[StillStunned]

There are too many foot fetishists and not enough hand fetishists.

I had a hand fetish right through adolescence.