Line #93 Creator/ThornBrain


1	Mikaela Thorn, also known as [=ThornBrain=], is a writer, video editor, musician, humorist, [[LetsPlay Let's Player]], and voice actor. She is the head of the Let's Play channel LetsPlay/TheStrawhatNO and their comedy/parody channel Creator/TheMidnightFrogs, host of the music podcast ''Podcast/SophomoreSlumps'', and is the writer of ''Webcomic/TheLegendOfZeldaBookOfTheTraitor''.
2
3	Information for her music and personal projects can be found on [[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/ThornBrain_Wiki her website]], and information on her projects with Yoshi and Jacob can be found on [[http://themidnightfrogs.wikia.com/ThornBrain TheMidnightFrogs' website]]. Tropes related to those projects and her involvement are on their own pages.
4	----
5	[[foldercontrol]]
6
7	[[folder:Works on TV Tropes]]
8	* Current:
9	** '''LetsPlay/TheStrawhatNO''' ([=LPer=], editor, commentator)
10	** ''Webcomic/TheLegendOfZeldaBookOfTheTraitor'' (Writer)
11	** ''Podcast/SophomoreSlumps'' (Host, editor)
12	** '''Creator/TheMidnightFrogs''':
13	*** ''WebVideo/SgtFrogAbridged'' (Writer, editor, voice actor, voice director)
14	* Inactive:
15	** Abridging
16	*** ''Podcast/AskGiroDoroSFA'' (Solo)
17	*** ''WebVideo/TamersAbridged'' (Writer, editor, voice actor, voice director)
18	*** ''WebVideo/JettersAbridged'' (Writer, editor, voice actor, voice director)
19	*** ''WebVideo/HowICaughtYourMother'' (Writer, editor, voice actor, voice director)
20	** '''Other''':
21	*** ''WebVideo/TheAudioLogsOfDrSquid'' (Voice actor)
22	[[/folder]]
23
24	[[folder:Music Releases]]
25	!!Records as [=ThornBrain=]
26	!!!Albums
27	* ''[[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/BlackholeWhitespace BlackholeWhitespace]]'' (January 2011 - available as part of ''The Forgotten Ones 2'' compilation)
28	* ''[[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/Nobody_Cares_Unless_You%27re_Pretty_or_Dying Nobody Cares Unless You're Pretty or Dying]]'' (December 2013 - remixed and remastered for ''The Forgotten Ones'' compilation, and the original master is on ''The Forgotten Ones 2'')
29	* ''[[https://thornbrain.bandcamp.com/album/buried-secrets-old-lies Buried Secrets & Old Lies]]'' (December 2018 - remixed and remastered version released February 2020)
30	* ''[[https://thornbrain.bandcamp.com/album/worldbuilder Worldbuilder]]'' (March 2019)
31	* ''[[https://thornbrain.bandcamp.com/album/rise-in-love Rise in Love]]'' (July 2021)
32
33	!!![=EPs=] and Singles
34	* ''[=BlackspaceWorkinprogress=]'' (EP, January 2011 - demos and [=WIPs=] of tracks from ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]'', came with downloads of ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]''. Available as part of ''The Forgotten Ones 2'' compilation)
35	* ''[[http://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/Saw_Beat Saw Beat]]'' (Single, 2011 - available as part of ''The Forgotten Ones 2'' compilation)
36	* ''[[http://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/The_Right_Way_to_do_Everything The Right Way to do Everything]]'' (EP, March 2011 - remastered for ''The Forgotten Ones'' compilation, and the original master is on ''The Forgotten Ones 2'' compilation)
37	* ''[[http://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/Lost_Effort Lost Effort]]'' (Single, March 2011 - remastered for ''The Forgotten Ones'' compilation, and the original master is on ''The Forgotten Ones 2'' compilation)
38	* ''[[https://soundcloud.com/thornbrain/sets/rise-in-love-instrumentals-ep Rise in Love instrumentals]]'' (Demo EP, February 2021)
39
40	!!!Compilations
41	* ''[[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/Spider_(album) Spider]]'' (Free promo compilation for ''Nobody Cares...'', November 2013)
42	* ''[[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/ThornBrain_is_Really_Bad_at_This_-_The_Best_of_the_Worst_(2009_-_2011) ThornBrain is Really Bad at This - The Best of the Worst (2009-2011)]]'' (Compilation of the best material from 2009-2011, November 2014)
43	* ''[[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/No_One_Needs_Me_-_The_Rest_of_the_Worst_(2009-2011) No One Needs Me - The Rest of the Worst (2009 - 2011)]]'' (Everything else from 2009-2011 that was left off of ''The Best of the Worst'', November 2014)
44	* ''[[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/Quaero_(album) Quaero]]'' (Free promo compilation for ''Buried Secrets...'', October 2018)
45	* ''[[https://thornbrain.bandcamp.com/album/the-forgotten-ones-the-2020-mixes The Forgotten Ones (The 2020 Mixes)]]'' (Compilation of remixes and remasters of ''Nobody Cares...'' and select originals from ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]'' and ''Spider'', plus an expanded remaster of ''The Right Way to do Everything'' EP, December 2020)
46	* ''[[https://thornbrain.fandom.com/wiki/The_Forgotten_Ones_2_(The_Free_Music,_2009-2021) The Forgotten Ones 2 (The Free Music, 2009-2021)]]'' (Compilation of all the free music released from her first demos on [=MySpace=] through ''Rise in Love instrumentals'', September 2021)
47
48	!!Records as Sellafield
49	* ''Profile'' (Album, ETA: 2022)
50
51	!!Features
52	* "[[https://djsawtooth.bandcamp.com/track/industry-standard-feat-thornbrain-2013-re-release Industry Standard]]" (2011) by Sawtooth - Vocals
53	* ''[[https://djsawtooth.bandcamp.com/album/snacks Snacks]]'' (2014) by Sawtooth - Vocals and noise sampled from "Tribalism" on "Human (I Like You)", Lyrics and vocals on "Grudges"
54	* ''[[https://smellma.bandcamp.com/album/viva-lasagna viva lasagna]]'' (2019) by smell - Lyrics, vocals, guitar and Ebow on "bird ghosts"
55
56	!!Charity Appearances:
57	* ''[[https://combustibledesigns.bandcamp.com/album/effigies-a-tribute-to-ministrys-with-sympathy Effigies: A Tribute To Ministry's "With Sympathy"]]'' - Cover of "Revenge"
58	* ''[[https://bozforoz.bandcamp.com/album/boz-for-oz Boz for Oz]]'' - Cover of "Mr. Clarinet" by Music/TheBirthdayParty
59	* ''[[https://wereinthistogether.bandcamp.com/album/were-in-this-together We're In This Together]]'' - "Plague Fools" with Scapeghost
60	* ''[[https://agitationtrips.bandcamp.com/album/safe Agitation Trips]]'' - Rhythm guitar and original demo for "Safe"
61	[[/folder]]
62	----
63	!!This creator provides examples of:
64
65	* TheAbridgedSeries: Her best known projects with Creator/TheMidnightFrogs, including ''WebVideo/SgtFrogAbridged'', ''WebVideo/JettersAbridged'', ''WebVideo/TamersAbridged'', and their ''Pokemon'' one-shots including ''WebVideo/HowICaughtYourMother''.
66	* AuthorTract: Sexual identity is a frequent subject in her works. Episode 11 of ''SFA'' was devoted almost entirely to saying that [[GayAesop it's okay to be Bisexual]]. [[UsefulNotes/{{Transgender}} Trans issues and identity]] also started popping up in the late-[=2010s=], being a major theme of her album ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'', part of the subtext of ''Worldbuilder'', and ''Rise in Love'' is partially about her coming out as trans.
67	* FanWebcomics: Writer of the ''Legend of Zelda'' fancomic ''Webcomic/TheLegendOfZeldaBookOfTheTraitor''.
68	* LetsPlay: Does them as part of ''LetsPlay/TheStrawhatNO'', and did a few beforehand that are long gone.
69	* SpriteComic: Used to make these several years before ''SFA'', but they're also long gone.
70	* StageName: She uses [=ThornBrain=] professionally as this, both for [=YouTube=] and her music.
71
72	!!Her music provides examples of:
73	* AffectionateParody: "[[AllLowercaseLetters the shift key is broken and so is my heart]]" is titled as an affectionate jab at musicians who title their songs, albums and/or band name in AllLowercaseLetters, particularly her friend Patrick's project 'smell', whose first album ''woof'' was a big inspiration for Mikaela returning to music from 2018-on.
74	* AnswerSong: "There for Me" is written as the opposite of Al Green's "Take Me to the River", which [[Music/TalkingHeads David Byrne]] described as not comparing love and baptism but simply combining them. "There for Me" actively compares love and religion [[AntiLoveSong unfavou]][[ReligionRantSong rably]].
75	* AntiLoveSong:
76	** "There for Me", doubled with ReligionRantSong.
77	--> ''Sorry love there's nothing [[TitleDrop there for me]]\
78	I don't want somebody there for me''
79	** "Angel Lungs" dips into this when the lyrics aren't outright surreal.
80	--> ''I was the last thing to go right for you''
81	* BookEnds:
82	** ''Nobody Cares...'' and its remade tracks on ''The Forgotten Ones'' begin and end with a sample of a telemarketing voicemail from "Bobsatm.com".
83	** A favorite composition trick in ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies''. The album begins and ends with Old Lies walking through the desert and dying, "Neuropia" with a blast of noise and a distorted voice, and "Principle Shit" with the same soaring Ebow guitar and chords.
84	** ''Rise in Love'' opens and closes with part 1 and part 3 of the TitleTrack (part 2, "Disassociation", is in the middle). The "Supermoon" suite also opens and closes with the same acoustic guitar-driven composition.
85	* BoxedSet: Though ''The Forgotten Ones 2'' is a digital-only release, it is treated as this with the 75 tracks separated into 12 conceptual "discs". Tracks that are part of the same album, EP, or general era of recording are considered part of the same disc, E.G.: "Disc 1" is the ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]'' album, "Disc 2" is its companion EP ''[=BlackspaceWorkinprogress=]'', etc.
86	* CallBack: "Rainborne" from ''Rise in Love'' makes reference to Thorn's previous works - "For Not 206" ("the boy with the thorn in his brain") from ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'', ''The Right Way to do Everything'' EP, and ''Worldbuilder'' - as a way to put her coming out as trans into a wider context in her life and her music.
87	* CanonDiscontinuity: Downplayed with 2011's ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]'', which she acknowledges as her first album and still has some nostalgic affection for, but she avoided re-releasing it in its original form after Futures Passed Free Music shut down in 2013. Its tracks only appeared in compilations, with only the fully original tracks being remastered for ''The Forgotten Ones''. Finally subverted in 2021, when the entire album was included as its own 'disc' on ''The Forgotten Ones 2'', every track intact in their original forms.
88	* CoverVersion:
89	** Half of ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]'' is covers: three of songs by her dad ("Void", "Ghost Town", and "What's Going On"), one by Music/{{Sparks}} ("Confusion"), and one by Music/ScottWalker ("30 Century Man").
90	** ''Spider'' includes covers of "Requiem" by Music/KillingJoke, "[[Music/PinkFlag Ex Lion Tamer]]" by Music/{{Wire}}, and "Blackout" by Music/{{Lush}}.
91	** ''Quaero'' includes covers of "[[Music/{{Psychocandy}} My Little Underground]]" by Music/TheJesusAndMaryChain and "Lively Arts" by Music/{{The Damned\|Band}}.
92	** Thorn also contributed covers of "Revenge" by Music/{{Ministry}} and "Mr. Clarinet" by Music/TheBirthdayParty to charity compilations run by friends in the New England area in 2018 and 2020 respectively.
93	** ''The Forgotten Ones 2'' includes all of the above covers plus old, rare and/or unreleased covers of [[Music/{{Melt}} "Intruder" and "Games Without Frontiers"]] by Music/PeterGabriel (the former heavily based on Music/{{Primus}}'s 1992 cover), "The Machman" by Music/GaryNuman + Tubeway Army in two separate mixes, "[[Music/TalkingHeads77 Psycho Killer]]" by Music/TalkingHeads, and "Totally Wired" by Music/{{The Fall\|Band}}.
94	* DeathSong: Frequently:
95	** "The Forgotten One" is about a person who dies in a car accident and is buried under leaves and snow never to be found.
96	** "What a Way to Go" and "Hang On, I Got This" are about the strange ways people kill themselves.
97	** "Let's Make a Martyr", a satire of martyrdom and how people and their causes become venerated after their death, so you'd "[[BlackComedy better pick up the pace]]".
98	** "Quaero" is about a man dying in the desert, only for his skeleton to rip out of his body and keep on walking. Except his flesh gets back up as well.
99	** "Misery Is A Riot" has the narrator and a funeral procession mourning the death of the aforementioned skeleton but happy that the person is gone too.
100	** "Woke Up Seeing My Killer" is about Thorn trying to survive her suicidal mental health crisis in September 2020.
101	* EpicInstrumentalOpener:
102	** The extended version of "Spider" has 1:30 of intro.
103	** The 8:20-long "Abbott is Death Process" has 3:40 of a shoegazing instrumental before the vocals begin.
104	** Downplayed in "Northern Mantra", which has a vocal line at one-and-a-half minutes, but the intro is otherwise two minutes of guitar riffing before the first verse.
105	** "Rise in Love" part 1 has a minute-long opening in a four-minute track.
106	** "Afraid of Music" has a two minute organ intro, then another 30 seconds before the vocals come in.
107	* EpicRocking:
108	** ''The Right Way to do Everything'': "Echo to Canal Street" is 9 minutes, and "Knock Gabriel Knock" is 7 minutes.
109	** ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'': "Misery is a Riot" is 6:41, and "Abbott is Death Process" is 8:20.
110	** ''Worldbuilder'': "Tell Me About Your Planet" is 6:42, and "Northern Mantra" is 8:08.
111	** ''Rise in Love'': "Afraid of Music" is 8 minutes, and a bonus track combines the three separate parts of the title song into a single 12:48-long track. Though the two suites, "Bloodstar" and "Supermoon", have their parts separated into individual tracks, they are respectively 14:22 and 11:08 when their parts are combined.
112	** ''The Forgotten Ones 2'': Thorn's cover of "[[Music/PeterGabriel Games Without Frontiers]]", which was later stripped and remade into "Knock Gabriel Knock", is even longer than the latter track at 7:36.
113	* EverythingIsAnInstrument:
114	** The phased noise intro and outro for ''The Right Way to do Everything'' is her computer's fan.
115	** "The Flint Robot has a Perfect Day" uses a processed microphone thump and some Skype call static as a rhythm track. "Quaero" does a similar thing with recordings of Thorn hitting her desk with her fist and making vocal noises, both recorded over Skype while it was bugging out and playing her side back over Mugiwara Yoshi's mic. The processed recording of Thorn hitting her desk comes back in the intro for "The Mask is the Face."
116	** "Quaero" also uses drum sticks hit against her desk and each other for percussive texture.
117	* FadingIntoTheNextSong: ''Worldbuilder'' and ''Rise in Love'' do this for many of their tracks, being linear storylines.
118	* GenreMashup:
119	** Her then-label boss didn't know what genre to use to describe "Count All the Flies in My House", so Mikaela called it "Avant Dance".
120	** ''Nobody Cares Unless You're Pretty or Dying'' and ''Spider'' are self-categorized as "Hardcore Pop" because they mix so many random Punk and Alternative subgenres together, and as a play on "PowerPop".
121	** She describes the album ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'' as a "Post-Punk/Alternative subgenre blender", combining even more disparate subgenres than ''Nobody Cares''.
122	** She describes some of ''Worldbuilder'', namely "Micronova" and "Electricity", as Dream Rock to differentiate their harder sound from their softer {{Shoegazing}}, ProgressiveRock and NoisePop influences. This carries over to ''Rise in Love'', which also has more pronounced {{Krautrock}} influences.
123	* GenreRoulette: Her music is a mix of PunkRock, PostPunk, AlternativeRock, NoisePop, {{Shoegazing}}, {{Industrial}}, ElectronicMusic, and various other influences combined or alternated. ''Worldbuilder'' went even further left-field, adding influences from ProgressiveRock, {{Jazz}} Fusion, and HeavyMetal.
124	* GriefSong: "The Singer Died Today", while itself a story song with characters only named after them, is about the deaths of Music/DavidBowie and Music/ScottWalker.
125	* IdiosyncraticCoverArt: Starting with ''Buried Secrets...'', all of her albums have "[=ThornBrain=]" and the album title in a jagged, hand-drawn style in the top-left corner. [=LPs=] have their titles written in red, while compilations have their titles in the same pale yellow as the [=ThornBrain=] logo.
126	* {{Improv}}:
127	** Most of the music for her original songs from 2011 were improvised. This is noticeable in "The Forgotten One", which has multiple flubbed notes and structural inconsistencies in the guitar performances.
128	** The guitar solos on "Get Out of the House" were recorded one after the other with no planning other than to make them dissonant and disorienting. They had to be re-edited to fit the song's tempo, and this is most noticeable in the outro where she left the recording as-is, so the solo loses the tempo.
129	* LoudnessWar: A firm aversion. All of her albums and songs have a minimum average dynamic range of [=DR10=] and avoid clipping (though this was mainly due to her pre-2018 work not actually being mastered or significantly compressed). Though many unmastered versions of tracks from ''Quaero'' and ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'' went as low as [=DR7=], her mastering process actually increased the dynamic range of louder songs; most significantly, DJ Sawtooth's remix of "The Mask is the Face" was ''[=DR5=]'' before mastering, after which Mikaela doubled the dynamic range to [=DR10=].
130	* LyricalDissonance: She enjoys writing uptempo, melodic, Punk-inspired songs with lyrics like:
131	-->''"Let's make a martyr, you're gonna die someday''\
132	''Let's make a martyr, you're gonna die anyway!"''
133	* MediumAwareness: "Hang On, I Got This" includes the line "I hear you better when you're further away", sung by the backing vocals which are buried in reverb.
134	* MinisculeRocking: Many of the tracks from ''Nobody Cares Unless You're Pretty or Dying'' were under two minutes long, being heavily influenced by miniscule rockers Music/{{Wire}} and Music/BadReligion; "My Parents Died and Everyone Loves Me" and "All the Wrong Friends" are both only 30 seconds, and the album outtake "Headcase" is 45 seconds. ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'' was significant for it being the first album were she consciously [[AvertedTrope averted]] this, making an effort to have every track be two minutes-long at minimum.
135	* {{Pastiche}}:
136	** "There for Me" is NoisePop directly fashioned after Music/TheJesusAndMaryChain.
137	** "Knock Gabriel Knock" is styled after ''The Drift''-era Music/ScottWalker, especially in the ghostly vocals.
138	** "Let's Make a Martyr" is a PowerPop take on Music/AndrewWK.
139	** "Edged Out" is in the style of Music/MinorThreat, and a simultaneous TakeThat to Ian Mackeye's and UsefulNotes/StraightEdge's views on sex.
140	** "A More Traditional Love Song" is in the style of Music/{{The Damned\|Band}}, Damned guitarist Captain Sensible's solo work, and Music/{{Motorhead}}.
141	** "Tribalism" is in the style of Music/KillingJoke and Music/{{Ministry}}.
142	** "Fountain Neck" is styled after Music/ButtholeSurfers, though Mikaela later noticed it also sounds like Music/{{Nirvana}}'s ''Music/{{Bleach\|Album}}''.
143	** "Room For One More" is primarily in the style of Music/{{Fugazi}}.
144	** "Last Minute Thought of a Man on Fire" is a heavy take on [[AlternativeDance Madchester/Baggy]], particularly Music/TheStoneRoses and Music/InspiralCarpets.
145	** "Rise in Love" parts 1 and 3 are styled after the motorik works of [[Music/{{Neu}} Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother]], particularly Dinger's band Music/LaDusseldorf. Part 2, "Disassociation", is instead styled after the Music/{{Kraftwerk}} album ''Music/{{Autobahn}}''.
146	** "The Singer Died Today" is styled after Music/CocteauTwins.
147	* PackagedAsOtherMedium: The cover art for ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'' is designed as a horror comic book cover.
148	* ReligionRantSong: The second half of "There for Me":
149	-->''"To cheap experiences I'm not a stranger''\
150	''I went to church for a number of my years''\
151	''Sat in back with my eyes glazing over''\
152	''You never see one like me coming to tears"''
153	* {{Sampling}}:
154	** The ''Saw Beat'' single is composed of three songs made entirely out of this.
155	** The extended version of "Spider" samples a California Lottery commercial.
156	** "Don't Hear Me" samples a Skype call with Mugiwara Yoshi as Yoshi's mom yells at him.
157	** The first and last songs on ''Nobody Cares'' have samples of a telemarketer advertising the now-defunct website, "Bobsatm.com".
158	* SelfDeprecation:
159	** From "There for Me":
160	-->''"You gave your compliments long after I decided\
161	I have a face that you scrape off the road"''
162	** She released a compilation of unavailable music from 2011 and titled the compilation ''[=ThornBrain=] is Really Bad at This - The Best of the Worst (2009-2011)''. Its free companion ''No One Needs Me'' is similarly subtitled ''The Rest of the Worst''.
163	* SelfImposedChallenge: [[invoked]] ''Worldbuilder'' was recorded entirely in February 2019 for the RPM Challenge. ''Rise in Love'' and the Sellafield album ''Profile'' began the same way but couldn't be completed in time.
164	* ShoutOut:
165	** The title of her first album, ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]'' is a loose reference to the Music/DavidBowie album ''Music/BlackTieWhiteNoise''.
166	** "Saw Coffee (Mensforth Hill)" is "Saw Beat" reversed and further treated, a reference to "[[Music/{{Sandinista}} Mensforth Hill]]" by Music/TheClash, which itself is a reversed and overdubbed remix of "Something About England".
167	** "Knock Gabriel Knock" has multiple lyrical references to "Games Without Frontiers" by Music/PeterGabriel, due in part to the song originating from an avant-garde cover of it.
168	** "I'm Your Victim" opens with a guitar riff lifted straight from Music/BlackFlag's "Rise Above".
169	** ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'':
170	*** The title of "Here Comes Singularity Black" is one to "Here Comes the Singularity" by Music/KillingJoke. Its original title was "Vantablack" after the world's blackest pigment, but Thorn wanted to avoid any potential legal trouble due to the name being copyrighted; "Singularity Black" is the name of the blackest publicly available paint - only slightly less black than Vantablack.
171	*** The title of "Room for One More" quotes the ArcWords from ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'' episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E17TwentyTwo Twenty-Two]]." It was also originally going to sample the line before Thorn decided not to anger Viacom.
172	*** The title of "For Not 206" is one to the sometimes inexplicable {{Word Salad Title}}s of Music/{{Wire}}.
173	*** The title of "Abbott is Death Process" is a quote from ''Film/{{Arrival}}''.
174	** ''Worldbuilder'':
175	*** Being inspired by video games, ''Worldbuilder'' makes reference to multiple ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'' games, ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'', ''VideoGame/DemonsSouls'' and ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'', ''VideoGame/NiNoKuni'', ''VideoGame/KatamariDamacy'', among others.
176	*** Along with [[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTwilightPrincess the Twilight Realm]], "A Different Place in the Twilight" makes another cheeky reference to ''Franchise/TheTwilightZone'', and the title was also inspired by "[[Music/YearZero In This Twilight]]" by Music/NineInchNails.
177	*** The title of "Northern Mantra" is one to the Music/CabaretVoltaire EP ''Three Mantras'', [[NeverTrustATitle which only contained two "mantras"]]: "Western Mantra" and "Eastern Mantra".
178	** ''Rise in Love'':
179	*** The cover art shows a figure flying upward, which is actually an image of them falling flipped upside-down (evidenced by a palm tree at the top of the picture), a reference to the iconic scene of Miles Morales falling upwards in ''WesternAnimation/SpiderManIntoTheSpiderVerse''.
180	*** Much of the album was inspired by the works of Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother, together as Music/{{Neu}} and separately in Dinger's band Music/LaDusseldorf and Rother's solo album ''Flammende Herzen''. The title track utilizes Neu!'s signature motorik drumbeat, and "Supermoon" uses drums inspired by [[Music/{{Can}} Jaki Liebezeit's]] drumming on ''Flammende Herzen''.
181	*** Music/DavidBowie's death in January 2016 is "ground zero" for the events that inspired the album, so the lead character in "Bloodstar" is named after him, a line from his song "Music/BlackstarAlbum" is paraphrased in "The Singer Died Today", and Sue in "Afraid of Music" is named after his song "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" from the same album.
182	*** Other named characters include Scott, named after the late Music/ScottWalker, another major influence on Thorn; Wendy, after pioneering transgender ElectronicMusic composer Music/WendyCarlos; and Angela, after late transgender composer Angela Morley who arranged for Scott Walker's early solo albums. The second half of ''Rise in Love'' is about the lead-up to Thorn coming out as transgender herself, and she found Carlos and Morley being out as transwoman and winning awards for their work back in TheSeventies as inspirational.
183	*** "Woke Up Seeing My Killer" is heavily referential to WebVideo/PhilosophyTube's "Blackstar" trilogy of videos, particularly the "cosmonaut" character, in tribute for Thorn using the videos to get through a suicidal depression in late 2020 before deciding to come out as trans. Some of the album's references to Bowie's ''Blackstar'' are circuitous influence from these videos.
184	*** "Rise in Love" part 1 opens much quieter than the rest of the song before blasting out at full volume to surprise listeners, a reference to Music/RoxyMusic doing the same thing with "Virginia Plain."
185	* SpokenWord: "Self-Portrait with Stolen Painting" is Mikaela telling a story over {{Industrial}} PostPunk music.
186	* TakeThat:
187	** "Let's Make a Martyr" mocks the tendency for people who die or are killed for their cause to become symbols of said cause that others rally behind, saying that those people wouldn't have cared until that person died.
188	** "Edged Out" is this to the UsefulNotes/StraightEdge movement's and [[Music/MinorThreat Ian Mackeye's]] views on sex, comparing it to sexual oppression in religion as a pointless rejection of a natural human instinct.
189	** "Principle Shit" is a vicious takedown of Baby Boomers who look down on millennials and Gen Z-ers for being unprincipled by saying their outdated principles are what lead to things like domestic abuse and school shootings.
190	** "As Gods As Demons" is one to people who use religion as an excuse to commit acts of evil.
191	** The final third of "Cancerous Winter" is one to celebrities who were revealed to have committed sexual assault. The first two thirds of the song are about [[{{Unperson}} celebrity deaths]].
192	* TitleTrack: ''Worldbuilder'' has "Worldbuilder (A Denoument)", and ''Rise in Love'''s title track is separated into three parts at the {{bookends}} and middle.
193	* UncommonTime:
194	** ''Worldbuilder'' flexes its prog and jazz influences this way:
195	*** "Competition for a Bad Life" alternates 7/4 in the verses and 3/4 in the chorus.
196	*** "Electricity" is in 7/4.
197	*** "Tell Me About Your Planet" has the lead-in to the "Shark (A Distraction)" piece that alternates 5/8 and 3/4. "Shark" itself starts in 5/8 before switching to 7/8, then 3/4, then 5/4, before ending in 4/4.
198	** ''Rise in Love'':
199	*** "The Singer Died Today" is 4/4 with short choruses that are 7/4.
200	*** "Afraid of Music" has a 7/4 organ intro, 4/4 rock section, 7/4 organ transition, and 6/4 shoegaze ending.
201	* WordSaladLyrics:
202	** "Count All the Flies in My House":
203	--> ''I like to sit on a petrified head and''\
204	''Count all the flies in my house''\
205	''I like to think that there's plenty more people''\
206	''With insane amounts of time on their hands''\
207	''I wish the voice in the roots of my teeth stopped''\
208	''Buying pizza it can't afford''\
209	''It makes more flies, it makes more flies...''
210	** Invoked with "An O in Hell", written to spin sentences and clichés in weird ways ("what have you done" becomes "''[[IntercourseWithYou who]]'' [[IntercourseWithYou have you done]]"). The song's other lyrics were recycled for "Face Down Walls", where they and the new lyrics make just as little sense.
211	* WordSaladTitle:
212	** ''[=BlackholeWhitespace=]''.
213	** "An O in Hell".
214	** From ''Buried Secrets & Old Lies'' and ''Quaero'': "Here Comes Singularity Black", "Face Down Walls", "Fountain Neck" and "For Not 206".

Context Creator / ThornBrain