GutterPutter

Since the First Era, Bard Music has risen to become custom among the proudest examples of Skyrim’s culture in the entirety of Tamriel’s history.

In the words of a wise man who has no problem with those who look different to him, “I’m not racist, but I think that mass deportation is an incredible idea to cut down on immigration.” Many places around the world have seen far too many different races or ethnicities who come in to help out in the community without doing anything that justifies hating them. For years on end, there are too many people who abide with the belief that everyone should be treated with respect no matter how much they stand out from those you consider “normal”. One of the greatest crises of our time is that compassion is too common and how that makes it okay to intermingle with many cultures to promote bond among all walks in life.

To counteract this vice, I hereby turn to the role models from a reality that is far removed from ours – the proud Nords of Skyrim who not only dream to maintain their homogeneity but they’ll refuse to ever fix their disarrayed castles until they get rid of anyone who doesn’t look like them whatsoever. Even among themselves do they rigorously maintain the proud structure where women can serve as a regional head of government called a Jarl only if they opt to not impede the progress of male Jarls. It is objectively good to not do anything about your problems aside from blaming it on those whose skin colour is 0.0001% lighter or darker than yours. After all, you are born in your land, right? Surely you deserve to enjoy whatever is there to have?

Music in Skyrim is exemplified best through what we call Bard Music. I capitalised it like a proper noun because Nords deserve a culture that valourises them as the manliest in Tamriel. Bard Music is deceptively complex. On the outside, the main instrument is a lyre which is to be strummed with the emotive resonance of a nostalgic neo-Confederate supporter with their banjo. The singing might have some bits of technicality, but the high notes never come. It’s never about the high notes or the technical competency however. It is the heart that speaks for itself.

Take for instance Ragnar the Red’s sole self-titled album that was released in 3E 69. His self-titled lead single in particular is a masterclass in examining the loneliness pandemic that single young Nords ought to go through. How relentless the criticisms heaved at them are by women who are represented by Matilda the Shieldmaiden. The rhyming couplet begs for a return to the status quo where proud Nordic women either work as obedient soldiers who heroically died on a battlefield when they get shot with an arrow by a random hunter who mistook them for bandits or as housewives where they either buy groceries, tend to genuinely horrible children, or react to their husbands’ death as though they forgot to buy 1 bag of flour. Lastly, the grand finale where Ragnar himself was slain for his love of meads is a rhetorical device. One which beckons this dilemma: Should women have the right to kill men for a reason? Or should men have the right to kill women for no reason? The lack of an answer suggests that of the latter.

However, it is not only Ragnar the Red whose music had long evaluated the importance of staying within your community only. There are many, many great singer-songwriters whose works have tackled nuanced themes like whether you should defend yourself by pre-emptively attacking alleged perpetrators who are minding their own business or the woes of being oppressed in your land where the restrictions aren’t enforced at all and how you are the clear ethnic majority with many holding major political offices. The latter is what Ulfric Stormcloak had tackled in his song collection titled The Age of Oppression in 4E 201. Inspired by his lived experiences as a victim of Imperial oppression which includes being imprisoned for asking questions about whether it’s fine to break a treaty in public that no one bothers to uphold at all and whether indigenous people should not ask for reparations of any kind and that they should be grateful of what they already have, Stormcloak had engineered a masterpiece in political songwriting.

I beg of you to take notes of how intricately made the title track is. “All hail to Ulfric! You are the High King!” goes the chorus which isn’t at all narcissistic, but rather inspiring in how one man could do everything he can to save his nation from letting those filthy Redgu- Legionnaires from sullying his claim to being a leader that needs no constitutional limitation. Contrasting Ragnar’s use of couplet, this one is the return to the status quo where proud Nords can now celebrate moving forward in rebuilding Skyrim after they force the Argonians and elves out despite relying on them for hard labour with little pay. Finally, right after the first use of the chorus comes this especially poignant line: “We’re the children of Skyrim, and we fight all our lives. / And when Sovngard beckons, every one of us dies!” Not only are people willing to sacrifice their lives for their home, but they are also compatible allies of Christian Evangelicals in their unwavering faith.

Last but not least in the exact same year, I call forth the potency of the final record that is an essential listen is Tale of the Tongues which is written none other than you – the reader, the star, the legend that is the Dragonborn or Dovakhiin in the language of the dragons. The greatness can’t be contained in lines that are epically written and not at all a damning indictment of economical woes that plague the writing that you have put your heart and soul into. “We need saviors to free us from Alduin’s rage,” this is the masterstroke that you have written to show everyone how awesome you truly are, “Heroes on the field of this new war to wage.” This has not been written anywhere else and it is not taken out of esoteric Indo-European pagan works at all. You are the hero who is in need of a good woman, one who clearly looks like one even though the idea of what makes a woman changes all the time. Do I need to explain any more?

Yet, you are not the only writer who covers deep topics like how awesome it must have been to have an infinitesimal chance at being a hero in a world where an everyman gets killed by a bandit who lives only 2 minutes away from his local village. Nor were Stormcloak and Ragnar the only voices of their generation. Long before you had written this masterpiece that is Tale of the Tongues, a playwright called Crassius Curio made Slurred Lines which is about how cool it is to fetishise Argonians without needing their consent in 3E 427. It’s so tragic how he passed away right after a court trial where many accused him of things that were clearly fine back in the day. Surely they must know that they want it, right? 

Or, maybe or, even in yet another universe, there is another man who is just like Stormcloak and Ragnar. Othmar Garithos, who soon led the last defense of his nation of Lordaeron against the Orcish Hordes who were taken over by Social Justice Warriors and the Scourge whose monarch proved lacking in testosterone, wrote Blackwood where he sang in detail his ex-wife’s affair with an High Elf who is old enough to be her great-grandmother’s elderly nursemaid’s university professor. 

In another, an entire nation of people with the legal right to own other people as free labour gets together to pray for those who would crucify them for their beliefs. The United Cities For Orkan’s Gulf is an inspiring project which recorded We Are the World which both exonerates the civilians in the Holy Nation for their hard work and yet belittles them for their impoverished living standards. “Well, tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you!” is the key message that intends to not take for granted a privileged life of owning other people for free labour and explaining why it’s good to take over other lands to help boost their economy regardless of the so-called “concerned” citizens. After all, they sure don’t know what they want. Do they?

And yet in another, the founding father of Columbia, Zachary Hale Comstock, wrote America Chooses Sides in a time that resembles that of our one in 1918 which mourns the collapse of the American South. And in another, Gary, the Cryptofascist, released Fascist Boy in ‘52 which deals with the downfall of his hometown that is Revachol and how it makes him feel pathetic which makes him objectively pathetic because he isn’t really a man but rather a woman. I hereby declare him a woman and that she should be punished with her pronouns being changed to accommodate her newfound status. And yet in another, George Lincoln Rockwell released 2 Pimp a DEI which inspired many of his countrymen to deport everyone to make America great again in 1967, And once again in another, and another, so on, so forth…