My Ranking of Every TØP Album

        I've discussed this topic in a couple blog posts in the past.

        Here I pick my favorite, but don't rank them all: https://whateveriwant7.blogspot.com/2024/07/my-fav-tp-album.html

        Back in July of 2017 I talk about various TØP related things including my (presumably) earliest album rankings at the bottom of the post: https://whateveriwant7.blogspot.com/2017/07/twenty-one-pilots-list.html

        This is my ordering of all their albums from favorite to least favorite. I was pondering this some after making my most recent tier list, and this is what I came to. 

        Note: This is primarily based upon how I feel -- not strictly looking at the data of seeing how the songs stack up against each other on the tier list; however, I will reference my current tier list as data. Writing this (alongside working on an upcoming project "My Fav 10 Seconds From Every TØP Song") has brought to my attention various shifts I would make to my tier list, so it's not like my current tier list is perfectly reflective of my current feelings anyway.

1. Vessel

        Vessel's still the GOAT, what can I say? How much of this is just a legacy pick? I am unsure. But this album has fundamentally shifted what type of music I love more than any piece of media, so it's kind of a big deal to me. It's had such a big impact in my life musically, but also just in general as well.

        It is simply jam-packed with songs that I consider all-time greats. Car Radio, Holding Onto You, Guns for Hands, Ode to Sleep, and, of course, Migraine and Trees, which both have topped every one of my Twenty One Pilots tier lists for as long as I can remember. 

        Additionally, I feel I would be remiss if I also didn't mention how powerful Truce is and how much I enjoy Fake You Out as well.

        Does the album have some weaker songs in my mind? Yeah, absolutely. But, man, I don't know bro, like, I just love this album so much.

2. Clancy

        Clancy coming in at number 2! I feel like this is not something I would have expected, but this album has carved out a spot in my heart over the past couple of years since its release. I love this album.

        Once again, does this album have some weaker songs on it in my opinion? Absolutely. But even those songs still just work so well in the context of the album somehow. I don't know how to describe it exactly. 

        Next Semester and Vignette being two absolute GOATs of all time. Two songs in my top 5? Very impressive. Feat only matched by Vessel. Oldies Station here as an emotional powerhouse. Paladin Strait -- so good.

        Oh, and shoutout to Lavish for being the slowest grower I have ever seen -- I kind of hated the song when I first listened to it (debuting in the bottom 10), but every listen, I enjoy it just a smidgen more (now still bottom half, but, you know, much that's much better than bottom 10). 

3. Trench

        In a vacuum, does Trench beat out Clancy? I think so, yes. Trench is a masterpiece, the production quality is insane, and the music is incredible. This album is generally considered their magnum opus for a reason. But we don't live in a vacuum. And so for some reason I prefer Clancy right now. 

        But, like, golly, when is the last time you listened to Neon Gravestones and Morph? Those songs are freaking perfect, man. And holy guacamole, the flow in Levitate is insane and Bandito and Chlorine and, man, this album is soooo good. Writing this out makes me question just a tad if Clancy really should be above it, haha, but I'm going to leave it as is for now.

        If you asked me what Twenty One Pilots best album is, Trench is my pick. I agree that it's their magnum opus. But what their best and what my favorite are are two different questions.

4. Breach

        After my first listen of Breach, I would have said it was in contention with Vessel for number one. Unfortunately, I have cooled off significantly on a lot of the songs on it since then.

        I do think this album is the most polarized out the albums I've talked about so far. Garbage and One Way just aren't my favorites, and Days Lie Dormant belongs right where I put it in F-Tier. 

        But it also has it's fair share of heavy hitters, which is evidenced by the fact that Breach is currently tied with Vessel for most songs in my top 10 (each having 3).

        

        Like, golly, if I liked the rap cadence in City Walls just a little more, it would be my favorite song oat. And Downstairs' conclusion part with the two parts overlapping is quite possibly my favorite section of any song in their entire discography. And Center Mass is peak.

        Clancy and Trench are clearly 2/3 for me, but I think Breach deserves to be chucked into those conversations.

5. Self-Titled

        I think lyrically Self-Titled can easily go toe-to-toe with any album and has some stellar songs on it that stand the test of time. 

        Taxi Cab has made several appearances in my top 10 for good reason, even peaking at #5. I love The Pantaloon (and I don't care if it turns out a lot of the TØP community doesn't, haha). Fall Away is fantastic. Friend, Please is powerful. Oh Ms Believer is peaceful. Addict With a Pen is amazing.

        However, the older sound/lower production quality makes me want to listen to this album less often, and over time I've just been enjoying specific songs not so much.

6. Blurryface

        

        Interesting thing about Blurryface when compared to Clancy -- Like I referenced earlier, even the weaker songs on Clancy still feel great in the unit that is that album. Blurryface, on the other hand, I much prefer as individual songs. As an album, the songs just kind of blur and feel very samey to me. I don't know, maybe that's just me. 

        That being said, I do overall enjoy the individual songs. The Judge is the only song that strikes into S-Tier, but the album does have a solid presence in A-Tier.

7. Scaled and Icy

        Interesting thing about Scaled and Icy when compared to Blurryface/Clancy: Clancy feels great as a unit. Blurryface kind of just blurs together as a unit. Scaled and Icy feels actively worse as a unit.                Every time I listen to Scaled and Icy, I can't help but wish it was something different than it is. Is that entirely fair to Scaled and Icy? Not really, no. But I can't help but be caught in that feeling.

        When I listen to the songs individually strewn throughout other songs, it helps me just view them as alright songs (some great (Shy Away, Redecorate, Choker, Formidable), some not so great (*cough* Bounce Man *cough*)), but when I listen to the songs as an album, it's hard to escape the feeling of "This is the album after Trench. Sad days."

        Reminder these are just my opinions, and I don't mean this to reflect in any way personally onto Tyler or Josh; I love them and their music (as evidenced by the existence of this post in the first place (and numerous other posts)). Don't hate me, please and thanks.

8. Regional At Best

        Oh, how my opinions have shifted. In the past, I heralded RAB as my favorite album (which you can see in my post from 2017 linked at the top). And now I just, like, really don't like the sound on almost all the songs. 

        Now, now, to be fair to RAB, when I think of this album, I don't include the songs that got put onto Vessel. Having those heavy hitters would probably help. Although, in a couple-few of those cases, being an active detriment instead, haha, so maybe it would just balance out. 

Final Note:

        

        It wouldn't surprise me if 1-4 swap in any way down the road (with Trench and Clancy (2 and 3) being the closest right now). Same with 5-7 (with Self-Titled and Blurryface (5 and 6) being the closest right now). RAB could climb up for sure, but less likely than 5-7 swapping around. Pretty clear stable divide between 4 and 5, though.        

Who is my Favorite Spider-Man?

        Note here at the beginning: These things I'm discussing aren't specifically the actors, although their acting does of course play a role. These things are the writing, directing, acting etc. etc. When I'm comparing their Spider-Mans, I'm not saying "Which actor did the best job in their portrayal?", it's much more broad than that.

        I remember reading online many moons ago that Tobey Maguire has the best Peter Parker, Andrew Garfield has the best Spider-Man, and Tom Holland is solid in both categories. Now, after finally watching the Tobey Maguire films, I can say that I would generally agree with this take.
        The way Andrew's Spider-Man uses his webs for movement is just next level. It is so cool. Tobey Maguire's emotional conflicts in his relationships of his Peter Parker life are so so good. And, yeah, Tom's Spider-Man is solid in both categories.

        Granted, I say all this, and WE'RE ABOUT TO GET ANOTHER SPIDER-MAN FILM. I am so excited. And obviously that film will have its effects on this entire conversation, but I wanted to write my pre-Brand New Day thoughts. These thoughts aren't in any real order.

        I think the Tobey Maguire's version of Uncle Ben dying was miles better than Andrew's. Andrew's just felt like a water-downed version of the same thing. Even with the "the last thing Peter said to his Uncle was mean" didn't feel as much of a gut-punch in The Amazing Spider-Man because it kind of felt like a valid crash-out on Peter's side. Versus in Tobey's, Peter's words were simply uncalled for, which made the regret of them being the last words hurt a lot more.
        Of course, to be fair to Andrew's, it's not like they could just copy paste the events over, which makes it a little awkward. I think this is one of the reasons Homecoming decided to just skip over the origin story altogether. That being said, I did miss it a little in the Homecoming film; I'm curious to see how they would have done it, but, that being said, I don't necessarily think they made the wrong choice skipping it.
        Now, that being said, I do prefer Andrew Garfield's version of learning about his powers compared to Tobey Maguire's. Not by a huge margin, though.

        I think Peter Parker is a little too cool in The Amazing Spider-Man films for me. But at the same time, I appreciate the fresh take on it.

        I think the writing in Tobey's films is probably overall the strongest, even if I currently have Spider-Man 3 as my least favorite Spider-Man film. Spider-Man 1 and 2 just carry, I think the stories there are really really good. And I think Spider-Man 3 ultimately sticks the landing by the end of the film, which is important.

        I think the actors themselves all did a great job. Even though I think Andrew's Peter is a little too cool, he absolutely killed it in the acting department. For me personally, I felt that Tobey's acting was a step below the other two.

        

        The final thing I wanted to talk about, which ultimately is the main motivating factor for my final answer, is the question of which Peter Parker do I care about the most as a character. Which one do I suffer the most when they suffer?

        And, for me personally, that would be Tom Holland's Spider-Man by a landslide. Is this perhaps because he's part of a bigger universe and thus has appeared in other movies? Almost assuredly. Is this perhaps because he was my first Spider-Man. Probably yes as well. But I care so much more for his Peter Parker + supporting cast than I do for either Andrew or Tobey.

        And that's why, ultimately, my answer to who's my favorite Spider-Man is Tom Holland. I'm not saying his movies are the best or that he's the best actor out of the three, but he is my favorite Spider-Man.

25 Minutes of Me Talking about Project Hail Mary Book/Movie

Recorded myself giving many thoughts which you can watch here:

https://youtu.be/YTCHEW1COcE

I also wrote a couple additional thoughts I had this morning in the description of the video.

Bonus Feature (it's one minute long and worth watching imo. Note: Spoilers):

https://youtu.be/5SUkTviXvt4?si=2KVuwQM5nk9RT5Q1

The Melancholy After Finishing a Book

         So I just finished a book (more musings on that in a sec), but I wanted to talk the feeling I got after finishing it. A feeling which I get frequently when I finish any series.
        It's this feeling of almost melancholy. A feeling that's a mix of peace and sadness and longing. I think the core of it is the fact that I won't hear from those characters again. That those characters' time in my life are at a close.
        I don't know how to describe it precisely. Melancholy is definitely a good word for it.

        

        More musings about the book itself:

        I just finished the last book in the Healing Wars trilogy by Janice Hardy; a trilogy which I first read many moons ago (sometime during middle school probably, don't remember exactly when).

        It was fun to revisit the world, fun to have random memories pop into my brain of potential events, fun to see what details of those memories were true/false.

        Getting to revisit the magic system was particularly interesting.

        Being able to experience all these things with the lenses of my adult self was interesting.

Why Hogwarts Legacy Fell Flat For Me

        So I recently played through Hogwarts Legacy, a game I've been looking forward to playing through ever since I saw one of the original trailers. And, sadly, the game really fell flat for me. I wanted to take this post to explain why.

        I wanted to caveat here that I can easily see why others might have a phenomenal time with it. I'm just here to explain why the game didn't work for me (and by extension, why the game might not work for you).

1. Too Much Dialogue (for a guy like me)

Message from my cousin Joseph

        

        Yes, yes, to be perfectly fair to Hogwarts Legacy, I'm very much a certified story-hater in video games. This isn't to say it's the case with every game. Celeste hit perfectly for me. I'm 15 hours into Clair Expedition 33 and the story/writing has been phenomenal so far. How Hades story fit into the gameplay loop was peak. There's some good stuff out there for sure. Buuuut, overall I often find dialogue cumbersome and the story disinteresting. Gameplay is by far and away more important to me.         But, even with that in mind, this game has SO much dialogue. I thought it was going to calm down after the first initial story, but nope. I watched a vast majority of the cutscenes, but ahhhh so much time with textboxes, just let me play the game! It didn't take me terribly long to start skipping every textbox imaginable, which did improve my experience. But that didn't even let me skip all the dialogue! Because many quests began with you just following another character as y'all walk and talk. It was not fun.

  

2. Overall Too Easy (and this fed into many of my other problems)

        There's more I could write here, but it felt like opening a can of worms, so I'm going to attempt the path of not writing anything at all (besides this sentence, of course).

3. Combat (and spells) Quickly Felt Samey

        Initially I enjoyed combat and thought the different spells were cool. However, and I think definitely in part because of the lack of difficulty, combat became very spell spammy. I was literally just pressing whatever spell whenever. And spamming roll.
        The different enemies had different weakness and stuff, but I just rarely felt the need to exploit them. You could just mash spells and it would be fine.

4. The Bosses were Uninspiring

        They frequently just felt like normal enemies with larger health pools. Which meant it wasn't any more fun and instead just felt more annoying if you died.

5. Didn't Feel an Incentive to Explore

        Because the game was too easy, I felt no real desire to go out of my way to level up. And because the combat became disinteresting to me, that core gameplay loop wasn't appealing either. This meant I never cared to do any Exploration Challenges in the Field Guide.

Conclusion

        I feel like I could dig into those five reasons more alongside a couple others, but the more I tried to dig, the more incredibly subjective it felt. The way I have it currently written feels somewhat objective, though, which I want. Because, like, fundamentally I can tell there's a lot of good stuff in this game (it's simply fun to be in the wizarding world, flying is just cool, the storyline is solid, you have other cool wizarding things besides spells like potions and beasts, big skill tree to explore, the Field Guide is plump with things to accomplish), so I can see why someone else might love it. 

        And there was enough for me, even with my gripes, to finish it. I rather enjoyed my first ~10 hours. Next 10 it was okaaay. Next 10 I was honestly dragging my feet just to finish it. So, sadly, I walk away from the game with a generally negative view of it, or, at least, my time with it.