Yes!
I had opted out of Thunderdome voting this time around because a couple of life events prevented me from giving the full dome my full attention. Those life reasons, since they aren’t germane to the Thunderdome itself, are spoilered below in case anyone really needs to know.
Two life events
I’ve appreciated the discussion that took place over the last day or so because it illustrates something I really love about Thunderdome. How does Majula, sparse as it is, even make it this far? Why did this other track not make it out of the group round? Why didn’t everyone like that track?
Art in general resonates differently with different people. It’s why two people can look at a painting or read a book and appreciate different things. But more than that, our appreciation also differs based on our unique lived perspectives. One person can appreciate the craft in a movie because they have lived a life that resulted in them being a person who appreciates craft. Another person can watch the same movie and appreciate it because one of the characters reminds them of a beloved family member. Sometimes, my enjoyment of a given track depends entirely on my state of mind on a single day. Different perspectives, different appreciation, equally valid.
In the Thunderdome, I think this sometimes gets overlooked in favor of the competitive aspect. After all, we are lining up our best, most-meaningful songs, hand-picked to beat the others. When they end up resonating differently with someone else (or everyone else, sometimes), it can be confusing.
Painful even. This is Thunderdome. It giveth and taketh. But rather than take that as a hard truth, I take it as a thing of beauty. Only in the Thunderdome can Majula and Obra Dinn beat out so many others to arrive here.
That said, for me, it’s Majula.
Majula is safe, a hub, and a place of rest in Dark Souls 2. You’ll see it a hundred time or more in a playthrough. As someone who played the game, those things obviously weigh in its favor. But for me specifically, it reflects a place in time as well. That tiny period between your schooling (whichever level that is) and true adulthood. When you have the free time of a student on break, without any of the same responsibilities, but before you have things like a “career” or a “family” or “tax burdens”. A lot of games were consumed during that time for me, Dark Souls 2 among them. So while the music does immediately conjure images of the safe area, with all of those associated feelings, it also conjures the feeling of sitting on my bed, controller in hand, with a couple of days off ahead of me. It conjures the feeling of going into a tough game blind, learning it at the same time as the rest of the world.
Does this make the Obra Dinn theme worse, or lesser in any way? Of course not. It’s a fantastic song, from a fantastic game. When someone asks for a detective game, that’s the first one that gets recommended. But listening to it doesn’t evoke the same stuff within me. And this is the Thunderdome, where sometimes a round needs to be decided by someone whose stuff is the deciding factor.
