straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2025-10-05 09:55 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2025-10-05 09:55 pm
318 | memories of singing bones
Yesterday, I found myself thinking about the podcast Singing Bones. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it was a podcast about fairy tales, delving into the history behind each tale, told by a host with a lovely, almost haunting sort of voice, and background music to match. Perfect listening for this time of year, in other words, though that’s not the main reason why I found myself thinking about it.
As with many things in my life lately, it’s actually because of Final Fantasy VII. Which might sound odd, since the two genuinely have nothing in common with one another, but there is a reason for it. Back in 2017, when I was playing FF7 for the first time, I was looking at the Steam achievements and realized that getting 100% actually seemed fairly doable? So I decided to go for it, and I have two key memories attached to that experience.
The first was the intense frustration I felt while trying to defeat the Emerald Weapon. It took me so many tries, and I am never, ever doing that again. To this day, I cannot think of that boss without wanting to curse its name.
The other memory is a more positive one: of listening to the episodes of Singing Bones while doing the chocobo races. I’m no longer entirely sure why I had to do so many races, but looking at the achievements list, I assume it was related to getting a golden chocobo. In any case—I have that memory seared into my mind: the odd contrast between my muted game, with the bright lights and colors of the chocobo track, and this haunting, ethereal voice coming from my headphones, talking about fairy tales.
Yesterday, I was struck by the urge to relisten to that podcast for the first time. I couldn’t actually remember what it was called at first, but it wasn’t too hard to dig it up again. More complicated was actually finding it. I did know that the podcast was abandoned after only 17 or so episodes, having last been updated in 2017, but to my horror, I found that the website was no longer online, and all the podcast streaming sites no longer had working links.
THANKFULLY, the Wayback Machine came to my rescue—the website is archived there, and through it, almost all of the audio files for the individual episodes. I went through and downloaded all of them, just to be safe, and the only one that didn’t seem to have a working audio file was the “Bluebeard” episode. Which is unfortunate—that’s a fairy tale I have strong childhood memories of, and I would’ve liked to be able to relisten to that episode too—but at least I was able to get my hands on all the others.
(...On the extremely off-chance that anyone reading this has a copy of the Bluebeard episode, or knows someone who might, I would appreciate it if you hit me up!)
Today, I did the Pagoda sidequest in FF7, and decided to grind up Yuffie’s limit breaks afterwards so that I could actually use the All-Creation I got. Partway through, I had a moment of, “...wait, why am I not listening to a podcast to break up the tedium”, and put on the first episode of Singing Bones. And I cannot express how right that felt—being able to listen to that, while playing this game. ♥
One final sidenote—the music used in that first episode is from Musk Ox’s Woodfall album, something which I had no memory of. I was deeply struck by this because that’s actually an album I (apparently re-!)discovered at some point later on in my life (I suspect throughyuuago mentioning it in a post, though I’m not 100% sure on that) and purchased, and is actually an album I listen to quite frequently.
As with many things in my life lately, it’s actually because of Final Fantasy VII. Which might sound odd, since the two genuinely have nothing in common with one another, but there is a reason for it. Back in 2017, when I was playing FF7 for the first time, I was looking at the Steam achievements and realized that getting 100% actually seemed fairly doable? So I decided to go for it, and I have two key memories attached to that experience.
The first was the intense frustration I felt while trying to defeat the Emerald Weapon. It took me so many tries, and I am never, ever doing that again. To this day, I cannot think of that boss without wanting to curse its name.
The other memory is a more positive one: of listening to the episodes of Singing Bones while doing the chocobo races. I’m no longer entirely sure why I had to do so many races, but looking at the achievements list, I assume it was related to getting a golden chocobo. In any case—I have that memory seared into my mind: the odd contrast between my muted game, with the bright lights and colors of the chocobo track, and this haunting, ethereal voice coming from my headphones, talking about fairy tales.
Yesterday, I was struck by the urge to relisten to that podcast for the first time. I couldn’t actually remember what it was called at first, but it wasn’t too hard to dig it up again. More complicated was actually finding it. I did know that the podcast was abandoned after only 17 or so episodes, having last been updated in 2017, but to my horror, I found that the website was no longer online, and all the podcast streaming sites no longer had working links.
THANKFULLY, the Wayback Machine came to my rescue—the website is archived there, and through it, almost all of the audio files for the individual episodes. I went through and downloaded all of them, just to be safe, and the only one that didn’t seem to have a working audio file was the “Bluebeard” episode. Which is unfortunate—that’s a fairy tale I have strong childhood memories of, and I would’ve liked to be able to relisten to that episode too—but at least I was able to get my hands on all the others.
(...On the extremely off-chance that anyone reading this has a copy of the Bluebeard episode, or knows someone who might, I would appreciate it if you hit me up!)
Today, I did the Pagoda sidequest in FF7, and decided to grind up Yuffie’s limit breaks afterwards so that I could actually use the All-Creation I got. Partway through, I had a moment of, “...wait, why am I not listening to a podcast to break up the tedium”, and put on the first episode of Singing Bones. And I cannot express how right that felt—being able to listen to that, while playing this game. ♥
One final sidenote—the music used in that first episode is from Musk Ox’s Woodfall album, something which I had no memory of. I was deeply struck by this because that’s actually an album I (apparently re-!)discovered at some point later on in my life (I suspect through
yuuago mentioning it in a post, though I’m not 100% sure on that) and purchased, and is actually an album I listen to quite frequently.