same haha. although ignorance and malice are pretty intertwined... there are definitely more resources now, but there's still a ton of hate (and stuff that might be in between). and ignorance. and in some ways people knowing more isn't always good since it makes it easier for them to target people or like use gay as an insult or stuff. i don't know what it was like back then, though. 

interesting about the queerness. i've seen it go from "not really talked about a ton" to "talked about a bit more" to "horrible pushback and impersonations" to the wonderful haven it is today. although it could have been talked about more than i thought when i got here; i also didn't know that queer people existed XD 

and yess Danse Macabre!!! The violin solos sound so fun to play. and yes Vivaldi :D you cannot convince me that The Four Seasons are not genius. People just hate that they're overplayed, and guess what? Like most overplayed things (Peer Gynt, Holst Jupiter, Bach Orchestral Suite no 3 Badinerie, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy or anything from The Nutcracker (ahhhh it's the best)) it's amazing. (The Nutcracker in particular.) not always the best thing the composer has ever done, but still usually very good. though when it's overplayed there is also a bigger library of poorly-done recordings to choose from. If you're going to answer again - what do you mean by repetitive? if you mean that there's a lot of repeated content in different pieces, that's because of the amount of music he (and any baroque composer) had to write. for instance, Bach had to write a cantata a month at Weimar. since composers and musicians were usually employed by the court or church or some big important place, they didn't have much freedom, so if they couldn't think of something new they would just reuse an old thing. for instance the first movement of Bach's third partita is reused in some cantatas i think. you probably know that but eh. i don't tend to find his music repetitive in like "not a lot of variation in the actual piece" personally, and i'm very very sensitive to that (i don't like a good portion of modern music because of that - even when it's really cool, often it's just the same thing repeated over and over again, which is unfortunate). but i also haven't listened to a lot of Vivaldi in a while... 

I've meant to watch some operas since I have some opera and ballet and such streaming services but haven't gotten around to it. Samson and Delilah is high on the list of ones i want to see because of the Bachanal, which I've played but been a fan of since far before that.

if you want to post any of your art that would be really cool! you don't have to though. 

Discworld! I just started it. A friend recommended I start on Mort, which I just finished. I have Color of Magic on hold at my library!

Oh! The science mag, I think you're talking about Muse!