Explain

She came in with 4 other horses, 3 of which we know have been ridden before. So it’s likely that she was also ridden. They rode a 2-3 year old mare, a skinny and muscle-less 20 year old gelding, and another young mare and I believe barrel raced her. So I see no reason why they also wouldn’t have ridden this girl. Obviously I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have ridden any of them, but clearly the condition these horses came to us in shows us they didn’t really care about their well being.
For the past few months I’ve literally just been getting to know her. Only now are we actually starting the training. She knows how to do everything I’ve thrown at her so far, but badly. It clearly hasn’t been done in a while and was also trained in a choppy rushed manner. If you really wanted to I’m sure you could throw a saddle on her and ride in a day, but you’d probably hit the ground and traumatize her while your at it. And that’s probably exactly what happened in her past. All they cared about was riding these horses, so they rushed through all the groundwork training, got it just good enough that they could do it somewhat okay, and hopped on. I think she’s waiting for me to do the same. Obviously I’d love to ride her, but I want to do it in the most comfortable way for her. I’m going to get groundwork done as best I can, pick up all four feet, pick them out, comfortably stand behind her, be able to climb a fence and be above her, jump around her, etc etc. And even her first ride by me is probably going to be bitless and bareback just so it’s as simple and easy as possible.
Yesterday I took her on her second walk down the driveway. I mean, our second walk. People might have taken her on walks before I knew her (she’s been with the ranch for a little over a year now, I’ve been there for 10 months.) but I’m not sure. Our first walk went alright, it was a little stressful, and she did try to trot past me a few times on the way back but it was easily corrected. Our second walk yesterday was a million times better. Her pen mate has separation anxiety and even while she was whinnying extremely loud to her the entire time, she acted like she couldn’t hear her. We went up to the barn, the hose being dragged on the ground was a little bit spooky but a little flinch is all she gave it. Even walking past the pen of 30 horses she’s never met before she just looked at them and continued on. Then we hung out on the lawn for a few minutes and grazed. Last time I took her to the lawn she was so stressed she refused to graze and just walked in circles around me. On the walk back yesterday she didn’t trot past me or even think about it, and even stopped to poop in the driveway 😂 which I had to clean up after!!
Before our walk I decided to pick out her feet. I’ve worked on picking her feet up, but I’ve never taken a hoofpick to them and actually picked them out. She did pretty good!! She doesn’t like holding her feet up for a long time, like 30 seconds at most, but she’s not rude about it, she just pulls her hoof out of my hand. She’s also had her hooves picked before, because she has had farrier work done a bit obviously. I have only tried to pick up her back feet once so far, so I obviously didn’t pick them out yesterday. She was a little dramatic about picking up one of her front feet once yesterday, as shone at the end of the video but nothing big lol. A lot of the work with her is just going to be repetitive and boring until she just gets used to it.
P.S I might also be starting to work with another mare. An untouchable mustang. She has been touched and saddled before but she’s been left untouched for years and reverted back to a wild mustang. She’s got a bad knee that we need to take care of and we also would like to get her handleable so in the future we don’t have to tranq her and all this stuff just to fulfill her basic needs like hoof care, dewormer, vaccinations etc. So, be on the lookout for some posts about her in the near future hopefully! My work with her will only be groundwork. She’s 20 years old and as mentioned she has an issue with her front left knee that we need to sort out. It’s possible she will be sound for riding once we take care of that but she’s older so it’s really not worth it to train her to ride. She’ll probably be living out the rest of her life at the ranch anyways, so we will just be leaving her basically retired.

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Favorite songs: “Sons of Thunder” & “The Tornado” Least favorite songs: “Field Notes” & “Adam, Check Please” Overall rating: 2.4/5 stars
I’ve known for a while that old-style Owl City music I originally fell in love with is long gone, but I had hoped that whatever route he took for his new album would be just as captivating. Unfortunately, Coco Moon is a sharp turn in a direction I don’t think I’ll be following. While a few songs on the album are fun, standout surprises, they’re the exception by far.
The biggest disappointment in nearly all the songs is the songwriting. I fell in love with Owl City’s music because of the unique and dreamy lyrics, and many of Adam’s songs in recent years have been missing that quality entirely. Coco Moon especially suffers from awkwardly phrased, clunky lyrics filled with cliches, morals, and over-explained messages; there’s not a single song on the album that avoids it.
One of the other major issues that many songs on this album suffer from is undeservedly long runtimes. This album definitely could’ve used some input from another songwriter to help prevent that issue; I think many songs could be greatly improved simply by cutting a few verses and/or choruses here and there.
Something that I noticed but don’t have particularly strong feelings on is the wide variety in tone and topic between the songs on the album. While a lot of the time artists and/or management prefer keeping an album thematically consistent, I personally don’t mind having a wider variety — although I will admit that many of the transition between songs can be incredibly jarring.
Overall, Coco Moon is an album that feels like it’s constantly missing the mark. I won’t be re-listening to most of the songs off of it, but at the end of the day, I’m happy that Adam is making the music that he wants to and continuing to grow and evolve his style.
(Individual song reviews below! Favorite/least favorite lyrics spoiler-ed so you can ignore them if you want; I just included them for fun.)

Adam, Check Please

⭐⚫⚫⚫⚫ (1/5 stars)
The instrumentals are super fun, but I just can’t get over the lyrics. They’re super-literal, awkward, and clunky — and weirdly glorifying underpaid retail work. It feels like Adam’s trying to make a connection between his grocery store job and his music fame with the whole “climb the ladder” thing… Uh, no. Again, the music itself is really fun; the layering of instruments, synths, main vocals, backing vocals, etc. works really well. But in my opinion the lyrics are bad enough to make the song flop.
Worst lyric: all of it “I said, hey, I’m looking for Casey Connor / Here’s my resume”
Best lyric: “All those hours / And store-bought flowers set me free”

Under the Circus Lights

⭐⭐⚫⚫⚫ (2/5 stars)
Although I’m not personally a fan of this song, I can admit that Adam did a really fun and unique job blending pop style with musical/soundtrack style music in this song (and some others on the album). It veers a little too far into soundtrack at points for me to listen to it most of the time, though, especially with the announceapplause interlude. Again, the lyrics here are very cliche at times and overall leave something to be desired, but it’s not one of his worst offenders. The circus setting of the story just feels weird to me — it feels like Adam was trying to pick a whimsical setting for a romance (in the vein of “Super Honeymoon”/”The Yacht Club”) but it feels too grounded and misses that classic Owl City level of whimsy.
Worst lyrics: “I got cotton candy” / “She seemed to drown in the "oohs" and "ahhs"”
Best lyric: “Lighter than a feather / But careful as with a heavy heart / She seemed to fall forever”

Kelly Time

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
Honestly, the fact that Mr. City decided to write a whole song about Cast Away from the point of view of the volleyball… There’s no word but iconic. It’s a bop, too, with super fun instrumentals and what feels like a genuinely fresh evolution of Owl City music. It’s so close to 4 stars for me, but it gets points off for a few things. One, awkward and often cliche lyrics throughout the song (I think in this case from trying to fit the lyrics to the movie dialogue at times). Two, for the fact that, like many songs on the album, it feels unnecessarily long — it keeps going several verses longer than it feels like it should. Three, connected to that, at times it goes overly hard trying to impart a moral into the song (one that’s not necessarily present in the original movie!). And four, it’s missing some of the whimsy I think Adam was going for, and ends up too grounded in its source material — even if it works for the song, but I prefer not to listen to movie summaries in the form of songs.
Worst lyric: “The most beautiful thing in the world / Is, of course, the gift of life” (He CHANGED IT — in the movie it’s “The most beautiful thing in the world is the world itself”.)
Best lyric: “And now I have to learn to let you go / Even though I love you more than you'll ever know / I'm getting used to half a heart and the way things are”

Field Notes

⭐⚫⚫⚫⚫ (1/5 stars)
Coming from someone who fell in love with Owl City’s music because of Adam’s songwriting… This is the worst songwriting I’ve ever seen from him. He wrote an overly literal song about one of the more obscure Christian fables, and topped it all off with an explanation that that was what he was doing in the song. Dude, ever heard of “show, don’t tell”? Also, I’ve read the fable and various explanations of it, and I think I understand what it’s trying to say, but I just don’t think the song communicates it well through the story. (Hence the need for the explanation at the end, I guess?) And I guess the music is alright… except for the minute-long instrumental solo at the end that feels like it’s a totally separate song. Overall, this whole song is just a mess.
Worst lyric: “It’s a fable, you see / And the moral is this”
Best lyric: (none)

Sons of Thunder

⭐⭐⭐⭐⚫ (4/5 stars)
Adam needs to do Christian rock more often! This song is a banger and probably my favorite song on the album. The music is incredible, and his vocals, plus the backing female vocals, work really well to give the song a sense of power. In terms of the theme — I’m not Christian myself, and tend to find Christian themes tiring in music. But the first part of this song was actually done really well, in my opinion. It’s only in the tail end of the song where it begins to get preachy that Adam starts to lose me. It’s another example of “show, don’t tell”; the song conveys its message perfectly well through the more symbolic first part of the song, but grinds the pace to a halt to unnecessarily lay it out plainly at the end. And as a final note — nimbusofghosts on Tumblr already made an excellent post about this, but as a queer + transgender person, there’s a few lines in the song that I really connect with.
Worst lyric: “Yeah, we serve a God / Who loves us to death / No matter what we've done / So don't lose hope / 'Cause he will lead us home”
Best lyric: “And even though we are strange and exquisitely scarred / We don’t need to pretend to be anything we aren’t”

The Tornado

⭐⭐⭐⭐⚫(4/5 stars)
WOW. It’s incredible to see such strong vocals from Adam, and the instrumentals really support them and the mood. You can really hear the influence of movie and musical scores in this song; the knowledge he gained from the Adam Young Scores project really shines here, even years later. This song really had the potential to be my favorite song on the album, but (like several other songs on the album) it really lost its momentum halfway through, which brings the song grinding to a halt. The energy and mood of the first half is totally absent in the second half. Once again, the length also does it no favors; I think this song could easily be improved by cutting several of the verses after the climax so it falls later in the song. And, once again, the preachy Christian overtones and explanation of the moral feel very heavy-handed to me.
Worst lyric: “No, I vowed I'd not be murdered by a monster in the sky that night / But if I went home to heaven, at least that's where I'd belong”
Best lyrics: “And then the nightmare started, it got deafeningly loud / Every fiber in me screamed out but I couldn't make a sound / . . . / And this was my prayer: / "Save me from this terrible nightmare"”

Vitamin Sea

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
This song is pretty simple but fun. It’s a cheesy, pun-filled bop — solid, but never going to be in my top songs. This is probably the closest to Ocean Eyes that will ever happen, but I feel a little sad that it’s in the vein of “Dental Care” or “Rugs From Me To You” instead of some of the more beautiful, whimsical songs from that era. The cliche lyrics feel a little but less cliche because there are only so many puns out there, but among the many other cliche songs on the album it feels like just one more song filled with unoriginal phrases. Regardless, it’s a fun song with fun lyrics and fun instrumentals.
Worst lyric: “So heads up Nancy, don't get antsy / While I'm working on my tan”
Best lyrics: “Yeah, I gotta go now / 'Cause I'm a little worn down / And I'm a little burned out” / “I’ve gone coastal” (A pun on “going postal” — if you’re not familiar with the phrase, look it up. I do appreciate a bit of dark humor in Owl City songs.)

Dinosaur Park

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
This song has so much potential, but falls flat for me in so many ways. The topic (dinosaur statues coming alive at night) and the music (chill, twinkly vibes) are both wonderful, and in some ways a return to a classic “dreamy” style. But the six-and-a-half minute runtime means that the singular topic and limited instrumentals are stretched out for far, far, far too long. By the time some more interesting instruments kick in midway to give the song a little more life, it’s already over three and a half minutes in. (For reference, “The Bird and the Worm” is just a little under three and a half minutes long.) It’s a fun, silly song, but not at all deserving of the gargantuan runtime.
Worst lyric: “Boy, I love Rapid City / And that hilltop of beasts”
Best lyric: “'Cause when the moon's sitting pretty / Above Rapid City / There's much more than meets the eye”

Learn How to Surf

⭐⭐⚫⚫⚫ (2/5 stars)
A fun, funky song, that is also incredibly baffling to me. It really just feels like Adam trying out some new synths with some quickly written cliche lyrics slapped on top. The verses and chorus, while both fun in their own ways, feel totally disconnected lyrically, like they belong to two different songs. Ironically, despite the fact that this song feels super short and insubstantial, it’s over three and a half minutes long, making it a pretty average song length for any of his older albums. I think it’s because this song suffers from the same issue many others on the album do, which is that so much of the song’s lyrics feel cliche, repeated, or like filler material. It’s a fun song but overall insubstantial; really nothing too interesting beyond the funky synths.
Worst lyric: “You can't stop the waves but you can learn how to surf” (A classic-to-the-point-of-cliche “inspirational” phrase… that he made the catchphrase and title of the song.)
Best lyric: (honestly, nothing stands out in particular)

The Meadow Lark

⭐⚫⚫⚫⚫ (1/5 stars)
Honestly, I keep forgetting this song exists. It doesn’t feel like it belongs on this album, much less that it was written by pop musician Owl City. While this might be an excellent song in a different context — An album of modern hymns, perhaps? Relaxing Christian moral music? — it’s jarring to hear it following “Learn How to Surf” on Coco Moon. Also, yet again, it tells its message perfectly fine through the story, but drags the end out by explaining it in the most literal terms possible, abruptly ending the narrative setting and tone of the song. (Also, as a sidenote, I do appreciate Adam’s shift in the language he uses to make it feel more like a hymn or otherwise traditional song!) But to sum up — in a different context, I’m sure this is a good song, but not on this album.
Worst lyric: “If I should live to see more days / I pray the Lord to guide my ways”
Best lyric: “And then, the curious thing occurred / On wings arrived a tiny bird / And troubled not by war or peace / She sang for us a melody”

My Muse

⭐⭐⭐⚫⚫ (3/5 stars)
What can I say, it’s a sweet song. It’s hard to critique a song as personal as this — it almost feels like it’s not meant for any of us to hear — but if there’s one thing I can point out, it’s the (once again) over-reliance on cliched language throughout the entire song, and some instances of awkward phrasing. I will say that this is one of the few songs on the album where it feels like just the right length (although ironically enough, it’s the shortest one on the album). It’s a simple, sweet, personal song, and even though I won’t be listening to it much, it’s one of those songs that just makes me happy for Adam.
Worst lyric: “Yeah, without a doubt, I took you out for coffee”
Best lyric: “There's nowhere else I'd rather be than here with you”
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Let me know your thoughts on the album and my review — what you agree or disagree with, any thoughts or context you’d like to share, or your own song rankings if you feel like sharing!

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Spoilers ahead...

Killer: The Siren

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Stats:
Difficulty: moderate/hard Stature: Average Terror radius: 32m Base speed: 3 m/s
Power: Damsel of the lake
Passive ability: Razor scales
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The siren possesses 30 scales on her body, a number of scales will get stuck into a survivor's skin when performing a basic attack on them (2 - 4), the siren will loose the equivalent number of scales. Surpassing 6 scales will inflict the mangled status effect on the survivor. If the scale counter reaches 12 scales, the survivor is inflicted with the broken status effect. Survivors can take off scales by healing themselves or being healed by others. For every great skillcheck success, a scale will be taken out. Completing any healing interaction will result in -1 scales, if a survivor is picked up, they will loose 2 scales. All survivors will loose 4 scales after being unhooked.
- Escaping the siren's grasp will add 1 scale to the survivors counter, the siren will loose 4 scales in turn.
- Scale counters are personal to each survivor.
Special effect: Siren's treasure
As a survivor, gain 50 bloodpoints for each scale in your counter once you escape the trial.
Main ability: Song of desire
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Killer side:
Hold M2 to charge song of desire (it takes 2 seconds to fully charge). While charging, your speed is reduced by 45%. By releasing M2 you'll be able to walk backwards at 110% speed and your terror radius is replaced by the song of desire for 10 seconds. You can end the song by performing a or lunge attack.
- While charging "song of desire", all survivors inside the terror radius will hear the faint sound of a waterfall. This sound can still be heard even if the killer is undetectable.
- Song of desire can be heard all around the map, but will only affect the survivors that are inside the terror radius.
- Song of desire has a total of 90 sec cooldown, if it hasn't been cancelled before the 15 seconds are over. Song of desire will take an extra 5 seconds to charge when less than 20 meters from a hooked survivor.
Survivor side:
All survivors inside the siren's terror radius while song of desire is active, become enchanted and loose control of their movements and actions. Enchanted survivors will start running towards the the siren's location, avoiding any obstacle along their way. Their screen will become slightly distorted to signify this. The enchanted status effect is displayed in the survivor hud to survivors and killer alike.
When less than 20m from the killer while enchanted, a series of fast skill checks will appear. Succeed in 4 of these to resist the call of the siren and become free from her call.
You can avoid being enchanted by becoming deafened. You get the "deafend" status effect for 30 seconds by missing a skill check while song of desire is being charged. While defened, all sounds except for the heartbeat are omited (does not affect visual heart beat).
Special effect: The lake
Releasing M2 will cover the ground area of the killer's terror radius with water. The lake will not follow the siren's terror radius and will stay in place untill "song of desire" becomes active again.
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Speciall ability: What lurks beneath
I know this GIF doesn't have anything to do with the ability, I just thought it was cool.
By pressing the action button, you dive into the water and surpress your terror radius. While diving, the siren's head remains partially submerged and can be spotted by survivors. In this state, the siren moves at 170% her speed and can pass through dropped palletes, but is unable to attack, use her ability or interact with objects. If stunned while diving, she is forced out of the water.
- For every 2 seconds spent diving, gain back 3 scales.
- Press the action button again to come out of the water by perfoming a 1 sec animation, you will automatically emerge when exiting the lake's perimetre. You are unable to exit the water while under a dropped pallete.
- The lake will dissappear after hooking a surivor inside the lake's perimeter.
- The lake can be relocated by charging and releasing song of desire outside the lake's perimeter.
Special interaction: Healing blood
The siren will leave small pools of siren blood every time she looses scales or when getting pallette-stunned while inside the lake. Any survivor can perform a 3 second interaction with the pool to fully heal, even if they are broken or affected by deep wounds. Survivors that heal this way will loose all scales from their counter and their location will be revealed to the siren via killer instinct.
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Perks:

• Hex: Visage of madness.

Your horrifying aspect is imprinted into the psyche of those who dare get too close.
You start the trial with 4 tokens (1 per survivor).
After a survivor stuns you, a random dull totem ignites and you lose the token corresponding to that survivor.
While the hex totem is active, all non skill check interactions will now have a 20%/50%/70% chance for a fast skill check to appear. If the survivor misses said skillcheck, they will scream and their location will be reveald to the killer.

• Swiftness and precission

You are no stranger to the art of killing and your efficiency is spottless.
Injuring 4 different survivors within 60/90/100 seconds grants up to 4 tokens . For each token your speed and vault speed increases by 2%. Loose a token after putting a survivor in the dying state.

• Morbid curiosity

Your monstruos nature weaken's your prey's mind.
Ending a chase with the obsession without hurting them will cause them to become incapacitated and exhausted for 5/10/15 seconds, but they also get the haste status effect for 8 seconds.
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Survivor: Jíbaro

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Perks:

• Self-willed

It is worth to take a risk and abandon all moral in order to survive.
You get up to 4 tokens for every 6/5/4 seconds you spend less than 16 meters from the killer without being chased meanwhile another survivor is hooked. For every token, the speed at which you're healed or heal yourself is increased by 2%. You loose all tokens after being fully healed.
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• Thick skin

In order to complete you objectives, you must endure pain. At least for a while.
You don't scream after being injured by a basic attack, any status effect that would be applied on hit appear after 7/13/16 seconds.
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• Opportunist

You wait patiently till the time is right... You may get something out of the death that surrounds you.
Picking up an item dropped by a dead survivor will make it regain a 30/50/70% of it's initial charge. The item will be fully charged if you are the only survivor left in the trial.
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Thank you for your attention. This took me a while to make so I'm looking forward to hearing your opinions and criticism. Feel free to comment any changes you'd make to the killer or the perks.
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