The projector hums again, transitioning to the next SoundCloud waveform. The heavy, symphonic metal guitars are gone, replaced by a clean, pulsating synth line, a soaring pop tenor, and a warm, layered choir. As the final words—”As long as you hold us in your heart”—fade into the quiet parlor, Artie immediately rubs his temples.
Artie:
I am gagging on the saccharine. We have gone from grandiose, hard-sci-fi pretension straight into the bargain bin of Disney-fied nostalgia. A pop ballad? For children’s literature and video game characters? If the first track was an over-engineered space ship, this is a giant, plush toy designed to extract tears from thirty-something adults who refuse to grow up. And the choir! Now they sound like they’re auditioning for The Lion King on Broadway.
Dex: (Practically bouncing out of his chair)
Artie, you are so out of touch it hurts! This is an absolute, tier-one weapon of a track. Do you have any idea how fast this is going to go viral on TikTok and YouTube? “Geralt, Luke, Kratos, Samus, Frodo, Batman, Harry Potter, Trinity…” It is a SEO goldmine! It’s basically Ready Player One but with an emotional soul. People are going to make massive tribute edits to their favorite fandoms using this audio. The comments are going to be a swamp of people crying about their childhoods.
Gully: (Groaning, throwing his hands up)
It’s pandering, Dex. Pure, shameless name-dropping. “Geralt chose the lesser evil”? “Samus strikes Ridley”? It reads like a Wikipedia list of intellectual properties. Where is the art in just listing things people already like? It’s not a song, it’s a roll call for a comic convention. And the music is so sterile! That pop synth bass is so quantized it feels like it was programmed by an algorithm designed to maximize Spotify dwell-time.
Bea: (Staring coldly at the screen, her chin resting on her hand)
It is a fascinatingly desperate piece of myth-making, actually. What we are witnessing here is the absolute flatlining of modern cultural imagination. Because we can no longer create new mythologies, we must write elegies for the ones we’ve exhausted. “Where do our heroes go when the story ends?” The song acts as a secular prayer to the deities of corporate media. It is almost tragic. The artist is begging the listener to “come and visit us sometimes,” as if these multi-billion-dollar intellectual properties are lonely orphans living in our bookshelves, rather than aggressive machines of capital. It’s hyper-real sentimentality at its most alarming.
Chloe: (Smirking, taking a sip of her sparkling water)
Oh, Bea, look past the academic doom and gloom. From a pure A&R perspective, this is a pivot of absolute genius. Think about it: the previous track, “Space Wonders,” was a niche symphonic metal opera for the sci-fi nerds. This? This opens the gateway to the massive, mainstream casual audience. The melody in the chorus—“We’re here with you, through dark and light”—is an incredibly sticky, classic pop-anthem progression. The male lead has a beautiful, clean, radio-friendly chest voice. If they pitched this to a major gaming studio for a cinematic trailer or a credits sequence? The sync-licensing fee alone would buy this artist a house. It’s brilliant business.
Silas: (Leaning forward, adjusting his glasses to peer at his notebook)
What strikes me is the structural shift in the artist’s use of the choir. In the first track, the choir was used as a gothic, Wagnerian wall of sound. Here, it’s employed in the style of late-1980s charity singles—think “We Are the World” or the dramatic backing choirs of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.” Musically, it’s designed to create a sense of collective, comforting unity. And the lyrical transition—“The universe was listening to me—to her, us” from the first song, shifting now into “We stay… we stay” in this one—suggests a highly deliberate, thematic thread about persistence. First, the physical crew staying in the stars; now, the fictional characters staying in the mind. It’s a highly coordinated conceptual universe, even if the genres are wildly disparate.
Artie:
Persistent? It’s relentless, Silas! And highly irritating. If this anonymous SoundCloud creator is going to jump from symphonic metal to bubblegum pop-ballads with every upload, how am I supposed to properly pigeonhole and dismiss them? It’s chaotic. It lacks brand discipline!
Dex:
That’s the point, Artie! The genre is “Whatever the hell I want to write about.” That’s how creators build cult followings now.
Bea: (Exhaling a final, slow cloud of vapor)
Cult followings are built on worship. And this track is a liturgy for a church where the high priests are Nintendo and Warner Brothers. It is utterly shameless… and I fear I’ll be humming that chorus for the next three days.
Lyrics
Where do our heroes go when the story ends
Far away? Ever after? Let's pretend
We’re here with you, we’re all around
In every story, in every sound
We rise, we fall, we cross the line
We never sleep, we never die
Just open books. Frodo still bears the ring
Batman chasing Joker, on the wings
Kratos stands where he first drew his blades
Every choice he made, every debt repaid
Press start again. Samus strikes Ridley tonight
That battle burns eternal, blazing fierce and bright
We stand with you, light up your nights
Through every page, through every fight
Always standing by your side
Just come and visit us sometimes
Geralt chose the lesser evil, held his ground
Luke found good in Vader’s heart, the light he found
Whispers in the night still guide what you do
They made us who we are—and now they speak to you
We’re here with you, through dark and light
We never fade, forever bright
As long as you keep us alive
Just come and visit us sometimes
The boy who survived, where magic flows
Trinity trusted Neo, tale as it goes
Leading new children down roads first walked in youth
Showing them wonder, guiding them to truth
We’re here with you, through night and day
Turn the page, press play, we stay
We rise, we shine, we never part
As long as you hold us in your heart
As long as you hold us in your heart
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