What are your GM Setups?
This is mine: - Core Book - GM Screen - Cursed Scroll Zines and Supplements - 2x One Hour Sand Timers; For Torch Light - Metal Fantasy Coins; For Luck Tokens - Die Counters; For Round Timers - Book of the Dead; To Record Player Deaths - Time Out Chair; For Uncooperative Dice - Leather Foldable Dice Tower - Character Sheets - Adventure Modules - Pencils - Endless Adventures

I posted this on my Facebook last week and some people liked it but my family and friends don't know classical music like we do here. It's probably not the best written thing ever and I definitely could expand on it with more time but please leave me some kind comments talking about any details I left out. Thank you 😊🎶
Happy Birthday to my favorite composer, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, born May 7, in 1840. He would be 184 years old. He is one of the most famous composers in all of music history, especially during the classical Romantic Period. Despite career success in his life as well as cultural significance all this time later, during his life, Tchaikovsky experienced significant hardship that most people do not know about. However, they should. Tchaikovsky's story is one of strife and unfairness. We should learn from the mistakes of his and others in his life so such that we can both understand the past and proceed to change for the better. Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk in the Russian Empire. In Votkinsk, there was very little opportunities for musical education and this was particularly problematic as Tchaikovsky showed musical prowess from a very early age. He began studying piano at five years old and has work from even before then, saved in history thanks to their family governess. He caught up to his teachers ability to read sheet music within a few years and his parents, both trained in the arts, supported him. When he was 10 years old, he was sent to a boarding school called The Imperial School of Jurisprudence(this bit is very important later) in St.Petersburg. This is not a music school. This is a school that would prepare Tchaikovsky for a career in civil servitude. His parents' finances gradually grew weaker and they wanted him to be able to take care of himself as soon as possible, and a career in music was considered very low class unless you were part of the aristocracy. Being separated from his mom at an early age, despite debate on their relationship with each other, scarred him for life and it got worse when Tchaikovsky's mother would pass away to cholera when he was 14. He was immediately sent back to school where his father did try to support his son musically by giving him a private tutor but Tchaikovsky ended up graduating into eventually, a senior assistant to the Ministry of Justice. Around the time of his graduation, a society was founded; the Russian Musical Society and its goal was to find Russian musical talent. They started hosting basic music educational classes which Tchaikovsky began attending until they opened up a conservatory where he joined immediately as a premiere student. This school allowed him to develop his professional skills and allowed him to develop his own style, a mix of western and Russian, something would in the future inspire many composers. Tchaikovsky graduated the conservatory in 1865 and was offered a job by his brother to teach music at the Moscow Conservatory which he accepted readily as just the thought of a professional career involving music brought him joy. His first performance soon followed this, conducted Johann Strauss II, another famous composer. In the next few coming years, he began combining his professiorial job with critiquing music. This got him to be able to be exposed to all types of music including Beethoven, whom he liked, and Schumann, whom he thought had poor orchestration. It also got him the chance to go international for the first time. Back in Russia, five people named Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui,Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Romsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin became know as "The Five". These were people that had an idea what Russian music should be and rejected anything from the western European musical ideology. Tchaikovsky got caught in the middle of this entire idea but still remained friendly with them, specifically Balakirev who helped him write the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, also known as Tchaikovsky's first known masterwork. The Five actually liked his work and his second symphony as well but Tchaikovsky did his best to remain independent from them and their ideology as well as the conservative nature of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Tchaikovsky began to grow more and more popular in part to audiences listening with a more appreciative ear than before. His work became more and more performed. Nearing 1870s, Tchaikovsky began to write operas. They initially had mixed reviews but some of his most famous operas such as Swan Lake and Eugene Onegin come from this period. A Tchaikovsky trivia fact commonly known in modern times is that he was homosexual. This is very much the case so. However, the Russian government was much against homosexuality and Tchaikovsky was worried of attracting discrimination. He wanted to marry a woman to "shut the mouths of assorted contemptible creatures whose opinions mean nothing to me but are in a position to cause distress to those near to me." In 1877, Tchaikovsky married Antonina Miliukova, a girl from a respectable family with an average level of education, and a former student of Tchaikovsky's. The marriage was a failure and lasted less than a couple months. It made him incredibly depressed and gave him writers block. Tchaikovsky described her as a "woman who I am not the least in love". He had a mental breakdown and fled to switzerland. He says Antonina is not to be blamed for the failure of their marriage but due to a lack of character on his own part, this being indicative of feelings of guilt due to his own homosexuality. Any news of her brought him to become hysterical and a letter directly from her could cause him to become upset for a few days. After their separation, althought legally still married thanks to difficult divorce laws, he referred to her as "the reptile". Seemingly a victim in a story of a man covering up his homosexuality, Antonina was described as average intelligence but incredibly unstable mentally. She outlived him by 24 years but spent the last two decades in a mental asylum. Tchaikovsky had many male lovers but, mainly, Vladimir Lvovich Davïdov nicknamed "Bob". There are many letters Tchaikovsky wrote to him that describes their love for each other; how he feels the big cities are lonely(while on tour abroad)and he wished he was back home with his idol. There were plans for the both of them, plus Tchaikovsky's brother, to all live together in St. Petersburg but, unfortunately, Tchaikovsky died on November 6,1893. The cause of death at the time was death by cholera, the same as his mother. However, in the late 1960's, Alexander Voitov, a member of the School of Jurisprudence(before it was shut down), told a soviet musical scholar, who would end up imigrating to the United States in 1979, what really happened. In 1893, Duke Stenbok-Fermor wrote a letter addressed to Tsar Alexander III, talking about how he was disapproving in the amount of attention his nephew, who happens to be Davïdov, was getting from Tchaikovsky. The letter was to be passed on to the Tsar. Exposure of his homosexuality would have caused career failure, exile to Sibera, and public disdain for Tchaikovsky but, also, all the students of the School of Jurisprudence. However, instead of passing on the letter, the civil servant in charge of the task, Nickolay Jacobi, assembled the old boys from their school and went to Tchaikovskys apartment. After a meeting that lasted 5 hours, Tchaikovsky ran from the room very pale-looking and in distress. The others told Jacobi's wife that they required Tchaikovsky to kill himself and that he had promised to comply. Before this story was announced, people thought he had a nervous breakdown and saw him run to the kitchen, shouting "who cares anyway!?" and drink a glass of unboiled water, which was very dangerous at the time. This is now seen as him giving an explanation for what was to come. What makes this story more depressing is it is thought that there were other homosexual students in the School of Jurisprudence. In addition, the fact many scholars in Russia still even refuses to acknowledge that this forced suicide even happened, despite overwhelming evidence, saying "nothing like that would happen in the civilized Russia of the time" and some even refusing to acknowledge he was gay at all, again, despite overwhelming evidence! The fact this musical genius could have had more years of masterworks that we are, unfortunately denied, due to a selfish plot of murder, is revolting. This composer suffered his entire life but still managed to take his pain and turn it into something wonderful instead of displaying the pain alone. His famous 1812 Overture, he actually disliked. He thought it was loud, noisy, and without love or warmth. It was a piece he had truly written for money. As a side note, this is not about the War of 1812. This piece is about the commemoration of a Cathedral of Christ the Savior and a commemoration of the Tsar's 25 year reign. So every time on the Fourth of July you play this and feel patriotic, yeahhhh, you're actually celebrating the strength of the Russian military which I'm sure is probably not what you intend, especially nowadays. My favorite Tchaikovsky piece, his Serenade for Strings in C Major, was actually written right after the 1812 Overture and he loved that piece terribly and dreamed of playing it as soon as possible.
I doubt anyone will read this far lol, but if you did, thank you 😊 , below I've put some pictures of his houses which are both now museums.