For realzies though, these guys are adorable.

Seemingly out of pure coincidence, various friends of mine have been discussing Carmen recently. I’m writing opera reviews for a music class at school, and though familiar with much of Carmen, I’d never seen it all the way through, so I figured I might as well take this as a sign, and use this opportunity to seek out a recording of the opera, watch it, and write about it for one of my reviews. Then I decided to make it a blog post, because I liked it so why the heck not.

I picked up a DVD of the 1991 Met Opera production, featuring Agnes Baltsa as Carmen, José Carreras as Don José (hah… ), Leona Mitchell as Micaëla, and Samuel Ramey as Escamillo. I was utterly delighted by the opera – I was absolutely blown away by how excellent the music was, and was surprised it wasn’t a product of the early 1900s rather than 1875. Even the text seemed witty and interesting – and that’s based solely on seeing an English translation.

It’s funny how there are so many songs from this opera that have been absorbed into the public consciousness – namely the overture, the habanera and the toreador song (all these links are actually from this production!) – but in my opinion, the music that really makes this opera special isn’t really any one of those three, but elsewhere – one of my favorites being Les tringles des sistres tintaient. The “big three” do get credit from me, though, for being ridiculously catchy and ridiculously fun nevertheless.

Anyway, my job here is not to review the opera itself, but this particular production – I simply couldn’t help but bring it up since I enjoyed it so much – so let’s get started. All in all, the production was extremely impressive and tremendously executed, featured some powerful performances by its talented cast, some excellent singing, an exceptional orchestra, and great overall direction. Of note is the fact that the almost comically animated James Levine gets a consistently robust performance out of the orchestra throughout the entire production. (Not that he doesn’t normally, I’m sure he does, but it was so precise and so “mighty” sounding that it was noticeably excellent.) Even the way the DVD was cut impressed me – the camera angles were effective, the cuts and editing well-timed, creative and informed. One issue I did have though – and I don’t know whether or not this is actually the fault of those who edited the DVD – is that the voices on stage are fairly low down in the overall audio mix. In the DVD at least, the orchestra (and background sound effects, which is weird) are much louder and clearer than the voices of the singers on stage. Had I not had subtitles on (and if I spoke French), I probably wouldn’t have been able to understand what they were saying most of the time – which is a bit of a problem.

…I’m just saying.

One of the interesting things I have taken away from writing these opera reviews so far is not to trust my first impression of a given actor/actress. Often times a particular performer will seem extremely weak to me in their initial appearance, but as the opera progresses I will eventually change my opinion. This was very true of Baltsa and Mitchell in this case, both of whom I severely disliked at first, but grew to love due to the strength of their performances. It was actually how surprising how strong the performances were – I’m fairly certain some real tears were shed during the course of this recording.

My issue with Mitchell was more minor, and was related directly to something more subtle in her first scene. Granted I was also initially fairly unimpressed with her voice, but what bothered me was that she had an odd habit of cheating out only when she had a line. It made for an awkward and stilted performance in her first scene, which involved a dialogue between her and an officer, and it really took me out of the moment. However, as the opera progressed, Mitchell delivered an emotionally-wrought performance backed by a surprisingly rich and skilled voice. She stayed directly in-character the entire time, and let emotion dictate her performance, in a way that made it all the more powerful. This was evident in the strength of her chemistry with Carreras: She seemed to truly love him; with him she seemed happy, thankful, filled with emotion. And the audience noticed – their first duet resulted in the recording’s first really rowdy reaction from the audience. Her brilliant performance of C’est les contrabandiers le refuge ordinaire in Act III also resulted in similarly vocal audience reaction.

Derp.

However, a much more significant cause of initial aggravation for me was Baltsa’s first scene. During the famous L’amour est un oiseaurebelle (AKA “habanera“) Baltsa consistently looked as though singing was a challenge for her, making various faces that vaguely resembled those of someone trying to push a heavy object. (Seriously, go click the link, it’s from this production.) This is fine, but the habanera is famous for its playfulness and its flirtatiousness, and seeing her make such an effort to sing really took me out of the moment and irked me. To make matters worse, she took many breaths I found questionable, and frankly wasn’t always in key. More generally, I was also was a bit bothered by the fact that she sang it a bit too much “like an opera singer” (that is to say, with tons of rigid vibrato and generally very little shape to the lines; she stayed mostly at mf – f), and not slightly more carefree and playful, as I feel the song almost dictates.

My doubts about her were slightly allayed almost immediately in the following scene, however, when Baltsa made a powerful acting choice in reacting to the entrance of Don José. Simply the way she looked at him suggested a thousand things about Carmen’s character, and about how Baltsa was going to play her – rather than take the hackneyed “love at first sight” approach, she instead dropped her smile and reacted with what can almost be described as a sense of dread – one gets the sense that Carmen is shocked, perhaps even somewhat disturbed, by her own impulsive feelings towards Don José; that she knows her own impulsivity is a flaw, that this has happened before, and she’s not 100% certain how she feels about it happening again. It was a really powerful moment, and made me completely change my opinion of the actress.

Throughout the rest of the opera, I thought her performance improved considerably, and she seemed more and more willing to inject playfulness and emotion into her style of singing. She did, however, retain that weird quirk of looking like she was concentrating on singing rather than acting most of the time, however. If she’s making the choice of playing Carmen as if she’s pissed off at everything at all times, that’s one thing, but I still really don’t think that’s appropriate for the character.

Good… good… I can feel your awe… IT GIVES ME POWER

What was impressive about Samuel Ramey wasn’t so much the strength of his voice – which was very strong; excellent even – but the command of his presence. The moment he stepped onstage he immediately received applause from the audience. And of course, the toreador song was excellent, as it always is, but it was made even more impressive by how engaging his performance was, and, once again, by the strength of the orchestra – it shines particularly well here. The defining moment here wasn’t during the song itself, though, but the moment immediately afterwards – the audience’s reaction was like nothing I’ve heard from an opera performance before. They sounded more like the audience of a rock concert, almost. The camera hung on Ramey, triumphantly posed, the entire time – and I got this magical sense that as this period progressed, his presence on stage was less an embodiment of the character’s pride and arrogance, and increasingly, a reflection of the actor’s own growing sense of glory – he is truly relishing this moment, feeding on the energy from his audience. It truly seemed like a mystical moment. Seriously, watch the scene yourself and try to tell me otherwise!

As for José Carreras – does anything really need to be said? Carreras is the real deal – and it shows in this performance. It is beautifully acted and beautifully sung, if not perhaps a bit over the top in terms of physicality. This is forgivable though – it’s frankly refreshing, compared to Araiza’s dull, flat performance as Tamino in the Magic Flute (the opera I had watched previously), which was actually recorded during the same Met Opera season as this. (My review of that production in a nutshell)

The only real problem I think I have with José Carreras’ performance is that Carreras seems like such a likeable guy that his “descent to the dark side,” as it were, seems… wrong. His decision to set Carmen free in Act I seems totally against everything we know about the character thus far in the opera, and while this could very well be a textual problem, it’s one that could have been assuaged by a stronger acting performance. He just didn’t seem really tempted enough to actually change his mind, so when he does, it seems sudden and wrong.

You guys, I’m not saying women are evil… but women are totally evil.

An important thing to note about the text – or at least, my interpretation of it – is that Carmen’s sudden intrusion into José’s life isn’t “making him bad” per se. Like Walter White in Breaking Bad, it really seems more that the situation and increasing desperation are beginning to bring out nastier elements of his personality that were already there, but repressed, rather than changing him directly. I’m willing to accept the idea that José is flawed as a character, but Carreras’ performance seems to suggest José is a totally nice guy that suddenly, by Act III/IV is a huge jerk. I guess I would have liked to see Carreras give José more of an arc.

I know realistically speaking they were probably all over the biblical idea of “the temptation of woman” when this plot was originally conceived, but I just find the other idea (situational chaos causing latent nastiness to suddenly come into the forefront) so much more interesting as a concept, as it presents a look inward, rather than suggest a more “magical” element (Temptation of woman = “evil”).

Some other more general notes: I thought all of the actors shared tremendous chemistry with each other, and enjoyed their performances down to their core, which made me, as a viewer, appreciate it that much more. Also, as a more minor note, I think this production used the children’s chorus effectively – I generally don’t like children’s choruses as they always sort of sound a bit “angelic” and unnatural to me, in a creepy sort of way. But here they made sure the children sang loudly and without real grace, which normally would be a bad thing, but was effective here because it reflected their status as “street urchins” very well.

All in all, I’m truly surprised by how much I enjoyed this, both as an opera and as a performance. There aren’t many things that can make me willingly write for three pages, single-spaced, and yet here we are. (Yeah, this was totally in Word, originally.)

Maybe I should make the overture my new ringtone.

There’s too much JK Simmons in my life right now. (Stolen from http://thepageofhopes.tumblr.com/)

The Portal 2 DLC “Perpetual Testing Initiative” came out about a week ago, featuring – and sometimes it’s easy to forget just how expansive this DLC is, so let’s go in order – seamless integration with Steam Workshop that lets players distribute, download and play custom-designed maps and stories *directly in-game* without having to install any executable packages separately – a simple yet comprehensive tool that allows even the least-experienced of players to create custom chambers easily (albeit obviously a good deal simpler than their custom-designed-in-blender counterparts), and almost an hour’s worth of new dialogue from JK Simmons as Aperture CEO Cave Johnson. That all would have been fine by itself if they had decided to simply make it all fun and non-canon, but rather than just do that, they decided to go the extra mile and make it as simple as possible by giving the DLC in-universe justification – ie, we technically got new plot/story as well (though not exactly comprehensive).

What makes this DLC *so* cool is that, rather than abandoning the already-existing Portal 2 mapping community, Valve has made it possible for custom chambers built in Hammer (or whatever) to be uploaded to the Workshop’s collection as well. They could have just as easily made the entire system just based off of the new level designer Valve built – ie, all chambers are made from it and downloaded, etc – which is what I *thought* was going to happen. It seemed clear that the system they put together seemed to revolve around the new map builder (with it being most relevant to the Cave dialogue, etc) but no, instead they took that extra step and included everybody.

It doesn’t even really break from the story of the DLC – your character, a hapless tester – seems to be jumping from universe to universe. It can be justified that occasionally you jump into a universe where Aperture is in disrepair, or GLaDOS is in charge rather than Cave, etc.

It’s really the “not knowing what to expect next” aspect of this (plus the ridiculous dialogue) that makes the DLC so enjoyable, which almost makes me wish they had included a system whereby it generates a random testing track by downloading a series of random chambers from the workshop, putting it in your queue and setting you off. (And according to Reddit, I am not alone in this desire.) Obviously, being able to pick and choose chambers or sets of chambers is nice, but that ability would really make it feel like a “perpetual testing initiative -” you go home and say “let me try another testing track” and then you just go ahead, always getting something new.

But going back to before, where we talked about the map-builder maps vs. maps built in hammer, I gotta say there is a certain level of disconnect. The map-builder is great, but it’s clear that there are a number of limitations that are preventing it from being as great as it *could* be. Namely, I think the goal should be to, over time of course, narrow that gap between the two kinds of chambers until it is less noticeable. Now I’m not complaining at all, mind – note as I’ve already said that this DLC is awesome and way more than I was expecting from Valve – but I imagine it would be in their best interest to improve the builder over time. Valve has always been one to tweak. If they do, I hope they keep the following things in mind.

Continue reading →

Just got back from a one-week tour through Europe with the lovely Vassar College Choir. I’ve got one more week before I go back to school, so I may post some stuff here that I’ve been sitting on for a while.

And no, I don’t mean my butt.

Anyway, I’ve got some lovely photos from the trip, so, if you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, do feel free to peruse. Here’s one of my favorites from Paris.

At least, for the music page.

First of all, the dang url was fixed so now it’s simply “…/p/music.html” instead of the WAY TOO LONG “music-compositions-arrangements.”

I’m also trimming the page down a ton – a lot of those descriptions were just too damn long, and there were some pieces there that honestly didn’t need to be there. I’m also redoing it so that newer stuff is always towards the top – it was too confusing before. I’m also removing the “vocal” section, since hopefully in the future, more of my compositions will actually be vocal as well.

I’m also changing the metadata cover art that comes with the mp3s when you download them – a prototype of the new design can be seen to the left. This change won’t take place immediately, especially since the actual cover art might change a bit, but this is the general idea – the old art just looked too strange.

In other news, expect a whole batch of new music to be uploaded soon – I’m going to do a new thing where whenever I upload a new piece of music, I’ll do a new blog post about it. That way, anyone who’s actually following this blog will be able to be updated about new pieces of music instead of having to wait.

Peace out y’all!

Hey guys,

You’re looking at the first major site redesign of Maurus’ Lair!
Why, you might ask, did I perform such an update?
Well, unnamed individual, a couple of different reasons:
One – I got Dropbox, which made hosting my music using box.net and its embedded media player now seem silly.
Two – Helping my mother with her final project – she had to create a multimedia-based web report, and based on my experiences with Blogger, I thought it’d be the perfect thing for her – made me realize that my blogspot theme had by this point become very passé. Having gained a year’s worth of HTML practice designing TCT and OTF’s forums, I realized this simply would not do and got to work designing a new appearance for the site.
So I went ahead and gutted everything – the new design is cleaner and more organized.
The biggest changes, of course, have been to the music page, which has been completely redesigned and features loads of new pieces I didn’t post to the site before. You should definitely go check it out.

Peace out everyone!

Hey guys, been a while since my last update (but then again isn’t it always?).
I want to announce some new updates I’ve made to the music section on the blog.

Number one, check out the image above. I may have pointed out before that I’d originally like to organize some of my compositions into a demo CD, called “Degrees of Freedom.” (To answer your question- yes, stats pun intended but somewhat liberally reinterpreted.) I’ve always had an idea about what I would want a cover to such an album to look like, and while ideally I would want to design it all myself through a series of several photoshoots, I decided it was still high time I at least made some sort of mockup, so I ventured on over to google images and made a rough cut of my idea. Do you like it? let me know!

First of all, I’ve posted a brand-new piece, “I’m There.” It sounds kind of crappy just yet- that’s because it’s more of a demo version. It’s been sitting around while I tried to figure out what to do with it- I wanted it to be a vocal work, and given that my mic is broken, plus, finding willing vocalists, rehearsing and recording isn’t easy, PLUS I’m not exactly the world’s greatest lyricist, it kind of ended up being too much of a hassle. That’s why it’s strings. I thought strings were a good stand-in for voices until I was able to get vocal tracks. So yeah, it’s not final. I’ll get around to re-arranging it eventually, but I decided I shouldn’t hold back from posting the bare-bones concept sketch (so to speak) So I’ve posted it.

Secondly, I’ve posted another new song- well, it’s not so much a new song as a new arrangement of an OLD song I wrote called Ver Calidus. Some of you early stalkers of mine whom I perhaps do not know may remember this as a piece for flute, piano and voices- it was the only recording I made of it (barring a few updates to that very recording I had made through time), but some of you with whom I went to high school might remember it as a vocal piece with solo violin.
None of these arrangements ever really worked the way I wanted them to, however, so I decided it was time to start from scratch and try a totally new approach. The concept started off as this: “Hey, my musical style seems to have shifted somewhat towards more band/rock oriented pieces. What if Ver Calidus was arranged for a rock band?” So i set off creating a piece that could be conceivably performed by your standard setup of electric guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. However as I was developing it, I realized I got a much warmer, richer sound if I substituted the electric guitar with an acoustic guitar, and with that change came several others that kind of nullified the whole “band” idea, but regardless, the final result was a version of Ver Calidus that had more warmth, soul, and depth than any of its earlier versions did. I’m exceedingly happy with this arrangement and though I may make changes to it over time, I’m very proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish in this arrangement.

Retroactive Note: this is basically an earlier version of “Verdant Spring” on SoundCloud.

Finally, I made a few tweaks to Chao ab Ordo. (Edit: I had posted this tune to my music page earlier) Posting “I’m There” made me realize that the Suite, or at least a barebones version of it, is essentially complete. In reviewing Chao, I realized I hadn’t made some changes I had thought I made earlier. Searching my computer, I sure enough had the workings of an updated version lying around. So, I polished that a bit, and posted this new version. It addresses some issues the piece had before- namely, that the beginning isn’t nearly edgy enough, but also some more minor issues with rhythm and harmony that made it sound less… well, believable before. This new version replaces the old version, because rather than being a new arrangement, it’s really the same piece but with a few tweaks (that I think make it undeniably better). It just sounds very right now, so I doubt I’ll be updating it again any time soon.

Speaking of the Suite- reviewing it made me realize that despite having recently posted an updated version recently, Part I, Ordo Ab Chao… just doesn’t work, somehow. It seems, I suppose, too electronic, and not tangible enough. What’s more is that it still just seems really hard to take seriously, because it still sounds, in my ears, like the work of a young, inexperienced musician who’s just messing around. Some potential remedies for this problem might lie in the fact that though it opens sounding like we’re going to be taken on some epic rock journey, we don’t really hear guitars again. Ever. So, it might help to give it more of a rock edge, reduce some of the weirder electronic stuff to something a bit more traditional, and… more importantly, eliminate some of its undeniable cheesiness.

Retroactive Note: Here’s a remake of “Ordo” I had done earlier that year.

Also, I’ve made a new change to the music page- because I have a very specific order in mind for the page, rather than post updates by date, I’ll mark any piece of music that is new as of the last updating with some kind of indication in red.

So, what might we look forward to in the future? Let me tell you some of the ideas that have been in my head lately, most of which I’ve made a note of on the music page itself. First of all, I think, generally speaking, the rock-inspired re-arrangement of Ver Calidus proved to work very well. And since I’ve wanted to re-arrange Ver Frigidus for, well, longer than I can remember, a similar re-working of Ver Frigidus might be appropriate.
I also have had an idea for a follow-up to Organized Insanity. Basically, let’s pretend Organized Insanity represents the mental state of a young individual whose life seems out of control. (Let me point out that no, that’s not why I wrote the piece and NO, I didn’t write the piece because my life seemed out of control and I wanted to “express myself in music,” even if that sounds cool.) So how would the individual’s mind “sound” after several years have passed, they’ve matured a bit, and have begun to understand their role in the greater society?
I got this idea when I was messing around on a grand piano, playing Organized Insanity, and I realized that if I replaced the main CM-F#M chord sequence with cm-FM, I get something which moves and feels very similar, but sounds much more traditional, and, perhaps, catchy. Catchy enough to be expanded into its own piece, perhaps.
But as of right now that’s still just an idea- but it might be cool to try my hand at writing something with lyrics this time around. So, we’ll see what happens! Stay tuned guys and thanks for following me!

Retroactive Note: Here’s the tune “Organized Insanity” I was referring to, which I’d posted in 2009.

Seriously. It’s a lot simpler than people think, and yet, people don’t seem to get it.
Let’s start with the basics.
Here are the games we’re dealing with:
LOZ, AOL, ALTTP, LA, OOT, MM, OOA/OOS, FS, WW, FSA, MC, TP, PH, ST.
Excluding SS obviously cuz we don’t know anything about it yet.

So let’s piece together what we do know:

LOZ->AOL
ALTTP->LA
OOT->MM
OOA/OOS
MC->FS->FSA
WW->PH->ST

As we know, OOT is the “originator” of the whole timeline problem due to its split timeline.
As a result, there is the adult timeline, in which Ganondorf has ruined Hyrule but is at this point imprisoned in the Sacred Realm, and the child timeline, in which Link, as a boy, prevents the events of OOT from happening by warning the royal family ahead of time- the royal family is imprisoned by the then-sages, who then send him into the Twilight Realm.

_OOT_
|  |
MM WW
|  |
TP  PH
   |
   ST

Let’s deal with the Four Sword related games right now.
MC, FS and FSA all appear to take place within the same timeline and involve the rise and fall of Vaati. However, with their alternate version of history and incredibly altered origin story and backstory for Ganon, these series of games appear to take place in a separate universe entirely. So we can rest easy and put those three off to the side.

MC _OOT_
|  |  |
FS MM WW
|  |  |
FSA TP  PH
     |
     ST

Now we’re going to get into some of the harder stuff. So let’s take care of something easier first. A lot of the concept art for OOS/OOA and even the backstory of those games as well would appear to suggest that OOS/OOA features the same Link as ALTTP, who, after saving Hyrule, decided to sail the seas and explore other lands. This makes a lot of sense, and my vote is to include those in the timeline for ALTTP.
But even when we string those together, where the heck do they go?
Hear me out, gang, cause this is tricky. OOT was designed as a prequel to ALTTP, so they feature the same origin story- a war in which people attempted to seize control of the Triforce through the sacred realm, which resulted in the Seven Sages sealing Ganon into the Sacred Realm. In ALTTP, Ganon manages to break free of the sacred realm, but luckily, Link is there to stop him just in time.
Now note the backstory for WW- It’s the same up to one point- in WW, the claim is when Ganon broke free from the sacred realm, no hero came to help them, and therefore the gods decided the only way to stop Ganon was to flood Hyrule.
So, lets get this straight- BOTH games take place in the adult timeline. Why? How is that possible? Well, you might argue that the ALTTP series takes place somewhere in-between OOT and WW, but WW makes it pretty clear that once Ganon came back no one was there to stop him. It’s tricky, but it really sounds like the only possibility is that there was somehow a second timeline split at some point after OOT. I wonder if a future game will go into this time-changing event in more detail? That would be really cool! 🙂
To summarize the relationship between ALTTP and WW in a simple, succinct way:
WW takes place in an alternate universe, where the events of ALTTP (namely Link stopping Ganon before he could cause much damage) didn’t happen.

MC _OOT______
|  |  |  |
FS MM WW ALTTP
|  |  |  |
FSA TP  PH  OOS/OOA
     |  |
     ST  LA

Okay, so that’s just about every game. The only ones remaining now are the original games, LOZ (which *I* think should be retconned as “The Legend of Zelda: The Hyrule Fantasy” [which is a reference to its original Japanese name] ) and AOL.
These games were made before a lot of what gives Zelda is rich history was even born, so it’s really hard to place them due to their discontinuity. Crap, you might think, what do we do now?
Aahh ah ah. Fear not, friends. There is some info we can rely on.
What do we know about these two?

1. It must take place in old Hyrule.
A lot of people got excited when ST came out, due to the timeline possibilities that game appeared to open. That concept is unfortunately wrong, though, and I’ll tell you precisely why. Look at the major landmarks in LOZ- they clearly resemble the Old Hyrule we know and love- Death Mountain, Spectacle Rock, The Lost Woods. New Hyrule doesn’t really have any of those- there’s the new Lost Woods but that’s about it. What does it for me is the Hyrule mountain range that appears in almost every game- Death Mountain, and within it, Spectacle Rock, the twin spires that are the home to Ganon’s lair in the original game. So we know it has to take place in Old Hyrule. What else do we know?

2. It must take place in the Adult Timeline.
Wait, what? No, seriously, let me explain why.
In AOL, we see that several towns have, generations later, been named after the Seven Sages that imprisoned Ganon and brought peace to the land. Why is this significant? Because those sages never existed in the Child Timeline.
Remember Twilight Princess- if you were confused as to why the sages were these bright shiny ghost dudes, don’t be. It makes sense. They always existed, and were around even behind-the-scenes in the early parts of OOT. What probably happened was, Ganon, once he became Supreme Ruler Of All Badassery, had the sages all offed as quickly as possible, which is why their places even need to be refilled by the new sages you “awaken” one by one during the course of OOT. Note that since Link got an early chance to rat on Ganon once he was sent back to the Child Timeline, those sages never got offed (except for one of them…) and were in fact responsible for Ganon’s imprisonment in the Twilight Realm as seen in TP, and in fact were still around during the days of TP.
So people in the Child timeline would have never heard of Saria, or Darunia, or any of those folks unless they knew them personally. Becoming the sages that saved the world would of course inspire the towns to be named after them. So it has to take place in the Adult Timeline.

3. ALTTP was originally intended to be a prequel to LOZ.
Hence the title.’Nuff said, really.

So the safest bet is probably that the original two games take place in the distant future of the ALTTP games, and while there’s not that much official info in the games to justify this, it makes a lot of sense. The only other explanation would be a third split timeline, at which point is just retarded.
So let’s see how this looks:

MC _OOT______
|  |  |  |
FS MM WW ALTTP
|  |  |  |
FSA TP  PH  OOS/OOA
     |  |
     ST  LA
         |
        LOZ
         |
        AOL

Perfect! Anyone who wants to challenge me on this is free to do so, but, I think the evidence is pretty undeniable. The only thing I *know* is iffy about this is the placement of LA, OOS and OOA, since those three are pretty much interchangeable. The order of OOS and OOA doesn’t appear to matter, and all we know is that ONE comes after the OTHER, and LA could come either before or AFTER the Oracle games. But that’s not really a huge deal, the important thing is that we understand the timeline.

Bye all!

RETROACTIVE EDIT: So, the official timeline was revealed in Hyrule Historia December 2011. It ended up actually being very close to my prediction! The historia revealed that there was indeed a second timeline split after OOT, as I had predicted – the split is caused by Link failing in his final confrontation with Ganon, forcing the sages to handle the sealing of the triforce themselves. The only thing I got wrong was MC -> FS -> FSA, which is worked into various points across the official timeline. How cool!