manynarrators

the parallel between Lestat marking all the tenor's flat notes and Armand writing all his aggressive director notes for Claudia on the 500th performance... the performing community of Paris better thank their lucky stars everyday that lesmand didn't become a real couple because there would be no survivors

I noticed the same parallel! It’s hilarious, I love it, but now I’m just imaging them in said modern au.

I feel like the older cohort of their students— the ones who have survived the psychic damage and stuck with it— have an ongoing bet if they’ll have to find a new hobby if/when the theatre closes because their relationship falls apart.

They track the relationship via type of shows performed. If they split the troupe and do two, then it’s either a good thing or a sign of potential impending collapse (and requires other interactions to confirm). At their best, it’s compromise, and like… weird experimental classic reinterpretations.

No one can say their students don’t end up with a range!

Random worldbuilding: A culture where everyone's social status is expressed through how their hair is braided.

Children all have the same kind of a simple, unisex "child's braid" which is meant for their parents to be easy to do - traditionally boys were only taught how to do a "wife's braid" while women braid both their husbands and their children, but a modern man is naturally an attentive father and contributes to both cleaning and feeding, and clothing and braiding his children.

While this kind of knowledge is more accessible in the modern age, the art of braiding is still seen as an intimate family thing, and it's not unusual for a youth to come out to their parents by the way of braids - for example a daughter asking her father to teach her how to do the "wife's braid", or a son asking her mother how to weave the "husband braid" for their future spouse. Or a trans kid asking their parents to give them the other gender's braid when it's time to transition from the child braid into the "unmarried youth" one.

It is nonetheless still somewhat common to see an older gay man with a "wife's braid" or two older women both wearing "husband braids", because that was the only way they were taught to braid a future partner's hair when they were young. They could learn the "appropriate" braid now, but it has become a part of the culture, an old-fashioned gay thing to do. It's pride - if you wear this braid to show that you're an adult with a spouse, why try to hide who braids your hair every morning?

The only braid that one is expected to do on themselves is the widow's braid - the only one that is also unisex, braided in reverse from the simple children's braid. Sometimes, young unmarried adults who have no interest in starting a family switch directly into wearing a widow's braid to signify that they are not looking for a partner and are independent adults on their own.

Two of the stained glass designs that are mentioned in my new fic, Delirium Tremens!

I intended to have this out months ago, but the stars were surprisingly hard! It's hard to make things look glowy with no soft edges, so it was a fun challenge.

The fic itself might honestly be my favourite thing I've ever written, and some five years in the making, with a playlist that can be found here. It's the origins of my human heart pencil holder on my desk.

Chapter 2! Carlos in the Desert Otherworld (AKA, it’s actual title, Fever) is officially up! It’s also the lightest point of this fic until the last chapter.

broad daylight in horror is massively underused

there’s a constant feeling in nighttime horror of “this is an unnatural, liminal situation you’ve stumbled into. once you make it to the other end, or if everyone were to know the truth, you will be free of it.”

once the sun crests the horizon, however, there’s an unspoken shift in the underlying tone. this aberration of the natural order has come under all scrutiny and it is still there. you continue to cry for normalcy, but the world does not acknowledge what you believe it should be. no amount of truth or time will end this, and in my favourite of executions the very framing and narrative itself doesn’t acknowledge the dissonance. 

it all comes back to alienation, in the end. always.

if nighttime horror evokes a sense of isolation through salvation being just out of reach, then daytime horror evokes it through the realization that it never existed to begin with. that the walls and locks were all paper-thin artifice. that this is now tomorrow. forever.

broad daylight in horror is seeing the yawning abyss and knowing there’s nothing to wake up to.

@melpomaen | Everyone else excuse the break from our regularly scheduled programming for some Tolkien nerdiness.

I Wanna Be In The Calvary Noldor edition (as sung prior to the Burning of the Ships)

I wanna be in the cavalry if they send me off to war I wanna good steed under me like my forefathers before I wanna good mount when the trumpet sounds and I hear the dragon's roar I wanna be in the cavalry if they send me off to war

I wanna horse in the volunteer force that's riding forth at dawn Please save for me some gallantry that will echo when I'm gone I beg of you sir let me lead the charge when the battle lines are drawn Lemme at least leave a good hoof beat they'll remember loud and long

I'd not a good foot soldier make, I'd be sour and slow at march And I'd be sick on a swan ship, and the Belegaer'd leave me parched But I'll be first in line if they'll let me ride, by god, you'll see my starch Lope back o'er the heath with the laurel wreath underneath that vict'ry arch

Let me earn my fleurs in the battle's blur where the day is lost or won I'll wield my lance as the ponies dance and the blackguards hit their drums A sabre keen, and a bow notched and an army at my back Where the minstrels lead with the cold, cold steel let me be a cav'lryman

Let 'em play their flutes and lace-up my boots and place them back to front For I won't be back on the Helcaraxë until I'm finished in my hunt I wanna be in the cavalry if I must go off to war I wanna be in the cavalry, but I won't ride home no more

-

I Wanna Be In The Cavalry: Reprise (Written sometimes in the late first age)

I wanna be in the cavalry if they send me off to war I wanna good steed under me like my forefathers before

Courageous at first we took their worst, our positions we held stout We clung to belief and we hung on the speech from our trusted leaders' mouths Overwhelming odds and a hopeless cause and our cities overrun There were them that said we was badly led and that were we outmanned

I lost count of the worthy mounts that from under me were cut My favourite mare with her head in the air took poisoned arrows in her gut In the first two weeks on the Ard-Galen my brother lost his arm Was only sixty years till all we prayed was get us home unharmed

O for the day that we changed our names and the well that we were wished The men's congrats and the pats on the backs and the ladies that we missed The band that played and the grande parade and the patriotic shouts All faded fast, didn't even last till the uniforms wore out

And there were none to replace nor to help us face the winters cold and bleak That chilled to the bone the pneumonia prone and froze our bootless feet Then the red-clad came with oath-bound fits, blood and stolen gem That proved in the end to have killed more men than the vilest enemy

We were finally forced to feed on horse and carcass we could scrounge When the wagons stopped and we'd burnt their crops to charred and barren ground With morale in doubt and our pride run out no honour did I see All I seen were a thousand dreams piled dead in front of me

I wanna be in the cavalry if the send me off to war I wanna be in the cavalry but I won't ride home no more

**| Final exam down! I now have two sweet, sweet uninterrupted weeks until my summer classes start and I am thrilled! And if anyone us curious to see the cover art I made for one of my classes!

I'm super curious to hear everyone's favourite because they're all super different.