#and the productivity is still flowing!!!

[sagesfandomspot]

sooo how do we feel about getting the first chapter of the next installment of New Beginnings next Sunday??

[nicollekidman]

so far this is midnights if midnights didn't suck..... what's going on...........................

[supercantaloupe]

okay don giovanni review from last night. under the cut bc it's me. tldr the vocal performances were great, leporello carried the show, one of the most insane productions i've seen thus far but somehow in a new bizarre direction from normal. good snacks.

first of all i don't care how much wine you offer i think it's kind of ridiculous to charge $165 for a base ticket price for a performance that 1. isn't even in a concert hall or theater 2. is a concert performance rather than a staged performance (which was not advertised ahead of time) and 3. was not even a full production because they made the absolutely mind boggling decision to cut 100% of the recitative and replace it with Some Guy sitting on the stage narrating the plot between every 1-3 numbers

i did not pay that much gd bless. the student ticket was way cheaper.

the narration wasn't even good it was weirdly ungenerous to the women (like how do you even make elvira out be a "women, amirite" thing and also vaguely imply anna was into it in a production with zero acting? well they figured something out) and i don't think it even explained well enough what happens between each number to truly give a first time watcher a good idea of what's actually going on. not to mention that it absolutely kills any sense of momentum in the plot and makes the entire show drag like hell, because you have to wait between every single aria for either Some Guy to talk at you for three minutes straight, or wait awkwardly while people onstage walk off and people offstage walk on. it was so painfully clunky

they had a piano up there but since there was no recit it's not like she was accompanying much of anything. in practice what it ended up being used for was 1. the mandolin part for deh vieni (acceptable in the absence of a mandolin player; they were working with a limited chamber ensemble of musicians so i get it) 2. the party music at the end of act i (egregious fault imo because it absolutely kills the vibe of the scene and completely obfuscates the way the music is supposed to be adding to the tension and chaos with its different instrumental groups playing in different meters)

and 3. used to give singers their notes when the vocal line of their arias start on beat 1 measure 1, which they otherwise would have been able to get from the preceding recits (which is imo painfully amateurish for an ostensibly professional production)

all the numbers in act i were there although the narration was so bad i got jumpscared by fin ch'han dal vino because i forgot it was supposed to be there and thought we had skipped over that point in the plot. act ii had some really bizarre additional cuts made, notably they just entirely skipped over meta di voi and vedrai carino. it was like masetto and zerlina fuck off for the entirety of act ii save for, like, mille torbidi (they VERY briefly mentioned masetto getting beat up in the narration and i don't think they mentioned vedrai carino at all, they just skipped straight from deh vieni to sola sola. and also there was a painful awkward pause before deh vieni because i think the pianist forgot she was supposed to play there and the narrator jumped ahead to the next chunk of plot explanation too early). kept both dalla and tesoro (i'm fine with this ottavio was quite good though could've used a bit of ornamentation imo), kept mi tradi, kept non mi dir (more on that in a bit). no per queste which is probably a good thing not only for the show itself but also my head would have absolutely and irreversibly exploded if they had, probably

the whole thing kind of felt underrehearsed. like a quarter of the time it seemed like people didn't know what they were doing or had to be reminded where to be at that point in the show. and there were a few moments throughout where the orchestra struggled to keep up with the singers, but i really don't think they had much time to rehearse together, honestly.

and then, to my utter shock, the finale was actually really good?? like. insane compared to the rest of the show thus far. though it helps that 1. i absolutely love the harmonieband arrangements of cosa rara/i litiganti/non piu andrai, after possibly the draggiest non mi dir i've yet experienced it was like a breath of fresh air to hear that (and non mi dir was actually well performed i liked this anna but considering how much the Entire Show was dragging, the fact that they cut meta di voi and vedrai carino, AND the fact that they promised this act would be short, it felt crazy to me to keep it at that point.)

2. leporello and the don were by far the best performers of the night. so much so that i sought them out during the post show reception to tell them how great they were and enjoyed their performance. which i usually do not do, but in this like, high school recital ass production value. unbelievable relief that the final scene is dominated by the two actors in the show who most remembered that they can, and in fact Should, be acting. so much more movement and physicality and expression from those two compared to most everyone else. leporello especially, his actor apparently specializes in comedic bass roles and it shows, he was the standout all night

and 3. for the first time in the entire production they made an interesting decision regarding the physical space and staging! they had the commendatore sing from up on a balcony overlooking the audience in the foyer. the bar admittedly was set very low in the previous act and a half but the finale reminded me that i actually like this show again which is appreciated

though they then threw another curveball at me by Cutting the sextet at the end. which like didn't even piss me off at that point i was just baffled. like the don sinks down in agony and leporello sinks down whimpering in fear and the orchestra cuts off. and i'm expecting an awkward pause while they quietly get up and shuffle off so the rest of the cast can come back but nope. big orange title slate appears on the big screen behind them and the audience breaks into a roaring applause and the announcement of the wine and dessert reception. felt like i was in a fever dream

i will say the desserts were very nearly almost worth the bullshit that was the preceding show. they were so good. thank you austria for your dedication to pastry. and because i don't drink and couldn't appreciate the free wine offered i had to indulge in my own manner. spread contained chocolate oat bites (tasted as much like espresso powder as chocolate and coated in coconut, 4/10), almond sponge cake (classic, 7/10), cardamom apple bread pudding with caramel cream (not enough cardamom but otherwise very tasty and autumnal, 8.5/10) and honey cake (11/10. i don't know how they made this so good. i want more right now so much). i take both my mozart opera and my desserts very seriously.

anyway overall the production was. i would say frustrating. the singing quality was Really Good (leporello was the clear standout, probably followed by the don though i prefer my dons with a lighter voice but technically he was very good, then probably ottavio, then maybe masetto or anna. the commendatore was great but he's in it so little it's hard to compare)

i just wish they could have, like, actually done a full production. it would have been so great if they had gotten to tell the actual story and had been fully allowed to act. when there Was acting were the best moments of the show, and it's really unsurprising that most of that came from leporello, the absolute legend.

[beevean]

the hallmark of Peak Fiction is shoehorning a very serious conversation about a very serious past conflict in an unrelated scene, in the form of snarky banter played for laughs, so that the writer can pretend they listen to audience feedback, while not needing to fully think of addressing the issue and fully sweeping it under the rug because it would be inconvenient to paint the involved characters as dumbasses/vile. Bonus points if it literally goes nowhere and it can be removed from the scene without affecting the flow of the dialogue.

And if it makes me want to eat my own bones because I feel the urge to beat the involved characters to death with a nailed bat, that's just a plus :)

[forged-in-kaoss]

duality of matt [x]

[saviourkingslut]

not to be about opera again but to be about opera again. as an art form it has the reputation of being super stuffy and something for snobs who don't know how to have fun only but honestly this was one of, perhaps even THE main theatrical entertainment for centuries. i wish people knew how hard these things can go and how engaging they can be. like characters kill and die and fight wars and (almost) commit human sacrifice left and right. characters fall in love they mourn they're ecstatic they cry they're furious it's an extremely dramatic and emotional art form! and i understand that opera does not appear approachable bc of the general conventions of the art form but i promise old works can be fun and engaging if you go watch them with some preparation beforehand (reading the libretto helps) - not to mention not all operas are old bc there are so many modern operas which engage with topical events! also the music slaps.

[biblicalhorror]

Thinking about one of the loser men I dated directly post-college who, after I showed them Dirty Computer [the emotion picture] by Janelle Monae, said they "prefer rap that has something to say"

[dingoat]

Writing Patterns Tag Game

Tagged by @cinlat ! Thank you! Wow it was fun going back on all these bits of writing hahaha, the RP has definitely been going on all this time but to get to ten actual posted pieces I had to travel quite a long way back. Definitely makes me want to actually set down more of the ideas and musings I let float around in my head. @storyknitter @queen-scribbles @mimabeann @vespertine-legacy @tehriel @swtorpadawan @greencrusader13 if any of you folk feel inclined to play along please do!

Rules: list the first line(s) of your last 10 posted fics and see if there's a pattern!

Void-touched - Five never bothered with mirrors these days.

Five Years - He was as infuriating as he’d ever been.

Prompt: Six Repressed Memories - The night before, they’d stayed up late, conspiring in the fort in whispers that were too loud, overstimulated and giddy for the day to come.

Prompt: Repressed Memory for the Best Girl - The moon was bright and her belly was full, and best of all the pain had stopped, she’d found the source and shut it down and now everything was still and peaceful.

Artificial - Libby had wanted to hike Mount Marvellous for as long as she could remember, and she was beside herself when she finally had the opportunity to book a tour and be guided up the mountainside after years of training and research.

Prompt: Kiss, as a promise - “I don’t want to go.”

Prompt: "You could have died." - The days had been leisurely and indulgent, but with time came room for doubts and misgivings to creep in, giving a sour edge to the otherwise thoroughly pleasant experience of exploring the late Darth Vesstriss’ private estate.

Prompt: Protect - “Fynta. Hey. Hey is that you?”

Epilogue II - His bright blue eyes were the last things she saw before the lake swallowed her.

Prompt: "I'm only here to establish an alibi." - “WHOOOOAAAA–!!” Three voices hollered out in chorus as the out of town competitor, a burly selonian with jagged patterns bleached into her dark fur, was sent skidding across the ring.

[mistfallengw2]

Guess it's time to expand on this with another "first in-game death turned into backstory"

It is now canon that Lenorey had a close encounter of the unpleasant kind with Draithor the Drill (I forgot he was that strong and I'm still leveling her, welp).

Short story under read more with screens to go along with it [tw: gross "food", implied human meat (and all Draithor-related stuff), written at 1-2am]

_____

The young sylvari wasn't even a yearling when she had stumbled upon the necromancer's lair, following the rumors she had heard during her brief stay at the nearby Black Haven fort. Well, more like overheard, from afar, disturbed by some drunken norn's bellowing, but she did hear the words meat, magic and necromancer, which were all things she had interest in. And so she went, dodging and sneaking past this unknown necromancer's minions after being so rudely attacked when she called for the owner of that lovely cave. Irked by such an unwelcoming welcome, she helped herself to what she felt more pulled towards out of the vials on the tables and the racks of smoked meat -or at least what she could reach and carry, given the average size of the furniture-, then left the place with her consolation loot, settling for a little personal picnic on the nearby hills.

Lenorey had already eaten quite the sort of questionable things in her short life, she was aware of as much in her incessant search and had learned a few important lessons, but while the smaller vials were tasteless or things she had sampled before, that piece of chewy meat was disgusting even to her. It reminded her of the time she took a nibble out of a risen she had found on the side of the road, but not even that left such a foul feeling in her whole body, and not one lasting for so many hours. That was utterly gross. That was new. She had to know.

After her insides and head stopped churning with that weakness, she went back to the cave, and this time something was definitely happening inside. Again, she extended a call and her thanks for the meal as she entered, ready to practice her appeasing skills in order to get to know more about that foul meat and why it made her feel queasy, maybe even apologize and pay him back for the purloined goods. The minions waited in their place, menacing, and a towering figure emerged from the corner, stopping for a moment to grunt before approaching her. Not what she expected, but it sure explained the too-high tables around the lair. This necromancer was a centaur. Lenorey was ecstatic! She had never met one, and she had so many things she wanted to know about the culinary and alchemical traditions of his people, but she barely got past her third question before a thick haze choked the words out of her mouth.

While the sylvari did fall in the thigh-high water of the swamp, she didn't fully lose herself under the toxin, only feeling dizzy and tingly all over as her body relaxed in a sleep-like state. The sudden splash in the water only jolted her a bit out of it, though not enough for her to really keep her eyelids open. Bummer. The centaur grabbed her arm and pulled her up, inspecting her limp body as if she was a discarded doll. Grunting again like the rude thing he was, he uttered something about plant people being useless to his research, then carried her deeper into the cave and tossed her body against something metallic. A cage, not unlike those she had been into before. Again, extremely rude, on top of being unwelcoming and a bad cook.

It didn't take her long to come back to her senses. It wasn't a strong spell to begin with, it had just taken her by surprise and the earlier meal had likely weakened her resistance in some way unknown to her. Another bummer, but she was more concerned with the weird sounds she had heard as she waited out the effects, and she had enough self-preservation instincts to know she didn't want to wait around for him to come back or find out what originated them.

Her frame had been turning more limber lately -or "shriveled" as some of her siblings had more or less worriedly said to her-, but she liked it, because it meant she could squeeze her bark through most narrow spaces with just a little effort, and cage bars were not an exception. To be fair, the door wasn't even closed, but she still opted to slip under the lower bar for the sake of it.

That rude hooved guy was clearly not going to give her any information she wanted, so Lenorey sneaked past the guarding minions, only stopping to disable a pair of them, but curiosity pulled her gaze in his direction. He had his back to her, close to the table she had taken food from, busy chopping something on it. Whatever he had done before that, it was all very bloody and very dripping-from-a-pointy-tool, and it reeked of unsavory necromancy so much that she felt her thorns bristle. Without hesitation, she removed herself from the cave with careful haste, then let her mind fade a bit deeper as she continued on her road. She was not going to find what she was looking for back there, and she already had enough unpalatable things to digest for one day.

[quibbs126]

So I’ve been wanting to make this character ever since I saw @ennywashere Choco Cream Cookie and thought “Dark Choco having a dad arc would honestly be really interesting for his character”, so I decided to take my own stab at it and made Hazelnut Cookie, Dark Choco’s recently adopted daughter

I made her hazelnut because I heard hazelnuts go well with chocolate. But also because I remembered Nutella, and hearing back all those years to when I first saw those ads that they were made with hazelnuts, and I remembered it tasting a lot like chocolate, so I thought hazelnuts could be a chocolate substitute. Granted that wasn’t really true, it seems Nutella is made from both hazelnuts and chocolate, but after finding out hazelnuts and chocolate work well together, I decided to just stick with Hazelnut

Also side note, I was double checking whether or not there was already a Hazelnut Cookie, and while there wasn’t, I did find some ocs and one of them was supposed to be a love interest for Dark Choco. If the name has the same reasoning as here, that’s very clever, that

So I’ve been flip flopping about her age while making her. Originally, she was just going to be like a baby—my notes said she was no older than 2–but then later on, I realized that made Hazelnut less of a character and more like just a living prop, as she would have no real character. So I decided to age her up a bit, but she was still supposed to be very young, my top limit being “younger than Custard III”. When designing her here, I think I stayed closer to that upper limit, but I hadn’t really thought about how old she is, because I also want her to be a really little kid, that was kind of the point of her. It’s only now as of writing this that I think I’ve come up with a definitive age range for her, that being ~4 ish. I’m not entirely sure she looks that age here, as I feel like she looks too old, but if I draw her in the future, I’ll keep that in mind

Speaking of her design, I’m not too sure I’m happy with it. I wanted to design her after a hazelnut, since that’s what she’s made of, but did I go too far? And I’m not sure about her hair. Again, I was trying to design it like a hazelnut, specifically the inner cream colored part, but I couldn’t get it to look right. I think my current 2 is probably the one I’m most satisfied with (it’s actually my 3rd, but I didn’t have room for all 3, so I deleted my original 2nd in place of it. I dunno, maybe I’ll work on it. Should I lose the hood? I put it there to reference the shell of a hazelnut, but I’m not sure about it

So anyways, talking about her, so basically her story is that Dark Choco finds her in the forest one day all alone and scared (I haven’t actually worked out why or how she was there. It’s kind of a holdover from when she was a baby, where that didn’t need much explanation. A possible idea I had is that she was just baked in the Witch’s Oven and escaped, ending up there in the forest). After helping her out (maybe she was being attacked by beasts), he tries to help her find someone she knows who would be looking for her, like a family member or something. When he finds out she doesn’t really have anyone, he decides he can’t just leave her all alone out here and decides to take her with him, at least until they can find somewhere good for her to stay; they aren’t father and daughter yet. During their travels, Dark Choco starts teaching her things about the world she doesn’t understand yet, helping her with whatever’s confusing, and just generally being a caring figure towards her, as he can’t help but become emotionally attached to the little girl. And Hazelnut becomes very attached to Dark Choco. One day, when they’re passing through a town, they see a kid and their dad, and Hazelnut later asks Dark Choco what exactly a dad is. He gives what explanation he can: someone who takes care of you and protects you, teaches you about the world and how to live in it, someone who’s always there for you and loves you no matter what (during this explanation I feel like he might reflect on his own father and what his father was trying to do for him or what might have gone wrong, as he does explain to Hazelnut that not every dad is like this, but it’s what they’re supposed to do). After his explanation, Hazelnut thinks on it, and asks if she can call Dark Choco “dad” (or some form of that), since he basically already does all of that for her. He’s shocked by the question, but he says yes, she can call him that if she wants, and so then they (unofficially) become father and daughter

I’m not sure Hazelnut would be a “playable” character, in this hypothetical scenario where she or an adjacent character is somehow canon, but if she was, I’d probably put her in the Healing class, since from what I’ve been able to gather, hazelnuts have quite a few health benefits, and I wanted to incorporate that in some way

I think that’s all about Hazelnut, I hope you like her!

[britneyshakespeare]

idk who needs to hear this but period underwear is a godsend and if you can access and afford it, you should get some. it's way more comfortable and less nasty to deal with than disposable products

[vogelmeister]

i am begging someone on my hands and knees to give me a bootleg of Anastasia in Scheveningen i will sell my soul for it

[arysthaeniru]

"This language of work was by no means the private language of a single-minded maniac who had lived too long under the volcano. To the contrary, Hill’s ideas were on the leading edge of the terrain where biological science and social science intersected. In particular, the concept of the calorie, as a measure of both energy consumed and work done, emerged in connection with the steam-engine-based economics of work in mid-nineteenth century Europe. By the turn of the twentieth century, the calorie had developed into a unit of equivalency between what people ate and how much work they could generate, what they needed to consume and what they were capable of producing—effectively recasting the body as a measurable machine.Whether or not Hill had a formal grasp of the field of expert knowledge cohering around the calorie and its implications for labor management and social policy, he did understand it implicitly, for he paid his employees in food. He used the way of seeing the relation of food and work that gained expression in the science of the calorie in his campaign to reduce the people who worked on his plantations to mechanisms of value production—to make them his."

Augustine Sedgewick - Against Flows

(emphasis mine)

[wuxian-vs-wangji]

Okay but what is this class?

So, within the film school were 3 areas of study, and you had to pick ONE to do:

Telecommunication law and policy.

Media Sciences (The academic studies. If they could show you something and put electrodes on your head to read your brain, they're happy)

Design and Production-- actually making shit. Scriptwriting, studio, field production, sound design, editing, etc.

I did a self-created hybrid major, bridging Media Sciences with Design and Production.

----

Laid that ground information because I can only describe the classes from the way I approached them. The media psychology students got something totally different out of it and my brain just doesn't stop where theirs stopped.

If I mention the sex class, I'll end up writing that 100,000 word essay on how it is applied to LITA, so let's talk the horror one (my fav).

What the class does is get into physiologically, what happens to a person while watching horror? A lot of that is really obvious- you can become tense, anxious, your stress levels actually go DOWN overall (which is not how it feels in the moment), and you experience a rush of adrenaline.

Then you dig deeper. What is contributing to the tension? The human brain processes things at different speeds, sight is slower than sound. So sound mixing becomes both critical to creating a horror atmosphere, and also a cheat code. Anything becomes spooky if it SOUNDS spooky.

Monkey brain hear spooky, monkey brain no like spooky. Now it's dark. Monkey brain cannot see danger approach. Monkey brain fight or flight grow big.

Now, if you don't have a valve to bring the tension down (something scary, jump scares are the most lazy way), monkey brain get bored. Monkey brain start adapting to the adrenaline and your adrenal gland is like "Guys this party sucks".

And that's why M. Night Shamalan movies blow. Level tension. So at the end when he tries to ramp it up your brain has already gotten bored and gone home so it's just like "Who the fuck cares".

What else is in horror movies? Violence!

But guess what? Monkey brain feel things if they see gruesome stuff. Boy monkey brains especially.

But what's this? Girl monkey brains are different than boy monkey brains. Girl monkey brains have SO MANY MORE nerve endings (that equals empathy). You show gruesome to girl monkey brain, girl monkey brain is like "childbirth and periods are more gruesome than this" (girl monkey brain not the most feminist, the feminism comes from evolution and enlightenment).

But you show a girl monkey brain the FACE of someone in pain- the agony and the terror... That's going to slam into those nerve endings and activate Empathy Mode- and now you can imagine how that violence FEELS.

Know your demographic- based on your subject matter, the likely ratio of boy monkey brains to cater to vs girl monkey brains. Set your balance of violence and face shots to keep both on the same page with that tension you are rising and lowering.

And I did say I didn't want to get into the sex one because I don't want to rabbit hole, but sex and horror tend to walk hand in hand because they're such primal triggers.

That's the "monkey brain" theme up there. They are not speaking to you as a rational human person. They're speaking to the root code of your DNA (do not try to hijack my post to argue anti-feminist things because of monkey brain, I'm talking horror and sex).

They're poking at instinctive responses you do not consciously control on average.

So yeah

I created a hybrid major track for myself within the department (I love that my uni gave students the freedom to do that) to study media psychology and apply it not to research on the human condition, but to learn to basically brain wash and mind control my audiences.

To reach into the monkey brain and hypnotize them until they end up- as the video game design majors would say- in a flow-state where time stops existing. Just the story is left. Like a dream you don't realize you are dreaming.

... ... ... When my professor realized how I was mixing the two tracks, he started calling it the Super Villain Major.

I have no regrets.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Some recent pressed leaves and stuff to add to the collection :0

[lesbicastagna]

wait omg. why is the rose of versailles anime so good.