GrĂma Wormtongue as the Obligatory Confidant
Gandalf as the Conflict
Aragorn as the Noble Monarch Who Is Totally Not Louis XIV
Sauron as the Deus Ex Machina
Stop, GrĂma, and speak with me a while.Â
My eyes have ne'er seen a disaster so great:
My armies are scatter’d, my men are all slain
And Elessar the King is return’d to my door.Â
Shall I speak with the proud Maia who rides in his train
and what of the small folk who brought my tower low?Â
Alas, what ruin has come to Isengard!Â
O glories past, O hate, O my fallen pride!Â
Given the fact that there are several impressively urgent things in my life, there was exactly one thing I could do: drop everything and typeset this so that it looked like a proper page by Racine.
The first scene of Downfall felt like something creqted by setting a slider to be perfectly balanced between Ainulindalë and the latter part of The Bifrost Incident.
Look, this rainfrog is called Breviceps bagginsi, so I don't have a lot of choice, now do I?
[src]
Also, I would go with them to the end. Into the very fires of Mordor.
Low Fantasy
Phyllomedusine hylids have a certain weird clown marionette vibe to them. Just look at these Pithecopus rohdei.
[src]
Lovecraftian
The male Rhinoderma darwinii raises his tadpoles in his vocal sac.
GIF by cassiopeias-dreams
Sci-Fi
Gephyromantis pseudoasper sometimes wear handsome stripes—very Space Age™
But more importantly, their calls evoke a battle with laser-blasters.
I filmed this calling male in 2017 at an obscene hour of the morning.
Horror
Trichobatrachus robustus, aka the Hairy Frog, has flanks and thighs covered in weird, hair-like outgrowths that increase oxygen exchange over its skin, and BREAKS ITS FINGERS TO STAB YOU WITH CLAWS MADE OF BONE
[src]
Romance
Breviceps males physically glue themselves to the back-ends of females, and if that's not romance, I don't know what is.
[src]
Comedy
Nyctimantis arapapa are probably amongst the funniest-looking frogs out there.
[src]
Adult
The 'poly' in Polypedates may be a double entendre
[src]
Crime and Mystery
Calyptocephalella gayi is a Galaxy Brain frog.
[src]
Speculative
Myobatrachus gouldii is basically what would happen if you decided to try to build a turtle, but you only had frog pieces in the kit.
“me (in chat): I would like Jonny to narrate next year's Dracula Daily.
Jonny: You know what I would really love? Next year, I think it would work really well as like a full cast.“
And you know what? @re-dracula is everything I wanted and more. @jonnywaistcoat was right.
Like 4am and I have zero proof for this but Hades. The place. We’ve got no record of the god Hades in the old-ass Linear B records. What if the place was named Hades first and then they named the guy Hades because they called it the house of hades or some other euphemism and over time people were like oh the house of hades it must belong to a guy named Hades
I mean Poseidon was probably the underworld god in the Mycenaean times so where did Hades come from why did Poseidon get yeeted into the ocean we don’t know guys we just don’t know
I’m connecting so many thumbtacks and yarn but there’s nothing here I’ve just got headcanons
You know most of the time Hades the place is underground but occasionally it’s like a place. Out west. Just like a place. Not underground. Like if you walk too far past the horizon you could just run into a bunch of ghosts I guess.
Usually it’s underground. Like the vast majority of the time. I just like the idea that you could get really lost fishing and just float past Charon ferrying ghosts around.
There isn’t really a concept of an other world or alternate dimensions of any kind in Greek mythology. The divine beings are just hiding. Not existing in like a different layer of reality like the fairy land in Irish folklore or something.
So you could just find Hades. Like physically. Whether it be underground or far out west. You could climb mount Olympus. You could find the places that the sun and moon keep their chariots. You could have sex with or fight a tree spirit. Not like in a hypothetical spiritual way. You can stab a river and it will bleed.
The ancient Greeks had a concept of gods working invisibly but there wasn’t something all mystical and deep and otherworldly about it. Apollo could just reach down and untie your armor. Write down your curse and hope the god strolls by and sees it. There’s no guarantee they’re hanging out close enough to hear you right now.
Personally I think it's more likely that Hades split off from Mycenaen-Poseidon, but potentially the reason you don't find Linear B records is simply that they didn't want to name the bloke - same way people used euphemisms for 'bear' and avoid taboo words, etc.
The Poseidon/Hades split would, I speculate, have occurred mostly as Greeks moved away from the islands and coasts of Mycenean territories and so their connection to Bad Ocean = Death weakened. There's evidence that the main triplet of gods in Mycenean religion was Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon, so the linking of Persephone and Hades was likely an establishing part of his death god motif (as Mycenean-Persephone was closer to a death god than a springtime flower maiden).
I'm getting all this from Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube but in fairness to them they really do their research (as best as non-academics can). As someone who is not a scholar of ancient Greece I defer to their broader knowledge.
“potentially the reason you don't find Linear B records is simply that they didn't want to name the bloke - same way people used euphemisms for 'bear' and avoid taboo words “
As a Classicist by training I feel obligated to point out that “Hades” is in itself not for from a euphemism as it simply means “Unseen”. It is reconstructed more or less like this:
*nĚĄ +Â *weyd
where the first part is related to all those wordinitial “un”s in English (like saying that someone who isn’t seen is... unseen) and the second part meaning “seeing” (and “knowing” - as one knows something after having seen it and thus “knowing” is kind of like a perfect version of “seeing”). The English words most closely related to that are “wit” and “wise” but it’s better seen in borrowings such as Latin “video” (i.e. “I see”) or “vision”.
And so “Hades” kind of translates to “Un-seen”.
You mentioned that you've finished writing Gobelins, and I'm wondering if you're gonna raise money to produce it, or do it out of your own pocket? Either way, I'm very excited to hear it, hope your op goes well!
Thanks for a great question! There's definitely gonna be an Indiegogo fundraiser at some point before I start production, but the scale of that is going to need to depend on what my life is looking like at that time. In other words, when I’m physically able to devote time to the album again, I’m going to have to assess my capacity before deciding the scope of the project.
Basically, there's an "ideal" way I'd like to make Carnaval des Gobelins, with a physical edition, cool merch for backers, guest musicians and liner art commissions. I think it's gonna be the most satisfying experience for listeners and the best move from a "growing my business" point of view - producing that kind of stuff gives me a chance to order excess merch and another little revenue stream, which would take me a little step closer to making this my main job. But, it's also a big project to manage and as much as I want to do it that way, I'm not gonna bet on being physically well enough to do that until things are clearer. I'm pretty dang ill.
Then there are other options - like limiting that stuff to a digital version for Bandcamp and streaming, plus physical CDs that are a bit more pared-down in terms of liner content. And on the other side of the spectrum, there's just producing a digital album, like I did for The Wassailant, which while still a big project would be logistically simpler and would require the least amount of funding.
I'm going to run a fundraiser no matter what the scope ends up being and the reason for that is that I'm handling the production for C des Gs alone, in my studio. I have a great set-up and good technical knowledge nowadays and can make stuff with much higher prodiction values without spiralling costs of studio and engineer hire. However, to get the album done, I'm going to need to treat it as a part-time job for about a year and so I'm going to have to find a way to help me through that time financially. The reason I was able to finish The Wassailant within a year was because of all the time spent at home during the pandemic! I'm not going to start production until I find a new part-time day job anyway, so I certainly won't be trying to raise the sort of money to depend on! But I probably will be earning less from a day job while I work on the album and I will need a small amount to supplement that/keep for emergencies if something goes wrong for me in that time - so that I don't have to halt production part way through.
So the low-scope, digital-only version would still be a crowd-funded affair, just a fairly low scale one. For the big one with all the cool rewards and awesome CDs and everything, I guess my other mini-worry is I don't actually know whether the funding goals I’d have to set to produce all the awesome extras are actually realistic to what people can afford. I don’t know if I could fund a project at the same level as a Mechanisms album for example, because I don’t have the same reach the band did. But we’re probably looking at something comparable, cost-wise, to The Bifrost Incident (but closer to its goal, not the final amount it was pledged) to produce the “full scope” version. Plus, the last time I ran projected costs for the project was before the cost of living crisis, so I don't know right now whether the CD/merch suppliers' costs will have increased.
I genuinely feel a ton of support and goodwill from people like you who really want to listen and I know there are plenty of you! But also I truly don't want to assume anything from you, so we'll have to see how realistic it is to make the full bells-and-whistles version, financially or in terms of my capacity, nearer the time. The way I'm feeling as I type this is that I may run the Indiegogo with a lower inital goal and just a couple of reward tiers (aiming to fund production and release the digital album and a simpler physical edition) and try to do some of the other stuff like an expanded liner or producing merch (and making merch available at discounted rates to backers who want it) as stretch goals.
Anyway, that is almost definitely a much longer answer than you were looking for, so I'll stop now. I really do appreciate the great ask; having the chance to thing about a proper answer has helped me straighten a few conflicts in my head that were causing me a little worry. Hope you have a great day!
If you've read this far, thanks! Please reblog this if this sort of thing is something you'd be interested in supporting and would like to spread the word. I don't know when I'll be ready to start a campaign, but I want more than anything to get dates for my ops, recover to the extent I can, and do it soon.
The first hour of The Magnus Protocol Kickstarter campaign has passed and it’s currently the 4 most funded campaign in the Radio & Podcasts section of Kickstarter.
Our Dr. Seward is voiced by @jonnywaistcoat of The Magnus Archives! His familiar voice bring so much heart to the doctor we know and love - an excellent addition to our suitor squad and the show itself!
This is clearly the moment to link this Twitch clip I saved hoping for this specific occasion:Â https://www.twitch.tv/jonnywaistcoat/clip/BraveJoyousGrassStinkyCheese-jvhFRK4twE50VaMh?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time
(This is Jonny actually pondering a full-cast Dracula Daily adaptation - way back in the spring of 2022!)
