Dear DJ 2018
Apr. 12th, 2018 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morbaneDear potential writers/artists/recorders - sorry for the delay! I look forward to any gifts. Thanks for reading.
General Likes
Prompts for All Moments Leading to This - Lucid 3 (Song)
Prompts for The Chain - Fleetwood Mac (Song)
Prompts for Glorious Dawn ft. Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking - John Boswell (Song)
Prompts for Gold Dust Woman - Fleetwood Mac (Song)
Prompts for Instinct - Crowded House (Song)
Prompts for Kemp Owyne (Traditional Song)
Prompts for Outlook for Thursday - DD Smash (Music Video)
Prompts for Stranger Song - Leonard Cohen (Song)
Prompts for Yellow Flicker Beat - Lorde (Song)
Prompts for Der Zwerg | The Dwarf - Franz Schubert (Song)
Do-Not-Wants: amnesia, graphic harm to hands, substance abuse/addiction.
Likes:
I love original characters and worldbuilding - and this exchange is wonderful for those. You are welcome to write/draw/record work about any combinations of genders.
Fanfic
I like uplifting and hopeful messages, and protagonists who champion them. I also like genuinely terrible characters and tragic arcs, and villains with strong motivations and critiques of the protagonists' goals. Characters are welcome in any shade of grey. I particularly like seeing competence and loyalty.
I love mentors and protegé(e) relationships, and relationships between characters who are juggling multiple identities. I love seeing the relationship between two characters at one point in time, and then seeing it again when the relationship is very different. I'm just as interested in break-ups as get-togethers. I like Big Damn Hero moments, and also days in the life, or stories about people who are just trying to make it by in a weird world. I really like the trope whereby everyone's the protagonist of their own story, even if they may not appear to be at the centre of the most exciting or meaningful events that are happening.
I love emotional intimacy whether or not it comes with physical intimacy. For porn, I love xeno, voyeurism, dubcon, noncon, telepathy, praise kink, and awkward-but-not-emotionally-disastrous sex; intense oh-god-I-can't-believe-it's-so-good sex; gentle and loving sex.
I love it when authors incorporate something about which they have specialized knowledge, however mundane that thing is.
I love magical realism, dramatic weather, trains, telepathy, and dragons. I like puns and absurdity and banter.
You're welcome to write in past or present tense, and in first, second, or third person. Epistolary and found-media formats are welcome.
Fanart
I really love highly stylised designs in art - geometric patterns, decorative patterns, fancy borders and framings. I like skylines and a sense of distance. I love being able to get a sense of weather from a scene. I love costume details, or character studies done through faces or poses.
I like jewel tones and earth tones and grays best of all. I am less keen on Lisa Frank-esque bright rainbow palettes.
My fic likes also apply here, where relevant (ie for porn preferences and character dynamics).
I don't ask for art as often as I ask for fic, and I am also not an artist. So I apologise if these aren't very helpful notes, and I hope the individual prompts are more helpful.
Podfic
I'm sorry, I really don't know how to prompt for podfic. I'm excited to possibly receive it for Glorious Dawn or Outlook for Thursday, but I must trust to your judgement and skill in deciding what to make and how.
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanart, Fanfic
Put a wish on a whistling gale for the day ahead
All moments leading to this
I say a prayer for our success and blow it into a kiss
I love the sense of hope and purpose in this song, the sense of outwardly ordinary but inwardly significant change, the sense that decisions have come to fruition. I also get a sense of peace and comfort from the way the narrator is enthralled by the sky and seasons - it's the sense of steadiness and calm that comes from thinking about order and beauty in something so much larger than one's own decisions and problems.
I also love that whatever the narrator is doing, they are doing it with their friends.
Fanart
Any interpretation of the lyrics and tone is welcome! If you want prompts, though, what I specifically imagined when I prompted it is something that conveys the relationship between the narrator & friends and their landscape/journey. A road leading away from a city at sunset. A group of silhouetted figures looking up at the stars. A group or a person on a beach, bending down to touch the waves as they come in. That's the kind of thing I imagined, but seriously, having a piece of extra media to think of when I listen to this song would make me really happy, so do NOT feel bound by those themes specifically.
Fanfic
Write me a story of a warrior (or other person who serves others in some way) who must swear an oath; tell me about someone going back to their home town after college; make this as fantastical or as prosaic if you like. I'll love anything you write if you gesture to the kind of tone I hear in this song, of purpose and awe and community and quiet, shared strength.
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain
Fanfic
I love the slow gather and build of this song, the references to the light and weather that make everything seem bigger than the narrator, and of course the stakes and drama.
Why the ultimatum? Why this last chance? I want an answer to the questions this song raises. Some that occur to me: a fairy-tale like task whereby one lover must recognise or claim the other at a certain moment, or forever forfeit them; or, two people are forced to keep up the outward appearances of a relationship (and are thus 'chained' together) while their private feelings are a lot more complicated.
When I first heard this song, I thought that the addressee had to *break* the chain (some other loyalty or compulsion affected them) in order to love the narrator. (For example, someone pleading with their lover to break up with the lover's current partner and be with them instead.) But the lyrics 'chain, keep us together' suggests otherwise, and that 'I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain' is an accusation from the narrator that the addressee has broken their promise. Is it either of those, or something stranger, or simpler?
Something fantastical would be hugely welcome, or a study of these characters that makes them both sympathetic and flawed.
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic, Podfic
The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature
This song is a wonderful tribute and a wonderful collection of concepts and I find it very moving. RIP, Sagan; RIP, Hawking. I'm interested in either of two kinds of science fiction: fictional treatments of real past and present scientific thought and discoveries, especially centred on astronomy or linguistics, OR speculation (as tropy or serious as you like) about our near future and our next explorations.
Fanfic
Tell me about a scientist or thinker who fascinates you; flesh out their contexts and method and aims. Or tell me about visiting other worlds, seeing that 'dawn', ways in which humanity's destruction may be averted. It's a song that balances hope and danger; glimpses of downfall and failure are fine, but I'd like an overall sense of hope, or bittersweetness at worst.
Podfic
Because this is autotuned & remixed from speech clips, an audio treatment seemed particularly apropos. Happy to receive a performance of a story inspired by the above prompts, but also, maybe a speech from a leader of a new space colony, or the report of new, fictional scientific discovery? Or however you want to play with a spoken medium and the themes of this song.
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
Heartless challenge
Pick your path and I'll pray
Fanfic
OK, so I'd be down for something mundane and bitter and jealous and passionate - I can't tell if "did she make you cry" is sympathetic or gloating, and maybe it's both. The song could be full of terrible people, or at least include a person who projects their own issues onto others. (Though, no drugs please.)
And I'd also love a fantasy epic that foregrounds a clash between a reign and a romance. One thing this makes me imagine is a deposed queen who has survived and is on a quest to regain her throne, and has fallen in with some traders-cum-bandits, preferably led by a woman. After initial loathing, each gains the grudging respect of the other! Sparks fly!
Can the pale, lethal dragon-woman love someone and hold onto her power?
Ancient queen makes me imagine a reincarnation subplot... or perhaps the gold dust woman is indeed inhuman. I mean, she could be a shapeshifting dragon. The option's there.
Please don't feel bound by these very specific prompts. The only things I really, really want are a sense of strong emotion and high stakes.
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
And I'm hanging by a single stitch
Laughing at the stony face of gloom
Fanfic
The familiar refrain: this song includes that combination of ominousness and hope that I find irresistible. Your interpretation, please! I'd equally love something purely mundane, something highly fantastical, or some kind of blend.
Maybe this is a song about a monster hunter: low fantasy, urban fantasy, modern magical realism, or a hunter of metaphorical monsters (white-collar non-victimless crime, for example)?
Maybe this is a song about a monster hunter who falls in love with the monster he (or she, but singer's voice biases me slightly to he) is hunting, oh noes, but I'd like it to work out happily!
Maybe this is a dark/realistic song about falling in love with someone who's bad for you but having the perception, and support, to break out of that pattern and break away.
This is a great song for looking at an individual line and figuring out how to make it make literal sense. What's with the light/fire metaphors?
Back to top
YouTube (merely one of many versions; the tunes vary)
Lyrics
Fanfic
“It's from this rock I'll never rise,
No man on earth shall set me free
Till Kemp Owen, the king's own son
Shall climb the craig and thrice kiss me.”
I've requested this once or twice in the Once Upon a Fic exchange (![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
once_upon_fic) and it only just occurred to me I could ask for this here, too! So here goes. Dragons and heroes and sorceresses, oh my!
Fanfic
I'm especially drawn to the paradox of a fearsome dragon, created by an evil spell, but not evil in her own nature, and to the difficulty and specificity of the stepmother's condition for breaking the spell. Most importantly: how does Isobel convince Kemp Owyne to save her?
In some versions, she bribes him with fabulous treasures - where did she get them? How does he feel about being bribed? Why does he trust her to take the bribes? Their combat/courtship is really fascinating to me.
And of course, why did the stepmother curse Isobel? The line about all her sorrows lying with Isobel is fascinating - is Isobel some kind of magical scapegoat? And what happens to the stepmother in the end?
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic, Podfic
Tell me where a weatherman should start
When he's miles from his sunshine...
Impulse in requesting this video: 50% fascination with the song and video, and 50% an urge to share this piece of Kiwiana / New Zealand Gothic with more people.
You're welcome to focus on the song and only hint at the video. Though, for me, the video suffuses the song with both absurdity and paranoia. I don't have good questions, just "what?" and "why?"
Fanfic
Is this just a song about a weather reporter (and their love life)? Is there a hint of magical realism? Is something really bad or good going to happen on Thursday (after we get through Wednesday)? The chorus and Your guess is as good as mine is so charming and weird and relatable as a juxtaposition against the jargon of future calculations based on all available data. And as well as charming it's oddly ecstatic, cathartic to me. Maybe Thursday will be incredible.
Podfic
This seems like a good one for podfic since it's based on the concept of a weather reporter/announcement - maybe do something with that? I also think it'd be fun to design a response to this that is essentially a deadpan narration of the music video, explaining it however you like.
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanart
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there's a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
Fanart
This song has such amazing, vivid, enthralling images - I would love to see your interpretations. An illustration of any of the images would be great and so would anything that captures the sense I get of uncertainty and wariness and also hope.
Specific prompts:
-That meeting on the shore under the bridge - perhaps from a distance? I kind of imagine two people dwarfed by their landscape, and maybe by construction equipment, depending on how you interpret 'that they are building'. In the song, I love the idea of a physical landscape that is just as nascent, inchoate, as the time of tomorrow - I have NO idea how you'd represent that visually, but I mention it in case that sparks useful ideas.
-The highway curling up like smoke, or trying the handle of the road - any interpretation, but maybe a figure in the centre of a picture with roads (rivers, train lines) stretching away in all directions from them like the rays of a star?
-The Dealer/Narrator/you/Stranger as Tarot card figure in the style of your favourite Tarot deck - lots of different ways to interpret this, as I have already seen, and more would be lovely!
-A still life of a table with cards, a train schedule, and whatever else seems suitable to you - possibly other, odder things, like a golden cyborg hand or an imagined secret chart of hearts/roads/the past and future.
-'reaching for the sky just to surrender'
-A departure or arrival scene at a train platform.
-The burden of dreams.
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
My blood is a flood of rubies, precious stones
It keeps my veins hot, the fire's found a home in me
Fanfic
I'd love for someone to dig into all these images and allusions and hints! It doesn't have to be sci-fi or fantasy, but that's what I imagine: a princess questing through nightmares for a year; an android created to guard her people, now in rebellion against their leaders; whatever the person or being is that has 'smoother than storm' as a meaningful reference point. Please make one or two of these metaphors literal in some way - that would be amazing.
Is the comment about locking people up a threat, or a statement of fact? Have they already begun? And what are the consequences?
Back to top
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
"It is true I will hate myself forever
for having bestowed death on you with my own hand;
but now, pale, you must go to your early grave."
Fanfic
I'm not usually drawn to tragedies, but this scene in the boat gives me so many questions and fascinates me. Centrally: why must she die? I think ideally it would be more than an apparent murder-suicide that both of the parties are somehow convinced is necessary... but I could be sold on the awful, awful drama of that too. Does fate truly command them?
I assume the song is glossing over/romanticising the idea of strangulation, but maybe the dwarf has the gift of imparting painless death - and it's a previous use of this gift that has brought them to this point?
What part did the king play?
If this is the price the queen must pay, what crimes did she commit - or is this a sacrifice with which she buys something dear?
Back to top
General Likes
Prompts for All Moments Leading to This - Lucid 3 (Song)
Prompts for The Chain - Fleetwood Mac (Song)
Prompts for Glorious Dawn ft. Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking - John Boswell (Song)
Prompts for Gold Dust Woman - Fleetwood Mac (Song)
Prompts for Instinct - Crowded House (Song)
Prompts for Kemp Owyne (Traditional Song)
Prompts for Outlook for Thursday - DD Smash (Music Video)
Prompts for Stranger Song - Leonard Cohen (Song)
Prompts for Yellow Flicker Beat - Lorde (Song)
Prompts for Der Zwerg | The Dwarf - Franz Schubert (Song)
General Likes
Do-Not-Wants: amnesia, graphic harm to hands, substance abuse/addiction.
Likes:
I love original characters and worldbuilding - and this exchange is wonderful for those. You are welcome to write/draw/record work about any combinations of genders.
Fanfic
I like uplifting and hopeful messages, and protagonists who champion them. I also like genuinely terrible characters and tragic arcs, and villains with strong motivations and critiques of the protagonists' goals. Characters are welcome in any shade of grey. I particularly like seeing competence and loyalty.
I love mentors and protegé(e) relationships, and relationships between characters who are juggling multiple identities. I love seeing the relationship between two characters at one point in time, and then seeing it again when the relationship is very different. I'm just as interested in break-ups as get-togethers. I like Big Damn Hero moments, and also days in the life, or stories about people who are just trying to make it by in a weird world. I really like the trope whereby everyone's the protagonist of their own story, even if they may not appear to be at the centre of the most exciting or meaningful events that are happening.
I love emotional intimacy whether or not it comes with physical intimacy. For porn, I love xeno, voyeurism, dubcon, noncon, telepathy, praise kink, and awkward-but-not-emotionally-disastrous sex; intense oh-god-I-can't-believe-it's-so-good sex; gentle and loving sex.
I love it when authors incorporate something about which they have specialized knowledge, however mundane that thing is.
I love magical realism, dramatic weather, trains, telepathy, and dragons. I like puns and absurdity and banter.
You're welcome to write in past or present tense, and in first, second, or third person. Epistolary and found-media formats are welcome.
Fanart
I really love highly stylised designs in art - geometric patterns, decorative patterns, fancy borders and framings. I like skylines and a sense of distance. I love being able to get a sense of weather from a scene. I love costume details, or character studies done through faces or poses.
I like jewel tones and earth tones and grays best of all. I am less keen on Lisa Frank-esque bright rainbow palettes.
My fic likes also apply here, where relevant (ie for porn preferences and character dynamics).
I don't ask for art as often as I ask for fic, and I am also not an artist. So I apologise if these aren't very helpful notes, and I hope the individual prompts are more helpful.
Podfic
I'm sorry, I really don't know how to prompt for podfic. I'm excited to possibly receive it for Glorious Dawn or Outlook for Thursday, but I must trust to your judgement and skill in deciding what to make and how.
All Moments Leading to This - Lucid 3 (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanart, Fanfic
Put a wish on a whistling gale for the day ahead
All moments leading to this
I say a prayer for our success and blow it into a kiss
I love the sense of hope and purpose in this song, the sense of outwardly ordinary but inwardly significant change, the sense that decisions have come to fruition. I also get a sense of peace and comfort from the way the narrator is enthralled by the sky and seasons - it's the sense of steadiness and calm that comes from thinking about order and beauty in something so much larger than one's own decisions and problems.
I also love that whatever the narrator is doing, they are doing it with their friends.
Fanart
Any interpretation of the lyrics and tone is welcome! If you want prompts, though, what I specifically imagined when I prompted it is something that conveys the relationship between the narrator & friends and their landscape/journey. A road leading away from a city at sunset. A group of silhouetted figures looking up at the stars. A group or a person on a beach, bending down to touch the waves as they come in. That's the kind of thing I imagined, but seriously, having a piece of extra media to think of when I listen to this song would make me really happy, so do NOT feel bound by those themes specifically.
Fanfic
Write me a story of a warrior (or other person who serves others in some way) who must swear an oath; tell me about someone going back to their home town after college; make this as fantastical or as prosaic if you like. I'll love anything you write if you gesture to the kind of tone I hear in this song, of purpose and awe and community and quiet, shared strength.
Back to top
The Chain - Fleetwood Mac (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
And if you don't love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain
Fanfic
I love the slow gather and build of this song, the references to the light and weather that make everything seem bigger than the narrator, and of course the stakes and drama.
Why the ultimatum? Why this last chance? I want an answer to the questions this song raises. Some that occur to me: a fairy-tale like task whereby one lover must recognise or claim the other at a certain moment, or forever forfeit them; or, two people are forced to keep up the outward appearances of a relationship (and are thus 'chained' together) while their private feelings are a lot more complicated.
When I first heard this song, I thought that the addressee had to *break* the chain (some other loyalty or compulsion affected them) in order to love the narrator. (For example, someone pleading with their lover to break up with the lover's current partner and be with them instead.) But the lyrics 'chain, keep us together' suggests otherwise, and that 'I can still hear you saying you would never break the chain' is an accusation from the narrator that the addressee has broken their promise. Is it either of those, or something stranger, or simpler?
Something fantastical would be hugely welcome, or a study of these characters that makes them both sympathetic and flawed.
Back to top
Glorious Dawn ft. Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking - John Boswell (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic, Podfic
The cosmos is full beyond measure of elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome machinery of nature
This song is a wonderful tribute and a wonderful collection of concepts and I find it very moving. RIP, Sagan; RIP, Hawking. I'm interested in either of two kinds of science fiction: fictional treatments of real past and present scientific thought and discoveries, especially centred on astronomy or linguistics, OR speculation (as tropy or serious as you like) about our near future and our next explorations.
Fanfic
Tell me about a scientist or thinker who fascinates you; flesh out their contexts and method and aims. Or tell me about visiting other worlds, seeing that 'dawn', ways in which humanity's destruction may be averted. It's a song that balances hope and danger; glimpses of downfall and failure are fine, but I'd like an overall sense of hope, or bittersweetness at worst.
Podfic
Because this is autotuned & remixed from speech clips, an audio treatment seemed particularly apropos. Happy to receive a performance of a story inspired by the above prompts, but also, maybe a speech from a leader of a new space colony, or the report of new, fictional scientific discovery? Or however you want to play with a spoken medium and the themes of this song.
Back to top
Gold Dust Woman - Fleetwood Mac (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
Heartless challenge
Pick your path and I'll pray
Fanfic
OK, so I'd be down for something mundane and bitter and jealous and passionate - I can't tell if "did she make you cry" is sympathetic or gloating, and maybe it's both. The song could be full of terrible people, or at least include a person who projects their own issues onto others. (Though, no drugs please.)
And I'd also love a fantasy epic that foregrounds a clash between a reign and a romance. One thing this makes me imagine is a deposed queen who has survived and is on a quest to regain her throne, and has fallen in with some traders-cum-bandits, preferably led by a woman. After initial loathing, each gains the grudging respect of the other! Sparks fly!
Can the pale, lethal dragon-woman love someone and hold onto her power?
Ancient queen makes me imagine a reincarnation subplot... or perhaps the gold dust woman is indeed inhuman. I mean, she could be a shapeshifting dragon. The option's there.
Please don't feel bound by these very specific prompts. The only things I really, really want are a sense of strong emotion and high stakes.
Back to top
Instinct - Crowded House (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
And I'm hanging by a single stitch
Laughing at the stony face of gloom
Fanfic
The familiar refrain: this song includes that combination of ominousness and hope that I find irresistible. Your interpretation, please! I'd equally love something purely mundane, something highly fantastical, or some kind of blend.
Maybe this is a song about a monster hunter: low fantasy, urban fantasy, modern magical realism, or a hunter of metaphorical monsters (white-collar non-victimless crime, for example)?
Maybe this is a song about a monster hunter who falls in love with the monster he (or she, but singer's voice biases me slightly to he) is hunting, oh noes, but I'd like it to work out happily!
Maybe this is a dark/realistic song about falling in love with someone who's bad for you but having the perception, and support, to break out of that pattern and break away.
This is a great song for looking at an individual line and figuring out how to make it make literal sense. What's with the light/fire metaphors?
Back to top
Kemp Owyne (Traditional Song)
YouTube (merely one of many versions; the tunes vary)
Lyrics
Fanfic
“It's from this rock I'll never rise,
No man on earth shall set me free
Till Kemp Owen, the king's own son
Shall climb the craig and thrice kiss me.”
I've requested this once or twice in the Once Upon a Fic exchange (
once_upon_fic) and it only just occurred to me I could ask for this here, too! So here goes. Dragons and heroes and sorceresses, oh my!Fanfic
I'm especially drawn to the paradox of a fearsome dragon, created by an evil spell, but not evil in her own nature, and to the difficulty and specificity of the stepmother's condition for breaking the spell. Most importantly: how does Isobel convince Kemp Owyne to save her?
In some versions, she bribes him with fabulous treasures - where did she get them? How does he feel about being bribed? Why does he trust her to take the bribes? Their combat/courtship is really fascinating to me.
And of course, why did the stepmother curse Isobel? The line about all her sorrows lying with Isobel is fascinating - is Isobel some kind of magical scapegoat? And what happens to the stepmother in the end?
Back to top
Outlook for Thursday - DD Smash (Music Video)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic, Podfic
Tell me where a weatherman should start
When he's miles from his sunshine...
Impulse in requesting this video: 50% fascination with the song and video, and 50% an urge to share this piece of Kiwiana / New Zealand Gothic with more people.
You're welcome to focus on the song and only hint at the video. Though, for me, the video suffuses the song with both absurdity and paranoia. I don't have good questions, just "what?" and "why?"
Fanfic
Is this just a song about a weather reporter (and their love life)? Is there a hint of magical realism? Is something really bad or good going to happen on Thursday (after we get through Wednesday)? The chorus and Your guess is as good as mine is so charming and weird and relatable as a juxtaposition against the jargon of future calculations based on all available data. And as well as charming it's oddly ecstatic, cathartic to me. Maybe Thursday will be incredible.
Podfic
This seems like a good one for podfic since it's based on the concept of a weather reporter/announcement - maybe do something with that? I also think it'd be fun to design a response to this that is essentially a deadpan narration of the music video, explaining it however you like.
Back to top
Stranger Song - Leonard Cohen (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanart
And while he talks his dreams to sleep
you notice there's a highway
that is curling up like smoke above his shoulder.
Fanart
This song has such amazing, vivid, enthralling images - I would love to see your interpretations. An illustration of any of the images would be great and so would anything that captures the sense I get of uncertainty and wariness and also hope.
Specific prompts:
-That meeting on the shore under the bridge - perhaps from a distance? I kind of imagine two people dwarfed by their landscape, and maybe by construction equipment, depending on how you interpret 'that they are building'. In the song, I love the idea of a physical landscape that is just as nascent, inchoate, as the time of tomorrow - I have NO idea how you'd represent that visually, but I mention it in case that sparks useful ideas.
-The highway curling up like smoke, or trying the handle of the road - any interpretation, but maybe a figure in the centre of a picture with roads (rivers, train lines) stretching away in all directions from them like the rays of a star?
-The Dealer/Narrator/you/Stranger as Tarot card figure in the style of your favourite Tarot deck - lots of different ways to interpret this, as I have already seen, and more would be lovely!
-A still life of a table with cards, a train schedule, and whatever else seems suitable to you - possibly other, odder things, like a golden cyborg hand or an imagined secret chart of hearts/roads/the past and future.
-'reaching for the sky just to surrender'
-A departure or arrival scene at a train platform.
-The burden of dreams.
Back to top
Yellow Flicker Beat - Lorde (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
My blood is a flood of rubies, precious stones
It keeps my veins hot, the fire's found a home in me
Fanfic
I'd love for someone to dig into all these images and allusions and hints! It doesn't have to be sci-fi or fantasy, but that's what I imagine: a princess questing through nightmares for a year; an android created to guard her people, now in rebellion against their leaders; whatever the person or being is that has 'smoother than storm' as a meaningful reference point. Please make one or two of these metaphors literal in some way - that would be amazing.
Is the comment about locking people up a threat, or a statement of fact? Have they already begun? And what are the consequences?
Back to top
Der Zwerg | The Dwarf - Franz Schubert (Song)
YouTube
Lyrics
Fanfic
"It is true I will hate myself forever
for having bestowed death on you with my own hand;
but now, pale, you must go to your early grave."
Fanfic
I'm not usually drawn to tragedies, but this scene in the boat gives me so many questions and fascinates me. Centrally: why must she die? I think ideally it would be more than an apparent murder-suicide that both of the parties are somehow convinced is necessary... but I could be sold on the awful, awful drama of that too. Does fate truly command them?
I assume the song is glossing over/romanticising the idea of strangulation, but maybe the dwarf has the gift of imparting painless death - and it's a previous use of this gift that has brought them to this point?
What part did the king play?
If this is the price the queen must pay, what crimes did she commit - or is this a sacrifice with which she buys something dear?
Back to top
