My friend’s kid gave me pinkeye and I have been on a particularly fuckt up sleep schedule about it and dreamed an entire Italian Opera on the themes of heaven and hell and the power of love and recognition of the self in other and the tragedy of loving the idea of something rather than the thing itself and the dream ended with the phrase “-And then it was banned EVERYWHERE.”
The plot starts off with a hybrid of Cinderella and the Taming Of The Shrew where a woman with her own daughter marries a Duke who has an older daughter, and then the Duke dies under “Mysterious circumstances”.
But he leaves in his will that his fortune won’t be disbursed until his daughter (the elder one) marries.
The elder daughter (like, 20ish?) is refusing to get married because her step-mother is trying to set her step-sister (age 12) with IDK A Medieval Italian supreme court judge?? (Age 65) , but the marriage can’t go through until the Duke’s fortune disburses and the mother can pay the dowry.
Other thing about the Eldest Daughter: She Always Speaks The Truth. Not only does she refuse to lie, but kind of like a retroactive Cassandra, everything she says is True. As you can imagine, this is not terribly popular In Fantasy Medieval Italian High Society.
The mother, big mad about being stuck with this stubborn, awkward girl, gets a Lawyer and a Bishop and a bunch of other authority figures to modify the will so that “Should the plague take my eldest, we will not be bereft *wink*” AKA if the eldest just dies or disappears without getting married, the mother will get the money anyway. (They all know she’s going to kill the girl, but they’re getting a cut.) The Step-Mother then, in true operatic fashion of Going Way Too Hard tortures the Elder daughter, and locks her in the basement to bleed out and die.
There, in the darkness, abandoned by God and the Law and Family etc. the daughter turns to the last thing she has left.
BLACK MAGIC
(Come on, it’s Opera. Everybody knows Black Magic)
Morning reblog with some production notes now that I actually slept a bit:
Elder Daughter’s name is Franchezza, the Demon’s name is Radrizzare.
EVERYONE is getting the most Blunt-Force Names possible. it’s funny. God The Caterer is named Dio, and his big reveal is literally “You thought I was a simple baker, but in reality, T'WAS I, DIO!!”
It’s a tragicomedy of contrasts. Memes one second, the kind of ridiculous violence that would make a Tarantino film look like a saturday morning cartoon the next.
Franchezza should be played by the deepest, roughest female voice you can find. If she sounds like the ungreased hinges to the gates of hell, that’s your girl.
Radrizarre’s Costume: -the wings should be dark and ratty but always feathered, Not bat or insect wings. Ideally, he should look like a crow that fell out of a chimney fire. -His horns should curve together and ALMOST but not quite make a complete circle, to evoke his Halo. -The rest of him is magnificently monstrous- big teeth, lots of eyes, on fire, tail, hooves, the works. -When he is in “disguise” as a pageboy on earth, he should look EXACTLY like his demonic self- tall, dark and eldritch- but wearing the medieval version of a Shitty retail uniform. Nobody Except the younger sister notices.
When Radrizzare goes to earth to see what the hell is wrong with all these humans, he finds the Stepmother deep in grief and he asks her whose grave she weeps over. They have a duet where she sings about how much she misses her stepdaughter, and the life they could have shared, while Radrizzare sings about “Yeah that doesn’t sound like Frankie at all/Oh I see you only loved the version of her you made up in your head, no wonder you killed the real one.
Franchezza may or may not actually be dead, that isn’t really all that important.
Make that Wedding cake as ridiculous as possible
B-plot with the Younger Sister being in love/good friends with the creepy Judge’s grandson, who is about her age. They serve a few functions in the play: 1. The stepmother is deliberately misleading her daughter about WHICH member of the Judge’s family she’s arranging the marriage with. 2. the younger daughter and the grandson serve as scene-change clowns, in which they come out and have absolutely absurd conversations as a pair of clueless teens to make the audience laugh while the set pieces are moved around. 3. The Grandson is going to grow up to be himbo supreme, but in the meantime he manages to get lost and ends up in hell, so he helps Franchezza out. The younger daughter is onto Radrizzare’s shit immediately and helps him out as well.
Lawyer is actually a medieval hedge fund manager, or some other bean-counting money-obsessed twit that puts profit over ethics.
Plot exposition is done by the Art Historian in a sort of Princess-Bride-Novel-Style commentary from the wings, and is played by the same actor as God.
I’m calling it ”The Truth Gets Out“ unless I think of a better title.
the ancient and noble art of Hating must remain distinct from the dogmatism of the moral crusade. hating has no greater goal. it is not about engineering change or imposing one’s will upon others. to hate is a complete act in and of itself
THINGS I AM UNREASONABLY ANNOYED ABOUT BY GAME SYSTEM
D&D: Please put a disclaimer that you are not a universal system. Every time I see someone try to do a political mystery game in D&D, I take 3d10 psychic damage and have to make a death saving throw.
Pathfinder: Look. If i wanted to play a game about fighting Cthulhu there is an extremely famous game specifically designed around doing that. Literally no-one is ever going to say “Wow, I want to play a Cthulhu themed game! Time to stat up a musical halfling from a magical fantasy land!”.
Chronicles Of Darkness: Just admit no-one uses any of your rules. You have Social Door Rules and Integrity Conditions and Corruption Levels and I bet at most 50% of COD players could tell me which of those I made up. Just admit people aren’t dressing up as Alucard The Bringer Of Shadows because they want to sit down and do calculus.
World Of Darkness: You know that old guy who’s still doing his job even though he is way too old to do it any more, but he’s now an institution so you can’t get rid of him? Like that. The 90s called and they want literally everything about this back.
Call Of Cthulhu: I appreciate the commitment to authenticity, but maybe stop hiring actual disgraced mental asylum directors from the 1920s to design your sanity system?
GURPS: Look. Look. Listen. We both know that you just want to write history textbooks. These are history textbooks with a few stat blocks begrudgingly put in. If you just give me a book on early Chinese history I will read it and go “ah, very interesting!”. You don’t need to put in a list of character choices. We’re all nerds. We’ll read them. Live your best life.
Powered By The Apocalypse: I actually can’t think of anything wrong with PBTA. That’s not a bit, this is literally the perfect system. Take notes everyone else.
Mutants and Masterminds/Heroes System: Your systems have probably the most customizable character creation in the world and you both just make reskins of the Justice League over and over again. Maybe we only need one “thinly veiled copyrighted characters” setting? You can fight over it once you decipher your combat mechanics.
FATE: Ok I won’t lie, I have no idea how the fuck FATE works. I have read the rules repeatedly and played three games and I still have no idea what invoking an aspect means. I don’t know why. I grasped the rules of fucking Nobilis but this one just psychologically eludes me. This is more a problem with me I guess, but I’m still annoyed.
Warhammer 40k: Have you considered spending less on avocado toast? Then you might be able to afford to charge less for things?
Exalted: Apart from the lore, the setting, the mechanics, the metaplot, the character creation and the dodgy narrative implications, I can’t think of anything to improve here.
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