maybe they'll kiss

dan simmons, the terror (2007) // a mercy, the terror (2018) // rubens, ecce homo, (1612),

richard rohr, falling upward: a spirituality for the two halves of life (2011) //the c, the c, the open c, the terror (2018) // caravaggio, the incredulity of saint thomas, (1601),

dorothy lee, the symbolic narratives of the fourth gospel (1994) // the c, the c, the open c, the terror (2018) // juan de juanes, the last supper, (1555-1562),

like, what other song can make that claim?

The crowd cheering after the first stanza when they realize what they’re all doing

So many people audibly ‘doing the guitar parts’… like ya do

The sheer number of voices joining the rediculous falsetto (thanks, Roger)

How they all start jumping at the ramp-up “so you think you can stomp me”

There’s good reason why, nearly fifty years after the height of their career, Queen is still considered one of the best bands of all time ever.

Okay. You’re back? Welcome back. Unless you’re a trained singer, you probably can’t do it. There are too many long notes, too many key changes, and too many places where–if you’re singing all the parts–you’re just up and down the scale too damned fast. I’m saying this as a trained singer and I can’t do it. I always crack on “magnifico” and “leave me to die,” and I have a pretty decent range, but I know I sound ugly as hell on that final coda.

Okay. Now that we’ve established that, I want to talk a little about singing as a chorus. One of the things a lot of people learned during the pandemic is how hard it is to take twenty people, all in different places, and stitch them together to make a single coherent song with perfect pitch and timing. You’re all practicing on slightly your own tempo, slightly your own key, even if you’re all working from the same base track. (You can see this in a lot of the Wellerman compilations from Tiktok, where someone always says “Soon” a moment before everyone else on “soon may the Wellerman come.”) When you have a chorus comprised of many smaller choruses that are all traveling to be together, this is what dress rehearsal is for–to get all of you onto the same tempo so you’re starting and finishing at exactly the same time. This is a thing that normally only happens after at least several days of practice, and it is an important skill that must be taught. You’re not just born knowing how to do this.

I do not know how many people at that Green Day concert were trained singers. But I do know there is no way in hell all few thousand of them were a single group–they showed up a few at a time, maybe even flying solo for the night. Now go and listen to the video again. Listen to the ends of verses and the pickups. They’re fucking crisp as hell. Everyone is starting and ending at the same place. Not even a single note off. (And yes, you can hear when it’s a single note off, even in a crowd that big. A handful of people would be enough to throw it off.) And while a few in the crowd may be off-key, so many more are on-key that the cumulative effect is of the song being on-key. This isn’t even the band they’re there to see.

They don’t just know this song, this technically-difficult song, this long and complex song by a completely different band. They know it perfectly. They know it down to the fucking note. They know it so well that they did it in perfect synchrony, without a single chance to practice.

The interviewer raised speculation of an on-set romance between Piggy and Tim Curry. Kermit flailed, Piggy tried to be coy and Tim frigging Curry gave the most wickedly mischievous look straight into the camera and said “Well I do love a bacon roll”

The time has come again! TERROR RAREPAIR WEEK III will take place February 7-13 2022!

Brought to you once more by @areyougonnabe and @radiojamming, this year our week of (purely optional!) prompts are themed after VICES & VIRTUES.

Thanks to the prodigious output of the fandom since the last event, our eligibility rules have changed, and now all pairings with under 100 fics in their tag are eligible. (Basically this just means that Hartving is eligible this year, but Armitozer is not.)

Beginning February 7, you can post your fills to the AO3 collection and/or on social media using the tag #TRPW22.

(5) Francis Crozier, but only ever hypothetically (“I will retire to live out my years with you,” AND “I hope I live to buy it,” AND “you don’t want to live,” AND YET “God wants you to live” (x2) – God’s will outweighs Francis’s – God “is the captain in this matter, full stop,” perhaps…)

(3) Harry Goodsir (in London, apparently: “at the Ladies Grill Room at the Holborn in London, where we live,” and the above: “I hope you live to sell your dictionary, Mr. Goodsir,” and “Don’t you also want to live?”) 

(2) James Fitzjames, “happily,” in a world “with a few less foolish people in it,” and (ideally) within that fictive-yet-real “great gilded life that didn’t humiliate [him] to live.”

(2) George Hodgson (with his aunts, in Oxfordshire; and the above “I am hungry and I want to live”)

(2) Edward Little (“you and the others will live;” “we will live.”)

(1) a rat-catcher’s daughter, in Westminster

(1) “Cornelius Hickey,” in Liverpool and Manchester 

(1) nothing in the Arctic, at least according to Sir John Ross, (“nothing lives there, nothing grows”)

(1) the dead (“cleaved from the frame that carried them, yet live”)

(1) “more geese than swans” / “more fools than wise” 

(1) William Heather (“but he lives by the minute, if you ask me”)

(1) Billy Gibson, behind the line in officers’ territory (“practically live behind that line”)

(1) Sir John Barrow, though not for much longer (“he wants [the Northwest Passage] found while he still lives”)

And, in contrast, here are all the people that are “(a)live”

(1) the crew of the Franklin Expedition, but only in a different world (“tired of one another, no doubt, but alive”) 

(1) Silna’s people (“too busy staying alive to wage a war”)

(1) Silna herself (“Do you think she’s still alive?”)