#but ALSO no version of the changes actually preserve the rhyme scheme of the original like they put an internal rhyme in the new line

[dashiellqvverty]

will never forget watching the disney+ howard ashman documentary which includes his famous talk about how animation is the only way to truly adapt a broadway-style musical to the screen, then ends with a bunch of clips from the live action remakes talking about how his legacy is still living on or whatever. like no actually you are directly shitting on it hope this helps <3

[maggiecheungs]

Sending off Xin Jian at Furong Tower by Wang Changling

(my translation; original and my notes under the cut)

Cold rains flood the river as night comes to Wu;

We part ways at dawn in the mountains of Chu

Tell my kin in Luoyang—should inquiries be made—

Of my heart, pure as ice, in its cradle of jade

...

王昌龄 《芙蓉楼送辛渐》

寒 雨 连 江 夜 入 吴 ，

平 明 送 客 楚 山 孤 。

洛 阳 亲 友 如 相 问 ，

一 片 冰 心 在 玉 壶。

notes:

this poem is written in regluated verse rather than ancient style verse (meaning it has a fixed rhyme scheme and tonal pattern) so i decided to translate it with rhyme and metre to try and preserve the musicality of the original

the first line might also be translated as "the night you came to wu" but that didn't fit with my metre, so i went with the version you see above

"part ways" is my translation of 送, which is difficult to translate concisely as we don't really have an english equivalent (送 means to accompany someone for the first stretch of their journey when they leave). basically, the context of the poem is: his friend xin jian is returning to the capital city of luoyang, where the poet's family lives, but he's an official and needs to stay alone in wu, so he can only accompany him as far as the chu mountains before sending xin jian off alone while he remains behind.

"cradle of jade": okay, so this is a metaphor for a person who is honest and uncorrupt. the word actually used here is 壺, which refers to a sort of wine jar, and at one point had ceremonial or even ritualistic connotations. i toyed with translating it as 'vessel' (partly because i loved the double interpretation of drinking vessel versus sailing vessel, which i thought meshed nicely with the river imagery at the beginning and the general theme of travel). ultimately, however, i opted for 'cradle of jade', largely because the internal rhyme is so lovely and sort of replicates the assonance of the original line. but i also wanted the positive connotations of 'cradle' to soften the image of the 'icy' heart—having a heart like ice is generally a negative descriptor in english, but the imagery of the final line is so striking and pivotal that i didn't want to alter it, so i tried to offset it instead. might change it again later! idk!

[bestworstcase]

i guess it’s still farran yells into the void about poetry hour because i’m still obsessing over the incantations except bitter snow this time. specifically the sun/moon incantations and the decay incantation, the healing incantation is the same.

(but farran, you ask, why would you change them? because LORE, that’s why)

(and also because i love to torture myself i guess)

incantations in general

the 5/5/5/6 trochaic pattern is a convention originating with the moonstone cult in aphelion. in the original aphelionese [which doesn’t really exist yet] they don’t rhyme; the ABCB rhyming scheme is something demanitus did when he translated them into his own language and then replicated when he began to create his own incantations.

there are other incantations from all over the world that follow different patterns. most of them relate to the moonstone, or more specifically to the black rocks, and in general incantations originate wherever a) black rocks break the surface and b) the people living there realize that they respond to song. sundrop incantations are much rarer, since there’s only one sundrop flower, and are mostly found in regions and cultures with a significant underground presence—i.e., where people are more likely to come into contact with the sundrop’s roots.

if i ever get so deep in this that i start writing other incantations please kill me  

the moonstone incantations

for the purposes of bitter snow these are the “original” incantations. i’m not sure they’re the oldest but they’re quite old and they have the distinction of being the only incantations crafted by people who had immediate, direct access to the power being invoked. most incantations, as i said, developed out of interaction between people and the roots of one of the drops, with only an indirect connection to the drops themselves; the aphelionese incantations, by contrast, developed out of the cult’s understanding of what the moonstone actually does, and directly invokes its power. so they’re much more potent.

anyway.

the decay incantation

opal in the dark grant the night to me let the shadows burn and set the spirit free

wither and decay end this destiny break these earthly chains and set the spirit free

in bitter snow lore, the purpose of the moonstone is to control the “shadows” of the sundrop’s power, which it accomplishes by transforming them into the black rocks. these shadows are the natural opposite of the sundrop, so they’re associated with darkness, destruction, corruption, and rot. 

so the literal function of this incantation is to release the sundrop’s shadows from the inert stone form and place them under the caster’s control. (as i’m sure you can imagine, this is catastrophic when it goes wrong.) if the first verse is recited by itself it invokes the sundrop instead—this is unintended and also catastrophic. in either case it’s volatile magic. 

the moon incantation

i outright rewrote this one for bitter snow, not because the original is bad, but because the original is very tailored to cassandra’s usage of it in cassandra’s revenge and i wanted something more in line with my lore. 

crescent high above watching from the skies set the stars ablaze and by your light i’ll rise

let me shake the seas wake me from my lies lend to me your wings and by your light i’ll rise

unlike the decay incantation, this one is calling upon the moonstone’s own power, which is associated with change, transformation, and movement. so it begins with an invocation to the moon and focuses on characteristics associated with the moon (the appearance of stars; the movement of tides; clarity of thought*, light, rising and flight).

(*this is an inversion of the irl folklore associating the moon with madness; in aphelion, with its cultural admiration of the moon, it makes sense to me that the moon would still have folkloric links to the mind but in a positive way. i think the underlying logic here is that it’s easiest to see clearly at night if the moon is full, therefore the association becomes moonlight = clarity.)

it’s also very much a prayer. in canon the sun/moon incantations grant whoever possesses the drops complete control over their power, but i don’t think that is remotely the intention for this incantation in the bitter snow ’verse; the people who crafted it were people who worshipped the moon and the moonstone, and the basic idea here is “loan me your power so i can edify you with it.” possession of the moonstone is irrelevant. even proximity to the moonstone is irrelevant as long as the caster has some preexisting connection to it i.e. the kind of link created by worshipping it. 

of course, for both of these incantations, the closer you are to the moonstone on a... spiritual? level, the more potent its effect will be. e.g., members of the brotherhood would get a much stronger kick from using the moon incantation than your average aphelionese farmer with no special connection to the moonstone, and for someone like cass—who becomes its avatar—the incantation is essentially god mode. likewise, the bigger the kick the harder the crash, so our farmer might feel a bit tired once it ebbs but the brotherhood member would be need a few days to recover and cass is just laid out after.

 the sundrop incantations

these incantations are the ones demanitus wrote for the sundrop based on his understanding of the aphelionese moonstone cult and their incantations. they’re modeled off the aphelionese incantations, but they lack the religious context because demanitus focused on the power of the drops and wasn’t especially interested in the worship aspect. 

the healing incantation

this is the only incantation in bitter snow that’s 100% untouched canon.

flower, gleam and glow let your power shine make the clock reverse bring back what once was mine

heal what has been hurt change the fates’ design save what has been lost bring back what once was mine

demanitus wrote this one first. i sort of imagine him attempting a direct, literal reverse of the decay incantation but eventually giving up in frustration because, unlike the decay incantation, he could never get it to work at range. 

the reason for this is that the decay incantation unleashes the shadows, which are everywhere—literally, they are at the core of the world, the black rocks spread across the whole globe, and the metaphorical “light” of the sundrop’s magic is always creating more—whereas the healing incantation calls on the sundrop’s magic directly and without any preexisting connection with the caster, its magic cannot be drawn from a distance. 

i think a devout priest of corona’s sun cult could have used this incantation at range before frederic uprooted the sundrop, but being eaten and then inhabiting rapunzel sort of... scrambled everything. however, i don’t think demanitus and the sun cult got on very well [because he didn’t care about the religious aspect at all] so he never shared his incantations with them.

gothel did use this incantation from a distance, because her familiarity with and regular use of the sundrop flower created that preexisting connection that is required. however, the effect is weaker from farther away—it’s like heat from a fire where closer = warmer—so in bitter snow, gothel’s regular use of the incantation at range was a matter of daily maintenance, preserving her health and allowing her to age normally, while she made trips to the flower itself to de-age herself every half a century or so.

in the bitter snow ’verse, the sundrop flower was found and uprooted a week before rapunzel’s birth, and then there’s a six month gap between her birth and gothel’s kidnapping. i think gothel goes about three months without realizing that her daily recitation isn’t... working anymore—i picture her cutting herself chopping vegetables or something and trying the incantation and then being like “...fuck” when it doesn’t heal—and then it takes her another three months to figure out what happened and plan her infiltration of the palace. 

in bitter snow, the sundrop being uprooted and then absorbed into baby rapunzel damaged it. to return to the light source metaphor: the magic of the intact sundrop is the light from an electric lamp—steady, bright, casting a regular and predictable shadow—but after the flower is uprooted, the sundrop���s roots stay in the ground while its magic ends up in rapunzel’s hair, and the magic channeled through her hair is more like the light of a candle flame—fragile, dim, casting a flickering and unpredictable shadow.

the sun incantation

the canonical sun incantation worked with the bitter snow lore better than the moon one did; however, since demanitus modeled his sun incantation on the aphelionese moonstone incantation, i wanted the sun incantation to more directly mirror my version of the moon incantation. so instead of rewriting it outright, i took the bits of the canon sun incantation that worked well for me and remixed them.

jewel of the sky blazing high and bright burn away the dark and let my hope ignite

purge my heart of fear restore my fading sight strengthen me with fire and let my hope ignite

for this one, i imagine demanitus attempting to replicate the aesthetic of the moon incantation without quite grasping its religious implications; he looks at the moon incantation and sees a poetic invocation of the moon followed by a request for power but misses how the moon incantation reflects back on and extols the moon itself, so demanitus’s sun version lacks that element of giving anything back. a command, rather than an exchange. 

this one, he considered a success, because he was able to make it work even without having found the sundrop flower itself. what he didn’t realize is that he was able to do so because of how extremely potent this incantation really is—so potent that even somebody like demanitus, who had never even seen the sundrop flower, was able to use it with noticeable effect. 

on a functional level, the purpose of the reflection back to the moon in the moon incantation is to create a whole circuit between the moon and the caster, so that all that power has somewhere to go after the incantation is finished. this sacrifices some power in exchange for making the incantation much safer to use, because the power flows through the caster. they can hold onto it for a while after completing the incantation, but it’s hard, and it requires considerable force of will to do so, because the magic wants to complete the circle by flowing out of the caster and back to the moon. 

demanitus’s sun incantation, by comparison, creates a straight line: power flows from the sun and into the caster, who then becomes a vessel for it. with this incantation, the magic gets dammed up inside the caster, which is what makes it so potent, but it also wants to stay there, and must be forcefully pushed back the way it came when the incantation is finished. and that’s dangerous, because it’s simply too much power for a human body to contain. this is why the sun incantation takes such a severe physical toll on its casters (unless they’re like demanitus, have no other link to the sundrop, and are getting only a tiny fraction of the potential output).

[tunesof1982]

37. Crimson and Clover - Joan Jett

Over and over~

Released: 1982 Song history: The original single was written and performed by Tommy James and the Shondells, released in 1968, and ended up a giant #1 hit (including in Canada). Joan Jett covered it in 1982 for her album I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, and it was also a pretty big hit. Highest chart position in Canada: #4 Fun fact: All five of Jett’s singles from 1982-1983 are covers.

My take: Another Joan Jett, another cover. What else is new?

The difference here is that--and it may get me shot for saying it--I don’t like the original. Yeah, it’s a classic, whatever. The panning is terrible, the vocals are weak, the sound is extremely late ‘60s in a bad way, and there’s zero energy. There are certainly parts of it that have promise, but they’re buried in the terrible mix (fun fact: after a radio station leaked it, the rough mix was released as the single--some things never change!). But while I can appreciate it, I don’t personally enjoy it.

So in light of that, Jett’s cover stands out in a good way. The weaknesses of the original highlight the considerable strengths of her version. Nearly all of Jett’s changes are good ones. The production is a lot better, with the instruments sounding much clearer. This is a straight rock’n’roll cover, stripping away all the psychedelia of the original and layering on the guitars and the self-harmonies. Those guitars, in turn, imbue the track with a slow-burn energy that’s quite nice. And I like what she does with the various parts of the song--it’s like telling the same story, but in a different order. The instrumental parts are interspersed with the verses, and the “crimson and clover, over and over” bit forms the end of the song. It’s also much shorter. While the original clocks in at a ponderous 5:35, this one chops off two minutes and sounds more complete.

It’s the part that she didn’t change, though, that’s the most interesting to me: the pronouns. Of course, the use of “her” is essential to the rhyme scheme, so it’s more practical, but it's also more appealing to me as somebody who’s missing lesbian love songs in her life. In a way, this is another change--the meaning becomes different when delivered by a female singer. And as for the singing, Joan Jett is inarguably a much better vocalist than Tommy James. She also benefits from the improved production, so that all the nuances in her voice can be clearly heard. And she sounds like she means it. Her vocals are infused with a raw wanting that takes the sweet, platonic late-’60s energy of the original and turns it into something passionate. It’s a bit like the first time I heard Nina Simone sing “Feeling Good.” I had heard that song my whole life, but I didn’t truly get the lyrics until I heard how Simone phrased them. That’s what Jett does to “Crimson and Clover,” and I appreciate the change.

My only problem--and it’s a glaring one indeed--is the way they decided to interpret the background vocals. The original, for all its whacked-out over-the-top ‘60s psychedelicness, actually has these rather subtle, soft background vocals. They’re not good, per se, but they don’t distract. The cover, meanwhile, decided that these needed to be turned up to 11. So instead, you get a friggin’ male choir chiming in during the second verse, a terrible chorus of “ba-dah-ba-dah-ba-dah”s that overwhelms the entire mix. That element alone is cause for deduction of two points. I didn’t listen to this song very much in advance of this review, because all I could hear is those terrible background vocals. I’m also meh on the melody of the song, an element that by default has to be preserved. 

My rating: 7/10. A pretty well-done cover of a song that is just meh to me.