#i’m giving myself diphthong because it’s fun

[abyssmail]

Caerul Design Notes,

because I’ve actually put a lot of thought into creating Caerul’s aesthetic and I’m lowkey really proud of it.  I won’t get into her actual character concept/personality/backstory/etc. since this got super long, but this is how/why I made the choices I did with regards to her name and visual design!

▶ Caerul’s color scheme started off way bluer (hence the name “Caerul,” from caeruleus/a/um - “blue”/“cerulean”/“azure”/“of the sky/sea” in Latin) and less saturated, but when I gave her a (dead) twin with a red theme, I wanted them to look more alike and made both of their hair purple (although I haven’t actually done more than sketch Roseus before... he’s got purple hair and red eyes).  Purple’s my favorite color, and unnatural hair colors don’t seem to be uncommon in Orth, so why not, right?   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯   The red elements in Caerul’s design are meant to represent her honoring Roseus!

All of the base colors I use when drawing Caerul! They all end up looking a bit darker once they’re shaded though.

▶ As well as shamelessly using one of my favorite Latin words (I’m a Classics major, okay ;;>~>), I also tried to pick a name that sounded similar to the ones that already exist in-universe.  This was actually fairly tricky, since as far as I can tell the names in Made in Abyss have a WIDE variety of influences.  Some of them seem passably Japanese-sounding (Riko, Jiruo, Kiyui, Nanachi) disclaimer I bring dishonor to my ancestors and know 0 Japanese so this is just about vibez, others seem Western-ish (Reg, Nat, Lyza, Prushka).  Some are fairly whimsical (Shiggy, Maruruk, Mitty) while others are more mysterious and fantastic (Any of the White Whistles besides maybe Lyza).  The only common thread I could really settle on was a general fantasy feeling to all of the names.  I tried to capture that nebulous vibe with Caerul’s name, although with something so vague and subjective it’s pretty much impossible to say if I was entirely successful.  I named her siblings afterward with other Latin color words and ended up with a RGB theme lol.

▸ By the way, “Caerul” is pronounced “KAI-rool.”  It rhymes with “Hyrule.”  The ae diphthong makes an “eye” sound in Latin #TheMoreYouKnow

▸ “Caducalae” is a portmanteau of “caducae alae,” literally “falling/doomed/futile wings” in Latin (again), playing off how pointless it is to be able to fly when the Curse of the Abyss is a thing.  Originally, they weren’t supposed to work at all outside of the Abyss, but I decided that was boring for crossovers/other verses so I scrapped it.  I’m not too happy with the name since it doesn’t fit the naming scheme of the canon relics (there is no precedent at all for gratuitous Latin in Made in Abyss, which is a good thing because it’s overused in fantasy, but Latin was the only thing I was good at in high school sooooo... ^^;), but I didn’t like any of my other ideas that much, either.  “Wings of Futility” feels more canon, but it’s also kinda depressing :/

▶ I’ve mentioned before that Caerul’s build is based off of mine for art reference purposes (it’s convenient to just look in the mirror while making the pose I want =w=)b), but another reason she’s so short is that I didn’t have to make the caducalae quite as big since she’s smaller, so she can actually go indoors if she’s careful.

▶ Long hair isn’t super practical with mechanical wings with lots of bits for it to get caught in, but Caerul idolizes Lyza, so I left her hair as long as I could reasonably get away with.

▶ I heavily referenced the canon Made in Abyss character designs for Caerul’s clothing so she would fit into the world, but made some alterations to make everything more personal to her and accommodate for her wings.  In general, I lightened everything up, since she takes a bunch of short, quick trips rather than lengthy expeditions.  Her gloves, for instance, are loosely inspired by the ones we see many delvers wearing in the manga/anime, but are less heavy-duty and are convertible mittens/fingerless gloves for better dexterity with handling letters and such.  

The best close up of the gloves I could find was actually a screenshot of the aftermath Reg & Riko’s orb piercer encounter, but I didn’t want to have to tag this for gore, so you get Lyza ^^; There’s a filter over Caerul here so you can see the glove better which is why she looks kinda washed out :/

▶ Her coat is heavily influenced by Jiruo’s, since he’s the only Moon Whistle we’ve seen in canon.  

yeah, uhhhh, sorry to yoink your style my dude ^^;

▸ Caerul’s has a different color palette, a simpler lapel border, an extra set of outer pockets, and three separate panels in the back that button around her wings so she can put it on! I haven’t drawn it, but her shirt works similarly.  

This is my favorite detail about her design tbh... it’s just really satisfying what a logical solution it is for some reason???  the original doodle is off rotting somewhere in my Modern European History notes, but I tried to recreate it just as sloppily here =w=)b

▶ Caerul’s corset isn’t just a painful fashion choice - it’s actually meant to be a(n admittedly heavily stylized) brace for her back against the weight of her wings.  

▶ Since Caerul can’t wear a backpack with the wings, I had to get creative with storage options for her.  In addition to an undetermined number of pockets on the inside of her coat, I gave her these two pouches on her thighs to carry more stuff.  

I wonder how buff your quads could get carrying a significant amount of weight there...

▸ Messenger bags don’t seem super practical for delving, so I didn’t design a specific one for her to carry all the time, but Caerul does use them on occasion.  Even with that, though, she still has far less carrying capacity than the average delver, which is a problem she has to deal with when carrying out her duties!

▶ The wings/caducalae were by far the most difficult part of designing Caerul, and it took several redesigns over 2+ years before I was finally happy with them.  Their first design was deliberately far simpler in the interest of having to draw them a zillion times, but they ended up clunky and unwieldy looking: 

chonky o~O

▸ The final design is MUCH more of a pain to draw (in fact, a lot of the time I cheat and just copy and paste them from drawings I’ve already done), but I think it looks much sleeker and more “functional”.  

I also got better at making my diagrams look slightly more authentic ;0

▸ I knew I wanted jetpack-style thrusters to be a component of the wings to somewhat justify the shit I wanted Caerul to be able to pull with them (especially to eliminate the need for accounting for the damage landing suddenly could do to her ankles), but incorporating them proved to be one of the biggest problems of the design.  At one point, they were going to have a whole separate attachment point on her back, but I finally just made them an offshoot of the first “joint,” as you can see in the final design.  

A really messy intermediate caducalae sketch.  The weird double pentagon shape was meant to be the part of the relic actually fused to Caerul’s back, but I scrapped that too when I scrapped the separate limbs for the thrusters.

▸ Speaking of the joints, they’re all balls so they can rotate all over and I don’t have to fuss too much about how they move.  Likewise, the frame is metal, but I treat it like it’s kind of flexible, so Caerul can “flex” the wings open and closed.  These wings are hard enough to draw period okay I’m giving myself every excuse to be inconsistent af on purpose.

▸ The caducalae have some “bonus” features that I’ve sketched out, but that Caerul hasn’t unlocked yet, and won’t for a while.  

owo what’s this?

▸ For the wings, I think my biggest inspirations were some of the mechier Cardfight!! Vanguard dragon units (although I don’t remember which cards specifically) and the energy wings on the ninth-generation knightmares in Code Geass R2.

I’ve made a lot of OCs, and since I don’t like to use faceclaims, I’ve done a fair amount of character designing.  I don’t think I’ve ever spent as much time or had as much fun with any of them as I have with Caerul, though!  OCs aren’t always super well accepted in fandom roleplay, but the Made in Abyss community has been super welcoming and I’ve had a blast.  Thanks for listening to me gush about Caerul if you got this far, and thank you to everyone who’s interacted with her!  

The original sketch of Caerul from back in 2017.  How far we’ve come :’D

[the-writer-muse]

How to Write a Chorister

Intro

Singing has always been one of my passions--I’ve been in choirs since I was ten years old, so I have a pretty good knowledge of music and music theory! I haven’t seen many posts on how to write a chorister (aka a fancy word for a member of a choir), so I decided to make one myself. Yes, it’s a very self-indulgent post, but hopefully someone finds this somewhat helpful!

Warm up

You know how in movies and other media, people will start singing out of the blue and they're perfectly on pitch and flawless? Yeah, well that’s kind of misleading. A singer will never perform at their best without warming up. They can sing despite that, but their voice will most likely sound strained or weaker than usual, and their vocal range won’t be as wide. Singing warm ups are omitted in most media because it’s inconvenient to show, and I understand that, although I think it would be fun if the process was shown!

Choir warm ups are frequently both vocal and physical. I’ll give you my choir’s as an example. First we loosen up by stretching, paying particular attention to the neck and spine. Other physical exercises are clapping along to a rhythm that the choir director sets, practicing good posture, and doing breathing exercises. 

Next comes the fun part: vocal warm up. We usually start with lip trills, “sirens,” and repeated words or vowels/diphthongs. After that, we typically do ascending and descending solfege scales, stretching into the highest parts of our range and down into the lowest parts of our range. And then we’re ready to sing!

Vocal parts

There are four main parts to a choir, which I’ll define as simply as possible:

Soprano: The highest range of voices in a choir

Alto: The second highest range of voices in a choir

Tenors: The second lowest range of voices in a choir

Bass/Baritones: The lowest range of voices in a choir

Some people fall in between these ranges or span more than one, which is normal. Also, the average singer’s vocal range is 2-3 octaves on a piano.

Characteristics of a chorister

Choristers typically have or should have the following traits:

A keen sense of pitch, rhythm, and hearing

Strength in sight reading and in reading musical score

The ability to sing as a group and blend well with other voices

Leadership! Being a leader helps you as well as everyone else

Types of choirs

Choirs usually organize and limit themselves according to voicing and/or age of the singers as well as by the size of group or the type of music they sing. Here are some types:

Mixed choir: A group with changed (usually male) and unchanged voices (usually female or children); the voicing for this group is typically expressed as SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass). This is the type of choir I currently sing in!

Equal voice choir: A group for either changed (usually male) voices or unchanged (usually female) voices. Sometimes these choirs are called men's choirs and women's/ladies' choirs. Sometimes they are referred to by their voicing: a TB or TTBB choir and an SA or SSAA choir

A youth choir varies widely in its voicing since adolescence is the time when most male voices transition from the soprano or alto vocal range to the tenor or bass vocal range. For this reason, youth choirs can have any combination of voice parts, including SA, SAB, and SATB

A children’s choir is most typically an equal voice group for pre-pubertal singers. Some children's choirs also include youth and may include changed voices (tenor and bass)

Choirs can also organize themselves by size or repertoire type:

Chorus/choral society/large ensemble: Usually a choir of 40 or more singers and often includes 100+ people. These groups typically sing large works, including operas or oratorios or similar pieces

A chamber choir will never include more than 40 singers and will often be considerably smaller (For example, the chamber choir I’m in has 17 singers.)

Small vocal ensemble/group: Ranges in size from 3 to 12 singers

A cappella choir: Sings only music that has no pitched instrumental accompaniment. A great example is the group Pentatonix (which many choir directors absolutely adore)

Choirs that organize themselves around specific cultural or religious music traditions

How singing in a choir can affect you

You can learn many useful talents from choir, such as:

Learning to work with other people and form bonds with them. The better the members of a choir know each other, the better they will sing together!

Growing more confident in your abilities and improving your musical talents

Singing with like-minded people

Harmonizing to pop songs on the radio

Impressing people in karaoke

[aegor-bamfsteel]

i know you really don't like shiera seastar, but do you have any thoughts about the theory that melisandre is her and bloodraven's child?

Thanks for the question, El! I did a very cursory search for arguments on this theory, so I admittedly don’t know all of its ins and outs. The evidence I’m referencing comes from the comments section of Shiera’s SSM:

Melisandre is described as having full breasts, a narrow waist, and a heart-shaped face while GRRM described Shiera in the SSM as “slim of waist and full of breast” with a heart-shaped face. She has red eyes and “pale, unblemished skin” while Brynden Rivers has albinism and red eyes. By contrast, the people of Asshai have a “dark and solemn” appearance, maybe indicating her foreign origins. Her original name Melony could be a combination of Melissa Blackwood and Serenei of Lys, Brynden and Shiera’s mothers. Melisandre practices shadow magic and sees visions in the flames, while Brynden Rivers has an affinity for shadows and prophetic green dreams. Both of them possess magic jewelry, a Ruby choker and a moonstone brooch. Brynden Rivers and Shiera Seastar had a sexual relationship; Brynden asked her to marry him “half a hundred times”, perhaps because he felt a duty to their newborn child while she refused to give up her independence. Serenei of Lys was implied to be much older than Aegon, and Shiera allegedly used the dark arts to keep her youth, so maybe Melisandre is much older than she appears and uses magic to keep her youth just like her putative mother and grandmother.

I dislike this theory, but not because I think it lacks evidence. Although I don’t find any of these pieces of information convincing. Firstly, Melisandre and Shiera are both considered great beauties in Westeros, so it makes sense that they share the features Westerosi men deem attractive. The appearance-based parallels to Brynden Rivers are even more spurious, as Melisandre has “pale, unblemished skin” but does not have albinism (we know the Ghost of High Heart does, so it would’ve been obvious with Mel) while Bloodraven has albinism and a pronounced crimson birthmark. Neither Brynden nor Shiera has red hair, but silver-gold or white hair. On the other hand, if Melisandre can alter her own appearance with magic, she might not even look the way she is described. Melony isn’t a straight portmanteau of Melissa and Serenei (Melenei would be), but even if it was, this series isn’t Twilight where parents give their daughters amalgamations of their grandmother’s first names; I did a meta on the names of Aegon IV’s children, and these names come from their mothers’ culture. If Shiera had a daughter (which does not seem likely to me given her selfish and abusive character), then she would’ve given her a Lysene name, but Melony doesn’t sound like any female Lysene name we know of (Larra, Serra, Serenei, Mysaria, Doreah, Shiera), lacking a vowel diphthong or a double r. She might not be native Asshai'i, but slave ships kidnap children from certain lands (like Naath or beyond the Wall) and sell them to slaving cities like Asshai, so it doesn’t mean that her parents were two Westerosi nobles. Sure, Melisandre has supernatural abilities: she can’t be poisoned, can make swords glow, births shadow assassins, has visions in the flames, and can glamor people to look like others; but she does not have any abilities that we know must be inherited through the blood of the First Men, like skin changing and green seeing (which would confirm an at least part-Westerosi heritage, if not that Bloodraven was her father). Shadow binders such as Quaithe and Mirri Maz Duur learned their magic in Asshai, doubtless where Melisandre learned to create shadow assassins. Thoros of Myr can light swords afire and see visions in the flames like she can, so her powers also come from being a priestess of R'hllor. It seems that her abilities were learned, not something born to her.

And that brings me to why I don’t like the theory: it denigrates Melisandre’s character and abilities in a way that I find rather unsettling. Speculation is a fun way to pass time until the next book comes out and causes people to read the available books more closely. I don’t mind coming up harmless theories and headcanons without much evidence (I’ve done it myself), but the theory that Melisandre is Bloodraven and Shiera’s daughter isn’t that to me.

Think about it: Melisandre has impressive magical abilities, but she uses tricks to make herself seem more powerful (powders that she conceals in her robes) and pretends working magic takes less of a toll on her than it actually does. She likes to project an air of calmness and certainty, but her aDwD chapter shows that she is wracked by doubt; it also gives us a clue as to why: she was a child named Melony who was sold at auction to a red temple. She was in a horrific condition at an incredibly vulnerable stage in her life, so she is afraid of appearing weak or less knowing in front of others. She spent “years beyond count” honing her abilities to never be vulnerable again, and her devotion to R'hllor is for giving her a better life outside slavery. I believe that making Brynden and Shiera her parents undermines her story. She didn’t spend lifetimes studying to be so powerful, she inherited her abilities from her parents! Notice how while Quaithe and Melisandre are popularly speculated to be secret Targaryens, none of the male sorcerers like Thoros or Moqorro are, no matter the likelihood of any of them being so; it feels like a fandom example of the “Never a Self-Made Woman” trope, where men can become respected practitioners on their own merits whereas women only get their abilities because of their family heritage. Furthermore, GRRM has already been criticized for his lack of well-developed Essosi and ex-slave characters, and this theory makes an Essosi ex-slave, a PoV character with significant development for four books, the child of two Westerosi nobles. That makes me incredibly uncomfortable. And as someone who appreciates Stannis Baratheon having a common born smuggler and a foreign priestess as his closest council in a noble society that looks down on the “smallfolk” and foreigners, it undermines one of his positive traits as well. So while I don’t believe this theory, I also think it’s problematic (I don’t like using this word, but it conveys my meaning since I’m sure the theorizers don’t have bad intentions, but the implications are still very much present) because of its underlying sexism, classism, and xenophobia.

(If you’re still here after that somewhat overly dramatic conclusion, the final paragraph gets even more wanky, so might want to check out now.)

One of the most prominent supporters of this theory has an elaborate headcanon where Maekar banishes Shiera from court for getting pregnant by Bloodraven because it would “be too many bastards”, is spurned by Bittersteel when she offers to become his lover again in exchange for shelter, and then dies in childbirth with Melony in the Free Cities. She makes posts that get hundreds of notes about how GRRM uses women as “wombs with legs” in his writing and helped popularize the term “Dead Ladies Club” in fandom. She also took turns with another prominent member of the fandom mocking certain speculators as being “drunk”, “crazy”, and how “not having new books in so long addled their brains” because they came up with an improbable theory based on scant textual evidence. So please don’t think I’m being too harsh in my criticisms about this particular theory, since it’s coming from such an overrated hypocrite. At least I bothered to do some research before disagreeing.

[ratralsis]

March 16:

A fun followup: I donated $3.99 to http://tecendil.com/ for being super useful, and the guy who runs the site wrote me an email that replied to the note I included with the donation, along with the PDF of the Tengwar handbook promised when I donated.

So I wrote him back! Said I appreciated how easy the site was to use compared to others I'd found, and confessed that I'd really just used it to write the name of an orc. Showed him what I'd come up with, because fuck it, if I'm gonna share, why not overshare? I even mentioned that the name was randomly generated, with a Russian first name and a Romanian last name, and I just like it.

He replied and helped me come up with a better transcription of Katia's name in both Tengwar AND Orcish, which is based on a real rune system called Elder Futhark. Apparently, Orcs are actually known for sure to have used that writing system, whereas Black Speech, the language used in the One Ring inscription, was only written in Tengwar on the Ring itself as far as can be proven. It's likely that others, like Sauron, the guy who invented Black Speech in his attempt to give the Orcs a common language under which to unite, used Tengwar to write it elsewhere. Impossible to say. Tolkien really left Black Speech rather undeveloped, and that might be for the best. It's one thing to say that you're a modern-day Tolkien fan and you've been studying how to write Tengwar. It doesn't sound nearly as cool to say you've been "studying Black Speech, you know, as used by the evil races."

Anyway, there's very little demand for it, though, so nobody's made an actual font of Orcish runes. You gotta use an Elder Futhark font and then flip some of the runes horizontally, which is what I did for the final "u" in "Ligru." He also agreed that "Katia Ligru" has a nice ring to it, which was very kind of him even if it might not actually be a true statement.

I thanked him and I feel like I've learned a lot.

For one thing, my research into trying to come up with a good transcription myself led me to finally researching what diphthongs are.

I always thought they were "dipthongs," with only one "H." Nope! Double the H! My favorite letter! I love H!

Honestly, I do think I prefer the Tengwar version, even if it's not as lore-accurate. I can either say that Katia is a good and studious girl who learned her Tengwar in school, or I can just say fuck it, I don't care terribly much about being lore-accurate to Tolkien's version of Orcs.

For one thing, Katia's a woman. Tolkien once joked that there must be female Orcs out there somewhere, but none ever actually appear in his works.