@Kaylotta excellent! I don't know a terrible lot about opera, but I am a fan of what I do know. okay, so, my troll's ancestor is based on Julie d'Aubigny. if you don't know who that is you should totally look her up, because she's awesome. but I digress. point is, the ancestor's the Pugilist, and she was an opera singer and duelist and terrible flirt. my troll, who is named Saikym Auigne (sigh-kim owgh-nee, if you're curious) aspires to the first two and is kind of hopeless at the third. they are greenish-end-of-teal and have an Ospreymom (they hate fish) and an oliveblood moiral/flushcrush and are a giant fucking nerd. this is they, in full costume and Dramatic Pose. Spoiler: my darling nerd child screams excitedly about that beautiful commission anyway, troll opera. I imagine it actually started as a form of combat, a la rap battles, except the goal would be to, like, scream your opponent into submission by deafening them. eventually screaming turned to singing, because you can do it louder and with less strain on your throat. I'd imagine it started as a low- or mid-blood kinda thing, like how human opera singers used to be Not Reputable, and eventually it gained somewhat in status. at some point they started adding stories, and then it went full-blown drama from there. now opera singers in the fleet are a) morale boosters and b) hired entertainment for seadwellers. they do a lot of shows based on a commissioning troll's past exploits or ancestors. lowbloods are actors, of course, because acting across hemocaste is a huge no-no, and they aren't actually killed on stage because opera training takes a while, but a lot of them do actually get injured in dramatic sword fights. Saikym is coolblooded enough that this doesn't tend to happen to them, and also they can land some decent roles besides "scumbag antagonist" and "someone's tragically dead moiral." they really liked FLARPing when they were younger, and can be seen here owning the hell out of bastardized 17th-century court dress, again inspired by Julie d'Aubigny. presumably at some point trolls dressed like this? they are also singing a dramatic aria (they are a mezzo) right before dueling for their moiral's honor. exciting stuff, and the seadwellers eat it up.
my current thoughts about troll opera: current trend is based on French grand opera à la Lin-Manuel Miranda, because at the moment HIC is really digging it. (because of this there's also significant crossover with rock opera/musical theatre/other genres of music, because while i'm sure the violets would LOVE to sit and listen to froofy Classical/Romantic, Her Condescension needs some BEATS.) huge sets, massively complex costumes and staging, dance troupes, real lusii on stage, the whole nine yards. WAY back when, i suspect troll opera could have started out among the midbloods, particularly jadebloods, as a teaching/storytelling tool. everything's easier to remember when you sing it. but EVENTUALLY, it branched off: the lowbloods took it in the Broadway/rap battle direction, and got insane with choreography and polyrhythms and wacky instruments and shit. on the other end of the spectrum, the highbloods (particualrly the violets) went oooh look at this and basically evolved it into Baroque opera: very posh, the most gorgeous costumes and hair in the galaxy, all historical epics about ancestors with of course how could we forget the homage to the Empress at the beginning of every show. meanwhile, the midbloods continued having fun, and the middle current moved along into opera buffa, with subtle pokes at the higher castes but enough propriety that they still enjoyed themselves. newer trends involve highly experimental forays into combining everything into a massive clusterfuck of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, with the addition of Straussian/Bergian atonality and various flavours of jazz. higher castes prefer more atonal works (out of a sense of snobbery of course), while lower castes tend to enjoy the Singspiel/musical theatre shows. i headcanon (within my own headcanon? canonception BWAAAAAAAAA) that playing out of your hemocaste is an open secret, simply due to demand. sure, it's easy to get a rustblood actress, but a violet? no violet would step on a stage. but someone's gotta play them. (i wonder if troll actors have stagesonas for each hemotype they play. more theatre-ception.)
I love this. yes. entirely. it is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Saikym is more on the French grand opera side of things, given their ancestor, etc., but they do drop some sick beats in some of the newer shows. I'm crying real tears. real lusii on stage, can you imagine. (although at this juncture the pedant/Latin nerd in me has to point out that the correct plural of lusus is lusūs, since it's fourth declension. but.) probably somebody gets eaten every other week. oh, sure. but I feel like this would be the origin of narrative singing, not necessarily of staging sung narratives in front of a crowd. since these are trolls, I think any kind of crowd-attracting event would more or less have to be some kind of bloodsport; thus my interpretation of the origins. alright, so the thing about this is: I'm pretty sure slam poetry (and thus rapping and performances thereof) is a traditionally highblood pursuit. Tavros raps, yeah, but I'm pretty sure Equius at some point holds slam poetry up as this ancient and noble art, so. highblood. your design would have to be flip-flopped: the highbloods took it in the rap direction and the lowbloods did the serious singing and the midbloods found a happy medium, and slowly over time the sung aspect (and the spectacle) crept up the hemospectrum. because you're right, violets love nothing so much as a big ol' elaborate show, and operatic singing lends itself more to that than rapping would, I think. HIC is still dubious, and sort of the ranking of your theory of the current state of opera would be flip-flopped: the Lin-Manuel Miranda bit would be the highfalutin classy part, and the French grand opera bit would be a little bit disreputable and experimental. I'd disagree about the violet actors, actually! probably every so often there is a violet who in a huge dramatic flounce decides they don't want to be in the military, it's full of brutes, they're going to be edgy and artistic, and devotes themselves to the arts. or maybe they get really really interested in opera in and of itself and decide to dedicate their life to its pursuit, but that's probably less common. anyway, violets being violets, regardless of skill they get all the best parts, and their careers are really really long, so even though there aren't too many of them you do tend to see them on stage fairly often. but yeah, I definitely agree that actors do act across caste, and as for "stagesonas," I'd imagine each actor has a dedicated one. like, an oliveblood decides to act as a blueblood, and from then on they only play blueblood parts for consistency's sake.
I keep forgetting that troll class is totally the opposite of human caste. I gotta think more before chiming in again...
@Kaylotta Basically this is all telling me that this particular tune - Is the ideal troll opera piece :D
screams briefly I just got a wonderful commission of Saikym from @Vast Derp! oh man now I gotta decide about my icon again. Spoiler: WHAT A SMOL NERD OMG okay that is all.
:D omg, yay! i'm so glad you like it! they were really fun to draw. i would say roach's icon makes a better av, tho. them colors and lines :3
I'm glad you enjoyed drawing them! and yeah, I decided to put your drawing as my computer wallpaper instead. :)
My trollsona is a tealblood with 3.5 horns. They keep bees and live in an underground bunker. They're also some form of draft dodger, but I haven't decided the variety yet. ETA: Oh! Also, their name is Esprit! Esprit Bethal
