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Rec: Razia's Shadow
I have been meaning to do a rec for Razia’s Shadow for a while, but keep not getting to it. So lo: a rec!
Razia’s Shadow is a creation story musical released on Fueled By Ramen in 2008. It is officially from the band Forgive Durden, but the way it goes is actually this: Forgive Durden got together and released the album Wonderland. Then Forgive Durdensplit up reduced in size to one person and he and his brother wrote and produced Razia’s Shadow, casting it entirely with people from pop-punk bands (most notably from a bandom perspective, Greta Sapelter and Brendon Urie).
That one person is Thomas Dutton. Know him. Love him. Mock his manpain.
Razia’s Shadow is for you if:
Razia’s Shadow is not for you if:
NB: Edited to correct the fact that I swapped the names of the Act I and Act II protagonists. Stop it with all the character names beginning in 'A', Dutton!
ACT I:
O the Scientist, along with his cadre of angels, create the universe by singing about fabric metaphors. However, not is all well in angel-land. Ahrima, the cleverest and most manpainy of the angels (AKA THOMAS DUTTON NUMBER ONE), is sort of peevish that whatever cool stuff he does, the people of the earth credit to O the Scientist. He decides that the best way to overcome this is to do something really cool, like bringing the peoplefire light lamps. But in a surprise twist given his pre-existing manpain, O the Scientist gets the credit. Also he has a female love interest named Nidria whose main purpose is trying and failing to talk him down from his manpain. She is played by Lizzie Huffman and was an awesome singer, but would have been much awesomer with, yannow, agency.
Ahrima skulks off and encounters an evilSnake Raven Coyote Spider. The Spider sooths his manpain, tells him that it is totally valid and wise, and further, tells him that the best way to deal with it is to BURN SHIT DOWN. Reasonable and clever fellow that he is, Ahrima decides that BURNING SHIT DOWN is exactly what he needs in his life right now. So he destroys the lamps he created, all in the hopes that it would make people finally notice him.
Well, at least it makes people notice him, right?
Right?
As it turns out, O the Scientist isn’t too into his angels haring off and BURNING SHIT DOWN, but he is a rational Creator and so he only punishes the one dude for it.
OH WAIT NO.
O the Scientist divides the world in half, into the Dark Side and the Light Side. He and his angels build a big wall and move to the Light Side, where everything is beautiful and awesome and still full of fabric metaphors. He leaves Ahrima as the ruler of the Dark Side, where everyone is destined to be totally evil forever and ever, or at least until the prophecy is fulfilled.
Wait, what’s that you say? A prophecy?
Yes, as it turns out, there is a Useful Prophecy. One of these days, there will be a couple, one from the Dark Side and one from the Light, and their True Love will bring the sundered halves of the world together again.
I think we see where this is going. End of Act I.
ACT II:
A hundred years have passed. We know this because we have just listened to the cleverly-titled song “A Hundred-Year, Minute-Long Intermission.”
Here on the Dark Side, everyone is deliciously evil. The most deliciously evil of them all is the heir to the throne, Pallis (AKA EVIL!BRENDON URIE). Everyone thinks Pallis and his evil is the bee’s knees. But Pallis has an odd little brother, Adakias (AKA THOMAS DUTTON NUMBER TWO), and somehow the evil genes seem to have missed him. He’s got this wacky notion that he has a Glorious Destiny awaiting him, one that involves not being evil. Pallis tells him that this is wack and encourages him to stay around for some deliciously evil incest (ok, that part only happens in my head). The people mock him. Adakias decides to go out on a Quest, and Pallis promises him that if he does, he will secretly dog his footsteps and be evil.
Adakias ignores him, shakes off a further (subtextual) request for some hot hot incest, and starts off on his Quest. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, there is someone else who has been thinking a lot about Destiny. She is Princess Anhura, the heir to the Light (AKA PRINCESS GRETA).Thomas and Greta Adakias and Anhura sing a long-distance Destiny duet.
But they don’t have to wait long, because by the very next song, they have met, and let me tell you, it is love at first sight. They go to Anhura’s father so that Adakias can ask for her hand in marriage, but the King is pretty sure that Adakias is up to something. To be fair, Adakias has not mentioned to anybody at this point that he is From the Dark and Therefor Secretly Evil, so the King technically has a point. But, as is ever the case with Destined Lovers Who Can’t Get Their Parents’ Approval, they run away together.
It is at this point that Anhura starts to get really sick. Because, as it turns out, Adakias'sMark of Cain Darkness is actively corrosive and Anhura can’t handle it. Rather than, say, confessing that he’s the problem, Adakias chooses at this point to talk Anhura into going into the Dark with him to look for a work-around solution. Because he’s a planner.
On their way into the dark, they get useful advice from two plot-convenient boatmen. They learn two major things from the boatmen. First, the Prophecy is not about people in general, it is about a descendant of Ahrima, which almost certainly means Adakias. And for the prophecy to be filled, one of them is going to Have to Die [ominous music!]. Not that he clues Anhura into this. Second, they get some vague but oddly specific warnings about not trusting people who might seem very nice.
Come the next song, they met someone who seems very nice. It is almost like that last song was a setup for this or something. He is a Doctor, and he knows exactly how to make Anhura all better. But here’s the catch--he will do so only if Anhura agrees to be his sex slave for ever. /o\
Having apparently forgotten all the bits about their True Love and Destiny and such, Adakias and Anhura decide that their highest priority is just keeping Anhura alive, even if it means selling her into sex slavery to the man who just sang the most irritating song in the entire fucking musical.
Great work guys.
So they make the deal, and Anhura is all better now, and then, because this musical is all about the plot consistency, Anhura and Adakias just walk away from the Doctor with zero consequences. *shrug*
But they are NOT SAFE FOR LONG. Because as soon as they’re free from the Doctor, who should appear but our old friend EVIL!BRENDON URIE. Um I mean Pallis. Who has, as it turns out, been following them this entire time, just like he promised. And he’s, as usual, overly obsessed with his brother and seems to think for some reason that Anhura is in a relationship with both brothers and not just Adakias. NO INCEST HERE FOLKS, MOVE ALONG PLEASE.
But really, he’s not convinced that Anhura wants to be with “a couple of poor boys like us” so he demands that Anhura and Adakias prove their love to him, which they do in a spectacularly alliterative manner. Still unsatisfied, Pallis makes the big reveal, that Adakias is Secretly From the Dark! And then he moves the plot forward with the best (by which I mean "most literal") James Bond Villain speech of all time:
Because we haven't had this trope yet, Adakias dives in front of the blade and saves Anhura’s life. Pallis is instantly devastated about the fact that he has just killed hisTrue Love Brother Who He Has Strong Feelings About OK? Adakias, as one might expect, takes a very long time to die and in the process teaches us lots of life lessons about how what matters is Love.
Adakias's sacrifice closes the gap between the Dark and the Light, and lo, O the Scientist and Friends tear down the wall while singing about some more sewing metaphors.
Annnnd.... curtain.
So, material:
You can stream the entire album on PureVolume
The largely defunct LJ community![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
razias_oracle has some really awesome fanart and a surprising focus on Anhura/Pallis fic. I guess because of the evil!Bden/princess!Greta thing.
So far I have found a total of 0 Adakias/Pallis stories, and I want one, bad. So if you know of any, please help.
Razia’s Shadow is a creation story musical released on Fueled By Ramen in 2008. It is officially from the band Forgive Durden, but the way it goes is actually this: Forgive Durden got together and released the album Wonderland. Then Forgive Durden
That one person is Thomas Dutton. Know him. Love him. Mock his manpain.
Razia’s Shadow is for you if:
- You like poppy musicals in the style of Disney movies, but wish there they had a bit more punk-drum flavor
- You are particularly fond of the great and ever giving-genre of things
ripped-off frominspired by Paradise Lost. - You like your tropes served in trope sauce, with a side of trope.
- You want to see more of the deliciously evil side of Brendon Urie that showed up in the “Mona Lisa” music video.
- Two words: PRINCESS GRETA. Also Max Bemis! And Casey Crescenza! And Chris Conley! And Lizzie Huffman! The cast on this thing is to die for!
Razia’s Shadow is not for you if:
- You have a tiresome need for originality and/or plot consistency in your musicals.
NB: Edited to correct the fact that I swapped the names of the Act I and Act II protagonists. Stop it with all the character names beginning in 'A', Dutton!
ACT I:
O the Scientist, along with his cadre of angels, create the universe by singing about fabric metaphors. However, not is all well in angel-land. Ahrima, the cleverest and most manpainy of the angels (AKA THOMAS DUTTON NUMBER ONE), is sort of peevish that whatever cool stuff he does, the people of the earth credit to O the Scientist. He decides that the best way to overcome this is to do something really cool, like bringing the people
Ahrima skulks off and encounters an evil
Well, at least it makes people notice him, right?
Right?
As it turns out, O the Scientist isn’t too into his angels haring off and BURNING SHIT DOWN, but he is a rational Creator and so he only punishes the one dude for it.
OH WAIT NO.
O the Scientist divides the world in half, into the Dark Side and the Light Side. He and his angels build a big wall and move to the Light Side, where everything is beautiful and awesome and still full of fabric metaphors. He leaves Ahrima as the ruler of the Dark Side, where everyone is destined to be totally evil forever and ever, or at least until the prophecy is fulfilled.
Wait, what’s that you say? A prophecy?
Yes, as it turns out, there is a Useful Prophecy. One of these days, there will be a couple, one from the Dark Side and one from the Light, and their True Love will bring the sundered halves of the world together again.
I think we see where this is going. End of Act I.
ACT II:
A hundred years have passed. We know this because we have just listened to the cleverly-titled song “A Hundred-Year, Minute-Long Intermission.”
Here on the Dark Side, everyone is deliciously evil. The most deliciously evil of them all is the heir to the throne, Pallis (AKA EVIL!BRENDON URIE). Everyone thinks Pallis and his evil is the bee’s knees. But Pallis has an odd little brother, Adakias (AKA THOMAS DUTTON NUMBER TWO), and somehow the evil genes seem to have missed him. He’s got this wacky notion that he has a Glorious Destiny awaiting him, one that involves not being evil. Pallis tells him that this is wack and encourages him to stay around for some deliciously evil incest (ok, that part only happens in my head). The people mock him. Adakias decides to go out on a Quest, and Pallis promises him that if he does, he will secretly dog his footsteps and be evil.
Adakias ignores him, shakes off a further (subtextual) request for some hot hot incest, and starts off on his Quest. Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, there is someone else who has been thinking a lot about Destiny. She is Princess Anhura, the heir to the Light (AKA PRINCESS GRETA).
But they don’t have to wait long, because by the very next song, they have met, and let me tell you, it is love at first sight. They go to Anhura’s father so that Adakias can ask for her hand in marriage, but the King is pretty sure that Adakias is up to something. To be fair, Adakias has not mentioned to anybody at this point that he is From the Dark and Therefor Secretly Evil, so the King technically has a point. But, as is ever the case with Destined Lovers Who Can’t Get Their Parents’ Approval, they run away together.
It is at this point that Anhura starts to get really sick. Because, as it turns out, Adakias's
On their way into the dark, they get useful advice from two plot-convenient boatmen. They learn two major things from the boatmen. First, the Prophecy is not about people in general, it is about a descendant of Ahrima, which almost certainly means Adakias. And for the prophecy to be filled, one of them is going to Have to Die [ominous music!]. Not that he clues Anhura into this. Second, they get some vague but oddly specific warnings about not trusting people who might seem very nice.
Come the next song, they met someone who seems very nice. It is almost like that last song was a setup for this or something. He is a Doctor, and he knows exactly how to make Anhura all better. But here’s the catch--he will do so only if Anhura agrees to be his sex slave for ever. /o\
Having apparently forgotten all the bits about their True Love and Destiny and such, Adakias and Anhura decide that their highest priority is just keeping Anhura alive, even if it means selling her into sex slavery to the man who just sang the most irritating song in the entire fucking musical.
Great work guys.
So they make the deal, and Anhura is all better now, and then, because this musical is all about the plot consistency, Anhura and Adakias just walk away from the Doctor with zero consequences. *shrug*
But they are NOT SAFE FOR LONG. Because as soon as they’re free from the Doctor, who should appear but our old friend EVIL!BRENDON URIE. Um I mean Pallis. Who has, as it turns out, been following them this entire time, just like he promised. And he’s, as usual, overly obsessed with his brother and seems to think for some reason that Anhura is in a relationship with both brothers and not just Adakias. NO INCEST HERE FOLKS, MOVE ALONG PLEASE.
But really, he’s not convinced that Anhura wants to be with “a couple of poor boys like us” so he demands that Anhura and Adakias prove their love to him, which they do in a spectacularly alliterative manner. Still unsatisfied, Pallis makes the big reveal, that Adakias is Secretly From the Dark! And then he moves the plot forward with the best (by which I mean "most literal") James Bond Villain speech of all time:
I'm sure that she would care
To hear your acumen
As to how your presence
Is the reason she is sick.
But I suppose it's in vain
Since her life is ending,
When I thrust this blade in-
to her heart a-pumping!
Because we haven't had this trope yet, Adakias dives in front of the blade and saves Anhura’s life. Pallis is instantly devastated about the fact that he has just killed his
Adakias's sacrifice closes the gap between the Dark and the Light, and lo, O the Scientist and Friends tear down the wall while singing about some more sewing metaphors.
Annnnd.... curtain.
So, material:
You can stream the entire album on PureVolume
The largely defunct LJ community
razias_oracle has some really awesome fanart and a surprising focus on Anhura/Pallis fic. I guess because of the evil!Bden/princess!Greta thing.So far I have found a total of 0 Adakias/Pallis stories, and I want one, bad. So if you know of any, please help.