If You've Got It, Flaunt It

—--

There’s a lot to behold, for once.

Our eyes adjust as we take in the sights of a room only mentioned in passing, a half-joke that beyond all odds actually exists off of a distant hallway in Farthington Manor: FLAMBERGE’s Dripping Room.

In another architect’s hands, this would match the rest of the Silver Is For Poors, 24 Karat Gold Minimum Or Begone Peasant design of Farthington Manor; in the Glueminati’s vision, it’s more of a human-sized terrarium/church. Plenty of sturdy branches span the room for optimum Sitting In Stoic Silence, the water station is always full, plenty of green life; and best of all, different floor textures for when your feetsies need stimmies. FLAMBERGE rarely allows himself the freedom of vulnerability to smile, but when he saw the finished product for the first time a year ago, the giant exercise wheel was a touch he just couldn’t fight off. He felt seen.

A solid slab of black stone mantle sticks out like a sore thumb along the far wall - one imagines a display-only fireplace could theoretically be set up beneath the stone, but the fireplace was never the point of this art choice. It’s about the mantle.

THAT mantle.

The one where the necks FLAMBERGE collects sit on display, forever and all time a monument to both himself and, in a way, FLAMBERGE’s way to honor his (often absent) (conspicuously absent) (like, when was the last time we saw those two in a room together?) (have we ever?) (oh wait they watched Hank in the pool that one time, when Hank was Sonic the Hedgehogging underwater, spinning and spinning) (\we can move on now) mentor, Phil Atken. Without Phil Atken’s two or three weeks of mentorship and immediate, violently-forced retirement, FLAMBERGE would never have been introduced to the voice that led him to the singles run that once defined PRIME itself.

When imagining “necks sit on display”, like, OK - Coral Avalon, the First Neck that sits on the far left of the mantle, is not the actual Coral Avalon’s neck; he’s rumored to still continue to walk and breathe and win championships and is front-running awards that FLAMBERGE won in 2023, all of which probably require the use of a neck. What sits on the mantle in Coral’s spot is more of a bronze casting of a mangled neck mold, with a little copper placard giving the name, date, and event where the neck was collected:

CORAL AVALON ReVIVAL 17 10/21/22

And on and on down the line they go. After a while, Joe Fontaine had started doodling some goofy looking lizards with props and costumes and taping them to the wall around the mantle. One almost-iguana wore three sets of sunglasses at once; another one a cowboy hat and a mustache; one almost looked like a bearded dragon with FLAMBO’s hair and beard styles - “almost”, because these drawings are mostly crayon, and the whole visual just gives off Six Year Old’s Drawings On The Fridge energy, which nobody in the Glueminati was ever going to fight, because deep down they’re just a bunch of cutie boys. Good luck counting how many drawings surround the mantle, by the way - it’s a lot.

There’s a red and black painted statue of a bearded dragon wearing three crowns that sits in the very middle of the line of neck-molded trophies. And as our eyes adjust again - hey, would you look at that.

FLAMBO’s there. He’s wearing an ENORMOUS fuzzy teal trapper hat with yellow-gold sunglasses, and then nothing else except for some short black trunks…surely the hat elevates his sweat levels here in the Dripping Room, and the rest is just vibes. 

His eyes are locked in on the bearded dragon statue.

As we MLEM and BWOM and MYORP into the warped perspective of 24-year-old Julien Lavigne, meditating through his latest crossroads, the energy changes. It feels like something’s hitting.

There’s a beat, a rhythmic danceable beat. Like the many forces driving FLAMBERGE, he cannot fathom its origin or its goals. All he knows is how it moves the lizards in his mind.

How the drawings Joe did have all picked up instruments and choose beats somewhere between French and Argentinian pop.

FLAMBO sways. Without second thought (or possibly first), he accepts the lyrics he hears, from

<<himself,

<<the lizards here assembled,>>

and the red Lizard King statue...>>

……song 1. ♩= 120

<<i see the fire

<<play away, play away>>