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Faux Pas: French for "fox pass", this is when a behavior or comment that is otherwise considered socially unacceptable is allowed because a fox did it and foxes cannot be held responsible for their actions. It is spelled wrong because the French like to feel special.

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northern hemisphere babes we made it to the longest night of the year. we made it. for the next 6 months, every day will give us a little more daylight than the last. let's go. take my hand. climb out of the darkness with me

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There's a wicked production somewhere where Elphaba kisses Glinda on the cheek sometime in act 2... And because I can't find it anymore I sketched it 🥹

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I don’t think we talk enough about how the entirety of Wicked is built on the irony of No One Mourns the Wicked. The musical exists because Glinda feels the need to tell Elphaba’s story, because she is in mourning and entirely alone in that. Glinda’s love is what creates the musical because no one mourns Elphaba except her, and that is an incredibly lonely place to be. She’s just lost two of the most important people to her, and all she’s trying to do is make someone, anyone else see how important they were.

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our secret

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one of the most infuriating things about becoming an adult is when you realize that it actually is 10x easier to solve problems by making a phone call vs literally any other communication method

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verdant vines 🌱

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i love their friendship

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Been listening to Chant II

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Where is everybody? José Manuel Ballester

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bay windows appreciation post. i love bay windows

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the issue with Caitlyn and caitvi in arcane s2 is that acts 2 and 3 in particular treat fascism as a personal dispute. The background zaunites quite literally cease to exist. They either get swept up into the convenient little hive mind or just sort of… become extras with blue hair. By act 3 there is literally NO DIFFERENCE between a piltie and a zaunite, you might not even KNOW the distinction exists if you only watch only the last 3 episodes. And this is probably bc of the centrist “we’re all the same let’s just get along” message they tried to preach which you can’t even pretend is true when the previous 12 episodes of your show were spent setting up a complex political narrative about how systemic oppression and classism are pervasive and deliberately upheld.

It’s easy to say Caitlyn’s redemption was rushed (or even nonexistent). But the truth is that the writers really did write in an arc! They just didn’t understand what she did wrong. Unnamed background characters don’t exist. Piltover and Zaun don’t exist. What matters is that Caitlyn hurt individual major characters (league champions) so all she has to do is make it up to them!

Caitlyn hurt vi. So she redeems herself by helping vi take down ambessa! Caitlyn tried to kill jinx. So she redeems herself by advocating for her and then letting vi free her! It’s as simple as that because vi and jinx are no longer zaunites, Caitlyn is no longer from piltover! They’re just individuals with no sort of power over the other. Wrap it up nicely with a bow

and that explains the “dirt under your nails” line TOO. Because if you think about it (and nothing else) it parallels “oil and water” NICELY it lets the characters come full circle! Vi doesn’t have to view herself and Caitlyn as fundamentally separate anymore! They’re linked together! Except that’s not how it fucking works bc nothing has been solved, Caitlyn’s chemical warfare against civilians isn’t addressed, the power dynamics are ignored, because these characters are no longer products of their environment or pasts. They’re just actions taken by league champions against league champions

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I also just realized that we also spend basically zero time in the actual Lanes and Zaun locations that aren’t Singed or Jinx’s lairs this season, while we get many Piltover shots and spend the majority of our time there. What time we do spend in Zaun is related through music video montage and it’s lifeless. We don’t meet the people who live there. We don’t learn anything significant about any of these people. We don’t learn what happened to Ekko’s tree and his community. Ekko gets a throwaway line in the hexcore that Zaun would suffer the damage of anything happening to it and then proceed to see none of those consequences when the hexcore does act up.

It’s an empty city full of empty people ready to become fodder for the narrative, locked in stasis until Piltover needs manpower, and even as they fight they remain empty husks, a parody of a living, breathing people who appear to have no consistency in their cause. At first I thought Piltover was enforcing a draft for the war which would have at least offered SOME semblance of consistency in their exploration of oppression but that the Zaunites supposedly choose this willingly is the highest betrayal of the narrative to them.

tbh I think the lack of political coherence really set in when I realised the writers did not care about Zaun’s unnamed citizens as a crowd of people with ideals and conviction and desires, but simply NPCs who would do and say anything and everything the plot demanded them. they want us to buy that the Zaunites would idolize Jinx as an icon for the resistance just because she blew up the council? …..fine. she spent years making their lives materially worse under Silco, then brought the militarized police force on their heads, but, like, i wasn’t expecting deep analysis of political awakening from the show.

but if they wanted to sell that, then they needed to actually show the Zaunite general population having conviction in their own justification — but no actual motive is ever given by them. they do not have actual dialogue where they voice their desires or drives or motivations, not a single throwaway line from someone in a crowd or background character who could convince us they had, like, any inherent beliefs or reasonings, just a montage set to rock music. we’re supposed to trust a throwaway line from Caitlyn, who is their oppressor and who does not care nor understand their motives. i know it looks visually impressive to have a bunch of people with blue hair getting rounded up and arrested set to punk rock, but at no point are we actually shown what Jinx stands for to them. Is it desperate hope? Is it a violent revolution? Is it just being a nuisance to the authorities? Is it sheer chaos? Is it a mix of all of the above, for different people? We don't fucking know!

….And you’re telling me the same people would then willingly throw themselves into the war effort to protect a city that hates them?

Of course the liberation of Zaun is shelved for flashy fight scenes and fanservice; the writers don’t see Zaun as a city worthy of exploring or populating, nor it’s population as something worthy of humanising. They’re fundamentally uninterested in the liberation of Zaun because they’re fundamentally uninterested in its citizens.

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“…But since our destinies prevent us you shall always be with me, and you shall dwell upon my care-filled lips.”

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Tried to be as much Jenzee as I could (I need to see my boy Zag again)

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Why can’t we just stay right here?

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man of progress