#I keep thinking about doing something with lesbian nuns in honor of the lesbian nuns but a friend suggested making them an assassin

[katabay]

sketch page time, but make it medieval! I was messing around with a composition for a knight, and the blacksmith and the jester and also the lady (who is an assassin) were some early early early ideas for characters! someday they may even exist in a story that has a plot.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[floggingink]

Riverdale, “Chapter Forty-Seven: Bizarrodale”

Jughead eats: QUICK SHOT OF BRUNCH

the print on Josie’s bomber jacket? confounding

“If there’s no wedding reception, it means the Gargoyle King has won.”

Ms. McCoy in bright blue? confounding

have Moose’s eyebrows gotten thicker? he...he fine

Cheryl’s sheaths: like a true gay icon, Cheryl wears both a satiny demi-cup bustier and a flannel in bed with Toni, who’s rocking a sort of cottony Aerie bralette

Hermione’s earrings look like divining rods, which makes sense

“dangerously unhinged,” in this day and age? UNHINGED?

Cheryl is “legacy” in Riverdale’s version of Smith College

Cheryl’s pins: in her droopy 1920’s lady-reporter tie, Cheryl has a pin that is probably a bee but is POSSIBLY a giant frightening moth like in the Silence of the Lambs poster

Moose’s hair is longer or something and he’s like? I don’t know but I’m a gay boy all of a sudden, like let me at All That

I like how he pauses but goes in for more kisses after Kevin tells him he wants to ask him something

he’s like…..so tall….and he has this a little mole on his cheek….

(RIP Midge)

I’m writing a scene where it’s gay.: you look me in my pale astigmatic eyes and tell me the little snitch canary “told you they were in here sir” smug Malfoy stool pigeon ISN’T a pillow queen and I’ll give you this money RIGHT NOW. THAT thin-lipped smirk? with THAT cleft chin? he’s a gay, your honor

Sexy, aesthetic Southside: oh fuck!!!! Sweet Pea has a VERY vulnerable, soft-masculinity speech about his heartspace and emotional boundaries and he’s so fluffy-haired and trying to be gentle with himself……….SWEET PEA……..

Best costume bit: don’t miss the two-second shot of a Prostitute in a turquoise pencil skirt and red velvet blazer and pearls AND GLASSES leading a man by the tie down the Maple Club hallway

“Damn good coffee”: also this jazz music and Cheryl’s short pantsuit

WHERE CAN I GET CHERYL’S MINI BACKPACK

The Blossom spawn: I know Penelope Blossom is not out here suggesting there are no lesbians in what I assume is a women’s college. I remember when I got into My Women’s College one of the nuns at my church was like, Ha ha! Don’t let the drug-dealing lesbians get you! and I was like, How do you already know the plot of Riverdale season 3? but then I was also like, Ma’am why did you join this monastery?

Fifth period is AP English: “THIS IS THE PRICE OF SALT.”

Lawyer McCoy is right, Ex-Sheriff Keller IS a snack and this bitch’s blood sugar is low

I love Sierra and Whatsit playing Lawyers in bed because it happens to be my thing too and I want to be there with them

Certified pedigree: his name’s Tom right? he’s SO HANDSOME. everyone is so handsome right now!!!!!!! (I’m ovulating)

this is the same fancy hotel room Jughead and Betty stayed in when he sort of proposed to her? this is just the upscale version of the sex bunker

Kevin eats when he’s stressed, as you will recall from the drive-in S1 episode

“an epaulette to cry on”

Cheryl’s hair: and Cheryl’s sleeves!!!!!!!

Sixth period is Intro to Film: “looking like a community theater production of The Talented Mr. Ripley” is the SECOND time handsome bicurious Tom Ripley has been name-dropped (also the drive-in S1 episode)

“I can’t go back to Fox Forest” is like the most tragic thing. HE CAN’T GO CRUISING AGAIN

“Oh, sullen, tenderhearted Kevin.”

Cheryl’s a chaos angel from hell: “RAPTUROUS”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I like that Cheryl continues to use words like “whilst” and “amongst”

is Moose wearing a denim Henley? MOOSE?

the closed captioning renders it “O shutterbug of my dreams.” “O,” LIKE CHERYL IS SHAKESPEARE

I absolutely buy that Cheryl would ask if this was their first fight mid-fight

only Toni among us could wear that many necklaces at once

I did get a little confused when Toni confronts Cheryl in the bathroom, like at first it was about how you shouldn’t out people but then it was about her not being in the Serpents? let’s focus, ladies

The 2001 Josie and the Pussycats movie was a masterpiece: Josie’s commitment to keeping her eyeshadow coordinated with her jackets over her commitment to boys is aspirational

Every triangle has three corners, every triangle has three sides: I LOVE ARCHIE’S SIDE-EYE, LIKE………“SWEET PEA?”

Reggie on kneecapping: “Does that really happen?”

Reggie’s voice cracks me up. he’s just a big gorgeous squeezable side hustle dummy bro, so down for the ride, remember when he slugged Jughead? neither does he

REGGIE HONESTLY HONEST-TO-GOD IS JUST LIKE….RONNIE YO YOU NEED SOME MONEY?

“You can be my Baby Driver” uuuuuugggghghhhhhkkhhhhhhhhh REggggeieiee

“JUST PLEASE DON’T SCRATCH MY CAR” has more sexual energy than I think Archie has ever manufactured with anyone EXCEPT BETTY when they kissed that one time you know?????

why do you think Reggie is such a good doofus boyfriend while Archie was such a bad doofus boyfriend? is it because Archie tried to think for himself? or has Reggie just not been given the chance to fuck something up yet

I like Penelope bringing up Sierra and Tom getting married not to shade them but to just be like, They should be happy if they want. I was like, Damn, Penelope! You’re right!

“He is a vicious and petty god.”

lol oh yeah Hiram got shot

Gay?!: as has been discussed, Veronica is reading some classic lesbian pulp fiction for no other reason than I suppose she fucking likes it, and that is BDE

Summer + Blair = Veronica: Veronica would wear those shoes to baby drive

SOMEONE TAKE ME ON A “MAD SAPPHIC CAPER”

Archie > Dawson: Archie is a hot-or-cold boyfriend but he is an EXCELLENT beard!!!! GOOD, ARCHIE

I’ve seen Brick like thirty times: Reggie takes the same positive attitude towards getting shot and surviving that I hope I would have, which is “at least I can say I got shot”

Moose is like, out and THEREFORE dtf, as if they couldn’t have secretly been having sex this whole time

Toni conceded to Highsmith’s business formal dress code insofar as she wears a black vest over a plaid tie and that’s it

“WHOEVER YOU ARE, PLEASE BE CHILL.”

Veronica’s blue plaid coat SHOCKS me

Veronica was rich: Gladys admires Veronica and Reggie’s gumption showing up with only half the money

is it a coat or is it a miniskirt with a matching jacket?????

God bless jingle-jangle Moose: Moose is so excited that he just absolutely tells Cheryl he’s finally going to have sex. I know the show needs him to say it so Cheryl can tell him to BYOS, but it’s still cute of him, himself. is Moose kind of precious?

remember when Moose got gunned down in that car? Christ

HE BROUGHT A LITTLE RED CANDLE!!!!!

I love when people take off their whole belt, as if you can’t just undo it and still take your jeans off

dope deer skull! plus: everyone’s fucking

Mädchen Amick, MÄDCHEN AMICK: I’ve lost track a little bit of whether or not Alice KNOWS Betty and Jughead are literally/colloquially sleeping together in Betty’s bedroom, or are they taking advantage of her being gone?

The female gaze: Reggie’s chest is the new Archie’s chest

“NIGHT HAG”

“KEEP YOUR BOW CLOSE.”

Moose is MASSIVE like, do you see those arms?

Fwoopy hair is the best hair: HIS BEAUTIFUL FLIPPY HAIR ON THE PILLOW

Dilton Doiley Ethel Muggs The Gargoyle Children: the RROTC guy is Chris Cooper in American Beauty???

Gay.: Sierra was halfway right about “the jealousy thing”

even FP, conducting his interview in his flannel, is like, bruh

These students are legally children: his “Man, the Sisters did a number on you” feels like Riverdale’s version of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s “The Catholics really fucked you up”

Jughead doubts it: Jughead makes a good point. is there one costumes everyone keeps using or is it that easy to DIY your own Gargoyle King?

“UR-KING,” JUGHEAD, PLEASE

oh I can see Jughead about to be disillusioned by his family coming a mile away

Archie’s soft soft sweater? confounding

at least Moose isn’t moving to Toledo, am I right

CHERYL’S SLEEVES?????????

What damn high school in America: Cheryl’s girl gang is 100% Teddy girls and I love them

THE WHITE STRIPE ON REGGIE’S SWEATER and the little black birds on Veronica’s shirt!

Gladys & JB are already a more powerful duo than FP & Jughead could ever hope to be

ARCHIE ASKS HER IF HE COULD KISS HER. THAT’S VERY SEXY OF YOU, ARCHIE. GOOD, ARCHIE

wait Moose is moving to Glendale? SABRINA-GLENDALE? MOOSE WAIT A SECOND?

NEXT WEEK: Gladys tells Veronica to pray, OH BOY

[terresdebrume]

So on Saturday I mentioned that I was watching a play called La nuit de Valognes, by Eric Emmanuel Schmidt and told you guys that it has a lot of potential for shippers and, well, you probably guessed I love it already, but there’s more to it than just the shipping part.

Spoilers for the play, discussion of the impact of its main ‘plot twist’, of LGBTQ+ themes, and my personal history as a lesbian-who-didn’t-quite-realise-she-was-queer-until-long-after-discovering-the-play under the cut.

La nuit de Valognes starts out with a simple enough summary: five women (a duchess, a countess, a nun, a merchant’s wife and a romance novelist) who once loved Don Juan gather in a castle in Normandy to hold his trial and condemn him to either marry the duchess’ goddaughter (Don Juan’s latest conquest) or be sent to prison for the rest of his days (because nepotism was handy dandy like that).

The first act mainly consists of the five women discussing their affair with Don Juan. Most of them deny it ever happened (except for the countess and duchess) at first, but as time goes by, their memories come back, and you can tell the women present aren’t so much hurt at having lost their virtue as pissed off Don Juan left.

(In fact, by the end of the play, the merchant’s wife is quite clearly happy with what she got out of her affair with Don Juan.)

Toward the end of the act, Don Juan is left with Angélique, the girl he’s supposed to marry, who is very proud to have conquered Don Juan (through scheming but still) until she realizes he a) isn’t putting up a fight and b) is most definitely not in love with her.

In the second act, having realized Don Juan isn’t the womanizer he once was anymore (he played the part at the beginning of the first act, but it cracks once Angélique’s family is mentioned) and change his trial. From being tried for being, well, Don Juan, the guy goes to being tried for not being ‘Don Juan’ aka the mythical hyper sexual figure you guys probably already know about (if not, Wikipedia is your best friend). During this new trial, it is revealed that Don Juan hasn’t made any single conquest since he met Angélique’s brother, the Chevalier de Chiffreville (he doesn’t get a first name).

In the next six or so scenes, we see Don Juan and the Chevalier meet and grow closer, the Chevalier clearly falling in love with Don Juan while Don Juan himself is oblivious. At some point, Don Juan mentions that he doesn’t feel ready to let go of women, which causes the Chevalier to cut his ties to Don Juan without warning. Don Juan looks for the guy everywhere and winds up at the Chiffreville family’s house, where Angélique tells him her brother is busy drinking himself to oblivion and fucking an infamous local prostitute. Don Juan takes it badly and has sex with/rapes Angélique, who was earlier established to be her brother’s spitting image (1)

Later, the Chevalier provokes Don Juan to a duel, nominally so he can avenge his sister’s honor. However, when Don Juan refuses to fight, the Chevalier throws himself on his sword (2) and, in his dying moments, not only confesses his love for Don Juan but receives a similar one.

Chevalier: Don’t say [I love you] with words, they were dragged through too many mouths—say it with the eyes. … How well you say it. [...]

After this dramatic event, the play goes back to the ‘present days’ and Don Juan’s trial, where his judges, one by one, abandon charges. The nun decides to demand a divorce from God and gives a rather virulent atheistic speech. Then the romance novelist, who writes mutual pining without much resolution (from what the play tells us) goes kind of hysterical when Don Juan’s story with the Chevalier is compared to her novels.

The writer: My novels are stupid!

The countess, who is known (and disparaged) for her string of affairs, basically dismisses Don Juan for being too sentimental; and Angélique rejects him on the basis that she wants a man who will be possessive and jealous and ‘love her selfishly’ instead of the ‘we’re married but you get to do whatever you want while I promise never to touch another woman ever’ deal Don Juan offered her earlier.

After this, Don Juan leaves the castle—we don’t know where he’s going or what’s he’s going to do—and the play ends with Don Juan’s servant crying in despair when he realizes he has finally been paid after years and years of empty promises on that front.

There are many angles to take when looking at this play, some of them frankly not very satisfying—the general feeling that the women say ‘no’ but mean ‘yes’ is too in tune with rape culture and misogynistic discourse to be really palatable, and Angélique’s conception of love is, in my opinion, not a very healthy one unless you apply a sizable grain of salt to her last lines—but the one that attracted me was, you probably guessed it, Don Juan’s story with the Chevalier.

Yes, I know, it’s pretty much a textbook version of the bury your gays trope, and that’s just annoying—the play could totally have told a different story, though I’m not sure every writer would have handled it in a satisfying way either—but it remains my favorite aspect of the play, and the reason why this is, so far, my favorite play of all time (3).

I first read this play in high school—I think we were studying the ancient tradition of rewritings and transforming myths, and I think we can all agree that rewriting the womanizer as a man who fell in love with a man was a definite counterpoint to what mainstream media would expect, so it definitely had a place there. I wasn’t even out to myself at the time—although, as I’ve already mentioned, I think on a subconscious level I always knew I wasn’t straight—but boy, did that play appeal to me.

In the moment, I mostly looked at Don Juan and the Chevalier’s story and saw pretty much all the tropes I love in fanfiction. There was the mutual pining and longing, the oblivious partner, the jealousy who doesn’t realize (or doesn’t want to realize) what it is, and the heartfelt but ultimately tragic heartfelt confession of love at the end. My tastes have changes since then—I’m now aggressively into happy endings for queer characters, thank you very much—but at the time you literally couldn’t have written something closer to what I liked to read in my spare time. For real.

In all honesty, that love story still ticks several of my preference boxes.

Roughly ten years later, though, I think what keeps this play appealing to me is the fact that in the end, Don Juan’s not-love story with a man is his redeeming. When the story is told, the nun loses her faith in part because Don Juan’s story is so unfair (he finds love after so many years of messy searching and loses him just as soon), the romance novelist rejects the idea that doomed love stories are desirable or ‘the best’, the countess—who called him her teacher in ‘vice’—rejects him for not being an ass anymore, and Angélique refuses to marry him because his motive—to honor the cause his lover died for, even if only nominally—is too sublime.

There are so many—so many—instances, in literature and media in general, where someone falling for a person of the same gender is pretty much a doom sentence, when it’s not explicitly referred to as a bad thing (I would list examples but honestly I think a quick detour through Tvtropes will be enough to prove my point) but in this play it’s the reverse. Yes, Don Juan’s endgame situation still sucks mighty balls, and if you’re looking for a happy ending you should probably not look at this play.

But at the end of the day, Don Juan’s love story with a man is the very reason he’s forgiven, and that’s something that, combined with its position as the first play I saw with queer characters, is the reason why this text will always have a special place in my heart.

So, as you can imagine, seeing La nuit de Valognes on stage for the first time yesterday was a good experience for me. Not only do I love the text—honestly I kind of want to dig out my copy when I’m in France, and set to writing some meta about it because there are so many things to say about what’s a fairly short play, you guys—but the stage work was excellent. Okay, yeah, there were a couple stutters, but the actors all did a really good job, the directing was really creative and well handled. Don Juan and the Chevalier—especially the Chevalier—were especially convincing imo, and they really went for the kill in the romance story which is what the entire play rests on, so really kudos on them for that.

Also kudos on casting a LGBTQ+ dude in the Chevalier’s role (the actor is one of my male colleague’s husband, though I didn’t know that when I bought my tickets for the play) because, okay, that’s an amateur troop but it’s still nice to know, for one, and for two I think the Chevalier’s part probably resonates deeper for a queer man than it does for a straight one.

(I didn’t dare ask Fabrice about that. I’d like to know but not only am I AWKWARD with people I don’t know, you guys, there’s also the fact that this kind of question can be so wildly intrusive without meaning to it’s ridiculous. So, I didn’t dare ask but damn, I’d really like to know about his thought process in preparing for the role.)

Anyway, this is disjointed and not very coherent and mostly me throwing heart at a play despite its problematic aspects—don’t say I didn’t warn you—but yeah, I really wanted to talk about it with you. It’s been too long since I did that xD

(1) I don’t think it was consciously written as rape—at least I hope not—hence the use of slash, but the dialogue and the way it was played yesterday read more as rape than seduction to me. Plus, it’s pretty clear that Don Juan is having revenge-sex because he’s frustrated with the Chevalier’s obnoxious display of his relationship with the prostitute so consideration for Angélique is, at best, a secondary element of the scene.

(2) The double-entendre works in French, too.

(3) To be clear, I’m not a huge theater buff, but I did read/hear about a decent sample of plays during my studies, and La nuit de Valognes is by far my favorite.