#and it's in english so if any of you are opposed to opera because you don't understand the other languages

[oflightningandstars]

AO3 Tag Game!

I was tagged by @mvshortcut and @nobodysdaydreams, thank you both!

How many works do you have on AO3? 15! One of them is fanart, the rest are fics

What’s your total AO3 word count? 27,079

How many fandoms have you written for, and what are they?

3 (the obligatory 4 if you count MBS show and books separately). Nimona, Undertale, and Mysterious Benedict Society! (I've partially written or at least thought about fic in some other fandoms but haven't published anything).

Top five fics by kudos:

(Stuffed) Sharks Have No Bones

Strands of Dead Cells with Sentimental Value (tie)

This head is a hospital, someone please tend to it. (tie) (linked later in the post)

Mysterious Benedict Sleepover (fanart)

Kate comes out to their dad and it is wonderful

and because there was a tie and also one of the entries was fanart, Though heavy hang my eyes with sleep, my singing soul, it cries to thee

(Stuffed) Sharks is fun to me because it is my oldest fic, so it kind of makes sense for it to have the most kudos, but I wrote it several years before the Nimona movie was released and there was a noticeable uptick in people reading it, which was absolutely wild to see since typically I write for MBS which is a small fandom.

Do you respond to comments?

I try!

What’s the fic with the angstiest ending you’ve ever written?

Hmm. I definitely try to aim for hopeful endings, so even though things aren't fixed by the end of either This head is a hospital, someone please tend to it. or you're going too fast, you'll burn up soon, things are definitely looking up for Kate. I like to write Kate angst if you couldn't tell.

Do you write crossovers?

I haven't, but I'm not opposed to it! - that being said, I have some crossover-y art ideas that someday I will actually draw.

Have you ever gotten hate on a fic?

No thank goodness. I would almost certainly cry.

Do you write smut?

In theory I'm open to it, in practice I don't really.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, and I very much hope not.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, it would be very cool. I have thought about trying to translate one of my own before but have never actually tried it.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I must say, I do enjoy a good ship, but I'm not sure I have an all-time favorite? Different ones are special to me for different reasons. But I might have to answer Korrasami because their relationship and the ending of the show were so so important to me as a queer kid who was just starting to figure that out.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will?

Ough. I don't want to put any of my Space Opera AU stuff in this category because that would make me sad. So I will just say I have a number of partially-written fics that I forget about and who knows if I will actually finish them.

What are your writing strengths?

I am contractually obligated to answer this question, I am contractually obligated to answer this question, I am contractually obligated...

Jokes aside, I think I have interesting ideas, and there are certain flavors/styles of description I enjoy writing.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing the fic. Getting into the writing zone, especially lately.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I think it's interesting! I would probably be too anxious to do it, no matter how well I knew the other language (though to be fair I google words and phrases in English to double check that they are things people say)

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

My friends and I plotted and partially wrote Doctor Who fanfic in the format of a season of the show/episode scripts, so I think Doctor Who. The first fandom I published a fic for was Nimona.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written so far?

oooh this is hard, I like so many of them for so many different reasons.

Every time I type out an answer, I go "wait, actually maybe a different one?"

Maybe 'you're going too fast, you'll burn up soon' because it took me so long to write but I'm so proud of it

Tagging: anyone who wants to!

[emeraldskulblaka]

heyy which rock opera you would recommend to start with? everyone seem to choose between 'classics' and their favourite and it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts!

Hi!! Hmm, difficult question - which musical would you recommend to someone who hasn't watched any? Always depends on your personal interests. In my experience, rock operas are often very specific and require prior knowledge of the general plot and background to really enjoy them (as opposed to musicals, which usually do a great job explaining what's necessary to know).

The first thing you have to decide is which language you're looking for, or if you're comfortable watching with subtitles. I've been told that Temple is a classic, but since there is no translation and I don't speak Russian, I'm not going to enjoy it overly much. The German Faust rock opera has the same issue.

Next, it's important to decide what kind of content you're interested in. You don't like fantasy? The Last Trial is phenomenal, but those who don't like fantasy won't like this show either - you won't "convert" anyone. Finrod is very specific and barely mentions any names, so it's only really enjoyable for people who have read the Silmarillion or are familiar with Beren and Lúthien, at least. Someone who dislikes musicals for being tooo much of a show and too dancey and dramatic and glittery will have a very hard time watching Mozart l'Opéra Rock.

So my recommendations:

Mozart l'Opéra Rock - French with English subtitles. Can be considered a classic by now, I think. Entered my list of favourites instantly, the songs just slap, and it mixes classical with rock music. It wouldn't hurt to read up on Mozart's life a little beforehand 😅

Jesus Christ Superstar - originally English with a complete translation at least in Russian. Not sure about other languages because I know of several German productions with only the dialogue in German. Theeee classic. Not really my favourite, but very watchable, and tbh it should be on a 'required watching' list in this category just because of its massive success and continued popularity.

Lay of Leithian - Russian with English, Spanish, Finnish subtitles. Much smaller in scale than the other two, but so much love and care has been put into its creation. Only suitable for fantasy fans, but works without prior knowledge of Tolkien. This rock opera changed my life for the better.

Honourable mention: The Last Trial - Russian with English and Chinese subtitles, full English translation available, but not performed on stage. Took me a while to understand the plot, and it's billed as a musical, but it's so so good. The ending makes me want to punch a wall every time.

As I've said - it always depends on your interests. Obviously watch Orpheus if you like Greek Mythology, and if you're a history nerd, don't miss Joan of Arc!! But these three (four) do a great job of introducing you to the genre by showing a great variety in topics and styles 💚

[rhetoricandlogic]

REVIEW: Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente

Series: Space Opera #2

Published: September 2024, Simon & Schuster (Saga Press)

Genres: Science Fiction / Space Opera, Science Fiction / Alien Contact, Science Fiction / Humorous

Summary: The Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past returns and the fate of the Earth is once again threatened. The civilizations opposed to humanity have been plotting and want to take down the upstarts. Can humanity rise again in this sequel to the beloved Hugo­ Award–nominated national bestselling Space Opera by New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente?

This review contains spoilers for the ending of Space Opera and minor spoilers for Space Oddity.

Truthfully speaking, I didn’t find myself with a burning need for a sequel when I finished reading Space Opera—yet Space Oddity remained one of my most anticipated books of 2024, if only because I had total faith in Catherynne M. Valente to deliver Good Vibes and/or Hilarious Insanity like no other author.

In this sequel that’s lowkey a meta commentary on the nature of sequels (“This time it will be different!”), we return to the Metagalactic Grand Prix, an intergalactic Eurovision-esque singing competition between countless species that determines everything from trade deals to resource allocations to potential wars to music chart-toppers.

Last year, humanity eked out a respectable tenth place in our first showing. This year, we’ve graduated from newbie, and soon become escort to a newly discovered species.

Where other novels may treat the Dreaded Exposition like a concert opener—quality may vary from offensively bad to mildly boring to surprisingly delightful, but nevertheless it’s the thing you have to sit through to get to the thing you actually paid money for—subtly weaving it through the text so as not to drag down the pace or distract from the plot, Valente’s exposition is the headlining star of the show—all the bloody intergalactic history and weird alien biology and that one ranting monologue about the Frankenstein monster that is the English language, sketched in run-on sentences that can span a whole paragraph, if not multiple pages.

While I was thoroughly amused by Valente’s bombastically stylistic writing (and her ability to build entire alien societies around a single pun), the absolute heart of this book for me is the Absolute Zeroes.

Good News: While lead singer Decibel Jones is the frontman of the band and the book, Space Oddity is actually, stealthily, a story about Fridged Woman–turned-paradox Mira Wonderful Star, and any time spent with Mira Wonderful Star is, well, Wonderful. It’s especially touching when Valente contrasts Dess’s washed-up ennui about placing tenth in the Grand Prix with Mira’s punk-hope enthusiasm about touring and exploring the galaxy.

Bad news: I probably took at least half a star off when I learned that Oort St. Ultraviolet, man-of-every-instrument and my favourite Absolute Zero, is relegated to a background character. (We’ve had a Decibel and Oort book. We’ve had a Decibel and Mira book. Am I wishing for a third book that’s all Mira and Oort? Yes.)

Space Oddity is an glitter-filled, imaginative romp that matches the frenetic energy of its predecessor. Valente’s maximalist writing style makes even the dullest topic (e.g. a never-ending intergalactic meeting that could’ve been an email) a sensory and humorous delight. But while Space Opera skillfully married the Absolute Zeroes’ sordid histories and personal hang-ups with grand intergalactic stakes, the finale of Oddity didn’t quite pack the same emotional punch—though, I’ll admit, I audibly gasped and shook my fist at the sky (affectionate) when I read that reveal about the Empty.

[gotjacobian]

[Fun fact I learned writing this - tumblr’s mobile app will not let me copy/paste text into a post. From any source, as far as I can tell. What the fuck, tumblr? Anyway:]

I decided food gets its own category. My general eating pattern here was very different than in Japan, because I was eating almost every meal with my gf’s family, who either cooked or ordered for us. Most of it was not new to me, plus or minus some ingredients that I suspect are less common in the US depending on where you go (local fish, river eel, bitter melon, [organ meat that no one can tell me what is in english]*) I read a lot about styles of chinese cuisine before coming because I was curious - we weren’t trying to track down all 8 of the ‘official’ styles, but I think we hit 4 in one way or another:

Shandong, which includes local cooking styles in Beijing. Lots of stewed dishes, soups, thick and sweet sauces, and finely sliced meats.

Sichuan is probably the most recognizable, and is also my favorite. It makes heavy use of chili oil and specific spices, most notoriously numbing sichuan peppers. This is the regional style in Chengdu.

Hunan, which has a lot of braised or stir-fried meats and vegetables in sweet or salty sauce. Often more spicy than Sichuan food on average, just less Visibly Red. (If you’ve been to Sumiao in Cambridge, many of its offerings are specifically Hunan cuisine)

Cantonese, which has a focus on plain ingredients over spices, and does a lot of steaming and fermenting. Also includes Dim Sum.

It’s not like there was a perfect mapping of meal to cuisine for every single place we went - a lot of meals offered dishes from a variety of backgrounds, especially since they were nearly all hugenormous family-style meals with ten bazillion side dishes. But there were definitely differences and patterns across places we went, and that was cool!

Some of the stuff that stood out:

Beijing/Peking duck. Roast duck sliced up and served communally - you wrap it up with sauce and cucumber (and sometimes sugar on the fatty skin) in a steamed bun or rice wrap to eat it.

A whole stewed fish in an earthy broth served, to my amusement, with what were basically johnnycakes cooked in the same pan. It kind of tasted like gumbo - it had that kind of earthy brown flavor. I’ve become mildly obsessed with trying to identify the origin of this dish. It was described to me as Beijing cuisine, but Beijing isn’t a port city or anything, so it must’ve come from somewhere specific before that. I haven’t been able to find it yet.

Soup dumplings

Dim sum that also included soup dumplings that were inexplicably colored black. Also Dim Sum again but at the Hong Kong airport (which was better).

Sichuan Hotpot at what I am convinced was the absolute most tourist-trap place in all of Chengdu, but in a good way. We had a private room overlooking some traditional opera-style performances - dances, instrument playing, and 'face changing' (where the actors do a sleight-of-hand trick where they swap the masks they're wearing out for other masks). Notably featured pork intestine served in a sphere made of ice, for some reason.

“Green pepper” flavored ice cream that had sichuan peppercorn in it, and was delicious. It made me want to try and make more desserts with that flavor.

Lamb Hotpot (meat cooked in plain broth, as opposed to the spiced sichuan-style broth.) If you’re gonna do just one hotpot, I strongly suggest the Sichuan over this. This is pretty plain except for a sesame sauce you can dip in, and to me that always feels like dipping meat in peanut butter. Not my favorite.

A really, really good egg tart from a bakery chain ("butterful and creamorous") that my gf and I kept walking past. Every location had a giant line outside of it. We eventually gave in and stood in a half-hour line to figure out what the hype was. It was worth it.

KFC in china also has really good egg tarts for some reason. I really like egg tarts. These had peach in them.

A katsu restaurant near my gf’s old high school that entertained me greatly because it was putting SO much more weight in the “authentic japanese restaurant” thing than the actual sorta-canonical katsu restaurant I went to in yokohama. The non-english-speaking server tried to convince me to grind sesame seeds in a mortar and pestle to put on my rice while my gf was in the bathroom, and I had no clue what was going on.**

A lot of jasmine, oolong, and “butter” flavored lattes. Nowhere seems to agree on what “butter” flavor is. Some seemed to think it meant buttermilk, some went with cookie butter. The jasmine latte thing should come to the US though, it’s very good.

A truly absurd number of handmade dumplings, probably about 1/4 of which I folded.

I liked most of the food a lot. I really like sichuan spices and chinese styles of cooking vegetables especially. I have only two consistent complaints: first, the tendency in some styles of cuisine to steam or stew meat into a paste. This came up at dim sum, and also with several of the fish dishes. I’m already not a huge cooked fish fan. I am SUPER not a fan of picking pin bones out of musty fish mush. The braised fish was better, though still bony. There’s an art to getting the pieces that are more meaty, I think, but I admit I have not learned it.

The other, most egregious violation was serving unsalted soup. I’ve garnered a reputation in some circles for my Salt Takes. My personal taste and cooking philosophies both favor more salt than I know some people’s do, and I can respect other positions, to a point. But being served unsalted pork broth by my high school girlfriend’s parents years ago (i.e. a social situation where I felt obligated to consume all of it) is, to this day, one of the worst culinary experiences I’ve ever had. It was like drinking blood. You CANNOT serve meat-based soups without salt. You can’t do it. This was basically the only thing served to me that I didn’t even attempt to eat past a single spoonful. (There were not usually seasonings at the table) The black soup dumplings also had no salt but eating a soup dumpling requires commitment and I was forced to power through. I gagged. You CANNOT.

To end, I also had a lot of tea. A LOT of tea. A lot of tea that I took home. I have literally 15 canisters of pu’er tea that I assume I was given for passing whatever implicit Boyfriend Evaluation was happening, but I do not need 15 canisters of one kind of tea and also four canisters of another, and five extra samples, and one plastic bag of an unidentified black tea I apparently said I liked at a restaurant.*** My suitcase coming back was only under the weight limit because we shoved half the tea in my backpack. Let me know if you are in the Providence area and want tea.

*My gf’s family got worked up several times about whether I’d want to eat [various green vegetables that when sampled basically tasted like collard greens or lemongrass or etc], but would offer unidentified organ meats without batting an eye - something I think would be WAY further outside the average American’s comfort zone - which I found very funny. The set of things I actually avoid eating (mushroom, tofu, eggplant) is weird enough that I get if that was confusing, I guess. I am not usually a big fan of organ meats, but tried any that were served and was pleasantly surprised. I think either they’re prepared better here than in the US, or that it helped having hosts who knew what to order.

** I got out "对不起，我的女朋友不在“ (Sorry, my girlfriend isn't here), and she continued to attempt to explain but in pantomime.

*** I often had 3-4 drinks served to me simultaneously - water, a wine or beer or small glass of baiju (chinese liquor) (pretty universally regarded as bad even in china. it’s bad. i brought some back if you want to try it.) , and one or two teas. I felt very called out about the [LARP character who I’ve declared often orders like 4 drinks at once] thing about it.

Coming back from China tomorrow. I wasn’t able to do the chronological journaling thing I did from Japan (this was jointly a tourism and “meeting my gf’s family” trip, so I had a lot less solo downtime overall.) BUT I got to do a bunch of cool stuff I want to have feelings about, so instead I’m gonna share in a sort of ranked list. First are Things I Think Are Worth Going To China For. Like, on their own - the once-in-a-lifetime stuff that’s worth structuring a trip around.

- The Great Wall. Probably the least surprising thing I could put here, but like, the name says it. It’s a pretty good wall. We went my second day here, to the stretch that’s near Beijing and is some of the most heavily touristed. The view is amazing. It’s one of the most “wow, this looks exactly how people draw it” things I’ve seen in my life. I couldn’t stop myself from commenting repeatedly on how photogenic it was for something that very much predates cameras. Like, just look at this:

It requires a lot of walking on stairs and uneven ground. If you pay extra, you can take a chair lift up (great if you can handle heights) and a toboggan slide-thing down. It’s like, slightly sketchier than your average US six flags experience? But only slightly. You get a brake that controls your own speed going down. I got assigned “young person who’s eyeing that toboggan a little too hard” by the ride operators and they made me wait a few minutes behind the group in front of us before starting the slide, and I’m proud to say I did still catch up to them.

Another thing, because I don’t know where else to put it - I was expecting to be taller relative to the general population in china than I am in the US. But I was surprised there were a few times I had to squeeze myself into whatever people infrastructure was available. I’m not *that* tall, but have absurdly long legs for my height. In the shuttlebus up to the wall, my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me even when it wasn’t leaned back. There wasn’t really any way to avoid it. I have no idea what i.e. my 6’4” father would’ve done.

One last note - there were cats! No one told me there would be cats, but there were a LOT of them. People were lined up to take pictures of the first one here, who was just chilling on the wall itself.

- Next, the Beijing Lantern Festival. We ended up here as a last minute thing. It was *technically* a Mid Autumn Festival attraction, which was before my trip. But it lasted into October and my gf’s parents offered to take us on a night we had no other plans. Parking was hell, it took us 15 minutes to figure out how to get in, and then:

It’s basically a small theme park of foods, souvenirs, and giant lantern displays. It was gorgeous. Walking through it was maybe my favorite part of the trip. Pictures don’t do it justice - a lot of the displays flashed or moved or reacted when you walked past. The construction and use of the lantern ribbing in the design were so, so cool. I was walking around with my jaw dragging on the sidewalk. Like, let it be known that I’m an easy mark for this kind of thing. But if you also are, I honestly think it’s worth timing a trip around.

You could also buy a small lantern to carry around as a souvenir. My gf and I got this red lotus one. I cannot express enough how gratifying it is in practice to get to carry around a pretty light at the pretty light show.

- Seeing China. Weird thing to include - like, obviously you want to see a place you’re going - but it was a defining feeling on the whole trip for me. I was really struck when we were driving into Beijing from the airport how much less I knew about what places in China look like than I did about Japan before going there. It’s not like it’s a secret, exactly, but I think the additional barriers to western tourism (it’s the only place I, an American, have been that I had to pre-apply for a visa to go. More on that later.) and uncensored internet access make a big difference in how the information diffuses. And China is bigger than Japan (and South Korea, but I feel less able to compare my experiences there bc I was only in Seoul, and only for a couple days). So there’s less of a centralized picture to sell, and when there was, it felt very… politicized. Not to mention that information on China in the US often comes with a lot of political and cultural baggage on the receiving end. The information landscape is just different.

Potentially reflecting that, there were way, way fewer western tourists here than in Japan. I was the only obviously non-chinese person anywhere I went except the Great Wall and Forbidden City. Some of this might’ve been timing? And some of it might’ve been that a lot of my travel was facilitated by people who literally live here, so I probably spent less time in “touristy” areas overall. But even there, the vibe was different - much more geared towards chinese tourists than western ones (think no english audio guide at a museum, or a guide assuming knowledge of china’s history beyond a US AP World History level). My layman’s read, fwiw, is that China feels like it has put a lot less effort into “courting” western tourists in general, and presenting a united picture of China For Tourists than i.e. Japan has. And has put more effort into selling a picture of What China Is to Chinese citizens. I’m now very curious if this is what the US (especially DC) feels like to non-american tourists.

But anyway, tl;dr: It was cool to actually see the country I’d only heard about secondhand. Maybe the one I have the most secondhand connection to, across several close relationships. It was interesting to try and put the cultural diffusion to the US in context. And it was affecting to go there and see even mundane stuff that was hard to see otherwise. I found some of the exact souvenirs I’d been given as gifts by friends in middle and high school. I took a lot more pictures than I normally would. Beijing felt a lot like Dallas to me in some ways (lots of 70s era buildings, lots of highways connecting a wide radius of suburbs) and a lot like a brutalist DC in the rest of its vibes. Chengdu felt like a cross between Chicago and Orlando- a beach city with no beaches. Tianjin was… beautiful but weird. I have too many photos to put in a tumblr post, but would be happy to share more with anyone who’s interested.

[harry-leroy]

Opera 2020: The Rake’s Progress (1/99) 

So I’m gonna do a little post for each of these operas that I watch and give some thoughts on it (kinda like I do when I finish a Shakespeare play, but possibly a little more organized? we’ll see...). I figured that I would start with The Rake’s Progress, since I am still interacting with that work, even though I listened to it at the end of 2019. I’m not going to do a post for Xerxes because I saw that opera nearly a year ago (so if anything, I’ll listen to it again once I’ve listened to the others). 

                                                             * * * 

Alright, y’all. I won’t lie. I’m a little obsessed with this work now. If you haven’t listened to The Rake’s Progress and you enjoy some opera, I highly suggest having a listen. There are also wonderfully staged performances that you can watch on YouTube that have been so fun for me to watch because I adore this opera. It’s just a fun, seductive, flirtatious thrill ride with tomfoolery and hell-raising for two and a half hours, (with an ending that seriously messes with my entire emotional state). 

In fact, I’ve enjoyed listening to this opera so much that I’ve begun to do research on the opera itself, as well as some academic questions related to the work. On a larger scale, this project that I’m unofficially undertaking involves the stock character of the rake and the literary (and possibly the musical)  imagination. It is something that I’ve only just begun working on, and am possibly poking at the idea for my thesis, but I am still unsure as I thought I would be doing that on something Shakespeare related. For now, I am looking at Stravinsky’s work (which premiered in 1951) under the lens of a few questions that I want to apply to other works as well (and these are just preliminary research questions - aka things that came into my head as things I wanted to think about - some of these might be rather dull): 

- What is it about The Rake’s Progress that excites us as an audience? To put it differently, what is it about that story that works? Is it the extravagant setting? The high-stakes hell-raising that takes us on a jostling roller-coaster ride to a 180 degree cliff face from which we have nowhere to go but down? Or is it the inevitable moral at the end? The relief that we’re not in the same position as Tom Rakewell? In experiencing Rakewell’s story second-hand, is there a kind of fascination there with looking in on a world that almost appears fantastical? Some combination of these? Which elements stand out more than others as being successful? 

- What inspires an author to make their main character a rake? What inspires them to go down the road of the ‘progress’ once more? Do these authors always have a restoration type setting in mind for their work? Why are we so easily able to move out of that time period? 

-Based on the different representations of the rake and his progress, can we develop a traditional trajectory for how his story will go down? Is it more similar to Hogarth’s artistic interpretation or more different? What changes have had to be made due to the circumstances under which the author wrote, or were made for other reasons? Were these changes successful considering the medium? 

For Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, the work takes a kind of neoclassicist  approach, in which Stravinsky refers to the work as a “period-drama”. He intended for his opera to be set in an eighteenth-century setting, but from what I’ve seen being staged, it certainly has not remained that way. The elaborate restoration setting (something out of Hogarth) actually seems to reveal something interesting about the characters, and reveals that this opera is something quite post-modern. 

What happens in The Rake’s Progress is that we have some characters that are actually aware of their existence in the opera itself, some feeling somewhat trapped by that limit of just being in a show (in which their course is already set for them), and some taking it for what it is, or even taking advantage of it. Some characters are not aware of this at all. Tom becomes more and more aware of his existence as a character as the show goes on. He hopes that his written fate is a good one at the beginning, then in trying to take control of it in a state of maddened anxiety, destroys his other self (Nick) and subsequently goes mad. He falls into the first category of characters, as one who is trapped. Baba is totally aware that she’s just in an opera, and she’s going to make the best of it. She even recognizes it in her libretto during the epilogue (”Good people, just a moment”), “all men are mad, all they say and do is theatre”. She takes the situation for what it is. Nick takes control of it and like Tom, tests its limits, though that later comes to his downfall when he is dragged back down to hell for suddenly changing to rules and allowing Tom a chance to destroy him. He also laments this fact in the epilogue, “day in, day out, poor Shadow/ must do as he is bidden./ Many insist I do not exist./ At times I wish I didn’t”. However, this line comes across as more comedic than tragic. Anne and Trulove do not seem to recognize that they are only part of an opera, though this is somewhat contradictory given the nature of the epilogue in which the five primary characters sing a song very clearly addressing an audience who has been watching them this entire time, in which Tom has come back to life to do the same (clearly out of story-line). So not only does the epilogue help the moral of the story: “for idle hands, the devil finds work to do”, but it also shows that these characters are aware that they are characters and that they are putting on theatre. 

Another thing that has interested me was the relationship between Tom and Nick, and the possibility that Nick is a part of Tom, being his “Shadow”. This becomes somewhat complicated because on stage we see them as separate entities, separate bodies, and they sometimes act independently of one another. As far as the audience is concerned, they are two different characters, and visually they are two different people. However, when one applies the thought that Shadow is only just a part of Tom, all sorts of questions can arise. For me, it makes Tom an even more unstable character. Having done a little bit of score study, his lines are often tonally in opposition with the orchestra, or sometimes he’s so nervous that he doesn’t start right on the downbeat of a measure, but an eighth note behind it. This is especially apparent in the Graveyard scene. Additionally, Tom’s nervousness and instability is shown in his constant key-changes, the way his key pushes against the music played in the orchestra. In the first scene in which he is mad (”With roses crowned”), he sings Nick’s melody that he sang in the graveyard scene: three eighth notes followed by a dotted-eighth, sixteenth pattern, losing sight of his own melody that he had (which in itself was highly unstable, once again having many phrases that did not start right on the downbeat, though some did). 

Regardless of score study, the idea of having these two characters be a part of Tom almost makes me want to toy with the idea of Nick being a vision to him throughout, a vision that is more handsome, less hesitant, and more willing to exercise free-will. (I was joking earlier that Shadow’s either gotta be really creepy or really hot, but now I think it’s whether you want him to come across as a devil or as the other, more-reckless part of Tom). It makes me think that the whole graveyard scene could be some drawn out suicide attempt rather than an opposition between man and devil, which if allowed the luxury of a film version, could possibly be done. In such a case, it could be argued that Tom’s been on the verge of madness this entire time, but his destruction of Shadow finalizes it. However, again, having two figures on stage during that scene playing this elaborate card game would suggest that we are to imagine a card game with the devil, rather than a man imagining his other self threatening him. 

It also calls into question how much sympathy we should (or shouldn’t) have for Tom by the end. If we believe that he is cursed to madness by a devil figure, then perhaps he is more likely to gain our sympathy than if this was caused by his own hand pushing Shadow back into hell, or perhaps into non-existence as is mused by the epilogue. Furthermore, the opera does not end as Shadow is defeated, but after Tom’s (Adonis’s) death. In between these two deaths, we get a heartbreaking reunion between Tom and Anne, in which Tom as Adonis is asking his Venus for forgiveness. “What should I forgive?” she responds with almost too much innocence. Despite the fact that Anne was tossed aside during Tom’s wayward adventures in London, his love for her never seems to fade. Even when he is married to Baba (for that short and wild time), Anne is always in the back of his mind. In Bedlam, we are almost brought back to the Elysium of the woods. It’s almost out of a pastoral, but then we are bitterly reminded that these are no idyllic woods, but rather “a common darkness... in a night that never ends”. So perhaps the question is not of a moral choice of whether we should or should not have sympathy for Tom, but rather do we have sympathy for Tom. The answer for me will always be a yes, and I think that is one of many things that makes The Rake’s Progress an effective work. 

Of course, there are a lot more thoughts I have on this particular opera. The other posts about these operas that I’m going to be listening to will not be as long as this one. I’ve just taken a deep interest with The Rake’s Progress because, as I said before, it’s an absolute joy-ride. I highly recommend giving it a listen. There’s an excellent recording with Ian Bostridge as Tom Rakewell (and I am so upset that they didn’t make an entire production out of it because they should have - it’s scary good). There’s also a fun production on YouTube that was done in Aix in 2017 starring Paul Appleby and Julia Bullock that I love because it’s 9000% more extravagant than it needs to be, but I’m 9000% here for it. The staging is wonderful, to say the very least.

[humanwheatleyslefttoenail]

why do you ship chell and glados if glados is basically her mom

Okay this is actually a pretty common misconception in the fandom that unfortunately a lot of people have taken as canon, but I’m feeling nice so I’ll answer your question.

Basically, anon is referencing a theory from around 2012 that Caroline is Chell’s mom. The evidence for the theory is as follows:

- The turret opera calls Chell “bambina”, which means “little girl” in Italian

- Chell’s name can be found on a Bring Your Daughter To Work Day science project

- GLaDOS references the possibility of Chell being adopted multiple times

- GLaDOS is significantly nicer to Chell after discovering she’s Caroline 

And, anon, you’re right, it does sound like a pretty good argument at first glance. The problem is that a lot of these points don’t actually hold up to scrutiny.

For example, although “bambina” literally translates to “little girl,” it’s often used in the same way “baby girl” is used in English - it can mean child, but contextually it’s usually a flirtatious term. (Source: Cambridge Dictionary)

For Chell’s science project, it doesn’t work as evidence for the theory because GLaDOS killed the scientists around 1998-ish, when Caroline had presumably been uploaded several years earlier and Cave was already dead. Also, Chell’s in her 20′s, and since we know from Lab Rat/Portal 2 that people don’t age in stasis, and that Doug put Chell at the top of the test subject list only weeks after the takeover, Chell was 28 at the time of the takeover. The science project is really only an Easter egg and doesn’t actually fit into the canon timeline let alone prove anything about Caroline and Cave. 

GLaDOS talking about Chell being adopted is a pretty strong point, I’ll admit, but also it’s important to remember that maybe half of what GLaDOS says is true. And even if we take what she says at face value, she also says there’s a man and a woman in stasis with Chell’s last name, which could not have been Cave and Caroline because they were already dead at that point. And the official book Final Hours Of Portal 2 confirms Cave and Caroline were not married and could not have shared the same name anyway. It was also the 50′s, an an unmarried couple of two likely famous people having a child would’ve been scandalous, and yet we see no hint of something like this affecting their company. 

Also, although GLaDOS is nicer to Chell after the Caroline reveal, that’s not necessarily indicative of a mother-daughter relationship, and neither is any of their interactions. It’s just. GLaDOS being friendlier. 

Finally, when this theory was made (and let’s be honest - it still is happening) Chell was constantly whitewashed to hell and back. 

Chell is Japanese-Brazilian, and Cave and Caroline are white, so it would be a near impossibility for her to be their biological child (and insisting otherwise is kinda. just. whitewashing). And although people will cry “adoption!”, based on what I’ve previously proven, that’s pretty much impossible. This theory that somehow she’s Cave and Caroline’s daughter erases an important part of her identity. [Disclaimer, I am white, but this is what I’ve heard from around the fandom]

With all that said, the idea that she’s the daughter of Cave and Caroline really doesn’t hold weight when you really analyze the canon. It’s surface level analysis that doesn’t hold up. And honestly? The idea kinda cheapens the story. It’s much more powerful that GLaDOS learns to care about Chell and becomes kinder than just. Oh, she remembered she’s related to Chell. 

But to actually answer your ask. 

Why do I ship them?

Well, they aren’t mother and daughter, I think that’s pretty obvious now. But if you actually look at a lot of subtext in Portal 2, without the lens of the mother theory, it’s actually pretty romantic! 

I know that sounds ridiculous, but bear with me!

Now - it’s totally okay if you don’t ship them. I get it. Their interactions in Portal 1 and the first half of Portal 2 are toxic if not outright well. Y’know. Murderous. I completely understand why that turns people off from shipping them, and ultimately, shipping is a personal thing. To each his own. 

But before you judge me, let me present my case.

Exhibit A: Portal 

Portal is kinda gay. No, really. Chell and GLaDOS are enemies in this game, but the entire focus is on their relationship (good or not) and the power struggle between them. They are opposites, two sides of the same coin, different representations of opposite ideologies. People have analyzed Portal as a relationship metaphor, or as a metaphor about women’s role in society - either way, the heart of Portal is the complicated dynamic between Chell and GLaDOS. 

That’s not necessarily enough to code a romance, but a lot of popular (and especially popular queer ones) ships begin with opposite ideologies, symbolic powers colliding. Portal cements their relationship as a toxic one, something on the verge of falling apart and hurting both parties in the end. The ending image, of Chell and GLaDOS side by side after the battle, reinforces the symbolic parallels between the two. 

The companion cube is also pretty symbolically important to this interpretation. It’s literally a representation of someone’s heart, and you are told to protect it and preserve it under GLaDOS’ orders, and then you have to destroy it regardless of how you actually feel about doing that. You are destroying GLaDOS’ heart, so to speak. 

There’s also the ending song, Still Alive. The lyrics speak for themselves.

They hint that GLaDOS’ feelings about Chell are more complicated than they may appear (if she’s not being sarcastic...) and she literally talks about Chell breaking her heart (also, think back to the companion cube. Yeah.). The entire song is structurally similar to many a breakup number, with the laments of “I’m glad it happened, but also leave.” 

At the end, we also see that the long promised cake GLaDOS was supposedly lying about was real the whole time. Before Portal 2 came out, it was mostly interpreted as a stinger ending (along with the nicer lyrics of Still Alive) to make you question GLaDOS’ true motives and intentions.

She actually did have a real cake waiting for you. (Side note - not really evidence, but in Argentina, “torta” means cake in Spanish. It’s also a slang term for lesbians. So. Do with that what you will). The cake is what GLaDOS offers you to lull you into the sense that she cares about you, so discovering that “the cake is a lie” wakes you up to the realization that she doesn’t. Except then the idea is subverted one last time, at the very end, showing that the cake is real and at least some of what she said she meant. 

You also see the companion cube. You know, GLaDOS’ symbolic heart?

Now, okay, you might be thinking I’m extrapolating a bit too much. And you might be right. But Portal is not the only game in the series, and if you’re asking me about Cave and Caroline you obviously know about Portal 2.

Exhibit B: Portal 2

If you thought Portal was gay, Portal 2 turns that up to 11.

Even before GLaDOS wakes up, you’re treated to some visual subtext. A few of Rattmann’s drawings representing the events of Portal 2 focus a lot on the relationship between GLaDOS and Chell, with more of the cake symbolism.

In this, you can see a face layered on top of GLaDOS. This could be foreshadowing about Caroline, and likely is, but also resembles his other drawing of Chell. It insists that Chell is a part of GLaDOS, or reinforces parallels between Chell and Caroline, hinting at something either way. 

In this picture, we also see Chell standing on top of GLaDOS, in the same position where the overlay of the feminine face was, again referencing the parallel. It also presents them as opposites, fundamental parts of the same thing and both connected to the same basis, but on opposing sides. 

When GLaDOS wakes up, she returns to her antagonistic role, but there are more hints to something deeper just like in Portal. 

Here, in her awakening lines, she references Chell not unlike an estranged ex. Also worth noting that GLaDOS is pretty much the personification of testing (in a sense, she is testing since she can control all of Aperture like an extension of her body), and insinuates that Chell loves to test. And that she reciprocates that feeling.

In test chamber 10, she says this:

It’s supposed to be threatening, but it does read as almost... sentimental. 

There’s also another chamber with companion cubes in Portal 2. I already talked about their symbolism in Portal, and the same pretty much applies to them here. However, GLaDOS says something interesting about them during this level:

Once again, meant to be intimidating, ends up coming off as “well, GLaDOS, why were you going to give Chell a heart shaped representation of yourself that says ‘I love you?’” And you might think I’m stretching the GLaDOS’ heart metaphor thing a little far here, and I might agree, if the companion cubes didn’t literally sing Cara Mia for you. 

Cara Mia is the turret opera from the end of the game, which is all about how much GLaDOS cares about Chell. More on that later. But the companion cubes play a song called Love as A Construct, and when you get close to them, they sing a specific part of the song that has the tune of Cara Mia. These things literally exist to sing about GLaDOS’ feelings. 

Which makes this line a lot more. For lack of a better term. Tsundere-ish.

Then, right before the escape, she starts talking about the confetti from her fake surprise. 

I really don’t have to explain this one. What else does GLaDOS consider an inconvenience but might miss anyway? Or, more aptly, who else?

Then, during the escape, she teases a (fake) final test chamber in front of you, and forms the panels in the shape of a heart. No, really. 

Up to this point, a lot of the points I’ve presented are interspersed with a fair amount of antagonization on GLaDOS’ behalf, more Foe Yay than anything actually hinting at something deeper than GLaDOS being conflicted about whether she loves or hates Chell. But things really ramp up after Wheatley’s betrayal, when the two of them are forced to team up. (I should also note here that “enemies to lovers” is a pretty classic queer romance trope.)

Here, GLaDOS is put on an equal level with Chell and they have to rely on each other if they want to survive. For the rest of the singleplayer campaign, GLaDOS becomes a lot nicer and even friendly to Chell. There comes a point where she starts referring to Chell as a teammate, calling them “we.” She begins to consider them one unit, two opposites unified. Here’s what she says after the lemon rant:

You can not only see her using we, but actively talking about how her and Chell are going to fight Wheatley together. There’s also that last line - “let’s explode with some dignity.” GLaDOS has fully accepted the very likely possibility that she and Chell might die together. That she might die on the same level, and the same team as Chell. And she seems... surprisingly okay with that, as long as she and Chell go together. 

It’s during the Old Aperture levels that Chell and GLaDOS also discover that they have a lot in common. This is the part of the game where GLaDOS figures out she’s Caroline, that she’s human. Or, that she’s like Chell. And Chell discovers (from what we can tell anyway) that Caroline is kind, that she’s funny and smart and so many of these things she never noticed about GLaDOS before. Now also with the knowledge she is fighting alongside another human being. 

You can also draw parallels between Chell and Caroline, both intelligent women ultimately betrayed by their seemingly innocuous male friends before being trapped in Aperture and forced to team up with one another in a way that will free both of them. We see that really, GLaDOS isn’t that different from Chell - she too has been imprisoned in this place against her will, but in a completely different way. Once again, the idea of two sides of the same coin applies here. 

I’ve written another meta about this before, but I also think the whole idea of repressing a part of your identity and hating it, before bonding with another woman and then realizing that it’s okay to be like her and to be on her side. It’s okay to be yourself and meeting her is what helps you discover this new part of yourself. Is kinda inherently gay. GLaDOS’ discovery of her own humanity just fits so well into a queer realization narrative, to me at least.

Then, Chell and GLaDOS escape Old Aperture and have to get through Wheatley’s tests. 

Here, GLaDOS isn’t just begrudgingly on Chell’s team. She’s actively helpful. She wants to help Chell solve tests, defends her from Wheatley’s insults, and makes jokes to lighten the mood. Things that can really only be explained by her caring about Chell, especially the part about the insults. See below.

After the two escape Wheatley’s testing track, right before the boss fight GLaDOS has a few other things to say.

GLaDOS is not going to betray Chell, because of some kind of conscience. But she could easily ignore that back in her body, and yet? Here she’s deciding not to, and for no good reason. She didn’t have to say that to Chell, but she did, because she cares and she wants Chell to live.

And then, moments before the fight:

The final lines imply that GLaDOS does not think of Chell as an enemy anymore, and that it doesn’t matter what Chell thinks because they are in this together and they are getting revenge together. It’s pretty heartwarming to be honest, to know that even in a fight that will almost certainly kill you, she is there rooting for you and caring about you, even if you don’t feel the same way about her. It no longer matters to GLaDOS whether you even reciprocate - you staying alive, you making it through is enough for her.

So Chell fights Wheatley and sends him into space, all well and good, and at this point, GLaDOS has the option to kill Chell. But not only does she not, she actively saves Chell, and holds her hand in the process. If you don’t believe me:

And not only that, but when Chell goes unconscious from her injuries, GLaDOS sits and waits for her to wake up. It’s also implied that GLaDOS carries her to the elevator, since it’s where she wakes up but not where she passed out. In the scene where Chell blacks out, you can also hear the part of Love As A Construct that sounds like Cara Mia. Yeah. Yeah.

If you think that this cannot possibly get any gayer, you are wrong again, because then GLaDOS makes her final speech. Which is really just a love confession, let’s be honest.

The “surge of emotion?” Do you mean love, GLaDOS? And the idea of GLaDOS considering Chell her best friend, despite everything these two have done to each other? The idea that GLaDOS, out of all people, forgives someone?

Except this isn’t even Chell’s final send-off. GLaDOS writes her an entire opera of turrets, that sing a literal love song. (Note what I said earlier about the use of the word “bambina”).

It really can’t get any more obvious than that. “My (affectionate romantic term here), my dear, I adore you.” How. Is. That. Heterosexual. In. Any. Way.

So Chell goes to the surface, set free by GLaDOS (think of the saying “if you love something, set it free), and you think that’s the end. Until GLaDOS gives you a companion cube so you aren’t alone on the journey, and from the burn marks, you know it’s your first companion cube. Her original heart, her first gift to you, a piece of her that she wants you to carry with you to remind you that she does care about you after everything. It also gives the lyrics to Still Alive a much more genuine meaning. 

Portal 2 ends, and then the ending song, another GLaDOS number plays. Just like Still Alive, Want You Gone is structurally a break up song and very obviously about GLaDOS missing Chell and “counting on” (read: caring about/loving) Chell’s tendencies and quirks. 

She’s accepted Chell completely, and yet also given Chell the one thing she wants most. Only wanting Chell gone can mean GLaDOS not wanting Chell in her life anymore, but can also mean she wants to give Chell the freedom she’s wanted for so, so long. It’s the best thing she can give.

In the co-op campaign, GLaDOS also references still caring about Chell.

And that’s the end of the Portal series. Except. Brace yourself. Despite the games being over, there is STILL more subtext somehow. It gets. Even gayer.

Exhibit C: Supplemental Evidence

Valve has made a lot of extra/cut content for the Portal series, and I’ll be looking at some of it below.

This official valentine from Valve shows GLaDOS offering a romantic partner cake, which as we’ve established before, is very symbolic of GLaDOS’ feelings about and/or relationship with Chell. 

There’s a lot of other concept art and official art that emphasizes their relationship too. See below.

There’s also some cut GLaDOS lines that are even gayer than the source material and again, sound like confessions or references to a breakup:

The idea of “discovering things about someone”... how much more obvious can it get?

The developers have even confirmed a lot of my commentary on Chell and GLaDOS’ relationship in The Final Hours Of Portal 2. See these quotes from the book/this post:

The devs literally describe it as a romance. They use terms like “cheating,” they wanted to write a romantic duet, JoCo purposefully wrote the endings like love songs. It is literally, blatantly said by the creators of the game that their relationship is interpreted romantically. By the creators of the game. 

And if Word of God confirmation isn’t enough for you, have a song written for a cut alternate ending by GLaDOS’ voice actress, Ellen McClain. The song is literally nothing but GLaDOS talking about caring about Chell, about not wanting her to die/leave GLaDOS alone, about wanting to bake a cake with Chell, about waiting for Chell to wake her up. It’s so genuinely sweet and sad, and really, really romantic in the most heartwrenching way possible. 

JoCo also came back for the Portal levels in Lego Dimensions, writing one final breakup song for GLaDOS to sing about Chell. It comes off as GLaDOS not wanting to admit she misses Chell even though she obviously does, trying to replace their relationship but failing, and even explicitly forgiving Chell/wanting her to come back.

Also, the “finally I understand,” as if only now GLaDOS understands just how deep her feelings for Chell are... What else can I say?

In Lego Dimensions, GLaDOS also outright rejects anyone who isn’t Chell.

In Conclusion:

Why do I ship Chell and GLaDOS? 

Well, ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether I ship them. 

Because I think it’s glaringly obvious Portal does.

[whewchilli-theghetto]

You know, I'm pretty sure Taekookers (and now JinKookers, oddly enough) prefer Taekook interactions specifically because they are NOT romantic. If you spend any time in tkk spaces, it's immediately clear that they're fantasy driven. They like to imagine what it would be like to be with Tae/JK using the other member of the ship as the self-insert. Typical fantasy play, a safe way to explore a burgeoning (for the younger) or repressed/unexplored (for the older) sexuality.

However, Jikook past and present is unmistakably homoromantic. People who'd rather imagine themselves with the members, or who don't like the idea of the members having desires (sexual or otherwise) that have nothing to do with ARMY are threatened. That's why you see people liking and sharing or simply ignoring homoerotic fan art or edits of TK, while flipping out over legitimate pictures, clips, etc of Jikook. They see it, they absolutely recognize it for what it is, and they hate it because it destroys their ability to project their own fantasies onto their idols.

And to be fair, BTS is pretty unique amongst idol groups: they pretty much changed the way fans interact with their idols. They're very open and honest so it's easy to feel closely connected to them, almost like you know them. Just think about that letter Namjoon recently penned, or the fact that they are the group that turned VLive into what it is now, a place where idols can talk directly and (somewhat) personally to their fans.

And people love this! To a point. Because the more one is confronted with an idol's humanity, the reality of their personhood, the more restricted the ability to project onto and fantasize about the idol becomes. Gone are the days when idols were basically unknowable and their personas were easy canvases for fan projections and fantasies.

So for some, anything or anyone that would seem to contradict the fantasy needs to be incorporated into it (Tae was supposed to go to Tokyo! that's fan service! they're just brothers! he makes him so uncomfortable!) or destroyed (stop talking about jikook you fetishizer! you're a Tae/JK anti! #freejungkook!) Tkkr "theories" don't just sound like soap operas or fan fictions; that's literally what they are.

Jimin as JK's romantic partner stands as living, breathing opposition and contradiction to any fantasies fans may want to indulge in, and that's intolerable for some. They resent him the most, but it isn't personal. If Tae were JK's partner, the same people who now loudly oppose Jimin would undoubtedly turn on Tae.

And Tae and JK aren't exempt. Many fans frequently belittle JK's intelligence, implying he has no knowledge of film language, no ability to decipher English lyrics, no idea he has Jimin's name tattooed on the ring finger of his mic hand. And I don't know if you were in the fandom when Tae told a particularly bold tkkr to get out of her imagination, but not only did many tkkrs rush to misinterpret his words, but several also spammed Weverse with sexually explicit Taekook fan art.

I guess the main point of what I'm saying is, the vitriol from shippers has little to do with the members themselves and everything to do with fan projection and fantasy being frustrated by reality.

And for what it's worth, it at least appears the members have accepted it and chosen not to let it get to them. If the selcas Jimin and Jungkook dropped during hickeygate didn't convince you, I think partnering with Wattapad is a clear indication that they know what goes on in fantasy spaces and they're choosing to engage on their own terms. Yoongi even seems excited about playing a villain? 😆

And the things these people say are definitely vile, hateful, and hypocritical. But they're toddlers throwing tantrums and screaming into the void. They have little bearing on reality.

I say little rather than no bearing because JM seems to be dropping dongsaeng in favor of maknae, very consciously (in my opinion) removing a "weapon" from the arsenal of those who would seek to deny the truth.

And Tae... has not been known to mince words when he feels people have overstepped. Maybe it's just me, but I'd be treading lightly if I was a tkkr, especially on Weverse. You never know when Tae might get fed up and tell people exactly how he feels about their little fantasy narratives.

Wow anon...I agree with everything here. I agree because I was once there in my 1D days. Ziam and Larry were my ships (yes I know, embarrassing 😫) but it was mainly Ziam. And I used to project myself onto Zayn and fantasize what it would be like to be in a relationship with Liam. The only difference is that I didn't fantasize for being with Liam but I fantasized being Zayn (again, kinda weird I know but I was young ok😭). And everytime Liam did something I didn't like, like go out with his girlfriend I'd be so freaking pissed. "How dare you go out with her when Zayn is at home probably heartbroken🥺" then I would comfort myself with "Oh yeah we can't know about their relationship. They gotta keep going out with their beards to hide the real relationship🤭🤫" Another thing is, I would "feel sorry for Zayn" when Liam talked about his gf, but when Zayn talked about his gf I wouldn't treat him with anger like I did Liam. It was always "aw my poor baby having to be in this relationship he doesn't want🥺".

Now why did I say all this that no one cares about (😭)? Because this is very much like what you're describing here. I've seen it quite often with Taekookers being mad at one (Jungkook) while favoring the other. Is it because they see themselves as Taehyung in the relationship? So whenever Jungkook so much as looks at Jimin it's "ugh you're my- I mean Taehyung's boyfriend and shouldn't be looking at someone else. Hmph!"? Or maybe it's "Tae isn't like that if he looks at someone else it's just a friendly manner. He did nothing wrong". Kind of how I was with Zayn. "Only Liam is the problem. NOT the one I'm projecting onto😤".

Again I agree. These are all fantasies. When you finally come out of that little bubble of "my ship is being hidden! Let me look for the little cracks in the story that points to them being in a relationship!" you realize that you're making up things in your mind. "Omg Tae said they were drinking together last night! That means there's nothing special with Jungkook literally spinning Jimin to the point where Jimin left a big ole suck on his neck. Yay my ship is realll🥳" When it was literally just Tae and Jungkook hanging out and probably trying to get back that close friendship that once was (realize I never said they aren't friends; just not that close anymore which is OK.")

Thanks for the ask/thoughts, anon. If anyone has anything to add feel free🥰

[elpercotreviews]

Reviewing My Anime 10/10's *Relatively* Spoiler-Free

Note: What I rank a 10/10 is very specific and obviously very subjective to my own. Something can only be a 10/10 if I already consider it a 9/10 AND I must have rewatched it. I am someone who typically does not rewatch/reread anything, unless it's something I truly absolutely enjoy. With that being said, because of the requirements, I only have 4 animes that I rank 10/10, and tbh only one of those animes would get that ranking from the general anime audience. The rest are SO SO SO specific to my particular tastes that I would be absolutely stunned if someone also had the same four as me, because the requirement is so specific. Imma make another post eventually for my 9/10's because I think that list makes a lot more sense for a general anime audience lmaooo.

Soooo, in order of least personal to most personal (although obviously they're all personal to me lol) we have:

1. Psycho-Pass

Recommended for people who: are really into that dark dystopian future society vibes, are fans of Ghost in the Shell, like detective/crime stories

Okay, for a few people, this one actually probably makes some sense. At the moment, it has an 8.37 on myanimelist which means this anime is super well liked. I've watched this anime twice, first the original and then the second time I watched the director's cut (yes that exists lol). Overall, I'm a huge fan of the entire Psycho-Pass anime series as a whole. I've watched all three seasons, as well as two of the movies. I didn't watch any of the Sinners of the System ones cuz tbh I literally couldn't find an english sub of that anywhere, it just doesn't exist lol. I think it's okay cuz the ratings for the Sinners of the System trio of movies seems meh. I've actually watched Psycho-Pass the Movie like three/four times LMAO but that's simply cuz a movie is obviously much quicker to watch than an entire anime season. Like just objectively, the Psycho Pass series as a whole is very inconsistent in quality due to the fact that it's all original, so they do technically just make up everything as they go lol. Season two is all right (I think it gets more hate than it should), three is good but season one by far is the absolute best in the entire series. I'd argue the movie is technically my absolute favorite out of the whole IP, but I actually give the movie an 8/10. The movie, because of being obviously way shorter, simply does not have the deep controversial and philosophical lines of thought that season one has. It lacks that extra depth that would make me put it anything higher than an 8. The two main characters have good chemistry as a crime-fighting duo and the main villain's rivalry/relationship with the male lead is super compelling. The female lead is meant to be relatively naive/more on the innocent side which works with the plot as it allows the show to naturally explain and give more exposition as to the actual world and rules of Psycho-Pass without having it seem so ham-fisted or just throwing info to the audience.

2. Violet Evergarden

Recommended for people who: cry to sad movies, like gorgeous animation, are very empathetic, like vignette-esque storytelling

All right if you even remotely consider yourself an avid anime fan, then this anime is probably also somewhere on your 10/10 list or at least an anime you consider to be "very good." That is, unless you are that very vocal minority who simply really just REALLY do not like this anime for some god forsaken reason. However, in my honest opinion, I think an anime like this just really doesn't sit well with ... how do I put this blunty ... people who do not give a fuck about other people or anyone else's feelings but their own. Basically, IF YOU ARE SELFISH, A NARCISSIST, EGOTISTICAL, OR ANY SORT OF COMBO OF THOSE THREE, YOU WILL NOT LIKE THIS ANIME. And if you do, you probably don't think you're any of those things. Because of the anime's very premise, I find it very difficult to see a very self-centered/heartless person particularly enjoying this anime. The whole premise of this anime is that the main character who, because of her upbringing, doesn't understand feelings/emotions, especially the concept of love, grows as a human and slowly begins to learn what love is. The show does this by showing multiple sets of characters meant to represent different types of love (romantic, familial, platonic, etc). The vocal minority of people I've seen give Violet Evergarden bad ratings all typically argue that although beautiful, the anime doesn't have any substance/doesn't really mean anything. If that's honestly all you got after watching the entire show, then you deadass just don't get it, and you probably will never ever get it. If you've seen or heard of Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song, than just know that these two animes are VERY very similar in vibe despite being technically different genres. However, I personally found the themes and concepts in Vivy are done much more masterfully in Violet Evergarden which I think is due to Vivy's heavier focus on a story-driven overarching plot/action as opposed to Violet Evergarden's focus more on emotional impact/an episodic format. I've watched the entire series and I've rewatched the main show twice. TBH you can probably skip the gaiden movie AKA the one set at the girl's academy it was highkey pointless. Compared to the opera episode they added as a "special", the gaiden movie was still good but I wish resources were dedicated to something that actually added to the story. ALSO YES I KNOW ITS A GAIDEN AKA A SIDE STORY AKA FILLER SO YES NO DUH IT DIDNT ADD ANYTHING, BUT STILL. As for the main show, I think I cried for three episodes (the one about the playwright/author I forgot lol, the mother and daughter, and the soldier). On my rewatch, I didn't cry but I still deeply cared for and related to the characters. Violet Evergarden is a beautiful anime with a beautiful story.

3. ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu Ka

Recommended for people who: like bread and bakeries, don't mind a very chill and slow-paced story, like stories about political intrigue and hidden agendas

Based on a relatively short manga, ACCA: 13 follows the main character Jean Otus as he performs his job of auditing the 13 districts of his country Dowa, while rumors and politics brew in the background that threaten to entangle Jean into a complicated plot. To be honest, I think properly reviewing this anime is impossible for me, because I just can't really explain the vibes of this anime besides "chill" and "intriguing." I think trying to explain anything more than the basic premise I just wrote would spoil a lot of what ACCA is, because it's plot is actually relatively quite simple and straightforward. Compared to Psycho-Pass which has a relatively good cult following, and Violet Evergarden which is universally praised, ACCA is an anime that I've yet to personally meet anyone who has ever even heard of it LMAOO. And almost everyone I know watches anime, so that's saying something oof. ACCA is made by Madhouse, which if you don't know, is a super well known anime studio, producing big hits such as Death Note, Hunter x Hunter, One Punch Man, etc. That's why I'm surprised that ACCA has flown just SO under the radar, but that may be due to the overalls nature of the anime itself. ACCA is an anime where all the characters hold their card close and no one seems to really share their real thoughts. One main criticism the anime has is the lack of deeper connections to characters and that for a main character, Jean Otus is very bland. To be honest, I think that's a very fair criticism and I can understand why this would prevent people from rating this anime higher than an 8 or 7. Due to the very nature of the anime and its plot, I do agree that there is a huge cast of colorful characters that we unfortunately don't really get to know more about. To be honest though, I don't mind this because I feel that's honestly quite realistic, especially factoring in Jean's job. All these places he's going and all these people he's meeting, it's literally just his job. He's not on vacation, these people aren't his friends, so the anime has no real reason to dwell much longer on places past its specific episode. Just like in real life, you encounter so many people and go past so many places that you probably won't ever see again. So for me personally, I didn't mind that the anime didn't explicitly show much about the backstories or lives of the cast, save for the very main characters (as their backstories were plot relevant). I think as viewers of not simply an anime, but a whole other world, I think it should be satisfactory to inherently understand that these are whole "people" who have entire lives that we are not exactly privy to. So although admittedly our understanding of many of the characters was all around quite shallow, I think that works for the scope of the anime, which was relatively simple and focused on just Jean living his life and the political plot stirring in the background until it was brought forward in the second half of the anime. Also I love Jean Otus. I actually completely absolutely adore him. He is literally my profile pic for myanimelist LMAO. I think calling him "bland" is fair from other people's perspectives, especially as the supposed main character of an ANIME, but I feel that if ACCA was in a different format like a novel, I think his personality would have been less criticized. Like I said, I love him soo much. I don't find him bland at all, but actually very interesting and highkey attractive LOL (if only he'd quit smoking but it's part of his charm 😞). Yes for an anime "protagonist," he is quite underwhelming especially compared to others, but I think that makes him very charming!!! Like all he wants to do is just chill, vibe, and do his job lmaooo. I think as a person, he’s very charismatic, and in the world of ACCA the rest of the characters see that as well. Because like, if he really were such a bland person, why would so many people like him and actually trust him lol? As for why it’s technically my favorite anime of all time (my ultimate one is a movie), I can’t give super detailed reasons why to be honest. I just really like the overall vibes of the anime itself, and I think the anime is just super unique and original. I’ve watched a ton of anime over the years, but I’ve genuinely seen nothing like ACCA in the slightest. I mean, just look at the recommended animes on the myanimelist. The recommended animes are all stuff I’ve also personally really liked (like fugou keiji unlimited and the great pretender) but yeah there’s just truly nothing that’s close to what ACCA is, and because of that, it reminds my absolute favorite anime show. I’ve seen the dub and the sub, even though I am a vehement dub hater lmaooo (except for very few circumstances, and this also applies to all non-English media, not just anime). There was only one thing in the entire show that slightly confused me/ seemed slightly unbelievable and I won’t spoil but it had something to do with the overall timeline of some events, but it doesn’t detract from the story at all. Oh and the art style! I really love the art style of the anime. It stays pretty true to the manga, but is also just an overall kind of art style I really like. I really enjoy the more like 2d/flat/drawn art style versus really clean and really detailed stuff, and I’m typically not a big fan of very obvious use of CGI (unless done tastefully like in Demon Slayer). All the backgrounds in ACCA have this painted/drawn style and the anime itself has this like muted(?) filter over it that makes the anime seem like someone’s drawings just put up on display in a way that’s really refreshing and nice. I highly recommend this story for anyone who wants a breath of fresh air and to get away from the typical action-packed high energy of big name anime.

4. From Up on Poppy Hill

Imma make a whole separate post JUST for this movie so I can explain why I love this movie so so much. And honestly, Imma need a whole separate post in the first place to address the elephant in the room when it comes to this movie (if you’ve seen it, then you know what I’m talking about). And if you’ve haven’t seen the movie, maybe you’ve heard about one of its controversial themes. I’m not gonna say what it is, cuz I KNOW it’ll be super off-putting for a lot of people, but please omg just hear me out. I just love this movie so so much. I’ve seen it like 7 times and counting. I have it downloaded on my computer and on a flash drive. I’ve watched the sub AND the dub however I’ve stopped watching the dub because it makes me sad every time I hear Shun’s voice actor ;-; This movie is legit an honest-to-god comfort movie for me that I could watch over and over and I’ll fall in love with it again each and every time. And once again IMMA MAKE A WHOLE SEPARATE POST BECAUSE I SWEAR PEOPLE ARE GONNA BE LIKE “Yo ain’t this the movie with the -----” and it’s like PLEASE LET ME EXPLAIN. The vibes of this movie, the themes it addresses (yes even THAT theme), the music, the art, the characters, is perfectly presented in a way that I will never stop watching this movie. The only other film that has come close to the amount of times I’ve watched From Up on Poppy Hill would be Legally Blonde lmaooooo. 

[mrpenguinpants]

Hey so that Dainsleif quest huh 👀

[Spoilers for those who haven't played it yet ofc]

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These are just some disorganized initial thoughts for your consideration:

So I'm pretty sure his "travel companion" that he keeps mentioning is our twin

Does that mean our twin has gone to the exact same places as we've been going?? Dainsleif seemed to be familiar with all the locations we visited in Mondstadt but I suppose that could've been from an even earlier journey

And the possibility that the Abyss is trying to mislead us bc we hadn't encountered any abyss mages since Dvalin 🤔🤔🤔 what do they want??? We know (kinda) that our twin is watching our progress and that they're the prince/princess of the Abyss so like are they trying to keep us from getting in the way of their plans so as not to accidentally hurt us? Though something tells me we're gonna get tangled up in it one way or the other lmao

Dainsleif said that his goal is to oppose the Abyss so perhaps he's got his own secret plans to try to stop our twin (as is also supported by what he said at the end of the mortal travails video about proving ourselves worthy of stopping "her"/Lumine probably)

Also turns out I'd been pronouncing his name wrong the whole time lmao I had been saying dains-leaf instead of dains-lif

No Vision as confirmed by his full character model

Also his eyepatch is more of a phantom of the opera mask lmao

Important observation he looks like post timeskip Dimitri from a distance when I had to meet him in Dvalin's Lair I legit thought he was Dimitri for a sec XD

Anyway those were my thoughts about the new quest lmao my internet was cutting out the whole time while I was trying to play like dsfkdksjf pls I just wanted to talk to blond eyepatch man

Important part of this post: 

I took a lot of pictures of Dainsleif if you want to use them as references (or appreciation).  The pictures are under the read more tag so if you don’t want spoilers, don’t read anything and skip to the read more. 

Also, he calls you and your sibling “idiots” through money.

He asks for 500 mora and (this is probably just a coincidence but considering Zhongli tips Xiangling 888 mora I’m sus). The number 250  [二百五] or ( èr bǎi wǔ) means “idiot”. 

If someone calls you 250, they can say (nǐ shì wǔ bǎi) or “You are [250]”. But if you give someone 500, this can be taken as saying two people are stupid (250 + 250 = 500). I mean, that’s probably not how it works but I think it’s funny to imagine Dainsleif being too polite to call us stupid. 

---

I know right? When I saw the leak for it and seeing it confirmed in patch notes, I was so confused. Wha-Why are you here so early? I wasn’t expecting you for another 5 years at least. I’m happy to see you and your beautiful model in game but at the same time I was so worried that we were going to get crumbs of interactions. Same thing with Guizhong in Zhongli’s story quest. Genshin please...finish your stories (that’s fucking hilarious coming from me considering I still have a part 2 to Childe that I need to write), but I’m honestly just happy that he’s in the game. But yes 👀👀 more lore food. 

You know, I was talking about the archons a bit with @maagdalen and, I may have been misunderstanding or reading the wrong message, but they brought up the idea that what if the archons’ personality is based on their regions country's? So for example, Venti’s personality adopts the German mentality because Mondstadt was modelled after Germany? Obviously, I have no idea if that’s true because I’m not from or am German but in the context of Liyue and Zhongli. I can definitely see some sort of connection. 

But some food for thought:

“But cyro archon is very viable since she's suppose to be a kind hearted person that needed to be cold for the sake of freedom. or peace. something like that.”

 “Sorry, but this is stupidly Russian style. No matter what you say, people will always be dissatisfied. Of course it's not that bad...but it's something to think about.“ 

But yess, @svnflowery​ said the same thing. That Dainsleif was Lumine’s “guide” the same way Paimon is our guide. I actually think that’s an interesting idea. That Lumine has gone to the exact same places as we’ve been through. It actually makes me wonder (since we can play as both her and Aether), that Lumine went through the same story line as Aether. She met Venti, Zhongli, everything that’s happening right now. She’s already been through, then when she reached the Khaenri’ah chapter she failed. So she decided to spin the clock back and change destiny. I mean, this is me spit balling and I don’t think this happened but it’s something to think about. 

You know funny enough, hasn’t Venti been asleep for a while? Either way, he doesn’t really strike me as the type that truly wants to be an Archon. He says in his voicelines as well that “that’s a problem for Mondstadt to deal with”. So it would be easier for the Abyss Order to mess some things up. While Zhongli has been alive for 6000 years and I highly doubt Abyss Order can do anything to him haha. If we’re going on that “Lumine has already been through this journey” she could be trying to re-make or lead us on the same path. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if Dainsleif was our guide, then when Lumine spun the clock back and aligned herself with the abyss, that’s when they split. That could be a reason why he’s trying to oppose the abyss order but really I think it’s because the Abyss Order’s goal is to basically set the world on fire (or something like that). I always pronounce character names wrong and I don’t understand why people make such a big deal out of it. You know who I’m talking about, my pronunciation isn’t completely shit to the point you don’t know. So why do you keep yelling at me??

Also. The most important part of his quest was it was “Aether’s version” of the “We will be reunited” trailer. 

It even showed the crushed dandelion flower and the ruin guard footprints. IT’S OUR SISTER. 

I knoww, I was searching for his vision and got weird pics but that’s alright, I LOWKEY HATE THE OPERA MASK SO MUCH. GIVE ME ACTUAL MASK. THERE GOES THE “SEPERATE COLOURED EYE” ART OF KHAENRIAH PEOPLE. Yo, knock off Dimitri let’s go. 

I love Dainslief’s english voice but I hate Xiao’s en voice. What a dilemma. I usually play in chinese but wow does Dainslief sound old. Jp is slightly better but I hear grandpa vibes. Korean isn’t bad and I actually don’t mind korean xiao so korean we shall go. It’s weird. I like Dainsleif english voices, Xiao chinese voice, paimon korean voice haha. Jp is usually just good all around but I have preferences. But tyty for telling me your thoughts! I’d love to hear about the Xiao quest that just dropped. Beautiful boy 

sweats 

yeah about that...xiao scammed me. I wonder if his speech changes based on what you say. i kind of doubt it though. 

I’m looking at his outfit from every angle while Xiao stays pretty in the back. 

I like that you can see his magic arm there. 

While on this side you can’t. 

I swear this is for research. IM TRYING TO SEE IF HE HAS A VISION. IM INNOCENT!!

he also has some sort of weird...blue thingy on his foot?

Im using Xiao as a personfication of me BUT TELL ME YOUR SECRETS 

[friiday-thirteenth]

SINCE SOMEONE HAS TAKEN IT UPON THEMSELF TO YELL AT ME TO SLEEP AT AN APPROPRIATE TIME, HERE'S SOME HOT TAKES:

maths is good and fun and I genuinely enjoy it and that's not weird that's just how I am. I am speed running the year above me's maths and I am loving it. numbers make brain go brr.

I'm doing a thing called maths buddy and I'm just. going right through the year 11 work and it's so much fun? like, im on algebra but in class we're looking at bivariate data (we're looking at pie graphs soon yay!) and I love it so much. everything about maths is ten out of ten. also, at the end of the year we do a trial ncea test and get sorted into our classes for next year and I am really hoping to get into 101 bc that leaves calculus open later on!

ALSO

we did science today and learnt about the circulatory system and yes it's good but I also am going to list the bones now (disclaimer: this is a year ten science class. plz do not take all I say as fact although like 90% is right. if somethings wrong plz correct me!)

cranium + mandible (skull), scapula (shoulder blade), clavicle (collarbone, it's designed to break), humerus (upper arm bone), radius + ulnar (ulnar is along pinkie side of arm I think(I broke the top off of it last year. bones are crunchy), sternum, ribs, pelvis, femur (if u break that u fucked up. it's big and strong for a reason.), tibia + fibula (big + small leg bones, fibula is really hard to find in a chicken leg), and then ankle bones and feet. in the book the toe bones were called phalanges but the teacher said something abt metatarsal (t for toes) and metacarpal (ur fingers). And then the ear has like. the anvil, hammer and stirrup but idk abt the stirrup.

now the circulatory system

you breathe in air. goes down trachea (theres a flap in ur throat that stops food going down ur trachea and I think that is very cool). filters into lungs, absorbed into blood. goes thru the heart, into the arteries (although I'll talk abt them later) out thru the body, into capillaries (the tiny tiny versions of veins & arteries) and comes back thru the veins to the heart,goes to lungs and gets re-oxygenated because it was spreading oxygen to the body that whole time

VEINS AND ARTERIES R WEIRD

arteries are almost all sort of kinda the parts that bring oxygenated blood throughout the body. veins almost kinda sort of bring it back through the body to be re-oxygenated. but the thing is, you've got the pulmonary vein and the pulmonary artery, and I cant remember the vein ones job, but the pulmonary artery brings deoxygenated blood into the lungs. (pulmonary means to the lungs, I think.)

I can't remember much abt the heart, but it has two ventricles (left and right), two atriums (once again, left and right), the superior vena cava (literally, the one on top), and the inferior vena cava (the one below), the septum (which separates the two ventricles/atriums I think), the aorta (which is pronounced a-orta whereas in Maori, the native language of my country (I am European Pakeha tho) you would put the a and o together to make an "oh" kinda sound (I'm shit at explaining sounds sorry)), then you've the pulmonary thingies. the diaphragm is a muscle that pulls ur lungs down, and people with strong diaphragms have really good opera voices (kinda random but yeah). also one side of your heart is stronger (has more muscle we said in class) than the other bc one pumps blood to the lungs and the other, stronger one pumps it all around the body. that's all I can remember sorry (I've forgotten stuff, I can sense it).

oh!!! we dissected a chicken leg! bone marrow is pretty lit. the skin is weird and adipose (fat tissue) is gross. I liked ripping the muscles apart tho. in the coming lessons (the one after next I think) we get to dissect a pig heart! its gonna be really fun!

also we talked abt how Latin used to be taught a lot and now I'm sad I don't get to learn it, as in, I'd learn it as opposed to any other language because that's how I am!

Also. weird thing is, I could've learnt spanish this year but I didnt bc I hated the teacher (: but hes my Dean's partner so yeah. my Dean's pretty chill tho, she's my english teacher.

English is great! we're reading holes by Louis sachar and I've already read it, so I'm speed running the questions hehe. that is, if I cbf. tomorrow we get to silent read (in class not the library which is kinda sad, in the library I can hide alone in a corner) which will be fun.

this degenerated from hot takes to. not hot takes but just facts n shit, but anyway! now that that's out of my system, goodnight! I hope everyone who sees this has a lovely day/night/time of day for them!! and also a lovely week. you deserve it :)

[creepingsharia]

While Europe Slept, 15 Years Later  - a new preface

Bruce Bawer has updated his book While Europe Slept - detailing the destruction of the West by Islam (practitioners of Islam actually, aka Muslims) - with a new and much needed preface. Excerpts below.

Note: My book While Europe Slept was first published by Doubleday in 2006. Now the Stapis publishing house has put out a Polish edition, translated by Tadeusz Skrzyszowski. Given that the book is fifteen years old, Stapis asked for a new preface. Here it is.

   This book, which appeared first in English, has already been translated into several other languages, but it is a special pleasure to see it published in Polish. My father’s parents were both Polish...

   When I wrote this book, I used such terms as “radical Islam” and “Muslim extremist.” Indeed, the book’s original English subtitle was How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. I have asked my Polish publishers to remove the word “radical” from the subtitle of this edition. I no longer use such terms in connection with Islam, for I have recognized that Islam itself is radical and extreme; people who call themselves “moderate” or “liberal” Muslims are people who have exchanged key elements of their faith for Western Enlightenment values.

   In the same way, I no longer speak of “Islamic fundamentalism.” This expression came naturally to me because prior to writing While Europe Slept I had published the book Stealing Jesus, about Protestant fundamentalism in the U.S. Fundamentalism is a legitimate word to use in connection with certain varieties of Christianity that uphold an untenable Biblical literalism and preach a harsh legalism derived largely from the Old Testament book of Leviticus while losing sight of the forgiving, all-encompassing love that Jesus Christ preached in the gospels.

   But Islam is fundamentalist – it insists that every word of the Koran be taken literally, that every commandment in that book be followed, that Muslim men look upon Muhammed (a bloodthirsty warrior who married a little girl) as the perfect role model in every possible respect, and that women accept their role as household chattel whose lives may someday need to be sacrificed in so-called “honor killings” in order to preserve their families’ reputations. I have long since ceased, then, to speak of “Islamic fundamentalism.”

   In this book I blame the failure of Muslims to assimilate into European society in part, at least, on the fact that Europeans, while welcoming – and housing and feeding and clothing �� Muslim immigrants prefer that they live apart, in their own enclaves, rather than blend into mainstream society, and prefer to give them welfare handout rather than jobs. I now feel that I put too much blame for this situation on Europeans; after all, Hindus and Sikhs and other such minorities have faced similar obstacles in Europe but have overcome them. (In Britain, the average Hindu earns more than the average British native.)

   I also suggest in the book that America, historically a “melting pot” of people from all over the world, will be more successful than Europe at turning Muslims into happy, productive, and patriotic citizens. I now realize that I was mistaken. If Muslims in America do indeed seem somewhat more likely to be well integrated, law-abiding job-holders than are their coreligionists in Europe, this has a lot to do with the fact that many Muslim immigrants to America are educated professionals from largely Westernized cities, while many Muslims who emigrate to Europe are illiterate rural villagers. Yet even the most privileged Muslim families in the U.S. manage to breed terrorists. What I failed to realize when I wrote this book was that while the American “melting pot” may indeed work wonders on people from a great many parts of the globe, Islam, when truly believed in, is a force that powerfully repels other loyalties.

   In this book I describe the 2005 election of “pro-American, reform-minded Angela Merkel” to the office of German chancellor as a “hopeful sign,” and applaud her for insisting that a 2006 Berlin staging of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo go forward in the face of Muslim outrage. This is also the woman who in 2010 famously – and admirably – admitted that German multiculturalism had “utterly failed.” Who would have expected, then, that she would later open her country’s floodgates to a tsunami of Muslim immigrants – hundreds of whom sexually assaulted German women on New Year’s Eve 2015/16 – and would turn violently against the U.S., describing it as the moral equivalent of Putin’s Russia and Communist China? This woman whom I thought so well of in 2006 has turned out to be the scariest German chancellor since – hmm, what was his name again?

   The U.S. invasion of Iraq posed a particular problem to me while I was writing this book. On the one hand, I knew enough about Islam to doubt strongly that Iraqis, once freed from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, would institute something in their country resembling Jeffersonian democracy. On the other hand, I had never set foot in the Muslim world, so I hardly felt I was in a position to question “experts” many of whom had spent decades there. Besides, my country was at war, and I didn’t want to join in the pile-on against my president, however ill-advised I thought he was. So it is that while acknowledging that “there were sensible arguments against invading Iraq” and making clear my conviction that Islam, as currently constituted, is not “compatible with democracy,” I didn’t explicitly support or oppose the Iraq War in these pages, and instead focused on what to me, in any case, was the most relevant issue related to it: the truly vile tendency of many commentators in both the U.S. and Europe to equate Bush with Saddam and to attribute unworthy motives to decent Americans who, however misguided, truly thought they were engaged, as in World War II, in a struggle for other people’s freedom.

   This book first came out in 2006; the paperback was published a year later with an afterword that is included here and that brought my account up to date. In the thirteen years since, needless to say, there have been a great many developments in the ongoing story of Islam in Europe. The continent’s Muslim population has continued to mount, creating more “no-go zones” and increasing the incidence of rape and other violent crimes by Muslim youth gangs. There have been major acts of jihadist terror in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Barcelona, and many other places.

   Meanwhile, in the U.S., major terrorist acts have occurred in Boston, Orlando, San Bernardino, and elsewhere. In 2018, Ilhan Omar, a hijab-clad Muslim woman who is virulently antisemitic and openly contemptuous of America, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from a largely Muslim district in Minnesota. Another hijab-wearing Jew-hater, Linda Sarsour, enjoys the respect of many leading U.S. politicians, who take seriously her claim to be a feminist.

   In Europe, Canada, and elsewhere, though (thanks to the First Amendment) not yet in the United States, critics of Islam have been prosecuted. Throughout the West, such critics have been censored or have engaged in self-censorship, resulting in an alarming decline in freedom of speech. (This was the subject of my 2009 book Surrender.) As I write these words, Turkey, a member of NATO whose reputation as an exemplarily civilized and tolerant Muslim country has been destroyed by its current leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was encouraging tens of thousands of military-age men from around the Muslim world to force their way across the Greek border and flood into Europe.

   When I wrote this book, I lived in Oslo; I now live in a small town in the mountains of Norway, a two-hour drive from the capital. If you had told me in 2006 that the Muslim population of Oslo would increase dramatically by the year 2020 (as it has), I’d have believed you; if you had told me that by 2020 women in hijab and even niqab – which covers everything but the eyes – would be a familiar sight in the small town where I now live (which it is), I’d have been surprised.

   The subject of this book, then, is more urgent than ever. Yet there is nothing new under the sun; despite everything that has happened on the Islam front in the years since this book was published, all of these developments come under the heading of “more of the same.” Hence, I believe, this book continues to be, as it was in 2006, a useful introduction and overview of its subject – a subject about which every responsible citizen of a free country, and every loving parent of a free child, should be seriously knowledgeable.  

[iheartsunset]

Papa Louie Scarlett HCs

-Rosabella Ocampo is a 23 year old singer/songwriter and graduate school student who lives with her fiancé, Rudy, in a Powder Point condo. She is widely known by her legal/stage name, Scarlett Heart and is the lead singer/songwriter of Scarlett and the Shakers. While punk ska and playing gigs with her friends are her true passion, Scarlett plans to become a game theory professor in the future. She can mostly be seen writing lyrics for a new song, riding roller coasters with Rudy, climbing trees with Clover, and just vibing with Marty.

-Scarlett is rather bold and seductive, often playfully flirting with others or making jokes about inappropriate topics. I stole this from Rouge, thanks SnapCube fandub for revitalizing my love for Sonic. Alongside her flirtatiousness is her intelligence and desire to succeed, using rules and lessons that she learned from various games to apply to her daily life. Thanks to her love of poker and mahjong, Scarlett has grown to be very analytical and sly in her motives. Out of the shakers, she is undoubtedly the big sister friend as she’s kind of a bad influence on the rest of them and is always subjected to scoldings by mom friend, Janana.

-Rudy calls her “Princesa” because of her Cinderella-like backstory. Her mother was a very kind woman and Scarlett lived happily with her and her father. Her mother died in a roadside construction accident when Scarlett was only 9, leaving Scarlett heartbroken. Her father then married a woman named Moira with two sons, Graham and David, who was emotionally abusive towards Scarlett until she moved out at age 16. Scarlett’s relationship with her dad deteriorated over time and she’s basically disowned them since. She finds solace in Marty and Clover’s parents, who think of Rudy and Scarlett as their own. She also got along with the other Frostfield residents and helped Willow get back into hockey after her infamous car accident (the first one).

-Stan Twitter often makes memes of her because she’s so iconic and quotable. One of her most iconic moments was when she screamed “I wrote this next one about my bitch ass stepmom. Moira, if you’re listening, your hair is limp and you fucking suck!” at the VMAs.

-Music was her escape as a child, hence why she learned to sing and play multiple instruments. However, her stepmother made her play the violin in the school orchestra as opposed to being allowed in a punk rock band. Even though she was concertmaster and first chair, she hated life so badly. Scarlett can play the guitar, bass guitar, violin, cello, drums, the trumpet, the saxophone, the bassoon, the piano, the xylophone, the harp, the flute, the recorder, the French horn, the clarinet, i didn’t even list all of them and I’m tired already. When one of the other shakers has lead vocals on a song, she’ll take over playing their instrument.

-Scarlett met Rudy during their shared freshman year of high school. Hazelnut High’s orchestra department had its annual field trip to Powder Point (based off my actual orchestra field trip!). Scarlett decided to sneak away from her snobby classmates and teachers and have the time to herself. On one particularly large roller coaster, she sat next to a boy with a Mohawk who told her that since he was a Powder Point native, he could more than handle it. He then proceeded to cry the entire time while holding her hand. They realized how much they had in common and kept in contact even after her trip was over. Their relationship is super lovey dovey, yet chill at the same time. Couple goals, but not on the level of Prudence x Cooper x Taylor.

-The shakers got together during the 23rd season of Flipline’s Got Talent. After the shocking elimination of Taylor Morales in the quarterfinals, the remaining acts were merged together. Scarlett and Rudy and Marty and Clover were two sets of pairs merged together. They all got along beforehand and loved Scarlett’s songwriting, so they all wrote an original song together for the finals. Even though they were fan favorites and had lots of support from the audience, Bill and Boopsy’s amazing ventriloquy act was what won the show, with the upset Shakers coming in second place. Afterwards, they were approached by Janana who offered to become their agent, and all they’ve known since was success. Fun fact: Rudy wouldnt accept Clover and Marty into their act unless they beat him and Scarlett at poker. They did.

-The shakers each can speak multiple languages, with Scarlett being able to speak fluent English and Tagalog, Tagalog being her native language (Filipino gang!). She can also speak some Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, and Gaelic because she hangs around the other Shakers and Janana so much.

-All of the food, drinks, clothes, and personal belongings Scarlett loves are various shades of red. Cherries, longanisa, red wine, and candied strawberries are her favorite. Her entire wardrobe? Red. Her LED lights? Red. It honestly scares Rudy how red everything is.

-Her voice would either be Jessica Sanchez from American Idol or Gwen Stefani from the No Doubt era. She also covers a lot of No Doubt songs during their concerts. Speaking of covers, the shakers like to sing classic rock songs as well as modern day hits. Scarlett has the vocal range to do Ariana and Mariah Carey justice.

-Her and Marty are best friends. They’re both on the same wavelength and will most likely have the same reaction to memes, like word for word the same reaction. They usually have to get Rudy and Clover out of trouble most days. I love their chaotic, yet chill energy, like the types that just sit and observe and quietly make funny comments to each other.

-She determines whether she likes you or not based off of how good you are at mahjong or poker. If you suck enough to let her win, she’ll love you forever but if you match her in ability, she’ll respect you but kinda fear you as well. If you refuse to play altogether, she hates you. She’s a game theory student, so playing any board game with her is grounds for disaster because she’ll use her weird psychology and tricks to win all the time. Ironically, she sucks at video games. Even though she loves games of chance, she’s hugely against casinos and betting, instead trading small trinkets like food or makeup.

-At the Cheeseria, she set up a poker table, a mahjong table, and a pool table for the entertainment. They unfortunately had to get rid of the Uno table because somebody (ahem, Jojo) got a little too heated over a match with Papa and Wally. And by “got a little too heated”, I mean that Jojo literally got in a fist fight with Papa and lost.

-All she watches are telenovelas. Don’t ask about The Office or Game of Thrones, all she knows is stuff like Rubi and Maria la del Barrio.

-She doesn’t like musical theater except for Phantom of the Opera. She has taken a few roles as Kim in Miss Saigon, but secretly regrets it because musical theater is so much harder than just a regular concert. She still respects theater actors, but will never again sit through Anything Goes.

-She is the only one of the workers who has managed to successfully punch Guy Mortadello. Koilee and Rudy came close, but Scarlett landed an especially hard punch to his nose. Next to being engaged and forming Scarlett and the Shakers, she says it’s the third happiest day of her life. Now, Guy Mortadello is extremely scared of Scarlett and will cry if he sees her or hears her song on the radio (which is all the time).

-She has a tattoo of a heart of her hand along with a crown. On three of her fingers are a yellow Diamond, green clover, and blue spade.

-Scarlett is absolutely gorgeous and badass, I always kept rewinding Papas Cheeseria just to see her and Rudy in the opening because I had crushes on them both. Anyways, stan Scarlett for good grades (it’s not working though I’m still failing two classes)

[josefavomjaaga]

Sir Robert Wilson on Murat and Eugène

Okay, so I said I would read up on Wilson first before reading anything by him – but I had already looked into the second volume of his diaries, and this is just perfect: During the final days of March and April 1814, when the First Empire ended in Upper Italy, he visited both Murat and Eugène and had dinner with them.

Please bear with me, this is going to be lengthy. Plus, I do not know if these diaries were truely private or intended for publication, so I have no clue in how far they were edited later and how trustworthy they are as a source.

We start off in mid-March. Eugène is still holding the Mincio line for Napoleon. Murat has received the ratification of his treaty with Austria but is still on awful terms with Austrian Field Marshal Bellegarde – and with Bentinck [»Lord William«, as Wilson writes], of course.

March 15th – As I am of the species of anecdote collectors, I must note a speech of Beauharnois at Verona, which has made an impression in his favour, although it is not sufficiently towering for a hero's last struggle and would rather suit a sixth than a fifth Henry:

"Pour moi, je suis monté par un escalier si bas que je ne me ferai pas du mal en descendant. Je n'aurai que du chagrin pour ma femme, née et elevée princesse."

In English: "As for me, I have climbed a staircase from so low that I shall not harm myself on the way down. I will only grieve for my wife, born and bred a princess." That was Eugène’s usual attitude. Auguste did the same, in reverse: Of course she never wanted that crown of Italy for herself. But her Eugène (best of husbands™) deserved it so much more than anyone else in Napoleon’s family!

There are many others recorded equally meek; and this humility of spirit, combined with other good qualities and his present martial and military conduct, excites great interest in his favour.[...]

Yesterday, Colonel Cattanelli arrived and brought me advice that Lord William and Murat were at Reggio, contending for and against the British occupation of Tuscany. [...]

March 20th - We have no further advices from Reggio, but are most anxious to know the result of Murat's and Lord William's final conference.

Cattanelli tells me that Murat said to him: "Whereever I am in all the great battles, I have seen General Wilson. He is certainly one of the most distinguished officers, and if it had not been for him, we should in various instances in Russia have got through much better. He has done us infinite harm, but it is a fatality that he should always be opposed to me." He then continued his remarks, observing that I was an enemy to him, his family, the French nation etc. Cattanelli told him that he had heard me extol his military conduct, which pleased him much.

The fact is that I have not written a line or given an opinion under the influence of personal feeling. I have not shown the smallest prejudice in conversation or official correspondence, although I consider Murat's conduct as very dishonourable with reference to his benefactor. I have always said that the Allies did not give his renegade zeal fair trial, and that our present propositions are inadmissable by a King of Naples having only an armistice with England.

There is a reason, why, personally, I would wish to serve Murat. He now knows it, and will be satisfied that at all events I respect myself too much to wrong him.

March 29th, Bologna. - In consequence of the difficulties which existed and seemed to increase, I was requested by Lord William to negotiate with Murat. Constant to the principle of promoting public utility, I acquiesced, but I felt much personal reluctance. […]

At midday I went with Lord William, and was introduced to Murat. He received me very amicably; and we had more than an hour's very interesting conversation on past military events, particularly those relating to the Russian campaign; and I acquired some valuable information on that subject. Murat's dress was singular. Hair curled in Roman coiffure—two ringlets, or what, à la Parisienne, are styled “pensées”, dependent on each shoulder. Blue uniform coat, red pantaloons, yellow shoes, with spurs; sword, with three pictures in the handle. His countenance martial, his manners soft, his conversation easy and intelligent. I reserve further opinion until I have transacted business with his Majesty.

30th. — I dined with the Duke di Gallo - a handsome entertainment and a well-chosen party. In the evening went to the opera. Murat was seated as a Sultan -- princes and dukes all standing behind his throne-chair. He is by far the best actor that has appeared in the royalty theatre. This morning Lord William is gone to have an interview with the Pope. I am left to negotiate. I find myself much like the Allies in France—without any base for operations, line of communication uncertain, various interests clashing, and no unity of direction. [...]

April 1st. —On the evening of the 29th, at half-past six, I was at the dinner-table with Murat. The banquet was according to all the rules of perfect gastronomy. The master's manners were very gracious. It was impossible for Lord Chesterfield to have done the honours better. A certain high personage in England would, I am sure, ever feel a little jealous of his kingly courtesies. There was somewhat more of ceremony in the arrangement of the table than I ever witnessed before in royal fêtes. Murat occupied one whole side himself. Three persons sat opposite, and two at each end. With the exception of this distinction, there was no extraordinary attention paid to him, and the conversation was as general, fluent, and free as in private society. After dinner was over we remained talking till near eleven o'clock. I fought with his Majesty all the battles over again which we had witnessed together. He was exceedingly interesting, very candid, and by no means a Gascon for himself or his brethren in arms. I profited by this opportunity again to acquire information on various subjects which he was best qualified to give, and which may tend to make a posthumous memorandum of the late campaigns more valuable. […]

3rd. - I, yesterday, had a very long audience of Murat, and received his ultimatum on the subject of Lord William's demands. I begged, however, to have the statement in writing, and Murat promises to give it under his own hand. I think his case a good one. In foro conscientiæ he is justified. He has had much reason to feel mistrust and suspect hostile intentions under the pretext of peace. […]

Wilson actually lists up a whole bunch of reasons why Murat was justified both to mistrust the Allies and to break away from Napoleon, including Napoleon's intended takeover of Naples. So, in comparison with what he wrote on March 20, his opinion of Murat seems to have improved much by the end, on meeting him personally and on hearing his side of the story.

I skip over some stuff: The Allies and a bit later the Italians receive the news of Napoleon's abdication, which leads to a first military convention between Eugène and Bellegarde. Then we get the anti-French riots in Milan as soon as the senate tries to install Eugène as king of Lombardy, Pina gets tortured to death. That’s the point when Eugène quits the game.

25th. —Events have streamed so rapidly that I cannot attempt to note their progress. Yesterday, Marshal Beauharnois agreed to surrender the kingdom of Italy. The insurrection at Milan and the intelligence of Buonaparte's cession of the iron crown, with other circumstances, determined that measure.

I have, in my despatch to Lord Castlereagh, rendered justice to his conduct as an administrator, a general, and a man.

I passed the whole of yesterday evening with Beauharnois and in Mantua, and enjoyed very interesting conversation on all subjects. He treated me with a confidence that very few friends could experience from a person in his situation, and earnestly begged that I would see him again to pursue our discourses. There is unquestionably great satisfaction in a reception which gives proof of previous good repute, and shows the existence of unlimited credit on the heart's stores. [...]

Well, if I may suggest – don’t flatter yourself too much. That has, I fear, a lot to do with Eugène and rather little with you. (And btw, Eugène was not a marshal!)

The dinner was a most agreeable part of the day's entertainment, not only because we did not sit down till 7 o'clock in the evening, which is a great extension beyond 2 o 'clock, but because the society was very select, there not being more than eight, including three ladies appertaining to the Princess whose presence embellished the company. The Princess was herself not visible, having been confined only eight days, but they say she is very handsome. Her children, four of whom I saw, are of the best appearance and manners.

Beauharnois asked much after the Duke and Duchess of Bedford.

And that’s because he kinda knew the duchess pretty well before she became the duchess, during the peace of Amiens, when all the Brits crowded Paris. (There had even been talk about marriage but in the end either First Consul Bonaparte or the Duchess of Gordon decided against it.)

He is altered, but has a great resemblance to Moreau, and is as plain as Murat is gaudy in his dress. He is, in my opinion, just the man to suit some good Englishmen of my acquaintance.

Something makes me think he does not intend this to be a compliment 😉.

27th. — Yesterday, Beauharnois and his Princess arrived here. The preceding day there was much reason to fear that there might be obstacles to his departure, as the Italian generals, etc, were greatly displeased with the second convention which surrendered the capital and the fortresses without any arrangement made for them, according to the express stipulation of the first convention to that effect. I think, however, that Beauharnois does right; especially as Berthier desired him to withdraw, and the people had commenced a senseless and what threatened to be a very sanguinary insurrection, only to be repressed in its first outbreak by the presence of an Austrian force. [...]

The Princess, although only brought to bed twelve days, bore the journey very well; but Assalini tells me that she is very delicate, and that he fears the more for her as her mother died after child-birth. I have just sent her a bottle of Tokay from the cellar of John Sobieski. It was given me when I was in Warsaw, and I have carried it about intact on the presumption that I might one day apply the nectar to a better purpose than the gratification of my own palate. If I have not, as I hope, combined the “ utile dulci,” I have at least combined in this instance the “decorum dulci,” and this is more in character.

28th - Yesterday, Beauharnois showed me a letter from his sister, the Queen of Holland. It was full of anecdote about Buonaparte, the Empresses, etc, and proved that she possessed much good sense and good feeling. One of her remarks was—“Fatality determined that no experience, no counsel, not even the Emperor's own intelligent mind should discover the bandage which it had bound over his eyes. The perception of the heart was wanting, and great geniuses rarely possess it. He has been abandoned almost by all. Rustan (the Mameluke) is even about to quit, and when I saw the Empress Louisa the other day, she had not more than one valet-à-pied in her service. She came to the advanced posts to embrace her father before she followed her husband, but it is now said that she will not be allowed to go after him. It is true that he was not latterly kind to you, but I am sure you will remark only his benefactions at this time.” The tears started in the eyes of Beauharnois as he read.

May 1st. - I dined on the 29th with the Prince Eugène, the Princess and three ladies of her court; no other persons present. A conversation of five hours enabled me to travel over much matter, but without exhausting our subjects. I had every reason to be pleased with the Prince, and to be assured that we did not separate without a mutual wish to meet again. He was very anxious that I should be at Paris when he was there, but as I hate traitors and cowards - however beneficial their treason and baseness — I shall not sojourn in that city. I would rather be Buonaparte, to have written his last bulletin, than any one of the yet prosperous renegades.

So, to sum up: Murat fascinating but hard to assess, Eugène plain boring. No surprises there.

[margridarnauds]

Hello~! It's me again. Could you give us a top 5 of your favourite and least favourite theatre costumes of all time and why ^^

Almost ONE YEAR LATER but here we go! Let it not be said that I don’t fulfill my asks come Hell or high water. 

So, first time I tried to do this, it DELETED on me because TUMBLR and then my heart was, subsequently, so broken that I couldn’t do it. HERE’S TO HOPING IT DOESN’T HAPPEN AGAIN. 

The Hall of Shame. 

1. Morgane’s.................whatever this is, La Legende du Roi Arthur

Look. Look. I can’t say anything. I literally can’t say anything about this. The colors, the weird leather belt over the weirder bodice, the pants......I just. I just. I-

This musical made a lot of weird fashion choices, in keeping with the ultra-stylized nature of French musicals, some of which worked, some of which didn’t, but this one in particular earns top spot on The Hall of Shame. 

2. Juliet’s dresses, Romeo and Juliet (Takarazuka 2021) 

Now, you might say that there are uglier dresses on this list. You might say that there are dresses that are worse made on this list. And I would agree. But THIS production committed the single worst crime it could possibly commit: It disappointed me. Because at first we all saw the updated promo pictures pictures and were like “Oh! They’re changing the costumes around! That’s wonderful!” and THEN. And t h e n . 

Breaking my own rule to include two because I literally can’t choose and both committed Sins. 

Starting off with this one. Because........red belt on polka dots. Why. Why. The fabric is dull and almost totally colorless, the pattern is hideous and looks more like it belongs on a much, much older woman, and the cut itself is rather dull and unflattering, and that’s not including the leather belt that I half-suspect she stole from Morgane when Morgane was passed out. (Honestly, God help me, but Morgane’s belt at least looks fitted to the outfit. This looks like they tried to fit it, shrugged their shoulders, gave up, and called it a night.) The only excuse I can find for this gown is Lord Capulet deciding that, in a desperate attempt to keep suitors away, he’s going to start dressing Juliet up in his mother’s clothing. 

And then....

Her words are singing love. 

But her eyes are screaming “Help me, help me, I’m being held captive by this mismatched boho dress that they grabbed off the rack of a ‘Wandering Spirit' store. Save me. Save me.” 

It’s disappointing, for me, because the promo pic looked SO GOOD. 

The color is a much deeper, more vibrant red, the fabric looks more consistent (even if it still includes some of the more inexplicable fashion choices), and even the headpiece looks, roughly, like it SHOULD be there. But then, when you see it in stage lighting, that goes away, and all that you get is a collection of clashing fabrics on top of one another in a dull, limp mess of a dress. Toho RETJ made some weird costuming decisions, it made some decisions that I STRONGLY doubted working out, but, at least, when you saw them in motion, they worked and were consistent with the worldbuilding that’d been established (Capulets and Montagues both had a distinctive look, each character wore clothing that fitted them and their personalities, etc.) But this? No. There’s no reason for it to look that badly, they just dropped the ball. It’s trying to do a hundred things at once and succeeded at doing none of them. 

And what’s annoying to me is that I KNOW that Zuka CAN do better. This isn’t me saying “Lol Zuka.” I KNOW that they can do some wonderful things with fashion. 

This production wanted what Casanova had. Look. 

Look at that wonderful, watery fabric. Look at how consistent it is. Look at how pretty it is. Look at how clean and elegant it is. Look at how they manage to capture the look of a rose while doing so in a clean, elegant way. Look at how this was for MINOR, BACKGROUND characters, not one of your leads in ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC. SONGS. IN. THE WORLD. OF MUSICAL THEATRE. 

Zuka broke my heart there. Broke. It. 

3. Christine’s Yellow Contest Dress, Phantom (2019)

Ronan Mazurier called. He wants his yellow coat back. 

I don’t know what they were trying to do here, I really don’t. Make her look like a bumblebee? The cut isn’t particularly flattering (which you can say for most of the costumes on the main characters, I honestly think the best costumes in this production are on the side characters), the color is garish, and there aren’t really any....details that could salvage it? Like, some good embroidery or detailing MIGHT be enough to save it (though I don’t really think so, ngl), but there’s just. Nothing here. Nothing to redeem it. It looks better in motion than it does in still images, but that’s really, really not saying much. 

4. Mozart’s Everything, Mozart das Musical

Modernizing historical musicals is a gamble: Sometimes, you’re able to effectively mix historical fashion with contemporary fashion in order to convey the feeling of the era while not bogging down actors and actresses in heavy historical costuming. Probably one of the best examples of this I can think of is & Juliet, which mixes aspects of 16th century fashion with modern fashion. Hamilton is another example of a musical that does a really, really wonderful job of mixing 18th century and contemporary fashion, conveying that idea of “The story of America then by America now” (Not getting into any of the rightful critiques that have been made against that thesis, I’m just saying that, when it comes to the costumes, Hamilton does a good job conveying that idea.)

And then. Mozart. 

Poor. Poor. Mozart. And whatever you want to call the dreadlocks + 18th century coat + tank top (?) + jeans combo. This one is going to be HIGHLY controversial, since I know a lot of people love it and it’s never going to change because the costuming is viewed as iconic, but I really, really hate how they did the stylization of this musical. I feel like, as far as approach, Mozart l’Opera rock did a much better job with modernizing 18th century fashion. I know what they were TRYING to do as far as showing Mozart as a man outside of his own time. But the end result, in my opinion, is a hideous mishmash of No. 

5. Orléans’ Black Court Suit, Marie Antoinette

Now, it might be wrong for me to put so much hatred on this one coat. After all, it’s actually, all things put together, not a BAD coat. It actually looks quite accurate from the period, more accurate than Orléans’ silver coat from the 2018 production.

I do like the gold detailing on it...in theory. Is matches the floral gold embroidery that we see A LOT of in extant garments, like the one above from the V & A costume gallery. In practice, it looks quite bulky and cheaply done, like someone bought one of those easy stick embroidery sets from Amazon and got to work. More than that, though, it really....represents everything wrong with Orléans in 2018, in that this is clearly a Villain Coat. If this was any other character, if this was Artois from 1789, I’d probably love it. But not Orléans. Not replacing the iconic outfit. 

Honorable mentions: 

- Anne of Cleves, Six 

- Death’s Cowboy Suit, Elisabeth (2005 Wien)

- Ronan’s Yellow Coat, 1789

- Ursula, The Little Mermaid (Shiki)

- The Pink Dress™ from Poe Clan (2021)

The Hall of Fame: 

1. Marie Antoinette’s Silver Gown, 1789 (Takarazuka)

It only feels fair after giving Takarazuka such a sharp critique in the Hall of Shame that they should get top place when it’s deserved. Just because I don’t uncritically love EVERYTHING doesn’t mean that I unfairly criticize them, either. And this gown, in my opinion, is the epitome of what musical theatre costuming should be, and evidence, for that matter, that a gown doesn’t NEED to be overly elaborate to be stunning. The simple silver embroidery and the choice of fabrics are PERFECT, with the darker gray and the light silver complimenting one another perfectly. The lace is wonderful and subtle enough that it’s almost possible to miss it amongst everything else, and the gown furthermore shows off Antoinette’s development in the show, as we see her go from her elaborate, vibrant party gowns to this very, very simple, toned down dress, her hair loose. 1789′s had a lot of really wonderful costumes across the various productions (Olympe’s dresses in the Toho, with the exception of the pink dress, forever own my heart, as do MA’s), but this gown, in particular, earns its spot, and imo deserves more attention than the more famous flower gown from her opening scene. (Lovely gown, good costume designing, but a little too busy and over the top for my personal taste.)  

2. Anne Boleyn’s Red Dress, Lady Bess

Is this the most accurate gown in the world? No - The sleeves are more Italian than English, the under-sleeves look more like they’re late 16th century Italian and the French hood, while more accurate than most of the attempts in Lady Bess, still looks nothing like a proper French hood. (Lady Bess, in general, borrows a lot of fashioning from the Elizabethan Era as opposed to the Marian Era.) BUT. But. The materials used are absolutely exquisite, especially that sumptuous red velvet, and I adore the gauzy fabric that covers it, since that really gives the impression of Anne as a GHOST. The detailing is also exquisite. Overall, Anne gets only two dresses: This and her execution gown, but she really, really makes it work. 

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE, TOHO. (Image Credit: Lavinia Fontana, Ritratto di nobildonna, 1580)

I SEE YOU. (Image Credit: Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi by Bronzino, 1545)

(Have I ever mentioned that there was a time, a few years ago, where, if you were my friend, you WOULD see selections from my 16th Century Costuming Image Collection? Because...I was really, really into 16th century costuming.)

3. Christine’s “Wishing” Gown, Phantom of the Opera

Sometimes, I become so wrapped up in my non-English musicals that I forget about musicals closer to home. Which would be a massive oversight in the case of Phantom of the Opera because all of its costumes have more than earned their place as some of the most iconic costumes in musical theatre history. The Wishing Gown and Star Princess gown are probably my two favorites, but the Wishing Gown gets a special shoutout for the distinctly “wintery” look it has, with the frosty blue silk (apparently, actually a turquoise color), slightly snowflake-like look to the floral accenting on the bodice, and lace. It really works with the tone of “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” and the cloak gives it a properly dramatic look. 

4. Anna’s Black Dress + Fur, Anna Karenina

In my opinion, this musical includes some of the most gorgeous costuming ever put on stage, which made choosing any individual costuming hard, but the simplicity of the black combined with the elegance of the fur accents really, really sells it for me. I could spend a whole day just running my hands over the fur. Again, accurate? ...not really, but it does a wonderful job showing the style and the elegance of 19th century Russia. 

5. Donal’s Black Brat + Doublet, The Pirate Queen

The Pirate Queen in general provides some wonderful, wonderful examples of 16th century costuming (including some of the MOST accurate costumes for Elizabeth I that have ever been put on the stage), but this one in particular is magnificent in terms of how it constructs Donal’s character and position in 16th century Irish society, to the point I’ve written an entire meta on it. A good costume, in my opinion, looks good on stage, but a really, really great costume will tell you exactly where that character is in their arc WHILE looking great, and this brat does both. The show had its faults, but the late, great Martin Pakledinaz did a truly wonderful job with the costuming and deserved far more kudos than he got for trying to tackle a notoriously hard period as far as costuming is concerned. 

Honorable Mentions: 

- Orléans’ black coat/Marie’s gold dress, MA 

- Mina’s blue cloak, Dracula

- Josiana’s gowns, The Man Who Laughs (Korea)

- The Sternenkleid, Elisabeth

- Anastasia’s blue evening gown, Anastasia

- Elsa’s ice queen gown, Frozen

[ylizam]

going to continue the trend of saying, DO THIS IF YOU WANT TO. look, a shiny time-wasting internet question thingy! just like Ye Olde Livejournal days! tag, you’re all it.

1. Name/Nicknames: I do not tend to use my real name here, so call me whatever. if you do know my real name, I absolutely prefer my full name to any traditional nicknames of same! but also initials are good! 

2. Gender: non-binary

3. Star Sign: leo

4. Height: 5′1.5″, aka I was once measured as tall as 5′2″ but I’m really not quite. (apparently my lack of height comes from my Italian great-grandmother’s side of the family. everyone else is, if not tall, at least over 5′4″.)

5. Time: 13:57 EST.

6. Birthday: august 17

7. Favourite Band: I’ll go with Fleetwood Mac, as they are both band and soap opera combined.

8. Favourite Solo Artist: Dolly Parton

9. Song Stuck in My Head: Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger! (um, mostly because we sing it to our (tiger) cat.)

10. Last Movie: Judas and the Black Messiah, which I enjoyed but also the main characters are cast Too Old. which kept taking me out of it a bit. (the actors are very good, mind, but the real people were so young.)

11. Last Show: we’re (re)watching Babylon 5 right now (which is a surprise to ... no one following this tumblr, I am sure, what with my Ivanova and Delenn spirals). (“re” in parentheses because I’ve watched it all the way through before but roommate has not). I’m also watching Dix Pour Cent when I have the brains to watch something in French (which I find takes more concentration than watching things in other non-English languages, as I understand just enough that I tend to both read the subtitles but also simultaneously try to interpret the spoken French and anyway!), so it’s taking longer than it might otherwise take (but also means it feels like there’s more of it somehow, so bright side there?).  

12. When I Created This Blog: apparently December 2016? but I had a sideblog with this name before that, only I got frustrated with the limitations of that set up and just created this one. 

13. What I Post: mostly photos and gifsets of the fictional women about whom I obsess on the regular, ditto ships I am into; on the rarest of rare occasions, I even post fic.

14. Last Thing I Googled: hahaha where to get a covid test (I was ill yesterday, but am better today so fingers crossed I won’t have to use this information right now because wow is testing around here very car-centric). 

15. Other Blogs: a largely unused anymore DW that every so often I think about using again, also a tumblr that I use for just non-fannish stuff basically (and to which I pay only sporadic attention). 

16. Do I get asks?: sometimes! I am terrible at answering them, though, especially if I don’t immediately know what to say. 

17. Why I Chose My URL: it’s my LJ/DW username, but backwards because someone had already claimed my actual old username. 

18. Following: 115

19. Followers: 182

20. Average Hours of Sleep: never enough

21. Lucky Number: 7

22. Instruments: I played clarinet through middle school? um, piano for a bit, guitar for a bit. mostly I sang—choirs, musical theatre, madrigals, lessons, etc. (please note that I do none of the above now.)

23. What I Am Wearing: grey joggers and my A’ja Wilson hoodie. 

24. Dream Job: one that I’m not required to hold down due to money/healthcare/etc.? 

25. Dream Trip: lately I’ve been fantasizing about going to New Zealand and/or Australia during the Women’s World Cup? like taking a long stretch of time off, catching at least one match, and mostly just visiting friends and spending too much money traveling between places in Australia and New Zealand when I really ought to split them into more than one trip. (clearly, in this dream trip, we’ve somehow perfected transporter technology because I know that much actual traveling between various locations during a vacation would stress me out.) 

26. Favourite Food: probably pizza (and now I am thinking fondly back on the days of buying a slice from the local place and staking out a booth for everyone, sprinkling on the parm and red pepper flakes, not even bothering to soak up any of the grease). things with vinegar. bread (particularly with good butter or good olive oil). eggs are pretty miraculous. chocolate. 

27. Nationality: american. 

28. Favourite Song: but there are so many songs! how does one choose? so let’s just say I’ve had a soft spot for Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant forever, which is not at all a surprising fact about me. 

29. Last Book I Read: what is this reading thing? honestly, though, it’s been a rough stretch; I think the last thing I actually finished reading (as opposed to skimming through to the end because I feel guilty borrowing an ebook and not finishing it because I know there are limits on usage and whatnot, but also I just couldn’t actually read the book in question anymore) was Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger? 

30. Top 3 fictional universes I would love to live in: hm. the Star Trek utopia (the version it claims to be, at least) is probably the big one. after that? this is very hard! maybe the Galavant-verse, as I too inexplicably break into song at any occasion? I can’t think of another right now, but it would have to be a gentle space setting, possibly a station; stars everywhere but no capitalism, no war, plus community, plus magic, plus joy.

[mx08z7kz6gqrs]

此生 - Translation Notes

For my translation of this song, see this post. Listen to the original version of the song here. Below are some translation notes on the song.

Beware this is a long one. The song isn’t complicated, I just got a bit wordy and detailed with individual phrases.

This song is the ending theme to the Chinese drama 鬓边不是海棠红 (Winter Begonia), which is a lovely drama that I highly recommend. I might be a little biased because I’m particularly fond of the 民国 (Republican Era) setting, and the Beijing Opera imagery throughout the series.

This ending theme is actually relatively simple. As usual, I’ll do a line by line breakdown, with the original Chinese lyrics and the most literal possible translation next to them. In addition, I’ll note possible interpretations of the lines in relation to the drama since this song was written by Yu Zheng, the producer, specifically for the series. I believe this song is largely written from Cheng Fengtai’s point on view, and how he sees Shang Xirui.

There is also a variation on these lyrics that are used for an insert song, <此生此时>. I’ll cover the differences in a separate section after.

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Line by Line Translation Notes

假如这一生就任性一回 // If, in this life, [I] could be willful one time 我愿意背负你所有的罪 // I would be willing to bear all of your sins 让你肆无忌惮笑得欢 // Let you laugh with joy, completely unbridled 偷偷藏起这点余味 // Secretly hiding this bit of aftertaste

Both the first two verses start with “假如”, literally “if” but specifically more in the context of a hypothetical situation, one that isn’t actually happening (kind of like “if we were to say”). The first line talks about the speaker being able to be “任性” which I’ve translated as “willful” for poetic reasons but would probably be more accurately understood as “stubborn/bull-headed.” It’s considered a childish trait with a fairly negative connotation.

In the second line, the verb “背负” I’ve translated as “carry”/”bear” but for those curious about the subtlety in the word, “背” has the meaning of “to carry on your back/shouldered” or “burdened” while “负” has a similar meaning but also has the implication of “duty” (the character is also used in the word “负责”, to be responsible for). The word “罪” is usually translated as “sin” and I’ve also translated it this way for poetic effect. But it’s definitely more commonly used to mean “crime” (example, “犯罪” means to commit a crime).

In this context, we could understand this as the speaker taking on the consequences of any crimes committed by the “you” in the song. I think this echoes pretty well with Cheng Fengtai’s character, and how he has always expressed the inability to oppose the expectation set on him by society and family. “任性” is how you would describe Shang Xirui’s character- a childish stubbornness that refuses to capitulate to the demands other make.

假如这一生就流一次泪 // If, in this life, [I] could shed tears one time 我猛一回头来不及防备 // I suddenly turn back, it was too late to put my guard up 假装浑浑噩噩无所谓 // Pretending to be muddle-headed, it doesn’t matter 尘埃里开出了花蕾 // A flower bud bloomed from the dust

This second half of the verse is more metaphorical than the first. The first line follow structurally with the first half of the verse. The implication is that this is the one time the singer is allowed to shed tears.

In the second line, the word “防备” literally means “to guard against/prepare for danger.” For example, you’d use this word to warn someone to be prepared for an attack, or for some other potentially negative consequence (ie, the road is slippery, please be careful in case you fall).

The third line leaves some room for interpretation. “浑浑噩噩” is an expression meaning “muddle-headed”, or a general state of confusion about the world. It can be used to describe a drunken person, for example. Broken down, it’s “浑” for “muddy/turbulent” and “噩”, in this context for “simple-minded.”

The end of the third line is “无所谓 ”, meaning “whatever” or “it doesn’t matter.” Here, you could interpret it as pretending “nothing matters” by connecting it to the first words “假装” (to pretend to be). However, I chose to interpret it as a connecting phrase between the third and fourth lines. Literally, a bit like “even if [I] pretended [to be confused/muddle-headed, it didn’t matter [because]...”

I think the melody of this same line in <此生此时>, the other version of the song, probably supports this interpretation since there is a pause placed right between the first part of the line and “无所谓”. See more on the differences between these two songs below.

There’s not too much more detail I can go into for the last line because it’s already pretty literal, but it’s worth mentioning that “尘埃” (literally “dust” or “dirt”) is often used metaphorically to describe something that is “dirty.”

In general, I interpret this part of the verse as Cheng Fengtai’s inability to guard himself against the true affection he feels for Shang Xirui, and their friendship is something that grew almost unexpectedly, without his consent, like a flower bud that springs up from an otherwise “dirty” world.

我不后悔 // I don’t regret 风雪中和你走这一回 // In the wind and snow, having walked with you this one time 干了这杯 // Drinking (emptying) this cup

I originally had this half of the chorus split into two, but after listening to the same lyrics in <此生此时>, I decided to combine it. More detail on that below.

The first line here translates pretty well literally, and connects directly into the second line. This line likely refers to a scene early in the drama where Cheng Fengtai and Shang Xirui walk together through the cold, clearing up a some misunderstandings between them and establishing the beginning of their friendship.

In the third line, the phrase used is a variation of “干杯”, which is used in Chinese when giving a toast of alcohol, to the same effect of “Cheers” in English. Literally, it translates to “drying the cup”, referring to the fact that you are supposed to drink the entire cup after. In this line, they’ve specified “having dried this cup.”

Since there is no subject for this action, this line could be interpreted to link up to the first one (one of the things they did together that the speaker doesn’t regret doing), or it could be interpreted as something the speaker is doing alone after.

I actually favored the former interpretation before I listened to the variation in <此生此时>. But afterwards, I’ve interpreted this line as a transition instead. After drinking, perhaps alone (like in the second interpretation), the speaker is taken into the dream sequence in the next few lines.

我们在戏里灵魂相对 // In the play, our souls face one another 有些惭愧 // With some [feeling of] shame 我不说但你心领神会 // I don’t speak but you already know intuitively 就此一醉 // Like this, getting drunk

In this next line, the word “戏” can refer to any sort of theatrical performance- a play, an opera, etc. In context, I’ve decided to simply translate it as “on stage”, but this line is a direct reference to Cheng Fengtai’s statements that he finds Shang Xirui’s soul singularly unique on that stage, as if it were touching his own.

The following line notes that there is some “惭愧”, or a feeling of shame. It’s left unclear whether this refers to a mutual feeling of shame or if this is only from the speaker’s part. I personally favor the former, but the line after which specifically references the singer being unable to speak directly about it could imply the latter.

The last line in this part reinforces the drunken haze narrative, first mentioned in the line about draining the cup. The way it’s phrased, “就此一醉”, implies “just like this, [I] became [intoxicated].” Overall, this entire section echoes one of the earlier scenes in the drama where Cheng Fengtai wanders home through the snow, alone, after being deeply moved by Shang Xirui’s opera.

梦里你对我说人间好美 // In [this] dream, you said to me, “the [human] world is so beautiful” 此生有一段只能意会 // In this life, there is a time period you can only feel intuitively 无须安慰 // No need for comfort 彼此都懂得遗忘心碎 // Each of us understand forgetting broken hearts

The first line in this section is where I took a lot of liberties in my finished translation. The word being described as beautiful is “人间”, a word used to mean “world.” However, when breaking down the meaning of the individual characters, it means “the place where people reside.” In this sense, it’s meaning is closer to “world of humans” or “mankind” rather than the more generic English use for “world.” I’ve thus translated it as a statement of people being beautiful, something that Shang Xirui, in his idealism, would likely tell Cheng Fengtai.

The second line has the name drop for the song, “此生”, “this life.” It refers to a period of time that can only be “意会”, meaning “felt intuitively”. Broken down, these are the characters for “thought/idea” and “to meet/gather.” This line expresses the idea that there are things in this life that you won’t be able to put into words or confirm, things that you’ll only know with intuition and empathy. In my translation, I chose to interpret this as specifically the feelings between people, in keeping thematically with the first line.

In the third line, the word “安慰” means “to comfort” specifically in the sense of “to console” or “to reassure” (not necessarily in the sense of “feeling [physical] comfort”) Originally, I actually interpreted this line as a continuation of the previous line- the singer has no need of reassurance because they have an intuitive understanding already.

After listening to the <此生此时> variation though, I think this actually ties into the next line. Together with that line, this becomes “there’s no need for comfort, [because] we both already understand how to [forget] the heartbreaks.” You could read into it either way.

和你依偎 // Cuddling (leaning against) with you 分分秒秒都不够体会 // Every minute, every second, isn’t enough to experience/understand

In this part, the verb “依偎” can mean “to lean against”, “snuggle”, “cuddle”, etc. It can describe actions like two people embracing, one person sleeping against another’s shoulder/chest, birds nestled against each other, etc. The characters when divided are “依”, “to rely on” or “to go along with” and “偎” for “to cling/embrace.” I chose to go with “nestle” in my translation to give a sense of the characters being very close together, yet small compared to the rest of the world.

In the second line, “体会” means “to experience”, “to understand”, or “to realize [through experience]”, especially in the sense of walking in someone else’s shoes. In this case, no matter how close they are, the time together is too short, and they are unable to fully grasp the other’s experiences.

青山妩媚 // Green mountains are charming 回望戏台上锦绣堆灰 // Looking back, on the stage, the exquisitely beautiful [items] in piles of dust/ashes

The first line here about the “green mountains” actually comes from a Southern Song dynasty poem by Xin Qiji called <贺新郎>. You can find a translation of it on his Wikipedia page here. While I’ve translated the color “青” as “green”, the word can actually refer to a variety of colors on the spectrum between blue and green. It’s often used to describe both the color of the sky and the color of grass. After much debate, I also used a translation of “妩媚” (lovely, charming) closer to the one provided on the Wikipedia page (originally translated by Lian Xinda) since it was a reference.

The poem is from the point of view of an elderly man whose friends have all passed away over the years, and who feels perhaps that he has accomplished nothing in his life. As he looks out at the mountains, he notes that they appear quite charming and lovely to him. He muses that perhaps they, too, see the same when they look back at him, despite his current state of melancholy. In context, you could interpret this as Cheng Fengtai, a man who believes he has accomplished nothing, looking upon the more beautiful world described to him by Shang Xirui.

The second line also echoes some ideas from the poem. “锦绣” here means “exquisite/beautiful.” The characters individually actually translate more literally to “fine embroidery”, but as an expression it can be used to describe objects of exquisite beauty/craftsmanship. In this context, we can actually take it a bit more literally, as the most beautiful items on the stage would be Shang Xirui’s finely embroidered costumes. They now “堆灰”, literally “pile ash/dust” (the character “灰” can mean both). Overall, the imagery evokes an empty stage, where the things once remembered by the speaker in their dreams are no longer there, likely due to both destruction and the simple passage of time.

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Comparison to <此生此时>

There is actually another song on this drama’s soundtrack called <此生此时>, which you can listen to here. Those attentive can pick up on the fact that the lyrics are almost exactly the same despite the completely different melody.

The title of this insert song literally translates to “This Life, This Time.” In context, “this time” refers to “this era/this time period” rather than as an instance of an action. So you could understand it as “this life as it is in this era.” This compares to the ending theme, which is simply titled “This Life.”

You could interpret this alone in a variety of ways, but I think one of the easiest is that the melody of “This Life, This Time” fits in better with the popular musical styles of the time compared to the ending theme, “This Life”, which has a more timeless feel to it.

Moving beyond the title, there are actually a few very minor lyric changes. I’ve seen some translators online that have tried to pick up on possible changes to meaning from the differences. While I can see that interpretation, I personally think the changes are largely “cosmetic”, shifting the syllables to better fit in with the new melody. Usually when the writer is attempting a change in perspective on the song, there will be a more significant change in tense or in the pronouns to indicate different speakers.

Pronoun removals changes are listed below. These removals do not actively change the meaning of the line, though you can argue that they introduce a level of ambiguity.

<此生>:（我）猛一回头来不及防备 <此生此时>: 猛一回头来不及防备 // Removal of subject pronoun “I”

<此生>:（我们在）戏里灵魂相对 <此生此时>: 戏里灵魂相对 // Removal of subject pronoun “we”

<此生>: 梦里（你对我说）人间好美 <此生此时>: 梦里（你说）人间好美 // Removal of the object pronoun “me”

<此生>:（彼此都）懂得遗忘心碎 <此生此时>: 懂得遗忘心碎 // Removal of subject pronoun “each of us/both of us”

There is one line, the title drop line, where <此生此时> does actually add extra information to the line that was not present in <此生>.

<此生>: 此生有一段只能意会 // In this life, there is a time period you can only feel intuitively <此生此时>:（弥足珍贵）此生有一段只能意会 // [It is] extremely precious, in this life, there is a time period you can only feel intuitively

They add the phrase “弥足珍贵”, an expression for “extremely precious” in this line. This can be interpreted as a modifier on “this life” or on the specific “time period” since there’s a pause between the phrase and the rest of the line in the song.

What I find more interesting than the relatively minor changes in lyrics, though, is the difference in how the lines are split due to how the song is sung. The soothing melody for <此生此时> means that lines are often sung in longer phrases with different pauses compared to <此生>, which also means that we can better understand Yu Zheng’s intent when he wrote certain lines.

I’ve cited several instances of this above in my line-by-line notes. One really good example is this section of the chorus. In <此生>, the melodic structure means the section gets divided into a lot of small phrases with a lot of ambiguity in how they should be understood together.

我不后悔 风雪中和你走这一回 干了这杯 （我们在）戏里灵魂相对 有些惭愧 我不说但你心领神会 就此一醉 梦里（你对我说）人间好美

In contrast, in <此生此时>, this condenses nicely down, effectively tying together multiple phrases and better clarifying the relationship between them.

我不后悔风雪中和你走一回 干了这杯戏里灵魂相对 有些惭愧我不说但你心领神会 就此一醉梦里（你说）人间好美

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And that concludes my notes on this song! This was probably much longer than it needed to be, but I wanted to clarify as many nuances as I could. I really love this drama, and again, highly recommend it. The music is beautiful.

When I get the time, I’m hoping to work translating and explaining the opening theme as well.