#don't ask me to explain a joke

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Adding onto this post, I wanted to say thanks to everyone for their kind comments and replies!

More on these topics:

It occurred to me: why was I thinking of Tamara (and MT's Tamara in particular) as "upper middle class" when she married into aristocracy? I think it was mostly because 1) her Tamara really reminded me of specific people I have met in that category, and 2) there was a sort of a casual expectation of privilege combined with fear of losing that privilege which I associate with the upper middle class. (Though there’s also this article where Carson Kreitzer mentions EE’s “natural regality” so that could be part of the contrast as well.) It would make some sense if there were a perceptible class difference between Tamara and Tadeusz. During “Our Time,” she mentions that her father being "a merchant Jew" was an issue in their marriage arrangement (while the person favored by Tadeusz's family was "so proper"), which implies that both the class difference and the religious difference matter. Tamara also shushes Tadeusz when he alludes to the two of them having slept together before marriage, and he dismisses her concern saying, "What? It's just us," when there is obviously another person in the room—the person Tamara is using as a model for her painting (Masha?), who seems to be a household servant. Since Tamara orders her over to let Tadeusz wipe his hands on her skirt, Tamara is aware of her as someone that Tamara can order around and use, but Tadeusz doesn't even register Masha as a person. (The class difference could also explain why Tamara later thinks, “to get money I should just get a job” while Tadeusz is like, “Work??? Eww, embarrassing.”)

@muffins-for-days Re: Eden being silly, that does remind me of a couple of moments :).  There is the one at the beginning of the group show scene when the Baroness makes a snide (and funny) comment to Tamara about how nice it must be to show her work "indoors, at last," and poor blindsided Tamara can't quite figure out how to respond and nods awkwardly several times like a bobblehead desperate for approval. By that time we had already seen that she could be silly in private (the madeleines), but I was a little surprised at that specific gesture because this seemed like it was very much exaggerated for the audience vs. something literally happening within the scene. Then again the scene itself does call attention to the jokes with the little triangle "ding" played each time. On occasion the show presented this sort of campiness (sometimes deliberate, sometimes I wasn’t sure) which could have been a source of confusion about what tone it was trying to convey.

Though now I wonder, what is it about Tamara that the Baroness is so skeptical about (at least in Act 1)? Is she tired of the Baron picking up strays, as Marinetti puts it? Does she sense the Baron's little crush developing? Or maybe with her unusually clear sense of people’s emotions, she can poke at whatever people might be sensitive about – and Tamara really wants to have her artistic ability acknowledged. It’s not the worst insult, I guess; it at least acknowledges her progress, so it’s a little less mean than a comment on say, her bodily functions (hey maybe that other street artist just sweats a lot & he can't help it).

More silliness: there was also a moment in the final show in the same scene when Marinetti commented about all the promising young artists having the opportunity to "unzip and whip it out to measure – so what did you bring?" He then headed over to look at her paintings, but EE as Tamara paused to look down at herself before turning to hear his comments. I remember that getting a laugh from the audience and wasn't sure if she had done that in other shows or if it was intended to be anything other than a funny moment. But if we run with that... characters in the show repeatedly suggest Tamara wants to be a man (socially, if not literally). Could she be considering the idea? What would she be thinking? My guess: "I’d win.” (I’m fairly certain I’ve heard or read Eden Espinosa comment somewhere about Tamara’s BDE.)

Edit note: I made one update within the post (changed "muted trumpet" to "muted horn" since I finally looked more closely at the Playbill and the only brass instrument in the orchestra credits is a French horn (oops) played by Zohar Schondorf, so I assume that’s who is playing that note.

Been trying to gather my thoughts about Tamara de Lempicka as a character, and the difference between Eden Espinosa’s Tamara vs. Mariand Torres’s Tamara:

EE’s Tamara: Her Tamara seemed to me to be a little more self-serious and intense to the point where it both fed into the humor (e.g. when she meets the street painter and very earnestly steps in to try to correct his perspective while completely missing his offended reaction), but also informed her interactions with basically everyone else she interacted with. That focused seriousness and disregard/cluelessness about others’ feelings really made a lot of little moments—especially with Kizette, Rafaela, and Tadeusz—more understandable.

I remember thinking after seeing the show in La Jolla that she had done a very good and solid job as Tamara, but something about the performance was a little bit out of focus. I’m not even sure what that missing element even was, but between La Jolla and Broadway it seemed like she found the central spark; by the time I saw it at the Longacre it was the kind of performance (for me at least, if not the professional critics) where you’d jump out of your seat for bows, because she fully embodied that central role in such a way that it’s hard for me to think of the character of Tamara and not think of her in it.

MT’s Tamara: Her Tamara seemed a little lighter than EE’s in both vocal tone and personality. To me she came across as a blithely self-involved upper-middle class lady whom you might not take seriously until you find (to your surprise) that she has steamrolled right over you to get what she wants, and she herself might not even notice that she has done so. I liked her “I Will Paint Her” a lot, but I thought she also was excellent in “Speed” and “Just This Way” – she really conveyed the sense of sorrow and despair (with an interesting little dash of entitlement) from losing Tadeusz and Rafaela.

(On a less meaningful note, Mariand Torres seems to be slightly shorter than Eden Espinosa, and I remember feeling worried during some parts of “Woman Is” when Tamara is running up and down the stairs with her long robe open and billowing behind her, which seemed like it could easily snag or cause a mishap. Thankfully it didn’t!)

The moment that for me best illustrated the difference in the portrayals between Eden Espinosa’s Tamara vs. Mariand Torres’s Tamara happened early in the show, when Tamara’s mother tells her on her wedding day, “Don’t forget to smile. You’ll be surprised where a pretty smile can take you.” What I remember is that EE’s Tamara halfheartedly attempted a smile that looked much more like a grimace, while MT’s Tamara pasted on a smile that was bright, pretty, and fake. So I see MT’s Tamara as one who is better at putting on the façade.  

The second example that I found interesting was in “I Will Paint Her.” I have always interpreted “I Will Paint Her” as Tamara almost (but not quite) understanding that the overwhelming feelings she has upon seeing Rafaela for the first time are actually romantic and/or sexual, and not solely artistic inspiration. The humor is one of my favorite aspects of this song, and I just find that interpretation funnier than the alternatives. (The muted horn sound after the line “she’s just a woman who’s pretty” makes me laugh, because it’s as if the music itself is having a *looks into the camera* moment.)

One reason I like EE’s “I WIll Paint Her” is that her emotions are bursting forth and only occasionally (on those “I will…” pauses) she realizes what she’s been saying; she seems to be surprised by herself, and in trying to grasp at reasons why she’s feeling this way, she lands on what she currently knows best, which is “art.” I did really like MT’s “I Will Paint Her” as well, but after the “I will…” pauses, her follow-up seemed a lot more deliberate and knowing. In the moment I thought she was just overemphasizing the point for the audience, but thinking back on it, it could also be that she is more aware of where her thoughts and feelings are leading, so she is trying to regain her decorum and maintain a little plausible deniability. (You could interpret EE’s version this way too, really, but I am just choosing not to.)

[archerdepartures116]

can we get 7, scum villain for the ask game pretty please?

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

I can't lie, Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu.

Now before you crucify me and say "oh but you like LQG and he's an ass" HEAR ME OUT🤚

I feel like the "everyone loves shen yuan he can do no wrong" is a little annoying and SOME of the fanfics I've read or the art I've seen have just reduced him to a damsel in distress or babyified him and I am mad because his canon self is so funny (exhibit A, how he acts in the donghua)

also he's kinda annoying in those fics too and mfs tend to over feminized him when that is a fully able bodied grown man with a job (several of my blood vessels explode violently when someone calls shen jiu mamajiu cause brother eughhh)

as for Shen Jiu, I just think the glaze for him is insane and I cannot get over the fact that this guy is a voluntary abuser to basically an innocent child and his fans (SOME FANS BTW SOME FANS THE NORMAL ONES R FINE) are like "he did no wrong!" "He's just a diva!" "that's just a skill issue on lbh's part" just cause his backstory is tragic, some even outright excusing it cause he technically suffered more like erm💀 (i also know this is old discourse within the community but this is my opinion, you asked so you will hear what I say)

The thing is about these characterizations with the Shens is was that it funny at first but now I find it so annoying and SJ's characterization into some tsundere bottom made me cry real manly tears

My main point: I liked SQQ first, he was my fave when I was first dabbling into the fandom, but then I made the mistake of picking up fanfiction and now either feel indifferent to them or outright annoyed when they show up AND IT'S SO SAD BECAUSE THEY'RE GENUINELY SUPER INTRESTING CHARACTERS UGH

[barschter000]

broke: Due to his attractiveness, Barok has slept with countless (wo)men.

woke: Despite his attractiveness, Barok is a virgin.

Bespoke: Because of entirely different factors, Barok does not know what sex is.

[popcorn-plots]

quick PSA: the "who...... asked?" joke is not funny. It's mean, insensitive, and downright hurtful.

sincerely, the person who is slowly loosing interest in his AP psych class because people keep making that joke whenever he brings up something important to him

[dafpork]

dafpork is like a modern day speakeasy to me because everyone comes in like it’s forbidden but since it’s the modern day it’s perfectly normal. Little secret club

LMAO YES!!! THIS IS A REALLY GOOD ANALOGY.. AND SEE IT'S SO FUNNY because i'm like I DON'T WANT IT TO BE FORBIDDEN... i'm such an accidental hypocrite in that regard because i'm like "i want more people to talk about them i want people to be loud and proud it makes me sad to hear that people might have been initially embarrassed to ship them there's so much to love :(((( anyway here's my SHITTY ART of these people i HATE i'm so EMBARRASSED thanks for putting up with me in my SHAME CORNER UGH i'm so EMBARRASSED they're so EMBARRASSING i SUCK they SUCK it all SUCKS" LOL and i do mean it in a joking manner... mostly... but i'm kind of now at the point where i'm like. Okay well you're going to have to put in some more legwork if you want people to talk about them. (but, again, just the fact that people talk about and support them enough is so great! it's so weird and wonderful to me that people are calling it on dafpork on platforms other than this one, people who may not know i exist... it's cool hearing a term you and your friend came up with in a private discord be used, it shows how much growth there HAS been since there really used to be nothing!)

a dafpork speakeasy sounds so cool though oh my god can you imagine Porky and Daffy themed cocktails...............

COME JOIN US AT THE DAFPORK SPEAKEASY. which, you are not supposed to advertise that a speakeasy is a speakeasy. but it's subversive. like Daffy. or something. this is your sign to play pig and duck with us. yes you

[magnetothemagnificent]

Magneto and Professor X and their constant ideological and personal squabbles and homoerotic tension would fit right in as a Chavruta amongst the sages of the Talmud lmfao

[commsroom]

It’s my birthday too! !! Happy Birthday! I wanted to ask you about Jacobi since he rotates around my brain like he’s on a microwave plate 24/7. Just, general Jacobi thoughts, go crazy , I think about him all the time

yayy, shared birthday!! i hope you had a good one. you're actually the second person who told me it was their birthday too... june 21st birthday club!!

i feel a little guilty saying this, since it was your birthday too, but jacobi is one of my least favorite characters. not to say i don't have things to say about him, but. i don't care for him at all.

some things i can say about jacobi:

i think the most compelling thing about him is that his character arc is a perfect loop back around to his backstory mini episode - two people are dead. he feels responsible. he's out of a job. what now? in things that break other things, he deflects. he rationalizes - "it wasn't anyone's fault; everyone was just doing their jobs" - but is that really true? or is that what he has to tell himself in order to live with himself, and to keep doing the work that he wants to do. when jacobi says "i was wrong and people died, and the only thing i can do is not be wrong again" to kepler in the finale, it's as much about the deaths that weigh on him. maxwell's most of all.

... and i think there's potential for change there, now that he's able to confront it, but in a lot of ways that's the start of a character arc rather than the culmination of one. i will never believe that jacobi wants to spend any more time around minkowski, eiffel, and hera (nor vice versa, really) - they are also the people who killed maxwell to him, and they will never be "his" people. but i think if you were going to write about post-canon jacobi and that theme of survivor's guilt + escaping destructive cycles, lovelace would be a good counterpart to him for that - she's further along on that journey, he expresses a kind of respect and even almost-friendship for her that he doesn't for the rest of the hephaestus crew, and she has a more... biting sense of humor; i think they could actually be friends (or at least narrative parallels) given the right conditions.

and speaking of narrative parallels: he actually has a lot in common with minkowski. jacobi plays at being a rebel, a loose cannon, etc. because it gets people's guards down, but he's very, very patient, calculating, and measured. he is not an impulsive person, and more than that - he's a follower by nature, and a rule follower. jacobi doesn't believe in the "bigger picture" for his own sake, but he is deeply committed to maxwell's bigger picture. he wants to be told what to do, he wants to feel like he has a purpose within a greater system/structure, and - crucially to dirty work - he wants to be able to shirk responsibility when something goes wrong. jacobi craves certainty, he needs that faith in the judgment of the people who give him orders, and i think what dirty work does by positioning jacobi and minkowski as narrative foils highlights a lot of similarities in their faults.

(it does drive me a little crazy when people compare him to eiffel or say they'd get along under different circumstances, like... no? for all his other faults, eiffel is distinctly anti-authoritarian and sincere. they're like, coworkers with different politics who would really rather not speak to each other if at all possible.)

appearance-wise: i firmly believe he needs glasses (the line about his eyesight not quite being good enough is the kind of thing he'd downplay + it's a fun inverse of people drawing maxwell with glasses when she canonically doesn't need them), he has very specific military masculinity issues (thanks to his father) (and gabriel urbina once said jacobi's car is probably the civilian model of something used in the military) so i think he keeps his hair very short, and. i actually don't think he has notable burn scars. i respect that it's a distinct design choice, but canonically i think it makes more thematic sense that he wasn't personally, physically hurt by that accident (and i think someone would probably have made a remark about visible burn scars on the guy insisting he "is that good" with explosives.)

[laurellala-comics]

there are two wolves inside of you. One of them is fretting that you went through all the effort of making a new art account just to pigeonhole yourself once more into a specific fandom, which holds you back from exploring original art concepts that you care about. The other one came up with three separate ace attorney comic ideas in the last hour alone and isn't stopping anytime soon

[teh-nos]

loki/william rufus fic, where bill explains that as the second son he has inherited england while big brother bob only got the duchy of normandy, ha ha ha.

[elprupneerg]

ok actually thinking about it a bit more, i'm probably desensitized to this stuff. tried explaining it to a buddy the other day and they looked vaguely ill. which is unfortunate because wastewater treatment is actually super super cool and i wish i felt more comfy with talking about special interest stuff and that other people were ok with hearing about it more so that i could talk about it more. if anyone wants a big rant about how wastewater treatment works (or a smaller rant about how drinking water treatment works, i'm also interested in that but i don't feel like i know as much about it) please please please ask cuz i will gladly talk about it. please <3 🥺

[loveridden1999]

mwaaaaaahhhh!!!! >.<

thank you that kiss was overdue by now 😌

[marvthemagpie]

Being disabled is so fun!!! I get cool new learning experiences like trying to teach people basic empathy!!

[accursedthing]

Tbh I kind of hate those "NOT the same person. ARE the same person" Kingdom Hearts memes, not cause there's no humor to them but because most of the explanations for these things aren't actually that difficult, it's just possession or clones or spiritual connections most of the time, which are pretty common in fantasy stories (some of them like the Nobodies are kind of a can of worms but also not hard to understand in context and ANY fantasy story with multiple installments is going to have stuff like that), and yet people who aren't familiar with the series use these images all the time to support the running idea that Kingdom Hearts is like. Impossible to follow and makes no sense. Which I, of course, don't like because at its core it's just people calling a thing I like stupid. And I WILL take it too seriously because I have the kind of autism that makes you deranged about Kingdom Hearts

[deer-with-a-stick]

on one hand, if larian gave us raw rules for revivify/raise dead, you could do things like save Duke Ravengard without Mizora (ignore her, go to Iron Throne where he's going to be dead for some stupid reason, cast Raise Dead with a diamonds and boom. you can't tell me that he's been dead for more than 10 days when you find him) or just revive random NPCs for fun but on the other hand dear god the chaos

[ravencromwell]

hi! not sure if appropriate to ask, but is your username derived from thomas cromwell at all? cheers, from one considering cracking into the diarmaid maccullough biography if i can lift the damn thing

A. I love! this question. B. GOD I _wish. My username came, very pedestrianly, from a fanfic oc created in the early 2000's. I remember nothing! of this oc except it was shared between @blindbibliophile and I. I dunno if you were around in fandom back then, but the usernames on fanfiction.net were shudders just utter mishmash gobbledygook. We both wanted something that sounded kinda comparable to a human while having a properly _exotic flare. GOD we were both internet babies with no business out of swaddling clothes much less let off the leading strings :). So we coin-flipped for who would get to use the name, as I recall--she'll correct me if I'm wrong. I barely produced anything with it, but was fortunate enough to pick up fannish connections via leaving lavishly verbose fic comments for other people that evolved into convos/friendships (going around sprinkling comments like a fairy overburdened with rainbows and pixie dust will forever be my fav way of interacting in any and every fandom and I'm fortunate very few people have asked me to stop :). When I transitioned over here, I kept it for continuity with those folks and because I'm terribly, terribly fond of all the shared history with one of my fav humans.

Y'know, for all the years I've been a Thomas Cromwell geek--I don't remember when I read and adored Wolf Hall, but it was before 2015, and I have yet to read Mirror of Light because. I. just can't watch him die via headsman, if that tells you how insanely attached I am to the fictionalized bastard of her work--I'd never put the connection together, and am almost sheepish in answering this because for just a second there, I seemed so much cleverer than I was ;)! But! you have no idea how happy you've made me <33333333333333333 because oh! oh my god I didn't know that biography existed I now have flashing hearts in my eyes and need it immediately (he was kinda a religious zealot holy shit!!!!!!! with administrative competence I already found the Mantel version hot apparently I'm gonna find the real one that way, too. I have a weakness for revolutionaries--in whatever form-- with bastard morals, particularly when they lived long enough ago their bastard morals aren't affecting my friends and family and I can crush in peace :)

[mathmusicreading]

Xiè Lián: My surname is Xiè, my first name is Lián. Huā Chéng: You can call me your third husband. Xiè Lián: What happened to my first two husbands?!

I learned Huā Chéng was having Xiè Lián call him "husband" from Ty the Canasian on Kictor's YouTube, I found this when I was trying to corroborate the linguistics, and I indulged and bought the official Seven Seas Entertainment (translator and editor are on Tumblr!) English translations of the books so here's further confirmation from Volume 1:

ETA:

I made this post private because I was unhappy with it (misspelling/misformatting Wúmíng, knowing I wouldn't have good reach for larger and less biased sample size even if I could have tagged better for the fandoms and characters if Tumblr organized by more than the first five tags), but I'm making it public again since it finished and so did the similar poll that fun-mxtx-polls was kind enough to make for me.

Not to bias towards the first option, just to explain it, the first option and why I wanted this poll come from the naming pattern trivia for MXTX's love interests/male leads/gongs, which I think you can best read on Huā Chéng's page on the Heaven Official's Blessing/Tiān Guān Cì Fú wikia. I'm just using that as my citation given:

I'm not sure if MXTX has discussed this meta in-joke somewhere and if so, where.

The SSE Glossary: Terminology note (all volumes of all three MXTX novels) only explains the second and third gongs, and implies MXTX is doing this purposefully. Lán Wàngjī's wikia page explains only the three published gongs, and implies this started from fandom phenomena creating a proto-stage pattern (if you subscribe to "one is chance, two is coincidence, three is a pattern"). Huā Chéng's page linked above is the odd man out and so probably incorrect about Lán-èr-gē vs. Lán-èr-gēge, but it goes above and beyond by explaining the fourth gong, and it uses the most neutral language regarding this trivia.

I think citation is unnecessary for "gē" (哥 | 哥) meaning "big brother" and in certain contexts having the connotation or meaning of "eldest brother" (admittedly my unverified inference), "èr" (二 | 二) meaning "two", and "sān" (三 | 三) meaning "three".

I actually like so much because I like to think if it could use more wordplay and less literalism. Please forgive me for being a poor reader not remembering exactly, not buying the TGCF raws yet, not being able to buy the SVSSS and MDZS raws, and only being able to find old fan translations/interpretations of MXTX's fourth novel preview, but let me explain:

I believe Luò Bīnghé isn't being called "Luò Bīnghé-gē" (or rather "Bīng-gē" since I think? it's more usual to use the suffix with the single/first character of a person's given name, not with their full name, especially when the full name is three (or more? some of my reading has mentioned two-character last names but I didn't find if culture was strict about then making the given name be only one character) characters) for the usual reasons to address someone with "gē", but actually the PIDW!Luò Bīnghé is being called Luò Bīnggē (or "Bīng-gē") because he's more aggressive than canon/SVSSS!Luò Bīnggē who when being differentiated gets called Luò Bīngmèi (or "Bīng-mèi"), and I love that "very fitting reasoning for the naming, not strictly literal and not so bound to literal".

Then with Lán Wàngjī, I see the opportunity that his nickname could have used the natural naming of "erhua is used as a diminutive suffix", and the "er" would have been homophonous with "èr" (二 | 二) for "two" for him being the second gong, and homophonous to the potential "proper address for him as the second Lán son/brother".

In the most literal sense, you'll notice that the gongs so far have had their nicknames be using "(big) brother" and Huā Chéng's uses láng (郎 | 郎) "son" (his stated meaning, although it can also mean "man" and "husband" and the latter is how we can interpret he wanted it to be when coming from Xiè Lián). There's nothing wrong with that and the numbers are perfectly probable, and would still be so as they grow, but also they could feel more like "contrived" coincidence, which is part of my wanting to get away from literalism a little bit, not just my loving clever wordplay. With Huā Chéng, I don't have a homophone I can use for punning like with Lán Wàngjī, or really the "cultural language use where literal suffixes/honorifics get used figuratively for XYZ purposes", but I can make it fit with character interpretation. To me, Sān Láng doesn't have to be "Third Son" because "he has two older brothers" and in fact we aren't sure that he was telling the truth about that—instead, I think Huā Chéng could be being clever with not just getting Xiè Lián to call him (Third/surname "Three") Husband but in saying his name is "Third Man" because this is the third alias he gives Xiè Lián. (Some additional feels this gives me: It's like he's saying he's the same person Xiè Lián met before, that they shared all of that experience and it mattered, that he's the final form of that person wanting to be with Xiè Lián, that he's like a fairy-tale character with many names and forms and a true name and form and all along there was a trick or thread to follow in knowing and identifying him.) It just works out so perfectly because of the third way he introduces himself to Xiè Lián matching him being the third gong, and also the fairy-tale significant number of "three".

Finally, with the fourth gong, I've looked at Suika's TGCF Afterword translation, a NovelUpdates MDZS spoilers forum post by K.san crossposted to the Grim Reapers Have No Days Off spoilers forum by alexfilia, a reply to this post in r/tianguancifu by u/chenmochou, and also this post in r/tianguancifu by u/Loud_Daikon6167 which cites a TikTok I can't see either because of TikTok's thing about opening to a random page/the homepage or I assume the TikTok being removed or locked. Given the first NovelUpdates post maybe having more of a direct translation compared to the first Reddit post, it's still not definitive to me whether this is "actually more of a fandom thing, with MXTX acknowledging and participating in it enough to help make it possible" or it's "MXTX doing this on purpose with her name choices and character traits, whether she meant to have the pattern from the start or later, and yes could have been influenced by fandom" because I think "Other: 四少" is probably about the male lead(s) compared to it following "Protagonist: the uke's name is not determined yet" so it doesn't seem like the fandom came up with a nickname out of whole cloth. "Four young masters" is perfectly probable and could be equally reasonable, and "four ikemen" could even follow in reasonability; in fact it could be more likely and realistic since this is a modern setting, which would have different use of "young master" to me, and because we believe the gong to be the regular human and the shou to be the grim reaper. But for the wordplay, I would have liked it if the gong were the grim reaper and the "four theme naming" came from the famous "sì" (四 | 四) meaning "four" is homophonous with "sǐ" (死 | 死) meaning "die/death" and the latter being used in the Chinese for "grim reaper"/"death god".