#i love writing girlbossery

[caesium-55]

"Max, quick question, how come we've never seen your girlfriend despite you telling us that she's been in every race?" the F1News interviewer asks him.

Max shrugs his shoulders in an uncaring manner, "I don't know, mate. It sounds like a you problem."

The interviewer laughs at Max's dry response. Max doesn't understand why he finds humor in his words. He's not trying to be funny.

"We've seen the WAGS around the paddock today. How come yours isn't around? You just won the last race of the season and you've now added another world championship title under your belt. Everyone wants to see your girlfriend being supportive or..." the interviewer drawls and Max doesn't like his insinuating tone at all. "Has there been trouble with paradise lately?"

"No trouble at all," Max answers quickly. "We're happy. I'm happy. She's happy. She's supportive of me as I am supportive of her. But if you really want to see her..."

Max pauses for a moment, thoughtfully.

"Later, at the podium at sunset, look up at the sky, you'll see her. She's piloting the leading aircraft."

F1NEWS: RELATIONSHIP MYSTERY SOLVED—Max Verstappen just revealed that his girlfriend is an airshow pilot specifically employed by the FIA to perform during each Grand Prix, hence why we haven't seen her in the paddock despite Max insisting that she's been in every race. She leads the pre-race aerial shows and the awarding aerial shows. Now, we know why Max always turns to the sky when he's at the top of the podium. His girlfriend is watching him from above. Truly a power couple; he who dominates the earth and she who dominates the skies.

[beemovieerotica]

Updated - Two guys who happen to be on a boat

Mary Bonnet faced the sun, the wind fluttering her hair.  

She stood on no porch, by no garden, on no street.  Oh no, she was not on land at all.  Seagulls reeled overhead, and a damp deck creaked beneath her.  Cold salt spray misted the air.  

She brushed a sparkling curl of hair out her eyes as the ship plowed bravely through the waves, to where she had never gone before.

"I fucking hate the sea," she announced, turning away from the water.  

[popstart]

Am I the only one who feels like the way this fandom talks about female characters is always so like???? Omg girlboss but also a girlfailure I support women’s rights AND wrongs she was robbed!!!! Idk it’s always the same few phrases lol I don’t get it.

OHHHH I AGREE SO HARD💀 seeing the same 3 phrases used to describe the female characters bc they think its a diversity win. ok.

Female character is independent or strong etc -> omg shes suuuuch a girlboss teehee🙈 step on me. other weird and annoying sexual comments bc girlbossery is sexy (or something) and thats the only appeal female characters are allowed to have for a lot of people Female character is kinda cringe sometimes and doesnt succeed at everything -> omg my silly girlfaliure girlloser shes so sillystupid i love her Female character has dimension -> omg??? shes like a girlboss and a girlfaliure at the same time???

ignoring the fact i hate so many things about tacking on the prefix girl to random shit as something that feels like a negative connotation (or something degrading), there is 0 critical thinking people have for female characters and its like. ok man. people come up with 600 random headcanons and backstory elements for every single male character they like but designate the female characters they like to "oh ummm shes a girlboss so i like her😊" AWWEEESOMEEEEE. LOVE TO SEE IT🥴

and to people that dont see that or say that doesnt happen....... it does. i see it with my own eyeballs every damn day. eg; in fanon noah has 8 (or 9? i forget) girlboss sisters and is an expert hacker and speaks 300 languages and knows everything and makes 0 mistakes and is always calculated all the time and has 20 boyfriends while in canon he got kicked out of the opportunity of 100k dollars because he was reading and hates everyone and plays video games all day and is a massive schmuck for 1 single person that being emma. sorry noah fans thats just how it is. headcanons are fine but it gets to the point where its like hey guys what are we doing here.

and ok whatever. say we all stop talking about noah bc god knows he did nothing to deserve it. where do we go from there? the amount of people i see saying they wish there was more f/f in fandom they just dont wanna write it or people that say they wish they wrote f/f more its just too hard has me :I i think it really just proves how little fanon there is for female characters. since generally fanon is what fandom bases its fanfiction and general characterization on and f/f famously contains only women, it makes sense that if its "hard" to write for f/f pairings it means that people just dont care enough about the women to make wide spread fandom interpretations of them.

and it reaaaaaally sucks. total drama has what i consider a pretty good cast of diverse female characters. And sure, a lot of the time the show doesnt do them justice (they were robbed as many many MANY people say) but a lot of them have so much potential and all of them have at least SOME potential. but ofc, due to how theyre treated in the fandom, no one really cares about them outside of them being paired up with men. and even worse, people will just straight ignore them outright a lot of the time because they 'get in the way of their mlm ship' or some bs.

am i saying its inherently misogynistic to write mlm ships? HELLLLLL no. im just saying that the heavy apathy or visceral anger many many many female characters get unless theyre paired up with a man or because they 'get in the way of' a mans love for another man is quite frankly laughable when you consider what actually goes on in the show. this shit was made for kids, these people are kids. its just so weird just how obsessed people can be with a fictional character to the point of these overblown reactions to other characters of the same god damn show

[francesderwent]

Taylor famously writes from this place poised between two realities: her conviction that true love is real and that it lasts forever, and her experience of love breaking down and falling short. her songs can be wistful, hopeful, or they can be devastated, accusatory, and specifically accusatory of a moral failing. she’s not angry because her feelings were hurt, she’s angry because there was a standard which wasn’t met, angry because promises were made (even implicitly!) which weren’t kept. it keeps her music from being small—small-minded or small-souled. her hope doesn’t have to be naive, and her hurt doesn’t have to be navel-gazing, because it’s not about her, ultimately. it’s about the truth of love and how we’re all longing for that, and all capable of living up to love’s demands if only we choose to. she can confront everything that she’s been told about love, that it’s a “ruthless game”, that maybe she “asked for too much”, and she can measure it against what she knows is true and sift out the lies. the pillars of Taylor are “Love Story”, “Better Man”, and “All Too Well”: she looks at the tragedy of love and says over and over “here’s how you could have fixed things. here’s how you give the whole of yourself. it was your choice and you chose not to and that’s on you.”

Maisie is different. outside of the Trying soundtrack, written for a fictional story not her own, songs about a love that is whole and true are few and far between. her conviction that true, romantic love is real and achievable just isn’t as present. but just as much as Taylor, her songwriting comes from a place of held tension, of what we’ve been told meeting up with what we’ve experienced meeting up with what’s true. however, the realities that she’s encountering have always been different. Maisie is poised between on the one hand, the messages being fed to young women that they’re powerful and don’t need a man, and on the other hand, her experience of unavoidable vulnerability. or put another way: Maisie is poised between the flat egalitarianism of the more thoughtless kind of feminism, and the reality of asymmetrical relations between men and women. 

part of this, as we’ve said before, is that Maisie is so sisterful that even when she writes an independence anthem there is always a community lurking just around the corner. independence, for her, isn’t Enlightenment autonomy, holding herself together by her own power and beholden to no one. independence is friends holding each other up through communal heartbreak, growing and dancing and healing together—with a vividness that “New Romantics” never quite achieved. “Girls House” tells us very literally: an awful person got one year of trying to hurt her, but the next year isn’t for her alone, it’s for all the girls in her house. even the songs that are explicitly written along the lines of “I don’t need a man” have this echo in them: “I don’t need a man, because I know what it is to be loved.” you can only say “if you don’t want me, then you’re not the one,” or “loving him hurts, loving him don’t work, so love him I don’t” if you are absolutely convicted of what you are worthy of. that’s when you feel able to walk away. you could even make the argument that Maisie’s community of women building her up and filling her life takes the place of Taylor’s faith in true love. it’s what allows her to set standards, even as she remains pretty suspicious of romantic daydreams. 

but the other thing that saves Maisie’s music from being a non-stop one-note anthem of girlbossery, is that when she writes about hurt, about being done wrong, she gets right to the heart of a dynamic which gives the lie to a worldview in which men and women simply meet each other on equal ground. and I don’t even have to mention “History of Man” yet, because the other pillar of Maisie, besides “John Hughes Movie” and “Love Him I Don’t”, is actually “Worst of You”. Maisie’s clear-eyed recognition of inevitable inequality, the inequality that’s born because one person loves more, has been there since the beginning, and she doesn’t flinch away from it: “what was cheap to you, to me was all I had”. she said it flat out when YSUFT came out: “I’m not trying to write an empowerment album right now. I’m just telling the truth.” the implication is clear: a story in which women are simply empowered is not the truth. there is an asymmetry, which Genesis 3:16 describes as “desire” on the part of the woman (“she loves him more than anyone ever has in the history of man”) and “lording it over” on the part of the man (“you could just stop wanting me”). it’s not the ultimate truth of man and woman—Maisie isn’t resigned, she tries again and again to rewrite it—but it is a universal truth. it’s not just her terrible taste in men, making her fall for another rockstar. it’s not just immaturity, boys rather than men. it’s the whole history of man.

if Taylor is looking at human beings mired in sin and weakness and measuring them against the eternal standards of Love, Maisie is looking at the blind optimism of modernism and its denial of sin and measuring it against the fallenness that has been man’s for all of history. they’re looking at different dimensions of reality, and both of them are correct. Taylor’s is the discovery of the capital-I Ideal, realer than the real, which we all desire; Maisie’s is the discovery of the capital-R Real, realer than our desires for a lowercase-i ideal. because of this, they fall into opposite weaknesses: Taylor can sometimes be so preoccupied with the Ideal that she misses the way in which what she’s dealing with in reality actually isn’t that and therefore lets too much slide (False God, Lavender Haze). Maisie is so realistic that her daydreams don’t dream big enough, and she fails to escape the same old traps (Cate’s Brother). But Taylor, at her best, is able to look at an individual’s failings and says with confidence and empathy, “it is a lie that this is all you were capable of or all that love ever was. a love which gives everything and lasts forever is what’s true.” And Maisie, at her best, looks at the overly optimistic fantasies of empowerment in the hookup age and says “it is a lie that this is harmless. it’s a lie that this will make me free and happy. this is degrading and heartbreaking and unbalanced and that’s what’s true. so love you I don’t.”  

[whinlatter]

1, 2, 3, 12, 13, 14 for the High Inquisitor of Hogwarts *cackling in unseelie tones*

(ignore the previous ask pls! silly me, i chose the wrong no.)

ok… let’s have the tea on old dolores jane umbridge. i warn you, anon, that each of these answers is sillier than the last. RIP dolores* you would have loved valentino fall/winter 2022 🎀

1. Canon I outright reject

the weird girlishness of umbridge! it’s a real nuisance in canon for me. this is partly because it’s another example of jkr using being ‘girly’ as a sign a character is deserving of disrespect/mockery/contempt. but also because umbridge’s whole aesthetic presentation doesn’t really make sense for someone with her political ambitions. if you look at irl right wing female politicians, especially of umbridge’s generation, they almost always play with gender performance/deploy their femininity in very specific ways. eg: they lower their voices, they eschew open performance of patterns of behaviour and dress coded as female unless it’s to invoke a very specific officious schoolmistress vibe (more in mcgonagall’s vein). it’s clear that umbridge is someone of senior political standing who manages to rise up to a position of power in three governments (fudge, scrimgeour and voldemort/thicknesse). in all three instances, her holding a senior position would require a certain level of support from her colleagues i struggle to imagine a woman with an exclusively pink wardrobe with such openly twee taste managing to garner within a ministry that is extremely gender regressive (because the ministry does seem to have a gender problem, in that the only senior female official we encounter in canon other than umbridge is amelia bones, bertha jorkins and two mentions of griselda marchbanks - all other ministers, heads of department are men). so yeah never really made a ton of sense to me other than this is jkr’s yawn takes on girlbossery again. snore!

2. A canon/headcanon hill I will die on

umbridge and rita exchange christmas cards and meet for quarterly brunch to engage in a tit-for-tat exchange of info and influence. ofc they absolutely loathe each other and are competing to outlive each other so whoever dies first doesn’t get the pleasure of writing the other’s horrible obituary

3. Obscure headcanon

umbridge is such a fan of the popular muggle television programme antiques roadshow and tried unsuccessfully to exert her influence to get the wizarding wireless to adapt the format so she can get her extensive collection of pureblood paraphernalia valued

12. Crack headcanon

umbridge actually suffers from a very common form of colour blindness that mistakes reds for greens so thinks she’s actually wearing head to toe pistachio

13. Dumbest thing they’ve ever done

‘filthy half breeds’ like… girl

14. Most heroic moment

wearing a horcrux necklace in literally the most prominent place possible to make for remarkably easy stealing

* i’m aware in canon she’s not dead but i like to think she one day paused to consider how hagrid must have been conceived and the shock of it killed her instantly

[thedrunkenhermit]

notes from the future

hello, hello, hello. I made it! I'm back. I'm on prozac and I'm still the same. I'm frightened of things that are too small to be frightened of and brave when faced with spiders.

it's almost spring. easter is coming. I want someone to organize an easter hunt for me. it's international women's day and I don't want to be offended that no one wished it to me. I'm nonbinary so they might not know if it's applicable, but also it's not a terribly intersectional event and full of girlbossery more than much else, and I just don't care to see wasted opportunities for recognition or acknowledgement.

it's such a shame that the place from which I find it easiest to write is discontent. I've tried for so much of my life to sand down the jagged edges and cut off the t-shirt tags and without the irritation I'm harmless and formless and with it I'm thrashing but generating energy, still. I want so much that it spends all of my energy. I am so full of desire that there is no thing left for execution. what would it look like to be all do, and no want? industriousness, soullessness.

I could die tomorrow (or tonight) and I won't have much to show for it. I'll have impacted some folks' lives but most of what I've done thus far has been to minimize my own comfort in relationships. uncharitable, but technically true. as I unwind my relationship to worth and see oh, yes, darn, this *is* just a direct line to being useful and comforting to others, shit, I start to feel like I have made nothing worthwhile, nothing weird. certainly nothing as weird as I could.

I could be a source of great delight. I hear my loved ones saying in my head that I am, already. I know. I am also so sad all the time. I am going less crazy since being on medication but I feel like my mind is so adaptable that regardless the neurotransmitter environment I will always find a way to channel more than my hardware allows and burn out, burn out, burn out.

I'm in my 30s. It looks good, here. Truly. I feel like shit so much but it's so much more comfortable. There is agency even if it doesn't feel like it, I know there is. I am less inspired, but that's not the same as being less agent. I am currently as safe and secure as one can be. I am adapting and learning how to take care of myself. I have a lot of help, which makes that easier.

I don't know what to say. I wonder if I will ever feel only happy to be here, not also braced. I wonder if I will surrender. I wonder if I will read this years from now and marvel at my introspective and easy and articulate writing or if I'll be better by then and think the appraisal cutely mislain. Ooh, "mislain".

I will order bubble tea now and clean the house and watch garbage on the tv, but not the movie I was watching that made me feel like taking a potato peeler to my leg. I'll watch something worse and in that way, better.

[nowis-scales]

The One Where Some Potentially Questionable Girlbossery Occurs...

Wooooooo!

ALSO: This will sound completely stupid, but heads up if you intend to watch Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak, don't read this one. I just realized I like, blatantly spoil something about it in the form of a joke lol

(Emblems:

❃ = Positive, not a problem

❋ = It is entirely neutral

✾ = It’s a bit negative, but it’s told in a joking way

✿ = It is negative and critical)

❃ Wtf she calls out for her usually-absent father? That’s so sad! I don’t even know Annette that well, but that hurts!

EDIT FROM WHEN I INITIALLY WROTE THIS COMMENT: I know Annette now and that makes it so much worse. ❃

❃ Lol, talk about insult to injury. Not only am I fighting Rhea with her mom’s spine, I also broke it in front of her. I’m just trying to speedrun further traumatizing Rhea at this point. ❃

✿ Well of course you don’t have a need for gods anymore, you’ve killed all of them to fashion your weapons. ✿

✿ Surprising literally no one, I hate that Byleth survives this. I’d be fine if they maybe gave us some sort of reason (and also paid more attention to giving consequences for EdeIgard’s actions throughout the rest of the path) as to why this happens, but they don’t. They straight up just admit, through this plot point, that they were hoping you would love EdeIgard as much as they did while writing the game, and that this would make you really happy.

Honestly, there are just so many things about this route that have been so disappointing, and this is the cherry on top to me. ✿

✾ (Caitlin Glass as Kyoko Kirigir i voice): “Yeah I don’t get this either, pretty sure I died.” ✾

✿ You got that right ✿

❃ BABY BOYYYYY

Highlight of this route is getting to romance him, love this funny little guy. He is sweet, a good big brother, and like me, he gets really freaking excited about his favourite stories. Also, he has pretty eyes. ❃

[reggiecristal]

Reggie’s Report Card: Lohengrin, Metropolitan Opera, March 2, 2023

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Conductor: 4.2/5 Stars

I expected good things from Yannick going into last night, given what I’ve heard of him in symphonic music, and he largely met and satisfied the requirements of his role. His tempi were well judged, responsive to the action of the text and the inner life which the orchestra reflects, and many of the most musically and dramatically satisfying moments in the piece came at his baton. The horns, in particular, sounded wonderful—resplendent and full, never harsh or braying, and unified both as a section and with the ensemble at large. Winds were at times less satisfying, sometimes failing to spin the long lines of Elsa’s theme with sufficient legato, but the clarinets, in particular, deserve praise for their contribution to the drama’s color. As a string player, it is my duty to complain about something or another those sections could be doing, and so shall I here. The violins took more time to warm up than I’d have liked—their task in supplying that silvery, ethereal timbre the prelude asks for was only met towards the section’s end, and before then was watery and weak, rather than transparent, but full. Once at full strength, however, they were often a source of great beauty, giving the proud lines of the piece’s martial music a soaring arc, the intimacy of the Bridal Chamber Scene an honesty of sentiment, and the scheming of Ortrud and Telramund powerful dramatic tension through their exemplary articulation and rhythmic vigor. At times, however, I do wish they’d lean a bit into “messiness”; there’s a tendency, due to the section’s level of technical polish, to treat clean, faultless unity of sound as the norm, rather than as an expressive decision—a bit of fray in the upper reaches of the violins would give the public scenes a more lived-in, natural exuberance. The celli, of course, deserve recognition for their contributions to the night’s orchestral success, but I’d have liked to have felt the colors of the violas and basses more potently. They, of course, would never project over the rest of the sections, but the depth and warmth they provide to the middle and lower voicings in the strings was at times lacking. The same could be said for the lower voices of the chorus: they were at something like 140 strength, with a roughly 2:1 men to women ratio, but in voice the men’s chorus favored the tenorial voice too strongly. There is a certain machismo in Wagner’s writing of the men-at-arms, and with what’s written for them, he imparts a definite archetype of martial masculinity—the baritones and basses were needed to give that example firm grounding and, of course, a “manly” sound (bleh, I know). Overall, however, the orchestra came away as the most successful performers of the night, and Yannick, as I’m not wont to say often, fulfilled the demands of his position admirably.

Tamara Wilson, Elsa: 3/5 Stars

Elsa is my favorite character in this opera—seriously. I love Ortrud for her shadiness and general girlbossery, but Elsa, for many interpreters, is an enigma. Many sopranos find her bland, but a few see past the character’s initial coolness to see the incredibly rich inner life the girl harbors within her. Tamara Wilson came most into her own in the Bridal Chamber Scene, like her Lohengrin, but was generally of more secure voice. Like Christine Goerke, Wilson is the possessor of a significant instrument. For that reason, it’s a pity that the typical American nasality mars the warmth of her tone, robbing it of the variety of colors necessary to imbue Elsa with real life. I personally see the character as like a medieval mystic—particularly in the centrality of bodily experience and imagery of bridal union with Christ. When Elsa falls dead at the opera’s end, it is not for having lost a husband, but for having lost her only opportunity to be transfigured; union with Lohengrin is her opportunity to transcend the empty, lonely existence through which she wanders, lost in dreams of salvation. Elsa sings to Lohengrin that in him she must fade away, giving all that she is—this is a woman giving herself to union with her god, not just to a man. In Lohengrin, she senses the divine, but, tragically, the doubt Ortrud plants in her mind disturbs the absoluteness of her faith. Elsa, sensing her opportunity for salvation, wants it to be bared to her outright—she wants to know Lohengrin’s name, as he said she may not, so that she may speak it as sweetly as he does hers—to know him as he knows her. In this she fails the test of her faith—Ortrud and Telramund fail because they rely on their own craft, wit, and strength to achieve their goals, and Elsa falls in line with them when the trauma of her absolute solitude drives her to desperation. Even having just married her knight, she awaits his leaving with terror, beset by all the fear and uncertainty her faith had veiled and fortified her against. Lohengrin fails to comfort her as a woman, rather than as a wife, and, being denied human comfort, Elsa falls to her fears, demanding his name and, in doing so, failing the test of her faith. At the scene’s end, having realized the enormity of her loss, she echoes Peter at his denials of Jesus—when she cries “Allewiger, erbarm dich mein!” she has already passed on, the one purpose for which she lived having passed her by. As Elsa, Wilson imparted her humanity best—the limitations of her range of tonal colors stopped her from portraying the dreamy, otherworldly character Elsa has in the first act. Her legato, given her experience as a Verdian, did not satisfy, either, and so her separation from the declamation of the King and his men was not as clear as it should have been. At times, her vibrato also widened more than I’d have liked. As Elsa’s doubt reinvigorates her humanity, Wilson singing began to satisfy more, and when Elsa’s shame and grief follows her error, Wilson’s effort to imbue her lines with sentiment brought her voice into more natural alignment, forgoing the persistent nasality endemic to her vocalism for fleeting moments. Generally, Wilson’s inability to impart Elsa’s transformation through her music hampered the otherwise audible efforts to do the drama justice: the light embellishments in Elsa’s dreamy fantasy lacked spontaneity, the legato smoothness, and a general lack of rhythmic flexibility denied her portrayal the range of expression required to do the character’s inner transformation justice.

Piotr Beczała, Lohengrin: 3/5 Stars

Oh, Piotr. This singer frustrates me because, aside from seeming like a nice guy, he has a gorgeous instrument and some idea how implement it musically and dramatically, but the technique with which he wields it fails him. It generally seems that youth carried his voice intact into his forties, but now that he’s in his fifties, the insecurity in his top, with the way he’s so often scooped up to higher tones, has come to claim him. What’s more, his mastery of his breath is incomplete, so a wobble mars his middle voice and above, and sustaining the long lines asked of him in this role with heroic voice proved a struggle. Piotr was at his best between the extremes of his character: Lohengrin combines dramatic proclamations bursting above the upper passagio with scenes of great intimacy, sensitivity, and art, requiring an able mezza voce to impart fully. The tenor’s declamation lacked thrust, insufficiently rhythmically rigorous to give Lohengrin’s expression a flexible, potent authority, and his mezza voce suffered from problems of registration—Piotr’s head voice is not sufficiently integrated to deliver “Das süsse Lied verhallt”. That very scene perhaps encapsulated all aspects of this tenor’s incomplete portrayal. His opening remarks to Elsa were imparted warmly, but without the sensual mystery which intrigues and hints at the man beneath the mask of anonymity. This scene is remarkable for how greatly it develops Lohengrin’s character in so little time. The scene is effectively a confrontation, the fruit of the seeds of doubt Ortrud planted in Elsa’s mind blooming and forcing Lohengrin to both soothe and please his bride as her anxieties seize her. Though a warrior, Lohengrin appreciates the sensual beauty of nature and speaks of love as his true calling. Piotr failed to rise to the poetry of the character, his insecurity in his high notes marring the character’s flights into pure sentiment. He was most at home in Lohengrin’s attempts to calm Elsa, but truly found his footing in Lohengrin’s frustration with his failure and resignation to the demands of his duty; there, Piotr’s warm, rich tone in his middle voice took a plaintive tone, darker and softer as his character came to terms with the ruination of his joy. The extremities of expression written into this scene stretched Piotr more or less to the limits of his ability, but also showed glimmers of beauty here and there. Lohengrin’s procession of aria’s in the opera’s end strained him similarly, but did not show him to any great advantage, though “In fernem Land” was home to the few moments in which his mezza voce took a more promising timbre. All in all, Piotr was a sympathetic presence let down by his technical insecurities.

Christine Goerke, Ortrud: 2.8/5 Stars

In an interview played back during one of the intervals, Goerke describes her approach to Ortrud as believing in earnest that she is the wronged party—denied her birthright, as the princess of a conquered people, and denied the dignity of practicing her culture, such as her religious beliefs, openly. It’s a smart approach, as, with most well-written antagonists, there is an element of truth to their claims. In these things, I respect Goerke’s acumen, and in her portrayal there was certainly an impression of dramatic instinct and attention to the text. Vocally, however, her technique did not allow her the freedom to express her ideas fully. Her instrument is undeniably the real deal: full and rich in the middle, but short on top as many dramatic sopranos find themselves. Sure enough, Goerke seemed most at home, vocally, in the middle of her voice, which she could emit with dramatic thrust, and her top had the wiry, metallic tinge I expect of her. She’s stated her admiration for Astrid Varnay in the past, and it shows in her voice. Unfortunately, Varnay’s technique was the weakest part of her artistry, and like Varnay, Goerke commands a very generous vocal endowment without either full control or freedom. The lower passagio was rather veiled, sour even, brightened by the standard American nasality, but lacked the power of her chest voice, which came full of color and bite when she opened into it. Her voice, really, is in parts: the colorful, punchy chesct voice, the veiled, unpleasant lower-middle, the wide, warm middle range, then the thinner, strained acuti. Goerke, however, is of will in proportion to her vocal endowment, and gave great effort to meet the extreme demands of Ortrud’s music, but this effort took focus from her dramatic portrayal, which was, as Goerke said, of a woman seeking justified vengeance, but her Ortrud lacked the bite, the sarcasm, bitterness, and malicious craftiness others have brought to the role. By the end, Goerke seemed more intent on making it through “Fahr heim!” than in crowning a complete, persuasive interpretation.

Thomas Hall, Telramund: 3.9/5 Stars

Thomas Hall, I believe, made his Met debut last night, and as a replacement for Evgeny Nikitin—a known element at the Met who, I’m glad to say, was not missed last night. Unlike Nikitin, Hall actually saw fit to sing all of his music, and with as thankless a role as Telramund, he actually acquitted himself well. His instrument is appropriate for the role, if not glamorous: well enough suited to the low tessitura that he was able to resonate well in the lower notes, but secure enough up top to make something of the dramatic outbursts written for his character. His characterization was similarly adequate. Hall’s Telramund remained a noble throughout his trials, portraying a man led astray by his thirst for power. His Telramund, however, is always earnest—he does not represent his beliefs falsely, truly believing, at first, Elsa guilty of murder, Lohengrin of witchcraft, and himself justified in attempting the latter’s life. Hall did an admirable job in filling a role which is often poorly cast with a thoughtful, capable presence. His voice might have not been the most beautiful or unique in timbre, but he fulfilled the assignment, which, on short notice, is all that can be asked for, particularly in this role.

Günther Groissböck, King Heinrich: 2/5 Stars

I distinctly remember Groissböck’s performance as Filippo II in Don Carlo last Fall on account of his vocal estate—namely, that it was far lesser than I’d ever heard it, dry, strained, and emitted without a shadow of the ease with which I’d previously heard him sing. Lamentably, on account of what I know of his dramatic talents, his voice was in a similar state last night. As Heinrich, Groissböck generally failed to imbue his character with the dignity and authority asked of him. Heinrich can easily become a tedious presence—he’s often the voice of Wagner’s politics, notably of ethnic and national identity, as well as gender, in the opera, and as such is easy to portray as a rambling, moralizing bore. While Groissböck did not fall into that trap, he nonetheless failed to produce an offering of any other kind of interest, often limited to just playing it straight by the lack of color and vigor in his voice. Often, what was of most interest in listening to him was knowing a high note’s approach and wondering if he’d make it—he largely did, though he flagged in pitch on some, fell into straight, white tone on others, and generally failed to impart the role with the quiet, simple dignity which would make Heinrich not only a driver if the night’s action, but a sympathetic one with presence and gravitas.

Also, just as a note, I found it funny that the Met omitted Lohengrin’s line “Nach Deutschland sollen noch in fernsten Tagen des Ostens Horden siegreich nimmer ziehn!”

[panvani]

Also this is probably a controversial opinion but Uhhhhmmmm Mion and Shion’s relationship would have been more interesting if there was actual beef between them by the time of Watanagashi and not just them pretending for laffs?

[theladyofbloodshed]

This is exactly why I cannot see Tamlin as “abusive, period” like Janet wants us to. It’s just bad writing, plain and simple, but when you have a teenager who refuses to understand danger or repercussions for their actions, the choices should not be a) let her do what she wants and try to always be there to save her like some deus ex machina, b) let her do what she wants and be called heartless when you don’t rush to save her from herself, or c) refuse to let her do what she wants and be called abusive. Those were literally the options Janet, the narrative, and the fandom gave him and it’s not right or realistic or canon. It took me such a long time to understand why the way this series treated Tamlin and Nesta and even Eris bothered me so much, because I never let fiction upset me like this, and then this little interview comes out and it clicks: because as someone who has trauma, who was Nesta, and who has been backed into a corner with no choices that make me look good one too many times, this series and its portrayal of victimhood, abuse, and trauma is offensive. Like deeply offensive, to the point where I honestly feel like her series should be taught in school on exactly the wrong way to write/process trauma and unreliable narration/author bias. Deeply offensive like I feel like she’s using people who have gone through something similar as padding for her lukewarm, mediocre writing. I feel the same way with this as I do when people misrepresent my disability or my race in fiction, that’s how bad this is. Just because you say someone is abusive or you say someone is perfect doesn’t make it so, especially if you write them otherwise.

❤️❤️❤️ I feel you anon. When Tamlin locks Feyre up out of paranoid fear, it's abuse - not because he's terrified or cares so deeply about her safety that it's driving him to paranoia. When Rhys sends her into the Weaver, it's a test to show of her girlbossery. When Rhys puts a shield around her so nobody can go near, it's his mating instincts and she didn't mind. When he keeps information about her health from her, it's because he was worried and it was his instincts as her mate and Feyre forgave him. There's this constant push against the line of what is acceptable, with any wrong doing by Rhys explained away because he cannot possibly make a mistake. Or that because he's her mate that's how he is. The abuse is then all justified, because it's not abuse if somebody doesn't mind! They're just mate instincts. Like how Nesta wanted Cassian to have rough sex with her after her attack by the kelpie! (Like I'm sure she'd loved to have drank herself into oblivious after that too).

The kick in the teeth was the hike being inspired on one she took with her husband. Did he make you carry the heaviest bag? Did he ignore you for days? Did you have to curl up every night outside in pain? Did he drive you to the point of exhaustion? Did you faint from exertion?

[mattelektras]

What have you enjoyed about house of the dragon? How do you feel about the female characters in particular?

for starters i love lying and cheating and scheming and that’s all anyone in this show does. and i love not knowing shit about the source material. i stopped watching game of thrones at season 3 so i have absolutely no vested interest. ppl complain about changes from the books or whatever but i can just say weeeeee dragons and go to sleep peacefully at night. love a show with creatures built for maximum biting

the costuming is amazing, the cast r hot so even when they’re bad people it’s still kind of sexy. like criston is every man i’ve ever turned down i hate him but the dude that’s playing him looks like That so respect to rhaenyra for getting to bang him at least once before he went full incel. there’s milfery, there’s girlbossery, the men are all a little stupid or unhinged and i just think those 3 components are what makes a good show

as for the women. they’re all kind of bad people. i’m obsessed with every single one of them. i’ve said multiple times on here that i think the best thing you can do for women in media is write them as fucked up and messy as you would a man. like be unforgiving with it n let them do bad shit. and they’re all the epitome of no i will not be made better through my trauma i will get worse and then i will die probably. the whole plot is based on women and the relationship between two women who seem to have been lowkey in love and are now bitter exes?????? and are absolutely feral about it?????? superb. excellent. obsessed with it

[marshmeowpenguin]

ToH's reaction to Martin's Scorsese timeless masterpiece Goncharov(1973)

Hooty (in tears): A-AND THEN HE SAID "IF YOU REALLY WE'RE IN LOVE YOU WOULDN'T HAVE MISSED", AND THAT WAS THE LAST TIME THEY SPOKE TO EACHOTHER AAGAHAGAT_T

Lilly: oh, my little dear Hootsifer, it's just a movie, it's gonna be fine-

(they hug and HootHoot cries untill Lilith gets sunken in his waterfall of tears, embracing a forever warm hug between them)

Gus: (with awing sparks in his eyes) aww man, i will never look at clocks the same way ever again>o<

Hunter: man, Mario really is just like me fr-

Willow (friendly pokes him): oh yes, the unbreakable duo, even harder to break than boat in a Katya scene - Hunter and his little sad boys:3

Hunter (drowning in blushes): DON'T CALL ME A SADBOYWAWAWAA-

Willow: okayyy, scrunklo^^

Hunter: (dies inside)

(Luz and Amity laugh on the couchfaifsif)

(while Willow continues to magnificently tease Hunter, Eda discusses the true sigma women that is Katya with King-)

Eda: ohhh King, that movie broke me-

(drinks apple juice)

Katya's girlbossery reminded me so much of my younger years, when i didn't have the owl house, i wasn't married to Raine, i didn't have you... I was so lost.

I feel like that merciful day i found you laying defenseless on the island... That was the day *you* found me-

King: oh, Eda, it's fine, now you've got us, you don't have to belong to any coven no more, you're not bound by time like Katya!

(inhales):

You may have been a lost girlboss, but now you're a found slaya-mommy-versacci-charlixcx-gwurl, and i doubt that's ever gonna change

Raine: guys, that movie was so beautiful, let's cry together-

(King and Eda nod, crawl up into a pile of found-family- misery and suffer *together*)

Luz: that movie was so beautiful amor:> let's write flufft Gonchandrey fics together, where Ice Pick Joe survives, Goncharov and Andrey runaway from the seemingly never-ending cycle of violence, to live a peaceful domestic life on the vain of mother's nature Bieszczady<3

Amity: (with a face swelled with a redder shade than Sofia's cocktail dress in *that one scene*) YEAH OF COURSE, CRUMBLE CARROT

Luz:AHAAGAHAH CRUMBLECARROT, CRICKETSSS, I LOVE YOU SWEET POTATO:D

Amity: I love you too, Shwibblegum-

Luz: okay, that was weird-

Amity: yeah, it was-

Luz: It's fine, Broccolisprinkle

Amity: ohhhh no, Leafygwabble, reminding me of the hair was too much

Luz: Oh? I'm sorry, my lovely honey-cornflake-buttet-morning-toast in Rome7w7

(the name banter didn't stop, until they both fall asleep in eachother arms<3)

[grandhotelabyss]

For our audiovisual Tuesday, another movie trailer. I caught up to Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor (2020) this weekend. Resentful as I may be of those who follow daddy to renown, I concede it’s an effectively disturbing film, well worth watching.

It may be too languid in pace, it may be too reliant on shakiness of frame and obliquity of angle in a way that feels gimmicky, but the central surreal nightmare imagery of Vos’s face as melting Melpomene mask is beautifully unsettling, and premonitory of our mask dystopia’s deeper meaning: the dissolution of the real face. 

Politically, on film as on social media, some of the most interesting right-wing discourse seems to be coming out of Canada. With his publicly-funded inaugural foray into body horror, Cronenberg père is said to have contributed his own unique spin on Canada’s paradoxical status as post-national nation. No expert on Canada—though I’ve been to the place twice, for whatever it’s worth—I quote my undergraduate Film Analysis professor, Adam Lowenstein, from his Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film (2005):

Cronenberg’s career in commercial features began in 1975 with Shivers (also known as They Came from Within and The Parasite Murders), a horror film greeted by the prominent Canadian cultural critic Robert Fulford (writing as “Marshall Delaney”) with the infamous proclamation, “If using public money to produce films like [Shivers] is the only way English Canada can have a film industry, then perhaps English Canada should not have a film industry.” It is important to recall that Fulford not only damns Shivers as “an atrocity” and “the most repulsive movie I’ve ever seen,” but grounds this judgment in an attack on the film’s irresponsible governmental co-sponsor, the Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC)—in fact, the title of Fulford’s review is “You Should Know How Bad This Film Is. After All, You Paid For It.” In this sense, Shivers repulses Fulford not just because it is a horror film, but because it delivers an unacceptable image of Canadian national cinema.

[...]

In Canada, the utopian promise of an abstracted, indivisible national body resists being imagined in its comforting wholeness; instead, the national body is imagined as fragmented, fragile, even colonized. Cronenberg’s films give shape to this phantasmatic, fractured national body through stunning images of the unstable, metamorphosing bodies of individuals. The “body,” for Cronenberg, is neither entirely private nor entirely public; it is both an individual body and a national body, where the competing claims between these two bodies that are always actually one manifest themselves in shockingly literal forms. As Cronenberg explains, “I tend to view chaos as a private rather than social endeavor. That’s undoubtedly because I was born and raised in Canada. The chaos that most appeals to me is very private and very personal. You have these little pockets of private and personal chaos brewing in the interstices in the structure of society, which likes to stress its order and control, and that’s the collision you see.”

If the post-national was still an exciting ethical prospect to leftist professors in the early 21st century, however, Cronenberg fils understands at this late date in history that a post- and non-national nation may not be an inclusive counter-utopia but merely a dictatorial, technocratic landing strip for the global corporations. So Possessor represents its dystopic Toronto, in the cinematic style of Christopher Nolan, who presents his film worlds the same way, all dizzyingly inhuman glass-and-steel cityscapes under an uneasy hum and buzz, as if an alien empire had conquered the earth, and perhaps it has. 

Possessor’s bold and violent anti-feminism or perhaps feminist accelerationism—in any case, it represents #girlbossery as the absolute infanticidal end of love and nature—fortifies the anti-corporate critique: the corporate kills the human by aspiring to replace genetic reproduction with mimetic and memetic replication. You can’t have a nation without nativity; for the post-national, the archetype of mother-and-child must not be allowed to stand. But we are concerned with father and son in the Cronenbergs’ case, and for the son as for the father, the fragmented body-mind stands for the non-nation in its flailing, grotesque pieces. This publicly-funded film implicitly sides, however, with the body funding it, the state, if only because its rival is so awful, the economic agent in parasitic possession of the mother country. Oedipus after all, then: long live the old flesh!

[tibby]

the thing about nancy wheeler is that she could still so easily be a great character because there’s so much potentials. the fact she’s impulsive and selfish and insensitive and so focused on her own goals that she neglects the needs and wants of others makes her fun and interesting!!! she’s not a stereotypical nice girl next door and that’s what i like about her!!! but the problem is that we aren’t meant to see the thing she does as impulsive and selfish and insensitive: we’re meant to see them as empowering moments of feminism. like current nancy is such a product of #girlbossery because everything she does is portrayed as being a Girl Power move because the writers don’t actually think women have any nuance and so they believe a well written female character is one that can ~do no wrong~ and also shoot a gun. people loved nancy in s1 because she made mistakes and didn’t always say or do the right thing but she still had a good heart and still just wanted justice for the people she loved. s3 nancy is a hollow shell of that: she makes mistakes except we’re not meant to see them as mistakes, she doesn’t always say or do the right things but we’re meant to think she’s always in the right, she wants justice for HER beliefs and doesn’t care about what it will cost the people she loves. and she’s obviously not the mot irredeemable character in the show and i certainly don’t hate her but it’s very clear the writers lost interest in her once she got together with their self insert and now she exists solely so the show can pretend it’s feminist. she’s hollow and empty and boring and quite frankly doesn’t contribute anything to the plot anymore. taking issue with her character isn’t being a misogynist lmao it’s being critical of bad writing. and if you think a character who doesn’t seem to have a personality outside of shooting a gun is the peak of female representation in television then idk what to tell you.