#it is the end of the world and i am sad

[on-a-lucky-tide]

...fellas, a middle-aged middle manager just uhm'd and ahh'd about IDing me for paracetamol. Paracetamol. The legal age for paracetamol in the UK is fuckin' sixteen. He apologised after I asked whether he was having a giggle, because. Seriously.

A few days off school and my youth miraculously returns. I'm like Benjamin fuckin Button.

[chiricat]

i love beat :(

[heatherchasesyou]

Friendly reminder 😍

[zhongrin]

between genshin, hsr, and zzz, i have to say i have a lot of enjoyment and high hopes for zzz.

the team working for zzz are just amazing in my eyes (which sounds crazy especially since they're all hyv games). for one, i think so far they follow through with almost everything that they've promised. making the game having a 'low floor, high ceiling' and therefore isn't just a pure powercreep gacha game (looking at you hsr). all the gameplay promises with timelines they would say in dev notes (like getting players to be able to use different characters in the map by 1.4). literally giving us options to enjoy the contents through two different modes because half of the player base dislikes a certain mode of the game (therefore doubling the effort of the dev team to work on, which is still so crazy to me that they're actually taking this approach)...

of course all of them has their pros and cons in my eyes. for example, i am very much not a fan of zzz's blatant gooner bait, among other peeves. but something about having the developers listening closely to our feedback since the very start of the game and visibly making changes to the actual game itself accordingly is just so nice.

anyway. i'm going to go view more rooms. have a good weekend, all of you!

[captn3]

until next time.... stay fresh [plain text: until next time.... stay fresh]

[binah-beloved]

always remember that you have worth. you have worth by being alive, by being you. wonderful, quiet worth, even if it is sometimes unseen.

if you forget, Binah will remind you with all the gentle tenderness she has. just for you.

[deoidesign]

.

[andishouldfeel]

It's been years since the end of the world...

Humans finally managed to end it all and Nolan Holloway exists purely out of his parent's spite and years of foreseeing.

But now, winter is gone, so is his mother, and now he is alone.

Turns out that plant's aren't great conversationalists and he can't bring himself to kill his chicks anymore..., but yet there are more and more missing everyday.

And there is howling every night.

Fuck, doesn't do wolves know how hard it is to grow nice coffee?

---

Or the one where Nolan just wants a good night sleep and also he feels kinda lonely 'cause there ain't a single soul around but these fucking wolves just want to party every single night (aka happy 'cause they found easy access to food.... sorry Nolan's chicks :'( )

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 17 thoughts

whispers softly. man... i need a minute. shaky breath.

okay. i'll start at the top like always. AUGH THE TEARS. fighting them. okay. need to put on some sad songs to accompany the 45-60 minutes it will take to type all this up

so, i sat down ready to see where this was gonna go. in fact i noted that i was incredibly locked in. which i continue to believe that i was.

we see a submarine, which is a type of craft i just do not trust. even before all that went down last summer. too scary for me. but they see something giving off a signal. and despite being a cartographer ship, they have missiles. and they're gonna go towards the thing they see on the radar, because they were told to. which seems wrong.

but then all their power is knocked out!!! and they are ordered to surface. but how will they do that under a ton of ice?!?!

title sequence. i was expecting different than the usual "the truth is out there" but i guess it's just business as usual over here despite it all

back to where we left off: scully's on the phone with real mulder and fake mulder is in her room. she hangs up on real mulder and tells the fake one that it was a wrong number, which had to be confusing to real mulder.

she tells him to put his hands on the wall, and he makes some quip about being shot before and not caring for it, and for a minute i'm like oh shit, that's a very mulder thing to do- what if he is, in fact, real mulder, and it's fake mulder on the phone? but that theory didn't make much sense anyway and also it was quickly put to rest by the fact that he started beating the hell out of scully.

so time skip: real mulder shows up to the scene with his "sister", who says the alien hit man is gonna call and ask to make a trade: scully for his "sister", and yeah, quotes are verbatim, i was still not buying this whole family relation thing

but his "sister" says that she knows how to kill the alien hit man: you have to hit the base of his skull. maybe. she isn't 100% certain. and also you can't miss because their blood is toxic. which we actually did already know!

and he's getting suspicious. why won't she explain exactly where she has been all this time? and what's this deal with her "father"? he's yelling at her at this point and i get it because it's not adding up to me either

she says that the aliens have been trying to establish a colony on earth since the 1940's, and:

"it's their belief that the stewardship of the planet is being forsaken" <- okay yeah. can't argue there. some of us are trying, aliens. i am not one of the mega companies pouring nuclear waste into the ocean. but maybe y'all could do a better job. and she continues:

"and that by default they'll someday become the natural heirs" <- well hey. you were sounding reasonable but now you are not. have we considered that maybe the people already here could give it another go free from the shackles of the 1%? you're acting like it's an estate sale and buddy we're still living in the house. you lost me there, and i was willing to hear you out.

she says that all of the clones worked at abortion clinics to gain access to fetal tissue, so they could combine human and alien dna. which i imagine had to be a good pr boost for abortion clinics (heavy on the /s here)

and the killer is after them because their experiments with mixing alien with human dna were not sanctioned, so they're "diluting the race", which i guess seems like the thing they would be worried about.

he doesn't seem to fully buy it, because he says "that's a good story, but i've heard a lot of good stories lately" which is true!!! our old worstie ambrose chapel was a liar, remember? or at least someone impersonating him was doing some lying!

"i'm your sister, fox, you have to trust me" UM PROOF?? have we done a dna test??? you can't just show up like that!!!!!

skinner knocks at the door... but is it really him? or the shapeshifting hit man????

"why are the lights out?" skinner asks quite reasonably "orders from my ophthalmologist" he says, lying very easily for a man for loves the Truth. but it did make me giggle.

sister approves that it is really skinner! only after they set a trap to get him just in case it wasn't. again i ask why she can tell if it's the man or not but okay. we move past that.

he makes introductions: "this is my sister, samantha mulder" to which skinner replies "WHAT"

and yeah. i would react the same!!!!

(also weird to hear mulder used as a last name. to me that's just the guy. you know?)

NOOO his phone rings. it's scully calling from a payphone. "he says he's gonna kill me if you don't give him what he wants" oh. okay.

there's no time to explain to skinner what is going on so!!! just please trust me, he says!!! and he does. another point for skinner, who is like a strange uncle or cousin to me.

they go to do a hostage trade: "samantha" for scully. and is this the same bridge where they did the hostage deal for mulder at the end of s1? do they only have one bridge for hostage deals. might be a bit much to have 2 in one city.

skinner has a sniper in the bush, ready to shoot at the base of the alien hit man's neck during the exchange. okay save the day mister sniper please.

AUGH HOSTAGE EXCHANGE. it's so tense. i paused here to write how tense it was, which did not ease it in the slightest. the hit man has a gun to scully's head and it's recalling mulder's early trauma with hostage exchanges. they're waiting for the right moment to shoot....

scully's in the car!!!! but samantha tried to use the needle that kills the aliens and she MISSED and the sniper shot was messed up and then there's firing and is it the sniper? or is it the hit man? who is hit? it is very unclear!!!!! both hit man and samantha tumble into the cold water beneath.

he's still at the bridge, staring down into the place he last saw her. scully comes out to join him, and he says "you should be at the hospital" (she has gauze on her head and says she was just discharged)

he's staring into the water, trying to come up with different ways she might have lived

"why didn't you tell me on the phone that it was her?" "i couldn't tell you 'cause you'd never let me go through with it" AUGHHHHHHHHH.

(and knowing how the episode ends. i am glad this happened. but in the moment. this was a gut punch)

she asks how he knew it was really his sister (valid question, one i fear he should have asked as well) and he snaps about how could she ask that, and she's like, dude someone with your face and body just kidnapped me???? so the whole who is who thing is a little murky??

(she actually calmly explains this. without any judgement. judgement added was my own. but you can imagine that after this experience, hearing "he's an alien" might still be a bit of a hard sell)

okay, mr. mulder is on the scene. he has to tell his dad he lost his sister. I lost her, he says. emphasis on the I. as if it was an action that he took. fuck.

and his dad hits back with a "you LET this man take your sister?" and son mulder is CRYING. what the HELL this is too much. the man has suffered too much. i'm given flashbacks to the last time we saw him cry when he thought he lost scully forever.

PAUSE. i just know the actors were eating up these lines. ohhh i know they were sinking their teeth into them the way that good dialogue allows you to. when you tap into the soul of a character, a whole person who isn't even real, because the writing cuts to their heart. yeah yeah yeah i knowww they were rolling with it and it felt Good

back to the scene. his father is giving him a guilt trip about how his mother is going to deal with "losing her again". and he's apologizing and crying when his dad pulls out an envelope

"your sis- SAMANTHA" told me to give you this.

the implication that he lost the claim to be considered related to her????? is sooooo entirely messed up?? that is the kind of thing that ruins a person???? holy fuck??

he's sobbing while opening the letter, and it gives an address where she says they can meet up if they are separated... so maybe she's really still out there??? hope has been installed back into "she's not actually dead" camp

he rolls up to the address and parks in an area labeled "NO PARKING". grief will do this to a guy.

but just as he arrives, scully calls and says they found her in the river. NOOOOOO THE NEWLY RETURNED HOPE.... "whatever you're feeling, you can't blame yourself" she says, knowing that he must be putting his whole soul into Blaming Himself

but... her body is melting??? is it an alien body??? is the melting gonna turn into toxic gas?? scully don't stare at it you're gonna get all thick blood!!!!

back to mulder. this man is experiencing all stages of grief at once on the steps of a women's clinic. he goes in and pulls out a gun and boy i sure hope there are no women inside.

someone is in there. it's... someone with samantha's face??? saying that she knows "she's dead"????? "it was all a lie", he mumbles as he realizes he was played

YESSSS I KNEW IT. i knew that was NOT his sister. i knew it was too weird and coincidental to be true. this makes the grief of losing her dissipate entirely so i do consider this a win beyond me just being able to guess where the plot was going

and i'm thinking, how the hell is he gonna explain all this to scully? like, to mom and dad, you will have to play along with the whole "she died" thing, and while that is by no means easy, it is a concrete thing you can say and do. but scully??? how is she going to react to "someone pretended to be my sister and then got killed"

(i suppose mulder could tell his parents that DNA testing on "samantha's body" proved no relation, but that would still be complicated to walk through, because there was no corpse to prove that, you know, because she dissolved- maybe scully could make some paperwork to make it look real?)

back to the matter at hand: these aliens with the same face are saying that he must save their original source. and he says "i am not your savior" which- tea. set your boundaries king. in fact, had i been there, i would have done the opposite of protecting, and instead start blasting these aliens that pretended to be my long-dead sister.

but they have leverage... they know where she really is...... so he doesn't walk out....

hit man arrives!!!!! armed with his needle!!! and mulder goes to confront him, but he knocks him on his back, and sets a fire- mulder's weakness!!!!!!

scully is making a report. she cannot substantiate his claims of aliens. and she's got a cut on her forehead from hit man taking her. my poor queen :(

back to the fbi agent that died in the last episode. he has nasty cuts allllll over. like he was carved with designs. sorry for that imagery but i saw it and must describe it.

she thinks she can solve this case with the power of SCIENCE!!! what killed this guy, exactly? maybe if we can figure it out, the other pieces could fall into place

so the virus that causes the blood to thicken is inhibited by the cold.... which explains our earlier scene of mulder in the ice tub and her yelling about him needing to be cold...

DEEP THROAT 2.0 ARRIVAL? (sidenote does this dude have a real name? like while this was airing what were y'all calling him...)

he tells mulder that the last alien- the one who was sent to kill the clones, our shapeshifting hit man- has been tracked to alaska, and that you have to pick your battles to win the war. telling him not to go to alaska. can you imagine.

scully goes to his place and knocks but no one answers. and his newspapers on at the doorstep. so she busts out her keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey..... heart still melts that she has this.......

and HE KNEW SHE WAS GONNA INVESTIGATE???? he sent her an email..... and he's saying how he wouldn't let her risk her life... nooo don't you weaponize the earlier drawing a line thing, that was about chasing a very vague alien lead to an agent's death, not about investigating ur sister...........

she bursts into skinner's office. and then apologizes for doing so.

(i love this so much. such a tiny detail that tells us a lot about her character. that Need to be good and do the right thing and please those whom she looks up to. ohhhhh)

he asks to speak to her off the record, and it seems at first promising... but he won't help her get in contact with mulder. EVEN after she says please!!!! she is gonna cry!!!!!

skinner's bitching about mulder's actions being a violation of his oath, and she's saying that he saved her life, and he comes back with a "if he wanted or expected you to do the same, he would have told you where he was going"

skinner being a jerk... at this point i began to revoke the point i earlier gave him...

he looks deeply troubled though, and i was like, ohhh, mulder must have promised him to not tell her where he was going... i see into your plans, mulder (<- this is not what happened)

back at mulder's place. scully's searching for clues. there's an x taped to the window again, which must be something he just does sometimes. and there's ominous music.

she falls asleep on his couch, and i swear i actually felt my heart melting at this moment. the way she was curled up. subconsciously trying to hold onto a piece of him. only finding rest where he did. i can't even wax poetic about this because i can't put the words into the right shape. but it is gonna destroy me.

someone is knocking... but who?

DEEP THROAT 2.0?!?!

he tries to act like he just went to the wrong room, but she isn't buying it, following him and demanding to know where he really is

SKINNER IS HERE? GETTING ON THE ELEVATOR????? SKINNER ATTACKING D.T. 2.0??? the girls are fighting!!!!!!!

he makes deep throat 2.0 tell him where mulder is, even when skinner is pinned up and deep throat 2.0 is the one holding the gun, and he said "i've killed men for less", but skinner says that if you kill him, he'll be killing 2 men....... this gag seems to have worked

SKINNER is AT THE DOOR to mulder's place where scully is staying. and he is bleeding from MANY wounds. tells scully where he is without elaborating on the blood pouring from all over. okay skinner. you're real for that. you get that point i was tossing around back. and a bonus one, in fact.

so mulder's out on the ice, and usually him wearing a big jacket would spark joy in my heart. and i won't lie, it does a little. but there is also a LOT of tension going on, so it's very brief. feels wrong to rejoice in the simple pleasures of man in big funny coat when he just had to lose his sister and then learn it wasn't even her.

but he sees some sort of tower and he's going in!!! and a dead guy is spotted.

pause. at this point i am sitting here thinking, man, these episodes are good, definitely among the best i've seen so far. who let these men cook? can we get them back in the kitchen with more regularity?

someone is leading him deeper and deeper into the maze of this... station? sub? and i fear he is being led into a trap. but he finds a very very scared man and having a big man point a gun at him doesn't help with the fear, i'm sure. but is it really a sniveling coward... or the hit man???

and JUST as he almost had me fooled and wondering if mulder was gonna really shoot an innocent guy, BAM! hit man reveal.

mulder keeps asking where his sister is, even while being pummeled by this alien with super strength. and he says "she's alive. can you die now?"

mulder shoots at the alien and he misses the back of his neck, so his toxic blood is filling up the space, and things are not looking good at all. and the alien takes him out and drops him on the ice!!!!!

he's going to break the ice and let him freeze or hit him with the sub as it goes down, both very bad endings........

CUTSCENE TO WHERE WE BEGAN!!!!

scully is bursting in, telling this doctor that he has a virus that can only be slowed by keeping him cold, and he isn't buying it, but just as he tries to get her kicked out of the room, his heart stops, so she intervenes.

and she's calling all the shots- get 100 grams of this and that and a drip of this- and this doctor has had his shift hijacked by a better doctor. he implies that mulder might not make it, and she refuses to hear this out.

and she's.... gently stroking his hair... while this is going down........

and sitting by his bed while he's getting better...

(so are the counts for who has been in a coma now tied? justice is served)

and now she's doing the case conclusion:

"several aspects of this case remain unexplained, suggesting the possibility of paranormal phenomena" <- OHHH??? is this what makes scully a believer? are we gonna see some character changes?

"but i am convinced that to accept such conclusions is to abandon all hope of understanding the scientific events behind them" okay!!! we are getting a deeper look into her philosophy here. yes yes yes give me more. and more i was given:

"many of the things i have seen have challenged my faith and my belief in an ordered universe, but this uncertainty has only strengthened my need to know, to understand, to apply reason, to those things which seem to defy it"

and i love it. i love it so much. seeing how she understands the world, why she knows that there has to be an order to it all, and if it seems there isn't, it's just because she hasn't figured it out yet... and science did allow him to get better... the need to fight a good fight in the way she knows how... yeah... that's lovely...

and she's CRYING at his bedside and holding his arm when he finally opens his eyes. her smile. her gentle "hey". it's so innocent, seeing that he is okay, that he made it through the worst part of getting better.

"thanks for ditching me" aughhhhghhhhh.......

he says he didn't find what he was looking for, but he did find the faith to keep looking. ohhhhh. ohhhhhhh...

the way his faith was gone at the start of season 2, but now it's back, there's something worth fighting for, his sister is out there, there is a world worth figuring out..........

man.

at this point my friend was sending me texts and i was like queen i need a minute. i need a minute. to put these things in order. and honestly i STILL do!

it was an absolutely amazing duo of episodes. i truly loved the writing, seeing them pushed to the brink with each other and with themselves. seeing skinner come into fruition. seeing what motivates them both and how they see the world and how it is entirely different but still driven by hope and faith and a need to learn the truth. and the tenderness of it all. of her sleeping on his couch in his absence, thinking maybe he'll be home soon. of running her fingers through his hair while he was being revived. the fury of being blamed for the loss of his sister, the fury with which she screamed at deep throat 2.0 to tell him where he went off to, the fury of mulder realizing he had been lied to and that his sister had never come back at all. but there still being hope despite it all. because there are things worth searching for. and they can do it together.

man. it was a very good episode but your girl is gonna go watch a silly video because it definitely hit me right in the Feelings!!

[silkjade]

i haven’t been here much recently, and i’m sorry i’ve only been negative on the off chance i’ve been online, but let me just say one last piece before the end of this month, so that maybe the next might be better….

[pikachu-deluxe]

hey, image of my beasts coming up sometime tonight in like a few hours, if not check back tomorrow in my art blog, it should be there by then

[transmechanicus]

I’m allowed one (1) vent of the colossal amounts of pressure my body and mind are under per month and i usually do my best to bury it in the early hours of the morning, so now that i’ve provided this valuable and important context:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[seokmatthewz]

PARK HANBIN & SEOK MATTHEW ✧ JELLY POP

[burinazar]

Alright someone actually said they couldn’t find my takes and wanted to know and unfortunately I do love to Yap so here’s a post about my Wicked feelings. It’s now been a very long time since I directly engaged with either piece of media (the book or its musical), like, almost a decade in the case of the musical, but I’ll try to read the book again soon. As such, various parts of this may be Totally Wrong about specifics of narrative, but also…hopefully they aren’t. 

I have not seen the movie. If it diverges from the musical then I don't know about it. Consider this to be about the book and musical.

If anyone’s very emotional attached to the musical narrative, you may find this post overly negative and want to give it a skip. You have been warned. Also, obviously, spoilers for various versions follow.

 It feels very central to the point of the book for me and central to the reasons Elphie is a tragic, heroic, and emotionally resonant character that she a) essentially failed at everything she tried and achieved only incremental progress for her causes, b) died, and c) died without anyone else ever really knowing her story. This is a story that asks us “is this a life worth living, a life that you can find heroism and admirable traits in? Is it worth having tried to do the right thing the entire time if it isolates you from society and means you must live a life like this and nobody ever even KNOWS all you strived for and in the end you fail?” 

And to me the point is, yeah, it still was, and that’s why it hits so fucking hard. Although I don’t really recall how point A pans out in the musical, B and C are fundamentally undercut by, well, obviously by her not dying, but also (and maybe even more importantly?), by having Fiyero alive and Glinda knowing her story. 

The book also has this looming and relentless sense of the march and grind and brutality of colonialism, genocide, and the like (this is why it feels so important that even though she failed and died she still tried, she still fucking tried – because basically everyone in real life who meaningfully and directly opposes colonialism and totalitarian regimes see many people they care about die while they are helpless to stop it and then they die themselves and then their stories are not perceived and recorded and they don’t get to run away happily with their lover and they don’t have a best friend who knew the truth and is still around.)

Other than just the changed ending there are dozens of ways that the shiny marketable tale told in the musical reflects the neutering of these themes. I feel Turtle Heart’s existence and the related backstory of Elphie’s family is pretty fundamental since the fact Elphie’s parents were in a poly triad with an indigenous man that was publicly lynched and they both spent their lives wracked with guilt for it after is the reason her childhood was the way it was and what predisposed her to spend her entire life perceiving the horrors and injustice of the world and fighting them. Replacing all of that with ‘she is the way she is because people were mean to her because she was green’ is just insulting and depressng. Fiyero and his family also being from a culture of brown/black people that is genocided out of existence is important as well. That’s the entire reason they bond! Replacing him with a random chipper jock (usually played by a white guy, but replacing the race of the actor would absolutely not solve this issue) and getting rid of the entire plot with his wife and kids and Elphie’s guilt piled upon guilt for neither confessing to nor saving them is… is… I just can’t explain how depressing it all is, that the version with all of this cleansed and gutted is the version embraced by the world.

The entire existence of colonization and genocide of various nonwhite populations of humans as a prevalent theme in the book (and the entire reason the Wizard is bad lol. Also given he came from his world his deeds are clearly an extension of the real world enterprise of colonialism and genocide perpetuated against real life native peoples) is just swooshed out of existence in favor of, if i recall correctly, keeping literally just the talking animal oppression plot point. (And that’s toned down from speaking Animals being an ethnic minority that’s getting killed off just like the oppressed humans, to ‘in this magic land animals can talk but he wants to use magic to make them stop talking!!! :’(  anyway I, hmm, don’t love the implications of who seemed most sympathizable to the audience……but that’s probably way too cynical there.

This next part is subjective but the book also feels like it links defying oppression to gender and queerness in ways that were removed. It was written in the 90s so the explicitness of the queerness I’m going to describe would probably not really meet the standards of today almost thirty years later but it still feels prominent and serious to me. The aforementioned relationship (Frex and Turtle Heart may or may not have been sexually involved like Turtle Heart and Melena were, but the book definitely says they both  ‘loved’ him so I do consider the three of them confirmed as a queer, poly relationship), and the inclusion of an actual gay couple among Elphie’s uni friends (they later die from what I think was implied to be something of an AIDS analog; keeping in mind this book was written in the 90s that was probably fresh in many people’s memories, the positive depiction of a gay couple with fantasy AIDS would have been meaningful at the time), and the little recurring subtle thing of Elphie being mistaken for or rumoured to be intersex or defying assigned gender which feels to me like her role as a witch and disruptor is juxtaposed with the concept of witch as a gender role disruptor…unfortunately all of this is infinitely more interesting to me than whatever handwavey shippable potential lesbians are teased in the adaptation that people are obsessed with. (Although if someone likes them as a ship the part in the book where they share a bed during their journey to Oz feels very queerplatonic.)

I dunno. It all…feels like something that would happen IN the book, honestly. The book’s story of Elphie isn't marketable and lovable. It’s the kind of story that would make people wonder if they WOULD mistreat a person like this in real life and would feel justified doing so. It gives you very uncomfortable things to sit with. The version in the adaptation allows the audience the happy comfort of identifying with heroic Elphie and knowing they would never ever be so wrong as to malign a person like that in real life, the comfort of knowing they’re not complicit in regimes like the wizard’s. The book, the permeating and structural and unstoppable nature of the evil depicted and the real reasons someone might like Elphie, an alienating, uncompromising woman who doesn’t bathe and sleeps with a married man and gets a bunch of people including children killed and fails and fails and fails but never stops trying for what she knows is right but who cares about that, who would root for an uncharismatic failure anyway – is a version that wouldn’t inspire popular sympathy, so she was erased in favor of this more simple and lovable version. 

The entire modern reality of the ‘root for the villain’ retelling genre is always doing what the musical of Wicked did. (It in fact may very well be because of said musical.) It isn’t ever really about the untold story of why to root for someone who has done what you find unpalatable or unrelatable or despicable because it was right to them; it’s about taking the easy and palatable concepts of heroism and villainy and simply swapping the labels and color coding on who’s who to introduce a surface veneer of novelty while allowing the audience to carry on in general comfort with their predefined conceptions of who is deserving of sympathy and comfort. But what feels so insulting and frustrating and so damn sad about this specific case is that here, they do so while soothed by the consolation that they’ve definitely now been thoughtful and introspective about the subject and are able to sympathize with those different from them. They’ve definitely now learned to question the narrative. Right?

I’ve compared it to Hunchback before (Disney Hunchback fundamentally changes the plot and the themes of the original novel, but i happen to LIKE Disney Hunchback) and been like “why am I capable of loving one adaptation that does this and not the other” and, I dunno, there are a lot of reasons, but probably just because the kind of narrative the book has and the things it wants to say about the nature of heroism feel bitterly sad to lose, and it feels bitterer still to know most of the world was happy with what we got instead. I try to keep it packed away because I don’t want to bum people out and I know a lot of people that love the musical and I can verge on sounding judgemental of the people who like it, but it’s not the audience’s fault this was the version they were given and they happened to like it, it’s the fault of the tellers of the narrative…I dunno. 

I don’t have a good ending to this post. The only hopeful thing I’ve ever heard about it was someone pointing out to me recently that people are regardless of content more inclined to enjoy stageplays with music than books, which I took as reason to believe ‘maybe a musical of Wicked which had kept what was so bitterly amazing and meaningful and tragic about the original would actually be just as loved if it existed’. So though I know it’s pretty much guaranteed any further adaptations or versions will keep the ‘new’ story and that if they didn’t people would hate them lol, I’ll hold on to that little scrap of imagining that maybe people at large WOULD be capable of embracing the original narrative too, rather than the popularity of the musical being an indictment that says the world can’t handle a story like that.

Did the witch come back?

Not….

Yet…!

[shijiujun]

“Isn’t it just betrayal?”

- TILL THE END OF THE MOON 长月烬明 (2023) | EP. 9 -

[oopsallmabari]

....why are the youtube comments so mad lol don't y'all like to have fun. don't we like to have fun here