#it’s a play it’s a tragicomedy

[cto10121]

Me: [rocking in the therapist chair] But Elphaba asking Glinda whether she and Fiyero ever had an affair is so heartbreaking to me. Of course the very idea is ludicrous—not even Sarima’s sisters believed it—and Elphaba should know better. But she still loves Fiyero so much that the very possibility lived rent-free in her mind, so much so that she just has to ask Glinda whether or not she banged their mutual college friend. Freakin’ Glinda, whom she hadn’t seen in almost 20 years (!!). And no, I don’t think Elphaba wanted to alleviate her misplaced guilt by believing Fiyero’s death was really the result of Sir Chuffrey getting into a jealous rage. I think it’s rooted in the fact that Elphaba never believed she was good enough for Fiyero. After all, she was never enough to make her own father love her, at least more than her sister, so why should Fiyero stay faithful to her, why not Glinda? [Starts sobbing] Well, jokes on you, Elphie, because Fiyero did not go for Glinda and probably would have, yes, he found her lovely but he was also WTF-ing over her new chipmunk personality and refused to take her up on her offer to meet up, and instead homeboy went to the Chapel of St. Glinda just because he knew you went there for some reason, because news’ flash he was not chill about you either, not even once, oh God

Therapist: This is the first time she has talked about something other than the French R&J musical, don’t anybody move—

[justanotherliteraturestudent]

"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors."

— Pozzo, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

[july-19th-club]

erica schmidt adapting cyrano de bergerac as a musical: oh my hot little husband could fucking crush this to pieces . oh this is going to sound so good when my hot husband sings it . this is so great

[ponds-of-ink]

Right after the tail events of Ruin, Vanessa decided to check on MXES. Since, y’know, she probably had a hand in making his current form.

She asks the standard “How’s everything going?”. Really trying to play it off casually just in case.

The answer she receives is an audio excerpt from the chorus of A Human’s Touch by TWRP. Punctuated by a bunch of sad emoticons.

So yeah, it’s not going that great.

[britneyshakespeare]

I am once again thinking about how the Rover dwarfs all of Aphra Behn's other plays in acknowledgment and how if people read only one Behn play it's always the Rover but it personally for me was not even close to the most interesting play I'd read by her very early on and it's kind of not a light thing I wanna reread because of the two near-rape scenes

[do-you-know-this-play]

[blogmollylane]

Finished reading: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead by Tom Stoppard

Currently reading: The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler, translated by Charlotte Collins

[armeniuslaurant]

About 30 minutes into Clouds of Sils Maria, and I'm reframing my viewing of it into a comedy.

[spitoffbridges]

Just been stood 2ft away from David Tennant please don’t talk to me for 3 days

[muninnhuginn]

huh, just skimming through the link click tag now I've seen the episode and seeing some mixed feelings over it, but I do honestly think the latest episode gave a lot of answers/much bigger pieces of the puzzle than we've been given before. I was getting somewhat frustrated at the number of questions raised every episode so this is the first time this season I've seen stuff be properly addressed. Between this and the twin swap confirmation last episode we've absolutely tipped over into the getting answers side of things.

[cto10121]

Not anti fans saying they finally understand Bella’s (romantic) appeal to Edward in Midnight Sun…when it was also obvious in the original Twilight.

I think a lot of people really struggle with the fact that Bella is a bit of an unreliable narrator with regards to herself, due largely to her major self-esteem issues. Also, she is not in the happiest of moods re: her hatred of Forks. But even beneath her self-deprecation you see her selflessness and her consideration of others. The very first thing she does in the books is to sacrifice her life in Phoenix for Forks so that her mother could be happy with her new husband. She cooks and cleans for Charlie without prompting and lowkey considers Renée as a kind of daughter from years of having to be the mature one—and thinks nothing of it. She diverts conversation away from Angela when Jessica starts to grill her on the type of guys she likes. She encourages Mike/Jessica, making them sit together in the van. She enjoys her time at Port Angeles with Angela and Jessica and helps them find dresses, perfectly content in her auxiliary role. She is diplomatic in her rejection of her three suitors. And then there is the fact that she demands answers from Edward, sees through his lies, notices his vampiric qualities, but also keeps his secrets and is not afraid of the vampiric side of him (as we all know). She is very perceptive; hence how she solves his mystery in virtually no time at all with just a tiny bit of sleuthing.

All of this is downplayed because Bella doesn’t like to boast about herself or even attract attention to herself. Not in Edward’s POV, though. Since he is fascinated with her, he picks up on all these qualities and focuses on them. We get the full, truer picture of Bella’s personality without her self-deprecating narration, and many of her graces in Twilight are highlighted and reinforced in Midnight Sun. And this time we go into detail on Bella’s likes and dislikes, past the cursory summary in Twilight, because Edward is interested in all that. Bella’s humor also comes across more in MS, since Edward finds her funny—both intentionally and not.

Because that’s how first person narration should work. You get the full internal sense of a character, but also their biases and blind spots as well. Just as Bella’s narration is wholly focused on Edward and other people and her own appeal is diminished and backgrounded, Edward’s narration is focused on Bella and other people and his own appeal is diminished and backgrounded. When both have evidence of each other’s attraction to them, they both try to justify it, sometimes correctly, but always with psychic discomfort. The smart reader was supposed to pick up on the subtext in the original book…a subtext that is then made explicit text in the companion novel.

[idiopathicsmile]

School Gymnastics: A Tragicomedy

So one day when we were in third grade, our P.E. teacher divided us into girls and boys. (I don’t remember what the boys had to do. Wrestling? Tackle football? I don’t know, probably not at age nine, but that’s not the point. Gladiatorial combat? I still don’t really understand kids’ sports.)

What matters for this story is that all the girls had to do gymnastics. Now—and I suspect this won’t surprise you if you know literally anything about me—I was always terrible at any form of school athletics. I am intensely, almost impressively uncoordinated. This doesn’t affect my life much at 36, but it was often a miserable way to be a kid. The only playground game I liked was playing pretend, because when you are playing pretend, you don’t have a bunch of people ostensibly on your side screaming in your ear, “Pretend faster! Pretend over there! Pretend with greater accuracy!”

Anyway, gymnastics and my clumsy, doughy little body. I couldn’t do a cartwheel. I couldn’t do a backwards somersault. I couldn't do any of it. We had an entire unit on this business and I literally did not learn how to even safely attempt a single move besides the log roll (lie flat and roll sideways on your belly). In retrospect, this seems like maybe it was in part a teaching problem, not a me problem, but that’s actually not the point either.

The point is, at the end of the unit, we were told to divide ourselves into little teams and choreograph a group gymnastics routine. My group, faced with my long list of limitations (more limitation than girl, really) decide my role will be to just forwards-somersault around the rest of the group as they do their moves. (This is itself kind of embarrassing but trust me, it is but the appetizer.) My friend Ashley has the Lion King soundtrack and we all agree that it is a great choice. The movie has only come out a couple of years earlier, and it of course features some funny, peppy options. 'Hakuna Matata'? 'I Just Can't Wait to Be King'? It's all coming together.

Carried on a wave of youthful enthusiasm, none of us even think to double-check which track Ashley has picked. Foreshadowing!

So the day of the performance comes. Another group goes right before us. They had picked “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls, which was a huge hit at the time. I mean, it still is because it’s a classic, but then it was big and new. They step onto the mat and immediately begin to do choreographed dance moves, which they have worked into their routine. We had not thought of this. Oops. Dance moves, of course! So they incorporate the necessary gymnastics, it goes over really well, the energy is high, and now it’s my group’s turn.

I take my place at the edge of the mat, the mat we are required to stay on for the length of the piece. Ashley cues up the track she’d chosen.

A song starts up. Instantly, I recognize it from the movie. It is the very slow instrumental music that plays when Simba realizes his dad is dead.

‘Well, this is not optimal,’ I think. I've been on this planet for nine years; I can see that much. But it’s too late to change the track, and so I tell myself, ‘It’s okay. I’m a performer. I can sell this.’ I put on an extremely solemn face and begin to execute a series of the world’s saddest somersaults.

Friends, when I say “sad” I mean it, in every possible sense of the word. Picture a nine year old with the gravest possible affect, determinedly doing somersaults to the slowest, most serious music she can imagine, in a careful ring around her friends who have actually learned any gymnastics whatsoever. Okay, now as the music starts to pick up and get more hopeful, imagine she gets real dizzy and in front of everyone, she rolls all the way directly off the mat, careening dangerously towards the assembled students.

Somehow, I roll myself back onto the mat, we survive what feels like hours of humiliation, we stagger away, and I blessedly avoid adding “puking my guts out in front of all of my peers” to my very short list of gymnastics tricks.

Later, I asked Ashley what in the world possessed her to choose that song.

“It didn’t have any words,” she said.

(There was absolutely no rule against using songs that had lyrics.)

Anyway, that’s why being an adult is better than being a kid.

I may have to do laundry and make my own dinner and wrestle with more complex existential angst, but you know what I haven’t been asked to do in like 26 years? Somersault for three minutes straight to the musical shorthand for “this cartoon lion cub has no choice but to process the weight of unimaginable grief for his dead dad.” And you know what? If I live another 50 years, I can be pretty confident nobody will ask me to do it then, either.

[bixels]

Now that Ghibli's new movie is coming out soon, I've been thinking about anime films and wanna talk about my favorite animated movie ever, Tokyo Godfathers.

TG is a 2003 tragicomedy by Satoshi Kon, following three unhoused people––an alcoholic, a runaway girl, an a trans woman––who find a baby in a dumpster and set off across Tokyo to reunite her with her parents.

If you like the sound of that, go watch it because the rest of this post is spoilers and I have FEELINGS about this movie.

URGHH, the fact that only two moments of true kindness, generosity, and care given to the three protagonists without any expectation of reciprocity are given by a Latin-American immigrant couple and a drag club full of queens and trans women. The fact that, despite her loud and dramatic personality, Hana is the glue that holds the team together and the heart of the whole movie. The fact that this movie pulls no punches at showing the violence and inhumanity committed by "civilized Japanese society" against the unhoused. The fact that Miyuki craves to be loved by her parents and ends up seeing Hana as her true mother. The fact that Miyuki starts off accidentally using transphobic language against Hana, but slowly begins calling her "Miss Hana" out of respect. The fact that, according to Kon, Hana's role in the story is as a mythological trickster god and "disturb the morality and order of society, but also play a role in revitalizing culture." The fact that Hana so desperately wants to be part of a true family, yet is willing to sacrifice her found family so they can be with their own, and is rewarded for her good deeds in the end by becoming a godmother. The fact that, throughout the movie, wind and light have been used to signify the presence of god's hand/influence (this movie's about nondenominational faith––faith in yourself, faith in others, faith in a higher power. Lots of religious are referenced, such as Buddhism/Hinduism, Christianity, and Shintoism), and in the climax of the film, as Hana jumps off a building to save a baby that isn't hers, a gust of wind and a shower of light save her from death. The fact that god saves a trans woman's life because she proved herself a mother, and that shit makes me CRY.

[newtkelly]

Not to word vomit on you but I can't stop thinking about Oliver wanting a love story like Tarlos and how it all accidentally lined up.

Knowing that Carlos and TK were about to move in, and then Carlos made that romantic gesture and TK got scared because it was, "too good to be true."

Carlos is left, confused, puzzled and nursing a broken-heart but still just as in love. What do you mean that TK and Carlos saw a future together, one got scared at that prospect and left before Carlos was the one to leave??

What do you mean that happened after Oliver said he wanted Bucktommy to have a love story like Tarlos; where it was always going to be them?

Then you consider Oliver saying that we might see Tommy and Buck interact during a call and it'll be awkward and who can't help but think of TK and Carlos running into the furniture store and seeing each other for the first time in weeks.

Anyways, sorry to be delusional in your ask box. I'm deep within the Tarlos trenches so this is all starting to look eerily familiar lmao (it could also be Tim is out of ideas, which is most likely the case)

Please feel free to word vomit on me always, I live for it.

Receiving this ask has actually prompted me to share some thoughts that I’ve held back from sharing, just because I wasn’t sure if it was worth it to throw more speculation into the void. But this message is so lovely, and I agree with it so much and so… okay I will share some of my mixed bag of thoughts about this whole situation.

Firstly, I adore Tarlos and LS (even if I don’t post about either much), TK is my baby, and the interesting thing about them for me is that I wound up caring for them more AFTER they broke up and got back together. If Buck and Tommy’s story is formatted as a rom-com, TK and Carlos are a tragicomedy. TK, the heartbroken recovering addict thrust into an entirely new city, a new career, who doesn’t want to let himself get too close to something good because he is misery incarnate. Carlos, the hopeful hopeless romantic who sees TK and doesn’t see something that needs fixing, but someone who his love could help heal. It’s such a gorgeous story, and the symmetry of both characters shockingly losing a parent in a tragic way is painfully beautiful. I LOVE their love story.

That brings me to Oliver and Tim’s comments. Throughout the Buck and Tommy relationship, my belief that this would be Buck’s final relationship only ever wavered twice. The first time was in the immediate aftermath of their first date (I spent the whole episode thinking that Tommy was actually reintroduced to kick off the bi awakening plotline and Buck was not acquiring a boyfriend) and the second time was towards the tail end of the summer hiatus when I legitimately began to doubt Lou would want to come back given everything that transpired. Other than that, I had full faith that this was it, this was Buck getting off the “hamster wheel”—Tim’s words, not mine.

I had confidence for a few reasons. 1 – the story was always handled with care onscreen and gave us no reason to think they weren’t going to work out. 2 – the chemistry was insane, and I knew it couldn’t just be me because an entire fandom was born. Tim and tptb must have seen what we saw. 3 – the supplementary information funneled to us through articles and Tim’s social media, literally up until post-8x06 never seemed to indicate that their relationship was headed in this direction. A big part of that was the comparison to Tarlos.

In order to protect myself (should I name the list of shows, movies, couples that I’ve fixated on that wound up playing out in dissatisfying ways?), I am awfully pessimistic. The post-episode interviews, articles, + hearing a bit from LFJ and OS has me wondering if this was some mass hallucination. Did we truly cling to something good and blow it up, run with it? Was this always the plan? I’ve wondered if because S7 was so short and S8 required that other characters get the spotlight first/other stories needed to be told and wrapped, and if because of production and scheduling and whatever external reasons, did their relationship wind up having a longer life than was ever intended. Were they ever supposed to make it to six months? Were they ever supposed to make it past the fucking wedding? I have been asking myself this stuff a lot. Alternatively, did something happen that made them want to or have to part ways with LFJ? So many questions, and I’m not sure we’ll ever know.

But… then there’s the delusional side of me, and the reason I haven’t totally abandoned hope is because when I was watching 8x06 live, EVERYTHING in me told me that this is a necessary section of the rom-com formula. Even the call-backs throughout the episode made me feel like the writers are so painfully aware, and that the narrative wants these characters to be together (Miceli’s, Abby, basketball, going to the movies, calling an uber, the loft kitchen, “you’re not ready”)—the motifs were absolutely popping off. I did not think it was the end when the episode ended. I wondered when and how they would find their way back to each other to fulfill the rom-com genre, but what I did NOT expect was to open social media and see articles framing this as the end. I wasn’t surprised when I found out who wrote the articles, and listen—if they bait one side of the fandom, can’t they bait the other? I still have some hope, because at the end of the day, anything can happen with network television. Maybe this is all part of the plan, and the interviews should be taken with a grain of salt. I just don’t know.

Interviews with Tim and Oliver from day one positioned the Buck and Tommy relationship as a queer love story devoid of trauma. Okay, well… huh. From where I was sitting, there was A TON of explicitly queer trauma exposed in 8x06. Their “hurdle” is tied utterly and completely to queerness. Tommy runs because he is a gay man who doesn’t trust that his bisexual boyfriend should “settle” for him, and who would rather be alone than heartbroken, and if that truly is the last of Tommy, it has to be one of the coldest and cruelest exits we’ve ever seen on this show. Do they simply not realize how deeply traumatized both characters come off in that episode, or is it all part of the plan? If the interviews positioning this as the permanent end of bucktommy should be taken at face value, shouldn’t the other interviews that position them as a rom-com (with the formulaic third act breakup, boils and all) be taken as the truth as well? If there was some misinterpretation, why hasn’t Tim said anything—he clearly knows a lot of fans were hurt by what they watched. He must have seen the outrage—why radio silence? Did we truly blow this out of proportion? Are the wheels coming off behind the scenes? I need a tell-all at this point lol

Thank you for the lovely ask, I’ve been sitting with these thoughts all week so this was a good excuse to finally articulate them. <3

[britneyshakespeare]

She's bloody. She shoots arrows. She's crazy bout the common boy. She's the Queen of Dacia's heir. She's suicidal. She wants revenge. She's gonna free her brother from his imprisonment and subvert the prophecy. She'll follow her lover into Heaven while dressed as a man in battle. I didn't say a name but someone popped into your head didn't it?

No it didn't because she's Cleomena in the Young King, a criminally underrated tragicomedy by Aphra Behn

[do-you-know-this-play]