#like idk something like masquerade or poto

[lotrmusical]

post about poto italy

quite genuinely the most i've ever enjoyed watching phantom. i've been trying to figure out why and i think it basically boils down to a couple things:

- one of the things i like most about phantom is the metatheatricality, and one of the things i like most about theatre in general is suspension of disbelief. poto italy played into those things (both deliberately and inadvertently). any moments that lacked 'polish' (which there undeniably were, if you compare it to the london production) really worked for me to keep up that sense of immersion. we are in a theatre. this is a work of artifice. being able to see through the gaps in the performance and understand that this is something people are working together to make 'go', while still at the same time buying in to the world that it presents... idk. delicious chaos. if it were any other show, and if the cast hadn't all been singing their hearts out, it might not have worked. but as it was i think it being less polished than the london production actually made me enjoy it more

- on a related note, the other thing i like about phantom is how stupid it is. half the songs are overtly comedic and the other half are the world's schmalziest most over the top secretions of lloyd-webberage and the plot doesn't make any sense. so when i'm watching phantom i'm already psychologically primed to react to things with 'sure!! why not!!'. the sillier it is, the better. and boy did this production deliver on silly

- credit to alw, i think this is because the music is so genuine and compelling that it makes a strong enough tissue to hold the show together and preserve the emotional sincerity despite how objectively silly it all is. it's a rubbery sort of show. you can fit a Lot of silly into it without any risk of tearing the immersion.

- i don't even know what to say about characterisation tbh since i think it's fairly clear i don't watch this musical for the characters. i do not think that character depth is one of phantom's strong suits. nevertheless here are my takes.

christine felt like she had less agency than normal (already not a high bar) but compensated by responding to situations with genuine emotion/stress/fear and delivering a wishing you were somehow here again that made me weep.

i sort of enjoyed the unhinged all i ask of you. it makes christine and raoul more interesting to me if they're both obviously having a terrible time. i like raoul struggling with trying to be the Guy Who Fixes Everything in a situation that he's realising is actually beyond his abilities to fix.

diversity win/loss: this phantom stims. obviously one wishes they hadn't chosen to code the stalker and murderer as autistic/Ambiguously Mentally Unwell. like i think we can all agree we probably wish they had made a different choice there. that said, as someone who does rock back and forth in times of emotional stress, it did sort of work to get me to like him better. ah well.

- favourite things about this production: revolving set, deliberate arson and insurance fraud, the anastasia once upon a december thing they did during the overture, spinning piano, lesbianism, the masquerade staging

[hismercytomyjustice]

Hoooooly shit

Spotify has been suggesting songs from Epic: The Musical for a while now and I’m finally listening to the whole thing and

GODDAMN

Fuck it is SO GOOD

The instrumentals fffffuck

And the singing

Just banger after banger

It kind of reminds me of the Prince of Egypt soundtrack, which is also *chef’s kiss*. Ooh and The Great Comet’s soundtrack too!

I fucking love musicals, but I feel like they don’t always have super powerful vocals AND instrumentals (barring being from a movie soundtrack) and this one hits both just so fucking good

Love to hear something that sounds so…whole? Rounded out? Idk.

It’s reminding me of that moment I was doubled over by POTO when I was 16. We watched the 2004 movie (I am old, okay???) in orchestra class because we’d already done our final concert for the year. And I just remember standing there as they performed Masquerade and it was like a fucking bullet to my skull.

And it’s all been downhill from there, baby!

Lmaooo I will also never forget the fact that I listened to that soundtrack so much that my little brother, who HAD NEVER WATCHED THE MOVIE OR VOLUNTARILY LISTENED TO THE SOUNDTRACK, knew the fucking lyrics.

But all of this is just to say that I’m very happy with this soundtrack so far and am looking forward to listening to it so many times I literally can’t stand it anymore!

Yay!

[off-the-deep-end]

In another case of I-didn’t-like-it-the-first-time-through-but-I’ve-made-a-complete-180: actually, Origin is bangin’.

I like the music and how the program utilizes the music! It adds to the elements and the elements add to it!

This may be the first time I really appreciated how organic Yuzu’s jumps and spins feel. He doesn’t really telegraph them; they naturally flow from the music and steps before.

Ugh. So good.

[britishchick09]

OMFG POTO 1925 IS PLAYING AT THE ORPHEUM ON HALLOWEEN EVE!!!!!! :D

[flowers-of-io]

@eri-223​ you brought it upon yourself, now I won’t shut up c:

OKAY SO

I can’t really draw neat straight lines between the two, but there’s so much aesthetic similarity to me, particularly with Toland and the Hive-Ascendancy thing. Maybe it’s just me dying for the vibes (or loving POTO in general since I was 9), but it struck me today how Eris/Toland--when it’s made a Working ship--is basically everything Christine/Erik is not. There is so much to be said about Christine/Erik alone, but to me it’s an epitome of why gothic-novel-esque dynamics don’t really work in the long run when they don’t move past being just Gothic and Tragic. And hear me out. A goodhearted, elfin woman at her vulnerable point (grief over father) meets a honey-voiced stranger and has this secret thing with him, this music they share in the dead of night, and it’s intoxicating because music *is* her passion (and something she has deep emotions over in itself, the thing that is most hers in the world) and it’s secret, and a whole other world to what she’s facing in the daytime. The mystery is intriguing, and that’s intoxicating too. And there’s an uncomfortable power imbalance but it doesn’t bother you just yet, because there isn’t really any attraction between the two--not in the romantic-as-in-love sense at least, rather this romantic-as-in-romanticism pull all dark beautiful secret things have.

And here we can shout a fucking thank you at Erik for completely ruining that beauty by being an absolute creep. But Chrissie doesn’t know that yet. And so he leads her deep down into the dark, into his world of darkness and secrecy and yet twisted beauty, and she is living the mystery now, she’s in this nighttime world they would share in secret. And she’s close enough to take a peek behind the mask, something she was so violently curious about and attracted to, a glance into the dark abyss of his soul that is so intriguing. And so she does peek, and what she finds is terrifying rot.

And this, THIS is the best moment of the entire thing to me. This story could be well off without Raoul (whom I deeply love and cherish but he ruins the gothic) because he adds this romantic tension of a love triangle (which I absolutely loathe because ugh. love triangles.) to what could have been a tale of a girl torn between the world of day and night rather than two men who each love her in a different way. There’s so much of Persephone-sque struggle in Christine’s soul that has been shunned by the story imo, and would have made the whole thing better in the long run (and maybe less grossly-abusive on Erik’s part).

So let’s circle back to Toland, another pale, bony, possibly disfigured brunet in a dark coat with a living room full of skulls and candles (the vibes, huh. he probably owned a boat and a horse too). If we take Eris/Toland as starting off before the Hellmouth (I’m really starting to tentatively test my ground on this hhhng), it feels like the same story slightly to the left. Granted, Eris has more agency, but there’s still a huge power imbalance in her and Eriana coming to Toland--an exiled genius|madman with an evil black crow (Guren) perching on his shoulder--and asking him for help, laying their and their team’s lives at his feet - him, who could probably kill them in seventeen different yet equally fancy ways were he more invested! And there is so much darkness here already because how dark it must have been in Eris’ soul to agree on this revenge fantasy, what an abyss Eriana’s eyes must have been hiding; how desperate they must have been to come to him, to even consider this, to choose a possibility of painful, screaming agony in the Hellmouth over the ache they were feeling now. And so there’s vulnerability, too, in a way - because they’re desperate, because they’re hurting, because everything has been taken from them and they have nothing else to do but this ridiculous, mad plan. And oh he can abuse this void, he can make them do whatever he wants and they’d do it gladly, and I have a feeling both Eris and Eriana are aware of that.

And so they work, in secret, cracking secrets of the Hive, tasting the rot of the forbidden fruit, hiding from the daylight with their dark, heretic, nighttime folly. I think there is a threshold at wherever it is they are meeting--be it a room or a house, Eriana’s kitchen or Toland’s disturbing “lab”--in the doorway, between the bright but empty world of patrols and strikes and dead friends and this horrid, twisted, yet fascinating realm of promised vengeance. And I think Eris learns, hungry for secrets, hungry perhaps for Toland’s eyes on her because all dark beautiful secret things have a pull, and she can’t tell if she’s more drunk on the adventure, or the heresy they’re so blatantly committing, or him. And maybe he reciprocates in his own twisted way, maybe they talk or kiss over the parchment pages, and she cannot tell--she cannot tell if his eyes are truly for her or the Hive, the mystery, the thing they’re doing. I’m thinking of what you wrote, how “he wanted Ascendance as badly as she wanted him”. But despite that--or maybe because of it--she allows herself to be led deep down into the dark, into his world of darkness and secrecy and yet twisted beauty, and she is living the mystery now, she’s in this nighttime world they would share in secret. Is it the Hellmouth? Maybe, though I think it’s a process that spans between their secret studies of the Hive and the midst of their descent, when Vell is dead and maybe they’re all doomed, and Toland’s eyes twinkle in the dark and it’s such beautiful madness she cannot help staring. And the checkpoint has come, time to show cards--and she’s close enough to take a peek behind the mask, something she was so violently curious about and attracted to, a glance into the dark abyss of his soul that was so intriguing. And so she does peek, and what she finds is terrifying rot.

I think this is Ir Yut, or maybe a little bit earlier, but nevertheless the bubble bursts and Eris is left in the dark alone and betrayed. That’s of little concern, of course, when the Hive is hunting you down and all you hear is your friends’ dying screams, but it still hurts, it’s still bitter, it’s still so, so wrong. I like to think he comes to teach her then, maybe give her the journals, and it’s a whirlwind of madness and horror and fury and gore, but he’s whatever comfort she can hope for at this point. It’s twisted, it’s awful, it’s dark-gothic rotten, it’s as wrong and horrid as Erik/Christine is as a whole.

But then they’re given the chance Erik/Christine never got. They’re allowed to outgrow the rot. There’s so much dysfunctionality and disturb going on in most gothic-esque “love” stories because it’s not love, it’s attraction taken for a spin and often grossly abused. Love is growth. I like to think of what must have been going on in Eris’ head (and Toland’s too, perhaps, though I doubt he had one at that point) when they were exchanging the letters, the dearest Eris right next to did you watch me carve out each eye; now that she’s wiser, and scarred, and not so stupid anymore--but there’s still that dark pull she can’t help, now even scarier than before that she knows him for what he really is, now that she’s seen the rot. There’s so much hurt to be outgrown, so much betrayal, but she finds he’s yet again whatever comfort she can hope for (that entry *is* called A Light In The Darkness, huh). I could wax poetic about this whole process but I think you captured it so well in STM I don’t have much else to add.

I wanted to throw quotes into it but couldn’t quite fit them into this, uh, essay (which I didn’t absolutely re-read), and I guess Music of the Night would apply here but it’s ripe with uncomfortable sexual tension?? And aside from that (which is in its entirety a trip) just consider these ah

this whole moment

also this

He'll always be there singing songs in my head  Is this Eris in the letters phase? maybe. I performed a vibe check and it showed positive

Wandering Child for how unhealthy-twisted and beautiful it is (ignore Raoul, I have no metaphor for him in this au)

For either way you choose, you cannot win  It’s just a good quote y’all

Farewell my fallen idol and false friend / We had such hopes, and now those hopes are shattered 

Angel of Music, you deceived me / I gave you my mind blindly  (HOW SHE WHISPERS THAT LAST PART IN THE MOVIE OK)

Stranger than you dreamt it  now you’re stranded in the Hellmouth good job

What warm, unspoken secrets will we learn / Beyond the point of no return

The bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn

Down that path into darkness deep as hell  but Toland smiles while he sings this

And of course the classic,  And in this labyrinth where night is blind / The Phantom of the Opera is here inside my mind

Wow! I didn’t even get to the Dreaming City! It’s way more vague than the whole Eris/Toland thing because of course ships take up 80% of my brainspace but idk I just find it so incredibly fitting when it comes to paralleling Savathun/Dul Incaru terrorising the Dreaming City with what Erik does to the opera. Like, everybody knows he’s There but no one can do anything about it, he sends vague threats and kills people but nobody can catch him, and the place is just a giant playground for him to have fun and achieve his personal goals in. And whatever the hell is going on in Masquerade, like

Masquerade! Seething shadows breathing lies Masquerade! You can fool any friend who ever knew you Masquerade! Leering satyrs, peering eyes Masquerade! Run and hide, but a face will still pursue you

wow that sure is subtle. Seething shadows breathing lies, huh. Run and hide, but a face will still pursue you :) And then he crashes the party in a fucking Red Death costume. If this doesn’t have huge Dul Incaru/Siren of Riven energy I don’t know what has.

And of course the shitshow only starts when we kill Riven but the seeds have been planted long, long ago. If you listen closely, you can hear Petra screaming in confusion somewhere under box five.

I know most of this second part is a stretch, BUT! this is my au. And for the record, I know there are very mixed feeling about the 2004 POTO movie but to me personally it was a formative experience, first watched on a very crappy TV in music class at the age of 9 and not even in its entirety, but I was already captivated and shaken to the core, and there’s still, after all those years, something that screams at my soul when I hear the first notes.

And, as a treat for those who suffered with me until the end of this essay,