#meant with complete respect

[dumpster-fire-sapphic-failgirl]

Not to be a lesbian about it, but I think my number 1 reaction to most of Aabria’s narration and at least half of her NPCs last night was “Ma’am. ma’am.”

[venomouslilith]

.

[britneyshakespeare]

also in a very real way being a soap opera actress is kind of like. one of those half-baked dreams i have that i will never ever pursue. like if someone offered me an open role on a daytime soap opera wo having to audition i would absolutely accept. i would be like hell yeah id love to act these melodramatic dialogue scenes day in and day out. i cant tell u why. so i cant imagine someone doing that and then just moving onto being a serious actor in big high budget things and having legitimate fans who arent old ladies who watch abc every weekday at 2pm. a part of me is like why would you even wanna do that?

[fatedroses]

A bit of community service work to repay his third chance leads to Hien witnessing Zenos' own special brand of weird.

[atalante241]

Do people genuinely forget that the Traveler had had zero intimate/purely positive interactions with Furina before the whole execution thing? Because I feel like they do. The Traveler became semi-friends / acquaintances with her during her story quest and that became more cemented during the 4.3 event

[supercantaloupe]

okay don giovanni review from last night. under the cut bc it's me. tldr the vocal performances were great, leporello carried the show, one of the most insane productions i've seen thus far but somehow in a new bizarre direction from normal. good snacks.

first of all i don't care how much wine you offer i think it's kind of ridiculous to charge $165 for a base ticket price for a performance that 1. isn't even in a concert hall or theater 2. is a concert performance rather than a staged performance (which was not advertised ahead of time) and 3. was not even a full production because they made the absolutely mind boggling decision to cut 100% of the recitative and replace it with Some Guy sitting on the stage narrating the plot between every 1-3 numbers

i did not pay that much gd bless. the student ticket was way cheaper.

the narration wasn't even good it was weirdly ungenerous to the women (like how do you even make elvira out be a "women, amirite" thing and also vaguely imply anna was into it in a production with zero acting? well they figured something out) and i don't think it even explained well enough what happens between each number to truly give a first time watcher a good idea of what's actually going on. not to mention that it absolutely kills any sense of momentum in the plot and makes the entire show drag like hell, because you have to wait between every single aria for either Some Guy to talk at you for three minutes straight, or wait awkwardly while people onstage walk off and people offstage walk on. it was so painfully clunky

they had a piano up there but since there was no recit it's not like she was accompanying much of anything. in practice what it ended up being used for was 1. the mandolin part for deh vieni (acceptable in the absence of a mandolin player; they were working with a limited chamber ensemble of musicians so i get it) 2. the party music at the end of act i (egregious fault imo because it absolutely kills the vibe of the scene and completely obfuscates the way the music is supposed to be adding to the tension and chaos with its different instrumental groups playing in different meters)

and 3. used to give singers their notes when the vocal line of their arias start on beat 1 measure 1, which they otherwise would have been able to get from the preceding recits (which is imo painfully amateurish for an ostensibly professional production)

all the numbers in act i were there although the narration was so bad i got jumpscared by fin ch'han dal vino because i forgot it was supposed to be there and thought we had skipped over that point in the plot. act ii had some really bizarre additional cuts made, notably they just entirely skipped over meta di voi and vedrai carino. it was like masetto and zerlina fuck off for the entirety of act ii save for, like, mille torbidi (they VERY briefly mentioned masetto getting beat up in the narration and i don't think they mentioned vedrai carino at all, they just skipped straight from deh vieni to sola sola. and also there was a painful awkward pause before deh vieni because i think the pianist forgot she was supposed to play there and the narrator jumped ahead to the next chunk of plot explanation too early). kept both dalla and tesoro (i'm fine with this ottavio was quite good though could've used a bit of ornamentation imo), kept mi tradi, kept non mi dir (more on that in a bit). no per queste which is probably a good thing not only for the show itself but also my head would have absolutely and irreversibly exploded if they had, probably

the whole thing kind of felt underrehearsed. like a quarter of the time it seemed like people didn't know what they were doing or had to be reminded where to be at that point in the show. and there were a few moments throughout where the orchestra struggled to keep up with the singers, but i really don't think they had much time to rehearse together, honestly.

and then, to my utter shock, the finale was actually really good?? like. insane compared to the rest of the show thus far. though it helps that 1. i absolutely love the harmonieband arrangements of cosa rara/i litiganti/non piu andrai, after possibly the draggiest non mi dir i've yet experienced it was like a breath of fresh air to hear that (and non mi dir was actually well performed i liked this anna but considering how much the Entire Show was dragging, the fact that they cut meta di voi and vedrai carino, AND the fact that they promised this act would be short, it felt crazy to me to keep it at that point.)

2. leporello and the don were by far the best performers of the night. so much so that i sought them out during the post show reception to tell them how great they were and enjoyed their performance. which i usually do not do, but in this like, high school recital ass production value. unbelievable relief that the final scene is dominated by the two actors in the show who most remembered that they can, and in fact Should, be acting. so much more movement and physicality and expression from those two compared to most everyone else. leporello especially, his actor apparently specializes in comedic bass roles and it shows, he was the standout all night

and 3. for the first time in the entire production they made an interesting decision regarding the physical space and staging! they had the commendatore sing from up on a balcony overlooking the audience in the foyer. the bar admittedly was set very low in the previous act and a half but the finale reminded me that i actually like this show again which is appreciated

though they then threw another curveball at me by Cutting the sextet at the end. which like didn't even piss me off at that point i was just baffled. like the don sinks down in agony and leporello sinks down whimpering in fear and the orchestra cuts off. and i'm expecting an awkward pause while they quietly get up and shuffle off so the rest of the cast can come back but nope. big orange title slate appears on the big screen behind them and the audience breaks into a roaring applause and the announcement of the wine and dessert reception. felt like i was in a fever dream

i will say the desserts were very nearly almost worth the bullshit that was the preceding show. they were so good. thank you austria for your dedication to pastry. and because i don't drink and couldn't appreciate the free wine offered i had to indulge in my own manner. spread contained chocolate oat bites (tasted as much like espresso powder as chocolate and coated in coconut, 4/10), almond sponge cake (classic, 7/10), cardamom apple bread pudding with caramel cream (not enough cardamom but otherwise very tasty and autumnal, 8.5/10) and honey cake (11/10. i don't know how they made this so good. i want more right now so much). i take both my mozart opera and my desserts very seriously.

anyway overall the production was. i would say frustrating. the singing quality was Really Good (leporello was the clear standout, probably followed by the don though i prefer my dons with a lighter voice but technically he was very good, then probably ottavio, then maybe masetto or anna. the commendatore was great but he's in it so little it's hard to compare)

i just wish they could have, like, actually done a full production. it would have been so great if they had gotten to tell the actual story and had been fully allowed to act. when there Was acting were the best moments of the show, and it's really unsurprising that most of that came from leporello, the absolute legend.

[notmoreflippingelves]

I need to ramble more about Esteban Flores, because everything about this character and his arc seem as though it was tailor-made for me and specifically designed to make me absolutely feral.

This going below the cut, both because I do not want to spoil the entire show for my friend who is think of watching Elena of Avalor and because I go full-on apologist here and I feel like that will annoy some people.

Imagine making the absolute worst mistake than anyone could possibly make, because you are 18 and scared and stupid and tired of being ignored. And it results in you losing your family and your freedom and what little self-respect you had left because you know all of this is very much your own fault.

 And so you proceed to spend the next 41(!) years eking out a miserable existence in an oppressive state. Upon fear for your life, you are forced to be the reluctant right-hand of the evil witch-queen who conquered your country, killed your aunt and uncle and trapped your cousin in magical prison. In spite of this, you nevertheless do everything within your limited power trying to hold the kingdom together and make sure the people don't starve, because the queen certainly doesn't care about anything except greedily bleeding your country dry.

And no exaggeration, this is just what canon explicitly gives us outright in the pilot. Like that's not even getting into head canons/interpretations/common sense of what exactly this sort of life entailed for you. Because this is a children's show so there's only so much they will let us imply about living under that kind of system. Especially as a young, attractive, terrified person who is the last living member of the previous royal family who is likely being kept alive partly as a combination trophy/punching bag for the evil queen (even if the show never actually states this outright).

And then by some miracle, what's left of your family comes back after all this time. The evil queen is overthrown, partly because you yourself finally stood up to her at a critical moment. You and your country are finally free again, and what's more, you and your family are finally together again after over 4 decades. But you still feel like an outsider--partly because you always were an outsider in your family even in the better times and partly because  over the past 41(!) years, time stood still for all of them except you.

And as a result, no one ever cares to ask what those 41 years were like for you or even just if you’re doing okay. Not only because your family can’t even begin to comprehend what it must have been like, but also because they don’t care to even *try* to understand. Because the narrative has decided that everyone else’s respective traumas is worth way more than your own.  (Though tbf the narrative really doesn’t dwell much on anyone’s trauma in general but yours gets especially neglected , except to briefly play it for laughs or to remind you that your trauma is *your own fault and only your own*).

For a little while, life is pretty okay. It’s weird not having to watch your step every instant to make sure you’re not putting a toe out of line. And so you never really fully break out of your “survival mode” conditioning, making sure that you are still considered important and valuable enough to keep around.

But all the while, you know that your past—and especially your terrible little secret—is eventually going to come back to haunt you. And it does. First via blackmail and then via the return  of the evil witch-queen herself. Fortunately, she is defeated for good before she can take avenge your “betrayal of her” but you still have to deal with seeing the ghost from the past who terrorized you for 41(!) years.

And then, your secret finally comes out in the open and you are disowned by your family—the family you *just* got back a few years ago—for an admittedly super bad decision that you made over four decades ago and have regretted ever since.  Rather than face the rest of your life in isolation (as though you didn’t already have enough of that during the previous regime), you escape before you can be sent into exile. This puts you directly in the path of *another* terrifying, evil magical milf who you are forced to ally yourself with. Because you have 40+ years of conditioning that when a woman like that says “jump,” you say “how high?” if you are to have any hope of survival.  Especially given that the only people who could’ve protected you from her are the family and friends who have just definitively washed their hands of you.

Despite this, you are still trying to seek your cousin’s forgiveness and to protect her in the little ways that you can. But you are constantly getting rebuffed over and over again, and if anything, your attempts at reconciliation only seem to make your cousin angrier, and she now hates you just as much as—if not MORE than—the woman who actually murdered her parents.

Your cousin is so angry at you specifically that she actively ignores the greater threat of Witchy Milf 2.0, because she happens to see your face and is enraged. This ends up backfiring spectacularly for you both, though it does indirectly lead to the defeat of said Witchy Milf 2.0.

But guess what?  There’s no time to breathe or celebrate, because her defeat occurred during the successful summoning of a third power-mad, feminine-presenting magical humanoid and her allies. At least, this one treats you with some initial respect and actually gives you outright what you-think-you’ve-thought-you-always wanted. But she also turns your family and friends to stone in front of you as a warning of what’s to come if you dare to defy her.

But this time, you are finally done with this, have finally lost enough that you have paradoxically found your courage. You sacrifice yourself to save your cousin, and she is finally able to accept that you’ve sacrificed and changed enough that she can forgive you. And her forgiveness is so powerful and pure that it not only restores you to life but also undoes all the other evil magic. Together, you defeat this final enemy, paradoxically by banishing her to the same Underworld where your mistakes accidentally sent your aunt and uncle and her parents long ago.  Peace has been restored. You have returned for good and are finally secure in your family’s love.

And after all that, there are *still* people (both presumably in universe and in the fandom outside of it) who say it's too little, too late and that it would've been better for everyone if you'd simply stayed dead.

Like I'm just... are we really victim-blaming the character who has 45 years of unprocessed trauma and guilt (both survivor's guilt and guilt in general) because of a decision he made when his brain was still developing and he was being manipulated by an older, much more powerful person?

[wereh0gz]

Begging for ppl to understand sonamy isn't canon

[mitamicah]

I had to say goodbye to my last grandparent tonight. She passed away in her sleep after a long struggle with dementia.

R.I.P

[storytellering]

the moment I see someone unironically make a "deadweight" nero joke or seriously refer to him as "deadweight" i know i can't trust them

[thebuttsmcgee]

With the leak being more spread around even with spoiler warnings, and because of a post I saw earlier when the news of the entire ep being leaked was first breaking, I gotta say

This really is disheartening to see. This really does hurt the whole series and the ones behind it. As of right now, we haven't gotten an official release date, yes we got the 21st from the TV listings but I mean no source from Dana or disney, and while most of us on here know about it, more casual fans and even some international fans don't, so the entire episode being leaked could hurt their excitement or love for the premieres that Always (seriously I mean ALWAYS LMAO never forget HM) get an incredible amount of notoriety, which help boost more support for the series, which JUST recently got noticed by disney.

It hurts the chance of the franchise getting more support (ie books, comics, a possible video game, more official merchant, etc) because of the less talk about the episode.

And while yes a lot of people (including Ms Dana Terrace herself) pirate the show, whether it be due to international troubles or insufficient funds to get disney+, what ultimately helps as well is the notoriety each episode gets. Anyone can pirate yet still make 100+ posts about how good each new episode was and it would help!

Yet this time it doesn't help cause this came outta nowhere and now so many are just being spoiled, getting their hype flattened and being pretty inconsiderate to the entire crew who made all of it possible, the same crew who already were disrespected by their very company. (And I do mean everyone! So many of the crew aren't given as much props and respect yet deserve it all the same!)

And ngl, it really sucks considering this is the 2nd to very LAST possible product of The Owl House as a whole. There was so much support for Thanks to Them yet FtF already seems a bit cluttered.

It's not hopeless cause there's still a chance FtF gets a huge amount of support when it officially releases. This is a huge problem tho, one that's already leaking through every big ocial media.

There's really not a point to this post other than just to say, this fucking blows, support the series in any official way you can when it officially releases (Make posts! Draw as much art as you can! Tune into the PostHoots! Make as much noise as you can!), and please be considerate to those who refuse to even look at it until the time is right.

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Just remembered I have a psychiatrist appointment so early tomorrow. And I obviously dyed my hair so recently because there's green staining on my face. I don't think it's going to look great for the bipolar diagnosis, to disclose that I was feeling impulsive and wanted to get control over something, so I dyed my hair at midnight.

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

sometimes you read something for a fandom you were crazy over years ago and you encounter one of the ships you loved back then and you just think “yeahhhh…. this is still great :) way to go younger me you were so based about this actually :)”

[cloud-somersault]

every time i hear someone sayin' they only read completed fics but also complain because there's not enough 100k slowburns, i get so irrationally mad.

how do you think fics get completed? do you think the author sits on that 100K slowburn for months and posts it all at once? maybe interact and give some engagement

[doublestarsystems]

I will inevitably write some long winded post about this later, but I love the fact that identity discourse about Aziraphale and Crowley is so complicated. Yes they are queer- but also are they? They’re queer through our human lens of viewing what queerness is, but angels and demons aren’t human queer people. They just are. I think that’s beautiful, and also a very healthy thing for a very queer fandom to talk about, because it encourages conversation about how our personal human lens affects how we perceive queerness. Are they gay? Lesbians? Trans? Ace? I don’t think so. I don’t think they’re any human queer label, really. But I do think that what’s beautiful about this show is that it lets the audience perceive the representation it needs. Crowley/Aziraphale is ace representation if that’s your interpretation, gender-fluid if that’s your interpretation, etc. That’s so cool and wonderful, it makes me so happy to see people discussing their headcanons and using any pronouns for Crowley/Aziraphale. More later on this probably, right now my brain is fuzzy.

[padfootastic]

Okay, so related to my ask about the only picture truly left of Sirius being the one of him laughing as he’s arrested, I have also decided that Narcissa sends him a copy of his and Bella’s arrest photos. At some point, Sirius gets an untraceable package and it consists solely of the photos of him and Bellatrix laughing as they get arrested (he can see the other 3 in the background but Bellatrix dominates her photo, just like she always has) and a note saying “I thought these photos were particularly fitting. For obvious reasons I couldn’t send them to you or Bella earlier, but I’m sure you’ll get the joke. Don’t die.” There’s no signature but Sirius recognizes Narcissa’s handwriting and he does indeed get the joke (it’s not particularly funny, but it’s “no matter how hard you try, you’ll never not be a Black. Nobody will ever see anything but our family when they look at you; you can never outrun the Black blood in your veins”). It’s also a tad cruel, as Sirius is very aware of how similar he and Bellatrix look in that picture and he’s just as aware that Narcissa would’ve been as well and wanted to make him think of it too, but the Blacks’ form of communication is about 20% jabs that everyone else would consider too cruel to ever be forgiven but they say those comments as conversation over breakfast so he’s not too upset. Sirius sends back an old newspaper scrap with the owl, making sure there’s no way to identify where he got it or track him with it, and scrawls “Thanks. You used to be a lot funnier” on it. He knows Narcissa will know this means he’s alive, he got the joke, and he’s not truly mad at her. I like to think that Sirius takes the photos with him to Grimmauld and the Order is rather confused about why he’s chosen to keep photos of him and his lunatic cousin laughing as they get arrested. I also choose to think Narcissa made a copy of the photos and she gives them to Bella when she gets out, and all three of them are aware just why Narcissa kept them and what her message is with them. For crack purposes, all the other Death Eaters have to see the photos and words cannot describe how unsettling it is to see Sirius Black and Bellatrix Lestrange laughing madly as they’re surrounded by over a dozen Aurors; for all that they’re on opposing sides, they look near-identical in the pictures. Narcissa and Bella are the only ones who don’t find the pictures creepy (other Death Eaters have brought it up to Lucius who shrugs helplessly and rolls his eyes because he’s lost this argument 3 times and he won’t try for a fourth time so they’re on their own)

that this also lends credence to the androgyny of sirius’ appearance pleases me on a level i cannot articulate.

also the last point lmaooo i love how detailed ur stuff is bc i can imagine it happening perfectly. the look of resignation on lucius’ face, the alarm on everyone else’s, the mix of cruelty-humor that the blacks are known for (and that make them too abrasive for everyone else)