I deeply relate to Howl because I too get myself to do hard things by gaslighting myself into thinking I’m not doing them, until I’m so far along that I actually have to do them
Hamilton was the show that got me into musical theater, and i still regard a lot of its songs fondly, and naturally, it is very popular, so i get why it's winning,
But, I am also very passionate about Gentleman's Guide so, here's propaganda:
Gentleman's Guide is a musical comedy about Monty Navarro, a young man who discovers that his mother was noble born, and ends up murdering six of his cousins in order to become earl.
My favorite song 'Sibella' is a song Monty sings to Sibella Hallward, the woman he's in love with, and with whom he has an affair, because she is already married to another man (this song isn't actually funny, it doesn't feed into the comedy, but, it is really good, my personal favorite love song ever)
[TW: Flashing lights at the beginning of the video]
other iconic songs include 'I've decided to Marry You', a song which takes place right after 'Sibella', when Phoebe D'Ysquith, the other woman he loves, barges into Monty's room to ask for his hand in marriage (the performance starts at 1:00)
and 'Stop! Wait! What?!', which takes place during Phoebe and Monty's marriage, after he's become the earl, when a police officer comes to arrest Monty for the one murder he didn't commit
#somebody’s poll got me to listen to#a gentleman’s guide to love and murder#and it was honestly iconic#and for the next week I had poison in my pocket stuck in my head#which should probably be concerning but was in fact quite entertaining#Hamilton is as iconic as ever#but a gentleman’s guide to love and murder is deliciously zany and entertaining
I know the look is very similar and they're both gangsters, but it irks me when people seriously compare Kaz Brekker to Thomas Shelby, since Thomas Shelby puts women in positions where they're in incredible danger of sexual assault repeatedly, and has a deep destain for sex workers. They are Not the same.
Eugenia Kingsdaughter
So I finally got the courage to read Moira’s Pen and then I went hunting for posts to help me cope emotionally, and now I NEED to talk about “Gitta” because. You guys. Everyone is talking like Gen and Irene were terrible parents and both their kids ran away and everything is sad. And completely sleeping on our girl Eugenia!
First off, the very person who says it’s a sad story is demonstrated to be an unreliable narrator who doesn’t have all the facts. (”Some of the [volumes] are missing”, “[Eddis’ grandson] ordered…”).
Secondly, let’s look at what happened.
Eugenia ran away. There was no politically-arranged marriage to a Braeling prince, no diplomatic exchange, no nothing. She ran away!
And ~somehow~ she just waltzed up and ended up RUNNING THE BRAELS.
The Braels. The country that betrayed her parents, her country, her god.
Can you imagine the LOOK on Yorn Fordad’s face when she arrived?
Eugenia, daughter of the man who stole three countries, who stole a country herself. We know that Eugenia isn’t just a princess. She is the next Thief, the next chosen of Eugenides-the-God. MWT is careful to mention that she died “falling” asleep.
“We don’t know the queen’s reasons,” said Tykus. Neither do we, since we don’t get to see things from her POV, but we know that she refused to marry her daughter or granddaughter back into the Ephestalian royal family… until Gitta, who had a look in her eyes the day she was born that Eugenia recognized. Gitta she happily sends back to the land of her birth, almost as her last act.
Gitta, who Eugenia wanted to name after herself. The only battle Eugenia ever lost, Hennis tells Gitta, is when their father named her Gittavjøre instead. Well-born.
Eugenia, who ran away and stole a country, never lost a damn thing.
movie vs book (i adore them both)
How could you leave this in the notes, excellent addition
Actually, this makes the childification of Michael in the movie when he’s 15 in the book really funny:
Sophie, a 20-ish year old woman from a fantasy land where getting married at 16 or 17 does not seem to be unusual: Yes, this is a young man who is almost an adult.
Howl, a man in his late 20s from our world: This is a BABY and he does BABY things.
I think I've seen you mention how you love the way the Queen's Thief series portrays man's relationship to the divine? I'm really interested in reading more of your thoughts on that!
Yes!! Not to say there are no other fictional deities that show something true about God, but the Queen's Thief gods get a lot of unique things: particularly, I think, the Old Testament sense that the gods are invested in a particular people, for that people's good.
The Queen's Thief gods reveal themselves not for their own sake, but for the sake of relationship. We don't get a lot of indications in the Queen's Thief books that the gods need people to worship them, in an American Gods sort of sense. When Eugenides ends The Thief knowing the gods personally, that's not because the gods want to get something out of him, it's just because they want him to know them, because they know him and are looking out for him. A god that tells his servant "go to bed" and "stop whining" but not "glory shall be your reward" is an intensely personal god, who cares about the minutia of human life--and not in a pop-culture-guardian-angel-tethered-to-our-emotions way, but as a real Person with wisdom and insight and emotions outside our own (I find Jesus less exasperated now than I did when I was younger, but there's still quite a lot of moments where I can tell He's exasperated but it doesn't change the direction of His love, and the Queen's Thief gods are exactly that way).
The other side of this is that the gods' actions are all for the good of their chosen people of the Little Peninsula, but often hidden under a strange providence. Cutting off Gen's hand? Sending the Mede to intercept them at the top of the cliff path? Tricking Kamet into going with Costis? (Back to that in a sec.) Those seem like awful things! Betrayal and trickery and pain. But the gods are so clear that they do all that for the good of their people, so that the people of Eddis can be saved from the eruption and the queen of Attolia can have her heart restored, and Gen can have his heart's desire. That love that cares for both individual hearts and large-scale health is so much like God's, as is the way it often comes out on the other side of suffering and terror and despair.
The way the narrative treats the Mede also avoids the rival-gods error of pagan/fantasy pantheons, because the Mede don't have deities working for their protection the same way the Peninsulans do, or at least, not that we see. Instead, Ennikar and Immakuk are on the side of friendship and love. They protect Kamet and Costis either for their own sake, or for the sake of the Peninsula winning the war, or maybe both. That keeps divinity in the books squarely on the good side of morality, instead of setting up a divine conflict to parallel the human one.
Mostly, I think, it's the wildness of the personal relationships to the gods that rings true for me. That's exactly how our God works. And then Turner avoids other issues that would taint it.
thinking about the scene where merry pledges his service to theoden and then immediately says “youre my father figure now. btw.” and theoden is like “☝🏻temporarily”
theoden watching this plucky young guy say theodens his new dad and then proceed to demonstrate a complete disregard for theoden’s opinion that he should not go to war: hey i know who you would get along with
theoden lying underneath his dead horse watching the witch king of angmar get fucking obliterated: ok yes perhaps i should have foreseen this when i introduced them. thats on me.
Maybe the thing that makes Austen the gold standard of romance is her focus on "esteem" as the all-important factor in a relationship. Your partner has to be someone you can respect. They have to have traits you admire. You have to value them, not just for the security they can provide or the feelings they give you, but as a separate, unique person.
This is so different from the bad romances I see in so many other places, where the two people are attracted to each other almost against their will. They'll be like, "I hate him and everything he stands for, but I just can't stop thinking about him," or the girl will obsess over the guy's body or whatever. We're supposed to believe that this attraction overcomes all the obstacles so they'll fall in love. But as a reader, I'm looking on like, "Okay, but do you even like him? What is there that you find admirable about him? Do you respect his judgement, his skills, his values? Why am I supposed to believe he'll be a good partner for you just because you stopped bickering for five minutes?"
Austen doesn't forget that the purpose of a romance is not to find someone who makes you happy now, but someone who'll be a good partner to help you navigate the rest of your adult life. You have to engage your mind as well as your heart to find someone that you can respect as a separate person before you can join hands in marriage.
The final results are in:
Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 defeated Falsettos by 14.8% and is the CHAMPION of the Best Snubbed Musical World Cup!
Honestly I wish SOC would get picked by the Lockwood and Co creative team
Some of my personal favorite underrated Kaz moments from the books.
I don’t know what my neighbors are listening to, but from one floor down it sounds like bees buzzing. This wouldn’t be concerning if I hadn’t watched Lockwood and Co
I just caught myself drawing spirals in the sand at the beach someone send help I don’t think I’m ok