to be clear i also enjoy a throuple and also a love triangle but i feel like people treat those as a binary when they are actually two ends of a delicious spectrum 💖
things that are ways three people could interface sexually that are not a throuple or a love triangle:
- desire triangulation where person a becomes obsessed with person b because person c loves person b
- desire triangulation where person a micromanages person b's sex life with person c
- jealousy and jealousy games
- voyeurism. perhaps even of the unconsensual variety
- infidelity
- purely emotional infidelity 💖
- one person is in the cuck chair. physically emotionally spiritually sexually
- same as above but the person in the cuck chair is domming
- explicitly v shaped polyamory
- desire triangulation where person a tries to *become* person b because person b has person c
- desire triangulation where persons a and b both use person c to express their desire for each other. and person c is kind of left in the cold even though they're the middle
"autistic people need instructions for every simple task" okay how about we talk about the neurotypicals not following clear instructions. what do you mean it didn't work the way you wanted, i gave you the instructions. oh you didn't follow them? you didn't see where i clearly indicated the directions you were supposed to follow for this task? and you're shocked it didn't turn out right? you decided to pull a Jared I'm 19 and go rogue? you're surprised the road less travelled isn't fucking paved because no one travels it? do you get off on this
Very curious to hear your thoughts on Bathilde (and Giselle)
This is the best day of my LIFE omg thank you so much for this question! I do have many thoughts on Bathilde, in no particular order:
1. First of all, I think it's interesting to note that out of every character in this ballet, Bathilde absolutely has the widest range of variation from one production to another in terms of how she's portrayed. Like, in cruder terms, "is Bathilde an outright cunt? Yes or no?" I think it's a fruitful question to ask! And I don't believe there's a definitive "correct" answer! The nastiest, bitchiest, cuntiest Bathilde I've ever seen personally is in Royal Danish Ballet's 2016 production:
Ohhhhh my goddddddd fucking work, you fucking whore. The green. The riding crop. The long-ass braid. The way she drinks the wine Giselle serves to her and she doesn't even like it. She looks and acts like a villain from a mid-2000s animated Barbie movie, I LOVE IT. The best part is the necklace— it's tiny. I really tried my best with these screenshots but they don't do her justice at all, you have to see the way she moves around the stage. Here's a link to the full recording, Bathilde enters at 25:20.
Honorable mention for yet another cunty-Bathilde goes to Akram Khan's 2017 production:
Her costume here is quite reminiscent of Odile, especially with that black feather headpiece. The whole thing with her dropping the glove, also. Jesus Christ. Khan also has Bathilde catching a vibe from Hilarion at one point, which is truly inspired, I respect it. (By far the BEST thing about Khan's production is his rendition of Myrtha. But if I think about Myrtha for too long I'm going to need to be chained to the floor by my neck, so, moving on.)
Aside from cunty-Bathilde, I appreciate a mellower version of her character, I really enjoy it when she's played as being just like, tired. She's on a hunting excursion in the countryside. It's smelly. It's muddy. She's over it. She's not a bitch, she's just itchy and sore and wants to go home, we've all been there.
2. There's something to be said about how she and Giselle are the two women in Albrecht's life (the fiance and the mistress) blah blah "Giselle gives him everything Bathilde can't" blah blah, I'm not particularly interested in that angle so I'm not going to get into that. What I am interested in, concerning Bathilde as a foil for Giselle, is the total divergence of the 'princess' from the 'ballerina'.
In the ballet medium at large, the 'princess' and the 'ballerina' are almost always the same character. Aurora, Odette, Raymonda, and Aspicia are the most obvious examples but I'd also put forward Gamsatti (she's a villain but she needs to be played by a seriously good dancer, so she counts!) as well as Sugar Plum (the socio-economic class system of Candyland is a mystery, as is the extent of Sugar Plum's material wealth, but come on, just look at her.)
The point I'm trying to make here is that when Giselle and Bathilde stand side by side, we see a dancer who is not a princess (read: materially impoverished) next to a 'princess' who is not a dancer.
Bathilde is the least-dancey princess I can think of in all of ballet canon. I mean, we at least get to see Rosaline amongst the corps during Dance of the Knights. Bathilde on the other hand acts as, like, a steward of the dance, if that makes any sense. It is very very striking to me that Giselle's Act 1 variation is performed not for Albrecht, but for Bathilde.
3. Speaking of class differences, I firmly believe that the single most excruciating moment in all of Act 1 ought to be the moment when like, Bathilde is sitting down with her gorgeous velvet gown spilling out behind her and Giselle lowers herself to the ground and starts rubbing her face on it like a dog. Ohhh goddd. It hurts to watch! Like girl, nooo!!!!
This turns my stomach SO much worse than any moment in the Mad Scene because at least the Mad Scene is cathartic. This is just bleak.
4. The gifting of the necklace, obviously. Oh my god. I don't even know where to start with that one, so I won't right now. I might make a longer post about it in the future.
5. One has to wonder what Bathilde and Albrecht's marriage was like following the events of Act 2. I like to imagine that from that point onwards, Albrecht behaves like someone who was abducted by aliens, had his brain and asshole probed for 12 continuous hours, and then got discarded back down to earth like a wad of old receipts. He's just fucked. Oh well.
hi it's me again getting emotional about anne bonny and sexuality in black sails. something about how during sex scenes, she's almost always at least partially clothed...
the first/one of the only times we see her without a shirt, even though it's the prelude to a threesome, it isn't framed as a ~sexy moment~. the first thing we see are the scars on her back, and the reactions from jack and max aren't "whoo that's hot, can't wait to have sex!", they're more like "wow this is a big deal that our beloved feral dog is trusting us." it might even be the first time Max has seen those scars?
we immediately learn something about anne's past, her relationship with her gender, her vulnerability with jack and max in this moment - all without a single line of dialogue. and it's while she's undressing, without being overly sexualized!
also, imo anne's sex scenes tend to focus on her emotionality (her conflicting feelings about sleeping with max, later her jealousy about max and jack). I have Thoughts about how black sails portrays women during sex (esp in season 1), but that never applies to anne - her body and her sexuality don't exist in this show for titillation, but to show more about her character. this isn't to say that sex scenes can't exist just to be sexy, but it feels so rare to have a female character whose sexuality is more than that: it's part of the storytelling.
I really want more practical-effects body horror in movies. Like i think we should hiring trained dancers to do insane shit with their limbs on screen and move in ways that send you straight to the uncanny valley
One thing about Obsession (2026) that I enjoyed was that it almost asks you to feel empathy for the entity possessing Nikki as well as the real one. Like, obviously the things she's doing are horrific and fucked up, but I think the scene where Bear is asking her to "just be Nikki!" and she eventually just desperatly screams "I can't be Nikki!" does a really good job of showcasing the entity's inner feelings. She's been created with the sole purpose of loving this guy more than anyone else but no matter how perfect it is or how much he claims to love her, its not her that he loves, its Nikki. And any time she stops pretending to be Nikki, he reacts (albeit rightfully) with disgust and horror. She can't be Nikki because Nikki would never love Bear, and so Bear will never love her.
Just saw the interview where Curry Barker explained that it's totally possible to get a normal wish from the One Wish Willow, and I love the way they did that so much. The reason Obsession happened isn't because it's trying to twist Bear's desires into something evil. It's not even because he phrased his want wrong. Obsession happened because Bear got his hands on a magic item that could do anything in existence, and chose to force someone to fall in love with him, which is an inherently evil thing to do.
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