32|she/her|Ace AF| I usually post about being a black woman with some dashes of anime, Persona and Dragon age. Hinata did nothing wrong, y'all are just some demons. If you're sensitive about people calling out privilege, I'm telling you now to hit that back button. Even if you try to whine, I'm not gonna argue with you. I'm exiling you to #blockanda. You've been warned. Pro-Finn and Pro-Hinata OTP:NaruHina, SasuNaru, FinnRey, PoeFinn, IchiHime NOTP:NaruSaku, SasuSaku, Reylo, Ichiruki,BoruSara
Unpopular theatre opinion: intermissions are bad and I wish we could just have a 2.5 hour performance uninterrupted, like people manage perfectly well at movie theaters. It always just kills my emotional immersion. Set changes and costume changes valid, but the art form could adapt in other ways. Or making the intermission experience somehow also part of the performance? Just something more interesting and intentional than dumping people out into the lobby to buy m&ms.
I do like intermissions myself, with all the getting to chat with my companions about the show and releasing excitement and leg stretching and restroom breaks and all of that, but there are probably a fair number of musicals that don't need to conform to the 2 act + intermission format and might be better off without it.
I can't imagine Les Mis or Wicked without one (although Les Mis is abnormally long anyhow) given the sheer power and finality of Defying Gravity and One Day More, but I think many shows with subtler Act I finales could be done continuously without anyone batting an eye.
I also do think intermissions can be quite helpful in emphasizing time skips between the two acts, but shows without a time skip between the two acts could work well continuously.
And for what it's worth I have seen a handful of people argue that movies (at least the long ones) should have intermissions, but that is a whole other discussion.
the ACTORS need the break 😭😭 movies don't have intermissions because they aren't being performed live. theater is highly physical and even if it isn't like a high energy show they're still under blinding lights for hours and sweating to death. they need a break to breathe lmao
If you enjoy labor rights & union mandated breaks: yes, that ALWAYS INCLUDES ARTISTS. This should be obvious for live performance art.
What's wild is this feels like a spillover convo from kino/film buff social media.
Cinematically, the death of the intermission is largely due to the shift to both digital film formats, and to gapless reel to reel tech, coinciding with film length increases in the latter 20th century and onward (becoming increasingly popular beyond the old limited realms of religious/historical epic or theater adaptation). Which is why now, people have been pushed into recognizing the logistics of, "gee, actually, now that the limit is me, I DO need to pee more than I need to prioritize keeping the 'sanctity of art' on a pedestal" + post-pandemic-onset, people recognizing how uncomfortable it actually is to spend hours in one spot vs. watching films from home (to say nothing of disability access or continued pandemic precautions).
And this is one of those convos that's largely trending because Killers of the Flower Moon (which is at the moment a financial floppington flopiana for probably somewhat related reasons!) is a painful 3hrs 26min long with no potty breaks, and relentlessly depressing material. For those of us who grew up in the VHS dinosaur stone age, if you ever knew anybody with a box set of Ben Hur, which was about 6 VHSes long, a shelf full of videos, this is 6 minutes less than that— aka, 14 minutes less than The Ten Commandments, aka, about a half hour less than the absolutely brain numbing runtime of Gone With the Wind. It is five minutes LONGER than the excellent but sometimes interminable feeling Fiddler On the Roof. It is a full hour longer than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which somehow feels longer than Fiddler. And that's before you add on preview trailers.
So, of course, "film bros" are arguing adding a break in would be a "slippery slope to censorship" & artistic bastardization if you just ALLOW theaters or studios to make cuts in film or split showings (the studios do, in fact, already do this; producers & studios have more of a say in edits than directors & certainly more than actors do), and telling people to "just toughen up & learn to hold it" like 4 hours is not HALF OF A LEGAL WORK DAY & like people want to be unable to pee on their free time, recreationally. And of course, my fave, the most egregious— and boy, do I wish I was lying and this was NOT something I've already seen repeatedly on X, née Twitter: "the Osage have been through so much, you can sit through a movie for 3 hours." (??!)
Babes. I gotta tell y'all. UTIs and pelvic floor strain are not the Osage Nation agenda. And my family very specifically did not catch hell during the Reign of Terror for my bladder to be under a Scorcese dictatorship.
Anyway, TL;DR: people need to stop obsessing over treating performers and audiences like they're entitled to others' bodies to be automatons for their entertainment or artistic satisfaction & validation, and in the words of the great CW television network,
Remember when the NRA told doctors to “stay in their lane” RE gun violence and #thisismylane trended as a result?
One of the tweets I saw was a surgeon who’d taken a picture of her OR, having just finished surgery on a young man who’d been shot. Blood. Everywhere.
This bloke retweeted her, mentioning that he worked as a cleaner in a hospital and had had to clean up stuff like this and worse.
Surgeon replied to him (and went up *greatly* in my estimation) and, despite living in different countries, thanked him for his hard work.
I can’t find the tweets sadly, but hers went something like;
“Without a clean and sterile operating room to work in, my team, our skills and the best medicines in the world are next to useless. You are doing invaluable work, without which my work would be impossible.”
I really do not care why men are lonely and hate women to cope. I’m lonely and u know what I do ? finger myself like a normal person . They have no excuse
And like mens mental health is not declining bc girls are mean to them online. Everyone’s mental health is declining bc this world as a whole is built around profit and sucks the life out of all our communities. We’re all in this shit hole together but men think if they can seize control over womens lives then everything will be okay. So to say women complaining about it online causes this is just honestly a sadistic joke and there’s something broken in your brain.
Penelope Featherington and the Quality of Friendship
If Penelope used her wit, even her cruel wit, but any wit, more, out loud in front of the ton, she would have suitors. Philippa found a suitor over cheese, for pity’s sake. “Lady Whistledown’s“ plant puns received praise from her sister’s suitor. Prudence is having trouble because she has neither wit nor wits, not because she is too mean (and they’re all sabotaged by their mother’s “cutting edge” fashion taste). The man Eloise danced with, whom she called out for trying to “not-like-other-girls" her, would probably have gone crazy for mean Penelope. If Penelope were as vocally, publicly mean as Cressida, she would either be in her group or smashing that group. (I am not saying that being mean in public would have been the best of Penelope's available choices, but it would be more honest and, ironically, do less damage.)
Her mother pays only the most cursory lip service to Penelope’s getting married and has probably already begun to think of her as the daughter who will stay with her through her old age. But if Penelope allowed herself to speak and let either her nice or sharp sides (or both) be seen by more people, there would be suitors.
Alas, then she would have to consider other possibilities besides her long-time crush (or love, look at it how you will), and that is what she is most afraid of doing. She cannot let go of the dream of Colin, and so she embraces Whistledown, at first perhaps as a one-time lark (she tries to get out of debuting, remember, but her ability to obtain content for her “blog,” her “great” life’s work, becomes intrinsically tied to being in society). This (possible) lark becomes an identity, perhaps her truest identity, one that allows her wicked thoughts a free rein. Yet Cressida Cowper, the person outside of her family who has the best claim to be Penelope's nemesis, is rarely seen in the Whistledown papers as far as the audience can divine, except for the occasional knock on her fashion choices (with bonus slut shaming). The one time that springs to mind is aimed at running a modiste out of business to curry favor with another modiste, Mme. Delacroix, all in order to eliminate a perceived threat to Whistledown and gain leverage over Delacroix to obtain her assistance with—you guessed it—errands for Whistledown.
At first, Penelope uses Whistledown to lift the Bridgertons up. They are a family of “perfectly handsome sons and perfectly beautiful daughters.” If the audience never finds out who Whistledown is, it scarcely seems to matter at this point; she could just be one of any number of anonymous people in the ton and not part of the story at all. Whistledown uplifts Daphne at her debut. It is Whistledown, not the Queen, who names Daphne “a diamond of the first water” (something apparently forgotten in season two).
But then Anthony gets in the way of Daphne’s suitors, and perhaps Eloise offhandedly mentions it to Penelope (“I can’t think why she wants to deal with them anyway but Anthony is being overbearing” or similar), and Penelope realizes she can criticize Daphne, the pretty Bridgerton who apparently never thought of being friends with her or guiding her. Or the sister Eloise is kind of annoyed with (but would never really want to see hurt, which one would think Penelope has to realize). According to Daphne, Lady Whistledown all but declares her “unmarriageable,” a devastating fate for most Regency ladies and something Penelope fears herself to be. Lady Whistledown is powerful, and Penelope has gotten a taste for that power.
Penelope has crossed over into Whistledown’s dark side as early as this, striking out at someone she perceives as being above her and cutting her down to size. (In the books, nothing on this level occurs, although one cannot go so far as to say Lady Whistledown is a benign force there.) Yes, on the show, she is willing to “help out” by printing the Berbrooke gossip, but is she helping out? It makes good copy for her. It’s actually something of a scoop. But what if it were a lie? Has Lady Whistledown ever fact checked any of the things she has heard people talk about? How, even, could she?
For some reason, she begins to take shots at the Queen, a reckless and nonsensical thing to do. The Queen may have some input with the Prince Regent (this is never clear in Bridgerton but in the prequel-sequel-spinoff series, Queen Charlotte, we see it played out at least on a personal level), but her domain is the social season, and she has the time at least to set others on Whistledown’s trail. And what has Charlotte done to Penelope? Someone posted that the Queen looked at her with disgust (she wasn’t impressed with the three Featheringtons’ joint debut, perhaps, but that was hardly directed at Penelope personally).
While in her first season, Penelope tries to be a little discreet about her secret identity, in her second season, she becomes more obvious. When someone in a group of girls says that Whistledown will not write anything because they are all in the country, Penelope asks if she thinks so and smiles a secretive smile that could not be more blatant.
Lady Bridgerton puts Eloise and Penelope into that group of girls hoping Eloise, and perhaps Penelope too, will make more friends. Eloise asks why the girls can’t say no to their mothers’ edicts regarding suitors and is met with shocked looks. (Eloise is criticized online for this as well, for this apparently means she is inconsiderate of these girls who cannot on any account question anything, but it is entirely possible that one or two of them thought about this later and their lives were changed in even small ways by it. The idea that every woman in the Regency era never questioned anything or did anything is not true anyway, and, if it were, this is still Regency fantasy, even without dragons.)
Neither Eloise nor Penelope makes a new friend. For Penelope, who secretly longs to be part of the social life of the ton, not on the outskirts, this is a huge missed opportunity, if only she would realize it. In addition to friendship to offer, some of these girls probably have brothers or cousins or even a young uncle whom they could introduce to Penelope or even to her annoying sister, Prudence. Perhaps more importantly, Penelope might begin to see the other girls as people, not just fodder for her society pages, and she might come out into the light instead of remaining in the shadows with Lady Whistledown. But she might have to let go of the dream of Colin, the thing she most dreads doing, the thing she cannot bear to do.
When Edwina exchanges a few pleasantries with Penelope, Penelope could also use that as a springboard for a friendship, but she instead walks off to talk with Colin and never sends a note to Edwina or makes any attempt at friendship, even when Edwina is spending a great deal of time with the Bridgertons. Eloise appears to have the beginning of a friendship, or at least a mutual admiration society, with Edwina’s sister, Kate. The only friends Penelope appears to want are Eloise and Colin, and she gets annoyed when the former interrupts her while she is talking with the latter, but she never takes the step of sharing her feelings for Colin with Eloise. Although Eloise might have been puzzled by those feelings had she done so, it is difficult to believe she would be anything other than supportive of her friend, as she was when she divined that Penelope enjoyed all the parties and social whirl—the opposite of what Penelope does for Eloise when she confides her burgeoning feelings to Theo.
There may be several issues of her paper that only reveal engagements prior to the official announcements or critique fashion choices, including the Featheringtons’ (which would work to her benefit if her mother would pay attention—unfortunately, she can’t just write “Penelope Featherington looks better in pink, Lady Featherington”), and maybe she doesn’t write about couples sneaking off to the coat closet, but she is not kind. She does not wield her considerable power to help anyone unless it is in Whistledown’s best interest and will sell more papers or in line with Penelope’s current agenda, the things she believes will achieve what she wants. Breaking up Marina and Colin, getting Eloise away from the print shop and her trail, not letting Eloise do a mock version of Whistledown because Whistledown is hers—these are Penelope’s goals at different points. Penelope could tell Eloise the truth about Marina (at least Marina would not have been publicly shamed and maybe the Bridgertons would have even helped her in some way) before writing about her, the truth about Whistledown before writing about Eloise, but she does not. Before writing about Eloise, she could go to the Queen and confess. She does not.
Penelope claims, rather disingenuously and conveniently, that the Queen will never believe her. It is absurd to think Penelope has left no trail, no evidence that she is Whistledown. Even if she has burned all her drafts after sending the final to the printer’s, the printer will remember her as the person who came to make arrangements in the guise of an Irish servant (particularly as she spoke quite insultingly to him). The Queen can’t execute anyone. She could hire an assassin, in theory, but this isn’t Game of Thrones and Charlotte isn’t a monster. Penelope could go to the Queen and offer to work with her. She could confess to Eloise before Eloise figures it out, and they could come up with a plan together. She could just take the consequences of what she has done and live with them. She had other choices besides throwing her friend under the omnibus (which didn’t exist yet, but, oh, well) to “save” her.
Penelope could confess to the Queen and offer to prove she is Whistledown by having the Queen give her a false piece of gossip and allowing herself to be placed in a room in the palace while she writes it up as a mock Whistledown column. Surely Penelope is clever enough to do that, isn’t she?
Penelope tells Mme. Delacroix that the Queen wants to be flattered, so Penelope knows this. She knows the Queen isn’t out to destroy Whistledown. She could write an issue with something flattering the Queen, but she doesn’t. She writes a post that will separate Eloise from someone she has come to care for and from the people who are not rich but want to do something in the world.
For Eloise to have a cross-class love interest is not madness, although unusual in the world of the story. Theo is a printer’s apprentice and a writer who could very well own his own business someday, and Eloise is working on a novel, or at least was in season one. Both of them could be published someday beyond political pamphlets, although those are fine too. (And, yes, Penelope and Colin both write too.)
Of course, this wouldn’t make Theo a “gentleman” by the definition of the time, but Lady Mary wed a man who was not in the ton, and, although she hoped her daughters would not have to choose between love and security, it is doubtful that she regretted her choice. Her husband also wound up with a very good job in India as secretary to a royal family, and, had he died later, their financial circumstances might have been better. It seems as if Lady Mary's parents refused to put a brave face on things and instead hid away, but the Queen’s only rebuke for Lady Mary is that she did not say goodbye to her, not that she married “down” or against her family’s wishes. Eloise’s family would probably not refuse to see her as the Sheffields did with Lady Mary if she were to marry "down" (Daphne could remind Violet that she said she wished for Daphne to have the very best, not in rank but in love), and not being invited to society parties would hardly be a loss to Eloise.
Many of the people who say this would ruin her younger sisters' chances also argue that every scandal the Bridgertons go through is short-lived (which is somewhat the case) and they can never be truly ruined. (Although it’s unlikely the show will go the Theo route, more's the pity, if it were to do so, one would expect this to be a long enough road that Francesca's first marriage would already have happened, and we know her second husband wouldn't care about her sister's so-called scandal anyway. And Hyacinth, well, Hyacinth is rather similar to Eloise in many ways.)
Theo was an important friendship to Eloise and going to those meetings an important part of her growth, facts Penelope would realize about her friend if she would listen to her instead of gaslighting her.
But Eloise is not Penelope’s best friend. Penelope’s best friend is Lady Whistledown. It is Lady Whistledown whom Penelope protects, and she is the one to whom Penelope always turns when she has a problem. She scarcely shares a problem with Eloise outside of her confusion about where babies come from. She never comes to Eloise about her father’s death (which, to be fair, scarcely seems to faze her, and that is probably understandable); about Marina, the only other person who is close to being Penelope’s friend (and it can’t be because she respects Marina’s secret); about her feelings for Colin; about how to get her mother off this yellow kick. When Eloise asks her about herself, Penelope almost invariably changes the subject. There is one memorable and revealing conversation while they lie on the grass in which Penelope extols the joys and power of not being seen, of being invisible, of being a wallflower. It’s a fascinating speech, and she has every opportunity to tell Eloise about Whistledown after it, for good or ill, to ‘fess up, but she doesn't. Instead, she continues down her dark path.
By the end of the season, Penelope has destroyed her friendship with Eloise, and she has had her illusions of Colin destroyed by overheard words (not staying long enough to hear what follows, whether it’s “Penelope deserves better than me” or “Penelope is like a sister to me” or "Who would want to court Penelope?"). Her bridges are effectively burned and to rebuild them would take meticulous care, diligent work, and more than a little self-reflection, as well as attempts at apology and amends.
Lady Whistledown is the only friend Penelope has left.
Special thanks to @dollypopup and @torchwood-99, who have written so many thoughtful posts.
Reynolds putting his hand on George’s shoulder in 1x04 while they were waiting for Charlotte is such an under discussed scene.
👏SO. 👏MUCH. 👏HAPPENED. 👏IN. 👏5.👏 SECONDS.👏
- He noticed George losing control. Because of course he did.
- He looked around to ensure no one was looking. Protecting his King’s privacy.
- He then made an incredibly weighed decision in reaching out to touch him. He had to wager that it would be received well by George. That it wouldn’t be seen. And that it would help at all.
He is, as Brimsley is to Charlotte, the closest, yet the farthest away.
Okay so I haven’t seen this talked about but it nearly DESTROYED me so I must say something about it. The scene where Brimsley goes to Reynolds and tells him that Charlotte has written a letter to her brother and she thinks of leaving — that was when because of his love towards Reynolds, he was willing to break the RULES. He was willing to be insufficient in his duties “Shall I fail to deliver it?” He was ready to be unreliable, to do what he had sworn not to do — sabotage Charlotte on purpose. Reynolds wasn’t ready to do that. Brimsley would risk EVERYTHING for Reynolds but to Reynolds, duty always outweighed EVERYTHING. That was the moment I knew the end was coming — inevitably so. I can’t remember crying harder to any moment in the show.
My family is on the brink of ruin. I am nearly certain every last one of my brothers and sisters secretly despise me. My own mother, at that. Despite the fact I have lived the better part of my life for them. And yet still, all I find myself thinking about, all I find myself being able to breathe for... is you. Do you think that I want to be in this position? Contending with these thoughts of wanting to be nowhere except with you. Wanting to run away with you.
Imagine evolving capsaicin specifically to stop mammals from eating your fruits, and then a mammal comes along that not only will eat your fruits, but likes them specifically because of the capsaicin, so much that it starts using its weird paws to distribute and care for your seeds, which turns into a strong selective force that literally starts evolving you into producing MORE capsaicin and makes you a WAY more successful and wider ranged species than you ever were before
simply because this mammal LOVES Pain Chemical. that evolved specifically to produce pain in mammals. It's not that the capsaicin isn't WORKING. It's just that these freaks like it.
This is the same mammal with social instincts so goddamn strong that they literally try to form social bonds with their predators, and end up evolving the predators into a new species that fits into their social communities as a form of mutualistic symbiosis, and exists in several different forms with unique morphology and behaviors based on the function they perform.
Instead of, I don't know, EVOLVING TO BE FASTER, this animal finds a faster animal and sits on it. Which shouldn't even work because the faster animal is a prey animal and this animal is a predator, but SOMEHOW they FORM A SOCIAL BOND WITH THE PREY. So they can sit on it while it runs fast. And somehow the prey animal?? is cool with this?? and benefits from this relationship???
Literally how can you hate humans. Humans are possibly the most hilarious thing evolution has ever done.
eat poison plants, decide they like getting poisoned, and evolve the plants to poison them more
evolve to not have hair, but they find mammals with thick fluffy hair and put the hair on themselves, and evolve the mammals to produce extra hair so they can both have a warm coat of hair
split up their parasitic lice species into two separate species because they start taking other animals' hair and putting it on themselves so much
learn how to set things on fire on purpose. maintain body temperature by just standing beside some wood that's on fire instead of literally any normal option
figure out that their prey tastes better and is easier to digest when they hold it over a fire after killing it. get smarter because they digest food so good after it's been held over a fire.
find a poisonous plant and try washing it in boiling water until they don't die when they eat it anymore
go across the ocean by making a floating nest despite not being able to breathe underwater, drink ocean water, or even swim naturally
drink milk from other mammals even though they can't digest it and it makes them sick. Evolve those mammals to produce more milk than their babies can drink so they can drink the milk. Some members of the species evolve to be able to digest milk because they were so hellbent on drinking it.
find flowers, bugs and minerals that are nice colors and crush them up to try to turn other things that color
eat mushrooms that make their nervous systems malfunction because they like malfunctioning their nervous systems
humans worldwide looking up into the celestial vault of stars a million light years away, separated from Earth by the deadly cold and emptiness of space: I bet there are guys up there to form social bonds with
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