relationship status: I'm aroace and haven't dated in 12 years so it'll be surprising if this ever changes from single.
fav colour: cerulean
song stuck in my head: uhhhhhh absolutely nothing. tho yesterday it was 'Home' from The Wiz, performed by Brandi Carlile, for the penultimate episode of Ted Lasso. Also from the same episode, 'Fought & Lost' by Sam Ryder, ft. guitar solo from Brian May.
last song listened to: well now it's those two, but a minute ago it was 'Weightless' by Marconi Union, which was composed to be as calming as possible and is my sleep music when I need to drown out sounds.
last google duckduckgo: "totk what do you use naydra pieces for" because i'm playing the new Zelda
dream trip: uh idk that i have any? or i have like a dozen. right now it appeals to me to go somewhere tropical to swim in warm water
anything i want right now: small: some chocolate or snacks would be great. medium: hanging out with my dad and close friends i haven't seen in months. huge: i've been thinking more and more about wanting a child. (requires some effort considering the 'aroace' part)
@arqueete tagged me, SO LET'S SEE i'm gonna tag:
@bonethief @athousandordinarylemons @ruffboijuliaburnsides @taibhsearachd @xhanathon @asylos @singaroundelay @infernalhera @finalgwen @gallifreyburning
Are you familiar with a variation of the Broadway Chess script that some regional theaters were using around 1990 where at the very end it's revealed that Anatoly was (as I understand it) skeptical all along that Florence would actually get her father back so he took matters into his own hands and tracked him down, so despite everything else it ends with her reuniting with her father again? Do you think the themes of Chess still work if someone tries to make the ending less depressing?
are any of us ever truly "familiar" with Chess? can we ever really ""know"" what Chess is ”””about”””? (no, I did not know about this version, and I would be very interested to hear more)
LOVE the idea of Anatoly doing a whole investigative crusade purely because I 100% do not believe he's got the skills or free time to manage it. yes, king, spend your kids' college fund on private investigators so that you can pull a largely symbolic victory back out of the clutches of the Soviet government.
alright I wrote out this whole thing about Anatoly’s central character flaw and his role in the narrative but honestly? this isn’t about him. scrap that. the question is (In My Unpaid And Unprofessional Opinion) Does Chess Still Work If The Characters Get A Win? and the answer is...depends on how you frame the win, I guess?
we all know the “theme” of Chess is “what if these two characters were in love? :) isn’t it sad that some romances are short? :( :(” but the actual content of Chess is a combination of “do you see me? can you see me? am I real to you? god, I’m so lonely. will you stay with me? will you come back? are you going to leave? are you listening to me?” and “fuck it, I’ll do it myself” and also “haha wouldn’t it be fucked up if WE were the pawns in some larger game?” as the story unfolds, the audience squints past all the songs about how your boyfriend will break up with you eventually and realizes just how much work is being poured into rigging the world championship to have the most politically desirable outcome. then you get that beat at the end where it’s hammered in that this isn’t even really about chess. big reveal! the championship was a soft power tradeoff for a prisoner release or a hostage exchange or something else so far above the scope of some guys who are really good at a board game that all their personal struggles are reduced almost to irrelevance. it doesn’t matter if Anatoly wins or Freddie wins or Viigand wins or America wins or Russia wins. it’s a fucking game. there’s always next year.
but also: the stupid little personal struggles matter. they have to on a story level, because the audience doesn’t give a shit about the prisoner exchange. hell, the audience barely knows about the prisoner exchange. what the audience cares about is the characters, and what we’ve learned about the characters by the end of the musical is that they can’t win. they can’t beat this game. they’re not players, they’re (forgive me one more time for the chess metaphor that I am compelled to lean into) pawns. they’re too small to ever outsmart or outplay or evade their governments, the depersonalization of fame, or the machinations of history. the characters can’t beat the system - the system is too powerful - but they’re still people and people want things, so the characters can still have personal victories.
alright, you can’t have Anatoly defeat The Philosophical and Social Construct of the USSR. but what does he want? self-fulfillment, a divorce, and independence from the burden of national success or failure. can he get that? can he figure out a way to be Anatoly Sergievsky, Russian Man Who Is The Best At Chess (But Not Because He Is Russian)? Chess takes a shot at that angle in the West End version where Anatoly wins the championship - which reads as a betrayal! he’s choosing personal success over saving Florence’s father! - as a huge fuck you to the manipulations of Molokov and as the only act of honesty he feels capable of, but then he returns to Russia anyway, on his own terms. is that a win?
personally, I like that way more than him choosing to throw the championship, but both versions have their merits. this one has Anatoly self-actualize in the only way he can (selfishly, but he’s a deeply selfish man). the original Broadway version lets him throw the game as an act of sacrifice that he knows will be likely be futile, but he gets some character growth the second he chooses to express love selflessly. these are both victories for the audience because the character either succeeds at something he really wanted or grows as a person by breaking his policy of individualism to try to help someone else.
can you give any of the other characters what they want? Svetlana wants Anatoly to acknowledge that he’s hurt her and presumably for the Soviet government to stop jerking her and her family around to get her husband’s attention. she gets one of those things when Anatoly returns to Russia, but anything more comes at the cost of Anatoly’s character and the story is reluctant to make him a guy who sucks (for the record, Anatoly is a guy who sucks. do not date this man). Freddie wants success and attention, but the stakes of the story are the least personal for him. it’s not really interesting if Freddie gets what he wants because 1) he already has those things at the beginning of the musical, and 2) Chess does a frankly terrible job at creating investment in him as a character, so he gets slotted into the role of antagonist and therefore we only care about whether or not he’s winning if it inconveniences the protagonists.
Florence wants some fucking respect, which she gets by linking up with Anatoly (Anatoly “Women Respecter” Sergievsky), and I suppose she also wants love. I’m not sure there’s a world in which you can set her up for romantic success when the lyricist starts undermining her relationship in LITERALLY the second song she sings about her relationship with Anatoly (Heaven Help My Heart - #1 is obviously Mountain Duet) and the musical is built around her doomed romance, so that’s a challenge I’m just not going to tackle. she also wants her father to be alive and safe, but that’s not a goal she’s pursuing, it’s something that’s imposed upon her. in the West End and Broadway versions, "your dad has been alive this whole time” is just something that Molokov makes up without doing anything to verify and she’s compelled to fall for it to varying degrees because not chasing that possibility down would make her a horribly selfish person.
does the story still work if she reunites with her father? I honestly can’t tell. I probably don’t know enough about how this version of Chess plays out to make a judgement. the period on the end of Chess is Florence realizing that she’s been played and strung along for this greater, almost unfathomable political game on a scale she cannot begin to engage with. her agency throughout this whole musical is undermined because she realizes that she really was manipulated because of her political identity, even after denying it to Freddie (”don’t you hate Soviets because of what they did to Hungary?” “no, fuck off”) and Molokov (”don’t you feel closer to other Eastern Europeans than Americans?” “no, fuck off”). her personal ties to the place where she was born were used against her and she lost her gamble on a life with Anatoly because of it. Florence can still “win” something from the exchange by getting her father back, but then what? she’s traded her lover for the dad she thought was dead her whole life? what do we do with that? are you sad for her? does she still sing a little romantic reprise? no matter what, it still feels very much like she’s been totally played and this is a consolation prize. at least Broadway Chess actually sets up the idea that she actively wants this part of her life back; if it’s going to work anywhere, it’d be there.
Broadway Anatoly can have his Nobody’s Side moment and say “fuck it, I’ll do it myself” and find Florence’s dad, but what the hell do you do with that? if he could find her “real” dad on his own, why did he go to Russia? if we’re going to put in the work and fight the government and solve all our problems, why doesn’t he figure out some way to get Svetlana and his brother and his brother’s family out of Russia? he already did it once, what’s with this half-assed giving up? if you want Chess to be less depressing and this is how you’re gonna do it, have him send a note to Florence through Mr. Vassy promising that he’ll be back. all of you, stop playing chess. get away from the platform that makes you a target for political manipulation. live normal lives and be together because you make each other happy.
I think Chess is more interesting when the characters are conscious of their position in Cold War theater and they’re reacting to that. I think the more interesting reactions come from the downsides to being a political pawn, otherwise you just get a bunch of Freddies. I also think there’s definitely a way (probably lots of ways. it’s fucking Chess) to end things on a hopeful note, but I don’t know if you can do that AND stay true to the themes of fame and pressure and depersonalization during the Cold War without giving the characters some sort of out from that environment.
this was a lot to say that I don’t have a good answer. the themes of Chess can. be anything as long as you try hard and believe in yourself. if anyone has a different read and wants to talk about it, hit me up. what would you do to make Chess less of a bummer? how do you end it on a hopeful note?
so I haven’t mentioned this much, but my latest earworm musical is this little show some of y’all may know called “chess”
and, tbh, I’ve been super consumed by political shit lately in terms of my Tumblr Content(TM), so it just kinda fell off my radar in terms of talking about it. have often considered making a post shouting out my one mutual who’s super into the show (hi Jess!), but never got around to it, esp. given yesterday. plus, one of my IRL friends has a fixation-level interest in the show, so I’ve mostly been talking about it with them.
so imagine my simultaneous shock when I go to the Genius page for one song, check out the liner notes...
... click on the footnote, and be taken to THE AFOREMENTIONED MUTUAL’S TUMBLR 😂
again... why have I not brought this up sooner to my mutual?? I LET YOU DOWN FAM
Remember when every FB post had to start with “is”? Clearly didn’t care about it on that night, lol. Happy twelfth Spring-a-versary to me; it’s been a long time since I was Awakened by the Broadway company, but the memories and the love for my favorite show still remain.
12/12/08. Matt Doyle (u/s Melchior), Jenna Ushkowitz (u/s Ilse), Jesse Swenson (u/s Hanschen), Frances Mercanti-Anthony (u/s Adult Women). A night for the ages.
a girl i know has a candle bc of “light a candle and hope that it glows” — but i already have a lit match and i don’t want it to be too similar
my hair tattoo is just “i got life” which i really like but i don’t think i want any other text tattoos — i settles for it bc i couldn’t think of one image from hair i loved
moritz is My Boy, so i want something that’s connected to him in some way, but a butterfly (“awful sweet to be a little butterfly”) feels like a tacky overdone tattoo and i don’t want that
in thinking of other lyrics from that song though i’m so drawn to “so maybe i should be some kind of laundry line / hang their things on me and i will swing them dry” so i’m really seriously thinking about a clothesline
alternatively in a totally different vein bc my production is really focused on the role of music as self-expression + we’re doing it with actor-musicians, i’m trying to think of chords from particular moments or songs that resonate with me and maybe just getting a staff with that chord on it
but i’m reeeeaaaally into the laundry line rn
i knew once i got my hair tattoo this would be a slippery slope to tattoos for every show i love working on lmao
My boyfriend's mom says that the main thing she remembers about Christmas in Sweden from her time as an exchange student in her youth is Donald Duck and she's not sure if they still do that and I said, oh no, I am under the impression that they definitely still do that.
Oh no, we definitely still do that. I’ve only ever experienced it in Norway, and I believe Sweden is even more obsessed than we are. The special is called “From All of Us to All of You” and has been broadcast every year in the Nordic countries from 1959. Almost half the Swedish population watch it every year.
In fact, here is a photo from doing exactly that (tho in Norway, obviously) just two days ago. I don’t recall if this was the Norwegian airing or the Swedish airing. They air an hour apart so you can catch both in succession even though they’re almost identical, because why not, right?
In addition from this Christmas, here is my dad comparing the new release of this 1954 Donald Duck comic to the original printing.
Which of course he had on hand because him and his brother have almost every weekly issue from the early 1950s to current day. (Featuring Christmas decorations so you know I just took this photo!)
It should be noted that while this is not unheard of, I do come from a particularly Donald Duck obsessed family and love and adore the comics.
In fact, in November I went to a Donald Duck store in Oslo. Yes, we had that for a hot minute, for the anniversary. It was great.
And ended up going on a shopping trip, including buying a fantastic Donald Duck wheeled suitcase that I brought to London and treasured because it was so incredibly recognisable.
As someone with opinions about BPD in media, are you watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend at all? The protagonist on that show was diagnosed with BPD in a recent episode.
I haven’t!! But I’ll make sure to check it out to see what’s up—thank you for the tip!!
I genuinely get a little excited when BPD is brought up in media because it really is good to see it being talked about, but not if just to excuse a problematic character or if they’re just typecasting BPD people as manipulative or clingy, yakno? I hope whatever they’re doing opens up a good dialogue
