my mother is playing pikmin and yelling at them in the exact tone of voice she uses for me and my siblings so we go into fight or flight every time. we thought initially that this meant she regarded the pikmin as akin to her children, but I now fear she’s always viewed us as pikmin
I really like the part in Merrily at the end where it's just frank and Charley on the roof talking about something shifting something changing and Charley is visibly like am I about to have a closeted gay rooftop hookup with my army roommate and jgrofff is like no far worse a decades long creative partner turned friendship that will break me worse than any of my multiple divorces
my favorite thing about sweeney todd is that it so thoroughly exposes the hypocritical misogyny of the fridged woman trope. sweeney is just as bad as judge turpin, but it's not because sweeney's desire for vengeance makes him inherently immoral. it's not even really because he becomes a serial killer. it's that they're both misogynists.
sweeney and turpin both view the women who are supposedly at the center of their conflict as extensions of themselves rather than their own people. turpin abuses lucy and johanna, and todd, who supposedly loves these women so much that avenging them becomes his life's purpose, fails to recognize lucy when she doesn't align with his idealized memories of his "beautiful" wife (it's notable that sweeney and turpin use very similar language to describe these women and that "pretty women" is their big duet). and he actively sabotages anthony's attempt to rescue johanna in order to achieve his revenge, which he is supposedly enacting on johanna's behalf. both these women are alive and entirely within his reach, and if sweeney truly cared about them as much as he claims he does, he would have reunited with them. but they are more useful to him as women in the fridge, as a suitable motivation for all his anger and rage and violence than they'll ever be as living breathing people. violence against women is simply an excuse for him to live out his own violent power fantasies, to take power over a man who he feels disempowered and humiliated him by taking "his" women. the women themselves are totally inconsequential.
finally got to see sweeney todd live (seen the movie and a few boots) and i have some Thoughts about utilizing sexism in your setting without the writing itself being sexist. because sweeney todd is SO good at it.
if you haven't seen sweeney todd, uh, both spoilers and trigger warnings for sexual assault, murder, cannibalism etc?
in sweeney todd we have three critical female characters
the entirety of sweeney todd happens because a man with wealth and power decides that he wants to rape benjamin barker's wife. he makes up a sham crime to get benjamin out of the picture and ships the man off to australia. this leaves young lucy as a single mother in victorian london.
he horrificly and publicly rapes her in a setting where other people jeer and laugh during the act. eventually she tries to poison herself, and the combination of poverty and cruelty is left to fend for herself on the streets, slowly losing her grip on reality due to the past trauma, ongoing trauma, and presumably brain damage from the poisoning.
when her husband, now calling himself sweeney todd, returns to their street, she is quite literally still there. he's cruel to her even before he "learns" from mrs. lovett that lucy died. the absolute revulsion he experienced towards her due to her being a homeless woman blinded him to even the possibility that this person who is in the right location could be his wife, even before she's "confirmed" as dead. she's just his beautiful, lost ideal. (but she isn't. she's there she's suffering she's insightful and caring and she's THERE-)
sweeney and lucy's daughter, joanna, has been stolen and locked away by the very judge that sent him to australia and raped her mother. she's spent all sixteen of her years confined to a single room, and the moment she catches the attentions of our young hero, the man she calls FATHER decides that he must marry her.
forcefully.
when she presents resistance and tries to run off with her young man, her captor forces her into an asylum where she will wait until she decides to become his wife the way that he is "owed".
sweeney never once acts to save her, despite both mrs. lovett and our hero's prompting. she, again, is the lost ideal. she would remind him too much of his lost love! oh no, however could he stand it! she is just something to mourn, even though she is here. breathing. singing frantically longing for freedom making connections with others and clever choices-
and then we have mrs. lovett, his wonderful, conniving soulmate. she's hilarious! she's far more clever than anyone gives her credit for, because she's just a silly woman after all! she snorts! she tells bad jokes! she's kind to children!
the dynamic between her and tobias only works so well because she's a woman. even if mr. todd was kind to him in a very similar manner, little boys don't show their affection for grown men with I Must Protect This Person. that is a way that little boys are taught to show their affection for the older women in their lives. because their grans and mums and aunts and older sisters, why, they're just so delicate! so kind! grandpas and dads and uncles and older brothers might need help and deference, but their favorite women need protection.
they can't be aware of the terrible things that are happening, or god forbid, a PARTICIPANT! that's just my auntie nelly! she's not capable of such a thing. she says things like "poor thing" and tells silly, bad jokes, and flutters around after the man she has an unrequited crush on.
surely she can't be in on this dastardly plot! she can't be its true author! the one that takes an angry, short-sighted man and gives him a purpose. that would be absurd!
sweeney never suspects her until seconds before he kills her. toby never suspects her at all. she's just a silly little cook with a crush that needs protection after all.
the thing about Sweeney Todd is that you'll hear the greatest song ever written for a musical and then it's followed by the greatest song ever written for a musical and then the next song after that is also the greatest song ever written for a musical because what do you mean Kiss Me - Pretty Women - Epiphany - A Little Priest - God That's Good! - Johanna (Quartet) are all consecutive, most insane six song run of all time
areudirty
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
prguitarman
germansingergirl
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
romaincrisis
dailybridgerton
