#Opera Drive

[newssocialite]

Кевин Маккой стал хедлайнером премии «Товар года 2024»

Национальная премия «Товар года 2024» прошла в Москве в Madison Event Hall. Хедлайнером церемонии стал Кевин Маккой, солист легендарной группы BAD BOYS BLUE, который исполнил свои хиты на русском языке. Ведущими вечера выступили Настя Негода и Никита Камбаров. Открыли церемонию вокалистки арт-проекта Opera Drive, исполнив мировые хиты в классическом оперном стиле. Также для лауреатов выступили…

[classycoffeesublime]

Night drive home from the theatre, discussing classical music and falling deeply in love

[itsmeimcathy]

faust (1858) by charles gounod | le fantôme de l'opèra (1910) by gaston leroux | wuthering heights (1939) by william wyler | la belle et la bête (1947) by jean cocteau | labyrinth (1986) by jim henson | van helsing (2004) by stephen sommers | the phantom of the opera (2004) by joel schumacher | crimson peak (2014) by guillermo del toro | consumed (2014) by david cronenberg | nosferatu (2024) by robert eggers

[fellthemarvelous]

How can you be on the council and not be a master?

I need to stop looking at Star Wars TikTok posts because I guess the concept of personal accountability is lost on so many people.

I love Anakin Skywalker. I do. I think he is one of the best fictional characters ever created because he is so fucking complex. I love him for all the good he did and in spite of all the bad things he did as Darth Vader. In the end, he sacrificed his own life to save his son.

That's the thing that's killing me right now.

People want to blame everyone else except for Anakin for the choices he made. They want to blame the Jedi because the Jedi don't strictly adhere to their vision of love and are therefore responsible for why Anakin fell to the dark side.

I saw a few comments where someone blamed the Jedi (specifically Obi-Wan), blamed the council, blamed Ahsoka because she left him, blamed Padme (because if we can't blame female characters for something then what are we even doing, right?), blamed the Jedi for not trusting him (and therefore somehow preventing him from believing in himself), and then at the end was like...oh and I guess Palpatine too since he groomed him for 13 years.

First of all, why is it a chore to blame Palpatine for Anakin's problems but so easy to blame the Jedi?

Imagine the heartbreak Anakin felt when he learned that the man who spent 13 years mentoring him turned out to be the Sith lord the Jedi had been searching for. That's reason enough to be angry at Palpatine because it was Palpatine who broke Anakin's spirit.

Secondly, not one of these people is responsible for Anakin's actions. Not one of them. Not even Palpatine. That's why it had to be Anakin's choice. Palpatine could not force him to fall, so he had to resort to manipulation and gaslighting to fuck with Anakin's head. He spent 13 years planting seeds of self-doubt and mistrust in the Jedi in Anakin's head. Because what happened when Palpatine assigned Anakin to the Jedi council despite having zero authority to do so??

"How can you be on the council and not be a master?"

The Jedi Council would like to ask Anakin the same question.

You have to be a Jedi master before you can be on the council.

Anakin became upset because he was denied the rank of master. It didn't occur to him at all that Palpatine intentionally placed him in that situation for that exact reason. Palpatine knew the Jedi well, and he knew how they would react. He knew it would lead the Jedi to asking Anakin to spy on him. He played the long game and it paid off.

The Jedi taught Anakin what they could, but they have no control over whether or not Anakin put the Jedi code into practice. The Jedi trusted Anakin. We saw them trust Anakin with their lives many many times during the Clone Wars.

They gave him a padawan for crying out loud. They looked at this 19-year-old, freshly knighted Jedi General and trusted him to mentor Ahsoka, a 14-year-old girl who was more advanced than everyone else her age. He's a vergence in the Force and they gave him a padawan who was already incredibly powerful. It's rare for Jedi to get their own padawans at such a young age, but Anakin was a Force prodigy and Ahsoka could have become a knight herself at 16 if she had not left the Order.

The Jedi trusted him. Until they didn't.

Anakin is the one who slaughtered an entire clan of Tusken Raiders in anger after the death of his mother. Even the women and the children. He killed all of them because he hated all of them and he was angry because he wasn't able to prevent his mother from dying in his arms. The only people who knew about that were Padme and Palpatine.

Anakin is the one who spent three years lying to the Jedi because he kept his relationship with Padme a secret from everyone (except Rex). He believed he could have it all if he tried hard enough, and trying to have it all is what lead to him losing everything when he chose to fall to the dark side, when he chose to sacrifice the galaxy for one person, only to lose her and his unborn child for good.

During the war, Ahsoka told Barriss that Anakin will always do what needs to be done, leaving out the part that includes the use of terror and torture. Barriss got to witness Anakin's rage personally when he figured out that she was the one who framed Ahsoka for treason.

We all saw how Luminara reacted to Ahsoka violently threatening Nute Gunray to get him to talk. She was horrified and immediately reprimanded Ahsoka because it is not the Jedi way to resort to terror. The Jedi were supposed to negotiate, not terrorize. And Anakin taught Ahsoka his version of aggressive negotiations. (And she hinted at the fact that she used aggressive negotiations against Morgan Elsbeth when Huyang questioned her about how she obtained the information to locate the map to Peridea and she told him that she did not follow Jedi protocol.)

When Anakin interrogated Poggle the Lesser during Brain Invaders, he physically hit Poggle before force choking him. He used brutality to get the answers he needed. Obi-Wan, Luminara and Ki-Adi all expressed concern over how he got Poggle to talk, and he wouldn't tell them what he did. What he did went against the Jedi code. He made that choice. No one else made it for him. He knows it was wrong. It's why he didn't answer their questions.

Yes, he was doing it because Ahsoka was in imminent danger and he needed to save her (and Barriss and the infected clones) and there wasn't enough time to negotiate with Poggle. Anakin did what an older brother would have done for his little sister, but she was also his padawan and he was her master. And it was very clear that Ahsoka was a lot like him.

It's not Anakin's fault that Ahsoka left the Jedi Order, but it is not Ahsoka's fault that Anakin fell. He was incapable of letting go of his padawan (he literally resurrected her from the dead on Mortis), which was an important part of the reason he was given a padawan in the first place. He had formed a strong attachment to her just as he had Padme and Obi-Wan and Rex and C-3PO and R2-D2.

His unwillingness to let go of his attachments is what caused him to fall. He was a Jedi, and Jedi are not supposed to form attachments. So when he betrayed the Jedi Order to save Padme's life, his fall to the dark side was a result of him giving into his hatred and his anger. He took his rage out on an entire galaxy for 25 years because he was unable to let go.

Attachment does not equal love.

Maul was attached to Obi-Wan and there was nothing loving about it. It was violent and many people died because of Maul's inability to let go of his anger and hatred for Obi-Wan.

The whole reason that Anakin gave into the dark side completely was because he fell for the trap. He believed he could use the dark side without letting it consume him, but the dark side is all about controlling others. He couldn't control Padme and he ended up force choking her. He couldn't control Ahsoka and she left. He couldn't control Obi-Wan and chose to fight against him instead of listening to Obi-Wan's pleas.

No one could save Anakin Skywalker from himself. He had to save himself from his own darkness.

Which he did, in the end, because he saw his son being tortured by Palpatine, and he realized what it meant to let go. He finally understood what he needed to do and accepted that he would have to give up his own life to do so.

It took him a long time to understand what it means to let go, because letting go isn't giving up. Letting go is about accepting that there are some things beyond his control.

The conversation he had with his mother on Mortis was key to helping him accept who he was in the end. "Your guilt does not define you. You define your guilt."

He knew he was going to die, but he died saving someone he loved, doing the right thing and ultimately returning balance to the Force. He accepted his destiny. He accepted responsibility for who he was as Anakin Skywalker and that Anakin Skywalker was also responsible for the actions of Darth Vader because they were one in the same.

It's the problem we see Ahsoka struggling with when she's with him in the World Between Worlds. She struggled with the knowledge that her master became a monster and worried about what that meant for her. She struggled to figure out who she would have become if she had not left the Order. She had to wrestle with her own darkness, and Anakin's final lesson to her also took a weight off her shoulders. It's why she's suddenly that same girl we saw at the beginning of the war. The one who always smiled and was always so sure of herself. She chose the light and it was reflected in the way she suddenly began wearing white, a contrast to what she'd been wearing decades.

It's understanding that she has control of her own destiny, whatever that might be, and that she gets to choose who she decides to be. Anakin chose to be a Jedi in the end, and he was able to pass a hard-learned lesson onto a padawan he loved like his own sister. He was still able to watch out for her in the end while teaching her one more time.

It's never too late to do the right thing, but it's Anakin who has to take responsibility for his actions instead of blaming everyone else for all of his problems.

Apparently that's a lesson a lot of fans need to learn too.

A question Star Wars has always asked us is "how far are you willing to go to save what you love?"

[cardboardmoon]

Oh lord the chaos would only get worse when the triplets are born!! Specifically: Hashtag.

Soundwave is getting increasingly frustrated because someone keeps hacking into the nemesis computer… and sending him memes. He is baffled beyond comprehension and increasingly frustrated because he can’t figure out who it is. Who are you. How are you doing that. Why are you not trying to steal information. Can you stop sending him the ‘never gonna give you up’ human.

Assuming the kiddos are born when Starscream is off on his own, Hashtag comes home one day (Ratchet does not remember teaching her how to use the groundbridge. Who taught her how to use the groundbridge. MIKO!), and she excitedly tells her siblings about her new shiny and sarcastic friend. No one knows how the hell she found Starscream but no one is happy about it. (Star doesn’t know where this newspark came from, who lost their progeny?! And can he keep them? He’s lonely)

Knockout keeps finding her in drive in theaters. He’s just happy to have someone to talk about horror films to (breakdown won’t watch them anymore, he doesn’t like seeing Squishie’s insides).

Optimus and Ratchet are getting the mother of all headaches. Hashtag please… stop…

QBWVEGEGWJBQVEGWH this is amazing

Hashtag would screw with the Nemesis so much. But like. For fun. When Ratchet and Optimus find out that she’s been hacking the enemy for weeks to send memes they’re gonna lose their minds. How the hell did you achieve this. How the hell is Soundwave not tracing you. They’re going to kill you when they find out. WHY. MEMES. The processor aches that day will be legendary

Bonus points: Since it’s 2011, one day Megatron walks into the bridge to yell about someone blasting the shitty human song “Crazy Frog” on the comm system. He finds Soundwave and the vehicons loosing their shit and all the monitors frozen on this image:

[lambf4rm]

happy 16th birthday repo!

[flea-palace]

ok this may get me booed offstage but. i think the whole "christine looks like madeleine" in susan kay is more than just a basic oedipal complex, i think it's representative of erik's compulsive need to fix things/cultivate beauty and, despite all his efforts and tricks and hypnotism and attempts at creating an alternate universe for his mother where she could be happy, he knew it was never real and so he never really "fixed" her. and then along comes christine, looking like madeline two point zero, and of COURSE his wretched pattern recognition ovsessive compulsive perfectionist brain said "aha! a second chance to Fix Her!" and i think that's why such a core aspect of kaystine is her brokenness (cracked vase comparison, etc) and erik's attempts to do what he couldn't succeed at the first time. but lo and behold he is not only NOT fixing her (and satisfying that unsatiated urge to make things right and proper and just so), but he is actively making her worse, fueling the pattern of how he destroys anything that makes the mistake of getting too close to him. anyway that's my take feel free to publicly execute me for dredging up the old motherwound discourse in this fuckass novel

[thunderpoolisawesome]

Rest in pieces my scrapped VN Poto Highschool AU game 😔

I had a working dialogue system but then my usb wasn’t working and I couldn’t access the software file

It was supposed to be like a mix of lots of Visual Novel dialogue with an affinity/affection mechanic (based on the Love Interests only) and a Bullet Hell mechanism (It’s for when Christine is singing with the Phantom and moments when she gets on stage to act)

Have more of my Erik that was a prototype for the dialogue system (yes I’m officially calling that this Erik is my Erik)

[dartalias]

Headcannon that once Lek and Kyoshi got more used to calling each other family they started to sometimes tell/insinuate (like at mettings or events) that they are actually blood related just to fuck with people

not sure who would first start with that

either Kyoshi would stumble in her words trying to present Lek and then they just role with it without explaining anything and ended up finding funny the various confuse/akward reactions

Or Lek first starded with it because he hates high class events as much as Kyoshi (for different reasons) and that's a "allowed" way to at least get a crack out of it

This or Lek just wanted to piss of Kyoshi but how both ended up having fun they just keep doing it as a joke

[elserendipiente]

karate kids: a character study | sketches from 2022!

[dreamingofep]

I'm not sure if any other writers feel the same way, but there’s certain lines I’ve written that I’m so proud of🤭 Like there’s one in this upcoming chapter that has me kicking my feet, giggling and blushing over. 🥰 Very very excited to post this next part 🌹

[dogmouthhorse]

2h practice of values+rendering 💪

[formulafangirl]

F1 should put on an extra press conference with Max and George so we can get all the drama

Invite some of the other drivers to enjoy the drama and make it worse. Make them choose sides

[lmxpsuedonym]

I love that gothic shit those authors were lwky cooking w/ that

The Raven? Fire

The Phantom of the Opera? Let him COOK

Interview with the Vampire? STRAIGHT GAS

Jekyll and Hyde? BANGER

The Picture of Dorian Gray? GAWD DAYUMMM

[leynetto]

Heyo! My friend (@slowlyfriedicecream) and I have compiled some full ballet plays that anyone can access for free here! We're still only have Royal Opera House there but are planning to add more and from different theaters if possible. If anyone want to add to our collection of ballet plays please do chat me! We hope to try make ballet accessible to more people

[whartonists]

New promo photo for The Gilded Age season 2, via Entertainment Weekly