asena-queenslayer

[asena-queenslayer]

Some commissions I ended up liking a lot!!! Thank you everyone who kindly commissioned me 🥰

If you’re interested in commissioning me, feel free to check my carrd here!!!

[asena-queenslayer]

there's like nothing new in this analysis but "we learn, johanna, to say goodbye" is such a devastating line. because a healthy and normal person would say this and imply they're giving up on the blind revenge that ruins their (and others) lives, that he's willing to move on and part with what cherished memories of his daughter he has

but it's the inverse

he's learning to say goodbye to any actual justification he had for his entire revenge scheme in order to become this demonic spirit of vengeance purely driven by spite. any pretenses of him doing this for a sense of justice are out the window. he's saying goodbye to his one motivation that has kept him going all these years, his own cherished daughter, and by extension his humanity, to essentially just carry out cold blooded murder.

of course, you can draw further allusions to how johanna is forced to say goodbye to her remaining family (including a reciprocation of this metaphorical goodbye as well as a quite literal one) in the climax, much like how she had to say goodbye to her family and freedom all those years ago

[asena-queenslayer]

not to critically analyze adolfo pirelli/daniel o'higgins of all characters but the way he parallels sweeney todd actually drives me nuts.

my theories:

- both on fleet street, both barbers

- both left fleet street, came back under different names and go largely unrecognized

- passing off some human product as not human product

- promising the world false salvation (pirelli is promising salvation from baldness lmfao)

- both ultimately brought down by their actions driven by something self serving coming back to bite them (with pirelli its super immediate but)

the theme we think is going to be pirellis leitmotif actually is just the leitmotif for passing off something human as a product (miracle elixir + god thats good). pirelli digs his grave not by blackmailing sweeney but by being blinded by getting one over him and rubbing it in sweeneys face. similarly sweeney digs his grave by being blinded by vengeance rather than seeing whats in front of him.

and like in a way for the show to go the way it does sweeney HAS to kill pirelli. following the plotline pirelli puts forward where he is a main villain would make it more like a story abt the importance of being true to yourself or whatever and would require sweeney to analyze himself and recognize the mirror in front of him. which we all know he isnt going to do.

[asena-queenslayer]

Is he actually hot? Or is he just wearing a waistcoat?

[asena-queenslayer]

Straight up attending it, and by it lemme justr say the tale of Sweeney Todd

[asena-queenslayer]

oh so when other people say "eat the rich" it's a rallying cry for the working class, but when i, sweeney todd,

[asena-queenslayer]

My favorite thing about Sweeney Todd is that Sweeney gets into the killing-and-baking people business because he’s a deeply broken man destroyed by an unjust and corrupt system that cost him his freedom and family and has been driven mad by revenge.

And Mrs Lovett does it because somthin wrong with her <3

[asena-queenslayer]

EPIPHANY IS FUCKING INSANE BC ITS *violins that sound like fucking bees* there’saholeintheworldlikeagreatblackpitandit’sfilledwithpeoplewhoarefilledwithshitandtheverminoftheworldinhabirit *some fucking horns* B U T N O T F O R L O N G … *the scariest ritardando you’ve ever heard in your life*

[asena-queenslayer]

If there was ever an example of "God is in the details," it's the line that opens this show: "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd." Detail 1: the use of "attend" to mean "listen to" is just archaic enough to tell the audience that this will be a period piece. Detail 2: the idea of a "tale" suggests that the audience not take the story realistically but as a fable, and opens them up to accept the bizarrerie of the events which follows; it also promises a story that will unfold like a folk ballad, foreshadowing the numerous choruses of the song that will pop up during the course of the evening. Detail 3: the alliteration on the first, second and fourth accented beats of "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd" is not only a microcosm of the AABA form of the song itself, but in its very formality give the line a sinister feeling, especially with the sepulchral accompaniment that rumbles underneath it. If all of that seems like the kind of academic hyperanalysis which regularly shows up in studies of literary forms, I can assure you that even if the audience is not consciously aware of such specific details, they are affected by them.

Stephen Sondheim, Finishing the Hat

[asena-queenslayer]

Leitmotifs drive me insane, like I hear *repeated melody that has an association with a person, idea, or situation* and I go *tears up the fucking rug like a dog*

[asena-queenslayer]

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.

[asena-queenslayer]

there is SO much depth and beauty in the stories we hear in sweeney todd. a murderer who was once a doting father, so blind with hatred and anger towards the world that he couldn’t even see his own wife and daughter, staring him right in the face. a woman down on her luck and in love, trying so desperately to make a connection with a deeply broken and disturbed human. an unfortunately innocent and unknowing boy who ended up being the one who could sense the dark truth. a love at first sight that refused to die, even when torn apart by the disgusting perversion of a greedy abuser. sweeney todd is about all of these people, doing absolutely horrible things, all out of some form of love. that’s the beauty of sweeney todd. sweeney killed for a father and husband’s love. lovett baked real people with real lives into pies to maintain a shallow, lustful relationship she impossibly dreamed would bloom into true romance. turpin destroyed an innocent family because he could not contain his ‘love’ for a pretty woman and her daughter. toby slit a throat because his mother figure was all he had, and he loved her, simply and purely, as an innocent child loves a mother. their love is the purest of all in the story.

but my point is — yes, sweeney todd is about a murderer and his accomplice who cannibalizes and sells his victims. but it’s not. sweeney todd is about love. how love is even stronger and more dangerous than the deepest hate. it’s about how love can destroy people. this show is so beautifully, deeply, disgustingly human. and this dark, telling tale is somehow warped into some of the most gorgeous music to ever be written and made hilarious, lovable, and entertaining. musical theatre is truly magic. human nature is love and filth and greed. sweeney todd perfectly embodies both of these ideas.

[asena-queenslayer]

it's fine johanna i'm fine everything's fine (gotten obsessed with yet another musical) (esp obsessed with the johanna quartet) (the STRINGS THE METHODICAL & CALCULATED BUT DRIVING STRINGS OMG)

[asena-queenslayer]

I made this a year ago and I never posted it. Oops

[asena-queenslayer]

the greatest living show ✧.

[asena-queenslayer]

did you hear they're gonna start publicly executing anyone with a glimmer of hope and a light in their eyes

[asena-queenslayer]

papa...