pyrlian - Tumblr blog

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Underrated form of intimacy: being silly together

[pyrlian]

Bubble butt caffeinate world-builder 💖

I'm stealing this from Twitter

Here's the link

I am a high-definition gateway drug body double!

[pyrlian]

[Writing] is a solitary independent activity in which practice can never bestow seniority. Fortunately anyone can take up the activity. Whatever the motives, […] the writing becomes as soon as I begin, a struggle to give meaning to experience. Every profession has limits to its competence, but also its own territory. Writing, as I know it, has no territory of its own. The act of writing is nothing except the act of approaching the experience written about; just as, hopefully, the act of reading the written text is a comparable act of approach.

To approach experience, however, is not like approaching a house. Experience is indivisible and continuous, at least with a single lifetime and perhaps over many lifetimes. I never have the impression that my experience is entirely my own, and it often seems to me that it preceded me. In any case experience folds upon itself, refers backwards and forwards to itself through the referents of hope and fear; and, by the use of metaphor which is at the origin of language, it is continually comparing like with unlike, what is small with what is large, what is near with what is distant. And so the act of approaching a given moment of experience involves both scrutiny (closeness) and the capacity to connect (distance). The movement of writing resembles that of a shuttlecock: repeatedly it approaches and withdraws, closes in and takes its distance. Unlike a shuttlecock, however, it is not fixed to a static frame. As the movement of writing repeats itself, its nearness to, its intimacy with the experience increases. Finally, if one is fortunate, meaning is the fruit of this intimacy.

John Berger, from “The Storyteller,” Landscapes: John Berger on Art (Verso, 2016)

[pyrlian]

jean paul gaultier| spring 2006

[pyrlian]

People do not see masculinity as being as fluid and complex and nuanced as femininity and it’s annoying as hell. Because of patriarchy’s stranglehold on masculinity and radfem theory’s stranglehold on queer spaces, people really think with their whole heart that only femininity is subversive or experimental, or frankly, queer, and that masculinity is only a power grab and nothing more. Embarrassing!

[pyrlian]

Something that always confused me when I read TPOTO was why The Phantom chose box five out of all the private boxes to be his.

Out of all the seats in the house, box five is among the worst and would be (and still is) sold cheaply (average 65 francs at cheapest in 1880, now sold a between 10-25 euros nowadays) on general sale. A higher profit would've been made from a year-long booking, especially since there are multiple seats, so it would be 65 francs per person on a yearly booking no matter how many people are in there at once, but still not as much as other seats.

Visual wise, a good chunk of the left side of the stage is cut off and parts of the performance that would occur in the higher wings would be completely unseen, so, why choose it? Isn't the main point of going to go watch an Opera is to actually see the performance?

(A screenshot from the Palais Garnier's seat listing stating the best seats for viewing and the view from the box five via this video)

Having been there myself in late May, I found an answer to my own question and I'm gonna share it with you guys because maybe someone else was asking the same thing!

Although yes, the stage is half cut off, it's one of, if not the, best seats acoustic wise. You're a perfect distance from the orchestra as well as the stage for everything to sound just right. As much as The Phantom would've loved the operatic performance, I don't doubt he would've been more focused on the music itself as well as the vocals, and, mainly, Christine.

Further, although going to the opera was more of a social thing than an entertainment thing, so the boxes were built for aristocracy to be seen above all things, you can disappear from public view quite easily in that box. There are two to three rows of seats going backwards to the door, so all one would have to do to disappear from sight of anyone on stage or in the audience would be to just move a seat backwards (which means he wouldn't have been able to see the stage at all, but would still be able to hear everything perfectly well).

Plus, the box is located right at the end of the row of private boxes, as well as very close to entry and exit stairs, both public ones and private ones meant for stage hands and general workers.

All in all, those three reasons are why the box was chosen and kept in high priority for The Phantom, because he could quite literally disappear, like a ghost, by just moving himself in the box, as well as disappear out of the box and hear Christine almost perfectly.

[pyrlian]

Emma D'Arcy as Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen in new promotional images for season 2.

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[pyrlian]

Isabelle Adjani in "Ondine" at the Comédie-Française, 1974.

[pyrlian]

Blue Mosque - Istanbul, Turkey.

[pyrlian]

Sailor Moon was real because it was the 90s and Sailor Jupiter was the only trans woman in a friend group of cis girls

Like that culture of "get a group of cis women to like you and then spend all your time with them, that will help you pass better and they can accept you into womanhood" was very big back then

[pyrlian]

Sailor Moon was real because it was the 90s and Sailor Jupiter was the only trans woman in a friend group of cis girls

Like that culture of "get a group of cis women to like you and then spend all your time with them, that will help you pass better and they can accept you into womanhood" was very big back then

[pyrlian]

beauty standards are so wildly insidious because I can pass a gorgeous girl with my exact same body type on the street and completely forget how to speak, just dumbstruck by how striking and lovely she is, but it's ten times harder to see that in myself. It's like part of me sees my mirror in the wild and responds with affection and warmth and attraction, but the conscious mind resists integrating that. may we all extend to ourselves the tenderness we offer others!

[pyrlian]

Illustration from Goethe’s Faust for The Latch Key of My Bookhouse by Donn P. Crane (1925)

[pyrlian]

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin or that Babel was too heavy-handed just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

[pyrlian]

Anthony van Dyck - Portrait of a Woman with a Rose /detail/

[pyrlian]

Oh to be a loyal knight and serve my lord (we are fucking)