qwanderer

[qwanderer]

[qwanderer]

okay notes on the romeo & juliet production i saw the other day:

set in modern-day appalachia and going in i didn't think too hard about that beyond "oh cool" but it worked really really well. gave the whole thing an intense vibe of "this town has been left behind by the rest of america and everyone thinks we're backward assholes and we're clinging to all the pride we have left in our families and our history even when it's history we should actually probably let go of." like rewired my brain for real i had not considered the degree to which the city of verona can be a character in itself

also they played live music!!! mostly folk/country; the show opened with mercutio on guitar singing "ain't no grave" & everyone else joined in

the cast also did a very short reprise at the end which did something to my brain. something about how the play opens telling you what's going to happen and then ends with it happening, but this version of the play opens with a promise of life beyond death and ends with the actors standing up and shaking themselves off and smiling

looooots of folksy singing at the capulet ball. mercutio and benvolio got romeo to do a very dejected drum accompaniment, which he did like he was being tortured UNTIL

juliet did a banjo cover of nina simone's "when i was a young girl" and it was incredible and lovely and also lyrically devastating in context

and THAT was what got romeo's attention and got him to start engaging socially with anyone

romeo was wearing a tina turner shirt :)

tybalt meanwhile was wearing a natty lite shirt

paris looked exactly like a pedro/napoleon dynamite lovechild. i'm sorry for saying it that way but there's no other way to put it. he had the curly hair and the doofy mustache and these dorky overalls and probably a pocket protector. normally i have very few feelings about paris but i really felt bad for this paris; he was clearly just another kid emotionally in over his head and he didn't seem to know what was going on at ANY point which emphasized how much he was just collateral damage in the violence

all of the actors were amazing but the absolute standout was juliet. this juliet was SO good. this juliet is going to be the defining juliet interpretation in my head until the end of fucking days

she was soooooo thirteen years old. so angsty shy gangly teen always hovering between being brilliant + still being the girl who hugs her parents and clings onto their arm and hides her face in their shoulders. the actress was SO good at hitting the exact mark of displaying how bright and determined juliet is and also how she is soooooooooooooo scowly little preteen

also her pajamas were PJ shorts and a britney spears shirt

very good tybalt. he was hot-headed as any tybalt would be but he honestly felt a little hotspurcore--at the capulets' ball when he saw romeo, everything about his body language and tone of voice was very clearly communicating not JUST anger but deep confusion/frustration about why he was the only person taking shit seriously. the feud runs everybody's life and yet in this scene he is the ONLY person who seems to understand that and he looked genuinely disoriented that lord capulet told him off

which lord capulet did do. loudly. to the point where everyone else at the party started looking nervously in their direction even when lord capulet was like "aha no keep partying <3"

i know i'm saying this about every character but fantastic mercutio. he hit the exact right note of being 80% dickhead teen who causes problems on purpose and 20% Abruptly And Darkly Intense In A Scary Way. also he carried the guitar around all the time and sang lewd jokes at people

during the queen mab speech he got benvolio to act out being the fairies' charioteer, which benvolio did by hunching down in a carriage-driver pose and making a gargoyle sound

i thought they weren't using fake blood because sometimes you just have to imagine the blood with your beautiful mind. and then the duel scene hit and ohhhhh man. mercutio did his first “i am hurt!” like when you stub your toe. and then he turned around and i heard someone in the audience make a sound because it was GUSHING. romeo rushed over to hold him up and mercutio collapsed into him with this sort of desperate exhaustion and you could hear the blood continuing to dribble and slop around on the floor it was NASTY AND LOUD

his wound was just your generic actor's faked stab wound. but romeo slit tybalt's throat. and tybalt had been intense and scary up to that point but after killing mercutio he was clearly wobbly and as romeo held the knife up he went "no, wait--" very small

and then, unlike mercutio (who died offscreen), he thrashed around on the floor for like a full thirty seconds

juliet's "tybalt is dead that would have killed my husband so i gotta stop crying" was transparently her trying to convince herself not to mourn tybalt but then she broke down sobbing again

that ^ scene was intercut with romeo and the friar talking about banishment so both of them were on stage at once but still unable to reach each other. very good

my beef with the friar + nurse is always "how are you THIS reckless with leaving these kids to their own devices when you have each had to talk each of them down from suicide like three times" and in this one. when the nurse found juliet "dead" in her coma. she thought juliet was sleeping until she found the empty vial of sleeping draught. and for a second she didn't yell for the capulet parents she just stared at the vial in total devastation. not surprised at all. just horrified.

and then when she screamed for juliet's parents she shoved the vial in her coat so they wouldn't see it. maybe to protect juliet or maybe so they didn't have to know

my shocker dark horse second favorite role interpretation was honest to god lord capulet. which is incredible because i've hated him violently since i read this play in high school english. but the actor very obviously had an EXTREMELY clear picture of his motivations and also that he loved his kid so fucking much

like far be it from me to defend the guy who screams at his daughter and threatens to throw her out on the street (he was frightening in that scene. really well-acted) but in every interaction between them up to that point his pride and adoration for her shone out of his body language. and at the start of that scene before he started yelling juliet (sobbing) ran up to him and grabbed him in a hug and he looked distraught

very painfully clear that he was trying to make her feel better. and also stressed out of his mind, especially after tybalt died, but mostly that he was really really really fucking worried about his daughter and trying desperately to make her better but always picking the exact wrong thing. STILL AN ASSHOLE! but devastating!

and when everyone thought juliet was dead the nurse + lady capulet were screaming but lord capulet just sat next to comatose juliet and very gently put her head in his lap and started stroking her hair murmuring "shh, shh" like man it takes a LOT for me to believe that man sees juliet as anything but a bargaining tool but THEY SOLD ME ON IT!

and then the nurse FUCKING SANG THE NINA SIMONE SONG AGAIN AS THEY CARRIED HER BODY OUT

romeo died very peacefully. he drank the poison + he kissed juliet + then he settled down next to her like he was falling asleep. but juliet. ohhhh god. juliet stabbed herself because that's what juliet does and it wasn't an easy hollywood-shakespeare one-pretty-knife-movement-and-she-gasps-and-dies stabbing. it was slow and agonizing and she twisted the knife in her own stomach and then she was sort of thrashing around on stage hyperventilating in violent terror like she was reaching out for someone to rescue her

has anyone noticed that they both have the same last word which is "die." the word being die honestly matters way less to me than the two of them having the same last word. after their first conversation made a sonnet. always on the same exact page in their language

this ^ was the point at which i started bawling and then i did not stop for I Shit You Not A Real Human Hour

[qwanderer]

explain your gender in 10 words or less without using boring words like “male”, “female”, “nonbinary”, “masculine”, “feminine” or “androgynous”.

go!

[qwanderer]

having thoughts about one of this season's seemingly lighter, sillier episodes (the hustler job). it was harry's episode, sure, but the thought bouncing around in my brainpan at the moment is about parker.

specifically, her full-tilt bloodthirsty outrage about the villain of the week "rolling nanas."

parker doesn't have much ingrained reverence for familial roles. and why would she? the closest thing she had to a father for most of her life was a man who used, manipulated, and isolated her, reinforcing in her the idea that she is fundamentally broken and unable to be like or around "normal" people, undeserving of real family. (yes, archie did also have love for her, but he still took a troubled child off the street and crafted her into a mini-me master thief off whom he personally profited, all the while drawing a hard line between her and his actual family. nate's scorn and disgust for archie was frankly extremely well earned.)

parker never had a nana.

but hardison did. hardison, who could've ended up a lot more like parker than any of them imagined, had he gone through the same cycle of use-abuse-neglect-violence-crime that parker experienced in foster care and even after it. but hardison, hardison ended up one of the lucky kids in the system.

he ended up with nana. a woman who cared for and fiercely nurtured him, loved him and instilled pride and confidence in him, gave him a home and family, and who would never, ever turn her back on him.

parker never had a nana, but she has undoubtedly heard a ton about hardison's over the years, met her and spent time with her, probably got a little taste of that same acceptance and warmth. parker saw her not just with hardison but with breanna, and however many other children who went into the system and found refuge in nana's house, against all odds.

i can only imagine parker has developed a mythlike admiration for nana, for the role of a nana, something sacred and purely good and as should-be beyond threat as children are, to parker.

her violently gungho fixation on the episode's villain as a predator of nanas is, like many of parker's oddities and quirky behaviors, played largely for comedic effect. but if you don't pay attention to the parts of parker's character that get framed as "for laughs", you'll miss a lot of the depth and nuance in her character.

as we've seen time and again in leverage and redemption, parker is easiest for people to dismiss as a crazy weirdo, silly and childish and incomprehensible. her weirdness often comes across in bright, brash tones, with the brightness set high enough you're not supposed to see the shadows, and the parts of her found in them.

parker never got her own nana, and until knowing hardison, possibly until meeting the woman herself, couldn't have managed to believe in such a concept as a real person. it was too entirely out of her frame of reference.

but nana is real. which means parker could have had one. but she didn't. and i'm sure she's wondered before... who might she have been had she been taken in by someone like hardison's nana, instead of a series of shitty people culminating in the man who cultivated her into a professional criminal?

would she still have been broken? this broken? would she still have been too strange for most people to connect to? could she have been something closer to normal?

and those questions, of course, can never be answered, and parker's not the type to dwell on them past the initial pondering. but it's quite easy to see how the sacrosanct myth of a "nana" who should never, ever experience harm and be protected at all costs could be built in her head.

because a nana saved hardison. and breanna. and so many others. so many children, vulnerable and afraid and alone.

might've, in another world, even saved someone like her.

so anyone who touches a nana could only be the lowest evil. and we know parker doesn't waste moral energy on trash like that. she takes them out.

[qwanderer]

happy pride to the boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend that mr the killers had in February of last year

[qwanderer]

[qwanderer]

Beyonce, Daughter || Charles Rowland, Dead Boy Detectives (2024)

[qwanderer]

Im fine and normal. My form is not ever upsetting to me. (Writes a story about a spaceship made out of meat) (writes a story about a girl transforming into a dragon) (rights a story about women permanently altering themselves with magic) (writes a-(im pulled off stage by a comedically long hook))

[qwanderer]

[qwanderer]

let's be real the amount of tea these two know about must be out of this world. And don't we all think they deserve to spill some of it? I think they deserve to spill some of it as a treat uvu

[qwanderer]

Sharks and surgery recovery and heat and humidity oh my . Not at work

[qwanderer]

In-app tipping plus eliot bothering = this is a second tip

Leverage 5x4- "The French Connection Job"

[qwanderer]

Asking because I overheard a physical therapist say that she uses this question to see if she wants a second date with a guy, and if he says more than like 4 eggs at once it's a red flag.

[qwanderer]

I am so glad I have an air conditioned house.

[qwanderer]

PARIS WAS NOT NAMED AFTER PARIS HILTON YOU DIPSHIT

source?

[qwanderer]

Took some gouache to my petsitting gig and made this while watching mean girls. A+ use of time. I'm still learning this medium so the struggle was honestly fun 🤣