#interpreter performance

[warningsine]

Love seeing the new generation find out how, well, gay "Wicked" is.

Closeted high femme dressed as the lesbian flag not getting on her rebellious activist bestie's broom and regretting it for the rest of her conformist life.

[edorazzi]

Page 13 of my Miraculous Mentor AU comic A Matter of Trust! In which Felix crawls home from what he thinks is a one-time magical assignment - but he's about to learn exactly what Plagg signed him up for! 😈

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[thecoolerliauditore]

one of my favourite ethubs things is that they both get jealous but bdubs will make it very obvious by being pouty and petty e.g. "you have a new family?" referring to etho "joining" gem and joel's team in WL or his bit on HC about etho's mail being in "love order" or just in general his constant berating of etho for being too good for him/their alliance essentially meanwhile when etho gets jealous he will not say a single word and instead just starts doing the most dramatic/ridiculous things e.g. stealing bdubs and impulse's beds in DL or Scar riding Bdubs in the new WL episode and etho immediately trying* to fucking murder him.

[sweetpaintedladie]

“She should be remembered as being Marianne Faithfull. She was a totally singular, unique character who stood her own ground, and I think she should be proud of what she did.“

- Keith Richards on Marianne Faithfull to Rolling Stone magazine, 2025

[nabi-unveiled]

Heartbroken, but he still showed up to fulfill his responsibilities.

Is this his self-sacrificing nature at work? Or is this maturity?

I'm going with maturity on this one.

Just add it to my Faifa appreciation checklist.

[mercymornsimpathizer]

some random thoughts on that literacy study going around, since the op has turned off rbs

one of the things that is hardest for me to wrap my mind around is that literacy and linguistic fluency are different skills. its one of those things that is obvious when you point it out -- i mean, language predates writing! there are languages that have no writing system! --but that a person might not ever consider because we are (implicitly?) taught that written language is the purest or most essential form of language. but there are people who are profoundly illiterate (in the sense that they might not even know the alphabet/writing system of their language) who nonetheless can and do speak fluently, follow conversations, enjoy and understand music/movies/etc.; in fact that is the case for the vast majority of people who are illiterate or have low literacy. it is the written word, not the word itself, that they struggle with, right?

and then you have these students in the study who in a literal sense are literate. it isn't the problem you see with low literacy adults, or with children who are learning to read, where they do not recognize or know how to pronounce a word, maybe they parse a word incorrectly or substitute it with a word they do know. it doesn't seem to me that the literal act of reading is what these students couldn't do; if their task was to produce an audiobook of bleak house they would do a passable job. rather it was making meaning of what they read that they struggled with. its the reverse of what we would expect of a low literacy reader, who has no problem in general with what words mean, who can follow and connect meaning over a discourse, who understands and might even enjoy figurative, poetic, or idiomatic phrases, who may have a large vocabulary, but cannot connect those things to written symbols. presumably (?????) the readers in the study also don't in general struggle with those things, when it comes to spoken language.

so where, exactly, is the problem? it isn't that the language itself is incomprehensible to them, and it isn't that they cannot (in the literal sense) read and write. naively it seems to me like those are the only two points where a person could fail. so what is it??? i guess it might really be the vocabulary that is the issue, in the same way that i could, for example, passably read aloud a piece of german language text without understanding it -- because its written in an alphabet I use, and I know the rules of german pronunciation, even though i don't speak german (i.e. i dont know what german words mean). or the same way that someone could sing in a language they dont understand by memorizing them sound by sound. that seems a little facile to me, especially since the words in bleak house are not really that obscure or unusual.

but like what else could it be. just that they don't read very much, and when they do read they don't "translate" it into their own words line by line? is it an issue of attention, or interest? do they assume (as the op posits) that they don't expect it to make sense to them, so they don't try to make sense of it? or its too embarrassing to admit to the facilitator that they don't get or are having a hard time? really and truly difficult for me to understand

[fear-no-mort]

evil rick is so good because hes the first and best example of how just cringe and melodramatic evil morty is in the way he acts while being controlled by him. the slow clap, the like fake orchestra director thing he does when hes talking about the symphony of morties, the ‘we’re not so different you and i’ lines, the cut-throat hand gesture he does when saying hes gonna kill rick. u get what i mean all of that is evil morty doing that except it’s him replicating the behaviour of a rick except all of that stuff is kinda just how he is anyway. i personally think he enjoyed it a lot he had fun with it

[ringaroundaroses]

I really wish Abra Kadabra was a Zatanna villain.

He's somehow perfectly set up for her despite fighting the Flash. A guy that wanted to be a recognized stage magician so bad he travelled back in time, who makes his audience applaud for him by force, and yet still tries to be dramatic, be flashy? That's prime material! He's not appropriating the magician image just to get famous, but he sure ties the fame very tightly into his self-worth and image (imagine the showsmanship battles, the conflicts over audience, the core friction of magic for itself vs. magic for fame!). He uses tech instead of actual magic while Zatanna hides actual magic in her show. Heck, he *was* a stage magician for a time, until he turned to thievery to get fame faster. Want a villain to interrupt her magic act? How about another villain that wants to do a different magic act! He can hate Wally West all he wants, but my god, I'd love to see him and Zatanna duke it out over the greatest magician title-- does he actually respect Zatanna's legitimate magical ability? He's a narcissist, so it seems unlikely, but at the same time it's possible he'd respect someone very close to himself-- another stage magician using real 'magic' that likes a long cape and bowtie. He is the utter anti-Zatanna and he was not made for her at all, it's a shame they seem to have only fought in Brave and the Bold (and it was fun! Very fun!).

[queerofthedagger]

delight of the day: just saw the odyssey performed as a ballet and it was so good, so gender, and i am so so so fucking glad that I'm bisexual mwah

[ozcarma]

In light of the TGWDLM remount I’m tempted to make a compilation of my favorite parts of various student and community theater productions that have been uploaded onto YouTube…

[thepoisonroom]

someone should study how gender performance gets surveilled and disciplined in gay dating btw

[river-of-wine]

I’m thinking a lot about Persephone Hadestown. Something about Persephone, blinded by a river of wine, living in an oblivion, is that she does want to help people, but helping them would require directly facing and acknowledging the suffering her situation is causing the world, which directly clashes with her own method of coping with it all. Persephone drinks and drowns herself, and the hardship of her marriage and the disasters it causes falls away. But that isn’t reality.

In Livin’ It Up On Top, Persephone does acknowledge what the surface is like when she isn’t there - “who’s doing the best she can? Persephone, that’s who” “some may say the weather ain’t the way it used to be”. The way she speaks about it insists that it isn’t that bad, when we know for certain that it is, and “you take what you can get, and you make the most of it” while, for us, we draw the connection with Orpheus and Eurydice, the timing she chooses to share her mother’s advice insists that through the suffering, they must do their best with what they have. This is both for herself and the people around her, but in a song as upbeat as this, it isn’t something we really catch on a first listen.

Perhaps the most direct sign of how Persephone herself deals with and views this entire issue is “who says times are hard?” She knows times are hard, and we know she knows. She knows exactly how hard they are and exactly why they are so hard, but who says times are hard? The world came back to life, after all. She is here, and she brings summer with her, and people are dancing and drinking and having fun, so who says times are hard?

But then Hades comes for her too early, and everything is wrong again. She sees what he has done, and it ain’t right and it ain’t natural. She knows just how much people are suffering - “in the meantime up above, the harvest dies and people starve, oceans rise and overflow”. Persephone knows exactly how awful the world is and she knows exactly who and what is causing it. It’s her husband, it’s her marriage, it’s her absence that she has no say over anymore.

Persephone is not just a bystander to the goings on in Hadestown, though she wants nothing to do with it. She is Hades’ wife, she is the queen, and - though she does not want to be there - she is part of the chorus in Why We Build The Wall. When her husband asks, she replies. The enemy is poverty. The wall keeps out the enemy. We build the wall to keep us free. That’s why we build the wall.

Persephone copes with her drinks. She drowns herself in her alcohol, unable to face either world truly. On the surface, she is drunk. Down below, she is worse. When she drinks, she does not have to face the reality of Hades or Hadestown and the suffering of the people within it, nor does she have to acknowledge the suffering of the people above she is well aware of. The Fates continue to torment her, and she is too drunk to even retort. Persephone wants to help people, but to truly help she would have to face reality, and that is something she is wholly unwilling to do, because it would require recognising the true scale of tragedy, both in her own life and in the lives of everyone up above and down below. Her one method of escapism is all she can offer to the workers, drinks and drugs and a crack in the wall.

But then Papers happens and something changes. Hades speaks to Orpheus, and Persephone, for the first time in this entire act, puts down the flask. In Amber Gray’s performance in the West End, she slams it right down on top of the piano - “Hades, I know this boy”. Persephone has, since Our Lady of The Underground, drunkenly and miserably watched everything. She has watched Eurydice emerge from Hades’ office and realise what has happened to her, she has been on the sidelines for Flowers as the rest of the workers collapse, and she has watched Orpheus’ return and known that his journey has been for nothing. But it is here, in defiance of her husband, that she puts down her flask and forgoes her ability to disconnect any longer. She has directly inserted herself into this conflict, and it does not end here. When Orpheus is attacked, Persephone attempts multiple times to jump in and stop the workers from hurting him. She watches on in horror, unable to help but trying anyway. For the first time, Persephone is trying to help somebody with more than just the brushing off of the disastrous conditions of the world and providing them her own methods of ignoring reality. She has never been quiet to Hades himself about her dislike of Hadestown, but now, she is attempting to put an active stop to something he has caused.

Persephone remains on stage for If It’s True as well, watching on in disbelief and Orpheus rallies the workers to his side. At one point, she is centre stage, watching the workers rise with him as if she cannot believe her eyes. She goes to their final joined group, but she does not become part of it. Still, she is not quite there.

Where Persephone does aid them, though, is with Hades himself. How Long? is such a pivotal moment for Persephone. How Long? is much more than her vocal distaste of Hades’ creations and her hard stance against it. How Long? is Persephone’s attempt to change things. It is where she makes it clear that her drinking and disconnection is done, that she will no longer live in her own oblivion away from her husband and Orpheus and Eurydice and the world. She is here again, and she pleads with him, she finds the flaws in his arguments, she reminds him of important truths and, no matter how much it hurts, she sees the reality of the world around her head on.

[tvckerwash]

you know, an interpretation of ct that I don't see that I personally really love is that she's a fuck up. like yes she's cool and she has some good fight scenes, but a huge part of her character is that she makes mistakes. the mistakes that she makes are ones that on their own aren't the end of the world, but she keeps making these little mistakes, and they eventually add up until she's out of room to make any more.

a really good example of this phenomenon in action is the actions she took leading up to her final confrontation with carolina and tex.

strike one, she thought she saw something in the water, but when asked by the leader what it was, she brushed it off as nothing when even if it had been nothing, it would've been smart to tell him what she thought she saw.

strike two, she didn't sense or notice florida's presence when the leader did, and she looks at the leader twice, once as she pulled out her magnums, and again after she did a scan of the room, almost like she was looking at him for guidance before he finds florida and takes him out with one good axe throw.

strike three, she couldn't convince the leader to leave when they had the chance to get away, and her cheap tricks were not enough to hold off either tex or carolina in a fight. they were only good for incapacitating her opponents enough for her to get away, which doesn't work when she has no escape.

ct is not tex, or carolina, or south. she is not a one woman army who can get herself out of trouble when she's stuck in tough situations. she needs people who can watch her back, she need a team who can cover her when she does mess up, and the leader and his team were not those people. she couldn't bring herself to trust them, and they couldn't bring themselves to trust her, and that cost all of them their lives.

[ask-nikolaorsinov]

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[paarthursass]

my controversial tdv opinion is that mark seibert's krolock is good, actually. like i get why we clown on mark. i do. i do. but his krolock is actually. he's a bitch. he's a clown. he has the STRONGEST dad energy. he will PERFECTLY play the part of the lovestruck hero for sarah if that's what she wants and then will go and hiss at a bunch of vampires like they're misbehaving kittens.

other krolocks might have more consistent performances, but BECAUSE he switches it up so often it gives his krolock the feeling of being a fucking chameleon. he will lure you in by pretending to be so earnest and sincere and a little bit goofy and then he'll rip your throat out. and then he'll turn and go back to being a little goofy with his son.

[overthegardenwirtt]

I originally thought of the eddie redmayne emcee as a weird mix between alan cumming and joel gray but now that I've been thinking about it more it seems like alan cumming and eddie redmayne emcee are two polar opposite portrayals and joel is right in the middle. alan as a deeply human character and a victim in the end, eddie as a marionette doll who is able to assimilate into the rise of Nazism when the times call for it, and joel as somewhere in-between. joel as the puppet-like host whose morality is called into question in a few key scenes when he may or may not support the Nazis and he may or may not be affected by the rise of fascism but what's most important is he is always trying to draw ur attention away from what is going on around u. anyway that's why even tho alan's emcee is my favorite to look at I think Joel's is the most scary and effective to me for his pure ambiguity and sinister yet seemingly kind aura