#on that note barkilphedro sort of does the same thing by clinging so hard to the idea the palm-reader gave him

[lordxgrinnyxboy]

(long unnecessary rambles ahoy)

thinking about the Smiling Songs and how in the first one, Gwyn initially seems super uncomfortable with the attention and tries to pull away from everyone touching him. he eventually settles and even initiates contact, becoming enthusiastic as the scene progresses, but still has that...almost shy kind of posture as he first starts to take off the bandages, with his head angled down and his arms positioned in such a way as to (somewhat) block his face from view?

i still don’t see these scenes as happening literally, but considering that it comes right before Labyrinth, wherein Gwyn tries to decide to give up on his past, i wonder if it’s not a bit representative of the kind of internal struggle Gwyn’s going through. On the one hand, he hates feeling like people don’t see him when they look at him, like they only see “this freak”. He feels like he doesn’t have a sense of self, that he won’t have a sense of self outside of The Grinning Man unless he can discover his past, and that makes him unfit for Dea’s love.

But on the other hand, he does want love and affection. Even if that affection is for, as far as Gwyn’s concerned, someone who’s both not really him, and someone he’s afraid of being and doesn’t want to only be seen as. Later on in Labyrinth, he says that Josiana “sees the beauty in [his] broken face”, and that can of course also be taken as, she’s seen his face and isn’t repulsed by the sight of his wound, but i wonder if it’s also kind of...connected to the reaction he’s seeing from the crowd?

As in, to her, and to them, the beauty is the broken face, and nothing else. It’s the anguish and the anger and the present sort of hopelessness that make people feel things. Not the actual person. They see Gwyn and they make it about how they feel.

Labyrinth and Brand New World follow Gwyn’s decision to...lean into that, i guess, and kind of embrace that this is what people want from him. And really he starts thinking in that direction as soon as he gets the letter, but i think his participation in the Smiling Song really illustrates where his mind is.

On that note i also find it interesting how Gwyn’s the only person who doesn’t actually sing or speak during either smiling song. For the first one, Barkilphedro, Dea, and Ursus are absent, but they all participate to some degree in the second one. Gwyn engages with the ensemble both times, but stays silent.

And in the second one, he doesn’t show his actual face at all. He stays facing away from the audience until after he’s picked up the Giant Awful Puppet Head, which he then holds for the rest of the song.

The second Smiling Song in particular, i see as being more Barkilphedro’s perspective than anything, and being in a kind of sarcastic tone. Barkilphedro doesn’t understand why everyone seems to ‘worship’ the Grinning Man, and people attributing miracles to him could just be another facet of Barkilphedro’s sneering disdain for the whole matter.

But also, given the whole tl;dr of ... the entirety of Labyrinth and the decision to meet Josiana- of Gwyn being just as terrified of remembering his past as he is desperate to do so, being afraid and, really, at least dimly understanding and therefore dreading, that remembering, that even finding and killing the man who cut him won’t actually heal him, not fully and completely like the fairy tale prince, and given the heel-face turn from “how can I give you my heart when there is nothing at its core” and “how can you love me when you don’t know me”, as if he’s more of a placeholder for the identity he can’t remember than a full person already, to immediately wanting to marry Dea... and given the way that Ursus and Dea actually participate in the second Smiling Song,

i still feel like it’s mainly Barkilphedro’s pov since he is the narrator and so technically everything that happens is run through that filter, plus Gwyn wouldn’t have known to include “father, what have they done to you/I will bandage your wounds for you”, but it’s also a multi-pov show even when those pov are happening simultaneously, so

reckon whether it mightn’t also be reflective of Gwyn maybe feeling like learning this little bit about his past gives him enough sense of identity that he can...do both, in a way? To have enough sense of self that he feels there’s enough to him to give Dea, and as if he doesn’t have to pursue the rest of his past any further? He might think that this will let him ‘bury his pain’, like Ursus has wanted him to do.

it could be worth noting that, while Angelica is the only person to respond to the sight of Gwyn’s wound by demanding justice for him, she also doesn’t respond compassionately to the knowledge of whom he is until after she sees his face. she doesn’t acknowledge the fact that he’s been recently beaten. she acknowledges  the wound from 20 years ago. This, after Dirry-Moir also completely ignores the fact that Gwyn’s shackled and shirtless and bruised, and instead chatters at him about the show and then directs Angelica to look at Gwyn’s face. All of which gives Gwyn another example of people not seeing him but rather his wound and how it makes them feel.

lastly, and a smaller thing, after 20 years of not knowing where he came from, and having his formal education brought to a screeching halt at less than 10 years old, Gwyn wouldn’t know the first thing about how to be a Lord, and might, for all anyone else knows, not even want to be one at this point. He’s used to a completely different life which, while by no means ideal or one he’s been totally happy and at peace with, is still all he’s known. And even if he does want to be a Lord, the thing is he isn’t given a choice. Nobody asks him how he feels about it. yes, the titles are his by right anyway, but it’s still something that’s just, along with all the associated expectations and responsibilities, just kind of dropped on him. Angelica is by far, after Dea, the most compassionate toward him, but even she ultimately wants something from him. She expects him to help her heal the kingdom. Which is a great goal for her to have, and she’s an amazing person, but it’s also something she expects rather than asks for. She assigns him a role and doesn’t question whether he’ll actually want to play it.

Gwyn doesn’t know during the smiling song that he’s now going to be ordered (however amiably) to marry, told whom he can and cannot marry, and generally expected to comply with all sorts of regulations to fit someone else’s agenda, but i do think that on some subconscious level he must understand that the role he was originally born into is not one he’s actually, currently prepared for. That he’s still going to have to put on this persona of sorts. Not just because someone else is asking it of him, but also because he’s already decided to try to be the person he would have been instead of the person he is now.

So he picks up the mask.