Taking Cartoons Too Seriously

She’s my favorite Off Color gem! I’m so happy that we finally have a canon Ruby/Pearl fusion!

DO NOT REPOST PLEASEEEE!!!! Or I'll get you, and I'll make it look like a bloody accident.

good job tumblr 👍

american attitudes about nudity are fucking wild, and the worst part is that because they're american, they just assume that everyone everywhere thinks the same. i will never forget seeing people on a left-leaning, progressive site saying that families bathing together is creepy and gross and clearly a sign that something is wrong with the family, that they'd never seen their siblings or parents naked and would in fact rather die. meanwhile to this day i bathe and go to the sauna with my sister and mother and have been bathing and sauna'ing with various family members - and even strangers! - my whole life. but yes, can confirm, seeing your grandma's tits as a child does you good, and not just because it teaches you that "beauty is fake and temporary", but because it broadens your ideas about what beauty even is in the first place. my sister and i used to spend our summers at our grandma's house by the countryside and frequently bathed and went to sauna with her. we saw not just her breasts but also her flabby skin, her moles and liver spots, her body hair and varicose veins, and we didn't see any of that as weird or ugly because they were a part of our grandma who we loved very much. and when we see those things in other people - ourselves included! - we think "well it wasn't ugly on my grandma's body, so why would it be ugly on anyone else's body?". it makes you much more understanding and "forgiving", if you will, towards the completely normal bodies of strangers as well as your own body.

touched up a comic from a while ago. follows the headcanon that danny's body temperature is abnormally low. get bundled, idiot

Audio from My Babysitter’s a Vampire because of course it is. They’re talking about Cujo btw. Reviving Cujo for Valerie

That can't be good...

Family trip!!!!!

Oh I absolutely do! I picture her as someone who made a name for herself fairly young and did so by making some sacrifices. Playing ruthless games, manipulation, even sleeping with the occasional patron or manager for support. She's someone who's voice is good but not great so to make up for it she had to cultivate an image and a following by using charm and cunning and of course, being an absolutely ruthless bitch. She's clawed her way to the top and she's in a position where she knows her limelight is starting to fade and the final nail in the coffin is this twenty-something-year-old nobody from Scandinavia who can't even name her teacher. Just like that, this girl is a sensation over night and Carlotta isn't ready to be dethroned just yet. I like to imagine her as egotistical and materialistic but also bitter and cynical. She fought for years to get what she has and then one day it's just gone. She's aware of what kind of industry she's in and that the world isn't kind to actresses who can't stay young and beautiful so she does what it takes to hold on to that spotlight just a little bit longer.

Making Carlotta no threat to Christine actively takes away from the strength of Christine's character and makes her triumph over her rival meaningless. What's the point of winning against someone who can't properly play the game in the first place? ALW turns Carlotta from a threatening rival for Christine to defeat into a paper-thin bully for Erik to humiliate.

I have expressed sympathy for characters like Jekyll/Hyde, The Frankenstein Creature, and Erik himself. These are people with actual body counts who have varying levels of misogynistic views. I don't have to like Carlotta or think she's a good person (I don't) but I am obligated to give her the same consideration and depth of analysis as I am all of the other characters. I have to think about the context of her work and what it means for her to be replaced when I judge her actions. I don't really have any strong reason to dislike her if I"m being completely honest. She's mean to the main character. So what? She does it in a way that makes the story more interesting and adds narrative tension. I don't care if she's a good person, I care that I didn't get bored reading about her. I also don't think her diva behavior is even out of place given the context of her background. The performing arts have always been a ruthless place, especially for women and even today it hasn't broken away from the idea of women having an expiration date. In the 19th century it was even worse. Being an actress was already scandalous and if you didn't make it big on stage you risked not being able to find other work because being an actress was only slightly more respectable than being a prostitute and there was quite a lot of overlap between the two professions if you happened to be poor. You also didn't become an actress if you wanted to be a respectable wife or mother. The only cases where the stigma of being an actress could be overcome or where an actress carried some respectability were cases where the actress made a name for herself or worked for a prestigious venue. Carlotta has managed to achieve that level of fame and is considered by the population at large to be a brilliant soprano. What undoes her time and time again isn't a lack of talent, it's her ego. That is her fatal flaw. Carlotta losing her career in her prime would have been devastating not just financially but also to her reputation and her future prospects. It's not shocking that she would want to make sure her rivals are completely destroyed because there is legitimately a lot to lose and she knows it. And she is paranoid as fuck about having hidden enemies everywhere. "She thought herself, at that time, the victim of a thousand jealous attempts and went about saying that she had a secret enemy who had sworn to ruin her." And the current mess she's in is her own fault because her hubris got the better of her. She puts herself in jeopardy by overplaying her hand and pretending to be sick as a way to throw her weight around only to get a harsh reality check. So of course she over-corrects and doubles down on trying to make herself the only option again. There's actually a lot you could get into about her relationship with Christine since Christine was her understudy and the two would have had to work together pretty closely. I honestly think it would be kind of interesting to see how Carlotta ended up the heartless and soulless monster she became. She's in an industry where at any moment everything she's worked for could be snatched from her and finding out you were so much smaller than you thought you were has to be a devastating blow. This is an interesting character. There is a lot of untapped potential here and her story could be a good one if played from the right angle. But no one ever really has an interest in exploring her as a character in her own right.

(And yeah, she's vicious and paranoid and a diva in every sense of the word, but she's also putting up with a lot of shit both on the social/cultural issues front and the "the crazy dude in the cellar doesn't like me" one so I kind of see where she's coming from.)

I understand what you're saying I also like The Creature as a character more than I like Carlotta but I am not going to go through any great lengths to say he's any kind of a better person. I do feel like we have to examine a character beyond terms of just how much we personally like them. I think there is merit to looking at what a character like Carlotta says about the environment and the culture of the opera and what she represents as a juxtaposition to a character like Christine in the greater narrative. It doesn't escape me when I read the novel that our spoilt diva who gets bullied represents the worst aspects associated with actresses of the late 19th century and to an extent women in the 19th century vs Christine who's often given very angelic symbolism. The author's period typical misogyny is kind of obvious. Leroux even go so far as to say that Carlotta is a bad fit to play Marguerite because of how seductive she plays the role, comparing her to Bizet's Carmen unfavorably. While it's true that one should not play Marguerite as if she were seductive it's the fact that a lack of conventional modesty is one of Carlotta's given negative qualities as a person, not just a performer. She's implied to be seductive and has a tendency to charm people in power. Leroux writes her about as close to the "actresses are prostitutes" trope as he can get away with with out spelling it out. Carlotta is everything a woman of the period should not be. Egotistical, manipulative, seductive and shrewd. Christine represents an idealized woman. Virtuous, humble, even a little naive. The characters in Phantom are a little more complex than some of their literary contemporaries, the Daroga was downright subversive for depictions of brown people at the time, but Leroux was not immune to the biases of his era. Even so, he still gives Carlotta at least enough dignity to feel like a human being and not a walking trope. There is enough realism to her that she doesn't feel flat in comparison to the other characters. The real problem is that rather than view this character critically or with the same nuance and consideration that we give characters like Erik or the Creature, who get more sympathetic and humanized with every new iteration, Female characters like Carlotta often get flanderized and exaggerated until they become a shallow caricature. If a book written in 1910 by a man ends up being the least misogynistic depiction of this character across multiple adaptations and the majority of fan works there's a wider problem with fandom and media. I also feel like if Carlotta were a male character this wouldn't be happening as consistently as it is. It's not about Carlotta on her own, not really, but more about media and fandom's tendency to favor male characters. Someone made a comment that was a rather good summary of this "Fandom feels conflicted about genocide man, universally hates annoying woman."

This, thank you, Xan, I hadn't clocked that but you are correct. Especially the term Karen wouldn't apply to Carlotta because Carlotta in the novel is Spanish and due to French attitudes towards Spain would not have been able to weaponize her whiteness or womanhood the way most women in France would have been able too. Particularly her implied lasciviousness and the intentional comparison to a Romani-Spanish character like Carmen. I wouldn't say she's POC coded, but she wouldn't have had the same level of privilege as someone naturally French would. Also again, very telling that Leroux's idealized female character is a blond Scandinavian woman while the bitchy conniving diva is Spanish.

This doesn't mean she's not deserving of her downfall. It doesn't absolve her of her behavior, but I'd be lying if I didn't see a little bit of tragedy in her character.

Canonically it's because she's souless and while her art is technically flawless it lacks emotion. In the book it actually notes that at one point on stage she shows off a bit, playing the role of Marguerite as if it were Carmen. My interpretation is that she does what a lot of popular singers with strong vocal talent but no real acting chops do. She adds a bunch of unnecessary flourishes to songs that don't need them. That's honestly one of the worst things a singer can do to a musical number unless said musical number is explicitly designed to have very colorful riffs and runs. Think of like, back in the 90's, those god awful shitty contemporary pop song versions of Disney songs. Christina Aguilera's version of "Reflection" from Mulan is probably the best example to illustrate this point. It plays well on the radio but wouldn't actually suit the song's original context. In this analogy Christine is Lea Salonga and Carlotta is Christina Aguilera. Some people may actually prefer Aguilera's version (I will never understand you, if you are one of those people) but no one can claim it's the version that belongs in the film or that this is the way Mulan herself would sing it. This is precisely what it would seem Erik doesn't like about Carlotta. She can sing the house down but she doesn't know when to pull back and really disappear into the role. She can only ever be Carlotta in a costume. This does make me wonder how Christine would handle a role like Carmen or the Queen of the Night from Mozart's The Magic Flute, tbh. Leroux loves to emphasize how angelic Christine is when she sings it actually makes me doubt she'd be convincing in a role that required her to act cruel or lascivious. From a Doylist standpoint I don't think Leroux would ever have put Christine in the position for the audience to associate her with something spicy like Carmen. At around the time Carmen came out it was highly controversial and even a bit ground breaking. It had a pretty negative reputation in France for quite a long time. The character of Carmen herself was extremely polarizing and there was a lot of critical backlash. Which Leroux would have been aware of even if Phantom of the Opera was written decades later. It's not an accident that Leroux wanted us to associate Carmen, and by proxy all of it's scandal, with Carlotta, on the other hand. Carlotta is meant to be every negative stereotype about actresses of the time. We are meant to be repulsed by her lack of modesty when she plays Marguerite. It's something to ponder anyway. Would Christine possibly not have been able to pull off Carmen or any acting role that wasn't a conventional leading soprano? Erik himself doesn't believe Christine has the temperament to handle the music he's writing. I always found that very interesting that when she asks to hear his music he immediately defaults to "Oh no, that would be way too much for you. I'll play you Mozart instead." He and Leroux both are very keen to protect Christine's virtue and image as a perpetual "good girl." This isn't unique or unusual considering the era in which the book was written but I have found myself on more than one occasion losing a little of my patience for this particular literary convention. Christine's saving grace is that she does actually have a personality and manages to be proactive, even fiery at times. Leroux manages to write his characters as complete people but as is to be expected from a novel written by an Edwardian Era white man, he's still beholden to some of the outdated misogynistic tropes of his day.

Granted, singing a piece in a recital is not at all the same as presenting the character on stage. However, I find it fascinating that Leroux chose to have her present the Queen rather than Pamina, suggesting her potential dramatic range is far greater than people might think.

Is the only mention I've seen of her performing for the Duchess of Zurich. Is yours a different edition or translation?

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One more for the collection. Book is Stars at Last by Jessica Jocelyn