Rhodonite
A Tender Dance for the Self.
She’s my favorite Off Color gem! I’m so happy that we finally have a canon Ruby/Pearl fusion!
almost home
Keni

Love Begins
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year

tannertan36
i don't do bad sauce passes
taylor price


roma★

Janaina Medeiros
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
noise dept.

DEAR READER
sheepfilms
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Jules of Nature

★
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

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@amaltheafan
Rhodonite
A Tender Dance for the Self.
She’s my favorite Off Color gem! I’m so happy that we finally have a canon Ruby/Pearl fusion!

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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"blood runs thicker than water"
Open for better resolution! Tumblr kills it.
DO NOT REPOST PLEASEEEE!!!! Or I'll get you, and I'll make it look like a bloody accident.
anyway i looked up the post about seeing your grandma's boobs and tumblr has deleted the screenshot of the story where the finnish dude says that americans are "like that" because they haven't seen their grandma's tits
good job tumblr 👍
there it is!
my comments on that post were (sorry for shamelessly copy-pasting them):
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
DANNYMAY DAY 24: NECROMANCY
Audio from My Babysitter’s a Vampire because of course it is. They’re talking about Cujo btw. Reviving Cujo for Valerie

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Another GWE piece! This time, I did @furiarossa's wonderfully sinister lines for Freakshow and his new pet ghost!
That can't be good...
💀 DannyMay Day 9: Ghost Zone 💀
Family trip!!!!!
I've never considered Carlotta could be interesting, do you have any headcanons for her?
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.
I agree with your thoughts on the PotO play, I thought what they did with Carlotta didn't make much sense. But if there was a few things about the 2000 movie that I did like about her. Is the fact that made her a bit of a dog mom and did actually care about her husband. But I think your take makes much more sense. I think the only time where a talentless Carlotta made sense was the Charles Dance movie.
It works in the Charles Dance miniseries because she's the owner's wife so her being a terrible singer but still being allowed to perform isn't that much of a stretch and they still manage to make her inability to sing funny in a way that ALW doesn't.
I love Cherik, even if he's pretty far off the book canon I have such a soft spot for him. The reason it doesn't work in the ALW musical boils down to the fact that she sounds terrible for one reason and one reason only, to make Christine sound better by comparison. That NEVER works, if you have to make the rival character incompetent, hard to work with and completely undeserving of their status to elevate your protagonist you've fucked up. You've weakened the impact of your main character's abilities. It doesn't work in the stage version of the musical but you kind of let it go because her lack of vocal ability isn't really made a huge point of but in the 2004 movie we get shots of people putting cotton in their ears and an adoring crowd asking for Christine. At that point keeping her is a liability to the managers because she's extremely difficult to work with and no one actually seems to like or respect her.
In the book Carlotta did have adoring fans, enough that she could fill the opera house with them as a way to bully and intimidate Christine. Her problem is that despite being a good technical singer she lacks passion and she's described as heartless and soulless. The toad scene is particularly telling to me of what kind of performer Carlotta is. The way everyone reacts with dismay instead of laughing or booing her off of the stage.
Later when Erik is explaining the trick he refers to Carlotta's voice as "-Carlotta's golden throat, Carlotta's crystal throat," now, he could be giving us some sarcasm there because earlier in a letter to the mangers he said she "sang like a squirt," (What does that even MEAN you goofy weirdo?) but I take most of what Erik says with a heaping tablespoon full of salt because he is very biased and just generally very unreliable. I believe the book gives more than enough enough substantial evidence to conclude that Carlotta is, in fact, a very good singer. And she needs to be for one reason and one reason only. Because if she's not then her rivalry with Christine doesn't pay off.
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.

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lmao please tell me you aren't defending carlotta
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.
My main beef with adaptations is Carlotta canonically is not a bad singer. People keep wanting to do that to her to emphasize Christine's genius and make her more of the bad guy (looking at you, Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston), but Leroux writes her as a highly skilled vocalist whose primary flaw is that she doesn't put a whole lot of passion into her otherwise technically perfect performances. (Christine, meanwhile, has the opposite problem--extraordinarily moving in her best moments but also extremely erratic.) This is why the "toad" incident is so shocking--apart from the bizarreness of it all, Carlotta's voice did not give out, ever, and she was pretty justly proud of the fact.
(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.)
Also, we as the reader/audience know the truth of Christine's situation, but if you look at it from Carlotta's point of view, it does look suspicious. Her understudy (or in some adaptations, like Webber, some random chorus girl) catches the eye of a wealthy patron and is suddenly being offered the leading roles that you've worked your entire life to earn? You clawed your way to the top, and now this younger woman is apparently being handed the roles you feel you've earned, just because a rich man has taken a shine to her? I'd be pressed too. We know Christine isn't sleeping her way to the top, but it absolutely looks that way fron the outside.
A very good point. Even if Christine isn't sleeping with anyone it sure does look that way. She's getting free voice lessons from an unknown musical genius and someone is sending threatening letters to make sure that Christine gets good roles. Carlotta even gets a note telling her that she'd better not show up for a performance or else. Of course Carlotta would think that Christine is currying favors and trying to get rid of the competition. Because that is exactly what Carlotta herself would do and probably has done in the past. This is kind of just the name of the game in some respects and it's a game Carlotta has played for years. She has no reason to believe Christine hasn't charmed a wealthy patron into boosting her success. Unfortunately for literally everyone the patron in question is not the Vicomte De Changy, it's the unhinged murder goblin who lives in the sewer...
I think the reason why, so many people here hate Carlotta more than the Creature and overall feel bad for him. Is because he's tragic, he wanted to be loved and find people who would accept him. While Carlotta for the most part dose come off as well kind of like a karen. A person that a lot of us have had to cross paths with and hate it. Who wants to deal with a grown woman who acts like that? No one, but yeah, she got screwed over by Erik. But yeah, those are my thoughts on this, and I agree with you the Creature has done way worse than Carlotta could ever do.
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."
spider-xan
Jan 13
Also going to add that Karen is an AAVE term referring specifically to a white woman who uses her whiteness and white womanhood to be racist, especially towards Black people - it's not a word for any mean woman or a woman you don't like, and people have to stop misusing and defanging Black terms to discuss racism like this
dross-the-fish
Jan 13
Original Poster
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.
Do you think Carlotta was a better singer than Christine before Christine had lessons?
Yes. Completely. Not because of inherent talent but Carlotta had years of training and experience under her belt. One thing people seem not to realize is that having talent isn't even half the battle when it comes to being any kind of an artist. You can have a predisposition or advantage that makes it easier for you to learn a skill but having a good voice would not be enough to make Christine a good performer. One thing we see a few times in the novel is that Christine sometimes falters on stage, especially if she gets distracted. She lacks the kind of discipline a seasoned performer needs to be consistent. She doesn't know how to block out the audience and performing takes a lot out of her, to the point that she nearly faints after one performance. It almost feels like she doesn't fully know how to pace herself and is at risk of burning out. It's also mentioned by Meg Giry that before her training Christine sang "like a crock" (whatever that means). Passion is a great quality but if you don't know how to apply technique to it then it's only going to get you so far. That's where Erik comes in, he helps Christine turn her talent into a skill and THAT is the point at which Christine becomes a threat to Carlotta. I like to think Carlotta might have had passion once, it would have been really difficult for her to be come Prima Donna of one of the finest Opera Houses in the world if she hadn't, but years of backstabbing and clawing her way to the top and vying for the favor of rich patrons to support her killed it years ago. Now she's shrewd, bitter, calculating and views everyone as a potential threat. People aren't born heartless they are made that way. Carlotta operates like someone who believes wholeheartedly that the only way to keep what she has is to crush any rising star before it outshines her. Being Prima Donna doesn't bring her any real joy anymore but it's something she feels she has to hang on to at all costs.
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.
Love your phantom takes, curious to know what you think it is that Erik doesn't like about Carlotta's singing?
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.
Fun fact, Christine does sing the Queen of the Night in Leroux! At the beginning of Chapter 6, a critic describes hearing her giving a recital of "the most beautiful segments of her repertoire" for the Duchess of Zurich, the only performance in the story she gives outside of the Opera:
It's true that when she has put on the Queen of the Night's diadem of stars, Mozart has to leave his eternal home to come hear her. But no, he doesn't have to trouble, because the keen and vibrant voice of her magic interpretation of The Magic Flute scaled to the heavens to find him with the same ease with which she passed effortlessly from her cottage in the village of Skoteloff to the gold and marble palace built by M. Garnier.
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.
Oh that's interesting! Thank you for the correction! I actually don't think that passage is in my copy or in the audio book I use.
Is the only mention I've seen of her performing for the Duchess of Zurich. Is yours a different edition or translation?
Yeah, the thing about Leroux is that the most widely distributed English translation is very heavily abridged; both your excerpt and my own are from the same part of the book but one has had a whole paragraph removed. I used my copy of the Leonard Wolf translation for reference (though honestly it has issues); Mirielle Ribière and David Coward have also done unabridged translations which are generally well regarded.
Phantom of the Opera request, Erik the angel of music presides over Christine x Raoul's wedding. 💖

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(getting a taste of my own medicine) actually this is okay. Is this what you guys have bene whining about? Jesus christ
One more for the collection. Book is Stars at Last by Jessica Jocelyn