.˚⊹ flabbergasties ⊹˚.

color and light, aka sunday in the park with gelphie

chapter: 4/7 word count: 42,620 rating: e

this is the scariest ask i've ever received, how could i ever rank my new children!!

right now, the songs that have stuck with me are freak, like i do, and nowhere, nobody. i think she's doing a lot with those songs in particular, and also they scratch a certain itch in my brain that i tend to find in her music.

that being said i also find petal to be a sleeper hit for me personally, and big feelings takes on a lot of the wordplay i really love about her songwriting, and warning signs is her strongest interlude yet (and is some of the most honest songwriting i think we've ever gotten from her, which says something), and bad thing is a really exciting new sound from her, and kiss me and stay are absolutely devastating, and i'm dying to properly analyze oh well and never get over me and SO.

*takes a deep breath*

A few weeks ago my wife and I were running late for dinner reservations with our siblings (my sister and her sister, not our collective siblings, to be clear). It’s a whole ‘we got distracted binge watching tv on a random Thursday’ story. So I was speeding slightly, going about 3 over the speed limit. Naturally, we got pulled over. The officer asks if I know why I was pulled over and I said no (because you should always say no). Asks for my permit etc. and peers into the car, he foes a double take because my wife is almost identical to Megan Fox, but he concludes that doesn’t matter.

He asks for the reason we’re going over the speed limit and I’m usually fast on my feet (but not always intelligently) and so I told him that we lost track of time and we were now running late for our daughter’s first ever summer camp play. He immediately is more sympathetic because it turns out he has twins. He asks for more details about the play which I had to make up on the spot (it’s Romeo and Juliet, she’s playing Juliet and had complained endlessly about the boy playing Romeo). We got off without a warning and made it to dinner in record time.

Now we have a fake 11 year old daughter who wants to be an actress, plays on the school soccer team (she’s a striker, obviously), does figure skating on the weekend and has ambitions of going to Julliard. Every time we are having an argument (only minor ones so far) that we get tired of one of us will say “we shouldn’t be doing this while Emily is home”. “Do you want to give Emily a sibling?” Is code for ‘we are busy adults with limited free time and we should make the most of it’.

We have no children. We only have cats. Thanks House of the Dragon, I guess. You are a terrible show but you have given us a fake daughter whom we love with all of our hearts.

when people talk about queer families, this is what they're referring to btw ♡

The night after dinner, my SIL shows up at my door. Tells me (not for the first time) that she married the wrong sibling. We do the dance we always do wherein we both espouse that we’re deeply in love, I keep a solid physical barrier between us, she brings up that I always put physical distance between us and that I barely ever physically touch her, I tell her it’s because if I started I’d never stop and I won’t cross that line. I tell her that sometimes I curse my brother for leaving the house the day they met because it means he met her first. We both lament that it’s unfair to all 3 of us that we never wanted to or asked to feel this way about each other. She asks me to hold her, I say that I can’t. We meet in the middle and hug. We cry. She leaves.

We go about our days, texting like besties but feeling differently underneath.

I meet with gallery girl, we go on what could only be described as dates even though we’re not really together. I’m hot with the realization that I like her more than I thought, and I see actual potential with her. This is immediately followed by immense guilt because I do like her, but I’m in love with SIL no matter how hard I try not to be. I know I will eventually be out of love but I don’t know how much time it will take.

2 days later SIL is once again at my door. This time she tells me she’s extremely unhappy in her marriage and plans to divorce my brother so we can be together. I tell her that she absolutely shouldn’t have to stay in a marriage she’s unhappy in, it isn’t fair to either her or my brother (who does seem to be happy, and I know he will be crushed). But her leaving him doesn’t mean that we can be together. It would still be a betrayal of my brother for us to be together, even if they’re not together any longer. I simply can’t/won’t do that to him, regardless of how I feel about her. She asks me if there’s someone else, I tell the truth. She is very upset, and I tell her that it’s unfair of her to be upset about me seeing someone else considering that she has literally been married to my brother the entire time that we realized we have feelings for each other. And that my position would still be the same even if gallery girl wasn’t in the picture.

Days pass. Then my BROTHER turns up at my door upset, venting to me about how he thinks SIL is unhappy and he thinks he has failed as a husband and he’s afraid she’s going to leave him. All the while I know she is and am frankly surprised she hasn’t told him she is yet, but maybe she’s just preparing the legal paperwork or whatever.

I’m supposed to meet gallery girl’s friends next week. We’ve planned to spend the weekend together after my showing this weekend. Which my brother and SIL are also going to attend.

My worlds are about to collide. My head is going to explode. Is it too early to take up day drinking? Am I too young? Should I change my name and move to Paris?

At least I’m really hot?

i've been thinking about you a lot, hot mess anon! wondering how it is you've been fairing, and so i appreciate the update — though i wish it was a simpler and happier one. i feel like the one big comfort in things reaching a head is that you're not going to be living in this in-between space for much longer. i hope for that for you!! ♡

it sounds like you've done everything you can to listen to yourself, to follow your intuition, and to put up the boundaries that feel right to you. when this feels the shittiest and most confusing, i hope you find some comfort in that fact. there's no perfect way to navigate a situation like this one, but you are doing your damned best, and that's something to be proud of.

Im honor of your Sunday in the park au. And petal release day. :).

this being the closest we get to dotiana now. that's okay! that's so fine. i'm really so okay and fine about it.

...it does mean that, yes. i thought perhaps if given the choice people would rather i besmirch sondheim's masterpiece over writing 3 whole chapters of a confusing grandma/grandchild gelphie-in-the-80s dynamic??

afkdjsalk YES IN FACT ! THIS IS ALL I THINK ABOUT MOST DAYS !

the promise of dotiana grande is the spark that brought sunday in the park with gelphie into the world, in fact.

dotiana grande....in a corset and bustle....complaining about the heat....