Well, I guess this is happening now

Playing a murder mystery puzzle game like wow...who is out here making these delightful and thematical puzzle boxes for people to hide their conveniently placed evidence in? And most importantly, do they take commissions?

My memory of The Birdcage (1996) is always that it's more dated and more difficult to watch than it actually is. You hear "drag-themed comedy from the 90s based on a musical from the 80s based on a play from the 70s" and you brace yourself just a little, right? But the film has a strong gay perspective, so the fruity fag jokes mostly come off as warmly affectionate. There is a surprising amount of poignancy in Robin Williams' portrayal of Armand, grudgingly agreeing to his beloved son's request that he go back into the closet for an evening ("do me a favor and don't talk to me for a while"). The drag club's staff attempting to redecorate the apartment with stuff straight people might like (a taxidermy moose head, an enormous crucifix, and Playboy magazine) is extremely funny. Albert's histrionics are a point of tension because he does often come off as a stereotypically pathetic/comic figure, but towards the end of the movie he makes it very clear that he's aware of how people see him, and asserts that trying to copy a stoic masculinity he doesn't possess for the sake of social approval would be more pathetic. In the 1983 musical adaptation, they give "Albert" (Albin) the only good song in the whole show, "I Am What I Am", which Gloria Gaynor covered to the delight of gays everywhere. Apparently Nathan Lane wasn't (publicly) out yet in 1996, which is amazing because it means that at one point in this movie you're watching a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man playing a straight man, in a movie about how it's important to be yourself, an absurdity that does seem to encapsulate the state of gay America in the 90s.

im going to explode in the kiln

I think enough time has passed since 2013 that Jessalyn is super fucking cavalier about the events of GTH. I think she opens conversations with “My mother, who committed manslaughter in 1989–” just to get a reaction out of people

It has nothing to do with what she’s about to say either. It’s like “my mother, who committed manslaughter in 1989, made this casserole when I was a kid”

[ID: A Black butch woman, seated, says, “I know I am a woman. I know I am butch. I know that there is nothing wrong with that. And I know that within the confines of the word ‘woman,’ there is plenty of room for me.”]

the lion concerns himself with everything