idk man i just live here

Some Hadestown Bway vs NYTW takes, in no particular order:

the catch-22 of black characters in fandom: if a black character is morally upstanding, heroic and kind, if they embody good and noble traits with minimal or understandable flaws, the majority of fandom will decide they're too boring and vanilla to stan and ignore or bash them in favor of nonblack characters, claiming there's something untrustworthy or unbelievable about how good this character seems to be. but if a black character is messy, morally complex or fucked up on par with nonblack characters in the same story or straight-up evil like a lot of popular nonblack villains in fandom are, the majority of fandom will hyperfocus on the black character's negative traits and use them as the reason why they "can't" be interested in the black character or as a flimsy excuse for repeating antiblack stereotypes. like when it comes to black villains or even just like. 3-dimensionally flawed black characters, most folks in fandom often frame them as beyond empathy bc they're exceptionally aggressive/dishonest/unemotional etc and that makes them fundamentally unsympathetic and repulsive, even if they have favorite nonblack characters with the exact same traits. the common denominator of these arguments is blackness, and how way too many people see blackness itself as inherently beyond sympathy and inherently lacking interiority- but a lot of folks in liberal fandom spaces are unable to face that bias about themselves, so they grasp onto arbitrary character traits as the "reason" for why they think so many black characters are just unsympathetic and unlikable and uninteresting regardless of how they're depicted. it's completely valid to have archetype preferences- some folks just prefer straightforward heroic types, some folks just prefer villains or monsters, etc- but if someone who loves a whole roster of bland morally righteous nb heroes is turning up their nose at black heroes for being too boring or too perfect, or if someone who makes a whole meal outta being a monsterfucker villain stan somehow draws the line at black characters doing all the fucked up things their nb faves have done, we know the basis of that double standard is antiblackness.

“They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950 and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant, he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant, so he got all his buddies to come and say, “We all fucked her, so who knows who the father is?” And he laughs at the good joke…. What was it like, if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved—what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child, this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,” this child whose father denied it … What was it like? […] It’s like this: if I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents … if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, … the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have born a child for them, their child. But I would not have born my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children. The life of that fetus would have prevented, would have aborted, three other fetuses … the three wanted children, the three I had with my husband—whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one, I would never have met … I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California, without work, with half an education, living off her parents…. But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear. What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could? What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage? Who couldn’t tell her mother? Who had to go alone to that filthy room and put herself body and soul into the hands of a professional criminal? – because that is what every doctor who did an abortion was, whether he was an extortionist or an idealist. You know what it was like for her. You know and I know; that is why we are here. We are not going back to the Dark Ages. We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman. There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.”

you're missing out on all the crazy euphoric moments where you execute an idea flawlessly, sending it to your friends and feeling the genuine happiness at their reactions to something you made authentically. you're robbing yourself of something beautiful.

did the question pierce his heart like it pierced mine?