Tendo/Fei

So the Revues in Revue Starlight are a lot.

There is just so much packed into a few minutes. The sets! The fighting! The music! There’s just so much going on that you can’t completely process everything going on at once. And it’s absolutely awesome. The Revues look so amazing and feel so epic.

And sure it’s a lot, but we still get what’s happening. We saw the build up to each Revue, and we mostly know what’s going on in each of their heads. After all, it’s not just the stage that matters in the revues, but also the emotions going into it. For some, they’re worried about their future as a stage girl, whether or not they’ll be good enough to one day achieve their dreams. And for others, they’re worried about what graduation will mean for their relationships with each other as they each go on their separate paths. And as much as they try to hide it, these anxieties boil over in their Revues, forcing them to confront their deepest insecurities in front of the very person they tried so hard to hide it from.

But they’re never alone in these cases, they have their partner. Admittedly this usually doesn’t help at first since the only thing worse than one person catastrophizing over their future is two people catastrophizing over their futures. But still, they all manage to figure it out in the end together.

But Maya and Claudine aren’t insecure about the future. Both of them know that they’ll get into their dream troupe and neither of them seem too bothered about the fact that the two of them will be going their separate ways after High School.

So unlike every other Revue so far, which has been desperate and came from a place of hurt, the Revue of Soul starts off so much more lighthearted. The vibes are completely different from everything that came before in the movie. It feels like Maya and Claudine have nothing left to say to each other, that they are doing this Revue just for fun, it’s like a game to them.

But obviously it’s not just that, the two of them mean so much to each other! They’re just acting otherwise because of their pride, and once the two of them decide to drop all pretenses, they can finally have a proper Revue, where they put everything on the line just to understand each other.

And to see how we got here, I’m going to try to lay out everything going on with Claudine and Maya in the Movie that got us here. This is a part of a series of Deep Dives I’m doing for each of the Movie’s Revues, and while you can read this one without reading the others, I may make some references to themes and ideas that I brought up in the earlier Deep Dives, but I’ll do my best to give context if that ever happens.

no thoughts, calvin klein shoot

she hesitates to tell them at first, but more of that fear is celine finding out than anything else. cause at the end of the day they're kids, and mira and zoey haven't really known about demons for all that long. and they promise each other to not tell celine that they know

but eventually celine figures out. by slip of the tongue or something. and she herself is a bit confused and angry like. why did you guys accept it so easily when i tried so hard to train you to internalize the same sense of duty that i had!!!! the same hate for demons, the same fear of the destruction they could cause!!! and mira and zoey are just like. well rumi's rumi. she's not an agent of hurt or destruction. she's nice and she helps us when we train and she listens to us talk and we watch movies together huddled under the blankets at night when we think you won't hear. she'd never hurt us. she patches our wounds after hunts and takes hits for us and sings our songs like theyre the best things her voice will ever touch. we love rumi. and hey, didn't you say gwi-ma feeds off shame, guilt, fear? wouldn't we just be handing her to his manipulation if we forced her to hide?? and rumi's just watching them defend her like. euwuewheh i love u guys so much and celine's like. but our faults and fears must never be seen!!! and then they just wonder. aloud. is rumi a fault to you. is she something Stained. And Wrong. is she something you have to fix instead of someone you can love.

but obviously celine loves rumi. thats her baby,,,, she loves rumi more than words can say but her love, she realizes, is all tangled up in fear and spite and a million other things she cant name. things that she projected onto her child. the child she promised to love and protect!!!!!! who she does love!!! just....in the only way she knows after a lifetime of learned hatred

and they TALK ABOUT IT and theyre OKAY and when jinu comes along rumi's in a much better place to talk to him (like. he was CLEARLY being manipulative in the movie. "i'm the only one who can understand you" set off SO many alarm bells in my head at least) and zoey and mira can be there to support her and overall everyone is just happier

there'll be happiness after you

but there was happiness because of you

Plant mom Rumi love of my life

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