divasdramaturg

- took a chainsaw to a tree bc that was her logical response 

- sat in granny’s diner staring intensely at regina while she was just reading her paper and chilling

- wore a leather jacket-tank top-boots combo every day of the week

- the lesbian Swagger

-  attacked a toaster oven bc she was annoyed?? no straight would do this

- hauled regina’s ass out of a  f i r e 

- tried to fight a dragon with a sword and a gun

- endless pop culture references

- slammed regina against a wall (twice)

- helped regina to her feet even when they were enemies bc princess charming genes

- always hanging out with her dad (bless)

- always standing with her knee up or hands in her belt loops

- has a terrible diet

- offered princess aurora her jacket when she was cold

- played video games with her teenage son for fun

- gave kick-ass ‘be yourself/punch back’ speeches to her younger female friends aka ashely, ruby etc

- plaid pyjamas

- literally obsessed with giving regina a happy ending

- just everything about her in neverland

- wore a plaid shirt under a waistcoat 

- ‘our son’

- came up to regina at the bar and offered to buy her a drink

- used to have hipster glasses

- did stress chin ups on a fucking boat 

- WORE A PLAID SHIRT UNDER A WAISTCOAT!!!!

- ran around town after regina all night bc she was ‘worried’

- smirked and raised her eyebrow to ask about a fucking firebird muscle car

 - tracked regina’s phone 

- bobble hats & beanies

- visibly freaked the fuck out whenever pretty girls move in her personal space

- obsessed with her car

- did rainbow magic with elsa who is always a gay icon

- slammed her hands on on surfaces a lot (again? no straights do this?)

- constantly glared at robin

- gave regina gun bc she wanted her to be safe in new york?

- taught hook sword fighting 

- tucked her button up shirts into her jeans good lord

- the whole lily backstory 

- literally sacrificed her fucking soul to rescue regina

- buttoned her shirts to the neck

- obsessed with onion rings and donuts

- immediately offered to co-parent another child with regina

- constantly staring at regina

- did stress chin ups on a fucking hospital bed

- defended regina physically (with. a. sword. that’s gay culture right there)on multiple occaisions

- offscreen took henry on a fishing trip??

- what time it is

- how long you’ve been reading

- how many chapters you’ve covered in the last 24 hours

- what you were late for because you were reading

- the woeful few hours you have left to sleep

- the emotional outbreaks you’re experiencing

- the inappropriate place you’re having said outbreak

- the general public’s reaction to your outbreak

today I met a professor who does queer studies. she told me that her teenage gay son yelled at her recently for using the word “queer” in describing her discipline and demanded to know how the university “could get away with calling it that.”

so of course she’s baffled right, and asks him where on earth this is coming from. and he told her he read it on Tumblr. 

listen if you don’t want to be called queer and don’t want to be lumped in with folks who comprise the queer community, that’s fine. that’s totally fine. it is 100% okay. people are allowed to have complicated histories with that word. it’s a fraught signifier. it’s a mess and it’s allowed to be. 

what’s not cool is telling young LGBTQ+ people that queer is a slur in all contexts because now you are stripping away not just the language that we use to describe ourselves but also the language that creates the discipline that lets us study our own lives and our cultures. Queer studies has been a part of American academe since the 1970s (possibly earlier, depending on who you ask). “Queer” has been a functioning and largely unproblematic signifier in American academe since ten years before the AIDS crisis. If you don’t at least know that much, you have absolutely no business trying to educate LGBTQ+ youth about queer history.

Trying to censor the word queer from our collective cultural lexicon is 1) impossible. it’s here now. and 2) an erasure of our lineage of scholarship. I could spend all day lobbing criticisms at American academic culture and I do, but queers created space for ourselves in academe. We built a queer world inside the tower that tried its best to keep us out and now we have a place here. 

holy shit

10 Things You Need to Know About Trump’s Tax Returns

Finally Trump’s tax returns have been made public. Here are the 10 big things you need to know about them:  1. Did he break the law? Almost surely. Details of tax practices suggest fraud on a massive scale. As Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the Justice Department, said yesterday, based on the Times’s story, Trump faces federal and state prosecution for bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud, as does his entire family. 2. How little has he paid in taxes? In 11 of the 18 years examined, Trump paid no taxes at all. In his first year in office he paid the most income tax he had paid in a decade: $750. He has deducted taxes for almost everything imaginable, including $70,000 for hairstyling. 3. But he paid taxes in other nations where he did business? Yes, in 2017, when he paid $750 to the U.S., he paid $15,598 in Panama —$145,400 in India —$156,824 in the Philippines. So much for America first. 4. Why did Trump run for president? He was deeply in debt in 2015, and was, as his former fixer Michael Cohen said, eager to rebuild his brand by running for president. The presidency has injected cash into Trump’s businesses, as lobbyists and foreign governments have invested in them. But he’s still losing money. 5. How broke is he? He owes more than $300 million in loans and can’t repay them. His businesses are constantly losing money. He’s fighting with the IRS and could owe another $100 million to the government. So much for the “successful businessman” image. 6. Who does he owe money to? We don’t know. And that’s part of the problem. Because whoever he does has huge leverage over him.

Orphan Black: The Next Chapter

this is ok.

it has happened before. it will happen again. it has been lost before. it will be lost again. and again. and again. and again. art and architecture are transient, and temporary, and 850 years may seem like a lot to the individual, who will live maybe 100 if they are very lucky and very healthy, but even the pyramids at saqqara have only existed for about 6000 years and that’s still not all that much, if you consider the grand scheme of things.

yes, this is terrible. as someone who is deeply religious and literally a professional historian with a focus on art and architecture, this is terrible. im mourning. im gutted. im horrified and upset and miserable. but.

it’s not over.

victor hugo wrote hunchback because notre dame du paris was in the process of collapsing and falling apart, and revitalized the entire world’s focus and love for this church, and that was not even 200 years ago. it led to it being renovated.

the roof has fallen in. the scars of fires are on its buttresses. the rose window has fallen out. the beams and piers have collapsed. the spire has toppled. the stones have suffered, and will suffer again, but it is not gone.

renovation work is essential. sometimes things collapse and burn and break and have to come back. it’s not a terrorist attack, it’s renovation, an accident, but we have so much evidence, history, carefully documented everything on one of the most studied places in the world.

Obviously everyone is shocked but here’s a few important key facts:

The roof is completely gone. Part of it dated back from the 13th century but the rest was from the 19th. The stone arch roof under the top roof is fine.

One of the three main stained glass rose windows has fallen out. Most of the other stained glass windows are okay.

The spire has fallen down and that’s the saddest part. BUT! It was in the process of being restored and the 16 statues that were there were removed just four days ago! So they’re fine.

The main structure is still here and nothing has “burned down” unlike what some people have been saying.

The “treasure” (sacred objects) is safe.

Glinda is being cheesy and charming in the opening number, but yeah, she’s devastated. when she starts telling the story of Elphaba’s life? it’s so sad. but they hold the baby up and people chuckle because it’s this weird looking green doll

yeah Defying Gravity is this huge inspirational ballad but their goodbye in the middle and Glinda’s last “i hope you’re happy” as one of the last lines of the act is just? so painful?

The Wizard and I has so much irony and foreshadowing that it’s easy to forget how eager and devoted Elphaba was, and how she never really had a chance. Thank Goodness is one of the most heartbreaking songs I’ve ever heard, but Glinda’s moment of pain and vulnerability is sung to herself, immediately covered by a big smile and a celebration

“I’ve had so many friends, but only one that mattered” gets the audience laughing, and you don’t always feel the full weight of it. I mean, Glinda’s entire character is tragedy wrapped up in a pretty smile.

This Fall I took some time to revisit some of the original reviews of Wicked. I honestly was unaware how drastically different the climate was when it came to discussing female to female friendships. I would actually wager that f/f romantic relationships were discussed, and on a surface level, anyway, understood better.

That's not to say that the f/f friendship aspect of Wicked was not discussed. It absolutely was in at least some of the reviews. (I'd be remiss if I did not acknowledge the f/f romantic side/Gelphie was immediately, if not sooner, recognized and relished by the LGBTQIA community to the point that it had its own subculture. As always, in the beginning there were shippers. Shippers who attended Wicked as often as possible, who wrote beautiful fic, who kept *highly detailed notes of EVERYTHING*, who had in depth conversations about the psychology of the characters, the ethos and pathos, who wrote excruciatingly painful fic that demanded to be read because MY GOD were those characters on point. In the beginning, as always, there were shippers, and it was good.)

In hindsight, it's obvious why Brantley got it wrong, why he was finalizing prep on Wicked's burial place in the Musical Theatre Cemetery of Things That Might Have Been, while fans and tourists alike were almost immediately frothing at the mouth (in the best way possible) because Wicked was Wonderful.

I won't make you guess as you probably know, if you look at the major reviews (I think I revisited seven), the ones written by men did not see the depth between the two leads. The one or two written by women? They saw it.

NGL, I really hate that such a predictable scenario played out in October of 2003. But it did and thankfully, the panning (even the gentle panning by some of the non-Brantley male reviewers) did little more than garner publicity and 25 years hence, The Gershwin still tells the story, 8 shows a week of two best friends torn asunder by a society focused on beauty that is not unique, on love that isn't about love but optics, about the thirst for power, all of which is meant to drive a wedge between women. Divide and conquer. And pay no attention to the pain in the blonde girl's face or the empty space that her friend's voice once filled.

Like all of it's source material (both direct and adjacent), Wicked is dark. It is painful. It is about loss, sacrifice and understanding the true meanings of both good and evil. But for those who prefer the lighter fair for their entertainment, that is there too. There's no shame in enjoying the story with which the audience is presented. (For that matter, for heavens sake, don't saddle friends/family/random strangers new to Wicked with the added ennui. Let them enjoy it peacefully at least once. Keep the existential crises stuff for another day.)