Kichterlette

Now, somehow, their entire mental health is based on the continued life and happiness of this fairground goldfish that they picked up.

Neither of you know the first thing about how to care for even a healthy fish. This fish has been poorly cared for, has multiple diseases and the person who handed it over explicitly didn't expect it to live nearly as long as it already has.

You're frantically googling how to set up a fish tank, where to buy fish food, can you even take a fish to the vet? Your partner wants you to know that they're happy they made it home and survived their horrific ordeal, but also that if anything happens to the fish then they're going to kill everyone on this planet and then themself.

You're honestly wondering if you're even helping the fish, or just prolonging its suffering, but your partner will only accept medical help for their many injuries or engage in basic self-care once they're confident that the fish is being looked after.

So you get a tank. You set up a filter and all that stuff. You learn way more than you ever wanted to know about water temperature and ph and nitrate levels. The fish is safe. You start to develop some affection for the little guy. Your partner begins to recover. The fish begins to recover.

Which is when you learn that in its 'healthy' state, the fish regularly refuses to sleep when tired, keeps begging for food that is obviously unhealthy for it (and struggling to eat the food that you do provide because “it tastes gross”), and continually tries to persuade your partner to take it out of its nice safe tank so it can go explore the wonderful world of Outside, where the slightest mishap will kill it instantly.

Wylan Van Eck in a mansion full of loud, untempered laughter

Wylan Van Eck emulating Kaz Brekker when making his first business deal

Wylan Van Eck and his guard dog who can’t stop getting into trouble

This is going to sound bizarre but i think, despite how much of a bastard he is, Jan Van Eck would be exactly the type of guy who finds out his son is trans and thinks 'Fuck. I hate this but at least the van eck heir isn't a girl.' This is mostly in a modern au but i don't know i haven't tried to make it fit canon so do with that what you will.

He'd hate the trans part of Wylan's identity, but he never really wanted a daughter so he does anything he can to make people think Wylan was always a boy. If there's even the slightest risk of someone in the mercher community finding out about it then Wylan gets into huge trouble, but at the time he's all for the name change and healthcare so he considers himself lucky.

It means he's (directly or indirectly) taught that his transness is something to hide, though, so when he's living alone and he suddenly has to manage getting access to hormones and whatnot he refuses to ask for help because he doesn't believe he can. The crows don't get told, either, until perhaps Jesper notices something like a sharps bin and gets all concerned about him, which only ends up freaking wylan out to the point where he just blurts it all out. Or one of the other crows is openly trans and Wylan is like 'huh i didn't realise people could be so chill about this sort of thing.'

Anyway, it takes a lot of personal growth to realise that perhaps his father wasn't as good about his gender identity as Wylan thought, and that he really doesn't have to be ashamed about this pretty important part of himself. as a bonus he can finally ask Jesper to help him out with t shots because he's always hated needles but has never had anybody he could ask for support.

so I Dreamed A Dance is gorgeous and genius and horrific, but most importantly, it can (and should !!!) be interpreted in any number of ways. I’m not trying to say this is the correct interpretation, in fact, I don’t think this is how Caissie Levy played it in the proshot or anything, but I think it’s interesting to think–what if I Dreamed A Dance was being sung to Natalie, not Gabe?

I mean, there is nothing to say that I Dreamed A Dance is actually about Gabe, except for the fact that Diana is singing it to/with him in the blocking. She looks at him and says/sings ‘you’, but the partner she’s describing isn’t inherently Gabe-specific at all. In fact, the lyrics and word choices point to the idea that she’s actually talking to Natalie the whole time.

Let me explain.

The second line of the entire song is “your sparkling eyes of blue.” Now, in the world of the proshot, Gabe obviously doesn’t have blue eyes. I’ve seen some really cool/horrifically sad explanations for this, like the fact that light baby eyes tend to darken as kids grow up, so Diana was imagining him as a fully-developed, realistic person. As much as I love those sorts of theories, I think (with Eleanor Worthington-Cox and Jack Wolfe as the actors) it’s important to remember that Natalie is the one in the family with blue eyes. Even beyond that, though, Natalie is frequently represented using blue, both in the staging and the script. Take, for example, the Blue ScrunchieTM Henry takes from her when she loses herself in Wish I Were Here and gives back to her when he’s comforting her in Hey #3/Perfect For You (Reprise), the Blue Dress she wears for most of act II, and her part of the stage in Superboy and the Invisible Girl that’s washed in blue. Henry’s line at the dance (“you look like a star, a vision in blue”) really helps the audience tie blue and stars to Natalie, which Diana calls on in I Dreamed A Dance a few lyrics later with “we spun around a thousand stars.” All of these little details point to the idea that this song and its message are meant for Natalie, even though Gabe is the one being sung to. This projection isn’t entirely out of left field, either, since Diana repeatedly falls back on her son in moments of discomfort (e.g. reaching for him instead of Dan in I Am the One), since Gabe has a habit of taking on the characteristics she needs him to in any given moment. This is especially apparent in the scene immediately following I Miss the Mountains, when Gabe switches from “Are you sure about this, Mom?” to “I think it’s a great idea. I think you’re brave” in a matter of seconds because that’s what Diana needed to ‘hear’ him say. 

So Gabe is the one she’s technically singing to, yes, but only as a stand-in for Natalie. 

Before we continue, for the sake of this interpretation, I want to define ‘dance’ as ‘life’. So every time Diana says “I dreamed a dance with you,” she means “I dreamed of having a life with you.” 

This means that the past-tense of “I dreamED a dance” could easily be interpreted as the plans that Diana had for a life with her son before he passed, but it could also be seen as the dreams Diana built with Natalie, her “perfect plan”, that she was never able to follow through with due to her mental state.

After those first two verses, we get the lines “I know the night is dying dear/I know the day will dawn.” These directly parallel Gabe’s verse in Light (“When the night has finally gone/and when we see the new day dawn”), which is discussing the better parts of the grieving/depressive healing periods in their life. With Gabe as her scene partner, I initially read this as her saying she knows she won’t be able to hold on to him forever/she knows he’ll have to go away someday, and she’s almost apologizing for it. It feels like she’s saying sorry for having to let him go, which is very consistent with Caissie Levy and Jack Wolfe’s portrayal of them. Howeverrr, if we look at it like she’s speaking to Natalie, these lines come through almost like a promise. She’s telling her daughter that she knows, one day, the day will dawn–Gabe will go away, she will get better, and she will be able to be more present with Natalie. It’s a more hopeful take on the situation, like she’s looking forward to making a better life with Natalie more than she’s dreading having to let Gabe go, which makes sense given that she starts the scene/song immediately following her choice to follow Madden’s suggestion to “spend some time with [her] daughter, and let [her] son go.” 

Then Diana and Gabe have their lines “the dancers may disappear/still the dance goes on,” or, in other words, ‘some people may die, but my obligation to live and love goes on.’ It’s worth noting that this is phrased using Natalie’s specific language when describing her brother in Superboy and the Invisible Girl, ‘magically appear and disappear’, tying the song even more to her. Those lines are immediately followed by Gabe’s solo “and on.” In the proshot, this little “and on” (as well as the subsequent hug and tears and whatnot) is heartbreakingly delivered, but there is definitely a way to play it as Gabe assuming the role of a yes-man once again. Just like when he supports Diana flushing her pills, him saying “and on” is sort of him assuring her that she’s doing the right thing, that she needs to move on.

OKAY, homestretch, I promise. Let’s have a quick refresher on the final lines:

“I’ll wake alone tomorrow/The dream of our dance is through/But now until forever love/I’ll live to dance with you/I’ll dream my love/And I’ll live my love/And I’ll die to dance with–”

The final clue that Diana has been singing to Natalie the whole time comes in the very last line. She says, “I’ll die to dance with–” and then the script cuts itself off. It’s very strongly implied that the person she’ll die to dance with is ‘you’, but because she doesn’t technically say it, that’s not the only option. The truth is, when she says “the dream of our dance is through,” she is talking about her dance/life with Gabe, but she’s telling it to Natalie, just as she’s been directing the rest of the song to her. It doesn’t make (logical) sense any other way, since she can’t live to dance with Gabe. She’d have to die to do that. Of course, following that reasoning, she can’t die to dance with Natalie either, so when Diana says she’ll “die to dance with—“ the word she misses isn’t ‘you’ or ‘my love’ or anything else to do with Natalie, it’s ’Gabe’. She’ll live and dream to be with Natalie, but she’ll die to be with Gabe. 

(plus, evilly, this falls in line with the fact that his name is censored/unspoken until I Am the One (Reprise) too)

Diana spends the whole musical trying. She’s never going out of her way to ignore Natalie–in fact, as we see in songs like Superboy and the Invisible Girl or Maybe (Next to Normal), she’s trying really hard to mend that relationship, so I think this interpretation of I Dreamed A Dance fits into that arc in a really interesting way. It’s just heartbreaking to imagine Diana finally, finally singing a song for her daughter, and it’s not even to her face–it’s to her son’s.

Again, I really don’t think this is the angle they approached this song with in the proshot with at all (nor am i trying to say this is a stronger choice than just. outright singing to Gabe) but i wanted to give my take on retconning the whole “eyes of blue line” and i thought it was interesting to think about, so i hope you did too !! :)

(p.s. some little tidbits that sting a bit more under the implication that ‘dance’ represents ‘life’

Natalie tells Henry “I can’t go to your dance. I have to take my mom to the doctor.” This furthers the idea that the ‘dance’ is life because she’s telling Henry she can’t be a part of his life because she will always have to help her mom get better. When she goes to the dance once she chooses to be a part of his life/let him be a part of hers.  

The last thing Diana tells Natalie is “Now go to your dance.” She’s telling Natalie to go on with her life. She wants her to choose her own life over Diana’s, letting her know her ‘dance’/life lies away from her mom’s)

"I don't do dances"/"do this dance with me"

last month my brother, a life long touchscreen hater, had to get his first smartphone because he couldn't pay his rent without one since his bank website no longer allows him to use his personal card reader (given by his bank) to make payments. most public transports outside the main city Require that you use the App to get tickets. the other day I went to a brunch place that wouldn't let me order food without going through the App.

and when it released for ios? holy fuck were they DROWNING in money. when they took a weekend to put the game on sale for a dollar, down from five, a couple months after release, they made as much in that one weekend as they did since its release. it was among the top paid apps for weeks.

with critics, peggle was among some of the top downloadable, mobile, and general best games of all time at the time of its release in 2007 and onwards, and it only shot up in popularity as they made it more accessible to more people. and this was in a time before candy crush.

the thing about simple addictive puzzle games is that they make you feel competent, confident, smart, and cool for being good at them. not everybody can learn how to aim in a shooter or the best strategy in an rpg. but anybodys grandmother or baby brother can play a simple puzzle game, and the nature of these games and the way they make you feel only makes you want to play more and more.

however very very fucking few people who play simple puzzle games that you can master on the toilet would be going to E3 in the early 2010s. remember in 2012 when every ~hardcore gamer~ would screech about ‘fake gamers’ who only play candy crush? thats what peggle was. it was THE crack mobile game from the pre-candycrush era.

no one who was excited about peggle was going to E3. the hundreds of thousands of people who played peggle were not the type of people who would consider going to (or even giving a shit about) E3.

but it sold like hot cakes, and candy crush was churning out content like a madman, and EA owned popcap now, so because the game sold amazingly, and because they wanted to keep cashing in on it, and because corporate drones who controlled the scripts didnt comprehend that their consumerbase isnt one homogeneous mass, they decided to announce peggle 2 at E3 2013.

but not just “oh by the way peggle 2”, no. peggle sold like skyrim, it sold like black ops, clearly they should be saving the best for last, they should announce it like it was the craziest most incredible announcement of the night!

thus:

✨ SORRY ✨

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