Dancong Oolong Delights

It’s the closest thing to show biz on Erid. The orchestra and actors are the stars and divas of culture. Of course someone writes an opra about Rocky meeting the alien Grace and saving the stars together.

The casting call to play Rocky would be so cut throat. And Rocky can’t really give any opinion on who to pick since he’s been out of the pop culture loop for 50 years. (A fact the writers use in writing the script. Purposely giving Rocky dated Eridian slang.)

As for Graces actor, the theater’s master puppeteer becomes invested in making as accurate a puppet as possible to play their alien. In the end they would create a puppet where, instead of stuffing, it is filled with sacks and tubes full of fluid. Including an air pump to churn it and a constant beating of what would be a human heart. The puppeteer tries to capture just how horrifyingly alien Grace is in the best way for Eridians, through sound design.

And that’s just the puppet for the actors to interact with. For the audience, I could see the orchestra Amplifying the sounds of the human body during scenes like when Grace hugs Rocky. Or used for laughs when Rocky points out how flawed the human body is as he describes it to the audience.

Actual Rocky being a puppeteer nerd as a pebble. So when the theater gets approval to send the Opera stars to meet Rocky and Grace during the press tour, Rocky straight up pushes past the glamorous opera divas to meet the puppeteer instead.

🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟🦟

YES

also you draw period costume so well and cute and with silhouette it's so good

(I can't stop picturing 18th century lady normalgirl drinking chocolate now)

milkshakes are my favouritest drink and thank you so much! my teenage years were spent obsessing over historical fashion so complimenting my period costume skills is the highest of praise <3 and omg now i cant stop picturing that either

Specifically, the female head of a modeling agency was on record of saying that "there's nothing for girls with long hair except cheesecake, and they're too little for cheesecake"

The association between specifically long hair and eroticism in the 1950s was not something I was previously aware of so I went looking at pinups of the era. I definitely remembered thinking that Bettie Page seemed to have longer and less tightly curled hair than most 1950s actresses or even just women in candid street photos, and sure enough, when I went looking… Far more women with long or at least longer than average hair for the era, in pinup photos and artwork

This makes me wonder about a lot of things, mainly if there was a respectability element to women having short hair versus long hair at the time (which is the complete opposite of what we would expect nowadays, since we're so conditioned by eras when women having short hair was somewhat scandalous to think it was always that way). But most of these pinups have specifically women with long hair worn down, and it was not socially unacceptable to see a woman with long hair done up in a bun or a French twist at the time

But then why wouldn't there be any modeling jobs for women with long hair besides "cheesecake," if they could simply put it up and be considered as respectable as a woman with short hair? Was it perhaps a situation of "respectable but not fashionable" where it WAS technically accepted but not generally desirable for brands? If so, why?

It seems like a situation where the "woman with short hair" could be sexy or not based on context, "woman with long hair pinned up" was not necessarily sexy but was not considered fashionable, and "woman with long hair down" was inherently sexy (and also the only type of modeling gig available for women with long hair – I found another magazine article showing off a budding model with long hair that said something about "of course she'll have to cut it if she wants any other modeling jobs")

PUT YOUR LIMBS BACK AND HOLD THIS INSTEAD

She doesn't bite people recreationally, or as her first line of defense, or as a natural unthinking fight-or-flight instinctive reaction.

However, she would not hesitate to bite someone if - and only if - she deemed it to be the most reasonable thing to do in the situation.

Her standards for what counts as a reasonable reasons to bite someone are not the same as most people's.

I could picture a scene of some higher nobleman coming to the emperor with a complaint of "your little freak fucking bit me". Requiring no further context of what the hell he could possibly be talking about, the emperor simply raises his eyebrows and asks "what did you do?" Because he knows Mao Mao wouldn't bite someone without a good reason. This mf did something.

Dumbstruck by not having the emperor immediately take his side about this, the nobleman explains how Mao Mao somehow went out of her way to deliberately orchestrate a situation where the nobleman's hand came close enough to her face to get bit. Not questioning that she would do that on purpose, the emperor turns to Mao Mao and asks why she did that.

Mao Mao - who has been silently sitting in a corner this entire time - explains that the poison used in this specific incident she is investigating is only lethal when consumed, but leaves a residue on skin for a long time. Had the nobleman in question been personally handling the poison at any point, she would be throwing up blood right now. She seems somewhat disappointed that she isn't.

The emperor asks her whether that means that the nobleman is no longer a suspect, and she says not necessarily, he could have orchestrated the whole thing without ever personally handling the poison.

And the emperor calmly turns to look at the now horrified nobleman, giving him a look that's meant to remind him that leaving the emperor's presence by his own free will and going wherever he pleases, instead of getting dragged out face down through the mud in shackles, is a privilege that the emperor can revoke at any moment if he pleases.

Edamame