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Love Begins
YOU ARE THE REASON

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@muthserra

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Top 5 favorite and least favorite episodes of Xena. GO!
You drive a hard, hard ask, but I have limited myself (be proud!!)
FAVORITE FIVE:
The Bitter Suite - In what world do we get an entire episode solely dedicated to digging into the roots of the anguish that the two leads have caused each other that they descend into some Jungian dreamscape heavily influenced by tarot, wherein they finally learn how to speak to each other as wounded equals, and through which they discover healing of trauma and forgiveness, all via song written specifically for this show/this episode? YOUR OTHER SHOWS COULD AND WOULD NEVER. (Also somebody please point me toward a Xena-inspired tarot deck.)
The Ides of March - y'all are aware of my obsession with Xena's vision in season four and my love of Gabrielle's pacifist arc as an unspoken reaction to the trauma of S3; and the way those two things collide, the inevitability of it, the sheer elegant perfection of it, is something I hope I never get over. Ofc I'm here for the beauty of the jail scenes, the simplicity of the quiet admissions of self to each other - but I'm also here for how it's all wrapped up in and transformed by the words that have been torturing Xena's soul for the last season: "I love you, Xena." YOUR OTHER SHOWS STILL WOULD NEVER.
When Fates Collide - Give me a season of Empress!Xena/Playwright!Gabrielle and it might be enough. The fucking yearning. So explicit on Xena's face! The beautiful meta layer of Gabrielle writing the Xena scrolls as plays that part of Xena remembers and reacts to! "Do you really believe love like that exists?" GOD XENA, YOU DO. "I’ll love you forever.” THAT’S RIGHT. *sobs forever*
Paradise Found - Aside from the gorgeous level of physical intimacy established as completely and utterly normal between them at this point, the deep dive into their psyches and the things that hurt them and the reasons why is so, so good. (Give me the paaaaiiinnnnn!!!) I've talked before about how beautiful the juxtaposition of the Platonic Way of Love vs. their embodied love for each other is, but gosh, THAT SCENE.
Who's Gurkhan? - I love this episode bc I am admittedly a shallow bitch! Also bc I am fucking here for Gabrielle's relationship with violence and Xena’s mind getting her through torture by conjuring up a vision of Gabrielle that’s not sweet supportive bby Gabs, but rather a strong, sexual, and morally complicated Gabrielle who belly danced her way into a harem for the express purpose of murdering a dude, bc that's who Gabrielle is now! And that's who Xena loves! And that's the show! (Also GODDDDDDDD they're both so fucking gorgeous, holy shit)
LEAST FAVORITE FIVE:
Ulysses - we are all correct in our collective hatred of this episode
Fallen Angel - ughhhhhhhhhhh you're gonna follow up The IDES of MARCH with this nonsense? Worst offender just bc of wasted potential, taking us from the glorious narrative heights of S4 into... whatever S5 was
Lifeblood - i.e., that ep I forgot existed until my friend on her first series watchthrough texted me about Julius Caesar being a caveman. And then I forgot about it again until this very minute. And now I will keep on forgetting about it, and that's exactly the way it should be.
Purity/Back in the Bottle - some character assassination goin’ on here, I cannot accept the 20,000 or 100,000 or whatever Xena was supposed to have killed with the powah of her mind bc there was “no other choice” or some bullshit. Oh and the rest of it was real bad too.
Anthony and Cleopatra - fun fact! when I first watched this episode while trying to binge my way through S5 to make it go faster, it filled me with such rage and despair that I had to skip ahead to S6 to make sure this wasn't just gonna be the show from now on.
ok: thoughts on S3 The Rift? I’m rewatching xena for the first time in like 10 yrs and omg…
I *clapping emoji* LOVE *clapping emoji* THE RIFT *clapping emoji x2*
(but will also qualify my love of the Rift by saying I have NO idea how so many people watch it and go "oh yeah, how could Gabrielle DO that to Xena?" rather than the other way around bc were y'all watching when Xena methodically hunted down her and her child to kill her? Right on top of the trauma that Gabrielle had literally just gone through??? JESUS XENA WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO YOUR WIFE
anyway)
I love how it goes full on Greek tragedy, which is a literary form that is ALSO bananas, just straight up fucking bananas in the best way. It's not realistic! It's not meant to be realistic! It's meant to push the characters to the very limit of human experience and their own experience with humanity! To make us question their own limits and their own humanity! And it does a pretty fuckin good job of it.
And there is also the crowning glory of the Rift which is - the entirety of the show that followed. It transformed the show in terms of form and story, it transformed the characters in terms of how deeply nuanced and terrifyingly human they are (especially when it comes to their relationship with/to each other), and it quite literally formed the foundation the later seasons stand on. No way S4 exists without the Rift!! No way S6 exists without the Rift!!! The Rift permeates the rest of the show and creates an uneasy just-off-center kind of balance that, in X/G's learned, easy, familiar navigation of it, becomes maybe the most ridiculously intimate part of their relationship. They know each other. They keep choosing each other anyway. It's incredible.
Gomez gives out better relationship advice than like 90% of dudes.
Gomez Addams is a suave motherfucker who loves his wife more than his own life.
Everyone should want a Gomez. He’s p cool.
Gomez and Morticia Addams actually have a very loving and extremely healthy relationship, both in the old TV show and in the more recent movies. They were also one of the first television couples to be shown to have an active (albeit offscreen) sex life. Their frank attitude towards sexuality was shocking in its’ time, but their relationship and their family dynamic is actually more functional and more…dare I say it…sane than most families portrayed on TV.
The comedy in the show came from the family’s “odd” lifestyle, rather than from infighting and petty bickering, or worse, as was common on other shows of the time, thinly veiled references to spousal abuse. They didn’t make fun of each other or act like their children were creatures from another world. Were they strange and outside of social norms? Yes. Were they united in creating a loving home and being good, supportive parents? Absolutely.
These two support and adore their children, care for an aging mother and an estranged brother, put family before everything, and they love each other, wholly, fiercely, without reserve. They are every bit as much in love after at least a decade of marriage as they were the day they met.
Relationship goals. LIFE goals.
Just remembered in the second movie when their third child became “normal” for a period and although they were shocked and didn’t know how to handle it, they didn’t mistreat the child or love it any less. They accepted the difference, even though it was hard for them.
Reblogged for truth.
❤️❤️❤️
Posts about Gomez and Morticia Addams are almost always uplifting and I’m happy to have them on my dash, but I think my favorite bit about this conversation is what Gomez is actually saying to Fester.
It’s nobody’s surprise that many of the aesthetic and thematic elements of The Addams Family in its various incarnations are influenced by Gothic tradition (not goth, that mostly came later. And not Goth, that was much much much too early), and I think Gomez’s words are a dead bullseye in terms of Gothic mentality.
“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”
The sublime is a recurring theme throughout Gothic literature. Although the word (like “awesome”) has lost a lot of it’s original luster over the intervening decades, sublime doesn’t really mean elevated and lofty (or even heavenly) as it’s often used today, but rather something possessing the power and grandeur to induce awe and veneration in the mind of the beholder. Although less than divine, something sublime possessed a wildness and power that transcended human ability to control…or even to comprehend.
Sublime is standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon leaning as far as you dare over the railing and still not being able to see the canyon floor below. Sublime is warrior-queen Galadriel being tempted by the One Ring. Sublime is waking up in the middle of the night in the heart of a wild thunderstorm.
“Make her feel like she’s the most sublime creature on earth”
Gomez isn’t advising Fester to treat a woman he fancies like a princess, or even elevate her to pedestal of angelic nature (who’s idea was it to equate femininity with purity anyway? What a laughable and historically damaging idea. Shame on whatever dead (probably) white dudes promoted that!)
Gomez is advising Fester that if he truly loves a woman he must do everything he can to remind her of how she’s an untameable force of nature who’s grandeur brings him to his knees in awe and terror. Just like Morticia, for Gomez.
I’ll sign off with one of my most favorite quotes of all time, because it feels suddenly very relevant:
“When I find myself surrounded by so much beauty, I feel as if I am the eye of a hurricane.”
- -Sanjay Kulkarni
Reblogging for the commentary on the Sublime
@bbydreamer
I understood more about the sublime from this one post than I did from the entire unit we did on it last year in English class

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The Addams Family Paintings by Denver Balbaboco
There’s an episode of Sesame Street (on Netflix! you can watch it easily!) where Elmo attends a toy-swap, where you offer up old toys you don’t play with anymore and receive someone else’s toys that are new to you. Cute!
But Elmo, after cheerfully surrendering his old toys, sees that the children who swapped toys with him are playing with his toys “wrong”! They’re imagining entirely different make believe scenarios! They’re pretending the football is a dinosaur egg instead of a rocket ship! Aaahhhhh!!!! And this is so distressing to poor Elmo that he does the unthinkable: He does swapsies-backsies and takes all his toys back!
This being Sesame Street, he learns that you can’t control how other people play pretend, but you can join in if you want to! And if you don’t want to, that’s ok, you can just play pretend your own way by yourself or with someone else who wants to play that way too. You can still be friends with people who play pretend differently than you (and aren’t being mean/harmful/etc, do not bad-faith-read this 🤨).
Anyway this is a post about fandom.
If you're a TV only Doctor Who fan sad about the recent news of the special being cancelled and want to dip your toe into the wealth of other Doctor Who media out there, here are some pointers that might help <3
Classic Who (pick a Doctor and just start, it's paced differently but trust me it's so good!) - All on Internet Archive (as of posting this)
The Big Finish Audios - Potential Starting Points: - Eighth Doctor - helpful resource with starting points and listen orders - Thirteenth or Ninth Doctor Adventures - still currently releasing bi-monthly so you can hop in with your fav NuWho Doctor! (they've also announced a Tenth Doctor series upcoming) - Classic Doctors, New Monsters - these boxsets are so much fun and were where I started with Big Finish so if you're unsure of the audio format, this is where I started - Sixth Doctor Main Range - starts with The Marian Conspiracy
The Novels - so many ranges to choose from, get stuck in there! - Generally split into Virgin New Adventures (VNA) featuring the Seventh Doctor after the end of classic, Virgin Missing Adventures (VMA) / Past Doctor Adventures (PDA) featuring other Classic Doctors, Eighth Doctor Adventures (EDA), and the New Series Adventures featuring nuwho doctors - Pick a Doctor or Companion you want to hear more from and maybe consult Tardis Guide.
The Comics - again, pick a doctor and eat good
Other helpful resources:
Tardis Wiki (better than the Fandom one)
Tardis Guide (help keep track of stories and where you're going and discover new stories - plus a great community)
Image of Steven Taylor (for comfort in these trying times)
I hope this helps someone <3
"Everything ends and it's always sad, but everything begins again too and that's always happy. Be happy." - Twelve
Title: DLZ (long winded blues of the never) Fandom: Doctor Who Editor: @isagrimorie Music: DLZ by TV on the Radio Summary: your methods dot the disconnect from all your creeds | there’s a straight line from twelve to thirteen
This is really fantastic. Distressing – I have such a hard time with what happened to Bill — but powerful.
I love all the links you’ve picked up between two incarnations that seemed at first sight to have little in common (I felt like she was trying to put a lot behind her and start over, but you pick up that she was fooling herself… it’s all still there.)
And the editing is so crisp and tight.  Stunning.
Dare I hope that some of the interesting stuff that happened in S12 inspires you to make another vid? This looks like it was an awful a lot of work, but Dhawan!Master and/or Ruth add some very interesting dynamics with Thirteen.
Lilia reversing the reversed Tower card in the end though is going to live with me forever, not just because it was a stunning piece of witchcraft, the shift from divination to affecting the physical world, not just because she understood what it would mean for her,
but bc they've been in the Tower the whole time.
Not just Billy... all of them. The Witches' Road to this point has been the Tower reversed for the entire group: resisting change, calamity, disaster, upheaval. For Lilia to be the one to see it! For Lilia to be the only one to see the only path forward is to stop resisting! For Lilia to know what the calamity is, and to flip the Tower anyway -
(Because she had been the one resisting - because she was exhausted of seeing Death - because being alone and an outcast was better - )
and to let go - into Death.

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I don’t think we talk enough about how the entirety of Wicked is built on the irony of No One Mourns the Wicked. The musical exists because Glinda feels the need to tell Elphaba’s story, because she is in mourning and entirely alone in that. Glinda’s love is what creates the musical because no one mourns Elphaba except her, and that is an incredibly lonely place to be. She’s just lost two of the most important people to her, and all she’s trying to do is make someone, anyone else see how important they were.
Wicked is a frame story. This often gets lost in the stuff that happens inside the frame. But it's wildly important who's doing the framing - Glinda - and why - because she's grieving.
But! It's not just grief! It's a decision. It's a character point! It's very much akin to the moment where a young Galinda stepped onto the floor of the Ozdust and started to dance opposite a young Elphaba... and just as delicate a moment.
Because what we definitely don't talk about enough is that Glinda is telling this story in a way that explicitly breaks a promise she's just made to Elphaba near the end of the story. Glinda, panicked and distraught at realizing what's about to happen and her own inability to stop it, cries, "I'll tell them, I'll tell everyone the truth!"
To which Elphaba immediately says, "No. They'll only turn against you."
"I don't care!" Glinda says.
"Well, I do!" Elphaba retorts. "Promise me you won't try to clear my name."
Overcome, Glinda promises in the face of Elphaba's fervor for her safety... and then turns around and immediately breaks that promise.
The thing I also love about this is that we don't see the reprecussions of her decision. We have no idea how it goes for her - if in fact "they" turn against Glinda. Chronologically, the last we see of Glinda in the show is her hovering on the decision to tell the story. "Yes, I was her friend. Yes, I loved her. This is how it happened, and this is what it meant."
Whether or not they turn against her is irrelevant. The fact that Glinda's telling the story at all is her final triumph over her character, her absolute culmination of self. That it's also a testament to Elphaba and their friendship - ultimately the final and most important thing to her - is beautiful. Here, whatever else comes, she's found not only strength, but peace.
my brain is super stuck right now on the dance scene in the Wicked movie again
not only because it was so incredibly beautifully done, and truly benefited from the ability to linger in closeups on expressions and show just what each character was thinking and feeling and the journeys they were on in a way the stageplay simply isn't able to do with the tools it's got
but also because of a shot I'd missed initially - a closeup on Fiyero.
historically I've always been very "yeah and Fiyero's there too" about the musical, and part of that's been that I've never really emotionally felt his attachment to either Galinda/Glinda or Elphaba.
but this shot I'm talking about - god I wish I had it to include here - is of Fiyero watching Galinda submit herself to potential humiliation to try to fix something she'd done to humiliate someone else. She's defiant of the crowd and her "friends" and surer of herself by the moment. She's becoming someone different right before his eyes. She's not the same girl he met even earlier that day. She's earnest. She's stripped herself of artifice. She's acting, probably for the first time in her life, in spite of what people are thinking or saying about her.
And he's breathless watching her.
I always laugh at the "you're perfect", "you're perfect!" "so we're perfect together!" because omg, they are. the worst. but more importantly, in that moment they're the same: genuinely self-absorbed, deeply shallow. Fiyero went along easily with Galinda pursuing him because he understood her.
But now Galinda, someone very similar to him, is modeling something new for him for the first time - something he's actually (surprise!) very attracted to. And watching his reaction to watching her, transfixed, it's obvious that this is the moment that he actually catches real feelings for her.
And with regards to the Galinda/Elphaba/Fiyero love triangle throuple relationship, I love that the movie gives us this small beat that actually blows everything else about their character development individually and in relation to each other wide open. That Galinda was actually the one to nudge Fiyero off of his "dancing through life" attitude? in this moment? and the implications that has for the entire rest of the play?
Whoa!
Hey so I just went to see Wicked part II. Bear in mind that I haven't seen the original musical. Like you, I was disappointed. I was surprised at what I felt was a lack of political message. I thought the first one set up nicely the rise of fascism, and in part II... How is this resolved? The people go from celebrating the death of the witch to welcoming back animals and munchkin without question?? There's no revolution. And I didn't get the purpose of Elphaba's discourse about the people needing an evil figure so they can accept Glinda as the good one, and her not wanting Glinda to redeem her. And of course, there's the uncomfortable subtext of a woman of colour sacrificing herself for a white person.
All this bothered me, but my friend had another opinion, saying that for her it was all intentional, albeit cynical - that it's not meant to be a victory or a revolution, that the people, basically, is shown as gullible and willing to accept whatever rulers (through media/propaganda) will feed them. And in the end, Elphaba chooses exile despite No Place Like Home, because there really is no place for her in Oz, so she'll look for her freedom elsewhere. She sacrifices this to preserve her integrity, and also her relationship to Fiyero, whereas Glinda is the opposite: she sacrifices her relationship to Elphaba because she has the opportunity to become a better ruler in a system that couldn't really be changed.
Another friend wondered if the backlash against the first film and the situation in the US meant they weren't as free as for the first one and had to "sanitize" the movie. (We're not from the US so, this was very hypothetical)
Anyway, I still feel it wasn't as well written as the first one in terms of characters motivation and political metaphors, but it seems I might have been mistaken about the original intent of the story. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this, as someone who knows the original story much better! :)
Wicked never really had a strong political message in the musical form, and puts its focus far more on the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda.
That said, I agree with your first friend re: the intent of the story. I also think that you have to dig a lot harder to get there because of the way the story was told in the second movie... and I would argue that it has (or should have had, in the movie) a lot more to do with the preservation of her life vs. just her integrity. She was being hunted. She was about to be killed. This was an escalation of targeted violence against her and everything she was fighting for.
Somehow, the movie completely bungled this point.
When I think about the sins of the second movie, one of the things I keep going back to is that Acts I and II are meant to be taken in together, as a whole, all at once.
Here's what that means. You have it fresh in your mind where the story ends: with Glinda announcing the Wicked Witch's death, and a mob screaming about the righteousness about it. This is a tragedy. You know that from the beginning. You never, ever forget it. The only question is - in what way?
I call them the mob because that's what the chorus is in Wicked the stage play - and they're used to enormous effect, especially in Act II.
"Thank Goodness" (the first song of Act II, into which you're thrust without warning in the stage play) was one of the songs that was so egregiously split in half in the movie, with entire new songs and long minutes of dialogue between its butchered parts. The effect is that the song loses enormous power - particularly when it comes to the developing strength of the mob mentality brewing in the citizens of Oz.
"The March of the Witch Hunters" was another song that was even more egregiously split into two or three parts, with Glinda's new, completely unnecessary song "The Girl in the Bubble" inserted between those parts. Again, you lose an enormous amount of building power, and the focus on the urgency of the mob essentially dissipates into thin air.
This means that the moment before "For Good" is a mess in the movie. The entire point of this moment in the stage play is that Glinda and Elphaba are mutually terrified for each other's lives, because of the mob that is marching with uncontrollable and literally murderous intent. Watch any bootleg of the musical when these key lines occur:
GLINDA: I'll tell them, I'll tell everyone the truth! ELPHABA: No! They'll only turn against you! GLINDA: I don't care! ELPHABA: Well, I do!
They're frantic for each other. Elphaba's morosely-delivered line in the movie you called out, "they need someone to be wicked so you can be good" - is a John M Chu addition, and a terrible one. I literally cannot think of a worse thing to say at this moment. Not only does this carry uncomfortable connotations of "I'm sacrificing myself for you" that you pointed out, but also... this moment isn't about fucking self-reflection. Time is hurtling forward! The mob is almost here! The chips are fucking down, the house is on fire, everything is wrecked beyond belief, there is no going back! They're left trying to salvage each other's lives, and because of this, they reaffirm their friendship in "For Good".
All this leads to the "Finale". In the final moments of the play, there's Glinda in her bubble, addressing the mob, having just declared her intentions truly try to be "Glinda the Good" (cut from the movie, for reasons unknown?) Then, thinking of Elphaba, she begins to sing: "Who can say if I've been changed for the better?" Elphaba, "hearing" her, steps forward to sing with her - only for the mob to literally cut them off and drown them out with the screaming reminder that "No one mourns the wicked!"
These, importantly, are the final words of the play... in the mouth of the mob. A mob who had been neutered by this point in the movie in a frankly unbelievable manner, and who don't sing these words at all. The words are sung, yes, but by people unknown and unseen, and in a way that is meant to be an afterthought.
There are certainly no Animals coming back.
The stage play is not a story about political revolution: it's a story about being beaten down by a fascist regime, and having to figure out how to operate within a broken system and society. It's not a happy ending. It's barely even a hopeful one. This is a tragedy. This is a tragedy. This is a tragedy.
There's unfortunately a lot more to say here, all of it negative, and none of which I really have the stomach for. But the gist of my feelings are: there were a lot of small changes and additions. Any of these changes/additions taken individually wouldn't have been awful. Taken altogether, however, they amount to an Act II that has been actually pretty drastically changed in form and substance, and in my view, manages to miss the point of the story itself.
I NEED A SICKO… im holding out for a sicko till the end of the night ..and hes gotta haha and hes gotta say yess at the window with a look of delight
loveeee characters who think they're likable but not lovable. characters who know they have surface-level admirable or alluring traits and so make sure to highlight those traits so that nobody looks closer to see what's underneath. characters who know they're hot or clever or cool and use that as a suit of armor so that no one ever gets close to them, because when they strip bare and show their vulnerability they're not any of those things, which means they have nothing left to make up for who they inherently are

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CRITICAL ROLE: COOLDOWN 4.01
Between Percy knowing Grog's favorite color (6), knowing that Grog was holding up one finger to him while he was blind to test his eyesight (Grog's middle finger), knowing how to win a cannon ball contest that Grog was judging (by exploding himself with raw sodium and drawing blood from both himself and Grog lol), and Grog getting Percy a broken pocket watch as a gift (because he knew Percy would enjoy tinkering with it), I genuinely think Percy and Grog's relationship is one of the most slept on in all of Critical Role.
Plus this little exchange that I love so dearly:
Percy: I know we don't always agree, and I know that I can be unkind but... you know you're family, right?
Grog: I don't know much, but I do know that.
Percy: It's nice having an older brother again.