#loquacity

You interpreted that title correctly. I mean all three of them.

I think I'm in the minority in that I genuinely enjoyed the 2019 Charlie's Angels film. I've talked about this before, specifically the inherent queerness of it, but another really important thing to mention is that (probably accidentally) it managed to star three autistic women.

Yes. Your faves Sabina Wilson (Kristen Stewart), Jane Kano (Ella Balinska), and Elena Houghlin (Naomi Scott) are all autistic.

Loquacity.

noun.

Latin.

the quality or state of being very talkative.

"The telemarketer who called me pushed ahead in his sales pitch with the practiced loquacity of a person who did this every day."

Merriam Webster.

As long-term aficionados of The Phantom of the Opera in its many forms, when we encountered RoseBlood by A.G. Howard, a young adult novel clearly inspired by Gaston Leroux’s novel (see the cover above), we needed to experience this story for ourselves. To quote Dhar Mann, what happens next will shock you.

We will give a summary of RoseBlood first, before expounding upon its many qualities.

Rune Germain, a Texan teenage girl with a peculiar aptitude for opera, is invited to a prestigious French conservatory called RoseBlood. She hopes to learn how to control her gift but is haunted by tragedies from her past…and a mysterious boy wearing a mask.

You may be thinking that this sounds like a bog-standard retelling of The Phantom of the Opera. You would be incorrect. This way madness lies.

Let’s elaborate.

Full text here.

After all, today is April 25th. It’s an international (tumblr) holiday.

Real talk: Miss Congeniality was my favorite movie from the time I saw it (in theaters — it was my first PG-13, it was very significant) till the time I fell in love with Patrick Fugit in Almost Famous, so for about three years in my pre/adolescence. It’s another of those movies that I’ve seen so many times that every line feels like a familiar blanket. It was a significant influence on my never-filmed junior high movie-parody movie Alabama Girl. I owned the soundtrack on CD. When my friends and I held a “kid Oscars,” wherein we celebrated movies that we liked instead of movies that grown-ups liked, I represented Sandra Bullock in the “ceremony.” (Yes, this event was my idea.)

I still really love it, for the most part, and I was delighted to realize that it actually does have a cult following among people that didn’t grow up in my immediate friendgroup. (See above, April 25th the tumblr holiday.)

But in recent years, I’ve realized something very important about the movie. I didn’t just love it because it was mostly a movie about girls and I thought Sandra Bullock was cool (I didn’t have a baby crush on her, surprisingly, but I really admired her) and there were pretty dresses and wacky comedy beats. No, I loved it because I unconsciously saw something very familiar in the characters.

Your faves Grace Hart (Bullock) and Cheryl Frasier (Heather Burns) are autistic.