#a lot of the more explicitly violent stuff is toned down and the order of events is shifted for pacing

[doomed-jester]

I started reading the original TMNT comics by Eastman and Laird and I gotta say, I didn't expect the 2003 series to be the most faithful adaptation.

#a lot of the more explicitly violent stuff is toned down and the order of events is shifted for pacing #but there are a lot of shots that are pulled straight off the panel #dialogue too #it's very interesting #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2003 #peter laird #kevin eastman #comics #animation #nostalgia #cartoons #2000s

[mammon-sama]

Poison Apple Crêpes (Fanfiction) Part 2/2

This was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but a few people were asking for a follow-up to this story from Lucifer's perspective, so I finally decided to buckle down and write one!  I really hope it met your guys' expectations! 🤞  Read it on AO3 here!

Also, I included some of my headcanons in regards to Lucifer's feelings about angels and stuff, and I hope that doesn't bother anyone.  In fact, it has a lot to do with another story I am working on for Obey Me!.

Title:

Poison Apple Crêpes (Part 2/2)

Summary:

An incensed Mammon recalls a fond memory he has of Lucifer from when they were younger.

(Essentially just a fluffy oneshot about Luci doing his best and Mammon just realizing it because he is a dumbass.)

Genre:

Fluff

Rating:

G

Word Count:

1824

First Part:

Read the first part here!

-

Lucifer’s mouth gaped open in a yawn, as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.  Blinking lazily, he cursed himself when he realized that the arm he had apparently rested his head on while he slept was covered in drool.  He sighed in relief as he remembered that he was in his private study and none of his brothers were there to catch him in such a state of disarray.

More awake now, he glanced at a small clock situated on his desk, and his eyes widened in surprise when he realized what time it was.  Had he really been asleep for so long? He knew that skipping sleep last night in order to finish the last round of R.A.D attendance reports for Diavolo would no doubt tire him, but he hadn’t expected it to cause a bout of weariness that lasted for this long of a time.

Lucifer’s stomach rumbled slightly, reminding him that in his desperation to finish the reports on time, he had forgone breakfast that morning, as well.  

He shook his head, trying to relieve himself of the last dregs of sleep, and took a deep breath to reorient himself.  

He realized that he never did end up completing his work.  Lucifer reached toward the left-hand side of his desk, where he had originally placed a pencil holder filled with pens and highlighters, but found nothing.  Surprised, he noticed that someone had shifted it over to the right side of his desk.  He nodded in appreciation at the act—after all, he was right-handed, so it made sense for his pencil holder to be on the right side.

With that, Lucifer’s eyes widened as he realized that not only was his pencil holder’s location changed but many of the other objects’ on his desk, as well.  They were artfully displayed, and although he appreciated the neatness of their arrangement, his eyes narrowed when he realized that all of this meant that  someone had entered his private study.

His face reddened in fury; he had explicitly told his brothers that while in his private study, he was not to be bothered, hence why the room was locked through voice security and none of his siblings were allowed inside. 

And his codeword—Eine klein Nachtmusik!   How did any of his brothers even guess that phrase?  ‘Eine klein Nachtmusik’ had been his most precious composition as Archangel of Music back in the Celestial Realm, but he never expected the other six demons to remember something as trivial and personal as that.

For a moment, Lucifer was touched that someone would make the connection between his beloved piece and the code phrase, but he couldn’t dwell on the fact when he noticed the sheet in front of him.

He grit his teeth; on the front of the sheet was a glaring pink slip—the telltale sign of test failure.  He yanked off the pink paper and nodded once when he saw the name on the test.

Of course, it’s Mammon’s.

Lucifer leaned back in his chair and put his hand on his temple.  Was it so much to ask for his money-grubbing second brother to take school seriously?  

It was no small fact that Lucifer wanted his brothers to perform and be the best students at R.A.D—after all, they were an elite demon family and considered to be the Rulers of Hell. And of course, excelling in their schoolwork would surely get Lucifer and his family on the good side of Diavolo.

This was motivation enough for him to work hard and maintain his grades, but indeed, there was something else that propelled him to encourage his brothers to put their best foot forward …

All his life, Lucifer had been taught that demons were the scum of Creation—horrid things, with no respect or love for the Father; he himself had considered demons to be absolute worms beneath his feet.  

When he was an angel, he was among the many who despised demons—that is, until he was forced to rely on them and therefore become one himself.  And for all his bravado about being proud of going against his Father and living a demonic life, a small part of him still considered him and his brothers to still be holy angels (with the exception of Satan, who he sometimes believed could be an angel by proxy).

And as he had been ingrained to believe, angels were better.  Angels were the  best.  Angels were sons of the Royal King, with blue blood flowing through their veins, superior to all other life.

A minute part of him wanted the demons in the Devildom to know that, to never forget that the Seven Rulers of Hell were always going to be above them.

Being the best at R.A.D was such one reminder.

And yet, his brothers refused to take themselves seriously in regards to school, and Mammon, with all his potential, was the worst culprit.  

Lucifer realized Mammon must have snuck into his private study to leave this refuse on his desk.  He violently grabbed a fountain pen from his now rightly-situated pencil holder and signed his name on the designated line on the pink slip with a flourish.

More irritated than he had ever been, Lucifer shoved the paper forward, leaving it upside down, so he wouldn’t have to see the abhorrent failure notification, again.  As he did this, he noticed that he almost knocked over a white paper bag that was balanced on the edge of his desk.

He cocked his head curiously and pulled the bag closer.  On it was a sticky note and in Mammon’s very loud handwriting, it read, WOW bro I just realized you drool a lot in your sleep XP hopefully that means you’re hungry!!.  Lucifer couldn’t help but blush … and here he thought he was lucky to not have anyone notice his drooling.

Going against his better judgment, Lucifer peeled off the sticky note and opened the bag.  As soon as he did, his anger melted away, for his nose was immediately graced with the warm, fruity scent of poison apples.

He froze; it had been years since the homey aroma had entered his nostrils, and instantly, he was brought back to a small café on the outskirts of the Devildom, where he and Mammon would used to enjoy a stack of crêpes when they were much younger.

Without thinking, his eyes zoomed toward a mini picture frame on his desk, where he and Mammon sat underneath an umbrellaed patio table at the café and beamed into the camera of a stranger, who had been so taken with the cheerful pair of brothers and insisted on photographing them. 

“Lucifer,” pouted Mammon, his bottom lip sticking out profusely.  “I don’t like these creeps.”

Lucifer shook his head and cut off another bite of poison apple. “They’re called  crêpes, Mammon.  And here, we can try another filling, if you’d like.  Choose something else from the menu.”

“Hmph, okay.”  He poked their waiter, who was walking by.  “I want this!” He pointed to ‘Super Salty Tuna Fish Surprise crêpes.’

Lucifer bit his lip.  He knew Mammon well enough to remember that the young demon did not enjoy salty foods.  

Lucifer had hoped Mammon would enjoy this outing with him, and there was no way he would if he couldn’t find anything he liked.  He took another bite of his poison apple crêpes, disheartened that despite it being his first time eating at this café, he had already found something he liked, while Mammon was left hungry.  

“Wait one moment,” Lucifer told the waiter.  He turned to Mammon. “Let me see that menu.”  For a moment, he perused the list of foods, before landing on ‘Blackbelly Newt Legs Macerated in Vanilla Simple Syrup crêpes.’  He knew Mammon loved spicy foods—blackbelly newt legs were renowned for their heat—and the sweetness of the simple syrup would make sure that the flavor wasn’t too hot for his little demon palate.  “Actually bring him this, please.”

“Boo, Luci, you suck,” Mammon grumbled, as the waiter walked away. “What if I don’t like those?”

Lucifer bobbed his head.  “I’m sure you will.”   

And he was right.

“Yum!  This is tasty!”  Mammon mumbled between mouthfuls of crêpe, and he grinned.

Lucifer beamed back.  “I’m glad you like it!”  He spooned the last bit of purple poison apple sauce off his plate.  “We should come here, again.”

“Yay!  We should!”

Lucifer sighed.  That had been the first of many trips to that café.  Over the course of many years, he and Mammon had tried every crêpe filling on the menu, but nothing ever came close to dethroning their favorite fillings of blackbelly newt legs and poison apples.  

However, as time drew on, Mammon and he had become quite the busy demons, with various responsibilities to look after.  Lucifer had always tried to make time to ensure that they still could frequently satiate their desire for crêpes, but Mammon constantly seemed to be occupied, being instantly taken with the glitz and glamor of the Devildom’s exclusive shopping districts.

He shook his head, momentarily wondering why he never thought of venturing to the café by himself, but then he realized that the trips wouldn’t be the same without his silly younger brother.

Lucifer carefully pulled out of the bag a fork and knife—it seemed as if Mammon had thoughtfully pilfered them from the House of Lamentation’s kitchen before bringing the crêpes to him—and a cylinder rolled in white paper.  

He unwrapped said cylinder to reveal three crêpes, each oozing with several extra helpings of poison apples, just as he liked.  The jewel-tone purple of the sauce glittered under the lights of his study, and he breathed in again the fruity scent of it. He nudged a chunk of apple with his fork and smiled when he realized that it was nice and tender, cursed to perfection.  

Lucifer put a hand to his mouth—eating the filling would stain his lips mauve for days … but could that really be helped?

Overcome with nostalgia, he brought his knife down into the crêpe and forked a piece into his mouth.  He smiled; it tasted just as sweet and sticky and delicious as it had the first time he had tried it.  

Chewing thoughtfully, he noticed some scribbling on the back of Mammon’s test.  It read, Mammon already signed up for tutoring ;(.

Perhaps it was the nostalgia talking, but seeing as Mammon was making an effort, Lucifer decided that maybe that was enough.

Putting his fork down, Lucifer pulled out his D.D.D and texted his secondborn brother.

Mammon Lucifer: Crêpes next weekend?

Immediately, he saw three bubbles pop up, indicating that Mammon was typing.  A moment later, his response appeared on the screen.

Mammon: I guess the Great Mammon can spare a minute or two!

Mammon: Sounds like a plan! 👍👍

And from that moment on, all was forgiven.

THE END

#obey me #obey me shall we date mammom #obey me lucifer #obey me shall we date lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me shall we date mammon #fanfiction #fanfic #fluff #brotherly love #adverbslut_writes

[jupitermelichios]

So I decided to rewatch Suicide Squad and I have some thoughts...

This isn’t really a review so much as it’s just a series of thoughts and impressions. I will say that while it’s still one of the worst made films I’ve ever seen, it’s never boring, which is by far the biggest sin a film can commit. It’s bullshit but it’s consistently interesting bullshit which makes it better than something like Fant4stic, which is as bad and incoherant but also just incredibly dull. I don’t think this could ever have been a good film, there was too much massively wrong with it before shooting even started to have been salvagable, but I do think it could have been a lot more coherant if it hadn’t been for the reshoots, re-edits, re-edits of re-edits and all the the other stuff that happened to it post production. Unlike something like BvS, I get why some people liked this one.

On that note, while I am going to end on a few possitives this basically a roast so if you don’t want to read about a film getting picked apart, this probably won’t be your jam. But if like me you find critiques of bad movies cathartic, read on. I’m not the first person to do this, but I’ve spotted some stuff I haven’t seen anyone else talk about so hopefully there’ll be something new for you.

All the dialogue is just slightly off in a way that’s hard to pin down, in the way that a lot of comprehensible stuff written by computers and neural networks is just slightly off. It’s got that phishing email or pornbot quality to it. Literally the fourth or fifth line in the film is Griggs saying about the prison rations, “...Everything a growing young man needs like you”, which isn’t nonsense, but is clearly wrong, and a lot of the lines have that quality to them.

In a similar vein, Deadshot’s daughter is written like she’s five or six, but the actress looks about twelve. I actually went and checked how old she was when this released, because I know white people are often wildly bad at judging the ages of black kids and I’m bad at judging ages in general, but no, she was 12 or 13 when this was shot, so why’s she written like a toddler? She doesn’t give a good performance (which is not the actresses fault, Will Smith barely gives a good performance in this and he can do this shit in his sleep, there’s no way a kid could have risen above the terrible script and direction) which makes it even worse, because you’ve got this pre-teen delivering dialogue written for a kindergardener in a way that feel like it’s maybe the first time she’s ever seen the script, and it makes what is otherwise one of the most competant scenes in the movie feel just as off as everything else.

The Joker. A lot of people have written a lot about Leto’s Joker but I want to add two things to the discussion I haven’t seen talked about much before. Firstly, before the electro-shock torture and acid bath, he and Harley have no romance. Like, explicitly, there is no romance, or even cammeraderie there. He’s her patient. She’s his jailer. He didn’t seduce her, he just tortured her until she gave in. That’s literally shown in the film. Even after the torture when she’s now on side he still really doesn’t like her, and not in a Paul Dini BTAS he doesn’t like her but he also wants her around kind of way. He doesn’t want her in his life. He orders her to leave him alone and she fucking stalks him. That’s not even subtext, she is specifically his stalker, because apparently the solution to the relationship being abusive was to retconn Harley into also being a creep as though that somehow solves something.

Secondly, Joker isn’t smart. Not only is he no longer emotionally intelligent (and comics Joker is many terrible things but he’s probably the most emotionally intelligent character in DC, that’s a lot of what makes him so dangerous because it’s how he manipulates people) he’s not intelligent full stop. His great plan for breaking out of Arkham? Some of his goons from the outside literally just shoot their way in to get to him. Even leaving aside the fact that Arkham apparently isn’t set up to deal with that kind of violence in this world despite Batman having been opperating for a decade, that’s not a clever plan, and it’s not Joker’s plan. 'Hope some of my dudes are loyal enough to come get me’ isn’t any kind of escape plan, and nothing we see after that point suggests that this was a moment of weakness. Joker just straight up isn’t very bright in this, which is weird because that’s one of the few genuinely consistent character traits he has. He’s no Riddler, sure, but he’s really smart and that makes him hard to contain.

Ayer made Harley functionally a sex worker in this, and it doesn’t actually matter that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with sex work or that sex work is real work, because David Ayer definitely thinks there is, and also really really hates women. David Ayer hates women so goddamn much. The only thing Slipknot does in the entire film apart from die is hit a woman just for being a woman.

When Waller arrives at Belle Reve, Croc is doing push ups. And that’s fine, it’s a classic movie shorthand for ‘bored prisoner is also fit and strong’, but the actor isn’t actually doing pushups. He’s got one knee tucked under his body to support his weight, and is clearly actually just sort of bobbing his head. What I suspect happened is that the prosthetics on his arms and chest were too heavy to allow that kind of movement, which would tie up with the stiff way he holds his arms throughout the film, but he’s not even bothering to pretend very hard and it adds to this pervading sense of off-kilter wrongness the film has.

Rick Flagg is supposed to be ‘the best special forces opperative this country has’, but he’s... really bad? He’s no use in any of the fights, he’s incapable of working with a team and has zero interpersonal skills, and when he’s assigned to be a bodyguard, he immediately starts fucking his client which is like, bodyguarding rule 1. He’s really bad at his job. (Which would be fine if the explanation was that he’s a fucking psychopath who’s 100% willing to just murder a civilian in the line of duty, but he’s meant to be Hannibal Smith more than Dirty Harry, and also if he is here because he’s a psychopath, why did Amanda Waller assume June Moon would be into that?!) He even has to be blackmailed into joining the opperation, so he’s incompetent, unprofessional, causes unecessary conflict, and isn’t even loyal to the project, so why him and not, I don’t know, literally any other character?

On the subject of June Moon, she goes (alone) on an archeological dig in a rainforest somewhere, finds a cave full of human remains and ancient artefacts, and literally her first action is to deliberately smash one of the artefacts, presumably just to see what would happen? IDK! We never get any explanation for that, but it’s definitely meant to be deliberate and not accidental when she smashes it! Why are archeologists in movies all so terrible?!

People have joked a lot about the fact that the movie changes the purpose of the squad from ‘plausibly deniable black ops, especially on American soil’, to ‘punching Superman’ but kept Captain Boomerang on the team, but there is actually an explanation given. A really really stupid explanation. Amanda Waller says that he’s there because ‘he faced down a metahuman and survived’, referring to him surviving being arrested. By the Flash. Who is famously non violent, and in fact in the next film in the series specifically says he’s never fought someone. So Boomer is on the team because he didn’t die when Flash picked him up and carried him to a police station, and Amanda Waller thinks that’s some kind of achievement. Like that isn’t the case for literally everyone the Flash has ever caught. And Flash is a street level hero, so that’s a whole lot of muggers and purse snatchers who are apparently capable of fist fighting Superman by Waller’s logic.

(On the same note as the Joker, Waller is also now incredibly stupid, but she’s mostly stupid for plot related reasons, so it sort of gets a pass? It gets more of a pass than the Joker at least, because making him comics-smart wouldn’t have necessatitated changing anything else about the film)

Re: Waller’s stupidity, her whole plan for recruiting El Diablo to the squad is... show him a video of him setting fire to some dudes. That’s it. She doesn’t even speak to him, she literally just holds up the video to the little window in his tank and seems surprised when that by itself isn’t enough.

And then when Flagg is like ‘hey let me try persuading him with actual arguments instead of just a weird video’, Diablo’s response is “You think you’re the first person to ask? I won’t do it. I’m a man not a weapon”, which gives us the amazing insight that in Ayer’s version of the DCU, there are apparently just... other Taskforce Xs running around. Other government agencies recruiting metahuman soldiers. So what exactly was the point of the half an hour or so of footage of her persuading the brass to go along with it? Because apparently they’re fine with this if every agency is doing it!

Tone? What even is tone. Griggs both has an antagonist but banter-y relationship with and brings cookies to the prisoners, but also he tortures them and is implied to be sexually abusing Harley, and like... you can’t have it both ways, Ayer. This is a one or the other situation. They can’t have a fun and jokey relationship with a man who is explicitly torturing and abusing them. Tone. You need to pick a fucking tone!

The decision to add a subplot about Deadshot being involved in a custody battle with his ex-wife was a fascinatingly terrible choice, and honestly tells you a lot about Ayer’s relationship to MRA talking points. Like, we know nothing about Deadshot’s wife except that she raised a cute well adjusted kid, so probably a pretty good parent, and that she doesn’t want her daughter to be spending time with a MASS MURDERER! So definitely a good parent! The comics just kind of handwave away Zoe’s mom most of the time, which was the right choice, because Ayer wants us to be on Deadshot’s side here, but it’s literally a choice between "a serial killer but you take credit cards” and a normal loving parent and somehow he thinks serial killer is the right answer? WTF happened in Ayer’s life that he thinks this is a choice where we side with Deadshot?! And it’s not even visitation rights or anything, Deadshot wants full custody. And the film thinks he’s in the right!

Not once, at any job I have ever had, one of which was a tourist attraction that required all visitors to wear a pass, have I ever seen someone wear a visitors pass on their sleeve. Not once. And it’s honestly such a good summary of the pervading wrongness of this film. This doesn’t feel like it was made by people. It feels like it was made by middlingly intelligent algorithms trying to pass as human.

Someone please tell me what the fuck any of this set is supposed to mean. The pose feels deliberate, but it’s not invoking anything I can see except the hanged man from the Ryder-Waite tarot deck, the halo of knives almost looks like it’s pseudo-religious imagery except that it’s not a full halo, the circle is incomplete on one side because of a broken piano, does the piano mean something? What about the babygrows, do they mean something? Does the Joker... want kids? Kill kids? Think Harley’s pregant? What the hell is any of this supposed to mean, and if, as I suspect, it was never supposed to mean anything why the fuck did they go to the trouble of making it?! What exactly does the hours this took to put together add to the movie?

David Ayer has a really weird relationship with both gang culture and latino gang culture specifically. He always feels the need to shoehorn them in somehow, and it’s this weird love-hate relationship where he apparently thinks latino gangs are so cool they have to be in everything, but is also so fucking racist he’s incapable of having a latino character who isn’t in a gang. Also in order to shoehorn them in here, he basically removed all of Joker’s henchmen (except for one scene which serves no narrative purpose) and replaced when with generic racist-stereotype LA gangs.

The fact that Griggs just hands Harley the phone in front of all the other guards and soliders was A Choice. Made even more so by the fact that Griggs never actually pay off. He gives Harley the phone, she tells him he’s “so screwed now”, and then... nothing. He’s just gone for the rest of the movie. He’s not even in the epilogue back in prison scenes.

I fucking love that the first thing Waller does is tell the world’s best assassin her real name. That is just... *chefs kiss* Everyone in this film is so fucking stupid.

I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming and I remembered the line perfectly, and I still had to stop the film because I was laughing too hard for “Ah would advise naht gettin’ killed by her, her sword traps the souls of its victims”. It’s the ‘that wizard came from the moon’ of film dialogue, and no one could have made it work, but the southern accent is really what makes that line delivery. I don’t know why, there’s just something about it in that drawl that it just endlessly hilarious.

It really is impressive how every character in this manages to be an offensive stereotype, sometimes multiple offensive stereotypes at once.

I love how Flagg’s right-hand woman is a samurai with a magical possessed sword that traps the souls of the damned who also isn’t military and refuses to speak English most of the time, but the squad are too weird for him. “You won’t believe it, this guy Boomerage, he’s got these bent stick things, and when he throws them they come back! I am freaking out, I can’t deal with this. Oh hi Katana, trap any damned souls lately?”

Harley is explicitly malicious in this in a way no other version of Harley has ever been, which is a Freudian nightmare when you combine it with her also being more sexualised than ever, and more infantalised than any version outside the Arkham games. Someone get Ayer a goddamn therapist. (Also in the vein of everyone being dumb in this, Harley is now an absolutely terrible psychiatrist and all her diagnoses are explicitly wrong, so that’s fun.)

The fucking pink unicorn-bundle of money switcheroo. There’s nothing to say on it that hasn’t already been said but holy shit. How do you fuck something up that bad? How? It’s like looking into Chekov’s nightmares and finding a pink stuffed unicorn staring back.

I love the way the soliders just come and go in this. Are they dead, are they alive, have they abandonned the cause? Why the fuck knows? Certainly not the editors!

I love how we’re supposed to be really sad about El Diablo being dead, but not care that Croc is seemingly directly underneath the explosion and definitely about to die, that’s fun.

I need to know if it was Ayer or Cara Delavigne’s choice to make Enchantress be just.. doing a little dance. Duing all the ‘tense’ moments. Because there are probably things which undercut tension more than the bad guy having a bit of boogy, but not many.

Enchantress gets so many costume changes, and I want to believe that they’re all from different versions of the film but I honestly think it was deliberate and I need someone on in the design department for this movie to tell me why because it add nothing.

I think the best thing about the stupidly on the nose liscenced soundtrack is that it just disappears once they arrive in Midway city. After spirit in the sky it’s original music all the way until the final scene. The great soundtrack DC stans insist this film has is literally only in the first 50 minutes and the last 2 of a 2hr+ movie.

The glorification of abuse in this is... seriously fucking something else. Twilight doesn’t have a patch on this. 50 Shades of Grey doesn’t have a patch on this. This shit is disgusting, and the fact that they pushed so hard to get it a child friendly rating is just morally bankrupt.

Possitive note to end on:

The dialogue is way too on the nose and exposition dump-y but the scene in the bar works pretty well. It fulfils its role in the story, and gives us a decent dose of team bonding.

Deadshot and Harley have great chemistry, and Boomer is perfectly cast, in a way that makes me really hopeful for James Gunn’s take on the team. A writer who knows how to write friendships could do a lot with the three of them, and they’ve been the core squad since 2011 so they’re the ones who matter. It probably helps that whatever Will Smith’s faults as an actor, you could cast him opposite a housebrick and they’d somehow have great chemistry.

#suicide squad #roasting suicide squad #bad movies #you could build whole academic careers just talking about all the things that went wrong in the production of this film #and some of it was studio interferance for sure #but a lot of it was ayer being incompetant #and trailerpark being incompetant #and kate hawley somehow being incompetant despite being fine on other movies #likewise john gilroy the creditted editor #lindsay graham and Mary Vernieu doing the worst jobs of their respective careers #i'm glad this movie didn't tank the careers of the creatives #and so upset it didn't tank the career of david ayer #how can you write this and fucking Bright and still have a job as a writer #how

[thewillowbends]

Thoughts on Lucifer (TV) Season 4

So I've spot-rewatched parts of season 4, and I've more or less got a sense for what did and did not work for me.  Lucifer is the kind of trash television I reluctantly love because I enjoy the characters so much, even as they are stuck in a painful mishmash of bad writing with the occasional moment of brilliance carried along by dedicated and talented actors.

SEASON 4 SPOILERS AHEAD OBVS

Let's get what I didn't like out of the way first -

Stuff That Makes Me Cringe

1.)  Up first is my completely shallow dislike for the new devil makeup.  The wings were really well done, but the face/body is kind of meh to me.  It's not badly designed, per se, but it's definitely narm territory in some places.  (While I do like the whole "king of hell" scene at the end and what it portends in terms of Lucifer's final decision, it is hilariously campy, too.)  In my opinion, season two and three still feature the best up-close devil look, particularly in the reveal scene to Linda.  It's disturbing in an uncanny valley sort of way that gets lost with the heavier makeup, and also...the wet blood is a really nice, creepy touch that I'm sad got dumped after the first try!

Also shallow opinion - Tom Ellis is fine as hell, don't get me wrong, and I appreciate that he worked out like crazy for this season, but I actually kind of miss his slightly less muscular look from the earlier seasons.  I feel like he's a guy who looks better with shoulders that are a tad less broadly defined, yeah?  It felt like it made more sense for Lucifer to be well built but not hyper muscular, since he wasn't a warrior in the way, say, Amenadiel or Michael were.  Samael was the tempter - he's built for beauty and desire, with kind of a sly appeal to him.

2.)  Eve.  I really like Eve as a character over all, but I do wish her motivations were explored more explicitly.  I do really like the vaguely feminist undertones of her story, that she's a woman whose entire life has been dictated to her by God and husband, and her decision to leave Heaven is a rebellion against that, a desire to pursue what she wants for herself even as she struggles to break free of old patterns.  While the story does seem to suggest this is her true motivation, I do wish it was given a little more individual reflection.  The thing I find the most poorly handled about her character is the punishment fascination.  I get that it's part of her tendency to try and mold herself into what she thinks the men in her life want, good or bad, but I would've liked more clarity on whether it held any personal appeal to her - i.e. she discusses her son, Cain, but there's little attention given to what it must have been like for her to watch him walk the Earth cursed, much less losing her son Abel to Hell.  Does she resent God?  Is she angry that human life is so short yet the recompense for a life well or poorly lived is so permanent?  Does she feel like her life was stolen for her in a way that other human's choices weren't?

She's already a foil for Lucifer in that she's daring to go against God's plan to explore her own freedom of choice, with the major caveat being that she left Heaven willingly in contrast to his exile.  So while I do feel she was a relatively well rounded character (as far as she could be with what they wanted to do with her), a little more exploration of those motivations was in order, but I absolutely would love for her to come back in a potential season five.  She has a lot of opportunities for growth and a lot of directions they could take her.

3.)  Mazikeen.  I'm actually not completely unhappy with the direction of her story.  It feels like a natural continuation of her struggles in season 3, learning how to "human" and find her place in the world, but the problem is she isn't being given much to do outside of that.  I like that her relationship with Linda is emotionally complicated (it's honestly one of the best female friendships on the show) with elements of platonic, erotic, and maternal love woven into it, but that the story is making it clear she still needs to learn how to develop herself independently.  In season 2, Lucifer states that Maze is like a "baby bird  that imprints on anything near."  Now that we know demons are naturally inclined to want leadership and direction, that actually provides a literal context for why she's clinging to Linda for purpose afterwards.  We just need to move that into a more strongly defined character arc.  Since we know have the Lilim introduced as a legitimate threat, I feel like that's a no-brainer for what should happen if season five occurs with her.  Let's see a storyline with Maze dealing with her family history (the Lilith), having to confront the fact that Hell is no longer her home, while grappling with a life on Earth minus the companion she's had for nearly all of her existence (Lucifer).  Let her evolve into a fully fleshed out character.

4.)  Cain.  I'm not sad to see him go out with a whimper since they clearly had no idea what to do with his character in season 3, but the fallout gets completely brushed over way too easily.  There's no way a federally investigated criminal revealed to be chief of the LA police wouldn't lead to absolute chaos in the precinct for quite a bit afterwards, and God knows, Chloe certainly would've been under the microscope for her role in what went down.  It would've made more sense to have a throwaway line about how she was suspended for a month and kept away LA proper for a few weeks until they made certain the danger was clear and the drama had settled down media-wise.

5.)  Chloe.  I'll be up front that I actually don't mind her more dramatic response to Lucifer's face.  For how easy it is to want to imagine she would handle it better, we've seen pretty much everybody freak the hell out when they see it, so she really shouldn't have been different.  The context also matters significantly here - she encountered it at a violent crime scene shortly after he killed a person.  HUGE difference from how a lot of the other characters were introduced to the truth.  So I don't find her characterization completely OOC there, but what I wouldn't give for just one more episode this season exploring her feelings during that period, what drove her to Europe, what destabilized her sense of who and what Lucifer is.  What I do like is that we got to see her make mistakes and have to answer for them - up until this point, it's been about Lucifer improving who he was to be somebody worth pursuing, but here we finally get to see Chloe's flaws, her struggles to be the better person she wants to be, to get told 'you f*cked up' and have to accept that she's possibly missed her chance.  I felt like her relationship with Eve was well done, that they didn't go the easy route of them being catty with each other all season, but that each provided a different but ultimately legitimate perspective on Lucifer's complicated character.  She could easily be set up as a primary protagonist of season five now with all the changes she's going through.

6.)  The Father Kinley plot.  I actually have no real problem with it for the most part - it provides a central antagonist that is far more threatening than Cain ever was, but I do wish they'd rethought the story of his introduction to Chloe.  It seems to me it would've made more sense for him to seek her out in America.  As a writer, I would've kept Chloe relatively local and had her confessing her fears and secrets to a local church pastor - who could have contacted the Vatican and brought Kinely to her in L.A.  That would've conveyed a sense of Kinley's operation being part of a vast network of religious authorities "in the know" and provided a possible set up for later conflicts if there were others out there like him.  Kinley actively seeking her out would've also reinforced her sense of how dangerous Lucifer is knowing that authorities had been tracking him for years, which could have undermined her own beliefs about who he is.

7.)  The Caleb plot.  I get what they were trying to do, and I appreciate that the show attempted to go there even as it is didn't fully succeed in treating the subject matter as well as it should have.  I get that it's meant to show us that life can be unfair, and that embracing the right to free will comes with the potential cost of suffering, that we must accept the risks of loving and caring for each other.  However, at the end of the day, you have a male POC killed off for a plot that ultimately leads nowhere, and that's...not great.  I mean, I'd rather them try and stumble then completely ignore such things, but it's definitely not the season's shining moment.

8.)  Other thing this season didn't shine on - the pacing.  I get why it happened, since these writers are used to having more leeway to work with time-wise, and ten episodes is not a whole lot to pack in all of the emotional and story conflicts, but the first four episodes in particularly really feel strained.  Even the humor feels slightly off kilter, like they were struggling to find the right tone.  It's better than season three's tendency to sacrifice pathos for humor, but to date, season two remains their best work in terms of the over all pacing and tone.

9.)  Dan.  His backsliding and self-destructive behavior makes sense in light of his depression and sense of powerlessness, but it does feel redundant in light of Lucifer's own backsliding in season 3 and even here.  Frankly, Dan has a legitimate point about how their tendency to write off Lucifer's worse behavior doesn't help him in the long run, but he's, y'know, one to talk.  I honestly think the best direction for his character in season five is to leave the police force.  In particular, I would not be unhappy to see him team up with Mazikeen to fight some supernatural demon crime, actually.  I feel like their relationship has a lot of potential.

10.)  Dan/Ella.  I don't hate it, per se, but I'm just very neutral on it.  The age difference is a little off-putting (he's fortyish, divorced with a kid, yo, and she's clearly a twenty-something), but I don't mind it being a hook up that occurred when they were both in a low place.  I'm uncertain if I want to see it go beyond that.

11.)  Remiel is a lot of fun, but I vacillate over whether her presence is particularly significant in light of Amenadiel's ultimate decision to stay on Earth.  I highly suspect she's being introduced now as a placeholder for further events down the road if the show gets renewed.  She's clearly there to generate conflict in Amenadiel rather than be the conflict itself, but I wonder if they plan on making Charlie's existence more of an issue if the series progresses.

12.)  As always, I appreciate that the series' maintains an unflagging dedication to diversity.  They cast an Israeli Jewish women as Eve.  All of Lucifer's siblings have been POC.  The show has probably MORE bisexual members in the cast than any other mainstream series that I've seen.  It's not perfectly handled, it it definitely has its stumbles where race and LGBT+ content is concerned, but it's trying.  That's more than I can say for most series.

The Stuff That Gives Me Life:

1.)  Tom Ellis acting the shit out of that script, no matter how ridiculous the scenes they gave him were.  I really appreciate that he's so gung-ho for giving his all to the character even when the material fails to rise to the occasion.  Respect, too, for what I assume was basically him living in a gym for the past year.  If Leslie Ann Brandt had to squeeze herself into leather pants two months after giving birth, I appreciate that he rose to the occasion for getting naked all over the place and providing an ass tight enough to bounce a quarter off it.

2.)  Lucifer's character development was on point for me across the entire season.  I feel like everything we saw building up from previous seasons - the anger, the grief, the self-inflicted wounds he refused to let heal - finally came together here.  That moment at the end of episode eight is the perfect culmination of his character development, the painful realization he has about who really is responsible for everything that's happened to him.  And now he can start making the real journey to being a better person.  What happens at the end of the season is exactly what was bound to happen, no matter what story came before, because he needed to recognize the importance of punishment as a LESSON about the consequences of our actions.  Responsibility sometimes means sacrificing what we want to protect what we care about.  That's actually a rather clever nod to the comic version of the character who ultimately had to give up his individual existence to achieve total freedom - this version chooses submission out of recognition that to love and be loved, to be good is to be fettered to our responsibility to others.

(Which makes me really wonder if they are going to eventually push a story where Lucifer becomes a true king of Hell - not only a tyrant who deals punishment and controls the demonic masses but one who begins to show mercy and help some of those souls find release and forgiveness.  Ah well, don't worry friends, if they don't write it in show, I'm already writing it in a fanfic.)

3.)  Deckerstar 4 lyfe.  I didn't expect them to wind up together because they weren't there yet, but it ended on such a pitch perfect note.  Something this show has done remarkably well is avoid the idea of Chloe as the sole source of motivation for Lucifer to improve himself.  It's emphasized over and over again that he has to want it, that he's the one who had to desire the good in himself.  The worthiness comes with the recognition that you want to be worthy of love - and that you are.  Lucifer had to come much farther than she did, but it was nice to see the dynamic switched up a bit with Chloe having to grow, mature, and reconcile herself to her mistakes.

4.)  Eve was MUCH better as a character than I'd thought.  I'm a little smug about predicting so much about her, but that's not an entirely terrible thing.  While her storyline isn't perfect, I did like that it's a deconstruction of an idea of the "perfect woman/partner."  Eve is in love with the idea of Lucifer and the idea of who she can be with him, not so much the reality of who they are.  It makes me a little sad because I do think if they'd met at a point where she was further along in her character development, or he wasn't already in love with Chloe and so far ahead of her in growth, they could have actually worked and fallen in love with each other.  And that's fine!  Part of the point it's making with her character is how important our individual journeys are.  At the end, Eve recognizes she needs to figure out who she is outside of God's plan or what she THINKS is what she wants.  That honesty toward the end, that she really left Heaven for *herself* and not for Lucifer, is a huge revelatory character point that can go a lot of places next season.

5.)  The demons.  Just...everything with Dromos is gold to me.  From his initial excitement at seeing Lucifer to his frustrated attempts to reason with him...to being much craftier and scarier than anybody possibly expected.  Regardless of how we look at it, he played the endgame to the benefit of his stated purpose - loyalty to the infernal throne.  Hell has a king again, one way or another.  And now we have an established threat to keep Lucifer in line over the next couple of seasons, as well as tying up the arc that was begun all the way back in season 1.

6.)  Pulling in the Vatican and a secret society of "in the know" sects was wise.  While I wish the introduction had been slightly different, it leaves open opportunities for later.

7.)  MY GIRL LINDA.  Rachel Harris is such an underrated part on the show.  She has such great chemistry with Ellis in the therapy scenes, and her becoming a mother feels like a natural extension of the underlying maternal element she provides the show.  I like that we get to see her outside of the office now, engaging in a story of her own, which allows her to stay in the cast without losing significance of no longer being Lucifer's therapist.

8.)  AMENADIEL.  He's probably had the strongest and most well directed character development out of any secondary cast member on the show.  Having him forfeit his power to stay on Earth with the humans he loved is such a nice touch, but I like that it was a decision he had to wrestle with.  The idea of human life necessarily being complicated, messy, even unfair and unkind fits well with the theme of responsibility for our choices.  If he stays on Earth, he has to accept that his son will not have a perfectly Heavenly life, that to be human is to accept all that comes with it.  DB Woodside has great chemistry with the cast, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll do with him in future seasons.

9.)  Lucifer holding baby Charlie for two seconds, awkwardly cooing at him, then immediately passing him off like a hot potato.  That's real character development, guys.

10.)  Amenadiel saying goodbye forever to Lucifer in the baby ward, for what is ultimately and tragically not the reason he expects it to be the last time he gets to say it.  Woodside and Ellis have such great chemistry.

11.)  Ella's loss of faith is handled pretty well.  I appreciate that she had to reclaim it herself and not because she got to see the divine is real.  Fits nicely with the theme that we have to actualize our own beliefs and realities.

12.)  LGBT+ representation was better this season.  It's too late for Lucifer's pansexuality to have any real meaning at this point, but I appreciate him stroking the guy's face while using his eye voodoo in episode 1.  Little touches like that make the "Bi the way" aspect of his character seem less tacked on.  Mazikeen, on the other hand, is where things got much better - she's actually seen dating both men and women, having difficulty parsing her complex emotional relationship with Linda, being openly attracted to and pursuing Eve (also openly bisexual).  Please don't disrupt this improvement next season by giving her a male love interest, Netflix, I'm begging you.  Give us at least SOMETHING here.  She's got the most open-ended story for a relationship, and her development is clearly suggesting she wants family to call hers outside of what she has with the rest of the cast.  (I know I was saying I low key ship her with Dan, BUT I TAKE IT BACK.)

13.)  The dragon wings are admittedly very cool looking.  I prefer the more streamlined devil makeup otherwise from seasons 2 and 3, but the wings can stay.  I imagine the amount of fic tagged "wing kink" on Ao3 is going to increase several fold now.  (Yes, that is an actual thing.)

14.) Lauren German showing up to play this season!  She finally gets to do more than just be the straight man.  All of her dramatic moments with Ellis were well done.  No complaints.  I have way more faith now seeing her move into a primary protagonist role in season 5 if we get it.

15.)  LESLIE ANN BRANDT CAN SING!!!  What a sweet moment and what it says about Mazikeen's development as a character (even if it is ruined by Eve's obtuse logic afterwards).  How much do we want to bet that Lucifer's reaction to that is what made him decide to leave her behind on Earth?

16.)  AJKLSJD;FLSAFDAS THANK YOU FOR FINALLY BRINGING IN MORE SUPERNATURAL STUFF.  We finally get to see the throne!!!  There are prophecies!!!  WINGS!!!  (How cool are Remiel's??)  Demons can possess people canonically!  The Lilim are a well established thing!  Lucifer is back in Hell!  So many place this can go now.

Anyway, I have good feelings for the most part.  It’s still a heavily flawed series, but it’s not so bad that I’m going to dive out of it ala Hemlock Grove, which I’m fairly certain gave me brain damage by mid-season 2.

#lucifer #lucifer tv show #lucifer spoilers

[azuresquirrel]

SO. MOULIN ROUGE BOSTON PRE-BROADWAY RUN PREMIERE. This is going to be massively unorganized, as I simply try to remember as much as I can from the show. And folks, this is a lot of show. This post is MASSIVE and needless to say I’ll be spoiling A LOT about this world premiere pre-Broadway run that may or may not have changes made to it.

(before I speak of the show itself, let me say that is was FUCKING CHAOTIC in the Colonial. Literally all seats but TWO were filled in the balcony, and probably the whole theatre, and they did not have enough people working there for this crowd. I didn’t even get a program because they didn’t have enough ushers)

 So like the overall take of this is that it is EXCESSIVE and OVERWHELMING. I mean that as a good thing. I of course have a bunch of nitpicks, and they could very well change things for Broadway, but this was essentially a Broadway-ready show that is set to be a crowdpleaser. Somehow they managed to capture the feeling of the movie itself on the stage with the direction and choreography, even with the numerous changes both necessary in terms of restructuring the story for a musical format, and just stuff used to differentiate the stage show. While a few things added I guess were something of an attempt to ‘deepen’ the story, largely they understand what this is – a big old sparking cupcake of musical and theatrical excess and it is goddamn enjoyable for it. It hooked me, it sure hooked the rest of the audience that hooted and hollered and clapped (I have bruises on my hands now).

DESIGNS ARE IMPECCABLE. The sets are ASTOUNDING (I gasped at a scene transition at one point). The scenery is extended outside of the proscenium with the windmill flanking one side and the elephant flanking another. The apron of the stage extended out and surrounded the front audience seats, who were seated at club tables a’la Cabaret or a much smaller scale Great Comet.  The costumes are EXCESSIVE and impressive even if they don’t fully match a few of the film’s iconic looks. The lighting design – my god, was the lighting designer on speed?? Or something?? Honestly don’t see this show if you are prone to seizures it is THAT MUCH. Choreography is on goddamn point.

The cast is pretty much Broadway-ready and I hope they don’t replace a single one of them.  Aaron Tveit and Karen Olivo are the perfect Broadway-versions of the Ewan McGregor-Nicole Kidman star power of the movie. I don’t know how the fuck Karen does it but she was at a TEN the entire fucking time, just belting every number like her life depended on it, and she really brought a lot of shading to Satine as a woman who has hardened herself to survive (one thing somewhat different from the movie, I guess with Karen not exactly being a youthful ingénue anymore was this idea of this being Satine’s ‘last chance’ but it melded into her arc pretty seamlessly). Aaron by contrast seemed to be holding back a bit/conserving his energy, especially in act one, but he fucking brings it when he needs to and his vocal command of that shitload of music is impressive, not a hint of strain. Christian is somewhat different from the movie version – he’s not British anymore he’s American (from goddamn LIMA, OHIO. GLEE.), and with act two being played for the tragedy he goes rather darker than movie Christian. Instead of a generic writer he is specifically a composer and the writer of love songs, and he’s somewhat less of the pure naïve innocent of McGregor’s Christian, but I thought it worked.

Danny Burstein absolutely nails it as Zidler, perfectly introducing the audience to the show and the tone. ZIdler is explicitly gay now in the stage show and largely it just fits the character that’s already there rather than making him ‘stereotypical’ (or rather not anymoreso than he already is). Honestly this is mostly a great change (I have a slight criticism for a plot point in act two), and it really helps his relationship with Satine and him becoming something less of a controlling sleazeball. This is especially needed because stage Satine’s goal is less to “fly away” and become a real actress, but rather to save the people of the Moulin Rouge, who she regards as a family. Thus Zidler is far less controlling over her, rather they feel much more like peers. Notably (AND A GOOD CHANGE) Zidler does not find out Satine is sick when she’s unconscious and withholds it from her, Zidler finds out she’s sick in act two and immediately tells her it’s consumption (which killed his first love, ANATOLE). Also he does not order her to break Christian’s heart to save him from the Duke’s wrath, that’s a decision Satine makes entirely on her own, so the plot changes to Zidler also strengthens Satine’s character and gives her a lot more agency.

By far the biggest change from the movie is everything about how they play the Duke. The Duke is not a foppish pathetic nebbish of a man who’s clearly no competition for Christian. Played by Tam Mutu, this Duke is sexy, threatening, controlling, and dominating (emphasis intended). Heck we’re introduced to him BEFORE CHRISTIAN (kinda nuts???). The love triangle is very much that, with the Duke being a very real villain who offers Satine everything she wants in terms of money but is also a controlling asshole (and extends that to the Moulin Rouge and the show within a show as well). He is not clueless and bumbling, Satine IS sleeping with him the whole time, and there’s no giant manservant, he makes his violent threats directly and you believe it (however they, WISELY I feel, cut the attempted rape during El Tango Roxanne, which is in the show but VERY recontextualized, even with act two being played more for tragedy it was wise to not go THAT dark with it). It will then not surprise you that one of the big movie numbers that’s cut is “Like a Virgin” as this would not fit this decidedly non-comic version of the Duke.

Sahr Ngaujah plays Lautrec, and he is a REVELATION as I was unfamiliar with him before. He is a FORCE OF NATURE. He is not a little person, nor is that played in this Lautrec (aside from like two lines of the Duke calling him “little man” which honestly read awkwardly). Rather he has a cane and a limp, and there’s now a really strong racial undercurrent to his devotion to Bohemian ideals as he is a Black man. He is charismatic and has a great voice. Since the bohemians in the stage version are really pared down (wisely, conservation of character) to just Lautrec and the Argentinian, Lautrec’s role is beefed up a lot, although it doesn’t always make entire sense. Lautrec is now the director and the book writer for the show-within-a-show, and his bohemian ideals are MUCH stronger as the show-within-a-show is dramatically changed. While there are jokes in act one about him going on about putting ‘proletariat’ ideals in his work, in act two he very explicitly stands against the Duke trying to change the show, so “freedom, beauty, truth and love” feels like it really means something to him rather than in the movie where they just seems a bunch of horny artists. On the stage, Lautrec is an old friend of Satine’s having met her when she was thirteen and dumps a lot of backstory onto Christian for us. He also says he was in love with Satine but never told her. This honestly leads to some character inconsistency – in one scene he’s telling Christian to “not make his mistake” and go for love, and in another he’s telling Christian to “forget about her, she’s made her choice”???? Also did we really need another dude in love with Satine with the central love triangle?

Let’s talk music – a lot of the music from the movie is still in there, though a few notable numbers have been cut, like the aforementioned “Like a Virgin.” They also added A LOT MORE MUSIC, including into mashups with other existing songs. MOST of these slot in amazingly into great numbers. In my mind there are two new numbers that really don’t live up to what they are replacing, but generally the new music sounds GREAT. Orchestrations and ensemble vocal arrangements are STUNNING on a few numbers, particularly the act two opener. There is, however, a SLIGHT tonal problem with some of the new music and the audience. A lot of new songs provoked laughter from the audience as they recognized them. For most songs this was not a problem, especially in the frothy frivolity of act one, but for the more dramatic numbers is kind of was (especially, again, in tragic act two). Please know that I will SO be getting the inevitable cast recording because everyone’s voices on these numbers are amazing.

NOW FOR THE NITTY-GRITTY. So there was ZERO pre-show announcement because THE SHOW TRANSITIONED INTO STARTING NEAR-SEEMLESSLY. About ten minutes before “start” actors slowly came onto stage, dancing, cavorting, entertaining the audience. Two of the very attractive women did a SWORD-SWALLOWING ACT right in front of the big Moulin Rouge sign. Then Christian comes onstage, observing off to the side, then hits the lights (there was a massive prop switch on one side of the stage that was used throughout the show for ‘the lights’), so the show can “start.” It begins right at the Moulin Rouge with “Lady Marmalade,” then Zidler’s entrance truly playing the crowd, including setting off THE CONFETTI CANON THAT IS CONCEALED IN HIS CANE, then into the Can-Can. Then the Duke enters with some contemporary song that honestly I SHOULD know but do not, and he sits in the booth on stage right. Then Christian enters with Lautrec and the Argentinian and they seat on stage left (the three of them also harmonize A BUNCH throughout the show and it sounds great).

It is only when Zidler begins to introduce Satine that the spotlight hits Christian and he begins “narrating” the story about the woman he loved. Christian has no typewriter like in the movie. Essentially what I got from the finale is that the show itself is him telling the story? He is a songwriter now after all? Anyway, at that point it transitions back in time to earlier that day when he arrives in Paris. This was the set change that floored me, immediately the stage transforms from the opulent Moulin Rouge to the streets on Montmarte in PERFECT GREYSCALE (one of the smaller but stunning pieces of stagecraft in the show is when Christian sings “the hills are alive with the sound of music” – when the spotlight hits him the backdrop goes from greyscale to full color in the light, then back again). So he meets up with Lautrec and the Argentinian, and they hit it off together to “Royals” (THIS ACTUALLY WORKS ASTOUNDINGLY WELL). They quickly hatch the scheme to pitch the show (which Lautrec wants to name “Bohemian Rhapsody”) to Satine, and we return back to the scene we left in the Moulin Rouge for Satine’s entrance.

SHE ENTERS DOWN FROM THE SWING. In a red feathered dress that later does an amazing quick change/reveal to a black diamond-studded lingerie number (Karen Olivo spends A LOT of this musical in fancy lingerie). On the swing she sings bits of “Diamonds are Forever” and then it goes into “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” For the “Material Girl” bit the female ensemble comes out in matching top hats that they all take off to reveal Madonna wigs. Then we have “Single Ladies” mashed up into it. Satine does not get back onto the swing to fall off dramatically, she simply has a moment in the song where she nearly faints, but she recovers to dance on top of a giant diamond platform.

Then her and Zidler have the mix-up of who is the Duke while the dancers dance to “Rhythm of the Night”, and then when Satine and Christian meet and dance it is set to a mashup of “Shut Up and Dance With Me” and “Raise Your Glass” (MUCH LIKE ROYALS, THIS SHOULDN’T WORK, AND YET IT ABSOLUTELY DOES???). Lautrec and the Argentinian also distract Zidler with some song and I think “We Are Young” is somewhere in all of this as well (HONESTLY I DO NOT REMEMBER EVERY SINGLE NEW SONG BECAUSE THERE WAS *A LOT* OF MUSIC IN THIS SHOW, “WE ARE YOUNG” WAS IN THERE AT SOME POINT).

Afterwards we get a backstage scene of Satine talking with Zidler and the main “Lady Marmalade” girls talking about needing the Duke’s money in order for the Moulin Rouge to survive and keep everyone off the streets. So here Satine’s motivation is much less “become a real actress and escape the Moulin Rouge” but instead “the people of Moulin Rouge are my family and I need to singlehandedly keep this place going.” Satine KNOWS she’s sick and is keeping it from everyone/doesn’t think it’s that big a deal.

-Now I should mention here as a slight tangent that one of the Lady Marmalade girls is um, well, she’s played as a transwoman. Mmm. I have. Thoughts. On this. For one thing, I can’t tell you the gender identity of the performer as I did not get a playbill. For another thing, while yes most of the characters are sex workers, and yes I appreciate putting a wider display of gender and sexuality onstage (which only fits the world of early-20th-century artist-bohemian Paris), do we really need more of the hoary old trope of the sexworker transwoman? It’s a small part of the show but still. CONCERN over that choice.

So obviously we don’t have “One Day I’ll Fly Away.” Instead we have . . . “Firework.” Number I don’t feel entirely works number 1. Now Karen SELLS THE GODDAMN SHIT out of it, but like. “Firework.” Not as a good of a number as “One Day I’ll Fly Away.” Also even though they obviously avoid the line about feeling “like a plastic bag” they do keep the line about FOURTH OF JULY in Paris, France. Even with Moulin Rouge being as over-the-top and fantastical as it is, boy does that stick out as WEIRD.

Then we go into the elephant set (it’s a garish room surrounded by an elephant proscenium, there are so many layers to this set), and “Your Song” remains in its glory, although we do not do the ‘dancing in the stars’ bit (NOT YET).

Now “Spectacular, Spectacular” is dramatically rewritten to reflect the show-within-a-show being VERY different as it is no longer set in India. Instead, Lautrec is playing into the actual revolutionary theatre style of the early 20th century of extreme realism (HONESTLY I FEEL LIKE I APPRECIATE THIS MUCH MORE THAN MOST AS A FORMER THEATRE SCHOLAR). Thus the play more resembles the actual La Boheme, or the “social dramas” of the time which is WHAT PARISIAN BOHEMIANS WOULD BE WRITING AND PERFORMING – Lautrec says plainly in act two that he wants to ‘hold up a mirror to Paris.’ So the show-within-a-show is set in Paris and is about the love triangle between a prostitute, a romantic sailor, and a rich gangster. Largely I think it’s a good thing to steer the hell away from the massive cultural appropriation of the movie’s Indian version, although this dramatically changes the climax of the show, as it now becomes a more intimate scene between Christian and Satine than the triumphant LOVE ABOVE ALL ELSE in the movie (more on that later). And my one BIG costume regret is that Satine is then in a dingy black dress for the climax (which is actually a plot point in act two with the Duke arguing against this), rather than the beautiful iconic white gown from the movie. Ah well.

So after Satine gets everyone out of the room but the Duke, they actually DO THE DO, after the Duke sings a mashup of “Sympathy for the Devil” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

After this we get a scene between Lautrec and Christian on the street writing the show, where Lautrec gives his and Satine’s backstory to Christian and sings “Nature Boy” gorgeously, eventually convincing Christian to go after her. The next scene is the Duke “negotiating” with Zidler, with Zidler’s male lover in there at the start (put a pin in that, we’re coming back to that in act two). By that I mean the Duke taking ownership of literally everything and agreeing to produce Lautrec’s show simply as “an amusement.”

We then go back to the elephant, and Christian is persuading Satine to have an affair with him behind the Duke’s back, and we have a revamped “Elephant Love Medley” with WAY MORE SONGS IN IT including “Take on Me”, “What’s Love Got to Do With It”, “Don’t Speak” and like LOTS MORE I AM PROBABLY FORGETTING. This morphs into the giant act one ender as HERE, once we hit “heroes” the stage transforms into the Paris skyline with all the stars out and the dancers wheel on the Eiffel Tower for Christian and Satine to dance on and EVERY SINGLE LIGHT IN THE THEATRE IS PROJECTING STARS and they quick-change into their starry blue costumes IT WAS ALL VERY OPULENT AND ROMANTIC.

So act one is very much a frothy delight of THEATRE!!!! MUSIC!!! LOVE!!!! BIG OLD PRODUCTION NUMBERS!!! And not to say that act two lacks those things but there is a NOTABLE tonal shift in act two to THE TRAGEDY of it all.

So act two opens with Christian narrating for the audience to think back to their first love affair, so that they can understand how he is driven to madness. He also introduces the “other” backstage love affair with the Argentinian and Nini, who are dancing erotically on the stage before rehearsal for the show starts. We begin the NUTSO act two opening number, starting as a duet of the two of them on motherfucking “Bad Romance.” It is AMAZING, particularly in the Argentinian’s growl. Then the other dancers enter, it becomes a group number which is then mashed up into “TOXIC” and “SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS” and eventually Christian and Satine join in with the whole group. The choreography for this whole number is NUTS the vocal arrangement OFF THE HOOK and it absolutely stopped the show.

So then we have rehearsals, including some prop comedy with Zidler that absolutely killed, and in a welcome change, instead of Nini divulging the affair to the Duke like in the movie (where it seemingly came out of nowhere), she instead WARNS Satine that the Duke is a dangerous man to mess with, telling about how another woman who cheated him ended up with her lover murdered in the river and the woman disfigured (this adds the legitimate threat to Christian and motivates Satine on her own). And the Duke gets the picture pretty clearly when Christian pulls the whole “SHE DOESN’T LOVE YOU” line in the rehearsal.

So after rehearsal goes shitty and Satine is conflicted about what to do with these two men, we get a scene of Zidler and the Lady Marmalade girls talking about how things are looking dire for the theatre. So essentially replacing “The Show Must Go On” from the movie we instead have Florence + the Machine’s “Shake It Off.” Number I have a problem with number two. Now this is a song that on its own I LOVE. But it honestly feels . . . out of place and unneeded. Again, the cast gives it their all but like . . . it just doesn’t fit in the way that “The Show Must Go On” did. I mean, I would see this as the number most likely to be cut or changed for Broadway, but honestly who the fuck knows.

The next scene is Satine going to Christian’s apartment. Here we have a full duet of “Come What May” (which is not a song in the show-within-a-show but just then straight-up singing about their love for each other).

Then the next scene is waaaaaay new as we have Satine with the Duke on a rich-ass boulevard with everyone in these extravagant rich-ass costumes that looks like Sunday in the Park with George was vomited on by Revolutionary Girl Utena and pastels (I’ll be real, the Duke is in the lavender suit with giant coat and tophat and I fucking wanted to wear the entire thing). The Duke shows Satine a house that he has bought for her and tells her all of the things he will provide for her – if she gives him “everything” including her heart, and she stops performing shortly after the show opens, as having his mistress parade herself onstage would be unbecoming to a man of his status. Satine, in her Sunday best but clearly on as “in fashion” as everyone else onstage, points out she doesn’t really fit his status. She then gets this . . . oddly sadomasochistic (?) makeover with the Duke singing a BIZARRE version of Rihanna’s “Only Girl in the World” (it does work, but I think it is purposefully bizarre in the scene) and Satine sings a dark reprise of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” while she is put into this Eliza Dolittle monstrosity.

With another rehearsal scene and Lautrec talking back to the Duke and Christian ready to lose his shit over the Duke treating Satine, and everyone else, as his possession, we then transition to Christian’s apartment the night before the show. He’s going mad with jealousy, threatening to kill himself, and the Argentinian and Lautrec are trying to talk him down. Eventually they tell him he needs to purge himself of Satine with absinthe. They take absinthe while singing Sia’s “Chandeleer” (their three-part harmony on this is STUNNING) and as Christian goes into a haze he hallucinates first Satine as the green fairy (COMING DOWN ON THE SWING AGAIN) and then eventually a whole sequence of different green fairies, dancing with men. Still enraged and jealous, Christian takes to the streets.

EL TANGO ROXANNE. It is still here but it is MASSIVELY recontextualized. It’s a much less literal number now, no longer set in the Moulin Rouge, almost more of a dream ballet (??) as Christian wanders the streets. We being with ZIDLER being the one giving the opening speech explaining the dance while the Argentinian and Nini do the dance to the side. Then the lights go out and come back on with the spotlight on Christian center stage and with tango couples around him. It begins with him singing the “his eyes upon your hand” bridge, and then the actual Roxanne part is sung BY CHRISTIAN. I was massively thrown off by this at first, I was looking forward to hearing this Argentinian sing this version, but it fits more with Christian here as motivating his actions rather than as the beset-upon innocent, and Tveit fucking GIVE S IT HIS ALL. We also have Christian seeing a vision of Satine and you know the red dress she’s wearing in all the promo pics? She’s wearing it here.

So then the scene in the Duke’s tower is hugely different from the movie. At the start Satine enters the room and the Duke is talking with the man who we saw before as Zidler’s lover. Apparently the Duke has been paying him to be “his eyes” at the Moulin Rouge (so my pin – the evil gay? C’mon guys. At least Zidler’s sexuality largely isn’t demonized but like c’mon), so he is VERY aware of Satine and Christian’s extracurricular activities. He then gives Satine the ultimatum – be mine or Christian will end up a corpse with his throat slit ear to ear. Christian, drunk and high, enters and sadly attempts to fight the Duke and professes his love for Satine. Satine coldly turns him down to save his life and breaks down crying when the men leave.

We now have Christian broken and alone on the street and he begins singing “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkely, which then transitions into “Rolling in the Deep” (this was probably the most awkward part of the show where the audience laughed at recognizing a song). “Rolling” continues on to everyone getting ready for the show at the Moulin Rouge, to Satine singing as well, then we see Christian off to the side LOADING A GUN, and the number climaxes with Christian and Satine singing on either side with the dancers in the middle performing the start of the show within a show.

Then we have the BIG CLIMAX of the show with the show-within-a-show, which is now a much darker affair since it is not a glorious wedding in ~exotic India~. Christian crashes the scene, coming up from the actual theatre’s aisles as we are now fully the audience of the Moulin Rouge. Here Christian doesn’t slutshame Satine and claim to “pay his whore” instead he pulls out the loaded gun (as a part of the written scene) but then turns into to his own chest.

To bring him back with the confession of true love, Satine sings “Your Song.” Then after their big kiss Satine VERY QUICKLY falls into his arms and starts dying (hence how it’s less of a triumph into eventually tragedy, but rather a personal scene with Christian and Satine that takes a VERY QUICK TURN). And after asking Christian to “tell her story” Satine of course dies in his arms.

After this, Christian gives a very brief epilogue explaining how he started writing again, and now he starts to sing “Come What May”, eventually joined by everyone else in the Moulin Rouge, sans the dead Satine. They keep these poses after blackout for the first round of applause.

THEN the curtain call asks you to forget about all that tragedy and SING AND CLAP A FUCKLOAD with a giant dance number/singalong of Lady Marmalade, the Can Can, and EVEN “HEY YA.” I should note that during this part the male ensemble comes out in the iconic movie look of the tuxedo on top and tutu and tights on the bottom. At one point the choreo has the female ensemble riding these men, and rest assured I yelled “IT’S EQUALITY.” THEN after that was the full cast bows, with Karen and Aaron last and together and then the men pull out cane which are ALL confetti canons that shoot out confetti and streamers so high it almost reached the balcony.

SO THERE IS THE EXPERIENCE OF SEEING “MOULIN ROUGE” ONSTAGE. It is indeed a RAVISHMENT OF THE SENSES and honestly there were probably a lot of bits of new music in there that I forgot, but folks, it looks great, it sounds great, the cast is phenominal, IT IS INDEED, EVERYTHING.

#Moulin Rouge #Moulin Rouge musical #musicals #theatre

[flarebossmalva]

notes for my friend for hire mix is she promised to the night

#abuse #death m

this won’t make a lot of sense if you haven’t read friend for hire. even if you have, i wrote that story back in ‘13 and made the playlist at around the same time and it’s ‘18 now and i don’t exactly remember what was going through my head when i put this together, so this might be a less enlightening mix notes post. regardless, here we go.

only happy when it rains / garbage

one of the things i figured out very early on about jack is that she’s pretentious and melodramatic and on some level enjoys having something to complain about. after all, what kind of fifteen-year-old runs an overly verbose vent blog filled entirely with lengthy personal posts about some girl her parents are paying her to befriend? well, probably someone who likes to wallow in it a bit. friend for hire is, i guess, something of a tragedy, but it’s also being told by a character who has a tendency to revel in being sad.

seventeen / marina and the diamonds

growing pains. teenage angst. more establishing material for who jack is. 

about a girl / nirvana

this is definitely a song jack likes — i’m pretty sure i alluded to her fondness for 90s grunge at least once. nirvana songs are hard to analyze because kurt cobain was the sort of lyricist who mostly didn’t give a fuck about what his lyrics actually meant; regardless, the way i read this song is that it’s about being too hung up on someone who isn’t that level of hung up on you, who has a life outside of you. an unbalanced relationship, broadly speaking, which is what jack and luna’s thing was from the get-go because of the money jack pockets for it and the three-year age gap between the two.

crushcrushcrush / paramore

i think i put this on there more for the mood than for any specific lyric. this is a story about angsty teenagers. it definitely calls for some paramore. 

down today / jonathan coulton

this dude can write a passive-aggressive song like no one’s business. i mean, if you haven’t heard this song, it’s about how someone (maybe an ex, from context) is attempting to go off on you but you don’t even give a shit because you’re having a good time with a nice girl now. also: did jack make friends with luna to spite her mom? one hundred percent yes she did.

summersong / the decemberists

song about taking it easy because it’s summertime and summer comes and goes quickly. the main events of this story happen over the course of one summer — that’s about a three-month time frame. that’s quick. but a lot can happen in a single season, especially if you’re young.

summertime / my chemical romance

abandoning the rest of the world to run away with someone. this song is off mcr’s concept album set in a dystopia, so relating it to a much more mundane occurrence (two adolescents becoming friends) helped set the overdramatic us-vs-them teenager mentality mood i wanted the story to have.

born to die / lana del rey

more moody shit, plus the line “you like your girls insane” for a little nod at the mental illness themes i was working with. and a little mild suicidal ideation, why not?

kimberly / patti smith

i don’t know what the fuck patti smith is on about half the time, i’ll confess, but i love the imagery in this song; it’s weird and surreal and grand and apocalyptic and ends with the narrator gazing “into your starry eyes, baby” for the rest of the song. more “the two of us against the rest of the world” / “all we have is each other” kind of stuff, in context.

4 o’clock / emilie autumn

so we’ve mostly been from jack’s perspective in this playlist till now, but here’s a bit of luna. she’s an insomniac, and when she does sleep, she sleepwalks. for a girl named after the moon, she’s learning to dread the night pretty well. i confess that this bit of luna’s character is also based off of my first depressive episode in part because i kept myself awake at night until sunrise because paranoia made me fear the dark. 

asleep / emilie autumn

luna again, big surprise. pretty self-explanatory. wanting to sleep but it sounds an awful lot like wanting to be dead at times, too. 

is she weird / pixies

yes, she is weird. this is where i got the title of the mix from. 

monster / paramore

again, us vs. rest of the world stuff. drowning imagery in this one too. i don’t remember my writing process for this story too well but i’m pretty sure the foreshadowing was far from subtle.

girls! girls! girls! / emilie autumn

i think i referred to this song explicitly in the story. this is victorian notions of female madness / hysteria stuff, which is a theme i hope i explored at least a little because it was a big influence while writing this thing. iirc i had jack reference this song which is sort of getting at jack’s gender issues i guess, not seeing herself as a girl and all that.

fear of dying / jack off jill

i love foreshadowing apparently. also sort of a “i don’t want to die and leave you behind (but if we died together it’d be alright)” thing here.

northern star / hole

more night imagery. also a really moody track, sort of apocalyptic-sounding. it’s hole so i’ll be damned if i know what the lyrics are supposed to mean but the tone fits. i think i had this one associated in my mind with a specific scene i wrote where luna shows up at jack’s house unexpectedly.

how strange / emilie autumn

don’t remember which of my main characters i associated this one with but i wanted to get some early emilie autumn in there and this song is basically a passive-aggressive “you don’t know me like that” track. also the chorus talks about dreams which naturally were an important part of this story.

if you feel better / emilie autumn

abuse victim anthem am i right. the lyrics for this one are basically like “you can blame everything on me and treat me like i’m just a heartless person taking advantage of you if it helps you to do that because i’m past fighting you on it” and, again, you can definitely read it as passive-aggressive but i’m not sure you have to either because this is 100% the mentality abuse victims commonly adopt during their abuse. could work for jack and luna or for jack and her mom. 

the killing type / amanda palmer

the narrator of this song constantly asserts a nonviolent, pacifistic nature but is clearly willing, if not eager, to resort to violence to fix a broken relationship. if that ain’t a mood, i guess. i think this is more of a luna track, except she’s like twelve and ends up directing violence at herself instead of towards anyone else.

i want my innocence back / emilie autumn

given the ages of my protagonists, loss of innocence is in the thematic mix, and i think luna in particular (who is just moving out of childhood into adolescence) wants to go back to how she was before losing some vestige of innocence... another violent song too, but not angry, the violence here is matter-of-fact. a means to an end. luna’s basically dealing with the onset of mental illness symptoms (i never decided what she might have, but definitely some measure of psychosis) and doesn’t know what’s happening but wishes things could return to “normal” for her.

time for tea / emilie autumn

my main reason for including this track, i think, was because luna would like it. it’s about girls exacting bloody revenge, what’s not to love?

eloise / the damned

given jack’s overall musical taste (which i don’t think i discussed too much in canon, but i alluded to it more than once), i’m sure she’d like this song. the angst makes it fit. also like... doing everything you can think of to keep someone happy and then losing them anyway.

liar / emilie autumn

god i really put a lot of emilie autumn on this one huh. this is another track that could work for jack’s relationship with her mom (i think when i had her review opheliac in a blog post, she mentioned liking this song; that’s why), but it’s more relevant to jack and luna’s relationship ultimately, especially once luna finds out jack’s been getting paid to befriend her.

when i am queen / jack off jill

extremely a luna track, the chorus is even about suicide by drowning for fuck’s sake. not sure there’s much more to say, the relation of this one to the story is probably very obvious.

shallot / emilie autumn

very pretty song about being imprisoned and escaping it in order to die free, or something. also a lot of water/night imagery. very luna.

where is my mind? / pixies

water imagery again, also losing your mind or realizing you never had one to begin with. most applicable to luna but jack is probably the one who likes this track.

come away to the water / maroon 5 ft. rozzi crane

the title is probably enough explanation but this is about children being taken to be slaughtered, so. there’s that.

4 o’clock reprise / emilie autumn

if friend for hire was a movie i’d want this to play the night luna drowns. that’s all i gotta say on that.

redondo beach / patti smith

this song is about a woman who has a fight with her girlfriend and then goes looking for her; along the way she sees a commotion on the beach, where a girl has just washed up dead, but ignores it to keep search for her gf, not realizing till the end of the song who the dead girl on the beach is. obviously i picked it because it’s about someone drowning herself following a fight with a loved one.

dear prudence / siouxsie and the banshees

the narrator of this song implores the titular prudence to come outside and play, but i’ve always thought prudence sounded... well, dead, the way the narrator keeps imploring her to open her eyes. i’m not sure if that’s like a “valid interpretation” of the track but in my mind prudence is absolutely not alive. at this point in the story neither is luna, so.

if i burn / emilie autumn

friend for hire concluded with jack realizing that even though luna’s dead, she’s never going to be rid of her. this track is about someone asserting that even if she dies, her killer will never be rid of her memory and will be haunted by her forever.

#Friend for Hire #whew. had to really sit down with this one