#and she's a baddie and i love her | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vivitalks · 23 days

Text

Last night I saw the Great Gatsby musical. Before I went, I reread the Great Gatsby book (for the first time since 11th grade!) to get a refresher on the source material and the original story. Having the book so fresh in my mind made seeing the musical really interesting, and now I am going to do something I never thought I'd do, which is post some lengthy meta about The Great Gatsby. If you haven't seen the musical, this post may still be interesting to read, but it does contain some mild spoilers, so I leave that up to you. If you also haven't read the book, godspeed lol.

There's a lot I could talk about here when it comes to the way the book was adapted for the stage. But there's one particular thing I want to zero in on in this post, and that's the "unreliable narrator" of it all.

In the book, Nick Carraway is our narrator. He's an unreliable narrator practically by default - the idea is that he's retelling events that occurred two years prior, from memory. But even knowing that Nick is probably not reporting all events and characters with complete accuracy, it's hard to know which parts exactly are wrong, or what might have happened in reality, because even though he's an unreliable narrator, he's still the only narrator and this is the only version of events we know. We're forced to take Nick as our surrogate and take him at his word. Until the musical.

(I wondered how the show was going to deal with the fact that the story of Great Gatsby is not only told by an unreliable narrator but also by an outside perspective - generally speaking the events of the Great Gatsby aren't happening to Nick, they're just kind of happening around him. Yet he's the voice of the story, so in that way he's central to it, and I was curious how they were going to balance that fact with the fact that Gatsby is functionally the main character.

I think they struck a really good balance in the end. Nick's beginning and ending lines, lifted verbatim from his book narration, frame him clearly as the anchor of the story - I think that's the best word for it; the audience jumps from scene to scene, many but not all of which contain Nick, but we know that Nick is always going to be where the action is, or that he will at least know about it. He may not be the main character, but he's an essential character. But I digress a little bit.)

The difference between the way the story is imparted to the audience in the book versus in the musical boils down to this: in the book, Nick "plays" every character, so all their dialogue and actions, their mannerisms and the way they're described and reported, it's all informed by the beliefs Nick holds about them. Whether he means to or not, his biases paint certain characters in certain lights, and because he is our eyes and ears to the story, we have no choice but to absorb those biases.

But in the musical, every character is literally played by a different actor. Nick can only speak for himself. Nick can only tell his own parts as they happened. He may be "telling" the story, but we're watching the story. We have the benefit of an unblemished perspective on things - we can watch the events the way they actually unfold, regardless of how Nick believes or remembers they went down.

This difference - between Nick as the narrator and Nick as merely his own voice - is crucial in how the musical develops each character, some of them fairly different from how Nick described them in the book. And there's one book-to-stage change - a fairly small one, all things considered - that, to me, illustrated this difference perfectly.

There's a line towards the end of the Gatsby book. Something Nick says in narration, after his final conversation with Tom Buchanan, talking about how Tom gave away Gatsby's name and location to George Wilson (which ultimately led to Gatsby's death). Nick writes:

"I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"

When I read this line in the book, I couldn't help vehemently agreeing. Screw those rich assholes! Money does corrupt! Tom and Daisy ARE careless wealthy people! It was easy to side with Nick, not only because he was the only perspective on the situation that I had, but also because he said this in internal response to a conversation with Tom, who, I think we can all agree, is a major jackass and a deeply unsympathetic character.

But in the musical, this line is spoken aloud by Nick. And he says it to Daisy, in her house, as she's packing up to skip town after Gatsby's death. In fact, he doesn't just say it; he shouts it, visibly and audibly outraged at her audacity to lead Gatsby on, ghost him, skip his funeral, and then move away to avoid the fallout. Nick is angry and highly critical of Daisy. But because we're no longer confined to his shoes, we also get to see Daisy's reaction - not as Nick remembers it, but as Daisy actually reacts. And because of that, we're able to really see, and confirm, that "Daisy is rich and careless" is not the full story.

I have to credit Eva Noblezada for a phenomenal performance (duh). Daisy in this scene is emotional, grieving, and it's clear she has been trying to contain these feelings for the sake of her husband and her own sanity. She's remorseful, not that Gatsby is gone necessarily, but that she allowed herself to entertain the fantasy of running away with him, only for it to be torn from her. She is trying to make the best of her unavoidable reality. And then Nick tears her a new one, calling her careless, accusing her of destroying things and being too rich to care.

And as I watched that scene, I was no longer wholly on Nick's side. I understood that this situation was so much more complex than Nick's chastisement acknowledged. Sure, Daisy wasn't innocent, but she also wasn't the callous rich girl Nick made her out to be. She did love Gatsby. And she also had a whole life with Tom. She had a daughter. She was a woman in the 1920s! That's a kind of life sentence even wealth can't erase.

The way Daisy responded may not quite have landed with Nick (if we consider the kind of fun possibility that the musical is the events as they happened and the book is Nick retelling those events as he remembers them two years later, then clearly Nick's disdain for Daisy's actions overtook whatever sympathy he felt for her), but the musical gave Daisy the opportunity to appeal to us. The audience. Having this omniscient perspective of things allowed us to draw our own conclusions, and I found myself a lot more sympathetic towards Daisy when I could both see and hear how she responded to Nick's verbal castigation.

In the book, Nick is the narrator. In the musical, Nick is a narrator. But he's no longer the sole arbiter of the story. The audience got to make our own judgements on the events as we witnessed them. Every one of us was a Nick - beholden to our own biases, maybe, but at least not beholden to his.

35 notes · View notes

nmelos · 2 months

Text

Saw people drawing meleanor in this outfit (inspired by the post below):

So I decided to try as well ^^

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst diasomnia #twst meleanor #twst fanart #sorry if the wings look scuffed #I was really trying to put the focus on her #smh can’t believe crowley bagged a baddie #it’s either that or she just put him over the shoulder like a bag of flour and ran #love her

455 notes · View notes

guacanator · 2 months

Text

Milllaaaaaa warmup . so fun. so much joy . thought tumblr might like it

#psychonauts #milla vodello #she a baddie #ngl i love her #if sasha and milla are canon #I’m between them #canon as well #I’m literally double fine #/j #hashtag throuple goals #okay ill stop now #smh

177 notes · View notes

hyakunana · 3 months

Text

Durge, the Dark Urge — but make it a bard forest gnome girl named Imbrie

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #larian studios #gnome #bard #dark urge #durge #fanart #dark urge's pt-br name is Impulso Sombrio - hence Imbrie #but i love how stupid it sounds to say durge the dark urge so im carrying it #I was first aiming for her to be someone fighting against the urge with music bUT SHE GOT SUCH A DISDAIN FACE IT IS STRONGER THAN ME #so i was playing her as 'look i love some bloodshed but i'll save it for the baddies' BUT NOW I'M ON ACT 2 #AND I'M TORN BETWEEN SAVING THE TIEFLINGS I'VE BEEN SAVING OR... DO THE DURGE THING AT THE INN #spoiler: I will do the durge thing - im just deciding the timing for it #there's something ironically tragic as me saving all tieflings so far with durge -except alfira ofc- while forgetting some w wyll #im a failure of a hero #congratz on tav the dracomonk for getting the save all tieflings achievement in my very first run #bc looks like i'm never doing it again aND I LOVE THEM

116 notes · View notes

crystalliumdaisy · 9 months

Text

Fav Npc core 🫶🫶🫶

She needs WAY more art of her!!! >:[[

#jrwi #jrwi riptide #jrwi show #jrwiblr #jrwi fanart #jrwi ensa #ends #I WANTED TO DRAW HER SO BAD #the LACK of art for this baddie #Also her and jay 😏😏😏#i love her and i want her on the BOAT AGAIN #But also dotn come to the black sea my bad #anyways i love her and she deserves more love #daisyart

280 notes · View notes

mangotelevision · 2 months

Text

katelyn the firefist doodles :)

#i havent drawn her in a bit #i missed her #my bbg fr #love drawing her with that scar #my minecraft diaries phase is coming back #im regressing #i did miss my ogs tho #she is such a baddie i should draw her more #katelyn #katelyn aphmau #katelyn the firefist #katelyn minecraft diaries #aphmau minecraft diaries #minecraft diaries fanart #minecraft diaries #mcd #aphmau

44 notes · View notes

memewife · 8 months

Note

omg I love the freezeria characters! you should draw evelyn if you feel like it, I love her sm c:

got so excited that someone was a fellow papa fan i got carried away . my bad

#thank u sm !!! im serious i love rqs ....#and i had so much fun drawing her . shes kind of a baddie #ok i am going to bed now #ty again teehee #ask #request #solarpire #papas freezeria #papas games #papa louie fanart #flipline fanart #papas freezeria evelyn #flipline evelyn #papas freezeria deluxe #ok . gn . sweet dreams to everyone ever #my art

122 notes · View notes

astoldbychae · 1 month

Text

Miss ma'am has returned from her lil mini trip and is headed to the salon (She only has two clients to ease her back into the work week).

#astoldbychae #blacksimblr #blacksimmer #ts4 #ts4photo #oc: marguerite webber #she irks my damn nerves #but I must admit...#Melo knows he loves him some beautiful women #theres another one that keeps popping up on him randomly #he messed with her during his lil time in college #and she's a baddie too #like...its unfair at this point

22 notes · View notes

nostalgia-tblr · 6 months

Text

I watched Avengers: Age of Ultron (apart from I skipped some overly long action sequences) and I am not sure so can someone tell me whether or not Tony Stark was the baddy in that film? Because about halfway through I was sure he was but then it was maybe just an evil robot after all and I am confused because either this film was surprisingly subversive or it was about robots hitting each other.

#I CANT STAND THE CONFUSION IN MY MIND #also i get why people wrote wanda/sylvie. they should go on a wholesome chick-flick revenge-quest together. and also they should kiss.#also i am now only *half* joking about thor being in love with mjolnir #it kept doing Christianity Bits which was quite awks.#not sure why it used the bit about building the church on a rock for some metal i mean wasn't jesus making a pun there? about peter?#i think Vision might be Jesus? or else he's Dr Manhattan who's done a first year philosophy course. could go either way on that tbh.#BUT TONY WAS THE BADDY RIGHT? WAS HE? WAS TONY THE BADDY OR NOT????#with the homocidal glitches in what he thinks is his winning personality?#and all the weapons he's made and is in fact still making but now he only sells them to The Good Guys?#except look how easily they fall out with each other and also don't a lot of innocent bystanders die in their overly long action scenes?#also i need to write fic about whether mjolnir does in fact obey some unknown code that can be cracked if you set your mind to it #she does like Robot Jesus so apparently we can rely on her to make the major decisions from now on #the ending's a bit ominous - apparently someone's collecting those TVA paperweights to do... something? Oh no! :O #yeah i watched the MCU in the wrong order shut up this was inevitable and Marvisney should just embrace that at this point #(i know 'Marvisney' will never catch on but that will not stop me using it)#the loki series ending is but the latest installment of “unlimited power with no oversight is fine as long as the Good people have it”#UNLESS TONY WAS ACTUALLY THE BADDY. WHICH AS I MENTIONED I AM NOT AT ALL CLEAR ON.#maybe what i mean is was tony stark the baddy *on purpose*?#i only picked this one to watch next because tumblr gifsets told me thor wears a nice coat in it #which he does! but only for a small fraction of the film :(#journey into the mcu #the avengers (the marvel ones not the other ones)

44 notes · View notes

chamomile-g-tea · 1 year

Text

i never posted ! holiday Rowan/Zelly, taking a selfie <3 they are from @pocket-ozwynn’s Offline Valor!

#he is SO head empty in this one #nothing behind those eyes #only look at big gf in the screen and forget how cameras work #i love HER she’s such a baddie #g/t #giant/tiny #chamomile doodles #wholesome giantess #not my ocs

308 notes · View notes

tuxalfredo · 6 months

Text

Jax, but if the character was actually good and interesting

[Click on image for quality 👍]

#SHE/HER‼️‼️‼️#i wish so badly gooseworx kept jax a girl cus i would've actually been interested in jax's character if so :\#im sooo sick of copy+paste characters dawg esp the men💥 im sick of men in general💥#“hOw dOEs mAKiNg jAx a WoMAn maKe thE cHaRAcTEr mORe iNtEResTinG?” cus the more women the merrier 😌 who doesn't love a baddie #Jax is just a mansplainer in canon like Angel Dust is farrr more interesting and likeable than him and that says a LOT #tadc #the amazing digital circus #my art #fanart #tadc fanart #tadc jax #zooble is next cus she should be way more appreciated‼️ APPRECIATE HER‼️‼️‼️ SHE LITERALLY HAS NEARLY THE SAME VIBE AS JAX

22 notes · View notes

rhys-ravenfeather · 1 year

Text

Listen, sometimes in life you’ve just gotta ignore canon, and even certain headcanons/AUs you don’t like or agree with and come up with your own/a version of the thing you like. As a form of self-care. This is a moral I live by, I think anyone who knows me knows at this point.

But for all that is good and decent in the world, you still absolutely need to be respectful towards others, even if what they made does not gel with you, personally. Especially if they’re the original creator(s) of the original, canon work.

#rhys-ravenfeather signing on #fandom stuff #a reminder to myself and others #case in point: there's a CERTAIN fnaf character a friend and i have VERY different opinions on #she loves him; i...DON'T; and he's one of many i've elected to keep out of my fnaf au(s)#i don't spend every hour of every day whining about how much i dislike this character out of spite because i love my friend and respect her #also what would it really accomplish lol :P #there's also the time someone told me my ahit au was boring because i just made snatcher a good dad who's trying to become a better person #instead of a soul-stealing baddie #like...i know my au isn't the greatest thing ever but i still love it and love my versions of the characters; snatcher included #and i'm really proud of the story i came up with #bottom line: be decent to each other people

69 notes · View notes

deva-arts · 3 months

Note

Okay this might be a really weird ask so I'm sorry in advance but- what does Sera smell like? Does she smell like feathers because she has wings, like Vincent? (Again hope this isn't weird..)

Not weird at all! Lol a few people have asked before, you're all good.

Birdpeople have notoriously weak noses. Their sense of smell (and taste by proxy) is pretty dull as a result. It's partly how Ser's food is always plain and Vincent smells like a SAW-scented teen who's been tarred and feathered. Sera doesn't particularly care about expensive perfumes like someone (cough Sonia) but she does like floral scents.

She smells like Lavender (Body wash/Shampoo) and baby talc powder. (Powder keeps her wings nice, dry, and itch-free.) When she's not working she uses a rose perfume Nate gave her.