Why Would You Do This To Me Fish?!?!

The chat next Saturday is going to be so unstable and I am totally here for it 💀

Saturday, May 3, 2025: NO STREAM

I try my best to schedule around Saturday evenings, but it's an event night! I might be back in time, but I don't want to risk it. See you next weekend!

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between gothic romance, melodrama, and fanfiction (mostly Re: POTO) and how they've been shunted into the category of "women's media." Like women and queer folks have been writing their desires into media for centuries and being told that such desires--the excess, the sensationalism/sensuality, the emotional transcendence--are not "realistic" and only good for aesthetic consumption in its place.

But then you look at the general endurance of "women's media" through time...and the fact that even in a capitalistic world obsessed with monetization and the "hyper-real," there are whole fandoms/online communities where authors are writing fanfics with hundreds of thousands of hits for FREE and where third spaces and alternative economies based on trading and sharing have taken shape around the very same desires deemed "unrealistic"....

Idk where I was going with that, but someone gets the point. Is it that queer and feminine desire are "silly," or do they imagine other ways of living and relating to each other, our bodies, our emotions that certain power structures want us to think is impossible?

Not sure if I'm allowed to do this (so someone tell me if I need to trash this post) but I just can't witness this Anthony Warlow near-hand touch and not do something about it.

Holy Week coinciding with the anniversary of POTO's closing on Broadway is a very dark combination when you think about it.

Look, I'm very excited to see Jordan Donica in the Gilded Age, but all I know is THIS BETTER NOT INTERFERE WITH MY DARKEST DREAMS OF HIM PLAYING THE PHANTOM FOR THE NORTH AMERICAN TOUR. Listen to the voice. Look at the hands. Imagine the pants!! This man was made to play the Phantom. He is the second coming of Davis Gaines or Howard McGillan in the making.

Whoever is in charge...whoever I need to contact, petition, or pray to...MAKE THIS HAPPEN.

Idk why I did this to myself. But when it comes to Phantom "specs" there's really no one who embodies the character as I imagine him like Davis Gaines did. In addition to just having that slender-but-muscular build, his movements are so elegant--almost balletic. And then you add that ghostly baritone of his and you can easily see how this man poses as both an angel of music and an opera ghost. Just know this is who I'm envisioning in all the fanfics you fine folks are writing.

Gifset dedicated to Davis Gaines's legs...and hands...and everything else.

My Favorite Phantoms in 1-2 Sentences

[Once again no particular order but this list includes most of my faves minus Killian Donnelly and TMG.]

John Owen Jones: Yes, I sob loudly whenever I watch that '05 performance with Rachel Barrell. And?

Gary Mauer: The best vocal Phantom imo, argue about it with someone else. Phans love him paired with his wifey Beth Southard as Christine, but that final lair kiss with Marie Danvers is unmatched (iykyk).

Earl Carpenter: His Erik was in love with Christine the whole time, idc idc. Top 3 final lair performer in his early run and I can't even tell you who's ahead of him tbqh.

Peter Karrie: There is literally NO Phantom like him in the history of the role and his '98 boot is the most heartbreaking performance I've ever watched. But is it ableist that his Phantom is so savant/autistic coded?

Hugh Panaro: Master of the hair slick and self caress; lord of the portcullis sprawl; perfector of the whispered "I love you" and "my angel." Holds your entire soul in a psycho death grip from "insolent boy" and doesn't let go until the curtain goes down.

Kevin Gray: Mix together Peter Karrie, Hugh Panaro, and a dash of Crawford and you get Kevin Gray. That's a deranged, hair-raising, and completely magical equation.

Ramin Karimloo: Gets disproportionate hype because of the 25th anniversary performance but his 25th anniversary performance is still worth the hype??

John Cudia: There are three ingredients to a Cudia performance: softness, sadness, and sexiness. He may not blow you away if you like your Phantom unhinged, but he will bring those three things every time.

Howard McGillin: Starts out classic and suave but ends the show completely broken with all the feels. Also a banging vibrato if that's your thing.

David Thaxton: The theater gods reward a risk taker, and Thaxton has so many unique touches that I admire his commitment even if I'm ambivalent about some of his choices.

Edit because I forgot Davis Gaines [HOW could I forget Davis Gaines??]: My second favorite Phantom voice behind Gary Mauer, even though they're totally different. He just has such a deep and hypnotizing baritone that's offset so perfectly by some of his vulnerable acting choices.

[More phantoms here and here.]

The Rehearsal (1877) by Edgar Degas

It's over now, the music of the night. Laird Mackintosh, April 16, 2023. [X]

“No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being disturbed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face… I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking - a precious, yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony; a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.”

— Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (via undergroundoutofsight)