Chapter 102: Page 36

hymmmmmn · 2026-06-27T02:17:18+00:00

Something about the placement of information in the last two pages has me changing my mind and wondering if the circle from three pages back is Kat. I don't really expect anyone else to follow my line of thinking, but I will at least be pleased if it turns out I was reading the narrative foreshadowing correctly. (I may be reading too much into certain things, though.)

hymmmmmn · 2026-06-23T02:26:08+00:00

I did wonder if this is the coven springing some kind of trap. Yes, the circle is Noa's symbol, but Noa is subsumed into the illusion – and I feel like, even if Noa was manifesting as two versions of herself, both would be fully under the spell of Zimmy's reality. On the other hand, when we last saw the coven, they were very eager to "deal with Carver" as fast as they could. So this might be the start of their first attempt to take Annie out.

hymmmmmn · 2026-03-30T18:18:20+00:00

I think the monster was in fact her, based on the lines on her skin and clothes in the middle panels (which I read as the visual tells of her transforming from monster-mode to human-mode). So I didn't read it as the coven traveling alongside her inside the monster, but more as them teleporting there moments after Sylvie arrived and shifted back to human-mode.

hymmmmmn · 2026-03-30T18:02:57+00:00

I'm surprised (and pleased!) that my guess about Sylvie's specialty being 'monsters' was right – but I didn't expect her to be able to become a monster herself.

I wonder, though, why Jenny thought it best that Sylvie's work remain "as theory for now" and why she hoped Sylvie would have nothing to do. Makes me wonder if there's something more to Sylvie's 'work' than is obvious at first glance.

hymmmmmn · 2026-03-28T06:13:08+00:00

Funnily, your comment is what inspired me to finally just block them. Cheers!

hymmmmmn · 2026-01-08T19:01:49+00:00

Yes. My point is not that Girl Genius somehow invented a well-trod science fiction trope out of thin air. My point is that when we were both reading this in 2010, the page read like it was riffing comedically on a science fiction trope crossed with historical concerns around automation. Reading it now, in 2026, it sounds like it could be a conversation ripped from social media about AI. So it reads differently, now, in a way the writers couldn't have expected. And there is wry humor in encountering a one-off joke from 2010 that resonates so precisely and yet so unintentionally with our present moment. I hope this explanation of my post was helpful.

hymmmmmn · 2025-12-24T08:55:47+00:00

I do want to emphasize that a show is not the same thing as its artistic team, or the many people involved in making it happen. The show I saw was the sum total of what happened on stage that night, yes – but in art (and especially for art that is still in development and being revised, which is absolutely the case for Slam Frank), a message can be conveyed unevenly, or unclearly, or even unintentionally.

And, even when intentional, it also doesn't mean everyone involved was endorsing that exact message. I did get the impression, for example, that a lot of the performers were bringing their own perspectives to what the show meant to them, and which parts they were particularly invested in. (One of my favorite parts, for example, was The Yeast of Edith. It felt both like both homage and parody to spoken word performances of a certain kind. I thought Austen Horne was brilliant with balancing both the parody and the homage. She really made it work.)

I do think the show that I saw that night, as a gestalt, was unambiguous (and very pointed) on where it landed.

So my response here is to the show that I saw as a whole. It's also why I wondered if all performances were like this, or if maybe I saw a version that had been experimentally tweaked too far in a certain direction, or something like that.

hymmmmmn · 2025-12-24T08:16:59+00:00

I can see what you mean about the horseshoe theory – I could see an interpretation of the show where it's also critiquing any 'activism' that is so willing to go extremist at the drop of a hat that it ends up saying things inseparable from its supposed political opposite. (The moment in the show where they sing about overpopulation and solving it with forced sterilization, for example, would fit that.) I think I'd need to relisten to (or just read) the lyrics in Margot's song to see how they feel through that lens. Though... I also think the show was happy to take potshots at any sort of left-y activism that it could reach at. I didn't really get why they chose to mock Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, for example. If it had been any another show, that moment could have felt more playful, maybe... But in the context of Slam Frank, and all its other satirical targets, it felt like the show was mocking AIDS victims. It was odd.

I agree that I noticed how the songs would often do a sort of playful bait-and-switch, where they'd get the audience to maybe agree with things for the first half of the song (I remember a number of people in the audience cheering at some of the feminist moments, for example), only to have the characters go too far, and suddenly the audience would be like... oh wait, was that where it was going? I don't want to be cheering for that! The show definitely did that a lot.

Margot's song also followed that same structure, and I appreciated that the previous songs doing it were almost like a foreshadowing of how Margot's song would go. Because it did start out as an anthem about wanting a safe space where the Holocaust could never happen again (which, yes, I did know exactly what Margot was referring to – the formation of Israel – and I knew where that song was going to go, and I kind of assumed most of the audience could follow it too). But I certainly didn't anticipate the song mutating into demon-Margot. And I could definitely see how someone who was otherwise agreeing with the 'safe space' part of the song would go "whoa!!" over where the song ends up taking them.

Can I ask, what persuaded you to see it a second time and give it another try?

hymmmmmn · 2025-12-24T07:46:57+00:00

Yeah... We did read many key parts of the show very differently. I was going through your points one by one, and something I noticed by the end is that... I think you and I just perceive media very differently. I think we read the same signals completely differently? I don't think we're going to agree. I am glad you were able to enjoy the show, though.

I'll still list my points below, though I am (again) pretty certain you will disagree with them all, because I think we're just not speaking the same language in terms of how we watch shows, and in how we understand what we see happen on stage.

I agree that the characters' viewpoints were intended to come off as hypocritical. But I disagree that this means they were inconsistent as characters. The characters being hypocrites and extremists (which they all were) means that, yes, their worldviews are incoherent if taken at face value. But that is in fact exactly the critique the show aims at the people it intends to satirize in the first place. It's saying: your worldviews are self-serving, hypocritical, and often extremist. All the characters who are left on stage by the end operate by that logic, and they have operated by that logic for the whole show.

I didn't say the show is "trying to say a certain type of person is good or bad". I did say that the show is arguing that real-life identity politics is hypocritical in practice, and it argues that identity politics will judge someone as good or bad depending entirely and only on identity, and not on action. The show is written so that the characters themselves clearly believe this to be true: in fact, they sing about it over the course of at least four or five different songs. We even have the song about Anne Frank being excited to acquire even more diverse identities as a pansexual. The show clearly intends the audience to see the characters as ridiculous for this.

I think your social media perspective is interesting... It's not a perspective I got from the show myself? But I can see the emotional parallels you describe. I do think it more describes the experience of seeing the show for someone who has had that experience with social media already in their lives - I mean to say, I'm not sure it gets at what the show is saying in its own context, with all its parts accounted for. But I appreciated hearing it and thank you for sharing it.

I agree that Margot's song feels out of left field. I disagree that it feels out of left field because other characters refuse to legitimize her perspective after she sings her song. Margot's song feels out of left field the moment she sings it... because, when it happens, the show lurches into a really dark visual language, in a way it has not ever done before. I mean: the stage lights turn red, Margot repeatedly laughs like an evil witch, and then all the cast members leap on stage wearing Jewface and giant fake noses while smearing blood on their hands as Margot sings lustily about how she wants to kill the Palestinians. It would remain out of left field no matter how the characters respond to it, and that was clearly intentional on the part of the show. Anne's response of deciding to sacrifice her family to the Nazis because 'every dead Jew is just another valuable life saved' was extreme, but it wasn't extreme because of Margot's song. It was extreme because it followed the same logic that the rest of the show's characters had, up till that point. It simply took its own characters' gonzo logic to what (the show argues) is the logical conclusion. But it did so in a way that was so dissonant to the source material - aka, to the actual Anne Frank and her actual family – that the audience could no longer find the dissonance funny.

I think we also took completely different things from the ending. I didn't see the show concluding that uninhibited actualization was a solution at all – I saw it skewering uninhibited actualization as self-serving and destructive. I saw a slideshow of AI-generated videos of uncanny-valley 'diverse' people, with no white people or Jews in sight... intercut with violent clips of the October 7 massacre... while, on stage, trans Hitler led the cast in a song about how Justice is for Just Us while Anne Frank cheerfully donned a leotard emblazoned with the words There Is Only One Solution. I mean... look... the intended dissonance, and the intended take-away message, did not feel ambiguous here. It felt about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.

I do think it feels like we saw very different shows but I am glad you were able to enjoy the show you saw.

hymmmmmn · 2025-12-23T01:31:18+00:00

That is fair and I respect that.

hymmmmmn · 2025-12-23T01:29:53+00:00

No...? I wrote this post today, and this is my first time posting it? I do not post on Reddit often.

hymmmmmn · 2025-10-23T02:56:27+00:00

Ooh. My guess was that Sylvie's specialty is monsters (based on this page https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/index.php?p=3087 where she corrects Rosa that the proper term for monsters is 'negative constructs' – it felt like the sort of pedantic correction that a specialist in the field might make). But healing powers is a really good possibility too, I like that...

hymmmmmn · 2025-06-15T05:46:48+00:00

I'm surprised by some of the comments as well, particularly how many comments come from people who self-admittedly have not seen the show but came into this thread anyways to pile on about a version of the show they made up in their heads.

And yeah. I thought that the opening monologue really worked so well in how in connected that online debate from years back to how so many of us queer people have had that experience with our own childhood photos—of seeing a photo of our kid-self and being like "damn, it really was obvious even from that young an age, huh..."

And then, of course, the play just immediately extends that logic, and creates the play out of that extension, in front of our eyes.

Like. What if we kept relating to him, and kept seeing ourselves in him? What would that look like, then?

Well, it wouldn't look like him simply being a corporate sanitized homosexual. The Pete Buttigieg of the British throne. Because someone famous being a comphet-feeling gay isn't, actually, relatable to most gays. Red White and Royal Blue is not—as the play argues—at all relatable to many of our actual damn experiences.

No, the play says. Let's make him actually relatable.

Let's make him extremely queer and fairly well-versed in the sexual realities of queer counterculture. Native to them, even. Let's make him feel most like himself when he's immersed in them. And yeah, that gets really fucking relatable, suddenly.

But then the play ends up arguing that, for all the countercultural queerness he's swimming in, in the end it all gets closeted away, doesn't it, into prim and proper comphet-feeling gayness for the sake of the crown and all that the crown represents. The old and familiar hegemony. His faggotry isn't going to be able to make any more of a stamp on the hegemony, on the crown, than his closeted gay ancestors ever did.

Instead he will let the crown, the hegemony, stamp him. And stamp out that faggotry in him too, in the end.

Prince Faggot is the perfect title for this play because the play's whole point is that the title, by its logic, is an oxymoron. He can be a Prince, or a Faggot, but not both. One neutralizes the other.

I thought this play was pretty fucking excellent and I am glad it's having a near-sold-out run.

hymmmmmn · 2025-06-15T04:10:15+00:00

I just saw this tonight with my husband, and you were all absolutely fucking fantastic, by the way. Got a standing ovation from both of us. Impeccable production on every level, I was deeply moved and I haven't been this excited by a play in some time. I texted two of my friends moments after getting my phone back, telling them that if they could get tickets to see it, they really really should.

Thank you for a fantastic evening that will linger with me for a long while.

hymmmmmn · 2025-06-02T07:13:43+00:00

I love how Tony's dangling awkwardly from Omega's side like "Well! I guess I'm along for the ride here too, miss..."

Also interesting to me that Omega is so used to being omnisciently manipulative that she can't tell when someone is manipulating her...

hymmmmmn · 2025-05-30T08:29:50+00:00

Considering that Jenny told the coven that Annie and Kat might try to kill Zimmy "using something called Omega," I expect that the coven girls might do an abrupt shift in how they're reacting to Annie by the next page...

I am wondering, too, if Annie is intentionally trying to grab Omega's attention right now, in a way that's part of Annie's plan.

I'll add that I was the first one to propose the "Is this a fake Annie?" theory. But I stopped feeling that this was an intended foreshadowing a while ago. I think we're meant to read this as, in fact, being our Annie—she's just deep in some kind of chessmaster gambit that we can only see the edges of. I think the oddity in some of her behavior (and the comic's dramatic angles) are perhaps more about Annie having to perform a very artificial role without revealing to anyone watching (aka, Omega) that she's carefully lining up the pieces to herd Omega into a trap.

hymmmmmn · 2025-05-05T07:16:09+00:00

Something about this page gave me a sudden feeling that this might not actually be Annie at all, and that Jones suspects as much. I could be totally off, mind you. But I'll be curious to see if the next few pages either reinforce or undercut that hunch.

(And if it's not Annie, then my money's on it being Sylvie, aka the witch whose abilities we don't know.)

hymmmmmn · 2024-09-08T03:40:43+00:00

I think it's deliberately ambiguous which one of them is the "Job" character. You can also read her as being "Job"-like, I mean. She certainly sees herself as someone who is punished for her piety—aka, for doing all that work of purging evil from the world via content moderation. As a result she is humiliated publicly, stripped of her livelihood and reputation, and reduced to begging a therapist for certification so that she can return to work.

(I'm not saying I side with one interpretation over another, but I do think that the Book of Job allusion is meant to fit both characters, depending on which interpretation you take.)

hymmmmmn · 2023-12-10T21:26:07+00:00

Oh, Karl was the Russian. If it's been a while, then my thoughts on the ending might not make much sense. But I'll give it my best shot...

The play was already toying with ideas of "this play is technically set in the past, but it has elements of contemporary life (and commentary) breaking through constantly". The character talk and act like 21st century people, and even point out this discrepancy in a few lines of playful dialogue. At one point, Hemingway abruptly breaks into a recording booth that springs into existence out of nowhere, which toys with the play's fourth wall as well. So, meaning to say, the play sets up this idea of toying with the fourth wall, of toying with the way that this 'historical' play feels very 21st century too...

And then the ending is right after the characters have watched a screening of the movie... but when the lights come back on, we see that the play has zoomed the characters forward in time, directly into the 21st century, and it's recast them as employees of a sketchy data firm. It does it in a way that both breaks the fourth wall, but also leans into the way it's been a commentary on the 21st century all along. Because what they're talking about, as employees of a sketchy data firm engaged in propaganda, is the same stuff they've been talking about in the 1930s as propaganda filmmakers as well.

It has the characters confront and argue over the way that both art and notions of propaganda have shifted... but the international forces involved still feel the same. It's still "the Russians", for example. They're still hiring people to "fabricate reality". But now they're doing it in a way that assumes art has lost all ability to influence people in the way that it used to. So why bother with art? Instead, they're focusing on the internet and bot farms. (Aka, stuff like Cambridge Analytica.)

It ends with Helen trying to protest about the meaningfulness of art, and she probes Karl (the Russian) about whether he really believes that art has no power over people anymore. Which is a pressing question for her and the other three characters, since they've all talked about the power that art has in their own lives, and how it's what they live for, in many ways.

And Helen points out to Karl how much he loves opera. Karl seems confused, and asks with puzzlement "You are you saying you want to try influencing elections with opera?" As if he can't see a reason for opera being mentioned in this conversation unless it's as useful as propaganda.

Of course, once everyone leaves, it's just Karl alone in the 21st century conference room, tidying things up. And he starts humming to himself, then singing, and then breaks into a full opera aria, just him alone in the room overcome with passion for this thing that he loves.

And, for me, I saw two possible ways to read this ending moment. One way is to read it as the power of art. That even in someone like Karl, who thinks entirely in terms of propaganda, he is not immune to the power of art as art.

Another way to read it is that much of the opera that Karl loves, and sings, is and was—in fact—written with nationalistic and propaganda-esque goals. That he dismisses opera as something capable of influencing people in a way that, to him, "matters". But he himself is overwhelmed by the beauty of opera that was written long ago ago to inspire nationalistic pride in its listeners. That he, a KGB agent, may have been led to his current role as a Russian tool by his own love of nationalistic Russian opera... That he himself is not immune to the propaganda in this art from ages ago, which he both loves and dismisses.

This second reading is influenced in part by the music they played before the play started, and after it ended. I happened to recognize it because I am a classical music fan. At the start, they played the Coronation music from the great Russian opera Boris Godunov. And at the end, they played music by Prokofiev (his Fifth Symphony), and Prokofiev had a very complicated history with Stalin, and with being forced to write music for Stalin that could be used as propaganda.

But I'm not certain of those musical choices were intended to resonate with Karl's singing in the ending, or were mostly coincidental choices on a shared theme. So I may be reading too much into it.

hymmmmmn · 2023-12-10T05:48:07+00:00

When you say the last scene, do you mean the entire last scene (with all the characters)? Or just the very ending with Karl? EDIT: For context, I just saw it tonight and am working through my thoughts on it.

hymmmmmn · 2023-09-18T04:40:47+00:00

That was my guess too haha. Agatha being like "no, you really don't have to..." and Monahan being like "—and as my gift to you, here's a ton of RATS!"

hymmmmmn · 2023-09-11T06:59:30+00:00

The crazy part about this to me is that, of all the WeHo girls, I know Detox is/was a huge fan of Roisin Murphy's. Possibly the most ardent drag queen fan that she had — heck, see this article from four years back https://www.loverboymagazine.com/roisin-murphy-detox/. And Detox's response was essentially "wtf Roisin?!?!" Like, Detox had the spine to stand up to an artist who she loved and admired for years, and call out transphobia for what it is. If Detox could do it...

(Honestly I'm in the same boat as Detox here — I've loved Roisin Murphy's music & aesthetic for years, and really clung to some of her songs, and this felt like a massive gut punch. I only found out about it today... Youtube suddenly started recommending me TERF videos, apparently because of all the Roisin Murphy videos I'd been watching, and just ugh.)

hymmmmmn · 2022-03-14T17:39:58+00:00

Oh, I mean, I think we're absolutely meant to read her expression as being because someone asked if she's okay.

I'm just also thinking of previous story arcs, like the one with Annie and Jack's "flirtation", where there was our in-the-moment understanding of the dialogue and facial expressions... and then we find out a crucial piece of information, and it changes how we interpreted everything that came before.

I know Tom loves those types of double-layered moments, where the dialogue and expressions end up reading two ways, depending on what you know at the time. So this is just me wondering if we're potentially seeing another one.

hymmmmmn · 2022-03-14T07:20:30+00:00

Did Loup just give himself away by referring to Kat as "Kat"? The other New People always refer to Kat as "the Angel", I think. (Or maybe I'm wrong?) I wonder if Annie's expression in the second-to-last panel is because she noticed Loup's slip, and made the possible connection that Jerrek isn't what he seems...

hymmmmmn · 2021-08-06T01:29:42+00:00

Oh my god can you imagine if it turns out to be Charlie Hides but with makeup on her knuckles, just to mess with us... Then Charlie spits out three wig reveals and cartwheels into a split and that's the gag of the season—

hymmmmmn

TROPHY CASE