switchbladesis

I got Anaïs Mitchell's Working on a Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown a few years ago after I first listened to the Hadestown OBC, watched a couple of bootlegs, and slowly realized hey, I'm into this. It isn't show I love end to end, like there's whole sections that don't do anything for me and I can only appreciate on a technical level, but the moments that hit hard, they hit very hard.

So I got Anaïs Mitchell's book because it was the only thing to do with the show that I could get from my side of the globe (still hoping for a touring production to drop by Singapore one day!), though I didn't read it properly at the time. I've read it now! It's all the lyrics as of the time of the Broadway opening, but Mitchell also goes through the creative process and shares lyric variations, some of which I've heard through the London production and Broadway previews. Some of the decisions that I found a little strange or disappointing (like the placement of "Why We Build the Wall" and the loss of Persephone's verse in "Chant II") are explained, as are the adjustments of the characters as time went along (especially how audiences tended to find Hades and Persephone more interesting than Orpheus and Eurydice).

Of course listened to the music and watched clips as I read the book, and got those feelings all over again. May have cried a bit, and so on.

Chris Horton's Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Survival was a spontaneous recent get, and also published this year, so I figured I'd better read it quick before uh........ the situation changes.

I'm not very familiar with the issues surrounding Taiwan, though living somewhere that's been affected by China's recent oceanic expansionist policies, it's not difficult to pick up at least some of it casually. I have also been to China to attend international exhibitions multiple times, so I'm well-aware of the sensitivity of maps and flags which are always, ALWAYS pre-checked on everything you bring into the exhibition area (backgrounds, flyers, posters, etc.) and they WILL boot you out and/or destroy your materials if they find anything not fitting the accepted standard.

Anyway that, plus my previous reads about Mao, WWII Shanghai, and that book about the triangulation of Japan-Korea-China relations, means that I knew of the broader history of Japan's occupation and the ROC's fleeing to Taiwan when the CCP took power, but not much that's more modern than that. The book's a good read for learnings, through Taiwan's history through colonization and resistance to cultural oppression through the changing periods, with pain and trauma forming their modern self-confidence into one of the freest democracies in the world. I feel like I have a better grasp of some of the nuances of Taiwanese identity, too? Like, I knew about Taiwan's indigenous tribes, but not their roles in the evolution of the island through its modern societal development and with immigrants coming across the strait.

Horton, who has lived in Taiwan for a while, is I think very clear about the potential benefits but also the potential cost that would need to be paid for annexing Taiwan (islands are just harder to invade, etc.), plus the arguments being made for the supposed historical justification of it, which isn't really an argument because it's not about justifications, it's about location, economy and resources. Look at those resources! Fascinating stuff about Taiwan's massive semiconductor industry, as the greatest supplier in the world, and I wonder how that's been going with the AI boom as well.

The funniest thing about watching* The Starry Night, the Starry Sea season 2 on youtube was following the comments. At the start, most of the comments were the same kind I'd been seeing on the Filipino teleseryes I've also been watching on youtube, i.e. excited comments of people who are watching the first time, supportive comments about how much they love the show and/or its actors, "who's still watching this in [year]", those kinds of simple things.

But over time.... ho boy! I don't know exactly when it happened, but there was a period where the positive comments slowly thinned out and then an outright tonal shift into majority frustration and complaints, because:

• The Female Lead, who was introduced as spunky and rebellious against social norms for women's roles and crossdressed in order to pursue her dreams, turned into a weeping, helpless heroine whose only recourse to having any sort of agency is to cry and beg;


• Which contrasts even more unfavourably with a side character who continues to be spirited and stubborn to stand up for what's right through the whole show;


• Also the singular central conflict of the entire show is a long misunderstanding due to a single villain character who dies before getting any sort of comeuppance or realization. A long con by a villain may be typical, but there's usually other subplots and the conflict itself has its starts and stops, instead of a single pressing weight of stress that gets worse and worse as EVERYONE falls for the lies put into a place by a single mastermind. There's no storytelling rhythm to it, just frustration.

(*watching = I skipped a lot, especially towards the end when people kept dying and there was no catharsis.)

As for me, I thought the show was indeed frustrating for the same reasons, but I knew it would have a tragic ending from the beginning because it's a prequel! Obviously it's going to end badly. But I think most viewers did not and hoped that all that suffering would be rewarded by peace and happiness instead of a last minute rugpull of death. I think the uploader saw that wall of rage coming so they went and UNLISTED the final episode for the show outright.

The episode is still up, but I had to find it through someone else's playlist instead of their own channel. Which is, you know, fair enough if they don't want to get swarmed with negativity (not that they have to read it, but I understand). But that still made me go 👀