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My Dear Melchior,

Mama will not let me leave the house. She says I am a disgrace, and I have bought shame on the family. She says…she says I can never see you again, Melchi. But I simply must see you again! I am going to sneak out, after dark, and hide this note in your private place. I think I will sit there for a while – it holds so many wonderful memories of our times together, and I am sure you will find it. I hope you are sent home soon, Melchior, because I have to see you; I want us to be together again.

I saw Ilse, last week. She climbed through my window in the middle of the night to deliver your letter to me. I told her that I am going to have a child – our child. You know, Melchi, she is the first person who hasn’t reacted in horror, or regarded me with disdain. It felt nice. I think she understands what happened…she told me all sorts of stories. She was the last person to see your friend, Moritz Stiefel, before he died. But you probably know that. Oh Melchi; there are women that Ilse knows…they tried to kill their child whilst it was still inside them. How could one possibly do such a thing? She told me about them. There was one woman who is dead, because she drank arsenic to try and kill her baby. But it killed her too. I can’t even imagine how I would go about doing such a thing.

Ilse seems…odd. She has changed from how she was before she was thrown out of her home. Melchi, sometimes, I think Papa wants to throw me out too. He says I will burn in hell for my sins, he says God will never love or forgive me. But how could God be angry with me for something so sweet and wonderful? When we were together, Melchi, and you touched me, I have never felt more content. Surely that is not a sin? I thought God wanted everyone to be happy…and now, something beautiful has come of it: a child. How can God hate me for this? I know you don’t believe in God. Sometimes I’m not sure if I do. But we will talk about this, and you can teach me what is right and wrong.

Tomorrow, Mama says we are going to go to another doctor. I don’t know why. She keeps slipping out of the house, and having whispered conversations with some stranger in our kitchen. It is all so strange. Melchior, I did not know that being with you, holding you, in that way, could make a baby. I asked Mama and she told me a ridiculous lie – too ridiculous to say. I had no idea what we were doing or what would come of it. But I enjoyed it so much – it’s amazing, that a man can go inside a woman. I think about it whenever I can; it felt beautiful. And I do not blame you for anything. You touched me, and I let you love me. You were always doing the right thing. Don’t you think it’s amazing, Melchi? I don’t know how a baby could be made by doing that…but I think it is remarkable. When I found out, and I thought about it…I felt so happy. Everything seemed beautiful and complete.

I am going to ignore the whispers of our society, and love this beautiful new life whispering inside of me. I know that you don’t believe in love, not really. I’m not sure, but I want to just write it down, even if I can’t say it. I think…Melchior, I love you. I remember the love I felt, that night, in your hayloft. You showed me…I think I should call it an awakening, maybe. It’s as if I was born with my heart and my body half asleep, and after fifteen years you woke them up, and they began an amazing day in that paradise…I don’t know. But I do know that I love everything about you; to me, Melchi, you are perfect. You are so faithful, so adoring. I never want to be without you, ever. I will always love you. So let that be my story.

Your Wendla.

best acted performances of anxiety attacks I’ve ever seen

- Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain
- John Gallagher Jr in Spring Awakening
- Jennifer Damiano in Next to Normal
- Logan Lerman in The Perks of Being a Wallflower
- Darren Criss in Glee

EXCLUSIVE: casting announced for Spring Awakening movie, filming scheduled to start this June

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Elena and Ricky and Michael should star in a new musical called ‘Spring Awakening: Return of the Guilty Ones’ set 15 years after the end of purple summer. Featuring such hits as ‘and the junk kept rolling in’ and ‘don’t cry for me mama’ and ‘another bitch in another hall’ and not forgetting ‘I’d be totally fucked for you’, it would go on to win more awards than anything in history. I mean srsly why has this not happened already, we’re sitting on a goldmine here

spring awakening is just so…it’s been in my life for several years now and I can’t get over it…I mean like the music is just so…like it’s so pretty I want to cry and it’s not like anything I’ve ever heard before it’s like totally it’s own thing and all other music just pales in comparison because the score is just so…and you listen to some song that you’ve heard a thousand times before and you notice some kind of instrumentation or vocal harmony you’ve never heard before and it’s like oh my lord where is duncan sheik I need to bow to him he’s just so…and the fucking lyrics are just so…I mean like they should rewrite the bible with the lyrics or something because they are just so…and the dialogue like don’t even get me started it’s just so…I mean every word I am just like yes that’s so me…also the characters I mean like these are not typical musical characters I mean they aren’t just there to serve a basic one sided purpose and then leave I mean these motherfuckers will get inside your head and make you cry because they’re just so…like they are complex and you will be thinking about them for years afterwards…and the set is just insane I mean everything is there for a really complicated important reason that you don’t see straight away and then one day you realise and it’s like holy sweet hell that set designer is just so…and obviously the story is just like what the actual fuck is this fuckery and I don’t know what I’m feeling but I need this it’s just so…like it changed my life and continues to do so constantly because you notice all these new levels and layers and meanings to everything and it’s just so…and like basically at the end of the day it’s just otherworldly and amazing and it still astounds me and shocks me even now after all this time and I can’t believe that it exists and I know about it…and I sort of wish every musical was as good as spring awakening but then I’m so glad that none of them are because then spring awakening wouldn’t be so special so maybe it’s good that it’s so unique because it’s just so…I mean I can’t even with this show all I know is that it’s spring awakening

Natalie Goodman is doing her homework - a family tree project. Most of the other kids only go back 50 years or so and then give up. But Natalie works harder than all the other kids and she traces her family back to the 1800s. It turns out that she is of French descent. Her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather was a man named Enjolras who died aged just 22 in a brutal battle during the French revolution. She finds out as much as she can about Enjolras and it seems that he was a charming young man, capable of being terrible. Upon reading about his life, Natalie determines that he was clever and determined and passionate, as well as having a fairly fluid sexuality. It seems he was deeply infatuated with his friend Grantaire, and Natalie, seeing a picture of Grantaire, can’t blame him. However, it seemed to be customary for Enjolras and his friends to visit prostitutes, and Natalie realises that he inevitably slept with a few of them. Appearances sake, perhaps? From what she could gather, Enjolras didn’t care much for women. Regardless, one of the prostitutes evidently became pregnant. Natalie sees several pictures Enjolras - at a table in a cafe, holding an enormous flag, marching through Paris, clutching a gun at the barricades, talking tenderley to Grantaire, and the most haunting of all, his lifeless body draped over the barricades, dripping with blood, his eyes staring at nothing. Unbeknownst to Natalie, Gabe has been watching her for the past hour. He looks at these pictures of Enjolras and can’t tear his eyes away. It’s as if he’s looking at his twin, the resemblance is so strong. Natalie finds that Enjolaras’ child, a girl, ended up in a small town in Germany, giving birth to a girl in the late 1800s who grows up to wear a brown dress with her hair in plaits. And Natalie nearly drops her laptop because it’s like she’s looking into a mirror.

tuer-ce-monstre:

So everyone who is a fan of the musical Spring Awakening understands that the sex that Melchior Gabor and Wendla Bergmann have is not consensual, right?  I would say “interpreted as” but there is very little to interpret.  

Just checking because a lot of people seem to miss this due to the broadway staging and media buzz. 

Also not saying you shouldn’t be a fan of the play or musical, just that this fact is often missed and is a large part of the point.

Actually no. That’s a really general, uninformed comment. In the original play it was rape. He forces himself on her and she says like 10 times ‘no no don’t melchi don’t’ etc. And then after he feels bad. But in the musical it’s different. They originally wrote it as rape just like in the play - you can listen to workshops from 2001 - but steven and michael discussed it and they wanted to make Melchior much more of a hero that the audience could root for. So they changed it. And yes, melchi initiated it and Wendla was uncertain at first - I wouldn’t say her reaction was the same as it is in the original play; in the play she’s refusing because she genuinely doesn’t want to, she’s not ready. But in the musical she says ‘no’ sort of uncertainly when he kisses her because this is something totally new to her, and she likes it, and at that time, ‘new’ was not a good thing, and also women were not supposed to enjoy sex. Its also evident that she wants to do it when Melchior gently reassures her and then she initiates a kiss, and takes his hand and places it on her breast. None of this happens in the play, melchi doesn’t reassure her and she doesn’t initiate anything; in the play, she just wants to get out of there. But in the musical it’s much more interesting because she’s having a sort of internal dilemma where she’s not sure if she should leave and repress these feelings like she’s been taught to do her entire life, but part of her just wants to stay and give in to her desire and need. Also, Melchior is much gentler and more empathetic than in the play. In the play he just kind of does it without any consideration for Wendla and he just fulfillls his own want. She is trying to leave and he physically restrains her. But In the musical, yes he initiates but when she says no, he stops and reassures her that it’s ok. This happens several times. He makes sure that she is comfortable with what is happening. She relaxes when over her initial apprehension and she is quite clearly enjoying herself evidenced by her cries oh yes yes etc. He constantly checks she’s alright, first touching her gently to make sure she’s ok with it. Of course she sounds nervous throughout the entire thing - she’s having sex for the first time, but it’s more the fact that she’s been told her entire life that she shouldnt do this, that this is sinful, and she’s having to overcome a whole load of bourgeois bullshit. Wendla is going through a lot in that hayloft. The sex is consensual. Of course shes reluctant at first, she has no idea what’s happening. But ultimately it’s consensual and they are both happy. This is shown when they sing the guilty ones and Wendla tells melchior that she’s alright. The song and their conversation demonstrates that the pair of them are happy with what happened, that it was a good thing. Some people think Wendla is screaming at the end of I Believe but she isn’t. She screamed when they did the first workshops before they changed the story and there is proof of that in audio recordings from the workshops. But in the actual version she is gasping and exclaiming because yeah her hymen is breaking but also she’s still kind of overwhelmed by everything. Melchior makes a noise too. In the original play, Wendla is just a girl Melchior fucks and moves on from very quickly, and there are no feelings involved. This is not the case at all in the musical, in fact quite the opposite. The passing of letters between Melchior and Wendla in act 2 also shows a strong loving bond between them, that it wasn’t just about the sex. His reaction to finding out she died is also evidence of this. We also have to remember that we cannot compare the sex in the musical to a similar situation in today’s modern world. Wendla is living in a fiercely patriarchal society and she is constantly babied by her mother, and surrounded by immature girlfriends and lives in a harsh borgeious society surrounded by strictly conservative christianity. She has been repressed her entire life and she doesnt know anything about sex. And I don’t mean in a modern sense - yeah there’s people who have to supress their feelings for religious reasons or whatever and there are young people in certain schools who are clueless about sex. But it’s 1891 and Wendla could not talk to her friends about sex and she couldn’t talk to her parents about sex. Thats why when her and melchi talk about it, and do things, it’s an utter revelation to her because she’s never known that this could exist. Of course she’s scared! You’d be scared if you found yourself feeling things you had no idea about and doing things that made you FEEL when you’d never felt anything before - especially if you’d been told your entire life that all of this was wrong, and yet here you are and it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to you because you thought that life was just a dull blur that you had to sit back and let men dictate and stop yourself doing anything honest and human and true for fear that it would damage your name or reputation or bring you into trouble with god or your parents. And now you’ve discovered an actual meaning to life - an amazing meaning. Your world would be tipped upside down. So thats why she’s nervous. The fact that she’s never had sex is only a part of it. It’s the bigger picture and the context that is important to consider. She’s having an existential personal crisis and she’s feeling However the main thing is that Stephen sater and Duncan sheik and michael mayor, as well as Michele and groff, all say that the sex in the musical was consensual and they were both happy with it. It was a good thing that both were willing to do. And as these are the people who actually wrote it, they are right. Thats the bottom line. They spent years analysing these characters and their journeys and emotions and thoughts and everything. They spent years tweaking every aspect of SA until it was right. They understand the meaning of every word spoken and every lyric sung much better than any of us ever will. We can interpret as much as we want but at the end of the day, they are the people who know what they’re talking about much better than we do because they wrote the damn thing. So please don’t make wild claims like that without actually understanding what you’re talking about.

(via tuer-ce-monstre-deactivated2013)

my headcanon for after purple summer

- Prologue -

Melchior slowly turned around and looked at the graves again. He knelt down, ripping some daisies from the ground around him and placing them on their stones. ‘Daisies’, he said. ‘They grow wild, where they shouldn’t grow. Away from the uniform and correctness of the rest of the garden, they grow; beautiful, strong and unique. Undeterred. Unknowing. Until someone tears them away.’ He spoke the last part bitterly, before forcing himself to turn away from Wendla and Moritz – or what was now left of the once young, vibrant and emotive people; neglected dust. ‘All will know’, Melchior murmured to himself. ‘All will know’.

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