A Fan's Playground

I was thinking again recently about how much I love a certain character type, which is typified by Death as played by Szabó P Szilveszter in the Hungarian version of the musical Elisabeth

an alien outsider, powerful, cold and restrained but with a depth of feeling, does not Get human emotions but can't help getting involved and intensely invested anyway in their own way. does things that would be considered bad or even evil from a human perspective but they don't have the framework to conceptualize their choices that way, and are acting according to their nature.

other characters of the type:

- the staryk lord, from Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

- Hun-Kamé, from Gods of Jade and Shadow by Moreno-Garcia, iirc?

- ok I actually struggle to think of others

but. what I want. what I really want. is this character type, but in a character who isn't gendered male!

(ok I will also take recs for more male versions bc I do just want more 😭 BUT.)

it's possible that what I want is just. more fiction about death gods. which would check out too tbh

LET WOMEN (AND BEINGS OUTSIDE THE GENDER BINARY) BE CREEPY PSYCHOPOMPS OK!!

Mara asked me last night whether I like Elisabeth or Romeo es Julia better, and I was momentarily stymied. I hadn't actually thought about it like that before! I've just been busily fanning over both!

It turns out to be something of a complicated question for me. Because first of all, my ideal production of Elisabeth doesn't exist, whereas my ideal production of Romeo es Julia pretty much does. And second of all, they're actually really different from each other? I like them in different ways!

( cut for people who don't care. No actual spoilers, I think. )

WELL I just finished watching Elisabeth (with English subtitles!) and I feel utterly unqualified to comment on it. It is interesting and intense and rather tragic! And there is clearly SO MUCH going on here that is commentary on the political situation of the time, and I really know very little about all of that. So most of what I am left with is one theme that I saw throughout, which is ( something I don't think counts as spoilers but I might be wrong so I am cutting it to be on the safe side )

My big disappointment here is that I really wasn't very into this version of Death. He's...ugh, I don't know how to describe it. Too overtly threatening? His body language and tone of voice don't give any indication of his supposed love for Elisabeth? Also he looks too human. BASICALLY I WANT SZABO P SZILVESZTER AS DEATH AND NOBODY ELSE probably.

On another note, Lucheni was really a highlight, and I wasn't expecting that. I didn't even know that he was a main character! But he was GREAT and it's really cool that this musical is all told through the lens of an extremely unreliable narrator.

(also I love that the word "kitsch" doesn't need translating from the German to the English.)