[ SECRET POST #2901 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2901 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.
[Legally Blonde]


__________________________________________________



03.
[Mikey Way, My Chemical Romance]


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05. [ SPOILERS for American Horror Story: Murder House (season 1) ]



__________________________________________________



06. [ SPOILERS for Into the Woods ]



__________________________________________________

















07. [ WARNING for non-con/rape ]



__________________________________________________



08. [ WARNING for non-con/rape ]



__________________________________________________



09. [ WARNING for genocide, etc ]



__________________________________________________



10. [ WARNING for incest ]



__________________________________________________



11. [ WARNING for abuse ]

[Begin Again]


__________________________________________________



12. [ WARNING for suicide ]

[Starsky and Hutch]












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #414.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes the narrative can come across as punishing a character for something even if, objectively, the "crime" and the "consequence" have nothing to do with each other.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Not saying that's necessarily the case here, just that the lack of actual causal relationship doesn't mean it isn't.

[(Anonymous)]

OP:

This. It just seems too coincidental that she cheats on her husband and then immediately gets killed. I would be happiest if she got a Disney death -- everyone thinks she died, she comes back at the end after fighting her way out of a giant footprint she accidentally fell into, the chorus sings, Ta~da!

[(Anonymous)]

...that would only make sense if you fell asleep during the part where she sings. She wasn't punished because she did something wrong. If anything, she died because her character matured and self-actualized, and she was ready to leave the woods - but no one else had yet reached that "enlightenment" and the story wasn't finished yet.

[(Anonymous)]

You do realize that not everyone interprets scenes or songs the same way, and that no interpretation is correct or incorrect, right?

So you can keep your smartass English 103 interpretation to yourself if you can't put it politely.

[(Anonymous)]

Lol sure not everyone interprets things the same way. But some interpretations are more logical than others. And saying she was punished because she committed adultery requires either a) a lot of explaining on the purpose of her song as well as her character development and why her death is different from the other random deaths in the story (even the narrator dies, after all) or... b) ignoring most of the musical.

[(Anonymous)]

Whoa, pretty defensive on your part, especially when I didn't see a hint of 'smartass English 301' in AYRT's comment.

But of course I never attended smartass English 301, so maybe that's why I failed to detect it.

[(Anonymous)]

da

I think it's possible for stories to "punish" even when it's not direct. But I never once got the sense that the baker's wife was killed for any punishment. Even though she committed adultery, she had the chance to sing about it, and it's her character's critical moment, which she sings about. Her realization is celebrated, we're supposed to identify with her. Then she dies. Of course it affects the plot, but I think it was supposed to be shocking in its randomness - I know when I first saw the play, I never saw it coming. I'm sure it was at least in part intended to keep the story dark, but the last half (or whatever it was) of Act 2 is when the story thematically comes together, and her death served as a catalyst for that.

tl;dr - I don't think the wife was "punished" by the narrative at all. Except, perhaps, in that she was ready to get out of the weirdness of the woods and the story wasn't done there yet.

[ginainthekingsroad]

Yes, yes, yes, this is exactly how I interpret it as well. Thank you for that, I was trying to come up with how to articulate this. In the context of this story, it doesn't come across as some kind of "punishment" at all, it's about the randomness and unpredictability of the future.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I watch things differently from everyone else, but I never picked up on the "punished by the narrative" idea unless the other characters act like the character who died deserved it. I never watched anything and thought "Oh I better not do what that character did or else some random coincidence will get me killed, too."