workin on an english version of "ah!

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

workin on an english version of "ah! qual colpo inaspettato" and my clark kent game is strong

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

incidentally the sole reason I play Paisiello's Count in drag is consistency with Rossini's Count, Paisiello's Count is butch enough in mannerisms that as with Figaro, visually coding him as male is not necessary. THIS here is the purpose of the drag -- to make it clear it's not that I, the woman playing the character, am incapable of a masculine physical performance, but rather that this character is in fact a Weird Little Guy

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

it's not that my Figaro in any way convincingly passes as male, it's that it's clear enough from the portrayal that this is meant to be a masculine character that any part of my physical performance that isn't how a typical cis man moves or gestures can be discarded as not "actually" what the character is doing in the context of the story. whereas in the case of the Count, with the drag i am indicating that he is absolutely literally doing everything you see him doing

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

in my mind this is all a subdiscipline of game development

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

I did play Figaro in realistic male drag in one video and it was so horrible I will never do it again. See when Figaro actually looked like a man, the tiniest flaws in my male impersonation became not visual noise automatically mentally discarded but rather Figaro himself exhibiting feminine mannerisms - exactly the effect I am intentionally availing myself of for the Count. Seeing it in Figaro was disturbing in the extreme

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

there's a wider tolerance for failure because he's a fancy nobleman, but i have to be a bit thoughtful about how I play Paisiello's Count or I'll run into the same issue

example here, y'all non-boob-havers might not realize that for a hand over heart gesture, boob-havers get in a habit of putting their hand higher up on the chest to avoid boob-mashing. for Rossini's Count lol sure he can do the boob-haver variant of the gesture. But Paisiello's Count must do the non-boob-haver variant

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

(in fact a significant upgrade to my male impersonation i made in the last few months was to allow my hands to go right in the space ordinarily occupied by my boobs, which goes against decades of ingrained habit)

[xibanya@mastodon.xyz]

for a non-me example of what I'm talking about, the first half of this video is a performance of the first verse of an aria from "Julius Caesar in Egypt" by a mezzo and the second half is the same verse performed by a countertenor. At least for me, when I hear the first performance my brain goes "that middle aged woman sounds normal, so Caesar is a middle aged guy who sounds normal", in the 2nd my brain goes "this man is doing falsetto, so Caesar is a man doing falsetto ...why would he do that?"