Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / Fun Home

Go To

  • Adorkable: College-age Alison. Especially her sing-song rambling in the song Changing my Major.
    Allison: Joan I feel like Hercules!- Oh GOD that sounds ridiculous.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: "Come To The Fun Home", ironically enough. In the middle of Alison's recollections, she and her brothers recorded an audio commercial for their dad's funeral parlor. While the moment serves to give the audience levity, it's never referenced for the rest of the play.
    • "Raincoat of Love" counts too.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The cheery, over-the-top song, "Come to the Fun Home," the Bechdel siblings' fake commercial for the funeral home, in which they happily talk about what to do after someone dies.
  • Cry for the Devil: While Bruce isn't a villain, he is emotionally abusive in the musical (and physically in the book) towards his wife and children. Alison and Helen both admit he wasn't easy to live with, due to all of his demands, hypocrisy, and adultery. Then we get to his BSoD Song "Edge of the World," where he breaks down on realizing that Alison was able to achieve the life that he always wanted, and he asks himself why he never was able to come out of the closet. It doesn't help that Helen reveals she wants a divorce and to move herself and Alison's brothers out of his beloved house. Bruce's support systems fall away from him, and he is furious with himself that it's all his fault. Cue the sound of horns to simulate a truck...
  • First Installment Wins: Bechdel followed up Fun Home with Are You My Mother?, which focuses on her relationship with her mother. While it received positive reception, it did not match the acclaim and recognition of Fun Home.
  • Funny Moments:
    • Big Allison's snarking as she looks back on her family, especially while reading her old diaries and letters and watching her dad hit on guys.
    • Medium Allison's Adorkable-ness.
    • "Come To the Fun Home" for the sheer Mood Whiplash.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Joan and Alison have an adorable relationship that leads to Their First Time for Alison, and in the graphic novel Joan comforts Alison after Bruce dies. In Are You My Mother?, Alison and Joan broke up and she has a rocky relationship with a butch mechanic. Realistic for relationships, but still harsh.
    • Alison berating her father in retrospect for cheating on her mother and hurting her becomes this when she recounts in Are You My Mother that she and Eloise cheated on each other and ended up in a weird Masochism Tango.
  • Heartwarming Moments: When Michael Cerveris won the Tony Award for Best Actor for portraying Bruce Bechdel in the musical adaptation, he showed the audience the very tie of the real life Bruce Bechdel given by Christian Bechdel, Alison's brother and Bruce's son.
  • Memetic Mutation: Playing "Come to the Fun Home" right after a character in some movie or show dies, usually when it's wildly inappropriate in context.
  • Moment of Awesome: The musical adaptation for not only being the first mainstream musical with a lesbian protagonist (and a young girl singing about her awareness of her homosexuality), but for taking the Best Musical. Even moreso that Alison Bechdel agreed to the musical adaptation (as opposed to a film adaptation offer) because she underestimated it.
  • Shown Their Work: The house and anything else drawn in detail looks exactly true to life (or at least, true to how it was at the time). You can still get on Google Maps with the aid of this book and find the exact place where Bruce died.
  • Signature Song: "Ring of Keys"
  • Tear Jerker: Has its own page.
  • The Woobie: Alison, especially Small Alison in the musical. Helen Bechdel too, her woes gets fleshed out in the musical and the sequel book.
    • Jerkass Woobie: Bruce doesn't come off as the nicest fellow and had sex with underage boys, but his struggles with his sexuality and his growing mania and desperation in "Edges of the World" make it near-impossible not to feel sorry for him.

Top