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Empty Wave

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Boomer

There are days, days in late summer, when you’d think that the heat just couldn’t get any worse, that the sun couldn’t get harsher.  Late summer days when you wake up and know that there’s no work getting done today, days for sweet tea and lemonade and for long naps between the fan and the open window.  Days for not leaving the house until long after sunset, nothing worth doing but to make the long drive into town and join the punks and queens and wander from bar to bar and try to forget for a while that tomorrow will be another late summer day.

And tomorrow, somehow, it’s hotter still.  And hotter.  But the mercury isn’t rising.  The air is wet, heavy, sticky, a blend of salt and swamp.

And there’s a big west wind coming over from the Gulf, a wind with that faint whiff of salt on it, and it builds and builds so that all the palms and the pines and the live oaks are shaking, shivering, dancing, and it builds and builds until it sounds like an old church organ moaning through their branches.

But even with that wind, it’s still so, so hot.  The air’s so wet, so wet you could swim in it, and so heavy, and it’s getting heavier.  But it’s not just heavy with moisture now; it’s heavy with potential.  A taught rope.  A coiled spring.

And it’s noon, but the sky is getting dark, and it’s getting dark fast, going from grey to black, anvils in the sky sprinting from west to east, and alongside those smells of salt and swamp you can smell … something else.  Like iron.  Like a spark gap.  And you can feel it on the back of your neck.  And the hairs on your arms stand up.

And then, all at once, CRACK

The black sky at noon splits wide open.  The wind rattles the shutters like it wants in from the rain that’s pouring in buckets down on the windows.  And all at once, in one flash of lightening and one rifle-crack of thunder, that heat you’ve come to know so well is all gone, all washed away.

And maybe it’s not the wisest thing to do, but something deep inside is calling you, and it’s not a call you can ignore.

You throw open the door.

You dance in the rain.

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I forgot to post these the other day, but… Wow, I fucking LOVE next to normal

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Furthermore, something I thought of last night:

Yes hello Santa, for Christmas I would like some purple men's shirts in my size, so as to exude Maximum Gabe Energy

Something I thought of while discreetly listening to Next to Normal in class and had to write down because it made me laugh:

“There is no such thing as Little Gabe Energy. There is Big Gabe Energy, and there is Maximum Gabe Energy. And my goal is to exude Maximum Gabe Energy 24/7.”

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We’re sitting here at this show Next to Normal we have this sort of informal group of suburban moms…

THIS IS THE FUNNIEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. AN AUDIENCE MEMBERS PERSPECTIVE OF NEXT TO NORMAL. I AM CRYING. BRINGING THIS BACK. XO.

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“There’s a quote in the Kennedy Center by JFK and it says: “I am sure that after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we, too, will be remembered NOT for victories or defeats in battle or in politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit!” and he’s talking about ART when he says that!…I think that Next to Normal fits the category of things that he was talking about…Musical Theatre is a fine art.”

— Alice Ripley in her Tony acceptance speech for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. (via thelovelinessoftheatre)

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The last “You don’t know” from the Broadway production of Next to Normal, also known as the time when Marin Mazzie went batshit crazy and was flawless, which happened exactly two years ago.

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(via fyeah-nexttonormal-blog)

I’m Alive | Kyle Dean Massey | Next to Normal

(With the crazy high note at the end.)

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“Tom and I once counted the songs we’d cut from the show over the years. We stopped counting at fifty." -Brian Yorkey [x]

A collection of found songs that were cut from, or never made it in, the musical Next to Normal.

listen | download

1. Night – Amy Spanger 2. So Many Ways to Die – Amy Spanger and Benjamin Schrader 3. Perfect – Jennifer Damiano 4. More…and More…and More (Costco) – Alice Ripley & Off-Broadway cast 5. Up the Dose – Joe Cassidy and Benjamin Schrader 6. Electricity – Joe Cassidy 7. Dan Brown – Amy Spanger 8. Blue Skies – Annaleigh Ashford and Benjamin Schrader 9. Open Your Eyes – Anthony Rapp 10. Something I Can’t See – Aaron Tveit and Louis Hobson 11. Shock to the System – Greg Naughton and Norbert Leo Butz 12. Feeling Electric – Asa Somers and the Off-Broadway cast 13. Growing Up Unstable – Jennifer Damiano 14. Four Seconds, Sixteen Years – Amy Spanger 15. Getting Better – Asa Somers, Brian d’Arcy James, Alice Ripley, and Jennifer Damiano 16. I Dreamed a Dance (Reprise) – Amy Spanger and Benjamin Schrader 17. Live Every Day – Greg Naughton and Anya Singleton 18. Everything – Alice Ripley and Jennifer Damiano 19. Funny, Love – Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott 20. I’ve Been (Reprise) – Joe Cassidy and Benjamin Schrader 21. In the Light – Jonathan Hoover

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Prelude - First Broadway preview of Next to Normal - March 27, 2009

“Our first preview was a little bit crazy. All our best fans were there, it turned out, many who had seen it at Arena, others who could only read about it there, and had been waiting since Second Stage to see it again. When the big blackout hit at the top of the show, screams and whoops filled the house. Tom [Kitt] and I looked at each other: What the hell? At intermission Michael Greif leaned over to us: ‘Just so you know, it’s not always like this. This is special.’” - Brian Yorkey [ x ]

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Broadway Songs To Workout To

Whipped Into Shape from Legally Blonde

You Can’t Stop The Beat from Hairspray

Seize The Day from Newsies

Defying Gravity from Wicked

Non-Stop from Hamilton

Out Tonight from Rent

You’re The One That I Want from Grease

Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Show

Candy Store from Heathers

Sincerely Me from Dear Evan Hansen

The Abduction from Great Comet

I’m Alive from Next To Normal

Totally F***** from Spring Awakening

What I Was Born To Do from Bring It On

96,000 from In The Heights

The Rum Tum Tugger from Cats

Master of the House from Les Miserables

Footloose from Footloose

Partner In Crime from Tuck Everlasting 

Transylvania Mania from Young Frankenstein

Forget About The Boy from Thoroughly Modern Millie

C’mom Everybody from All Shook Up

Step In Time from Mary Poppins

Electricity from Billy Elliot 

Shiksa Goddess from The Last Five Years

Learn To Do It from Anastasia

Revolting Children from Matilda

Freak Flag from Shrek

Two Player Game from Be More Chill

One By One from The Lion King

America from West Side Story

And The Money Kept Rolling In (And Out) from Evita

Friend Like Me from Aladdin

(Feel free to add more)

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Reblog if you think fanfiction is a legitimate form of creative writing.

HELL YES HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

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do you know how I would write a character with multiple pronouns? Would different people use different ones? And if the POV is omniscient/narrator would I just pick one pronoun to use?

Writing a character with multiple pronouns.

Many nonbinary people use multiple pronouns, in a wide variety of forms. How you would write them depends on what your character personally prefers. Here are the most basics three varieties:

1. All pronouns (or a specific list of pronouns) are fine, with no preference. A character like this might have different people (especially groups of people) in their life who use different pronouns for them. If they’re being viewed by another narrator, then use whichever pronouns that narrator wants to call the nonbinary character. (If you have multiple narrators, this might mean different narrators use different pronouns for the nonbinary character.)

Example: Yale doesn’t care if people refer to them as he, she, xe, or they. The narrator of their story first refers to Yale as they/them (and so will I for this example). Yale refers to themselves with the pronouns they feel fit most closely with their current gender presentation, which is masculine for work, androgynous for relaxing time, and feminine for fun outings.

2. All pronouns (or a specific list of pronouns) are fine, with a preference. Characters like this will usually have one pronoun they’ll specifically give if someone asks them, but they also don’t feel offended or uncomfortable if people refer to them by other pronouns. Narrators who are aware of this will (hopefully) use the preferred pronoun to refer to the character. 

Example: Kleos doesn’t mind he/him and she/her pronouns, but says they prefer they/them, if asked. The narrator of their story specifically asks them which pronouns they prefer when he meets them, and therefore refers to Kleos as they/them throughout the story. Other characters don’t ask, and some of those refer to Kleos with gendered pronouns. (In this world all gender identities are accepted, so Kleos not bothering to correct those people demonstrates that the gendered pronouns aren’t offensive.)

Certain pronouns at certain times. Some characters only feel comfortable being called the pronouns they currently relate to. They might identify as a man one day (or hour or week) and a woman (or nonbinary person) the next. If this character is the narrator, or the narrator is omniscient, the character should be referred to by the narration using the pronouns they relate to at that moment. If a different character is narrating, then the nonbinary character should either tell the narrating character which pronouns to refer to them with until further notice, or give some visual clue that they’re relating to a certain pronoun at the moment, (or else the narrating character might start using the wrong pronouns, which while perfectly realistic, really needs a genderfluid sensitivity reader to double check so I won’t cover here).

Example: Acan feels like he’s a guy some of the time and a girl other times, so he switches between he/him and she/her pronouns depending on what he identified with at the moment. People close to him understand how he changes his body language and voice to match his current gendered identity, but he’ll tell others flat out that she’s a girl now and would like to be referred to with she/her pronouns until further notice. 

Because using multiple pronouns (and nonbinary-ness in general) aren’t things most people are familiar with, you do need to explain it to some degree. This doesn’t have to be a big deal though. If the narrator already knows about the nonbinary character’s pronoun preferences, just have them mention it in the narration, and if they don’t, give them a quick conversation where they ask the nonbinary character what pronouns they go by.

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