#I love the broadway musical you have no idea how important it is to me

[maplewozapi]

She’s just a rag dolly 🥺🥺💖💖

#rag dolly #raggedy ann #raggedy andy #raggedy ann and andy #raggedy Ann and Andy a musical adventure #my art #digital art #I love the broadway musical you have no idea how important it is to me #I feel like this has potential in the tadc fandom

[olderthannetfic]

People going on about how they're representing this whole Greek thing are missing that that one anon had a pretty good point about how "cultural appropriation" rhetoric gets misused. People do really need to be more specific about what the issue is, or it very easily turns into basically just arguing for cultural segregation. I've seen that happen numerous times on this website over the years. I've seen people argue that it's appropriative to do something like *learn about* another culture or learn its language. I think it's really important for people to keep an eye on what are the actual issues with cultural appropriation (mostly about exploitation and colonialism) and not just the idea that cultural mixing is bad, or that being interested in a culture that isn't your own is bad. Because the truth is, whether you intend this or not, if you're just arguing that everyone should only keep to the culture of their ethnicity or their place of origin or both, then you're basically in agreement with white supremacists. It's not that cultures mixing is bad; most culture is a result of some mixture. It's when it's done in a way that's exploitative and/or disrespectful: like reducing sacred symbols like indigenous war bonnets to a fashion accessory, or incorporating the art of another culture into your own art without giving credit and without paying anyone from that culture who taught you or added to your work.

FTR, I don't think you can "appropriate" ancient mythologies. I think people are getting twisted around though because there is a genuine history of colonial exploitation of Greek artifacts by colonial powers to fill their museums, as with the Elgin marbles. I do think it's still a good idea to be properly informed about them, regardless, at the very least because those make for the more interesting retellings. For all that people (who IME, largely haven't read it, I'd love to hear if people who have read it disagree though) rag on Song of Achilles, I actually thought it was a pretty good example of a retelling because the author, who has an educational background in mythology, takes great pains to try to recreate the society and cultural norms of Greece at that time rather than sugarcoat it. Achilles may be even more of a jerk than he was in the original Iliad, tbh. It's telling to me that the author's other books that are less "shippy" don't have as negative of a reputation on here in that regard as Song of Achilles, despite being fairly similar, and it makes me wonder how much of that is because it's popular among "fujoshi fandom" so people just assume it MUST be shallow and fandomified, and I was super shocked at how much it really wasn't that at all. As well as I saw that a lot of people expecting something more like that were disappointed by all the period-accurate misogyny and so on.

Which brings me to another point: another reason I'm skeptical of a lot of this discourse is that it seems like often it's more of a high-culture, low-culture thing. A thing that is popular with M/M fanfic writers can't POSSIBLY be doing it right. A thing that is a popular video game or Tony-winning Broadway musical that is popular with the fandoms for those things, can't possibly be accurate. And I get that a lot of that is because a lot of populist things that took from Greek mythology have been inaccurate (Disney's Hercules, for instance) but if you're going to criticize the accuracy of something, I think it is worth engaging with the original work and what it actually does rather than just assuming It's Popular It Must Suck. It feels like a lot of this turns into lording that you were into it before X over others. And being aware that Tumblr Recommendations often do a poor job of actually giving you a good idea of what the work is really like.

As well as, of course, asking yourself - as we should with any sort of historical inaccuracy etc. - if the inaccuracy was deliberate or not. Sometimes people are not really telling that story in order to tell the most accurate version of something but to make a different kind of point, and so the changes might be deliberate. I would argue this is true with something like Hadestown.

That doesn't mean you can't still dislike it for that reason, of course. I know a lot of classical musicians who dislike the movie Amadeus for being so inaccurate about Mozart's and Salieri's lives. I like it despite that because I think the point it is trying to make is stronger for not sticking to the historical fact. I just wish more people did know the historical fact, though.

--

One would think the "Is it bad if I learn to cook Thai food?" thing was a strawman... but I've seen it in the wild far too many times.

[merp-blerp]

So Claudia Cacace recently posted her last Be More Chill animatic and said in the pinned comment that she had wanted to stop a long time ago when people gave her bad attention; it made me think about how animatic creators at the height of the musical theater fandom were treated horribly, despite being the backbone of that fandom for the longest time. For example, I remember people used to give Mushroomie/Mushie r crap about how they were “copying” Szin’s art style, which is literally impossible. A lot of people in the fandom were clearly inspired my Szin’s artwork because she was one of the most popular artists in the fandom at the time and her art was indeed really good. You can’t “copy” an art style. And when Szin announced that she wasn’t going to make Hamilton animatics anymore “fans” were calling her a liar among other awful things because she had said in a now private (or maybe deleted) Q&A video that she had wanted to do all the songs, despite that fact that she also said in that same video that she was going to keep making Hamilton animatics as long as they were fun for her, which they has ceased to be by the time she had finished Act 1 and a bit of Act 2. It had been years, disinterest naturally happens and that’s okay. There were a lot of animatic creators who stopped for the same reason; animatic creating had stopped being fun for these artist and began to be more like a job rather than the hobby it started out as. Remember most of these creators were making these animatics alone and possibly without much if any pay from YouTube. And on top of that a lot of these creators were minors at the time! They likely had other obligations in life like school and family, not able to have time for a job, let alone a very time consuming, demanding, solo job. Not to mention all the other things these creators had to deal with, like making content in a timely manner so the algorithm didn’t abandon them, or YouTube’s shitty fair use system constantly threatening to copyright claim or strike videos and even entire channels in some cases like Mushroomie. If you were in the musical theater fandom around 2016-2019 you know how important animatics were. Pro-shots were even more rarely made than they are now (like pretty much never), and bootlegs of then-currently running shows stayed up online for only a few days or weeks if you were lucky, so a lot of fans had no way of legally seeing the show(s), and sometimes not even illegally. A lot of people who loved these musicals would love a show for it’s music, but had no clue what the full plot was out of a lack of being able to access the show in an affordable way, affordability still being an issue with Broadway today. So animatics were very vital to people getting at least an idea of how these shows visually looked and an opportunity for artist to do something they loved. This was how people got to see their favorite show in away that YouTube couldn’t (fairly) take down. Quite noticeably, when these animatic creators almost collectively stopped making animatics for these musicals or slowed down around 2019, the fandom fizzled out as well, or at least changed. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t dead like some believe in my opinion, but it’s definitely different. In one way, now that a lot of the most popular shows from this time and others have some kind of pro-shot or shitty movie adaptation, and YouTube being a lot more lose with bootlegs then they used to be, animatics aren’t as vital, but their importance shouldn’t be something to sneeze at and it blows that these animatic creators weren’t treated with the utmost respect they deserved at the height of their popularity. I know I’m pulling an old issue out of the grave and this issue is essential gone, with animatics being made at a less frequent rate than they were at the time, but I’ve never seen this talked about in length. If any animatic creators, currently active or not, are reading this, I hope you continue to enjoy you creations and that people respect you as they should.

#musicals #musical #animatic #animatics #artist #theater #broadway #west end #the west end #hamilton #hamilton the musical #hamilton an american musical #heathers #heathers the musical #dear evan hansen #dear evan hansen movie #be more chill #be more chill the musical

[grapenehifics]

Not to tell you about *every* time I hear Solsbury Hill on the radio but…

Can you tell us why you picked it as the title for your fic? I feel there’s more to your reasoning than “grab your things I’ve come to take you home” and I’d love to hear your thoughts [it’s also maybe pretty obvious(?) but I’m really, really shit at 1) song lyrics 2) song meanings and 3) applying them to other contexts 🙈]

My friend, there is almost nothing I would rather talk about than the intersection between Peter Gabriel*, Genesis, Solsbury Hill the place, Solsbury Hill the song, and Solsbury Hill the fic.

(*Peter Gabriel, and all the members of Genesis, are real people, and would probably tell this story very differently. But they're not here to correct me [oh god, at least, I hope not], and this is how I heard the story, and I am going to tell it the way I know it. Apologies to all those living or dead.)

Sometime in the late 1960s a group of British schoolboys formed the prog rock band Genesis, and by the early 1970s they were...maybe not world-famous, but huge by prog rock standards, anyway, with a couple of albums and a tour. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway came out and it was a big enough deal that they got offered an American tour, too.

They were all still pretty young (they'd started basically in high school) and Peter Gabriel, their lead singer and main songwriter, had recently got married and he and his wife had a baby (this will become relevant in a second). So they go on the American tour and maybe about halfway through Peter turns to his bandmates and is like, "so...I'll finish the tour with you, because I promised I would, but when we get back home I'm quitting the band."

The other guys were stunned, obviously, because this was the moment they'd worked for. They'd already gotten through all the shitty garage band years, which is where most people give up, and now they were at the good part! They were on an international tour! The money was good! Their albums were selling! They had more fans than they'd ever thought they'd have! What on earth would possess someone to want to give all that up?

(The part of this story that is less-charitable to Peter Gabriel is that one of the answers he gave was 'more creative freedom' and his band was like...but you already write all our songs? What possible *more* creative freedom do you think you need?)

It wasn't just the band, though. His managers and the record company and everyone all told him that was a terrible, terrible idea, and there were a sizable contingent of Genesis fans who just refused to follow him to his solo career because they were mad at him for walking out on Genesis, wrecking the band, how dare he be so ungrateful...

(Genesis did fine without him, actually. Phil Collins took over on vocals and they had another couple of albums and some hit songs before going kind of weirdly soft-rock in the 80s.)

Also - and this is an important detail - when he left the band, there was no solo career. He didn't have any songs. I don't think he even had an agent. He was kind of on the outs with the industry for pulling that stunt. He spent the first year after he quit - while Genesis was recording a new album without him - just hanging out at home with his wife and baby daughter.

Eventually he did get back in the studio, and one of the songs on his first solo album was Solsbury Hill, largely regarded to be the most autobiographical of his songs (Solsbury Hill is an actual, physical hill in Somerset, near where he grew up). It's pretty blatantly about quitting Genesis, including being unhappy in the band:

So I went from day to day Though my life was in a rut

I was feeling part of the scenery

And liberty, she pirouette When I think that I am free

and trying to get up the courage to leave even knowing it would almost universally be regarded as a really dumb move and would very possibly end his entire music career even though he was still in his twenties:

My friends would think I was a nut Open doors would soon be shut

But eventually doing it anyway:

To keep in silence I resigned

I walked right out of the machinery

I will show another me

Then he writes about how, even though it was scary and he didn't know what the consequences were going to be, he was glad he did it:

Though my life was in a rut 'Til I thought of what I'd say Which connection I should cut

Today I don't need a replacement I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant

And he personifies all this as a person, or more accurately hearing a voice (while climbing Solsbury Hill, hence the title), and the progression of what the voice tells him mirrors the rest of the lyrics. First it's:

"Son, " he said "Grab your things, I've come to take you home."

and

"Hey, " he said "Grab your things, I've come to take you home."

But the final lines are the singer answering back:

"Hey, " I said "You can keep my things, they've come to take me home."

And not to belabor the metaphor, but that's what I see as the equivalent of the first quarter or so of Solsbury Hill the fic, at least the beginning to the Bakersfield hospital chapters. Peter Gabriel and Anakin both got the exact thing they thought they wanted - a record deal, a tour, money, fame, wealth - and then turned out once they had it, they actually didn't really want it all that much anymore, and the reality of it wasn't worth keeping it.

But also mixed in there is some shame, right, because to everyone else it looks like you have it all. Every kid around the world with a guitar and a garage bands wants what you have. Every kid on their school swim team watching the Olympics on TV wants that. And now you've got it, and you're just...going to hand it back? Say it's not good enough? This thing that feeds your family and lets you see the world? How dare you spit on that!

But all they really want - in both stories - is more time with the people they love. And yes, in both cases, there are ways to fix that - Peter Gabriel could have taken his wife and baby with him on tour, Anakin could have not fired Obi-Wan and taken up with Palpatine - but in the middle of that situation and looking down the barrel of year after year of touring and competition and the toll it takes on your body and your mental health - suddenly the smart play starts looking like turning you back on it, tearing the whole thing down, and starting over. Even if it means living without the money and the fame and the recognition and universal goodwill. Who cares. Keep it all. Keep my things; I don't need them; I just need you.

I'm going home.

#solsbury hill

[asurrogateblog]

Cannibals, Pirates, and PhDs: How Did I Get Here?

I mentioned in some tags earlier that I’ve only actually been a real fan of Pink Floyd for under a year, and that the confluence of events that led up to it is pretty absurd. Some interest seemed to be taken in this, so I though I’d elaborate.

I didn’t know how to shorten this timeline and have it make any sense, so it’s... long. But idk, I think it’s pretty funny. If you’re nosy like I am this is for you.

My Backstory Timeline:

early childhood: my parents essentially mainline me and my little sister with The Beatles. I know almost no songs written past the 70’s until at least sixth grade. I develop a childhood crush on Paul McCartney, a joke that the universe really decides to play the long game on.

2014: my dad calls me over one night, and gravely tells me he’s been waiting to share something until I’m old enough. I brace myself to be told about sex or secret half-siblings. Instead, he tells me I need to listen to The Wall. Irritated at the idea of wasting an hour and half of my night, I nevertheless comply and go up to my room and put it on. I do not come back from this, clearly having inherited some sort of generational curse.

Around the same time, I am also secretly watching Hannibal every time my parents send me upstairs because Game of Thrones is “too gory”. This will trigger three important things: an interest in psychology, a love of horror media, and a classical music phase will train my attention span to last well past the three minute mark.

2014-2023: Over the intervening years, I become a casual fan of Pink Floyd, but make a deliberate point not to learn anything about the band. I like being able to imagine my own meanings for the songs. Also, I am motivated against this by a childhood memory of being deeply frightening by a picture of old Paul McCartney (LOL). I do not want that to ever happen again, so no learning.

Cut to April of 2023: I am finishing up my first year of my PhD program studying media psychology. I am in a bad place mentally, and am going through another horror movie phase to fill the hole. As a result, I get very into American Psycho. The main character, Patrick Bateman, is a fan of superficial 80’s pop music, particularly Genesis. I decide to start listening to Genesis to see if I agree with his tastes. While researching “best Genesis albums”, I come across The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I listen to it, and am blown away. I had no idea that the Phil Collins band made music like that. This sends me down the prog-rock rabbit hole. I still won't learn any lore.

Summer of 2023: MEANWHILE, I am also going through another pirate phase. I have a fairly encyclopedic knowledge of 18th century piracy (and am still quite active in the Black Sails fan community). Around this time, I get really obsessed with this one random guy named Dennis McCarthy who was hanged in 1718.

I decide to work poor Dennis into a science fiction story I’ve been working on. The premise is essentially that the universe is an abandoned simulation, and a ‘glitch in the matrix’ starts to, among other things, bring people from the wrong time periods back to life. The format of the story is vaguely monster-of-the-week, in which the characters have to solve various problems caused by mistakes in the code. I think, “hey, you know what would be perfect for this? that fanfic I wrote about The Wall in high school.” Said fic (which that stupid fucking beatles movie stole from me) is about a world in which Pink Floyd never existed, but a wannabe rock-star discovers a box full of their records and decides to copy them. While he is touring his plagiarized version of The Wall, he realizes that the events of the album are starting to happen to him in real life. By working this concept into my new story, I go through another one of my periodical The Wall phases. It's in full swing when fall rolls around.

September of 2023: This semester, I take a grad-level narrative theory class in the English department. I decide it would be helpful to follow along with a specific example, so I choose The Wall. Using the terminology I am learning in the class, I start to realize that The Wall is…. incredibly narratologically fucked up. To help orient me, I watch the bootleg concert recordings, and the trick with the surrogate band sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore.

This is where the two plot-lines converge. I don’t remember which came first, but around this same time, I think to myself “hey, if Genesis was hiding such an incredible album under the 80’s pop, what must Pink Floyd be hiding?” On that whim, I put on Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which equally sends me so out of my mind that I decide I must break my rule about never learning band lore. I needed to know what the fuck happened to get them from Piper to The Wall.

September-November: In the two months between the onset of this and finally making another sideblog, I dedicate all of my free time to learning as much about Pink Floyd as humanely possible (and writing a 20 page essay for that narrative theory class). As you can imagine, this is a lot to unpack all at once for someone who didn’t even know who Roger or Syd or any of the rest of them were. Luckily, I am over-educated enough to be a very fast learner. Aside from the band lore itself, I of course also fall in love with the rest of Pink Floyd's discography musically-speaking. Having this interest to latch onto genuinely pulls me out of my depression.

Cut to February 2024: I am really enjoying myself, and want to keep this going as long as possible, but I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel on Pink Floyd lore. I decide I need to feed the fire by supplementing with lore from another band. The Beatles seem to have a strong fan presence on tumblr, why not revisit a childhood favorite? The universe laughs at my expense.

That about brings us up to date. I have gone through so much character development over the last eight months, it’s crazy. Pink Floyd is definitely one of those things that is less of a “phase” and more of a permanent part of my mindscape. Weirdly enough, since I am studying media psychology, all of this has also been really good for my career? I never took an interest in -real- media figures (as opposed to fictional characters) before, and I feel like I have a much clearer sense of things now. It's definitely influenced my research, so whatever domino effect this has on my future is bound to get even funnier.

Anyway, that’s my backstory!

#it’s interesting re-examining how my relationship to The Wall has changed over time. #strange how you can love something as a kid but not really personally relate to it. and then you grow up and suddenly you’re like... #...oh shit. there -must- have been a door there when I came in #// #that makes it sound less fun than its been tho #god. i've had so much fun. im actually glad i took so long to get into band lore so I could learn all this -now- #i had kind of worked myself into a (very silly) mental spiral of 'what if I've run out of new things to discover' #and it's been so. idk... healing for me to realize all of this has been here the whole time #(clenching my teeth: ....emotional vulnerability....)

[popculturebuffet]

Here Comes Garfield: The Fantastic Funnies (A Comission For Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people! And welcome one and all to Here Comes Garfield, my look at all things garfield. For the rest of the year this feature will mostly be a look at the 11 garfield specials, minus babes and bullets which I covered previously, as well as his appearence in Cartoon All Stars to the Rescue for last 420.

So for those just joining us: I'm a lifelong comic strip nerd, ever since my dear Aunt Paula gave me her spare copy of the Indespensible Calvin and Hobbes in the 3rd grade. From there I slowly glommed on to other strips over the years: From FoxTrot, to Doonesbury, to Get Fuzzy to Zits to Cul De Sac, to recent faviorites like Pheobe and Her Unicorn, Crabgrass, the Steenz version of Heart and the City, and Breaking Cat News, which i'm wrapping a huge retrospective of soon, and whose place this retrospective is taking on my friend Emma's Patreon slot.

I love talking about this fine art, fitting your best work in just 4 panels, all the wonderful characters many simply don't know exist, all the weird shit that happens.. it's good stuff. So naturally I also gained a love for specials based on them. And while I loved the Peanuts ones and will climb THAT massive mountain someday, as a tween.. my faviorites were Garfield's and it's how I fell in love with the fat cat, the cool cat the nobody's cool cat.

While younger me did like garfield as a strip, especially that one arc where Garfield gets caught in a window blind and it conttinues to suck in an escalating number of people

Truly the "Snoopy's Awkward Nephew" of Garifield comics. Pure art. But while I liked it, it was watching the specials on the DVD garfield as himself that sucked me into the character. The DVD"s were released around the time of the first movie and releases of Garfiled and Friends to cash in and they certainly got my money. 12 specials, all ranging from excellent to watchable, and all wil lbe covered this year.

However before I can tell you that story, I have to tell you this story: See while Here Comes Garfield was Garfield's first SPECIAL.. it wasn't his first apperance in animation. Two years before that Garfield lept onto screens and into the inky depths of animation with a short but scene stealing apperance in the 1980 special the Fantastic Funnies, an apperance I honestly didn't even know existed till recently, but is such a weird and important piece of garfield history I had to cover it and Emma was on board to comission it.

So what exactly IS the fantastic funnies you may ask. Well i'll tell you.. you may ask. The Fantastic Funnies was a sequel to the earlier special The Fabulous Funnies, a celebration of comic strips interviewing various creators and including a live action on animated bit with Rob Reiner. I haven't seen it but if there's enough intrest I might cover it. The special was a hit for NBC, with CBS regretting having passed over the idea when animation maestro and peantus producer Lee Mendelson suggested it. After they remembered he'd pitched it and they'd been stupid at all of course, as is the executive way. They called dibs on the next time.

The next time was 12 years and an animated series that didn't do so good later, and CBS was front and center for the Fantastic Funnies, taking the concept but spiffing it up: this time the interviews were, with two exceptions, each accompanied by an animated short, there was an animated bit to start it off, and we also got a few musical numbers and live performances from the broadway cast of annie.. well two of the broadway cast of annie bu tthat's still more of the broadway cast of annie than has been on this blog so touche Fabulous Funnies, touche. It's the most 70's thing to come out of 1980 and i'll be covering the whole thing under the cut.

Fantastic Funnies is hosted by Loni Anderson, who at the time was on CBS' hit WKRP in Cincinatti.. and what i've seen of it is excellent. She hasn't really done anything else i've seen, but she seems nice enough.

This makes it awkward as hosting wise she feels shoved into the special. The script she's given feels awkward, with her only genuine enthuasim coming from Barney Google. I honestly wish I could be as jazzed about Barney Google and his go go gooogly eyes as Loni Anderson apparently was in 1980. I AM that jazzed about Snoopy's awkard teenage nephew

But it's not the same alas.

I can't even blame her as anderson was already frustrated with her pay for the series she did do and would demand more from the network leading to a brief exit from WKRP. I can't be too hard on her for not giving a fuck about an extra gig they saddled her with she didn't ask for with a script written by a block of wood on several pounds of qualudes. She did her best under the circumstances.

The circumstances also include getting animated as a cartoon, lucky, and getting to introduce a panel of various comic strip all stars of the time.

Okay so going row by row, with the strips self titled unless otherwise stated.

Front Row: Charlie Brown and Lucy (Peanuts), Nipper (Wee Pals), Dennis the Menace (US Comic), Nancy and Sluggo and Little Orphan Annie. Second Row: Blondie and Dagwood, Dick Tracey, Barney Google (Snuffy Smith), Alley Oop and Prince Valiant

Third Row: Pogo, Tumbleweeds, miss Peach, B.C., Beetle Bailey

Back row: Michael Doonesbury (Doonesbury), Broom Hilda, Drabble, Cathy and Hagar the Horrible

And in their own section because dogs apparently don't get bleacher seats at Walden, where I assume this is taking place as the only college out of these strips, we also get the dogs and one very special cat in their own section.

So Snoopy, Daisy (Blondie), Fred Basset and Garfield who are all about to throw down when Lonnie announces they have to get back to the human world for the show. But before that a song they all prepared, and it was at this point in the special I had to ask myself the tough question:

I still don't know. But yes the song is like living in a living nightmare and I don't care for it. It's thankfully short and Broomhilda takes them all to the real world. But that's a story for another day

Sadly not that day.

For now the special settles int' it's formula: Lonnie introduces a cartoonist, they talk about how their strip came to be, we get an animated segment about it. The only exceptions to the last part are Wee Pals, which instead has it's creator voice over one of his strips directly and Prince Valliant, who gets jack shit.

It was at this point I also realized a bit of an issue. While I mentioned my love of comic strips.. most of the ones I adore come from the late 70's onward, with Doonesbury and Peanuts being the big exceptions. I don't have anything against strips from before that time, I've read what I could of Pogo and want to read more and Krazy Kat is still well loved for a reason. I've also recently gained an appreceation of popeye thanks to Randy Millholand's take on the franchise.

The thing is I started devouring every comic strip I coudl in the 2000's. It was a great time for that as every strip got at least ONE collection, so even if you didn't read the newspapers, you could get a sample of a wide range of strips in book form. Boondocks even got a hilarious title out of it for it's first book.

So I got to sample a wide range of strips, many of which I still read today: Get Fuzzy, Zits Pooch Cafe, For Better or For Worse, Baldo, La Cucaracha, Cul De Sac, Lio, Luann, Rudy Park, Adam@Home. Many strips I first found in collection and binged later. Sadly this went down in the 2010's but thankfully the kids comics boom has meant many newer strips have gotten collections. It's why I have collections for heart of the city and crabgrass on my shelf.

But as you may of noticed... most of those either started in the 2000's or in the 90's. Most of the kings features based strips simply didn't get collections and thus I didnt' notice them.. and by the time I could i'd mostly heard of them by reputation as dinosaurs that would go on till the heat death of the universe via various legacy artists who wouldn't really change a thing.

And I do GET why: a lot of these legacy strips.. are ran by family members who want to honor the legacy and may simply not feel comfortable altering the strip too much. I'm not asking that dagwood suddenly become a t-rex... i'd love that, but I get i'm not everyone's target audience. Not every strip can be Pooch Cafe and go entirley off the rails AND still be every bit the strip it always was AND be good

It's hard. So I do have some sympathy. It's not limitless: while I get not doing so say in the 2000's when handing your strip off to another cartoonist, let alone your DAD'S strip wasn't a thing unless they were going to stay the course, in the 2020's and late 2010's we've had a bunch of great reboots and soft reboots of legacy strips: Randy Millholand of Something Positive fame did such a fantastic job on popeye sundays he got a weekly slot with olive and popeye, giving other creators the chance to do their own olive oyl strip basically alongside his. Mark Tatulli got tired of doing heart of the city (Lio both continues and slaps hard) and rather than phone it in or end it, handed it over to the talented Steenz, whose work on the strip is both something entirley diffrent but something entirely fresh and fun with some tight continuity. Olivia James made people care about Nancy for the first time in decades and has a nice dry wit. And while Henry Barjas keeps the soapy stylings of gil thorpe and hasn't changed as much as his contemporaries he still isn't afraid to shake things up having Gil go through a divorce, get two new assitant coaches, a third assitant coach who was once his arch nemisis and making the teen cast far more diverse including trans and non binary characters, being one of the few creators to do so in comic stripery.

While I don't want you going after these old men, and please for the love of god DO NOT GO AFTER THESE MEN. I do not want that. I may gripe, but these seem like decent guys just ones who won't evolve and have no reason to. I'm just outlining why maybe i'd rather read strips that keep growing with age or have fresh new voices rather than "Dagwood still hasn't left the 1950's and when theyt ry to it's embarassing for everyone involved. "

I.. didn't mean for this to turn into a screed on legacy comics that never really changed but it makes it all the more special tha ta lot of these creation stories for these comics still fascinated me.

The big standout was Wee Pals, a strip I hadn't heard of as it ended in 2002. Wee Pals was created by Morrie Turner, a cartoonist and protege of Charles Schultz who bemoaned the lack of black characters in the newspapers. Charles told him why not make one, and Wee Pals came about, with Turner diversifying the cast to drum up intrest creating one of the more diverse casts in earlier comic strips as a result. Nowadays it's a tad quaint, but I can't fault the man for trying to make comic strips less white and i'm glad I know this pioneer exist. I'm also mildly annoyed his strip wasn't animated, as it was one of the funneist present, with our heroes talking about one's pet chameleon.

There were other intresting stories too: Cathy Guthwise based Cathy on her own life, just changing Cathy's job from cartoonist to "whatervers funnier". Broom Hilda, a strip about a wtich, was something his creator tried pitching as an add character first. IT's small stuff but it always fascinates me how a strip comes about.

The only outright hilarous one is Johnny Hart, who kept trying to sell a caveman character, his friends asked him to put up or shut up so in his words "He drank 4 beers and the caveman slowly came into focus." He just.. outright got hammered to fuck because that was a normal thing in 1980 and created a classic comic strip out of it that later became obessed with jesus. Amazing.

The interviews are neat and while I may not like these strips I respect their creators.. and the creator of Hagar for putting on a viking helmet. Good stuff.

As for the animated segmets.. their eh. Like I said most of these strips are pretty gag a day and it seems like the shorts just flat out animated a strip. Which can work as it does for the raeson we're all here, garfield will come soon I promise, but for the most part it just dosen't land for me

In two cases they just flat out take bits from pre existing specails: For Doonesbury they take a bit of Joanie at the daycare.

For those less drenched in the deep and complex lore of doonesbury as the werido who has a ton of print books and bought digitals of strips he already had and books he already bought years ago just to have a copy on kindle: Joanie Caucuss was once a house wife, who got tired of it and her husband clinton and hitched the first ride she could away from his sexist ass. That ride happened to be with strip lead Mike and his best friend and revolutinary Mark on a motorcycle trip to find america. They took her back with them, she joined them at their commune, and soon got a job in daycare while trying to become a law student, which is the status quo the special used. Soon after she'd become a law student, head to berkley, find the love of her life and a long LONG list of other stuff up to present day where she works as a campaign manager on occasion during her alleged retirement.

It's not a bad bhit, but I get the sense they wanted to pick the least political thing they could.. yet weirdly DIDN'T go with the musical number or the dinner the group have. Or you know just accept doonesbury is political and include frank discussions of the 60's in this special.

For Peanuts, they just include an animated bit of snoopy singing suppertime from your a good man charlie brown. It's new animation far as I can tell, as the bit wasn't in any of the specials and they woudlnt' adapt the musical till the mid 80s. It's fine I just question why they didn't recycle anything from the specials.

Finally Cathy is from it's special, but fits, with her "wanting to have it all". A very cathy joke and frankly had I not found out she has three specails, i would not have been able to tell.

As for the other material either recycled from the fabulous funnies or made for this special, i'm going in no paticular order.

Beetle Bailey: Beetle runs away from sarge to try and get out of doing the obstacle course

Hagar the horrible has a trite bit about his wife telling him to take out the garbage VIKINGS DON'T DO THAT. YOU SO SILLY HAGAR.

Dennis the Menace keeps drawing out bed time because kids do that, even immortal children who aren't all that menacing.

By now your starting to get what a mountain it was to climb this special: short interview, unfunny skit, short interview unfunny skit, rinse repeat, toss away my sanity. I TRY to be positive on this blog, try not to be a dickhead.. but this special is so damn boring half the time. The interviews are kinda neat but the animated bits are just.. so lame.

So as a break let's talk what else the special did to fill time. Loni Anderson sang the radio themes to Popeye and Little Orphan Annie. IN the former's case.. that's all you gets. No adventure, no high seas just her singing the popeye theme. We dont' even get a musical number from the popeye movie because it hadn't happene dyet. I want to hear bluto say i'm mean over and ove rand over again. I"m that desperate.

Annie DOES get the cast of the broadway show, a huge hit then and forever, to do two numbers, both iconic and both well performed: The first is I dont' Need Anything But YOu, the cute duet between Annie and Warbucks, and then of course Tommorow best sung by bill the cat.

But the kid they use here does pretty good herself. They have it sung at the only playground in budget for some reason, but they did their best.

We also get a truly batshit bumber about peopl eneeding their funnies, from reading them as they go down the fire pole to IN A MOVING CAR. Yes even serial murderers need their funnies as they mow down pedestrians. It's nature's way. I do relate to tha tboost you get from reading them every day, I do so and I have to use three diffrent sites: one for andrews mcmeel, one for king features, and one for the webbcomic kevin and kell. So I get it. Three's also a closing number I ran away form.

The final non torture bit is Johnny Fever from WKRP. Due to a news strike he's tasked iwth reading the comics and drmatically reads flash gordon. Howard Hessman is hilarous as always, the bit is fucking great, and it woke me up after several strip adaptions put me to sleep. good stuff.

Back to my cycle of torment, and we have a Blondie cartoon and one of the few animated bits in the specail that was intresting. And unintetionally hilarous as Blondie gets dagwood THIS haircrime done to him.

What makes it funny is that not only is this haircut too much even for the 70's, but Blondie LOVES it, as do the kids.. despite all three of them having never updated their styles. Granted Blondie's hair game is timeless, so I get her point but it's just a .. weird plot to pick for blondie.

Naturallyt his being blondie instead of forcusing on the problem of "his wife wants him to try a hair cut that makes him not feel himself" it's in part him worried tha this friends and co workers will laugh. I mean they will, it's as if Luke Skywalkers hair started to eat into his brain, but that shoudln't be your takeaway and him washing it out while Blondie's alseep solves nothing and isn't funny. "Haha he can't be honest with his wife and she's going to later cite this incident to thier marriage counclier". Granted I would ENTIRELY read Dagwood's hair causing a divorce between them, but i'm not sure that's an arc Blondie readers want. I do wnat reprints of golden age blondie as it apparently involved Dagwood having to get disinherited to marry blondie, getting drunk, and other soap opera stuff more intresting than Dagwood trying to single white female mark hamill. Huh now THAT'S a Disney + series i'd watch. get on it disney

The other really fun one is Marmaduke. This one's just kidna fucked up. Marmaduke want sto go sleep in the same bed with the kids, which can somehow fit all three and is adorable so I don't get why not, but the dad tries to make him go outside because that was the thing with dogs. It hasn't aged terribly with charlie brown because snoopy clearly likes having his own pad and the inside is larger than most mansions, let alone the brown house

And when the whole thing burned down in one of the more sobering strips in the series run

Charlie Brown dutifully helped him plan his new house

Honestly I could talk about Snoopy's house burning down all day but it's not what you came for. You came to hear me tell you how it relates to Marmaduke. My point is Marmaduke just has a regular ass Dog House, and just wants to sleep in bed. I get this was normal at the time, it used to be the norm that dogs woudln't sleep in bed.. but my Dog YOshi curls up on my mom' sbed every night and maddie, my other dog , only dosen't when she's not on her own bed restfully asleep as she is as I type this. what i'm saying is maybe just maybe forcing dogs to live outside at night was cruel jackassery and maybe letting the big old dog curl up at the foot of the bed or, if he prefers tucked in while old man bastard can sleep outside and think about his life choices. Also i'm shocked this wasn't the plot of either marmaduke movie. It's so perfect. One man's journey to be a better dog owner .. or Marmaduke repeadely hitting him in the nuts with a tennis ball machine and other various objects. I"m not picky. Also i'm not touching either of those films unless someone pays me the 15 dollars it'd take to comissoin it. I'll review plenty of garbage on my own time, but I have limits. Pete Davidson is very much a hard and fast one. Owen Wilson is fine though. We love owen in this house.. but even he can' save cgi marmaduke and we all know that.

Pogo also takes a bit from the then upcoming film I go Pogo.. a guy I don't know tries to take two passing critters for a ride using the old shell game.. only to have put something under every one. i'ts a nice joke and it works well, and the gorgeous claymation. Given it's both election based and based on a comic i'd like to know better, me reviewing that .. would still be 15 if anyone wants it but far less of my own personal hell. But i'm more likely to do that one on my own. Fun fact: pogo's election storyline's inspired bloom counties, which I will be covering this year or at the very least the 1984 one.

BC has some bit with a turtle. It sure does exist

Broom Hilda asks who the fairest in the land is and her mirror calls her second. She responds by breaking it. This bit.. was actually funny. I'm not sure Broom Hilda would be for me as it's main gag seems to be "Gee isn't a woman chasing men against their will funny" which

Same other way around or with non binary folks. But I did like this and her horning in on mike's close up

She looks like she's about to hit on him but adorably so and he looks just.. so done with it as he always is. I mean.. I can't have turned out worse than Mike's actual first marriage. his second is pretty ballin though.

Mama has her Son say that life is a song.. onlyf or her to sing about him neglecting him. Get it because guilt tripping is funny! This is apparently most of what Mama is.

Finally before our main event we have tumbleweeds with sexual harassment as some lady refuses to let tumbleweeds go. And that's not me being lazy that's his actual name. Though to it's creator's credit he retired rather than let it become "a zombie strip", so good on him.

Okay now for what you all came to see

Also garfield

Garfield's first aniamted special was MOSTLY worth the pilgramage here. While ti's only a few strips repeated, it's fascinating for just how diffrent it is from Here comes Garfield a few years later.

For starters the Fantastic Funnies used an early design for our faviorite cat, not the iconic entirely weird by this point earliest garfield but one more in between, not quite upright yet, but not nearly as realistic as day 1 garfield.

To the classic peanuts team of Mendelson and Mendez's credit they did a wondreful job, likely why they were chosen to produce the specials till the companies backing peanuts asked them to stop helping out rival specails, and this version of garfield heavily resembles what he was like in the strip this frame is based on

It's also telling how fast Jim Davis was evolving the special that by the time it aired Garfield had already changed his look up a bit, if still not fully to his more classic 80s look.

It's not a HUGE change, just a little thinner, with the bigger change being in how he sit's/stands

It's just a testament to how slowly but surely the character evolved in apperance over his first decade or so and part of what makes this intreresting: while the specials help chart this evolution, and helped cause it as Jim needed to draw Garfield with SKinnier legs for the opening dance number of here comes garfield, it's nice to have this bit of his evolution frozen in amber.

The voices behind the characters are intresting: to my shock Thom Huge ALWASY voiced john and basically only stopped doing it when he retired. Thom did voices for commericals and was an old frat brother of Jim Davis who Davis asked for help with this special. While the producers would recast huge for Here Comes Garfield, he sent them a tape and became THE voice of john in the same way Lorenzo Music became THE voice of garfield.

WHile that's weird enough... what makes this special stand out besides the earlier designs... is Garfield's Voice. It's not Lorenzo Music, who would DEFINE the character in my eyes and is THE garfield, no question, though Frank Welker and Bill Murray are admirable.. but Radio DJ and voice guy Scott Beach.

Beach is take is intresting as both Murray and Welker clearly take from Music, while Beach largely does his own thing. Instead of the dry, sarcastic bored tone Lorenzo perfected, Beach has that but it sounds more like Jean Shepard'ss narration in a christmas story. Shepard isn't bad but his voice for Garfield is less relaxed, mor ebooming and confident. It dosen't COMPLETELY fit and makes the short feel a tad weird.. but it's also hard to judge the voice as, like I said EVERY voice after took cues from Music. he left the perfect blueprint. The fact Chris Pratt isn't that dry, sarcastic , laid back voice the character has been defined by hasn't helped his case voicing the character at the time of this review. Beach does a good job, but he just didn't quite fit and it's hard to compare a 2 minute performance with dozens of hours worth of material from Music. Beach did a decent job, but he just wasn't the right guy for the part, simple as that. his voice just didn't fit Garfield's give no fuck nature that well.

Finally we have the specific strips adapted. nd the garfield wiki was a huge help here. Seriously fan wikis can have a bad rap but many are done by dedicated people who save me a LOT of work and do a lot of through research> Kudos guys, thanks for your help. So the wiki has each strip adapted. Excluding the "I have feet? " one we have

Not bad choices: they get all the garfiled bases: he dosen't like catching mice, likes food and Jon weight shames him a lot. Simple, quick and well done.

Overall the garfield shorts for this special are excellent. It's a short bit but it gets the character down and it's easy to see why, despite being the new kid on the block at only two years old at the time, garfield's the one who go ta specail out of the deal.

Now does he make the specail worth watching?

I mean if you like comic strip history like me, you'll get something out of it. There's a bit on the inductees into the hall of fame, but even then it's a long slog of interviews that are fairly short and shorts that are both short and tedious. The good bit here or there cannot save this.

Other than Garfield .. there really isn't much to write home about for the casual viewer or if your a fan of Peanuts and Doonesbury like I am, as both bits can be found elswhere. It's easier to either fast forward to the bit with a comic you like or find the garfield bits in their own little video, of which there are plenty. I'm glad I reviewed the special.. but it just hasn't aged well and probably wasn't that fun to begin with. Even as much as I ranted about how much I didn't know the strips.. i'ts still presented so dryly even if it had strips I liked more in it, it'd still be a bit of a slog. There's just not enough genuinely good stuff or loveable nonsense to keep this afloat. Skip the special but DO check out the early garfield stuff. It's brilliant.

Next Time: The first proper special as Garfield must save Odie from the pound.. after he grooves to Lou Rawls a bit. As is nature's way. Thanks for reading.

#garfield #peanuts #doonesbury #comic strips #comics #wkrp in cincinnati #doonebury #charles schulz #charlie brown #lucy van pelt #snoopy #hagar the horrible #blondie #wee pals #marmaduke #broom hilda #cathy

[jgroffdaily]

Along the way the cast has changed, but every time Friedman seems to have found actors with the charisma and rapport to make audiences care about Frank, Charley and Mary. “Every one of my actors has humanity, and I’m not just being soppy about it,” she says. “You can cast this show a million different ways and it will work, but you do need good hearts at the center of it.”

In casting, Friedman follows her instincts. She banked on the chemistry between Radcliffe, Groff and Mendez even though she’d never seen the three of them in a room together. “You just know,” she says.

As Broadway regulars, Groff and Mendez knew each other, but not well; neither had met Radcliffe. The three leads got acquainted over Zoom before meeting in the rehearsal room, where they discovered they had a lot in common — including big, unironic theater-kid energy.

Groff and Mendez both recall an early rehearsal when, left to themselves as the ensemble worked on a separate sequence, the trio clustered in the back of the room to talk exhaustively through the lyrics of “Old Friends,” the deceptively jaunty song that’s both a celebration of and an argument about what friendship truly means. “That was the moment I thought, ‘Oh, we’ve reached it,’” Mendez remembers. “‘We’re an actual team.’”

Radcliffe isn’t a Broadway baby to the same degree as Groff or Mendez, who launched their careers there. But the former “Harry Potter” star nonetheless feels a special connection to Broadway as “Merrily” brings him back after credits including “Equus” and a yearlong stint in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

Radcliffe isn’t a Broadway baby to the same degree as Groff or Mendez, who launched their careers there. But the former “Harry Potter” star nonetheless feels a special connection to Broadway as “Merrily” brings him back after credits including “Equus” and a yearlong stint in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.”

“It’s always been such an important part of my life and career,” he says. “This was the first place that I felt like I could become an actor and not just Harry Potter.” He adds, “Also, we listened to a lot of Sondheim as a family in the car — I thought everybody did! The idea that I’m now doing one of those shows is mind-blowing and incredibly cool.”

Of the three leads, Groff has perhaps the hardest job as Frank, who abandons his friends and his art in favor of empty success in Hollywood. Like so many of the characters in “Merrily,” Frank starts the show at his most vile. “I’d never felt so hated, for so long, by the audience,” Groff recalls of his early Off Broadway performances. “Trusting the complexity of the character and detaching from the need to feel liked was a big learning curve for me. Now I live for it.”

At the same time, Friedman’s production grants Frank uncommon grace. With a light touch, the director positions “Merrily” as one man’s memory play as he looks back at the mistakes he has made. “I don’t see Frank as guilty,” Friedman says. “I absolutely believe none of these characters are cunning or premeditated. Everything they do comes from loneliness and the need for love. They’re beautifully naive in their hopes for themselves.”

But what gives any production of “Merrily” its power is how effectively it dramatizes how those ambitions can curdle and those bonds can fray with the relentless passage of time. Radcliffe says, “One of the truest things Maria said about the show is, ‘The happier you guys are at the end, the more absolutely devastating it is for an audience. And I do think that’s true. I mean, hopefully not totally devastating.”

#jonathan groff #daniel radcliffe #lindsay mendez #merrily we roll along #merrily promo

[musicalrecs]

Today's shameless promotion is for one of my favorite musicals that I can't believe isn't more people's favorite: Bring It On: the musical.

tl;dr: This is going to be a long post, so allow me to sum up: if you like Newsies but wish it had a cast of about 2/3 girls and don't really care about the plot so long as there's idealistic teenagers singing and dancing like they've consumed a dozen energy drinks each, building up to a happy ending with more singing and dancing, then you'll love Bring It On. You may now press "j" to skip to the next tumblr post.

Still here? Then please, allow me to reminisce. When I first saw Bring It On, it was on tour before debuting on Broadway, and they were still getting the kinks out. This means I got to see, for example, the original staging of Killer Instinct, and while I get why they changed it for Campbell's character development, I do prefer the original narratively.

It also meant there was no cast album available, and no internet hype that I was aware of. I was there strictly because I saw most shows at this theater if I didn't actively dislike them, and was all "Cheerleading in a musical? Even if the plot is bad it should be a lot of fun!" When I sat down and perused my program I recall turning to my date and excitedly saying "Oh wow, Lin-Manuel Miranda worked on this! You don't know who he is, but he did In The Heights and Sesame Street, this might actually be good!" I also had no idea Ariana DeBose was anyone of import. I should dig out that program and see if I got her to sign it...

I had only the first movie to go on for the plot, which I vaguely remembered the end of. This meant a) I rolled my eyes at conveniently putting Campbell on the "right" team early on and b) I was quite surprised by the ending.

Whatever I was expecting, it was BETTER. Bring It On grabs you with the beat from the get go and and then starts throwing cheerleaders in the air as rapaciously as Jim Henson ever tossed penguins. I hadn't been so captivated by a show's live energy since I first saw Rent.

And the plot? Reader, it was my very favorite kind of plot: girl is in unfamiliar situation, does her best, makes surprising new friends, screws up, learns something, demonstrates leadership, ends with stronger friendships and supportive love interest to boot. (See also: Legally Blonde) You know, the kind of plot guys have had catering to them for millennia so much that the second I hear "coming of age story" I peace out. But it turns out I am not immune to gender-targeted storytelling, particularly when it also has dancing.

It's been an age since I read the reviews, but I recall complaints that Jackson high school was much too "nice," "diverse," "unrealistic" and, had those reviews been written today, they would have almost certainly included "woke." I, on the other hand, was thrilled to see high school portrayed not as a battleground but as groups of friends supporting each other while still enjoying "krunking in the parking lot." (I have never been cool enough to do any equivalent to "krunking" but I admire kids with the confidence to do so, and I did overall enjoy my high school years.)

I am the kind of person who unironically appreciates songs about how it doesn't matter if you're fat or trans or otherwise not society's ideal so long as you love yourself, and songs about how winning doesn't matter as long as you know who you are and have friends. So I loved "It Ain't No Thing" and "Cross the Line."

Plus, a supportive, non-threatening soft boy singing about how high school isn't forever so you might as well "Enjoy the Trip"? Keep your "cringe"; I'll take a dozen more musicals just like this one, please. (No, really. Please let me know if they make any.)

So I mentioned Lin-Manuel Miranda up there, but this wasn't just his show. To quote Wikipedia, "Bring It On: The Musical is a musical with music by Tom Kitt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, lyrics by Amanda Green and Miranda, and book by Jeff Whitty."

Tom Kitt has a pretty eclectic resume, ranging from Jagged Little Pill to Next to Normal to Spongebob. Lin-Manuel Miranda, of course, is best known for trying to sell real estate to Big Bird.

Sidenote: Tom Kitt and LMM had another collab that you may have heard of: the 2013 Tonys opening number, "Bigger!"

Although I couldn't get my hands on the album for over a year after I fell in love with the show, since one didn't exist, nowadays you can of course listen to the whole thing on Youtube, Spotify, or wherever. You can even buy the CD; it comes with a nice booklet with all the lyrics!

But as for seeing the show, I don't recommend trying to watch it online. A quick search doesn't turn up any proshots, and local productions just aren't going to be the same. Half the cast was made up of pro cheerleaders, and their intense choreography is part of the thrill. If a tour ever comes near your town, I highly recommend you get yourself tickets. Even if the moving screens aren't as cool and innovative now as they were in 2011, it's still a wonderful spectacle.

So that's Bring It On: the musical. I suppose I could have actually described the plot (head cheerleader Campbell gets redistricted to another school which - gasp! - has no cheerleading team), but really, does it matter? You're there for the characters expressing themselves through song and dance (and cheerleading), not how easy it is to fool gullible teens by editing Wikipedia (actual plot point). I hope you get a chance yourself to fall in love with its unabashed enthusiasm for friendship and being tossed really high on stage.

#shameless promotion #musical recommendation #bring it on #bring it on the musical #musicals #lin manual miranda #tom kitt #Youtube

[mangopit]

in "waitress" the broadway musical, there's so much tragedy surrounding jenna's abusive relationship and the way she finds herself in the exact same position as her mother. and there's so much tragedy in all the little, practically-unchangeable things of life that the characters have to face and settle with. but i think one of the biggest tragedies for jenna is that for so much of the story, she has no idea how strongly people are rooting for her.

there's a scene in "waitress" where jenna's husband, earl is lashing out at her and about to get violent. out of fear, jenna reveals to him that she's pregnant. this distracts and appeases him. but there's still a thick tension in the air, palpable not only for jenna but for the entire audience watching. and in one performance i've watched, after earl pauses his celebration to ask, "what if you start to love this baby more than you love me?", the entire audience sighs because everyone is so genuinely disappointed to see someone so perpetually unloving.

and i always found it heartwrenching because, of course, it's just jenna and earl in their house. she feels this weight, and she knows it's there, but as far as she knows, she's feeling it entirely alone. and it's like a sort of tragic irony, because jenna is gripped by the understanding that she's trapped and she can't get out because getting out is a mountain too tall to climb and nobody can help her because nobody can understand—except we do understand, we do care, so many of us care, and so many of us want to help her. it's just as an audience, we can't. and the impossibility for her to envision that support, both in-story and metaphysical, is tragic.

fortunately, jenna finds a support system and the story works itself out. but i think happy endings aside, it's nice to be an outsider looking in, coming away from this story with a better understanding of loneliness and isolation.

you're never as alone as you might think you are, even if you're completely alone in the moment. because your feelings of isolation do not diminish the validity and value of your existence. your capacity to be loved, supported, heard, and understood will always remain, even during lonely moments of devastation. and that's really important for everyone to know, because everyone has those moments, regardless of what they've been through.

#woohoojazelyn thoughts #waitress #waitress musical #waitress broadway #i think my tag is just waitress but idk #feel good #ask to tag #long post

[xoxoemynn]

6, 16, 26!

💜

Yay, thank you, friend!

6. Do you have your work beta'd? How important is this to your process? YES, and SO EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! I am useless without @monksofthescrew. And I'm EXTRA lucky bc she's there literally every step of the writing process. I'm constantly bouncing ideas off her when I'm still in the planning stages, asking questions as I'm writing, and then when she sees the actual draft it's like she's inside my brain and enhances it SO much. Genuinely would be lost without all her support and enthusiasm and brain noodles.

16. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Share one of them? Hahahaha oh boy. I'll just limit it to on my immediate to do list, and I have... five, I think, although I have a few others simmering in the background that I'm trying not to think too much about. The one currently occupying most of my brain: Ed is a legendary Broadway dancer who fucks up his knee on stage. While recovering and determinedly NOT thinking about how he doesn't know what he's going to do with his life now, he gets absorbed in watching some old black and white musicals featuring Stede Bonnet and Mary Allamby. Through some weird weirdness, he ends up transporting into Stede's world. Stede, he learns, somehow got trapped in this glitzy glamorous grayscale purgatory that looks like all his film sets. Naturally they fall in love, but struggle to find a way to truly be together. It has themes of being your authentic self/the temptation of avoidance/being comfortable in the unknown. Influences include Astaire/Rogers musicals, The Giver, Pleasantvile, Barbie, and Afterlight. I'm not sure I'm doing a great job selling this but I am VERY excited about it.

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride? Oh, Clock Boys, no doubt. Started off with me going "oh yes this will be a TRUE standalone PWP that's going to be super niche and maybe three people will read it because it's just going to get Weird." And then somehow it turned into a full series? And they kept getting weirder? And nerdier? And then they got romantic? Not at all what I expected writing it, also not at all what I was expecting in terms of a response. But I'm thrilled because I love them dearly.

Get to know the fic writer ask game!

#ask #scribophile #ask games #fic writer ask game #this has been such a fun journey #I should be doing work but this is much more appealing

[thrilling-oneway]

i need to stop writing random shit in the fact account drafts anyway i have so many thoughts about the singular chapter (the last one) of canaria that i read so now i'm gonna word vomit (onto the right blog this time!)

So YEAH hopeful ending holy shit but also I think it's gonna fall apart and that hurts. But! It's also the most realistic outcome and prsk is actually surprisingly realistic with how they write things in terms of like, plot and emotional stuff. Staying at PXL as WxS is what they would all like to do, because no one wants to leave their friends behind and go separate ways when you grow up. However, in terms of their dreams and ambitions, staying at PXL is only what Emu wants to do.

Emu wants to stay at PXL because of what it meant to her grandpa. She wants to make sure the park will continue to bring smiles to everyone for years to come because that was her grandpa's dream, and it's her dream.

Tsukasa wants to become a world-famous star, and then comes the question of can he still do that if he stays at PXL? And honestly, not realistically. Yes, the park has made a name for itself and the group did promotional tours around the country, but he's still just a performer at a theme park. Tsukasa is really interesting in this scenario because he's a very selfless character but he also manages to balance that with being selfish because sometimes that's what you have to do to achieve your dreams (Love Live reference). And it really comes down to would he settle for being a theme park performer over world fame?

Nene as well wants to be a musical star, and if the design of her fragment sekai is anything to go by, we're headed to broadway (i can't remember if this is ever mentioned anywhere someone please force me to stop skimreading everything). And again it comes down to would she sacrifice her dream of becoming a muscial theatre star in favour of staying with her friends.

It's also interesting from Rui's POV. I actually read curtain call the entire way through so here's more word vomit sorry. Rui has everything set up for him to leave PXL and WxS. It was handed to him on a silver platter and he even accepted it even though it's not what he wanted. Obviously Asahi sent him back to WxS, but he did say that he'll get in contact with him once they graduate high school and that the offer still stands.

And it's here where we reach that split between dreams and aspirations, because just on a surface level, Rui is the only one who falls heavier on the dream side of things. Rui aspires to be a director, but ultimately his dream is/was to have people accept him and have somewhere to belong. WxS gives him that and it's why he doesn't want to let it go. That said, WxS gave all four of them a place to belong, it's just that for Rui, that part is a lot more important to him than his actual aspirations, whereas it's more balanced with the other three.

With all that considered, I don't think whatever Rui's idea is (unless it's a real banger idea) is going to work out. They still have another school year to go (or 3 irl years), so there's time to try things out and see how they go, but in the end I just don't see it happening. It's a case of it just isn't how life works. All four of them have different dreams and aspirations which means naturally they are going to walk down different paths. It's not like Leo/need, MMJ or VBS where they all have the same goals and dreams and (for L/n in particular) they can and will reach these together.

That said, if they do disband and the devs don't just write them out if that happens, I could easily see the unit still functioning from a purely gameplay perspective. Just because they don't function as a unit doesn't mean that they aren't friends and don't have lives anymore. You could focus on what Rui and Tsukasa are doing in uni/work, and also Emu and Nene will still be in high school, so WxS could continue as a part time thing. For a bit. Maybe.

Anyway watch love live if you watch it you can handle anything this game could throw at the wxs story (lie it still hurts no matter how many times you watch the train station scene)

#this post is called can you tell what unit i'm fixated on rn? #project sekai #wonderlands x showtime #mine #project sekai spoilers #Rambles #long post #idk i've decided i don't like putting my long stuff under the cut it's less convenient for me #this took like 2 hours to write because i kept getting distracted every 5 minutes

[moonchildreads]

hi there! i'm bunny and i'm new here so i thought i'd introduce myself!

i joined tumblr because my friends are here and they are all magnificent writers and i wanted to jump in on the fun :) i've been quietly working on a st4 fix-it/rewrite for months and, as i tend to do, i've buried it in google docs and kept it to myself but since my friends are so brave and actually post what they write, i thought "hey, creating a tumblr and forcing myself to interact with other people might just be the exact kind of people pressuring i need to actually finish this mammoth of a fic" so here i am, telling you about it in order to feel guilty that it's out there and forcing myself to actually write it

so, what am i writing and what can you expect from me?

i am currently working on chapter 10 of small town which is, as i've mentioned, a st4 fix-it/rewrite that focuses on this idea: what if hawkins didn't split in four in march 1986? what if vecna waited to attack until, i don't know, a canonically important date a few months later? i'm using this fic as a character exploration of the elder hellfire club members through the eyes of our protagonist, dottie (bear with me), who moved to hawkins a few months ago and is recruited into hellfire by a desperate dustin after a spring break where lucas never rejoined the party and is actually quite upset with his former friends.

what i wanted to do with small town was something the duffer brothers seem averse to doing: having their characters face consequences. it is a love story between eddie and dottie, but ultimately, romantic love is not the only kind of love that matters: this is about the friendships and bonds that bind the party to one another and make them want to risk their lives when the time comes.

here are random things i've been toying with that i think you might enjoy: eddie and wayne's relationship and how they came to live together, eddie and chrissy finding comfort in their secret smoke sessions in the woods, giving a name to the unnamed freak!, seeing more of corroded coffin and giving those three boys a personality and a life of their own, eddie and dottie bonding over mourning a parent you didn't really get to meet, dustin being the actual heart of the party (move over mike, you're not that special here), lots of bantering and shitty dialogue, references to 80s music (and broadway musicals!), idiots in love, highly researched details like hourly weather details and period appropriate kool-aid flavours, eddie graduating?, eddie surviving!, giving trauma to everyone post-vecna and reinforcing the idea that a support system doesn't make said trauma go away, but it does make it lighter to deal with.

if this sounds like something you'd be on board with, please please please let me know and come talk to me about it! i've got so much info stored in my brain about this story and i've been waiting until i finish writing to post it, but seeing how long this is taking, maybe actually talking to people about it will make the words come to me faster. i've got a very detailed outline (this is a long one! i'm expecting +30 chapters!), hella headcanons and a job that allows me to dick around on the internet at all times.

thank you for reading this far and i hope to see you around! i'd love to make new friends on this app <3

#stranger things #eddie munson #bunny writes #joseph quinn #eddie munson fic #eddie munson fanfic #wip #small town fic #stranger things 4 #wayne munson #hellfire club #i don't understand tags

[arrow-dodger]

When I was 12, my mom bought the soundtrack to The Phantom of the Opera movie with Gerard Butler. She must have gotten the CD from the bargain bin at Wal Mart or something. She started playing it all the time in the car, insisting she loved that kind of music (which she had never listened to before, as far as I'm aware).

I became obsessed with it almost immediately. I made her get me the movie and I watched it almost every night. At that age I hated Raoul because I thought he was lame and weak. The Phantom was my sexy sad boy and for some reason I thought I could fix him. No offense to Christine, but I was built different. The idea of being someone's entire world was very appealing to me, because I never felt important to anyone. I wanted someone to take me away to be theirs forever. That was a romance I could read fanfiction about for years to come.

I've always listened to it and watched the movie from time to time since, but I revisited it more specifically recently. It occurred to me that I only know the movie version of the songs, which are probably the worst ones, so I started listening to the original Broadway cast and the 2011 recording.

The vibe is... very different. I am very different. Gerard Butler's Phantom IS kind of a sexy sad boy in comparison, and the stage Phantom has much more "muahahaha" energy. I mean, he's a devious, cringe little bitch. But the thing is that he's also scary as hell. Actually, this entire thing has always been scary, and I was kind of blind to it because of how sexy Gerard Butler is, maybe. Listening now, it's a horror that sends chills down my spine.

Now as an adult the romance angle doesn't work the same. I've had men make me their entire world before and convince me they'd die without me living to care for them. I've had men give me things without me asking and then use that against me later. I've had men seek out my very specific weaknesses to exploit them in their favor. I've had men threaten violence and violate my personhood because they wanted to own me so badly. I had a man essentially brainwash me for so many years.

I always hated Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again as a kid. I thought the song was boring and would skip past it sometimes, because I just didn't get what it added. Now I get that it's the entire linchpin to the plot of this thing.

When I watch that scene now, I realize that Christine's trauma about the death of her father IS the plot. That's what all of this is about, in the end. During the Wandering Child bit afterwards, when I see her say "wildly my mind beats against you, but my soul obeys," I know that very feeling... and it isn't romantic, it's DARK. When she says she has endless longings, she doesn't mean she longs to have a sexy phantom boyfriend, she means she longs to feel safe! Feel loved! Protected! She wants to feel like her father is still around and looking out for her! And she spent all these years thinking she would get these things from this person who's convinced her he's an avatar of her dead father, who spends this song calling her a lost child who needs his guidance, specifically poking at the wound he knows she has to give himself the upper hand. That isn't hot! That's awful!

When I see Christine crying as she turns away from the Phantom at the end of the 2011 production, I don't think she's sad because she's in love with him too. I think she's sad because she's leaving behind this person who is the architect of her entire consciousness. Someone who has convinced her that they need each other, that they're each other's destiny. She's realizing that she needs to leave her father behind. When he says "Christine, I love you," she's hearing her father's voice. She doesn't know who she is without him, or if she'll completely collapse if she takes another step away. And bitch, same. I've been there too. I thought I'd die myself.

The angles that art can stab you from change with you as you age. Stranger than you dreamt it!

#this won't stop me from romanticizing things I've romanticized since childhood #but it's certainly a big bite to chew

[amarantheum]

AM YOU'RE GOING TO SEE WICKED?????????? TOMORROW??????? boi. boi do you even fucking know what's tomorrow???? IT'S GONNA BE TALIA SUSKAUER'S FINAL BROADWAY PERFORMANCE I'M. i'm so fucking jealous of you sjdhfsdjhfsjdfhsfks it's going to be such a good show!!! enjoy it omg i'm so excited for you to experience it!!!! please tell me everything. like everything. every thought you have everything you loved everything you hated please you don't understand how important this is to me.... OKAY BYEEEE ILYYYY

Oh I have no idea who that is but I didn't know it was her last performance, now I'm even more excited to go! I just saw tickets available and was like sure why not? I'm not even into musicals but as usual your brainrot is like an infectious disease /jk. So yes I will be keeping you informed.

[hereliesbeetlejuice]

Hi! I found out about closing from your post and at first thought that was some old news but then I realised and cried for like 15 minutes 🫠 I’ve been in this fandom for 3 years and i have a Russian blog about Beetlejuice (there’s actually quite a lot of fans of this musical in Russia 🙃) and I know I probably would never have a chance to see Beetlejuice live but it became such an important part of my life so it’s just heartbreaking to see these news. At this point I just don’t understand why this happened and can fans do anything about it😔 I’m also wondering what will happen with fan art mural. My art got there and it made me extremely happy cause at least some part of my love for this show will be there on broadway but now I think they will take it all down and it makes me even more sad :( Thanks for listening (I really like your blog btw🤗)

i am,,, so sorry you had to learn it from me 😭 it literally did not occur to me in the moment other people have lives and might not have heard yet.

i had no idea it has such a big Russian fanbase!! that makes me so happy!!!! there are few things i love more than hearing about this show’s reach both on a widespread level and an individual level. i feel awful you won’t get to see the show on broadway but i’m just so glad it found you at all and affected your life the way it did 💜

i’ll miss the fanart wall and really feel for everyone whose art won’t get to live there anymore, but i’m also so happy for you that you were able to have a small piece of you at the theater even for a limited time.

obviously i’m incredibly sad this show’s run is coming to an end, but i’m also fully aware how lucky i am to have gotten the experiences with this show i have and just focusing on staying grateful. my heart really goes out to the fans without the ability to see it before closing. at the very least i get to remind people in the U.S. about the national tour (and people in the UK about the rumored West End transfer) but for other fans like you i hate not being able to do anything so i’m playing around with a few small ideas for making the show as accessible as is within my power:

my friend runs a playbill exchange program where people can donate unwanted/extra playbills or get playbills they want for FREE (just pay shipping). there are tons of different beetlejuice playbills currently in stock, you can find them on twitter at @ programXchange

i also have so many extra playbills from all different stages of the show from the last four years, i’m thinking of running a giveaway soon closer to the show’s final performance

i’m currently working on sifting through my collection of bootlegs and audios to find the ones i’m able to share publicly or trade (according to the boot owner’s wishes) to compile them all into one google doc that every fan will be free to access

i’m also working on creating a shareable resource that i’ll be constantly updating with any and all ticket discounts, deals, and lotteries for people who can’t afford a full price ticket

if anyone has more ideas or would like to contribute to any of these feel free to reach out!

i sincerely and genuinely really hope you get to visit the show someday, in any capacity. everyone deserves to 🖤

#sorry this took me so long to answer i’ve been in new york for bway flea weekend #but this is just such a sweet ask thank you <3 #ask #comicake

[cosettepontmercys]

Hi Cossette! My favourite Maisie songs are I'm Trying (Not Friends) and Cate's Brother, but I also highly enjoy both singles that she released for The Good Witch (both accompanying music videos are also very enjoyable) :D I've started following Maisie's music releases circa You Signed Up For This and it's been a joy to see her artistic growth over the past 2 years 💖

For The Good Witch, I'm most looking forward to the title track, but The Band and I and Coming of Age are also amongst the songs that I'm very eager to hear! I love good storytellings and I'm excited to see what she comes up with to weave the stories altogether!

I also love your connection between The Band and I and Taylor Swift's Long Live: When I first heard Long Live years ago I love how wholesome it is!! It also shows how far Taylor came (music career-wise) since her debut and the importance of fan support over the years 💖 Hopefully we'll get to hear the Taylor's Version of the song one day!

To name a few other music albums that I've been enjoying lately:

The Record by boygenius

Good Riddance by Gracie Abrams

Drop Cherries by Billie Marten

Young Heart by Birdy

Everything I Know About Love by Laufey

Phosphorescent by Gabrielle Aplin

P.S. 2023 has been a great year in terms of music releases so far (a lot of artists that I enjoy are releasing new music), so I'm very excited about it! In addition to The Good Witch, what are a few upcoming music releases that you are looking forward to? And what are a few recent albums that you've been enjoying lately?

that’s so special! one of my friends that i met through broadway twitter has been a huge maisie stan since YSUFT if not earlier and that’s how i found out about her music! i can’t wait to see what she does next!!  and i agree — i’m most drawn to good storytelling & good lyrics, and i feel like maisie does such a good job with that! i’ve loved reading her little teasers for each song! it’s just so special. 

i think long live (taylor’s version) would be the song that destroys me most on speak now (taylor’s version) — either that, or never grow up! i’m honestly so shocked that long live didn’t make it on the eras tour setlist, and i know that when she performs it on tour i’ll be sobbing (most likely on the livestream)! 

i’m actually listening to good riddance right now (as i respond to this message)! it’s one of my favorites of 2023 so far, and i hope it gets pressed on vinyl soon! i also really loved the record by boygenius & everything i know about love by laufey, but haven’t really listened to the others — i’ll do so soon! i own both the record & everything i know about love on vinyl, but rarely listen to them on vinyl for some reason even though everything i know about love sounds so good on vinyl!

i’ve been listening to a lot of holly humberstone’s “can you afford to lose me?” which is a compilation of her first two EPs! she’s rumored to have her debut album come out this year — i feel like since you like maisie & taylor, you’re likely to enjoy her music!  i’ve also been listening to cate canning’s newest single “get better” lately — i hope she releases another album/ep/something soon. the japanese house’s in the end it always does comes out at the end of june, and i’m so excited for it! i actually just preordered my vinyl yesterday. i have no idea what these singers are up to, but i’d love to see more music from: benjamin francis leftwich, no rome, isabel pless, and del water gap! i feel like there’s another album i’m really eagerly anticipating, but i can’t think of anything right now! 

albums i’ve had on repeat lately are: phoebe bridgers’ punisher, cuts and bruises by inhaler, emails i can’t send fwd: by sabrina carpenter, and of course, taylor swift’s entire discorgraphy and the 1975’s entire discography! and not an album, but i’ve been looping beabadoobee & clairo’s version of glue song since it came out! 

#post: answered #mutual: jennifer