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#one take musical theatre challenge
pageofheartdj · 2 months
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All jokes and horny aside(I do love horny and specific position only🙏 and them fighting over everything always ever and ooc fun scenarious) radioapple are so interesting to think about, about their dynamics, and the characters in general. So I will!
As they are in canon now, Lucifer did not care for Alastor plus the general disgust(and guilt) towards sinners. And then the song happened and Alastor became Lucifer's enemy number one xD If Alastor will drop it, Lucifer won't have a reason to hate on him, but initial negative imperssion is still there.
And Alastor, he is a mysterious guy. The abusive dad is still a theory, him being momma boy and therefore connecting with women better doesn't say anything about his dad situation. The Lilith's deal is also just a theory for now. So for me his immediate negative reaction comes from the same place as his annoyance at Carmilla disregarding him. He wants to be on the top, the most unknown, the most powerful one, the most scary one. He loves attention, he loves keeping everyone alert with his antics.
And he loves being in control, his plans going exactly the way he wants them, not that he can't improvise. He immediately tenses when he sees the sign welcoming dad, he knows. The King of Hell has the ultimate power, the ultimate influence, the ultimate importance. Alastor does not mind someone being more than him in something like he is politely neutral with Zestial. But the hotel carries importance for Alastor's plans so he feels threatened. Before with Charlie's daddy issues I guess he did not expect to see him anytime soon. But here he is, threatening to pull Charlie from his influence, from her needing his powers.
But then we see him being completely chill and not antagonistic at all. One of the reasons I think is that he let his stim out, for a reason being restricted in his activities, the deals he can make, the souls he can take, the kills. And because Charlie needed Lucifer to arrange a meeting with Heaven, something that only Lucifer can do. And that's it. So he lets go for a bit.
Who knows what dynamic season 2 will bring, now that Lucifer stays at the hotel and Alastor took a hard blow at his ego and reputation.
In the wiki it is stated Alastor dislikes people who are like him, but likes people who are more like him, but who knows where is this line. He also said to like Willy Wonka character for being an entertainer and a dick. And Lucifer was told to be like that character. For now Lucifer is a depressed sad baby, but we saw how he can be when he is fucking with others. Alastor likes fun, no matter how this fun is done. Potentially he can enjoy Lucifer's presence. Not to mention, he respects power, at least when the whatever deal with Alastor is done, potentially.
Don't know how prevalent this is now, but both seem to enjoy collecting certain things, like ducks and those firby toys. Both were drawn to dance-vibe with each other.
Speaking of, both love music and play instruments, they can totally jam with each other, making their own little concerts.
Lucifer's idea of sinners will be definetely challenged with Alastor. It's one thing to meet a nice sinner and think 'ah they are not like everyone else'. But it's a completely different thing when this sinner is exactly what you hate about them, the maniac who loves violence. And then you have to come to terms that even THEY can become better, can have something to them. Lucifer drowned himself in guilt and shame, it would be nice to get a bit in touch with people in Hell. Because it seems like he stays away from most things sinners bring with themselves.
Alastor was told to like theatres, so it would be nice for them to go together, to try and see something good from humanity even in Hell. Something that can still keep not being corrupted. And humans creativity and artistism can definetely spark more hope back to Lucifer.
And I think Lucifer would appreciate someone who treats him as equal, it doesn't look like he cares much about being a King, so having someone who will not shy away at punching first can be good.
Lucifer's main support of course would be Charlie(and hopefully hotel crew), but having someone who he can rely to get things actually done is pleasant. He is a King of Hell but he doesn't often act like one, he surely will benefit from someone who can act appropriately spooky. (He can get scary, but I think he needs to get MAD mad for this side of him to appear and at that point you better have Charlie around to calm him down)
And they have to keep the beef part of their interactions, it's just fun to have someone you can freely argue with with no hard feelings afterwards, just a battle of words, their interests don't always aligning. And it's fun to mindlessly banter about them. Like their sweet and bitter food preference, or cooking techniques, etc. Small irrelevant things, or maybe even some clash of ideals, but it is oh so fun to let yourself go lose and not hold back.
It would be nice for them to develop mutual respect and learn to care about each other's boundaries, be it the painful personal history, or choices of leading the relationship.
Yes, the aroace situation. Start with simple, I do not believe Lucifer is straight(nor NT xD) and he is perfectly sex-positive(he started with no experience and no shame either xD). He is more on a demi spectrum for me, getting excitedly horny only with close people(one-times can happen, it's a grey(literally) area). And Alastor... he is touch-aversed until you are close, then the touching is required(both gentle and playful and rough, depending if he wants to sooth himself or get energised or let the stim out). The same with the bed situation. He gets attracted long after all the other bonds are formed. He is sex-indifferent, never wanted with anyone so never went there. He is perfectly content with himself. And when it starts, yet again, depending on what it feels like in the moment.(cannibalism was not the only thing he grew to like in Hell(¬‿¬))
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crooked-wasteland · 4 months
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The rapresentation of abusers in helluva boss is something that particularly frustrates me, Stella in particular, it seems to be done just to victimaze certain characters not to show the complex dynamics of those relationships. It seems to me the writers aren't mature enough to handle these topics properly.
Abuse: The Heart of Vivienne Medrano
Christmas 1962, a man renowned the western world over for his revolutionary approach to animation sat in a withering melancholy as he watched what could only be called a cinematic masterpiece based on a novel classic. Walt Disney, now in the twilight years of his life, saw the walls closing in and his legacy coming to a close. This man, who pioneered the animated feature film, saw his greatest accomplishment as his greatest obstacle. The man responsible for the tales brought to life of Cinderella, Snow White, Pinocchio, and Dumbo felt trapped in his achievement. “I wish,” Walt lamented, “I could make a picture like that.”
To Kill a Mockingbird was a piece that challenged its audience. The discussion of a white man defending a black man in southern America, decades before the civil rights movement. The movement that, at the time the movie hit cinemas, was in its infancy. Released during the height of the historically revisionist counter movement taking place to combat the rising push of African Americans towards their human rights. The last film Walt Disney ever saw the production of before his death in 1966 was The Jungle Book, a movie that was the epitome of “Safe” and a message that upheld the status quo of segregation.
It wasn’t until 1972 that the media of animation became raucously adult with those political and challenging concepts Disney felt were unattainable. Fritz the Cat was an X-rated animated film composed of vignettes that were unapologetically perverse, violent, and aggressively political. Critical of politicians and the police with a sympathetic if exploitative lens towards the LGBT and racial minority communities Brooklyn-based director Ralph Bakshi grew up around. Bakshi proved that animation was not strictly a child-friendly media and that adult animation could be financially and critically successful.
(For more on Ralph Bakshi's career and animation history)
If one has ever had the opportunity to listen to a Brad Bird (director of Ratatouille and The Incredibles) interview, it is clear to see that the success of Bakshi was generally quite limited. That animation is considered a genre and not a medium of art has resulted in animated films being knee-capped in the box office. There is far more potential to animation, highlighted by Howard Ashton in his collaboration with Disney studios during the Renaissance. Responsible for resurrecting the feature-length animated movie through The Little Mermaid and credited for the monumental success of Best Picture Award winner Beauty and the Beast, Ashton once said that the potential animation was ideal for musical theatre. The limitless possibilities given the medium gave the possibility of introducing Broadway to the common folk who didn’t live in New York and otherwise couldn’t afford the theater. He was quoted saying that live action musical films were “an exercise in stupidity,” highlighting the freedom that comes with a blank page.
However, the success of animation, and media in general, comes down to the message the media wishes to send. The reason the Disney Renaissance films have enjoyed their position as cornerstones of pop culture and creativity was because it did introduce the artform of musical theater into homes and made them readily accessible to everyone with an even heightened sense of fantasy that revitalized Walt’s ethos of making films for the child in everyone.
With Bakshi, it was the loud and violently political message of a revolution taking place. This continues in adult animation with the Simpsons, a series critical of hyper-capitalist America and the fallout of Reagan’s economic disaster that the effects of which are still being felt today and a satire of toxic masculinity and abusive family dynamics.
So, ultimately, the value of a piece of media is a cross between its social artistic influence and the message the creators are intending to make. While Medrano’s influence on the field of indie animation is often mischaracterized as a “pioneer”, the fact is that indie animation and pilots have existed and been funded before Spindlehorse existed. It is simply that Medrano has had the spotlight handed to her for the myth surrounding the production and subsequent success of his indie projects. Artistically, her influence can be summarized as a double-edged sword. For some, she is the motivation for inspiring artists to connect with the community to one day, hopefully, create their own work. On the other hand, she is the cautionary tale of why investing in an indie project is a financial risk for an audience member and a risk to the community as a whole that poses a real danger of making the indie sphere financially cannibalistic, as her public persona is off-putting to “normies” and her show is simply not good.
Much like Disney, the man in 1962, and Disney the company circa 2023, the revolution of animating "because you can" loses its luster very quickly. Without something profound to say, an entire company, regardless of its social influence, can fade into irrelevance despite still being "successful". The story of Disney is a cautionary tale for Indie animation as a whole and Spindlehorse in specific.
And that is the other axis on this chart. Her narrative lacks a message worth telling, and that’s very much due to her not having anything worthwhile to say.
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“I really liked when things and shows and stories allow the characters to be flawed, and allow them to grow and to change. And I think that’s something that’s, you know, the world is not black and white. And I like things that explore the gray and that and the complexity, of life and mistakes and of things like that.” - Vivienne Medrano
It is not for want of mockery that I carefully transcribe Medrano’s words in her interview. To read the words aloud tells the story just as clearly as I have set out to do here. This is someone who is highly inspired by better media, who has ideas and a belief that she has something to say. But that is where the belief ends. There is no conclusion to that thought any more than there is one in the unfocused and run-on sentences she rambles along throughout the interview. She talks of “Things” without clarity, because she herself is a fundamentally incurious individual who has never once spent the time critically analyzing herself, let alone the work of others to better grasp what about it resonated with her. She merely consumes art insatiably and without any substance. Like a diet of fruit, it has a superficial veneer of positive value. Fruit would be considered healthy as it is “natural”. However, it is the nutritional equivalent of candy, lacking vital components that are necessary to sustain basic life, it is pure sugar. Her work, similarly, lacks any value of depth that would qualify as meaning.
Which comes back to what the message is in her work.
When it comes to others in the field of indie animation, Medrano does not have many friends. In response to the Lackadaisy situation, creator Tracy explained why she returned Medrano’s donation. For one, the donation was not Medrano’s money, but money she crowd sourced from her employees. While the $5k for the producer spot of the fundraiser would have not been a dent in her personal wallet, Medrano is so uninterested in supporting fellow creators while presenting an impression of camaraderie that she instead took money from the people she is in charge of the paychecks for to get her name in the credits of another creator’s work. In regards to why Medrano was declined her support, it was due to numerous individuals who had such an awful experience working for Medrano that they did not want her involvement associated with the project to any extent. When the money was returned, she made the situation extremely public and encouraged harassment by liking tweets attacking Tracy and the Iron Circus team.
A well-known member of Medrano’s crew, Hunter B, was leaked speaking crassly of other animation projects that were still in the process of production, met with support from other members in the discord. One of these creators being Ashley Nicoles from Far-Fetched. A former friend and creative partner on the Hazbin Pilot whose podcast streams featuring Edward Bosco and Michael Kovach single-handedly maintained interest in the show until the winter of 2021, free of charge. Ashley once spoke of how Medrano would speak disparagingly of an employee to her, saying that this individual was “Too unstable to work with”. Which, regardless of whether or not that is Medrano’s honest opinion, counts as defamation by an employer. It is the exact reason why most previous employers will not give a negative, detailed review of a former employee, maintaining instead to verify facts of the employment. If Erin Frost was more experienced and less involved in social media exposed culture, they could have easily sued Medrano and Spindlehorse for damaging their reputation in their field of employment.
Which circles back to Medrano’s self-assigned message of her show:
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“Abusers rely on your silence. They rely on knowing you can’t retaliate without consequence. That they can tell any lies and vague around without getting called out. But we see you, and you don’t have the power you think you do anymore. A message I put into my work. “Fuck you!” - Vivienne Medrano
Medrano, who has vague and sub tweeted individuals like Lackadaisy Tracy, The Diregentlemen, Michael Kovach, and Ashley Nicoles. Medrano who has instigated and incited harassment campaigns knowing that no one can call her out without severe and relentless backlash from her cultish fanbase that she personally encourages through positive reinforcement of liking the tweets of fans. Medrano who relies on the silence of other creators in the field due to the fear of her ire collapsing their projects before they even have a chance to begin.
Vivienne Medrano with an extensive abusive history that continues to this day, has something to say about abuse.
What Medrano has to say about abuse comes from someone who has the position of superiority in all of her relationships, but feels like she’s the outcast and bullied loser. Her self insert that is repeatedly expressed in every character at one point or another is how easily they abuse those around them just because they can, but that the narrative justifies their “acting out” because they are sad. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “An abuser externalizes the causes of their behavior. They blame their violence on circumstances.”
Indeed, the lists of abusive characteristics and traits, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, overwhelmingly encompasses the characteristics shown by characters like Loona, Blitz and Stolas that Medrano repeatedly has attempted to rationalize, justify and minimize. Which, “An abuser often denies the existence or minimizes the seriousness of the violence [including emotional and mental abuse] and its effect on the victim and other family members.”
It is not surprising, then, that the conversation of abuse in Helluva Boss is often infuriating. The narrative underplays the harm done by characters we are supposed to see as “good”. Not allowing for them to grow or change, but ignoring and minimizing the behavior, justifying it through circumstances and perpetuating the false belief that victims are not, themselves, abusers.
One of the first blog post rants I ever made about mental health and abuse was the affirmation that not all victims of abuse are survivors. I wholly stand by that. Victims of abuse perpetuate abuse. A victim and an abuser are one in the same, whereas a survivor is someone who has actually done the difficult work of being self-critical. And the one thing we all are very aware of is how much Vivienne Medrano rejects criticism.
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Hi, can i request a headcanon for rottmnt turtles with a gn!reader who loves watching movies and play video games with them?
TMNT Boys x Gamer!GN!Reader Headcanons
Pairings: Rise!TMNT x GN!Reader
Summary: How the boys would react to a S/O who enjoys gaming and movies
Warnings: none
Type: Romantic ❤️, Fluff ☁️
A/N: Sorry this took so long! I'm working on applying to colleges right now, so I'm super behind with requests! Hope you enjoy <3
Headcanons start below cut.
Rise of the TMNT Masterlist
Main Masterlist
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Rise!Raph x Reader
Raph is pretty into games
He's not as good as his younger brothers, but he takes every opportunity he can to bond with you
Due to his size, he can sometimes struggle with games since the controller is so much smaller than his hands
Though he hides it well, Raph is just as competitive as his brothers
Since he sometimes struggles with gaming, he makes sure to always team up with you during games night to make sure he's on the winning team
Raph prefers cozy games like animal crossing or stardew valley over more competitive games
One of his favorite things to do with you is vist each others islands and have animal crossing dates
Aside from gaming, watching movies is one of his favorite ways to spend time with you
Before you started dating, he would drag his brothers and April out to the living room for mandatory movie nights at least once a month
Once you start dating, the two of you have ~private~ movies nights together once a week
He’ll watch just about anything, but he can’t handle horror
His favorite movies are either action movies or Disney movies
Since the two of you can go out to normal movie theaters, the two of you sneak out and watch drive-in movies from the rooftops of New York
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Rise!Donnie x Reader
Donnie is very into video games
If you've seen the purple game, you know how competitive Donnie can get
If you're as good as him, he'll be very excited to have a worthy challenger
His brothers can never keep up with him, so the two of you will spend days locked up in his lab playing video games until Raph breaks down the door and makes you sleep
Even if you’re not as good as Donnie, he still won’t go easy on you
He may love you, but he loves winning even more
Like Raph, Donnie always teams up with you during games night
Not that he can't hold his own, but he enjoys the bragging rights when the two of you absolutely demolish his brothers in super smash bros
Even though he'd much prefer to play video games, Donnie will still watch movies when you ask
Even though he agrees to watch movies with you, you won't always enjoy it
Donnie has the tendency to talk during movies
A LOT
Don't expect to actually hear what's going on in the movie
Donnie will spend the entire movie pointing out scientific inaccuracies and spoiling the plot, especially if it’s a sci-fi movie
Donnie is very theatre kid coded, so I think he would really enjoy musicals
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RIse!Leo x Reader
Leo LOVES gaming
He's not as good as Donnie or Mikey, but he's just as competitive
In addition to be super competitive, Leo's also a very sore loser
He's the type of person to turn off the tv right before someone beats him in Mario Kart
Leo would team up with you during game nights to leech off of you and take all of the credit
He also really enjoys watching movies with you, especially if you’re into sci-fi
Instead of staying cooped up in the lair, he usually just portals you into the back of regular movie theaters where you won’t be seen
Leo also tends to talk during movies
He doesn’t spoil the plot like Donnie, but he’ll ask you questions about the movie that you also don’t know the answer to
He’ll spend the whole movie asking you who certain characters are and why they do certain things, which you also don’t know because you haven’t seen the movie
He also really enjoys movie marathons, so be prepared to spend a week straight watching the entire Jupiter Jim franchise
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Rise!Mikey x Reader
Mikey is the second best gamer in the family after Donnie, but he’s not quite as competitive
Besides Raph, Mikey is the most likely to go easy on you and let you win
Even though he’ll go easy on you, the same cannot be said for his brothers
During game night he’ll make sure to pair up with you and give you some of the credit when the two of you beat his brothers
Mikey is a really big movie lover, so watching movies with you is one of his favorite things
He’ll watch any movie you want, but prefers not to watch horror
His favorite type of movie is definitely Disney movies
His brothers are always hovering when the two of you hang out at the lair, so he prefers sneaking over to your house and watching movies in a blanket fort in your room
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the-ace-with-spades · 8 months
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Fic idea I'll probably never write:
Actor Bradley + still naval aviator Jake AU
Bradley was a theater kid and he was a really good theatre kid - his last high school won a national award for a musical he had the main male role and a play he's the main character and his theater club teacher encouraged him to send audition tape for acting schools. He does, just to get her off his back and he gets further auditions for Juilliard and Tisch, somehow.
Mav, who is trying very hard to change Bradley's plans to join the Navy by encouraging him to apply to as many colleges as he can, tells him to go, just in case he likes it. He gets a spot in Juilliard around the same time he finds out Mav pulled his papers from USNA. It's supposed to be just something to fill the time until he can join NOCS when he gets his degree, he doesn't actually think he'll be an actor full time, he just wants to be as far away from Mav and Ice as he can.
Things happen fast - he has his first Broadway role before he graduates. Within the next few years, he stars in an extremely popular TV show in one of the main male roles, he's got a side role in a box office breaking movie, and then he gets cast as the main character for a series of action movies (ala MI or FaF). He's one of those actors that does dangerous stunts himself and who is called a madman by most of his co-stars and gets a reputation as the crazy but absolutely the funniest and kindest guy ever who stars in way too many productions every year. Fans know him as the guy who engages in charity work, donates and promotes charities for orphans, veterans and minorities and as the guy that goes to random bars and sings musical numbers on untuned pianos. His main revenue are the popular action movies but he stars in more traditionally demanding roles for the challenge (dramas, tragedies, thrillers) and romantic comedies and musicals for funnsies and in indie movies way under his budget for the sake of artistic creation.
(Mav and Ice watched every single production he had been in, a few unavailable Broadway productions aside. Most of them, they have on DVDs.)
He had a lot of luck because his breaking side role was directed by one guy and that guy loved him and pushed him into many of his movies later and then the same happened with another two directors.
His career hits a tough point when his sexuality comes out (unwillingly). There are rumors and a lot of people who were fans of his action movies come around and talk shit about him and he decides to take a break from acting for a bit.
He's a year into the break when his friendly director calls and says he's got a military action movie for him. A movie about naval aviators, about fighter pilots. To be filmed raw, in real planes, in real flight, with real pilots.
Bradley says no straight away. But then his friend is like, I know you've got a pilot licence already and you fly planes for fun, don't you want to share the fun with the rest of the cast, don't you want to fly a fighter jet?
Bradley has always wanted to fly a fighter jet, that's what hurts most about it all, so he agrees.
He hasn't talked to Mav or Ice for over fifteen years when he finds out that the Dagger Squadron the cast got their assigned pilots from is led by Pete Maverick Mitchell and said Pete Maverick Mitchell is going to be performing the most demanding jet stunts needed for the movie.
Bradley's assigned pilot for the rest of the film is a very reluctant Jake Hangman Seresin.
Hangman doesn't watch movies and definitely not action movies. He's a romantic comedy kinda guy because his life is an action movie with ad breaks for paper work and training. So he doesn't know Bradley and like hell he's going to be flying for some hollier than thou actor - he's going to put him in his place and make him puke as many times as possible the minute he sits in his backseat.
It doesn't work. Bradshaw doesn't puke once. He's almost impressed.
He's definitely impressed when Bradshaw stops by the Hard Deck, looking absolutely not like someone who earns millions every year, wearing an old Hawaiian shirt, an old pair of jeans, sunglasses and a worn out Casio watch, and Nikes that have seen better days and sits down at the piano with Jake's squad and bursts out songs after songs, sounding like a freaking angel. He has to leave when people start asking about autographs from left and right.
Maybe Bradshaw is hot, whatever. He still doesn't think he's a big deal, he's probably a mediocre actor at best, some pretty boy with rich parents that could send him to acting school and who probably grew up with money that could buy him a career.
They have problems working together, obviously, and Bradley is like, fuck that, and tells him the address of a private airport and tells him to show up at four.
Jake thinks he's going to make him fly a small private plane for the sake of bonding but instead Bradshaw packs into the passenger seat of a new piston sport plane and starts it off. Doesn't explain anything, just takes Jake up in the sky, ignores his chatter until they're in the air space where he can do some funny bits and maneuvers.
At some point, the plane tells him Bradshaw is pulling 6 Gs.
In the end, Bradshaw tells him, "I don't care what you think of me, I just want you to fly the goddamn plane like I'd."
And okay, maybe Hangman starts finding him a bit hot.
He googles him. And watches some of his movies. And his rom coms and his musicals and he reads and reads and maybe Bradshaw isn't that bad.
They start to talk between film takes and then he takes Bradshaw to relax to a taco stand where he won't be recognised. Then to an ice cream place, and bowling, and surfing, and then again and again, until finally, Bradley lands at Jake's house.
In Jake's bed.
Everything would be absolutely fine but not even a few days later not only tabloids find out all about Bradshaw's gay navy romance - his sexual orientation being a topic Bradley's been avoiding as much as he could in the past year - but also about all the things he's told Jake during their dates, like about Goose and about his (unnamed) Navy gay parents and about how tough it was for him in college and then how tough it was being in the closet while in the industry.
Obviously, Bradley thinks the worst about Jake and how all that info surfaced.
(this gets somehow resolved but I didn't think that far - they get together and Bradley reconciles with Mav and Ice and they have an awkward meet the parents moment when Hangman finds out)
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hephaestuscrew · 8 months
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"Minkowski's been talking about Sondheim again…": Minkowski's love of musical theatre and what it reveals about her characterisation and her relationships
TL;DR: Renée Minkowski's love of musicals, while it might seem just like a mundane character detail, is used to give depth to her character because it contrasts with expectations of her from both the listening audience and the other characters. Her willingness or unwillingness to share this interest in different circumstances reveals her relationships with other characters at various points. Since this is a long one, if you'd rather read it as a document, you can view it here: Google Doc version.
"She actually really cares about these talent shows": Episode 8 (Box 953)
In the early episodes of Season 1, Minkowski is presented (largely through Eiffel's unreliable perspective) purely as a strict no-nonsense authority figure without much emotional depth, the kind of person who only likes things that are useful, purposeful, or mandated by Command. In contrast, musical theatre is a creative pursuit that has nothing to do with the mission of the Hephaestus and is viewed by many people as fairly frivolous or silly. The gradual exploration of Minkowski's passion for musicals is one of the many ways that the show expands and challenges our understanding of her as a character. 
The first indication that we get of her interest in musicals is through her entry into the infamous talent show, something that is required as part of the mission. Minkowski really cares about 'crew morale' activities in general, even when they actually have a negative effect on morale and even before she's friends with any of her crew (for example, the Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners in the earlier stage of the mission), perhaps partly because doing things in the "right way" is important to her. 
But Eiffel senses that the talent shows aren't just about rules for her: "it’s bad enough when she makes us do something just because it’s military protocol, but I think that she actually really cares about these talent shows". This might be the first indication that we get of Minkowski caring deeply about anything that isn't inherently part of her role as a Commander. Moments like this are part of the gradual process of giving us insight into her character beyond the Commander archetype that she tries to embody. And yet, she only indulges her theatrical passion because something mandatory gives her permission, or an excuse, to let another part of herself out.
Of course, to satisfy the needs of a talent show, she'd only need to provide a performance of a few minutes. But Eiffel mentions "the second act of the play" - which along with Hera's comment that "Isabel isn't the biggest role in the play" - implies that Minkowski was intending to put on the whole of Pirates of Penzance as her talent show act, rather than a few of the songs or some kind of medley. (I suppose that Eiffel could be exaggerating or Minkowski might have been planning to do extracts from different parts of the play, but I prefer the interpretation in which Minkowski gets to be more ridiculous.) 
Even though no one else would be willing to be in her production of Pirates of Penzance, Minkowski casts Hera as Isabel, a role with two lines and no solo singing. I found some audition notes for this play which said "The traditional staging gives [Isabel] more prominence than the solo opportunities of the part suggest, so she must be a good actress" which does make me sad in relation to Hera's inability to have a more significant role by being physically present on stage. 
It’s sweet that Hera still wants to take part though. She tells Eiffel "Pirates of Penzance is a classic of 19th century comic opera", so either she’s absorbed what Minkowski has told her about the show, or she’s done her own research and formed her own opinions. I enjoy the fact that Hera is the one Hephaestus crew member who shows potential to share Minkowski's musical theatre appreciation; I like to think that this is something they could explore together post-canon.
Anyway, I'm obsessed with the idea that Minkowski was planning to play every character except one in Pirates of Penzance, a show which is designed to have 10 principal characters and a chorus of 14 men. It seems that her contribution to the talent show was supposed to be an entire two-hour two-act musical, with costumes and props, in which she would play almost all of the parts. This is very funny to me as the perhaps predictable consequence of giving an ambitious and frustrated grown-up theatre kid a position of authority and asking them to arrange a talent show. Minkowski knows that the audience will be made up of her subordinates who are theoretically obliged by the chain of command to watch and listen, so she absolutely tries to make the most of that opportunity. There's probably also a degree to which she limits other people's involvement in her musical because - as with her other endeavors - she wants the outcome to be almost entirely within her control (something that is usually pretty much impossible in as collaborative a medium as musical theatre).
Of course, Minkowski's behaviour in most of the talent show episode is affected by her being drugged by Hilbert. This creates an exaggerated situation which is the first real opportunity for Minkowski to be something other than the strict sensible authoritarian Commander and the foil to Eiffel's jokey laid-back attitude. I don't agree with ideas that being intoxicated brings out anyone's true self (especially in the absence of consent for the intoxication), but it seems pretty clear that being under the influence of whatever was in Hilbert's concoction caused Minkowski to fully commit to a level of manic enthusiasm for her musical production that might have otherwise been obscured by her professionalism. It's a particular kind of person who belts showtunes when drunk, and Minkowski is that kind of person, even if that's not how she wants to present herself. (As a sidenote, I seem to remember that they took Emma Sherr-Ziarko's script off her to help her sound more drunk. It's an excellent performance.)
Minkowski wants interval ice cream. She wants "pirate costumes" (and she'll threaten to shoot a man to get them). She wants "swashes and buckles". She wants whatever props she can get her hands on (including a real cannon). This show is important to her, even though only three other people will witness it and two of them actively don't want to be there. It’s important to her for its own sake.
Eiffel says Minkowski wants "a second pair of eyes to tell her if the prop sabre for her Major-General costume was a bit much…"  While I certainly wouldn't put it past Goddard Futuristics to have a prop sabre on the station for no apparent reason, it feels more likely that she might have made it or adapted some existing item. Which suggests that maybe she was that passionate about the props even before Hilbert drugged her. 
Even so, it does feel significant that Minkowski's love of musicals is only revealed in the episode in which she is drugged, exhibiting lowered inhibitions, exaggerated behaviour, and an "impaired euphoric effect". Her love of musical theatre is initially revealed through a professional structure that provides permission, and then further emphasised by a forced intoxication that exaggerates some impulses that perhaps she already had.
"Some hobbies other than making trains run on time": Episode 17 (Bach to the Future)
After Eiffel tells to find Minkowski to find something else to do while her work duties have quietened down, they have the following exchange:
EIFFEL: You must have some hobbies other than making trains run on time. Something to do with friends? Boyfriends? MINKOWSKI: Of course I do, but, well, there aren't really a lot of opportunities for rock climbing or trail hiking in the immediate vicinity. 
Even though this quote doesn't mention musicals, I've included it here for two reasons. Firstly, it's very funny to me that, even after the talent show debacle, Eiffel acts like he's never had any evidence of Minkowski's hobbies. She tried to perform a whole play almost single-handedly and it didn't occur to him that this might indicate an interest of hers outside of work. I think this reflects the fairly two-dimensional view that Eiffel has previously had of Minkowski, which her interest in musical theatre didn't fit into. 
Secondly, it feels notable that Minkowski doesn't mention musical theatre here. She wants to show that she has non-work interests, but without undermining her own authoritative image. Her interest in rock climbing and trail hiking - while it may be genuine - fits with how she wants to be seen as a Commander. These are hobbies which portray her as physically capable, with a high degree of stamina and a willingness to adapt to perhaps less hospitable surroundings. Of course, Minkowski does have these traits and they serve her well on the Hephaestus. But there's not really anything particularly surprising about her expressing these interests. The surprise in this scene comes from the reveal that she has a husband, a character detail which - like her love of musicals - isn't something we'd necessarily expect from the archetype-based view of her we are initially presented with. 
Her interest in rock climbing and trail hiking never come up again, because these details don't really deepen her characterisation (or at least, they aren't really used to deepen her characterisation beyond proving that she isn't entirely all-work-and-no-play). In contrast, Minkowski's love of musicals is brought up over and over because it shows another side of her that she struggles to reveal on the Hephaestus, and that allows more interesting things to be done with her characterisation.
"You wanted to write showtunes": Episode 35 (Need to Know)
Alongside the more high stakes discoveries prompted by the leak from Kepler's files, we also learn that Minkowski applied to - and was rejected from - the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program.
Up until this point, we've only had evidence that Minkowski enjoys performing in musicals. But here we learn that Minkowski doesn't just love watching or performing in musicals - she wanted to write them too. This suggests a creative side to her that we never see her fully express.
The course
The Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program claims to be the only course of its kind in the world and it accepts just 30 students each year. The current application process requires applicants to: upload play scripts or recordings of songs they've written; answer a large number of extended response questions about their creative process and views on musical theatre; write a 'statement of purpose' which has to talk about why they are applying and include 3 original ideas for musicals; provide a professional resume and a digital portfolio; complete an exercise of writing in response to a prompt; and undergo an interview. The process might have changed somewhat since Minkowski would have been applying (which, if it was soon after she finished college, might have been around the early 2000s) or it might be different in Wolf 359's alternate universe, but I think we can safely assume that applying to this course was a serious undertaking that required an intense amount of commitment and work. 
Applying to a course like that isn't something you do half-heartedly or on a whim. You couldn't apply to this course if you hadn't done a fair amount of musical theatre writing already. (The course requires applicants to choose to apply as bookwriters, lyricists, or composers, but I'm not going to make a guess here as to which of these Minkowski went for.) The fact that Minkowski wanted to study this course suggests that she was seriously considering trying to make a career out of musical theatre writing. In Once In A Lifetime, she tells Cutter that commanding a space station has always been her dream job, but we've got evidence here that it wasn't her only dream job. There's something kind of funny and kind of sad about the idea that writing musicals was her back-up / fall-back career path. She does not like to make life easy for herself.
The revelation 
This information is revealed against Minkowski's will. It's not something she wanted people to find out, and she isn't happy about them knowing:
JACOBI: "Dear Renée, thank you for your interest in the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program..." MINKOWSKI: Oh, come on!  JACOBI: (pressing on) "We are sorry to say, we will not be able to offer you a spot in this year's blah blah blah." Oh this is too good. You wanted to write showtunes?  MINKOWSKI: Number one? Shut up. Number two, why are my personal records on there?! [...] How is it in any way relevant?! JACOBI: Oh, I think it's very relevant. I mean, if you're sending someone to pilot ships in deep space, you want to make sure that they can, you know... paint with all the colors of the wind.  Jacobi CRACKS UP - and, although to a lesser degree, so does Lovelace. Minkowski looks at her: really?  LOVELACE: Sorry, Minkowski. It's... it's a little funny.  MINKOWKSI: No, it isn't!
Minkowski seems defensive and embarrassed here. She obviously doesn't trust everyone there with this revelation (Jacobi, Maxwell, Lovelace, and Hera are all present). She considers this information to be "personal" and irrelevant and not even "a little funny". She's used to reactions like Jacobi's (and to a lesser extent Lovelace's); in Ep41 Memoria, she says "most people think it's hilarious that I like musicals" (see below for more thoughts about this quote). But the fact that these mocking reactions are expected doesn't mean that they don't bother her. She wants so badly to be taken seriously and, in this scene, her interest in musical theatre seems to be incompatible with that. Jacobi reacts the way that he does because of the idea that I've already expressed, that a passion for musical theatre does not fit with the serious authoritative image that Minkowski has often presented. It's not the typical hobby of a soldier, especially not a Commander.
To me, the way Lovelace laughs suggests that she might not have previously known about Minkowski's love of musicals, or at least perhaps not the full extent of it. At any rate, it's definitely news to Jacobi. And Minkowski clearly hasn't talked about it enough for it not to feel like a big reveal for her.
The rejection 
It's notable that this reveal is not just that she wanted to write for the stage, but also that she failed to get into a course that might have helped her work towards that goal. This of course compounds Minkowski's discomfort at having this information revealed. Not only did she want to write showtunes, but she encountered rejection in her attempts to do so. This detail implies that perhaps it wasn't just the appeal of her spacefaring dream that stopped her going down a theatrical career path. 
I'm about to move more into headcanon territory rather than just straightforward analysis, but I personally believe that, while Minkowski auditioned for a lot of musicals (particularly as a child / young person), she was never cast as the main role. She seems embarrassed about her interest in musical theatre in a way that (at least judging by people I've encountered) people who were always the lead in their school / college productions don't tend to be. 
We don't have much evidence about her actual level of singing/acting ability, given that she is inebriated during the only time we hear her sing in the podcast. However, it resonates with other aspects of her characterisation to imagine that Minkowski was generally good enough to get an ensemble part but never quite good enough to be cast as a main part. I think she might see only ever being cast as part of the ensemble, and failing to get into the Tisch Musical Theatre Writing programme, as slightly more down-to-earth examples of the same pattern as her repeated rejections from NASA. She is desperate to prove herself. She is "someone who very much wants to matter. To do something important." When she casts herself as almost every part in Pirates of Penzance, she is finally taking the opportunity to be a main character, an opportunity which I imagine had been denied to her over and over in both a literal and metaphorical sense.
"It's just from a play I saw once": Episode 41 (Memoria)
The next scene I want to talk about is from a memory of Hera's, which took place on Day 57 of the Hephaestus mission and in which Minkowski appears to be talking about the Stephen Sondheim musical Sunday in the Park with George:
MINKOWSKI: Oh, it's just from a play I saw once. It doesn't matter. (BEAT) The guy who sings it is this famous French painter. And his entire life is kinda falling apart. But he can always turn what's happening around him into these beautiful paintings.  HERA: And? MINKOWSKI: And... That's, I don't know. Reassuring, maybe? (BEAT) I don't know why I'm going on about this. You don't care.  HERA: I think it's interesting.  MINKOWSKI: Yeah? Most people think it's hilarious that I like musicals.  HERA: I don't see what's funny about it.  MINKOWSKI: Well, thank you Hera, but you're not exactly... you know.  HERA: I'm not... what? 
There's a couple of different things I want to pick out from this exchange. Firstly, the line "Most people think it's hilarious that I like musicals" makes me sad. I don't think she's talking about people on the Hephaestus there. Judging by the quote I talked about from Bach to the Future, Eiffel definitely wouldn't have registered Minkowski's love of musicals at this stage, and I doubt Hilbert cares at all about the hobbies of his fellow crew members. So Minkowski is talking about experiences that she's had on Earth, of people mocking her interest in musicals and thinking it doesn't fit with who she is. You can hear the impact of those experiences in Minkowski's reluctance to elaborate, in the way she says that something she obviously cares about doesn't matter, in her assumption that Hera doesn't care.
Secondly, this scene is a complicated one for Minkowski and Hera's relationship. On the one hand, Minkowski freely talks to Hera about something she's passionate about, and Hera listens and expresses interest. Hera validates Minkowski's interest in musical theatre without making a thing of it being weird and Minkowski thanks her. Again, it’s shown as an interest they could could potentially share.
But on the other hand, it seems like part of the reason Minkowski feels able to open up to Hera is because at this point Minkowski doesn't see opening up to Hera as fully equivalent to opening up to a fellow human. She doesn't just accept Hera not making fun of her interest; instead it seems Minkowski is about to imply that this lack of judgment indicates Hera's difference from humans (although she does have the decency not to say it outright). Minkowski's expectation of judgment from others contributes to her saying something very hurtful to Hera here. (This kind of potential consequence of negative self-attitude is explored a lot with Eiffel, so it's interesting that Minkowski can sometimes have a similar issue.)
Minkowski and Hera's conversation is interrupted when:
The DOOR OPENS.  EIFFEL: Hey, Minkowski, we've - What are you guys talking about?  MINKOWSKI: We were just discussing how I'm going to take away your hot water privileges if you don't reset the long-range scan.
Eiffel can obviously tell that he's walked in on a conversation that is about something other than work, or he wouldn't have asked. But Minkowski actively chooses not to tell him that she was talking to Hera about musicals. Perhaps she doesn't know how to open up to a human subordinate about it. Perhaps she doesn't trust him not to make fun of her. Perhaps she just doesn't have any impulse to talk about her interests with him. Either way, if Minkowski's love of musicals is something which reflects a side of her personality outside of her Commander role, this is a moment where she chooses not to take an opportunity to share that side of herself with Eiffel. This reflects the emotional distance between them three months into the mission, which forms a nice contrast with the next couple of quotes I'm going to talk about.
"Composition. Balance. Harmony.": Episode 54 (The Watchtower)
When Eiffel comes directly face to face with alien life, he discovers that music is the human invention that fascinates the Dear Listeners:
EIFFEL: You haven't figured out music?  BOB: ORDER. DESIGN. TENSION. COMPOSITION. BALANCE. HARMONY.  EIFFEL: (low, to himself) Minkowski's been talking about Sondheim again…
I only learned in the course of writing this post that in this moment the Dear Listeners are almost exactly quoting a repeated phrase used throughout Sunday in the Park with George. The titular protagonist lists various combinations of these qualities in multiple songs in reference to his art. In the closing song, the lyrics are "Order. Design. Tension. Composition. Balance. Light. [...] Harmony." It's not only Eiffel's references that the Dear Listeners are incorporating into their speech - they've picked this one up from Minkowski. This also suggests that some element of her appreciation for musicals and the way she talks about them has fed into the Dear Listeners' understanding of the human phenomenon of music. The Dear Listeners aren't just parroting - they understood the quote enough that they left out the word "light", arguably the only quality in that phrase which isn't a big part of music as well as visual art. Eiffel likes music too, but I don't think that this is how he'd talk about his favourite songs.
This is a refrain about finding order and beauty out of the chaos and uncertainty of life, which was also the aspect of Sunday in the Park with George that Minkowski focused on when talking about it in Memoria. It suggests that art/music could be something governed by rules and principles, which is potentially something that appeals both to Minkowski and to the Dear Listeners.
Eiffel's response to this reference is one of those little hints that reminds us that Eiffel and Minkowski have spent a lot of time together and that not all of that time has involved them being at each others' throats or actively in a life-or-death situation. Some of it has just been Minkowski going on about a musical she loves and Eiffel (willingly or not) paying enough attention that he recognises this phrase as a Sondheim quote that Minkowski has talked about. I suppose that this quote might have been in Eiffel's pop-culture-brain anyway, but judging from Eiffel's general tastes and the fact that I don't think Sunday in the Park with George is one of the more commonly known Sondheim musicals among non-musical fans, it seems more likely that this quote is something he only knows because Minkowski has talked about it. 
Eiffel sounds exasperated at the mention, like he's heard Minkowski talk about Sondheim far too much. But I'd argue that this still says something positive about their relationship, when we contrast it with a couple of other moments I've already mentioned. Firstly, when her previous musical theatre ambitions are revealed to Jacobi, Maxwell, and Lovelace in Need to Know, Minkowski seems embarrassed and defensive. Secondly, in the memory from Memoria, she avoids telling Eiffel that she was talking about this same musical. Yet, by the time The Watchtower takes place, Eiffel is sick of hearing Minkowski talk about Sondheim. She doesn't have the same barriers up in sharing her interests with him, even though he doesn't have the same interests. I think this is a demonstration of how comfortable she feels with him. It's a hint at the kind of easy downtime that they've sometimes shared.
"One day more": Episode 61 (Brave New World)
Eiffel recognises another musical reference of Minkowski’s in the finale. As the crew are preparing for their final confrontation with Cutter and co., Minkowski quotes Les Misérables, mostly to herself - but Eiffel recognises the lyrics and joins in:
EIFFEL: Hey - chin up, soldier. We're almost through. Just one more day, and then we're done.  MINKOWSKI: Yeah, one more day. (more to herself) The time is now, the place is here - one day more.  EIFFEL: - one day more.  They both stop, dead in their tracks. MINKOWSKI: Did you just - ?  EIFFEL: Was that what I - ?  They look at each other: No way. And BURST INTO LAUGHTER.  EIFFEL: Man... this is really it, huh? The end of everything. 
It feels really important that Minkowski and Eiffel share this moment of togetherness before she tries to send him back to Earth and before the rest of the action goes down. I think there’s some nice symbolism about them finding a way to communicate that they both understand. Making references is Eiffel's thing, and musicals are Minkowski's thing, so this is a synthesis of their two approaches. Again, there's a contrast with Minkowski's previous unwillingness to share her musical theatre passions with Eiffel (at least without the mitigating circumstances of a mandatory talent show and some kind of intoxicating substance).
I talked about the significance of the fact that they reference this particular musical in this post from ages ago. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler for Les Misérables to say that the revolution that the song One Day More is building up to does not end well for the revolutionaries. When Eiffel says "Just one more day, and then we're done", it encompasses both the possibility that the crew will escape to travel back to Earth and the possibility that they will all die. Minkowski's reference to a famously tragic musical suggests that it's the latter possibility that's at the forefront of her mind (right before she tries to send Eiffel away from the danger). But Les Misérables is also a story about people standing together in solidarity against powerful oppressive forces, which gives particular resonance to the way that this reference brings Eiffel and Minkowski together in a moment of being completely on the same wavelength as they prepare to fight Cutter and Pryce's plan.
When they laugh here, it's not about the 'hilariousness' of Minkowski's interest in musicals, it's about their unexpected unison - Eiffel's recognition of Minkowski's reference and Minkowski's surprise at the fact he joined in. It's a laugh of togetherness, of shared understanding, of friendship. It's a moment of lightness in dark times. And that moment is provided by Minkowski's pop culture interests, not Eiffel's. In spite of all they've been through, she's not lost that part of herself, and in fact, she's more open about it, at least to Eiffel.
I'll finish by highlighting what Eiffel says when he's trying to get into character to impersonate Minkowski so he can turn the Sol around:
EIFFEL: Umm... yes, this is Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski. I'm... uh... well I sure love schedules, and, uh, musicals. And that man, who I married…
I just think this is a nice example of Eiffel not defining Minkowski solely by her professional Commander role. Sure, she likes schedules (probably in a personal as well a professional capacity to be fair), but she also loves musicals, and her husband. It is a fairly reductive overview of her as a person, but it feels reductive in a fond way, like these things are part of Minkowski's brand to Eiffel in a way that he might affectionately tease her about. (Credit to @commsroom for this thought.) His view of Minkowski has come a long way from "our resident Statsi agent" or even just "you must have some hobbies other than making trains run on time." He doesn't see any contradiction or inherent humour in Lieutenant Commander Renée Minkowski's appreciation of musicals.
Conclusion
Minkowski's love of musical theatre is used to deepen her characterisation and is one of the ways in which we gradually begin to see her complexity beyond the strict Commander archetype. The degree to which she is prepared to share this interest at various points is used to illustrate the nature of her relationships with other characters: a general unwillingness to show a less serious side of herself; a complicated potential shared interest with Hera; and the growing understanding between her and Eiffel.
If you read this whole thing, well done / thank you 😄 It wasn't meant to be this long - it just happened… Feel free to share your thoughts!
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sentypurr · 28 days
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I am interested, what there Stefan and Nathan there majoring in? We alredy know what Robyn was majoring in theatre, and Temi is majoring in history.
Also-can-i-get-a-little-bit-of-information-about-Stefan-please. He-is-my-little-precious-babyboy-and-i-want-to-kiss-him-thanks.
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Nathan is majoring in music! He wants to be a singer and/or music producer in some fashion♥
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Stefan meanwhile is a Fencing major! He's had great passion for it since he was little, and was even team captain back in high school!
Let me see...Stefan comes across as a very, very polite and kind young man. And he is! Very law-abiding, extremely displeased with any sort of misbehavior or remotely criminal activity. The sort to drag you by your wrist back to the grocery store if you so much as accidentally shoplift a small pack of chewing gum.
However, unbeknownst to many, he is EXTREMELY competitive. Even for the smallest of reasons or in things he doesn't excel at- One-upping him is something he almost always takes as a personal challenge, and might even lead him to some subconscious resentment if it keeps happening, even if he's not very proud of that feeling.
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bananaofswifts · 2 months
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01 - Taylor Swift
No one in the music industry wielded more power over the past year than Taylor Swift, who made history at stadiums, movie theaters and on the Billboard charts, leaving even the most seasoned executives speechless. While they’d long celebrated her staggering popularity as a singer, songwriter and performer, her force as a strategic business leader suddenly came into sharper focus — and industry veterans took notes as they watched some of her bravest and most innovative business risks reap remarkable rewards.
At 34, she is one of the music industry’s most charismatic and influential leaders — and she rewrites the rules.
“The piece of advice I would give to the other executives on this list is that the best ideas are usually ones without industry precedent,” Swift tells Billboard. “The biggest crossroads moments of my career came down to sticking to my instincts when my ideas were looked at with skepticism. When someone says to me, ‘But that has never been done successfully before,’ it fires me up. We have to take strategic risks every day in this industry, but every once in a while, you have to really trust your gut and take a flying leap. My rerecordings are my favorite example of this, and I’m extremely grateful to my team and fans for taking that leap with me because it absolutely changed my life.”
Sage advice for an industry in which instinct has largely been supplanted by metrics and data analysis.
In December, Time named Swift its 2023 Person of the Year. In September, after encouraging her 279 million Instagram followers to vote and linking to vote.org, the nonpartisan nonprofit said it received over 35,000 registrations. She appears on the cover of this issue of Billboard and in the No. 1 spot of our annual Power 100 issue because her force across the business of music is now unparalleled — and because she models commitment to innovation that the rest of the business will need in order to tackle the big challenges ahead.
Swift’s gambles have paid off handsomely over the past year.
Her massive The Eras stadium tour, which began in March after she controversially put all the tickets on sale at once, crashing Ticketmaster and sparking mass hysteria, grossed an estimated $906.1 million in 2023 and is poised to become the highest-grossing global tour of all time before it wraps in December, according to Billboard.
The Golden Globe-nominated Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, taped during her six-show run at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., in August, has grossed over $261.6 million worldwide since its October opening, according to AMC Theatres Entertainment. In January, the publicly traded movie-house chain announced that the film’s box-office take made it the highest-grossing concert/documentary picture ever released, surpassing Michael Jackson’s 2009 This Is It. Once again blazing a new path, Swift made a groundbreaking distribution deal directly with AMC Theaters instead of linking with a film studio.
Swift has shaken up the catalog market, too. When Scooter Braun infuriated her by acquiring the master recordings of her first six albums through his Ithaca Holdings and then sold them to investment firm Shamrock Capital at a profit, Swift rerecorded the albums with loving precision and added bonus tracks to the new releases. They performed phenomenally well, as she deftly used her tour to promote them. When her latest rerecording (and 14th studio album overall), 1989 (Taylor’s Version), spent its fifth week at atop the Billboard 200 at the end of 2023, Swift beat Elvis Presley’s record for the most weeks at No. 1 by a solo artist. Her industry market share last year was 1.72%. If she were her own genre, she’d rank ninth for 2023 — bigger than jazz.
“She’s the smartest artist I’ve ever worked with,” says Messina Touring Group’s Louis Messina, who promotes Swift’s tours and has worked with her since 2005. “She outworks everybody and she has always had this vision. If you’re around her, you can’t help but believe in her.” —Melinda Newman
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dockofshame · 9 months
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Hmm let’s do some Brick x Reader Relationship Headcanons.
Brick met you on the show; despite you being on opposing teams he rescued you when you hurt yourself in one of the challenges. Nobody gets left behind, right?
Family is super important to Brick (he did win the “letters home to mom” medal for years). He’ll gush about you to his mom for months and wanted to introduce you, like, yesterday. If you’re not close with yours, his family will welcome you with open arms.
If you are close with your family and you have close friends, he’s 100% asking for their blessing to pursue you. You’re probably his first serious significant other so Brick wants to do everything “right”.
Brick eventually wants to go to fashion school, so when he does, he goes into the world of costume design. He’s come to really like musicals, so if you do as well, even better!
While calm and composed on the outside, he gets a little extra worried if you’re sick, whether it’s a cold or whether you’re having a rough mental health day. He’ll ask how you’re feeling and if there’s anything he can do to help, whether that means just leaving you alone or bringing you home dinner or taking on a few of your day-to-day living activities. I walked the dog for you, Y/N.
Brick’s whole “need to be dominated” thing mostly translates into asking for consent whenever he’s feeling a little extra affectionate… Brick, it’s okay. I promise I’ll speak up if I’m not okay with something.
He’s more into the classic dates (stargazing, a trip to the theatre, ordering takeout and watching a rom-com) but if you’re into the out-of-the-box stuff he’s happy to try that too.
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diyakkul · 3 months
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✩°。⋆THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU HEADCANONS⸜🎥✮
bc I'm bored and I miss them ♡ (diyakkul on AO3) warning for spoilers ahead??
First thing first: Neteyam and Lo'ak are half latinos!! And they perfectly speak Spanish (Lo'ak has a bit of an accent and Neytiri blames Jake's horrible/broken Spanish he had to learn to speak with Mo'at);
Neytiri never wanted Neteyam and Lo'ak to become actors because she didn't want the media to target them as 'nepo babies' due to her past fame;
Neytiri's choice to stop her actress career was solely hers after marrying Jake— he wanted her to continue;
Neteyam's first acting role was playing a tree in an elementary school musical recital;
Lo'ak was the first one to sign himself as an extra to start his acting career and dragged Neteyam with him;
Jake and Neytiri found out their sons were acting as extras while watching a movie on Netflix:
"Hey, doesn't that guy look like Neteyam?" Asked Jake as they were cuddling on the couch. "That guy is Neteyam!" Neytiri shouted after pausing the movie and studying the guy up close.
Their theatre club teacher was the first person they called when James Cameron sent them the script for Pandora;
Neteyam and Lo'ak bought their 'villa' together;
For Lo'ak was love at first sight when he saw Tsireya sitting in the script reading room;
Tsireya used to be a child model and did a few commercials when she was younger;
Tsireya and Ao'nung grew up together since Tonowari and Ronal are best friends;
Rotxo was already their friend since they attended the same high school for 'rich kids';
Ao'nung is the nepo kid par excellence, his first acting role was in one of Tonowari's movies as his own son, and doesn't care about being called a nepo baby;
Tonowari = Dwayne Johnson/The Rock btw;
Ao'nung *stared* at Neteyam throughout the first reading meeting but was so shy and overawed by his beauty that he forgot to say 'hi' back (the rest is history);
Neteyam was glad he had to switch roles with Lo'ak until he realized his character (Rai'uk) had too many scenes with Ao'nung's (Sahné);
After the switch roles news, Tsireya had to listen to Ao'nung's two-hour-long cheer in their usual nightly FaceTime call (Rotxo pretended to be sleeping);
Lo'ak and Spider used to challenge themselves in 'illegal golf cart racing' between a studio and another until James Cameron caught them;
Rotxo and Kiri had their very first kiss in his dressing room in the middle of the first season recording and had been dating ever since secretly;
Rotxo and Kiri used to share secret notes between one take and another;
Neteyam has never accepted roles in musical movies because he thinks he isn't good enough but he occasionally shares song covers on Instagram;
Among the cast, Tsireya is the one who shares the most moments/photo dumps;
Ao'nung had a secret account just to follow Neteyam before opening his own Instagram account;
Neteyam and Rotxo always read fans' tweets together;
Spider's podcast had to be a joke but too many people started following him, so he went with it;
Kiri will more likely end her acting career after the last season of Pandora because she wants to travel the world and do environmental volunteering work with Grace;
Neteyam sometimes thinks about accepting modeling offers;
Ao'nung's Instagram explore page: South Pacific landscapes, RPG games, Neteyam, surfing stuff;
Ao'nung's house is so big that Neteyam didn't meet his boyfriend's parents until two months after they went back together (Tonowari once opened the door for him and Neteyam couldn't stop praising him for his movies, Ao'nung had to drag him away + he met Ao'nung's mother in the middle of the night while he and Ao'nung were making a late night snack in the kitchen);
Neteyam and Ao'nung's housekeeper are partners in crime;
Neteyam and Ao'nung moved close to Lo'ak and Neteyam's old villa since Tsireya moved in with Lo'ak to be neighborhoods;
Ao'nung felt so betrayed by Rotxo after learning he had actually been dating Kiri for all those years he didn't speak to him for two weeks straight (Neteyam had to intervene);
Neteyam and Ao'nung sometimes like to share cute videos about their daily life or do Instagram lives together;
TMI (+18): Rai'uk and Sahné were switch;
Every time rumors about Lo'ak and Tsireya breaking up spread around the internet, they post a story thumbing their noses;
ENDING HEADCANONS! ♡⋆。˚
Neteyam will become a director;
Ao'nung will join the cast of a highly successful action movie after a long hiatus after Pandora's fourth season: it will become a franchise, and Ao'nung'll live off that success.
Lo'ak will still do back-and-forth between horror and action movies;
Tsireya will slowly retire from Hollywood's spotlight after founding a cosmetic and haircare brand that will be a worldwide success (girl boss, she actually will make more money than Lo'ak);
Rotxo will eventually join Kiri in her environmental volunteering work around the world, and they will found two sea animal rescue centers: the first in Awa'atlu and the second in California;
Lo'ak and Tsireya are going to have two twins: Raul, a boy, and Lani, a girl;
Neteyam and Ao'nung will be more than happy to just be the funny gay uncles and will adopt two dogs, a French bulldog named Rainé (after Rai'uk and Sahné's ship name, Ao'nung's choice) and a beagle named Coco (Neteyam wanted to call him Cacao but 'caca' is still the only thing Ao'nung knows in Spanish and laughed too much);
Kiri and Rotxo were fine being the rich uncle&aunt couple until Kiri found out she was pregnant in one of their trips to Awa'atlu, they'll end up having a girl named Raina.
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moonsghostwriter · 3 months
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Matthew Patel x GN!Reader HCs
I'm sooo normal about him I swear
> Sitting in his lap and doing his eyeliner for him, despite the fact that he can do it himself, he likes letting you do it
> Will ask you to sing musical theater duets with him. It Takes Two from Into The Woods? You have it memorized. Love Song from Pippin? Don't even get him started.
> One time you played Emo Boy by Ayesha Erotica in the car just to mess with him
> He almost screamed
> "Y/N WHAT IS THIS SONG?" "What you don't like it?"
> His demon chicks are basically like annoying little sisters and constantly tease you two
> "Eww! They're kissing!" "I DIDN'T EVEN SUMMON YOU GIRLS!"
> Loves giving you forehead kisses, even if you're taller than him, he will get on his tippy-toes and kiss your forehead!!!
> Has real bad abandonment issues... like... real bad.
> Pinky promise believer
> "Y/n do you love me?" "Yes, Matty I love you." "Pinky promise?"
> He can and will challenge you to theatre trivia. He wins every time.
> Likes to lay his head on your chest
> Whenever you cuddle he'll hold onto your waist and lay his head on your chest. He just likes being near you
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nejis-desk · 6 days
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Jack Jeanne Complete Collection - Interview with Terasaki Yuka (Kisa’s Voice Actor) Translation
This short cast interview is from the Jack Jeanne Complete Collection art book!
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Ishida: What were your impressions when you first saw the setting of Jack Jeanne?
Terasaki: It’s a story about teenagers putting on plays together that’s drawn by the creator of Tokyo Ghoul, Ishida Sui-sensei. That information alone was all it took for me to be interested. I’m sure a lot of other people thought the same.
Since it’s a story that takes place in a theatre school, I found the way it's like a game meets theatre to be unique. I also found the aspect that the shows are put on by an all male cast to be really intriguing.
Ishida: When you were voicing Tachibana Kisa, were there any aspects of your performance that you had to be careful about?
Terasaki: Kisa is a character herself, but she is also the stand in for everyone that’s playing the game. That’s why I stuck to the initial impression of the script as much as possible without adding too much of my own flair. I wanted her to be ‘transparent’ like Quartz.
In the romantic scenes especially, I want the player to have their heart racing over what Kisa’s love interest is saying and focus on them. So during those scenes I made sure to act out Kisa’s emotions more subtly. I’d like for those playing to be able to decide their own colours for Kisa, so I left some of her canvas blank. I remember I would go into the recording sessions keeping that in mind.
Ishida: Were there any particular challenges you faced while working on Jack Jeanne?
Terasaki: The singing. When I first listened to the songs with the temporary vocals I was like ‘I’m going to be singing this!?’ and my anxiety quickly turned into terror! I had to reconstruct the way I’d been singing up until then from scratch. It was very difficult and I was unsure about a lot of things, but now thanks to Jack Jeanne I love singing even more than I did before.
Ishida: Other than Kisa, are there any other characters that are your favourite or that you took a liking to?
Terasaki: Tachibana Tsuki… He’s Kisa’s older brother, but there’s still a lot of unsolved mysteries surrounding him. I can’t help but be curious about him. I’d love to read a novel or something about Tsuki-nii when he was a student at Univeil. I’d like to see Fumi-san and the other third years when they weren’t upperclassmen too.
Ishida: Quartz, Onyx, Rhodonite, Amber. If you were to enrol at Univeil, which class would you like to be assigned to?
Terasaki: The relationships between the seniors and juniors are wonderful in every class, however I think I’d have to pick Quartz. Since I don’t think you can join the other three unless you’re already particularly skilled at singing, dancing or acting. So I’d like to find my own way to express my individuality in Quartz!
Ishida: You have some experience with stage acting, so were there any scenes or moments in the game that you could relate to?
Terasaki: Jack Jeanne has a lot of different choices and branches in the story. You can choose different lines to say during the plays too, but no matter which one you choose the show will still reach its conclusion. If another actor changes something then you have to change with them, and if you change something, then they have to change with you. Even though every performance of a show is supposed to have the same programme and script and movements, you go into it with a fresh mind each day and there are slight differences between the shows.
There are things you sometimes only realise on opening day when you see the audience walking in, so I could relate to the sense of tension actually putting on a show brings. I’d love for the players to see how each character's dialogue changes with each option, so please play through the shows multiple times!
Ishida: Every show in the game is quite different thematically, which one (setting, musical composition, etc) did you like best? Also, were there any shows that you’d like to try starring in in real life?
Terasaki: All of the shows are very different and I love all of them, but the one that I felt the most accomplished and happily tired after was the autumn performance. During auditions, the selection of lines from it were full of passion and tension, so I remember being excited to record for the autumn performance.
As for which one I’d like to try in real life, it would be Sissia of the Central Nation. When I recorded my lines for the whole show in one session, I started arranging how the stage set would look like in my mind. I’d think ‘this line would definitely be delivered from the top of the set, and this line would be said from the audience to the stage’. I’d read the lines whilst imagining what the show would look like and the performance that I could picture the clearest was Sissia of the Central Nation. So I ended up really wishing I could see it in person.
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flanaganfilm · 1 year
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Hey there!
I’m a new writer-director finishing up film school and I keep getting into little spats with some of my instructors over my characters talking too much/for too long.
My stock response at this point has basically become “Well, it works just fine when Mike Flanagan does it.”
I don’t know if it’s because I come from a theatre background or what, but I really don’t like the seemingly common wisdom that characters talking—actors orating—is boring for audiences. That you have to have Something Happening all the time, and that characters “just” conversing or telling a story doesn’t count, as though “to speak” isn’t a verb.
Since you tend to have characters speak at length and it turns out riveting—I’m thinking specifically of the confetti speech from Hill House and Hassan’s speech about being a Muslim cop in NYC from Midnight Mass—I was hoping you could share some of your thoughts on balancing action with conversation, giving actors room to “just” talk, and keeping lengthy oration engaging.
Thanks!
I also come from a theater background. I wouldn't be too hard on your instructors - in fact, they sound like they're pretty in sync with a lot of executives in the industry.
I received similar feedback when I was a film student. My first few student features were very talky. We were studying the breakthrough work of Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, and Jim Jarmusch. The indie movies that were selling at Sundance and hitting theaters were The Brothers McMullen and Chuck and Buck. Tarantino had hit the scene and his characters were dropping pages and pages and pages of thick, unhurried dialogue. Reservoir Dogs posters were hanging on every dorm room wall on campus, and that movie was essentially just a long conversation. We watched My Dinner With Andre in class. So yeah, most of our student films were emulating that.
I have always loved a monologue. Going back to Robert Shaw's hypnotic story in Jaws, to Harry Dean Stanton's jaw-dropping monologue in Paris, Texas. It's an art form. Giving actors room to speak, to find music in dialogue, to transport a viewer just with mere words... that's an incredible feat, I think. It's some of the oldest magic left.
That said, I've always tried to balance that out. It's a visual medium, after all, and whenever I've found myself leaning too hard on the words, I've tried to counterbalance that was a very ambitions visual sequence, a long unbroken camera maneuver, or something else that honors the difference between filmed entertainment and theatre.
One of the reasons I made Hush was to challenge myself to eliminate words from my arsenal and focus on visual storytelling.
I take a fair amount of flack for my monologues and dialogue, first from studio executives and then from a small percentage of viewers whose attention spans are being challenged. The most common note I get on any project is to take out talking. It can be disheartening, but I'm always trying to be fair about it, and to be sympathetic to the fact that a lot of movies and television have actively tried to shorten viewers' attention spans for decades now. Audiences are being trained for things to happen faster, louder, shorter. What good is your amazing 6-minute monologue if people changed the channel two episodes ago?
There are times when it is more important to me than others. I dug in hard on Midnight Mass, where the words and ideas in those soliloquies are a big part of the point of the show... but on The Midnight Club, I didn't push for it. I kept scenes relatively short, and there isn't a monologue to be found.
But my overarching feeling is that an artfully written and well performed monologue is a gift, and a dying art. It celebrates great acting, it requires great trust of the performer and of the viewer, and it has the power to transport us with one of the oldest magics human beings ever discovered - the spoken word.
Storytelling began that way: monologues around a campfire. Over the millennia, we've harnessed that campfire light, we've even learned to paint with it, to pull our dreams out of our minds and put them onto giant screens, so the whole world can dream together... but the real magic still starts with the words.
Which is my long-winded way of trying to encourage you to make your films the way you want to make them. Make the films you want to see. And if you love words... that's a great thing. Try to find a balance, never lose sight of the visual medium, and if you're going to drop a big chunk of words in there, try to earn it with something visually challenging as well.
Or, just tell your instructors you'll make it shorter, and then cut out ten frames of air. ;)
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iwanthermidnightz · 2 months
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1) Taylor Swift
No one in the music industry wielded more power over the past year than Taylor Swift, who made history at stadiums, movie theaters and on the Billboard charts, leaving even the most seasoned executives speechless. While they’d long celebrated her staggering popularity as a singer, songwriter and performer, her force as a strategic business leader suddenly came into sharper focus — and industry veterans took notes as they watched some of her bravest and most innovative business risks reap remarkable rewards.
At 34, she is one of the music industry’s most charismatic and influential leaders — and she rewrites the rules.
“The piece of advice I would give to the other executives on this list is that the best ideas are usually ones without industry precedent,” Swift tells Billboard. “The biggest crossroads moments of my career came down to sticking to my instincts when my ideas were looked at with skepticism. When someone says to me, ‘But that has never been done successfully before,’ it fires me up. We have to take strategic risks every day in this industry, but every once in a while, you have to really trust your gut and take a flying leap. My rerecordings are my favorite example of this, and I’m extremely grateful to my team and fans for taking that leap with me because it absolutely changed my life.”
Sage advice for an industry in which instinct has largely been supplanted by metrics and data analysis.
In December, Time named Swift its 2023 Person of the Year. In September, after encouraging her 279 million Instagram followers to vote and linking to vote.org, the nonpartisan nonprofit said it received over 35,000 registrations. She appears on the cover of this issue of Billboard and in the No. 1 spot of our annual Power 100 issue because her force across the business of music is now unparalleled — and because she models commitment to innovation that the rest of the business will need in order to tackle the big challenges ahead.
Swift’s gambles have paid off handsomely over the past year.
Her massive The Eras stadium tour, which began in March after she controversially put all the tickets on sale at once, crashing Ticketmaster and sparking mass hysteria, grossed an estimated $906.1 million in 2023 and is poised to become the highest-grossing global tour of all time before it wraps in December, according to Billboard.
The Golden Globe-nominated Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, taped during her six-show run at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., in August, has grossed over $261.6 million worldwide since its October opening, according to AMC Theatres Entertainment. In January, the publicly traded movie-house chain announced that the film’s box-office take made it the highest-grossing concert/documentary picture ever released, surpassing Michael Jackson’s 2009 This Is It. Once again blazing a new path, Swift made a groundbreaking distribution deal directly with AMC Theaters instead of linking with a film studio.
Swift has shaken up the catalog market, too. When Scooter Braun infuriated her by acquiring the master recordings of her first six albums through his Ithaca Holdings and then sold them to investment firm Shamrock Capital at a profit, Swift rerecorded the albums with loving precision and added bonus tracks to the new releases. They performed phenomenally well, as she deftly used her tour to promote them. When her latest rerecording (and 14th studio album overall), 1989 (Taylor’s Version), spent its fifth week at atop the Billboard 200 at the end of 2023, Swift beat Elvis Presley’s record for the most weeks at No. 1 by a solo artist. Her industry market share last year was 1.72%. If she were her own genre, she’d rank ninth for 2023 — bigger than jazz.
“She’s the smartest artist I’ve ever worked with,” says Messina Touring Group’s Louis Messina, who promotes Swift’s tours and has worked with her since 2005. “She outworks everybody and she has always had this vision. If you’re around her, you can’t help but believe in her.” —Melinda Newman
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alainamama17 · 5 months
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100 Days of Music - Music Challenge
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Day 72 (10/31/23)
Happy Halloween to all those Tumblr-ites who celebrate!
So, as I was looking for an image to add to our theme tonight this was the one that fit perfectly with our theme. No, we're not making another mix tape tonight. But we are going back to 1982.
Our theme today is, share a song or songs that you love from the year 1982. I was 11 in 1982 and this music is definitely going to take me back.
You Dropped A Bomb on Me - The Gap Band ( I was definitely jammin' to the Gap Band in 1982)
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Chariots of Fire - Vangelis (This was the first film I ever saw in the theatre and I've always loved the soundtrack as well as the film)
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Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran (Needs no words. Love Duran Duran)
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Even the Nights Are Better - Air Supply
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Africa - Toto (Actually listened to this song on the way home from work this evening)
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The year is 1982...
@worldleaderpretend1969, @biggreenhouse, @lusnicky, @delightedobserverintraining, @words-music, @prbworld21, @oshea52, @flat-in-life, @mistymountainway, @switching-to-glide, @itsmythang, @secondlifep, @interestedin-life, @chaotic-music-collector, @musiclandoux, @a-lil-jaded-1, @onlya5butfunny, @hairlesschewbacca3k, @kickdrumheart68
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omnidemidisaster · 1 year
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Request
Hatzgang with a reader whos very talented but failing their classes
So its been known Ross is very passionate about his own grades...imagine him seeing yours
He starts fearing for your own
When Roy and Robert find out? Oh yea they wanna help with Ross with improving your grades
They know how talented you are and they support that
But Ross recommends you might focus more on studies than interests for now
Hes not saying give it up, just try to focus your time more on your work that you need help in
Robert and Ross both volunteered themselves as tutors to help you
And honestly they are really great tutors
( Roy? Yeah he just comes with the two boys. Not to tutor but to have help with his own work lol )
Ross carefully explains problems and terms you don't understand
Robert likes to make the work a little fun by trying to make things like math problems more relevant to your life
Robert also likes to bring awards in during these tutoring sessions
He'll bring things like candy or cupcakes so whenever you finish a challenging problem you get a mini treat
Is it silly? Yes. Is it probably used for little kids more? Yes. Does it work? Hell yes.
Once a big test comes up, you have the boys wishing you good luck
You can bet that you pass the test and the boys are super fuckin proud of you
Roy takes yall out for ice cream/donuts/whatever
Ross constantly praises you once your start getting better grades
By this point, if you were taking time off from clubs or sports, you can start going back more often
And about your talents?
If your very athletic and in a sports team, you bet the boys will come to your games every chance they can get
If you ever wanna practice, the guys won't mind practicing with you
If your in something like music or art, Ross is definitely one to go to for feedback
Theatre? Yeah, they'll practice with you and go to your performances
In the end, they are super proud of you
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sixthwater · 1 year
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no what do you mean i didn't impulsively get this idea and then fuck over my sleep schedule to do it Hi :) I like music. So I did this. That's it.
This is a very quick personality like pac and the way this is going to work is, I viewed you as if you were a song (pretty straight-forward) so the questions that were asked were:
Q1: Overall Theme (Archetype & Divine Tarot) Q2: Mood of the Song (Astro Oracles) Q3: Type of lyrics (Affirmators)
This is not my normal in depth readings (even though some piles tried to be) but I hope you still enjoy it.
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(Left → Right / Pile 1 → Pile 5)
Decks Used: Archetype Oracle, Tarot of the Divine, Arcana of Astrology Oracle, claves astrologicae, Affirmators!
Disclaimer | Pinned | Paid Readings
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Pile One
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Transformative songs. You let every situation you encounter fully consume you and spit you out as someone else — not completely different, but more experienced. Your songs don’t shy away from your faults, they toss they into the spotlight actually. They inspire you to create and motivate you to change, as well as to help others through tough times. Your songs can seem a bit negative, especially if you pay attention the lyrics, but they’re supposed to be comforting. They remind me of those songs that have a very soft melody while the lyrics are talking about how much of a wreck their life is, or how at the end of it all nothing matters. You spill your thoughts, they’re on full display for others to take comfort in the fact that they’re not alone with those worries or troubles. You also don’t wallow in your pain either. You’d express that it’s okay to show moments of vulnerability, and when you’re ready, you have the ability to stand up and face your fears to overcome challenges you thought you’d never overcome. You’d probably find yourself sitting in people’s motivational or safe place playlists.
(for some it’s just the tempo, for some it’s the lyrics) Songs: Catastrophe – Forever The Sickest Kids, I’m Not Okay But I Know I’m Going To Be – Raleigh Ritchie, Masterpiece Theatre I – Marianas Trench, As Good As It Gets – Set It Off, if we never met – John K, Only You – Ellie Goulding, Strangers Like Me – Phil Collins
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Pile Two
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Before I fully get into this, Golden by Fall Out Boy keeps standing out to me. It’s not really going to be like the rest, but it feels more like a catharsis underneath it all; like ‘I’ve ruined so many things, I’m putting on a brave face like it’s okay but it’s not’ type of deal. It’s funny too because I wasn’t done wrapping up Pile One and this pile was trying to grab my attention, and look at your cards lol. So anyway. This pile reminds me of Saucy Santana, Lizzo, or a few other specific songs that I’ve found on the BBE playlist. Very light-hearted but in your face. It also feels a bit defensive or protective of it’s own energy like some of Meg’s recent songs (I’ve only heard a snippet of some so I might be wrong). All the artists I’ve listed so far are either mainstream or they’re popular on tiktok so that’s also a vibe I guess. Overall, there’s the theme of doing what you want when you want, regardless of what people say. I can see some lyrics in there that would be seen as ‘firing back’ at others as well when there’s critique. I don’t know why this feels like a celebrity reading all of a sudden lol. It really reminds me of Lizzo though because as much as I enjoy her sometimes there’s this feeling of subtly being on the defense and being very loud about your personality and going ‘yeah I’m that bitch’ even when no one really asked. Now getting back into Golden from earlier: there will definitely be some breaks within this projection. If it’s not ‘I’ve ruined some things with how I’ve acted’, it’s a sense that your inner pain seeps through and you need to let it out, and people don’t expect that much hurt from someone who is so outwardly strong.
(for some it’s just the tempo, for some it’s the lyrics) Songs: Golden – Fall Out Boy, Material Girl – Saucy Santana, Set Off – Hey Monday, Hide&Seek – Namie Amuro, All You Wanted – Michelle Branch, Everybody Dies – Kim Petras, One Of Me (feat. Elton John) – Lil Nas X
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Pile Three
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Ugh, I get it parents just don’t understand. Quick note, struggled to control getting your cards. Very explosive, loud, innocent and childlike sort of. Very reflective of the cards I’m seeing, this quick pick a card is just turning into a normal one you guys. This pile is pretty straight-forward so it might be a little short. Loud in showing up for other people who come from broken homes or troubled childhoods and helping them own their own colors. Showing them that they’re not the problem, they’re not outcasts, they’re fine just the way they are. Music is loud, something to purge emotions to, but also somewhat playful sometimes. It’s reclaiming your childhood. Opening up about a shitty past and seeming like a ‘light’ for those who seek that comfort, while also showing that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel (with the bad comes the good). Coming to terms with the past through creation. There are minor similarities with Pile One but the delivery of it is vastly different.
(for some it’s just the tempo, for some it’s the lyrics) Songs: Walking Disaster – Sum 41, Pop Punk Pizza Party – Sunrise Skater Kids, Dani California – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Your Star – Evanescence, I’m Not Okay (I Promise) – My Chemical Romance, Dangerous – Set It Off, No Parallels – Hands Like Houses
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Pile Four
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Okay, very interesting combination of cards guys. Finally got my love song pile though. I believe there might also be a mix of just feel good songs though too, but definitely more romance songs. It feels more like pining at times, or songs that describe their ideal partner. Some of you will be in that pool, while the other group of you are in the batch of expressing how much of a catch you are. What’s interesting is that I’m not getting any songs that are in the typical mood of love. They’re all intense and grungy, or not about love period. Which I think this page of pentacles is attributing to. Aaahh it’s reminding me of Taylor Swift a bit lol. This is. Objective. It feels like a very dreamy and idealized perception of what love is, to the point of being taken advantage of. When that happens, there is a lot of aggression and vengeance that pops out because the emotions would be poured out into the song. I’m only really familiar with one song so there might be a better song but yeah. It’s essentially like, the highs are high and the lows are low. Very emotional music and can absolutely make people feel things, kind of like Lana Del Rey (I just have to trust others on that one, also don’t listen to her haha). Yeah oh my god all the music I’m getting is intense as hell lmao I was expecting some of my softer sweeter music to come through but everything so far is heavy. For songs that aren’t romantic, it’s about not growing up in a sense, like not losing your innocence or seeing the world through your pure eyes and being very adamant about it. None of that ‘nice guys finish last’ bullshit. Yes it can get you into hurtful situations, but you’d never give up that quality of yours, and you base your music around it, because part of this pile feels more of like a personality reading.
(for some it’s just the tempo, for some it’s the lyrics) Songs: Gashina – Sunmi, Afraid – The Neighbourhood, Bad Blood – Taylor Swift, Louder – Roselia, GONE, GONE / THANK YOU – Tyler, The Creator, 2 Soon – keshi, Run the Show (feat. Don Omar) – Kat DeLuna, Decided to Break It – Marianas Trench
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Pile Five
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Okay Aquarius. Your songs stand out in a crowd, but they’re also a reflection of you mental and emotional state. As well as your opinions on the state of the world. It’d be very easy to go back and check on where you were at in your life by cycling through your albums. I can see a lot of distinct sounds in your music. It doesn’t have to be weird or off-putting, but compared to the artists that would be within your circle (if you really belonged to one), you would definitely not blend into the background very easily. I can see your emotions not coming through so easily within your music, but your viewpoints or reactions to things? That’s immediately pinpointed, maybe even presented on a silver platter with the theme. Feeling kind of like how My Chemical Romance with their stories and themes, but specifically for you I’d say Danger Days. Not the song, but those topics specifically. I do sense that maybe your music may have impulsive reactions without the full truth which can cause some chaos, since it’s fueled by your emotions or slight insecurity (caused by constant scrutiny or criticism) — so your reaction might be a bit intense since you hold your emotions back within your music so it seems like the response is out of balance. Your music would probably be an outlet for a lot of unspoken thoughts or feelings though, hence the prominent ‘new phase and transformation’ or ‘time for clarity’ cards. Through this, you can figure yourself out and do some spring cleaning. I do feel that sometimes you might just say shit or run with rumors about you for fun because people should be able to do some research and not believe everything they hear or read, and that might cause a little bit of trouble as well. It’s like ‘oh everyone says I’m a drama queen so yeah you know what they’re absolutely right the theme for this song is that I’m 100% hard to please’ and people take you seriously lol.
(for some it’s just the tempo, for some it’s the lyrics) Songs: Courage – P!nk, Villain – Stella Jang, Creepshow – Kerli, Cyber Stockholm Syndrome – Rina Sawayama, Two Princes – Spin Doctors, Haunted House – DBMK, Too Much – Carly Rae Jepsen, Robot Rock – Daft Punk, My Own Dance – Kesha
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