#this is kinda jokey and mean but i have actual sensible thoughts about them as foils ok i just wish i could scoop my brain matter together

[mcmoth]

The virgin c!Techno vs the chad c!Tommy.....

Psa: THIS IS A JOKE, THIS IS A JOKE, I DON'T HATE C!TECHNO, i think he's an interesting character, and obviously c!Tommy's not perfect either, i just wanted to make some comparisons, ok, please don't maul me-

ID under cut since it's kinda long:

[ID: the "virgin vs chad" meme, only it's redrawn with character Technoblade and character Tommyinnit.

On Techno's side, the points are as followed:

Disagreement/miscommunication = immideate betrayal and that person is now dead to me;

Deals with complicated emotions with revenge and destruction;

"Violence is the only universal language";

Claims to be all for anarchy but doesn't even think about mutual aid, only about destroying anything that he personally percieves as threats;

Wears op armor weapons 24/7 out of paranoia and seems to respect others more when they're physically strong as well;

Is one of the richest people on the server;

Teamed up with Dream even after the man admitted to being a tyrant just because he had a personal grudge;

Is really antisocial and doesn't interact with people outside of his circle unless forced to despite his goal of seeking out oppressive power and removing it, leading him to be heavily misinformed and unknowing of the population he claims to know what's best for;

Claims others dehumanise him and "only see him as a weapon" despite he himself dehumanizing others, like calling the teens he used to be friends with just "government" or "traitor" and sees the general population around him as just enemies;

In general doesn't deal well with his emotions and paranoia and has really bad coping mechanisms that he largely doesn't reconsider.

On Tommy's side, the points are as followed:

Sticks with people and remains loyal even when he heavily disagrees with them and tries to compromise/help them get better;

Deals with complicated emotions by going through therapy and introspection;

"Some people aren't strong enough... some people stop talking.";

Tries to tend to the local environment and fights for people to live freely and has attempted to make safe spaces for people to go to away from fighting;

"You can't just make up the rules, you just have the strongest armor, that's not how it should work dude.";

Only wears iron armor and uses basic tools because op ones remind him of war and he's trying to move past that paranoia;

Is one of the poorest people on the server and unbothered by it because he sees strength in community and perseverance, not anything physical;

Has been pissing off the people in charge and fought against corrupt power from day one;

Interacts with people as much as he can, leading him to know and actually care more about the people he protects;

Has been dehumanized in many ways (called "liability", "hero", "security risk", "toy", etc.), but doesn't take it out on others because "I shouldn't take out any of the fucked up shit that's happened to me on other people". /End ID.]

#dream smp #tommyinnit #c!technoblade critical #c!technoblade negative #meta #meme #virgin vs chad meme #this is kinda jokey and mean but i have actual sensible thoughts about them as foils ok i just wish i could scoop my brain matter together #enough to actually form a well written analysis about it i'll get to it eventually #also please don't be too mean to c!techno in replies i should say. no dehumanization or threats to him or anything. just in case #because i think a lot of it could gen be explained by just poor emotion processing n trauma n stuff #even if that doesn't make him less of a bastard jdhfhfj /lh #my own post

[flynnspeaks]

“Frozen” Thoughts

Just got back from my trip and can finish this up from my drafts. Spoilers abound:

So tl;dr thought: Script is basically good, production bad. I think the show, script-wise, is 80% there but it needs some major changes to work effectively as a piece of theatre.

General stuff: - The only things outright cut from the film are Marshmallow, the icepickers, “Heimr Arnadalr” (replaced with a new coronation hymn) and “Frozen Heart” (which is still quoted in the show?? Like at one point a character literally says “born of cold and winter air”, so I don’t know why it’s missing). Every other song and character is represented. - The trolls are changed into sorta mystical ‘mountain folk’, and made into the narrators of the piece (I kinda felt this would happen--the movie has two options for a sort of greek chorus, the icepickers and the trolls. IMO they picked the wrong one). - Lots of new songs - Heavy ensemble--several new numbers incorporate them heavily, and they’re added to “Let it Go” (offstage voices) and “First Time in Forever”

The Good: - Two new songs are excellent additions to the score--a poppy Kristoff/Anna duet called “What Do You Know About Love” and an Act II solo for Elsa called “Monster” (insert Nicki Minaj joke here). The rest of the score isn’t nearly as memorable and there are times where it feels like you’re waiting for a movie number to happen, but it’s still for the most part good. - The score feels a lot more unified than the film--I know people complained about the songs in the film feeling sorta disjointed stylistically, and though that’s not a complaint I subscribed to the whole thing is a lot more cohesive here, both in terms of orchestration, in what the linking material is able to do, and the use of the ensemble. - Speaking of improvements over the film, “Fixer Upper” is vastly better. It loses a verse, and they’ve reorchestrated it to be more rhythmic, fitting with the other musical material the mountain folk get in the show. It’s far less jarring and far less annoying than in the film. - Both Hans and Kristoff get a lot more to do, which is good--less so for Hans, but we’ll talk about that later. - Sven is accomplished really well in an elaborate costume that sorta recalls Lion King but in a more ‘realistic’ vein. It’s very fun to watch, with one drawback--he blinks, and it’s really creepy for some reason. - The climax is really well-staged. It is also the only moment in the show that’s really well-staged, but we’ll get to that. - There were two families on either side of me both with little girls who seemed to be really enjoying the show. That doesn’t actually have anything to do with the show but it was nice. The Eh: - I was actually expecting some of the cut songs featured on the album would be used (”We Know Better”, “Spring Pageant”, “Life’s Too Short”), and they ended up not utilizing any of them. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing except that it often felt like those would’ve functioned better in the show than the songs they actually used--like, the opening number isn’t bad by any means, but it’s probably the weakest number in Act I and isn’t anywhere near as good as what a rewritten “We Know Better” probably would’ve been. “Life’s Too Short” is an interesting one, because I think it was definitely wrong for the moment in the film, but something about where the Anna/Elsa confrontation happens in the stage version feels like it desperately needed that number instead of the “Forever” reprise. - There’s dance breaks added to “Love is an Open Door” and “Fixer Upper”, and they’re not, like, awful, but they’re just sorta there. Here’s a thought: why not dance during the song? - The tone is really slippery in the first half of Act I. I’m probably misremembering, but I don’t remember Anna being this jokey as a kid in the film. It gets better as it goes on (either that or I’m Stockholmed into it by then), but they never quite reconcile the classic fairy-tale stuff with the more modern sensibility, and it jars constantly. - The finale is ok, but also just sort of there. They end on “Love is an Open Door”, which works better than it sounds but is also a really odd song to end on (like, why not just close with a “Vuelie” reprise?) - They try and justify the title of the show in one of the lyrics and it kinda really doesn’t work

The Bad: - Okay, let’s get the worst out of the way: The Act II opening number is the absolute worst piece of garbage I have ever seen committed to the musical stage. It’s an extended comic setpiece called “Hygge” featuring Kevin del Aguila as Oaken (the “Yoo Hoo!” guy, who only appears in this scene) explaining what ‘hygge’ means to the audience, done as a polka. With a chorus in the nude. The entire song exists only to get Anna out of the winter gear she’s wearing into the recognizable winter gear from the film. The audience clearly lost patience with the number halfway through. The song ends with the chorus doing a kickline in the nude with fig leaves covering their privates. It had better fucking be cut before Broadway. - Olaf. Olaf Olaf Olaf. Starting with the script, he’s for some reason far more grating here than in the film, and I think it’s because he’s being written as an iconic character rather than the simply sweet innocent he was in the film. “In Summer” is towards the end of Act I, which is absolutely the wrong place for it--by this point the show becomes a waiting game for “Let it Go” and the song is only an irritating distraction in that context (it clearly needs to open Act II, but we saw how that went). Olaf also gets a second comedic number in Act II that just doesn’t work. It’s not “Hygge” levels of awfulness, but it just falls flat and again feels like a distraction. And then there’s the performance. - Okay, this is gonna be its own bullet point. So the actor himself is fine, but he’s stuck doing a Josh Gad impersonation and can’t really make it his own. But they have Olaf be a puppet, Avenue Q-style with the actor operating him from behind, and it is awful. First off he’s designed to look exactly like the CGI model, which jars immensely with the look of the entire rest of the show. And the puppet itself is actively bad--horribly inexpressive, and the mouth doesn’t appear to actually be able to close all the way??? At first I thought the actor just wasn’t a very good puppeteer but at some point in the show the actress playing Anna has to operate the puppet and the issue persists, so you’re left with this mouth that can only close partway and it looks baaaaaaaad. - Hans. Okay, so I was actually expecting them to do something with the twist--the thing is that worked immensely well in the film, but is also kind of a one-trick pony and in all likelihood the entire audience of the show is going to know the twist going in. So with that I was expecting them to either reveal it a lot sooner, so the audience knows what’s up before Anna does, or else reverse it entirely. Instead it plays out exactly as it does in the film, with the added wrinkle that a considerable amount of material has been added to make Hans more trustworthy and likeable, which makes the twist feel facile and contrived. More than anywhere else this is the spot that needed to be different from the film, and the fact it stayed the same reveals a lot about the show’s priorities. - The set is actually awful. All projections and drops, and very little in the way of actual interactive pieces. It honestly felt like a national tour set--not something you would put together for Broadway. And the “special effects” are laughable--a few moments where they have actual ice shards in the set that are kinda cool, but for the most part Elsa does elaborate hand gestures and they project a swirl of ice on the set. The dress transformation is fun, but the rest of it feels honestly cheap as hell (especially since this really feels like a show that would sell itself on special effects work). - The set being bad impacts the direction, which often has no idea what to do with its actors and leaves the ensemble aimlessly wandering in the background. The staging is bland and lifeless--occasionally enlivened when it’s able to copy directly from the film, but usually staid (”Love is an Open Door” is literally, like, walking. It’s bad). - More than anything you get the feeling this is a production that aims for little more than slavishly recreating the film, and it ends up feeling like something you’d see at Disneyland rather than actually on Broadway. I don’t think the script is bad--it’s got really bad moments, but will probably be fixed pretty well in time for Bway--but this needed a director like Taymor that could make it feel like its own thing. As is...I mean, it’s a Disney show. Maybe it’s expecting too much for it to be theatrically interesting, but damn I really wish it was.

Ultimately this isn’t a show that’s going to change your mind about the film. If you liked the film, you’ll likely at least enjoy the show (though I loved the film and thought this was merely allright, so YMMV), if you don’t like the movie you probably won’t enjoy this very much. Hopefully the script issues that exist will be fixed by Bway, and with luck it won’t be long after that when the licensing opens up--honestly the best possible production of this would be with a smaller company that wouldn’t be obligated to recreate the film but could do their own thing, treating the material seriously on its own. Until then, it looks like this is what we got, and I can’t say right now that it’s gonna be worth your time outside of what will probably be a pretty great cast album.

#i won't tag this but feel free to reblog