#I feel braver about this now bc I'm getting very close to getting a new stylus!

[tired-reader-writer]

I have been stuck in a tension headache induced hell week and I didn't have my stylus for art, it broke, and I was kinda afraid of talking about my MC Elaine and the shenanigans for the polyship AU(?) thing I had going on without having anything to “contribute” to the fandom (yes I write fic too but my brain was simply not Computing bc of the tension headache, you understand) which might just be an irrational fear of mine, I was afraid of being ignored, but anyways I have a Cove/MC/Derek thing and my MC is Elaine Seaward (he/him), who wants to hear me ramble about this idiot?

[dross-the-fish]

Totally Underwhelming Eclipse of the Half-Hearted

Because I am not done talking about Dance of the Vampires.

If you want to see what I had to say about act 1 here are the links to my other posts

Now, the good news is that this second act is probably the better half of the musical. It's less consistently bad and a little closer to the European version, there are even a scant hand full of things that work.

But the bad stuff is really bad.

After Crawford sings the midnight serenade to Sarah we cut right to Total Eclipse of the Heart.

The problems in this number aren't anything we haven't seen before, I mean Crawford has been an unwelcome presence for most of act one, the choreography is shit, and the set, if you can call it that, is pretty pathetic, (fucking bleachers!) but I want to talk about a few things I haven't really gone into detail about yet.

The music. For the most part the music is generally the same, although it does sound like someone took Tanz and shrunk it. The orchestra and choir really lack the epic quality of the European version, but whatever, it's close enough. I'll give credit to Mandy Gonzales, she sounds great. In fact she sounds so good here that it just serves to highlight how awful Michael Crawford is.

Then you get to the lyrics.

The lyrics are a huge problem with this adaptation because in a lot of key songs, they weren't actually adapted. What we got in the final product isn't a translation of Michael Kunze's lyrics, rather it's a copy/paste of the existing lyrics (with some minor tweaks) from Jim Steinman's songs.

It's easy to say this was done out of laziness but given what I know and recently have learned of Jim Steinman I'd say it's very likely he didn't want his lyrics compromised. He has a reputation for being a massive ego and I'd be lying if I said I couldn't see the telltale Jim fingerprints all over the final product. I may expand on that later, but before I deviate too much from my initial point.

The lyrics.

Because they are cut and pasted from existing songs they no longer sound like the voices of the characters. They sound like the voice of Jim Steinman. In Total Eclipse Von Krolock sounds lovesick rather than predatory and Sarah sounds like a world weary old soul who's been burned before and is afraid to love again.... instead of... you know... and 18 year old girl who's never left her father's inn. This is even more egregious in Starker Als Wir Sind/Braver Than We Are because so much of the English version's lyrics are vague biblical metaphors that don't actually make much sense coming from a character like Sarah.

Example in Braver Than We Are Sarah sings "How can we fly like an angel in the sacred air?" At first that kind of sounds pretty, but in the context of the moment it doesn't really fit. It has almost nothing to do with what Sarah is doing or feeling and it's just empty imagery.

This is a fairly consistent shortcoming of Jim Steinman's songwriting. Style over substance plagues a lot of his songs. Even his best songs sometimes have weird lyrics that sound cool but don't actually mean anything.

Amazingly that doesn't hurt his music nearly as much as it should. All three Bat out of Hell albums are pretty strong, so much so that I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite between them.

In the context of a musical, however, it's a different story.

Let's take a look at the Tanz version to do a comparison.

The lyrics here illustrate a Sarah that is giving into temptation but feels shades of regret. Even as much as she wants what's being offered she knows there's no going back. Superficially it doesn't seem that different in theme from the English version but the lyrics do a better job of revealing Sarah's thought process.

Speaking of temptation let's touch on that for a sec, temptation and resisting it vs giving in is a huge theme of this musical. Draußen ist Freiheit and especially Das Gebet are all about temptation. How it pulls us, how the thing that finally breaks our resolve must be stronger than we are. Sarah is tempted by a voice that calls to her and offers her something dark, sensual, and forbidden. A fall from grace that will damn her forever but grant her her wildest dreams. Really the overarching theme of temptation needs its own post because there are so many layers, so I'll save it for after I've finished my breakdown of the full play.

We spend all of Draußen, Starker, and Das Gebet watching Sarah teeter on the edge and Finsternis is where she finally falls. There is a LOT of emotion here. The lyrics beautifully illustrate what she's feeling and how Von Krolock continues to suck her in by offering her her dreams.

In other words less this

and more this...

hell even this would have been preferable...

... you know I'm starting to see a pattern with young girls name Sarah and mystical older men in uncomfortably tight pants.

So why doesn't Tanz suffer from the same problem's with lyrics?

Probably because Steinman doesn't speak German and so had little say over how his songs got adapted into the German language.

The lyricist for Tanz is Michael Kunze, known for his work on Elisabeth and Rebecca and Kunze is honestly a wonderful lyricist. He does an excellent job giving each character a consistent voice while giving the lyrics depth and nuance. Which might not have saved the Broadway version, but it would definitely have helped.

Speaking of lacking depth and nuance....the next scene is the one where Von Krolock greets Alfred and Abronsius at the gate of his...

.... completely empty stage.

Hang on to your butts folks. It's gonna get real ugly.

[nicistrying]

Wednesday? Thursday? I have no idea any more. Happy Day!

This is probably going to be a bit of a rant, so fitblr stuff first 😂 Feels like it's been a while since I had a good chunk of time to spend exercising but this morning I did a lovely little 25 min yoga flow, then put my music on and did some really solid core work and a little bit of kettlebell work too bc our kettlebell finally arrived the other day! It's 10kg which is a pretty good weight for both of us. So my workout was:

Deadbug

Bicycles

Russian twists

Lying back raises

Double leg lifts

Toe touch crunches

Alternating leg drops

And then with the kettlebell I did goblet squats, squat > overhead press, kettlebell swings. I didn't want to do too much bc I want to do a full workout with it tomorrow 😊

Now to rest my foot for the rest of the day while I read my book and order Christmas presents. One of the girls at work offered to cover my Tuesday shift so I only had to work Sunday, Monday and Wednesday and that was quite enough - my toes have been throbbing by the time I've gotten home. The toe itself is kind of bent so I'm keeping it taped up to the one next to it, but it is starting to bruise a little. I also rolled my ankle at work the other day from walking on the side of my foot trying not to put so much weight on those toes so now that's all bruised up too 😂 So as much as I hate being stuck at home and not very active it's definitely necessary!

In other news, I'm getting braver in terms of not being nice to men that make me uncomfortable! Yesterday when I got to work, my friend who was on the till waved me over and told me that the security guard on duty (who I hadn't seen before) had worked there before but had to be escorted off the premises because several women had made complaints about him - one girl was only just 17 and he came up behind her and poked her in the sides when she was standing on a stool which is A) unsafe but B) just wildly inappropriate at work?? He apparently smacked one woman's bum and kept talking about it, telling her all the time she had a sexy bum, and literally all of the girls working there at the time said he made them extremely uncomfortable. So I just didn't entertain him at all. He would come up to me and just stand where I was working, clearly thinking of some stupid comment or small talk to make, and I just gave one word answers and never made eye contact or got anywhere near close to him. And even with me forcing myself to be really standoffish, by the end of my 6 hour shift he had made me SO uncomfortable - he literally followed me around and would just stand right near me wherever I was and just stare. So then when I was on my break and the night shift manager came in and was, like everyone else, outraged that he'd been allowed back (the girls from the morning shift had immediately complained to the deputy manager), we were just talking about it and how uncomfortable he makes us etc. and she asked me to cover the girl who was currently on the till's break because she didn't want to have to cover it after I left when there would be no one else in the shop. She said if I covered the break, she would come and stand with me so I wasn't alone with him. Which is a fucking ridiculous thing for anyone to have to do at work. But what got me was that she was completely right to do it because as soon as I went down and the other girl went for her break, he shouted to me 'I guess you're covering her break?' and I said 'yep.' and he came straight round, at which point I rushed up an aisle to make myself look busy because there were no customers and he stood there at my till waiting for me to go back. And when a customer came, he stayed there and just watched (which is fine, that's part of his job WHEN THERE ARE CUSTOMERS WHO COULD STEAL STUFF) and when the night manager came down, he came right up to us (way within the 2m distance as well, lol, apparently not even a global pandemic gets in the way of this pervert) and she had her hands on the bench and he fucking put his hand down right next to hers and obviously she snatched it away immediately but God it was just so uncomfortable. He would just keep coming over, getting really close and calling us 'chuck' and talking about how 'we know him, she knows him from day one he's just a lovely guy' and ugh I actually felt sick. She didn't leave my side until I finished and I am so so grateful bc I dread to think how horrible those 30 minutes would have been if I'd been alone. But yeah, I was just increasingly rude and standoffish with him and I do not care. I know where being nice to perverts gets me and I absolutely refuse to do it again and tbh it felt really good knowing I was justified in doing it too because this man had literally been fired for his inappropriate behaviour and I just know that if I'd given him the time of day and acted nice and made conversation, it would have gotten extremely uncomfortable and creepy and I would have been too scared to say anything to anyone, like every other time. So yeah this is a PSA to just be a Bitch when it's warranted! Feels great!