#Just like lost (2004)

[partial-prints]

If you love vampires, listen up!

Do you enjoy vampires, 80’s music, a healthy dose of homoeroticism - all with a theatrical flair? Well look no further, for I submit to you Dance of the Vampires.

(More cool pictures at the very bottom)

What is it you may ask? It’s a musical about a vampire who seduces a girl and invites her to his midnight ball - an offer she simply cannot turn down. The whole thing sorta gives Phantom of the Opera vibes, but like, wayyy less creepy (despite it being a literal vampire). I will say now that yes, Tanz der Vampire (the original title of Dance of the Vampires), is in German, but there is a full recording with English subtitles on youtube, so please don’t let that prevent you from watching it. Now if you’re still reading, allow me to elaborate on the 80’s music and homoeroticism that I previously mentioned.

Let’s start with the tragic gay romance, because I’m sure that’s what you want to hear about first. While not a main part of the musical, the main vampire’s son falls in love with - gasp! - the vampire hunter’s apprentice. They dance together, and with stage magic involving a mesh screen and an actor on the other side dressed identically to the apprentice, it appears as though the vampire has no reflection in the “mirror”. Of course, the feeling is not mutual, as the apprentice is only at the castle to rescue the girl, who he is in love with.

Now, onto the 80’s music. Surely you’ve heard of the song Total Eclipse of the Heart, or the singer Meatloaf (even if it was just his role as Eddie in Rocky Horror Picture Show). Well, the man who wrote that song and a majority if not all of Meatloaf’s work, was Jim Steinman, who composed the musical. The soundtrack contains a decent amount of electric guitar, even a bit of synth at parts, and all around just sounds awesome. However, he only had about a month and a half to compose it all, so he reused some stuff he previously wrote, including a couple Meatloaf songs and Total Eclipse of the Heart, a song he originally wrote for a Nosferatu musical that ended up not getting produced. It was actually originally titled “Vampires in Love,” so what better song is there to fill the place of a big love duet between the girl and the Count?

Tanz der Vampire is my favorite musical ever. I’ve loved it ever since Count von Krolock appeared on the screen and first began to sing, and you may love it too. So I implore you. Please do yourself a favor and check it out. I’ll provide a link of a full recording with English subtitles here, but it should also be the first result on youtube when you search “tanz der vampire english subtitles.” (That production also has Drew Sarich as the Count, my personal favorite.) I should add though, do not watch the broadway production because it’s terrible.

If you’re still not sold, I’m not sure what else I could say to convince you, but hopefully you at least found this interesting and learned something new. If you want to know more about Tanz der Vampire or would like to hear about other musicals about vampires, please let me know and I can answer any questions. (If even one person watches it because of this I’ll consider this a success, and if you do watch it please let me know because it would really make my day.)

And now I’ll leave you with some pictures of Tanz der Vampire as a last resort to convince you how awesome it is and that you should watch it. (I also put in the alt text the song each picture is from for anyone interested)

*ooo the set design and costuming have hypnotized you… you want to watch it now… do it for the vampires…*

[fist-of-vengeance]

last night for my birthday i forced my friends to listen to an hour and a half long powerpoint explaining the entire lost timeline in chronological order. i know lost is a pretty zany show but nothing makes you realize this more than trying to verbally explain time travel and the sideways universe to three people who've never seen it

[dragonsongmakhali]

<🅂🅈🄽🄲🄷🅁🄾🄽🄸🄲🄸🅃🅈>

this was 90% pose practice, but I really love how it came out - background is an evolving work in progress, I have them on transparency :)

ref->

[cardinal-baenitez]

Ben Linus truly a cartoon character because what do you mean you’re the evil antagonist(™) but you’re also the show’s most favorite punching bag

[stripesysheaven]

does anyone know where to watch the getting LOST doc? like is it going to be on streaming or what’s the deal with it

[liverpool-enjoyer]

sawyer being all protective over claire is the cutest thing ive ever seen oh my days 😭😭

[greasydumbfuck]

watched the 2004 punisher movie yesterday with pixie and honestly i had fun 👍 some stuff was good some stuff was eh some completely irrelevant stuff made me mildly annoyed. but most of all it was funny and they had frank hang around with his tits out for multiple scenes so i mean how could i not have a great time tbh

[bowie-pills]

David Bowie gets distracted during an interview, 2004

[nova-dwelling]

I’ve noticed how every time Charlie spots a spiritual older man he immediately latches on. Like he’ll see some weird dishevelled guy going ‘the island speaks to me’ and he’ll go ‘cool, do you need a son by the way’

[twomystdunstans]

Kian and Rand are in a fucking episode of Lost (2004) and Rolan is running around his house like this

[sleazyjanet]

i understand why alex had to die (to push ben's narrative), and understand less why danielle had to die (the streets are saying her arc was done? oh ok fuck that) and i know none of the characters get what they deserve, not really, but it really makes me sad that after all she went through, after so many years of being so utterly alone, and terrified, danielle just died like that? not even an interesting death, just a bullet (dart? arrow? what the fuck was that) to some imprecise part of the body and she's dead

and her arc wasn't complete, not to ME. she and alex were not close. alex never reacts much to danielle's affection, which makes so much sense of course, because she doesn't know this woman who loves her so much. it's as danielle herself said, she spent 16 years missing and loving this girl who never knew she existed, who never knew how much she'd been loved by her

so i understand alex had to die. but you know how the mib loves haunting people? danielle being haunted, regularly, by alex, being told what to do, and DOING it, because it's alex telling her to do it, being manipulated into doing things... and then learning the truth. that this was not really alex. idk, chefs kiss (+ danielle being visited by alex's actual ghost, too, like hugo with his ghosts)

(also the contrast of ben only seeing alex once, when mib needs him to do everything he says, preys on his guilt vs danielle not even being guilty at all for alex's death but still feeling responsible, being haunted by her regularly, seeing her everywhere, trying to grasp at straws, trying to build a relationship with a ghost of a person who never had the chance to really love her)

[inejqhafa]

I’ve been bingeing Lost for the last few weeks and just watched 4x05. holy shit. that was one of the best episodes of television I have ever watched.

[fist-of-vengeance]

thinking about how essentially every relationship john locke formed in the early seasons of lost has completely disintegrated by the time of his death.

of course there's his relationship with jack, which starts tense but manageable and culminates in jack pointing a gun at john's head and pulling the trigger. but even his smaller, less narratively prominent relationships either implode or drift apart. he bonds with walt in season one but then walt leaves the island, which is itself a severing of their bond since it was mainly based on being the only two people who wanted to stay. still, he goes and visits walt off the island so this is probably john's most successful relationship. I dont think i need to explain how he fucked up with boone, "the sacrifice that the island demanded." charlie viewed john as a mentor and claimed to trust him more than anyone on the island, but after the events of fire and water, that trust is destroyed and charlie despises him. at the same time we get john bonding with claire and having a pseudo-paternal dynamic with her, but their closeness basically drops off the face of the earth as he gets less and less involved with the other survivors.

his arc in the series is essentially a gradual distancing from everyone around him. it starts when he abandons hunting (providing for the others) in favor of trying to get the hatch open (it's extremely clear his primary motive isn't any survival applications but getting answers to the mystery). when they do open the hatch, he spends more and more time inside, underground, cut off from other people. he spends more and more time interacting with ben, a human mystery box that he's obsessed with cracking even if it gets him killed. he follows the proverbial white rabbit deeper down the hole and leaves his connection to humanity behind. the island and its mysteries become more important to john than anything or anyone else.

then in season three we get him claiming to go undercover with the others only to unceremoniously tell sawyer that he's actually going to join them. and it doesn't feel shocking, it feels inevitable. because john has spent the entire series becoming less and less connected with the people he arrived with. in that sense he actually makes a fascinating foil to juliet, who is introduced as one of the others and yet never really fits, she's increasingly sympathetic and kind in a way the rest of them aren't, her redemption arc feels so natural that she actually starts referring to her old people as "the others" like she's been one of the crash survivors from the beginning. her and john basically have inverse arcs, which is probably accidental but very neat.

in season five john tries to convince everyone to go back to the island, and fails spectacularly. and of course he does, because he was so consumed by obsession that he stopped maintaining his relationships, and in many cases actively alienated people (this is also basically what happened with helen) and now he can't wrap his head around why they're all so hostile to him. i am forever obsessed with the scene where he confronts kate and she brutally calls him out for wanting to return to the island because he doesn't love anyone. it actually struck me on rewatch how well the two of them got along in season one, and how badly their relationship has degraded by this point. john repeatedly casts aside interpersonal relationships in favor of his obsession with destiny, so when said destiny actually involves persuading the people he once shunned, he's at a loss. this is because john treats purpose as a supplement for connection, destiny as an alternative to love.

as an aside, this aspect of john's character kinda ties into my opinion that several lost characters can be read as allegorically neurdivergent under a certain lens. i know this was absolutely not intended, but as an adhd former gifted kid who struggles socially, there is something uncomfortably familiar about a character who allows their relationships to burn around them because of a single-minded obsession, especially as a result of being promised the fickle status of "special."

tl/dr: john locke is a doomed idiot and i love him

[otogariado]

LOST mention⁉️

also it wasn't entirely purgatory. fuck you fight me.

[sillimancer]

I hate that there are entire slices of the internet that are no longer accessible because Flash is dead

[enigma-absolute]

Happy New Year from here, gang! Let’s hope this one is made better than the last