#anyway i would not go to a tour and am 60-40 on if i'd watch DINOK if it's like a filmed solo project

[astradyke]

okay hi i'm Back Here again general thoughts of my own :3

I - i think the board game is going to be a definite thing happening, possibly alongside or in lieu of a new merch drop, but i don't think it's going to be the big project. if we're going off of dan's later and a little bit after that or whatever strange thing he said, i could see this as being one of those two, alongside something bigger. i know someone said in someone's inbox (sorry horrid memory) that Relatable took on new copyrights so i think this is near definite

II - i could see how they're gearing up for a tour in the sense that we're in the d&p renaissance but i genuinely don't think they'll even start ramping up for a tour until at least next year. dan wrapped up WAD like a few months ago and we're so new into the consistent content gig that switching into the rhythm of a tour feels weird. that being said i think most likely, 2025/6 d&p tour that is (potentially) their last collab tour.

III - i think if DINOK is going to happen it's gonna be a book and i'm pretty confident on this? in which case i would actually genuinely read it; i love d&p so bear w even though this sounds like a haterism but i actually don't love their on stage scripted comedy sometimes so it would be a win for me if DINOK was a book (also think he's maybe hinted at this?)

IV - i think the odds of them doing a film/series of some kind is HIGHLY LIKELY and personally i would annihilate this i would be ripping at it with my teeth you understand me. i could see this mostly being some kind of fictional though or maybe half fictional half biopic (you know what i mean?) but i know these guys have got Creative Ideas and i think whether it's original concept they act, or them riffing off their own lives with something (kinda DINOK-esque), it'd be something they haven't really done before and would definitely qualify as like New Project

V - bonus: it takes two #2 before the end of june. i believe this. it might be the 29th it might be the 30th but i think it'll be pre-announcement, and i'm expecting announcement early july

tldr: merch + board game, then film or series; tour in 2025 or 2026

anyway! i yap more than daniel james howell sorry (i'm always saying this) but lmk thoughts if u have them!! especially about what the film/series might be because if u can't tell i'm kinda waffling lol idk what it might be

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

almost-birthday thoughts

i'll turn 40 in a few days, on thursday. i've always loved presents and reasons to celebrate, round numbers, enthusiasm...reasons to be excited, i guess. but this birthday matters way more to me than the others; it feels deeper. i don't look to 50 or 60 (if i'm lucky enough to get there) and feel any particular way, but i felt this one coming. i needed this one to matter.

my mom was 32 when she had me, and her 40th birthday is the first birthday i remember witnessing of hers. the family teasing her, the 'lordy lordy looks who's forty' rhymes. her hair was already gray, and welfare hadn't forced her back into the workforce yet. she was happier than i would ever see her be, again.

and i honestly don't remember much else about her birthday party, or that year specifically. big, terrible things happened a year later, but when i was only 8? she was just 40, we all celebrated like we celebrated every birthday of everybody--and the number didn't mean anything to me.

now, i'm about to be 40, and the last time i saw my mom, i was 21. she turned 72 this year, which is the age my grandmother was when she died. i reached out, because of that. i get my spine from my grandmother and my stubbornness from my mother, but i yielded, just enough. i know i won't see her again while she's alive. i'm at peace with that, as much as i can be.

but it still makes 40 feel more important, somehow. like i've hit the inbetween. i've survived the rock and the hard place and somehow i'm still alive and i'm going to be 40 years old, older than my mother was when i entered the world, while she's older than her mother was when she left it.

i've never cared much about age in the way some people do: i don't worry about how wrinkles make me look, or how quickly silver began streaking through my brown hair. i'm not lamenting (or celebrating) what i've accomplished as i approach a real mile marker. until i started writing this, it didn't even occur to me that depending on how long i live, i may actually be entering middle age now.

that can't be true, right? whatever middle-aged is, it doesn't feel like me reblogging tumblr gifs and rambling about the movies i've watched or sharing my cat stories. my health issues have existed for so long they seem entirely divorced from the passage of time, so i can't even say i feel like i'm getting old because i have pain, or sleep trouble--whatever the cliches are.

anyway, being the many things that i am (autistic, bipolar, anxious, vibrating at a high ADHD frequency even while medicated), i'm probably always going to be one of those 'i don't feel my age' people. so that doesn't surprise me. it's more the principle of this year, that matters to me. it has mattered all year as i felt my birthday approaching.

so both intentionally and coincidentally, i made this one of my biggest birthdays ever. because of the timing of thanksgiving and school holidays and other stuff outside my control, my family celebrating started early. last week alone was intense, in the best way.

i found out earlier this year, with much surprise and delight, that hadestown was not only touring, but coming literally to our downtown theater. a ticket to that was my gift to myself. i'd never seen any musical i love onstage--and definitely not a broadway one, touring or otherwise. and i didn't think about, when i purchased the ticket, how the show would be happening only a week after the election. but it was perfect, even more so because of that. i needed it.

and then, @actuallylukedanes made it possible for me to see suzy eddie izzard, performing live. they're the one who first introduced me to her comedy, literally decades ago now, and her bits are embedded in the fabric of our family (who all went together). getting to actually be in her presence wasn't on my bucket list, much like i didn't actually expect to see a musical i loved until i did--i'm still a little in shock that we were really there. it really happened. and in addition to being funny, she was very sincerely trying to give us all hope. it made me cry.

before the show, we got something to eat nearby, and it's been years since i had such a good milkshake. i want to go back there and try their sandwiches (i enjoyed the fries and their natural orange soda). the theater smelled like history, and i love all the memories i made with my family just on that one day, including the hour i spent reading in the car before i ran out of sunlight while music blasted all around us. and the singalong on the ride home. i think it was nearly 4 hours of driving, to get there and back that day, but for me at least, it was worth it.

i've already gotten one of my birthday presents (besides the suzy eddie izzard show of course), because @actuallyrorygilmore had to visit early and leave yesterday, thanks to the schedules etc i mentioned above. she got me a book i really wanted, and can't wait to read, once i've made a dent in my giant partially-read pile of paperbacks and hardcovers from my distracted era. (i'm nearly done with two! i'm making actual progress!)

i also got a cupcake and a box of caramels i love...and all of that was before my birthday has even happened!

i've still got some kind of unwrappable gift coming to mark the day, and the wicked movie coming out, 20 years after i was first belting along to the soundtrack in my college dorm room, alone over thanksgiving break. (i won't be seeing wicked on my birthday, but because regal sometimes opens movies here a day early on thursdays, it will premiere on my birthday. i love that.)

a lot about this year, heading into turning 40, has been really hard. i lost my little ghost cat, bailey, in january--and mellie's son sebastian, who brought bailey to us in the first place...we lost him right before halloween. pretty horrible bookends to 2024. and now, bonus fascism! that's just hovering, a january storm cloud i'm ignoring until it's here.

so, i can't say 40 is gonna be fantastic. or, 2025 will be my best year yet! or anything else silly, like the hopeful things i remember proclaiming as we were heading into 2020. i'm sure i believed them at the time, very sincerely--but the universe gave us a pandemic instead, among so much else. that was not a year of joy.

what i can say, and be grateful for, is that i'm about to be 40 years old. and when i was a child, and i tried to imagine my life someday, it was a big expanse of nothingness. it wasn't that i was pessimistic about my future, or even that i didn't know what i wanted. i literally couldn't imagine myself as an adult, living in the world, having any life different from the way things had always been for me, growing up. i couldn't see it.

so i genuinely, fiercely, painfully believed that meant that i must not be fated to live to see adulthood. to have any kind of future. i was very much an anne shirley kind of child, and i blame my fanciful imagination for that sense of certain doom, but i did believe it. i never expected to make it this far.

despite that, despite everything, here i am. raising kittens and seeing musicals and being celebrated by a chosen family who both love and like me, for who i actually am. i have a room of my own and the choice of how i spend my time, and i'm needed in the world. i'll never run out of things to learn, and make, and new friends to meet. no matter what's coming, i still do love my small, valuable life.

a lot can happen in 40 years, i now know from experience. i'm going to try and keep making mine better.