#but in Denmark I learned that selling grandpa with a house was a real thing in rural Denmark in the olden days!

[starlene]

Okay so. Unless something unexpected happens at the last minute, I'm going to see Änglagård the musical in Stockholm next week, and here's the thing: I have literally no idea what it's about.

I haven't watched the movie or even read the synopsis on purpose, because I also didn't do that for Så som i himmelen, and getting to experience that story for the first time via Fredrik Kempe's music touched me to my core. Back then, though, I had some knowledge of Så som i himmelen as a concept and had listened to the Den tid jag har demo religiously (though I had no idea where it fit within the story, I guessed it was near the end of the first act where the main character starts to figure his life out, and then it turned out to be the opening song) – whereas here, I've somehow managed to miss nearly all of the songs, interviews and other stuff they've released.

I wonder if I should do some catch-up with the promotional material before leaving or if I should go in totally blind... but anyways, as a treat to future me and all of you Swedish movie/musical fans out there, here's what I think Änglagård the musical is about, based on the random assortment of Instagram promos I've seen (most watched without audio on):

Fredrik Lycke lives in an old farmhouse called Änglagård that his grandpa built with his very own hands. He feels extremely passionate about the farm and its legacy. Helen Sjöholm is married to Fredrik Lycke and she is also very fond of their home.

But then they either lose all their money and need to sell the farm, or maybe there's some Bennets vs. Mr. Collins kinda situation going on where grandpa willed that the house must be inherited by your idiot nephew in case you don't have any sons – and the buyers/inheritors are rebellious motorcycle rock'n'roll dude Lindy Larsson and his equally rebellious motorcycle striptease chick girlfriend Tuva B. Larsen. Or maybe one of them is Helen Sjöholm and/or Fredrik Lycke's estranged child who hasn't been in contact with them for years but suddenly wants to move back home?

Whatever the case, the young couple, who live in all manner of sin and probably have criminal records, upset the conservative sensibilities of the older couple... and they also remind them of being young and passionately in love, which they aren't anymore, and realising that causes a rift in their relationship. (Sidenote: I know Helen Sjöholm, Fredrik Lycke and Lindy Larsson are all about the same age irl, but onstage, the Larsson/Larsen couple is styled to look younger than the Sjöholm/Lycke couple. So I'm just making assumptions about the characters' ages here!) Furthermore, the older couple is afraid that the young couple won't honor the work and legacy of the people who lived in Änglagård before them. Thus, the young couple needs to prove their worth to the older couple before they can purchase/inherit/move in.

I have no idea how Tommy Körberg figures in all of this, except for that he seems to perform some kinda comic relief funny man song at some point, and possibly also feels passionate about the titular farm. Maybe he is Fredrik Lycke and/or Helen Sjöholm's brother (though hopefully not "and" if I'm correct that Helen Sjöholm and Fredrik Lycke are married in this) and the deal is that if you buy/inherit the farm, you gotta let him stay, so he'll be your resident old funny musical man?

Seriously, I have no idea. Looking forward to seeing what this musical is actually about!

[captainehren]

List of anime that influenced me

While watching CDawgVA talk about the anime that influenced him, I got to thinking of what has influenced me. I’m older than many fans now, so what I grew up with isn’t what everyone else grew up with. 

1) Sailor Moon

This show was the first real anime show I ever watched, though I had watched “anime” when I was younger in Voltron and Akira. However, they didn’t have nearly as strong an impact on me as Sailor Moon. I heard about it from one of my friends, and she was the kind of overly obsessed fantard that makes you cringe when you think of anime fans, but that came a bit later. I was in 6th grade and she told me I should try watching Sailor Moon in the morning. So I did.

I was instantly hooked. The girly clothes, the magic, the romance, the daring and mysterious Tuxedo Mask... I was in love! And so I got as many Sailor Moon things as I could get my little hands on. I got the small dolls, I also managed to get a hold of an Artemis plush that got ruined, and a big Sailor Venus doll. I really, really wanted a Tuxedo Mask doll, because good God he was pretty, but I could never find him. 

Over the years, I frequented anime stores, or Japanimation as we called it. I got a couple of Sailor Moon CDs, one of which was an import from Japan. I got a couple of imported manga from Japan that I could never read. And when the manga started being translated by Mixx Entertainment, I got the Mixx Manga magazine, which was kind of like Shoujo Beat or Shonen Jump except they smashed both the Shonen manga in with the Shoujo manga. I think I sold my copies to Half-Price ages ago because I needed whatever money they were willing to give me for it. And when I saw that Mixx was finally putting out the manga volumes for $10, I got my grandma to buy them for me. I was in high school when they were coming out then.

I learned to draw anime style by copying Sailor Moon’s style. My first attempts were awful, but I kept trying. I had a Sailor Moon character of Sailor Neptune way before I ever knew about the outer senshi showing up later in the series. (she was Serena’s sister and showed up to take Tuxedo Mask.) And later in 6th grade, my too obsessive friend not only claimed she had written a script for a Sailor Moon play that I was to play Sailor Jupiter in, but that, over the phone, she claimed she was turning into Sailor Moon when she looked into the mirror. And that she was having adventures in the mirror while talking to me on the phone. As I said: too obsessed.

Needless to say, Sailor Moon is one of my staples. It broke my heart when I had to sell my old Mixx manga Sailor Moon volumes and the newer ones that I had collected so that I could get some money. It’s okay. One day I will get them again.

2) Tenchi Muyo! or Tenchi Universe

I had not watched a lot of anime after Sailor Moon. There just wasn’t a lot that interested me and no real way of watching it unless I convinced my grandma to pay for it. I think I was in high school when Tenchi Muyo! showed up on Cartoon Network. I know I was thrilled to learn that Cartoon Network was airing Sailor Moon, so I was still in Sailor Moon mode. Whenever it showed up, I was hooked. I got on that train and careened right off the cliff. I love this stupid show, but the manga is soooooooo much funnier. Oh so much! This is where a lot of my old humor came into play when drawing my Harry Potter fancomics in high school, as well as the numerous comics that I started, but dropped when I got bored with them. (Attention span of a gnat.) It became more fun to just tease the shit out of my friends who wanted to know how the stories ended, but were sorely disappointed when I didn’t bother with them.

When I started writing out my super long and stupid Harry Potter fanfictions, it was a few years after high school. Before then, I was drawing them in high school when I wasn’t doing homework. And lo and behold, I’d copy the page layouts from Tenchi Muyo! and Oh! My Goddess, but only Tenchi Muyo! got a lot of interest from me. It might have helped that Tenchi Muyo!’s humor is pretty on par with Monty Python and other such British comedies I had grown up on, so it wasn’t a huge stretch to start picking up on how to draw some of its humor.

3) Fullmetal Alchemist

If you’re a long time fan of mine, then you know that this was bound to show up. FMA was one of those animes that I had no idea about until I randomly caught it on Cartoon Network when I was staying over at my great grandpa’s house. I was with my grandma and we were taking care of her dad--my great grandpa--who was suffering from dementia among other problems. The rest of the family took turns taking care of him and accompanying him on trips so that he was never left alone for too long. He had a problem of ending up in trouble and never bothering to ask for help when he couldn’t get back up. Now, I knew about a few more anime at this time, because I had anime loving friends in high school and out of high school who knew of stuff to suggest to me. I’d watch it on Cartoon Network and be somewhat interested in it. I watched Cowboy Beebop, Trigun, Outlaw Star (which has one of the best anime closing themes I’ve ever heard omg)... I can’t remember anything else at the moment.

I turned on the TV and found cartoon network was playing its late night anime block and watched FMA. And never looked back. Now, while my love of FMA is not as apparent as my love of Sailor Moon, it’s still there. I made my own Edward and Alphonse Elric dolls, for crying out loud! I would get the manga and I loved the art style so much I started trying to incorporate it into my own a little, much the way it happened with Sailor Moon and Tenchi Muyo. I would sit and listen to the soundtracks I would get from one of my friends. I have a signed picture of Vic Mignogna that I have stored away in a nice, safe place. I’m a fan. And it still stays with me to this day. I spent so much time playing with Harry Potter and FMA with one of my friends that we blended them together. 

Yeah. That’s right. My Mini-Erik series shows this bizarre shit in there and i will always be proud of how insane we got with it.

4) Princess Tutu

This one sounds goofy, and it is a little goofy, but it is so much deeper than you can possibly imagine. if you love magical girl stories as well as ballet, then you will love this. I love this. I LOVE THIS. This seriously came about when I found out that we had an anime channel. Back when my mom had a premium package for the cable, I could get free anime series to watch. I watched Pretear on there and a few other things, but what I took to the strongest was Princess Tutu. And trying to get my mom to sit and watch it with me because I know she will enjoy it if she gives it a chance was ridiculous. For some reason, she can’t handle anything where the characters have high pitched voices. She equates it to children’s voices and she can’t stand that. Not only that, but she, to this day, equates animated shit to cartoons for children. As I said, it’s fucking ridiculous to get her to watch this thing and enjoy it even though I know for a fact it has everything I know she will enjoy if she just stopped being a dumbass about it.

So this one has forever inflicted itself upon me. I still want to come up with a knight and princess like Fakir and Ahiru, but that will come when it comes. In the mean time, it will never leave me. Ever. I will always recommend it.

5) Fate/Stay Night (Fate series)

If you’re a long time fan of mine, you also know of my obsession with this series. It will never leave. NEVER. It always calls me back! Just like FMA, Princess Tutu, Tenchi, Sailor Moon, and a few others! But I think the most inspiring thing about the series is not so much the story, but the characters. Namely the heroes. See, I had a book I had taken from my great grandpa’s house upon his death. Actually, I had a lot of books that I had accumulated after his death, and all of them were mythology based. I staked a claim on those faster than you can blink. I have a Welsh Mythology book, an Irish mythology book, and two Scandinavian folk tale books that I got from his house. Well, I had read through the Irish one and enjoyed the Cattle Raid of Cooley and Cuchulainn, but it didn’t stick in my head. It was Fate’s Lancer that shoved that bastard right into my brain and he made a home there. I had always been a huge fan of King Arthur, and seeing a female King Arthur kinda weirded me out at first, but I liked the idea so much that I kept it for my own versions of King Arthur. 

“The Dark Queen”, “The King’s Hound”, and “Hound of the Dark Earth” all came from utilizing the images of the characters of Lancer Cu and Saber Arthur, but using them in my own way. So even now I’m still playing with these stories, and it has everything to do with fate/Stay Night being a huge influence on me.

6) Axis Powers: Hetalia

Oh, Hetalia. We have a love/hate relationship, you and I. I love you to pieces, but your fans tend to be fucking psychotic and/or stupid. Or at least the ones I always encounter minus one of my besties. My bestie Alex introduced me to Hetalia and I keep coming back to it while she’s kind of stopped caring. I always come back to things I enjoy, such as Harry Potter, Narnia, Lord of the Rings, King Arthur, yadda yadda.

 I instantly fell in love with America and continue to this day. I also fell in love with England, and later France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, China, Russia, Lithuania, and Japan. To this day, I have characters that are at least in some part influenced by the characters of Hetalia. My character Jimmy Stark was influenced by America, my character Bastian Wylde came from England, same with Fabian Santiago from Spain. I think even Darius Lis came from my usual portrayals of Lithuania in roleplays. How these came about was from a lot of role playing with Alex in various stories, including,but not limited to, Twilight and Harry Potter. We always paired Alex’s version of India with England, so in Twilight they became vampire lovers and in Harry Potter they were students. And then we used India in The Witch’s Son/Phantom of the Opera type shenanigans back when I was just trying to figure out how to make The Witch’s Son work.

However, I stayed far from the fandom outside of making overly dramatic fanfictions of a dumb parody cartoon. I know I had at least two Mexican idiots try to tell me that the Texas Revolution was America stealing Texas from Mexico instead of Mexico being an abusive dickwad and Texas raising a shotgun to his face and saying “No More.” Or that Palestine would have never picked on a young Israel, even though Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and a number of other places around Israel all declared war on Israel for simply existing. Israel won its independence in fire and blood, and then kept on surviving every single time these same nations never learned their lesson and declared they would “drive the Jews into the sea” ie kill them all. Or that America was never a conservative nation. However, they’re small fry in comparison to the bizarre fantards on gaiaonline. Had at least one of them molest my America and then, when I played such a thing straight and had America scream “BAD TOUCH! I NEED AN ADULT!” they started screeching about “straight helatians” being impossible and “straight hetalians” in their fandom. Like... dude? Seriously? The boys liking Hungary’s tits and ass don’t connect with you anywhere?

7) Hellsing

This one is more for two characters, specifically Alucard and Anderson. I played Alucard for years and then finally wanted to incorporate him in something without like... actually doing Alucard. If you know me, you know what I’m referring to. Anderson, however, kind of more just... visually influenced another character that has absolutely zero to do with him... though I suppose you could make the connection because they’re both priests that murder. The image in my head was more of the scarecrow variety, though, with Anderson’s long arms being more lanky, as well as his body. So perhaps a little of Batman’s Scarecrow fell in there somewhere, too.

8) Fushigi Yuugi

I literally only heard about this when I was... I think high school and then got out and ran into it later because of my bestie Amanda. This one is one of the lesser influences, but I suppose it still counts because some of it still lingers with me today. 

9) Ouran High School Host Club

A silly manga and a silly anime that makes the Captain a super happy person. This influenced more because of the stereotype characters in the same way Hetalia did. I’ve been noodling with the idea of romances surrounding similar types, including twins with a chick. We’ll see where that goes... if it goes anywhere. 

10) Anything CLAMP has created

Not gonna lie... I was a huge CLAMP fiend when I got out of high school. While I don’t really give a shit about the yaoi in the stories, my interest has always been in the cute, girly, adventure, or the DESIGNS. Jesus fuck, I would kill to be able to design some of the outfits they design. I’ve never been that imaginative with clothing. The detail put into the designs made me try to do the same with my own artwork, for good or ill. And the art styles were ones I emulated, particularly from eeh... Angelic Layer and Tsubasa Chronicle. I, in fact, used to rely on the manga from Tenchi, Sailor Moon, and Tsubasa Chronicle to get ideas for page layouts and whatnot when I drew comics. I incorporated a lot of it into my drawing style and then let it relax into something else when I finally got bored with keeping up with CLAMP.