#deh rant

[hole34]

hey so i was just chilling to my playlist and then Requiem came up and i started sobbing so i wanna talk about something real quick.

as much as i love everything about Dear Evan Hansen i feel that there's not NEARLY enough recognition/discussion of Zoe's side of the story with Connor dying.

what I absolutely LOVE about DEH is that no character or 'side' is in the right and equally none in the wrong. there is no villain to the story (unless you want to argue it's evan in which you need to fully drop the emotional aspect, which, is kinda the whole play).

people have sympathy for the real connor who committed suicide and made bad decisions for himself, but at the same time understand that bullying evan was wrong. people have sympathy for evan who struggles so deeply with having no connections or communication ability, but at the same time understand that making up a persona for a dead kid that isn't true and telling everyone it is is wrong. jared understands evan wants to help the murphys, but he understands that evan "helping the murphys" isnt morally right.

but,

CAN. WE. TALK. ABOUT. ZOE?

zoe's character in the play is especially personal to me because of the real representation that is just as important as the representation evan is and comes with.

zoe has lived with an abusive brother ever since she can remember. now this isn't to say connor is a bad person - but you have to look at him from zoe's point of view - he was abusive towards her and that's undeniable.

when connor dies zoe gets a spotlight to share her grief of him, which is complicated and "wrong" but the REAL GRIEF is the fact she doesn't feel bad. zoe doesn't mourn connor's death because her whole life with him was an abused sibling. she doesn't miss connor and she grieves the fact that she doesn't - because it's "wrong" - that's what her spotlight in Requiem is about.

societally expected family values are FUCKING STUPID and this is the kind of thing that always gets swept under the rug for people who have to deal with it. people who lose a family member who was abusive to them, while everyone else in the world mourns the loss of that person, and you're deemed as the villain for not missing them.

i can very personally attest to this. it's so fucking isolating to have the whole world see you as the villain because you didn't like the abuse. internalising that expectation and that becoming your own internal conflict ("i'm a bad person because i don’t feel bad") on TOP of this is the icing on the fucking cake.

seeing this position shown in Dear Evan Hansen means MORE than the world to me, and whether people take understanding from it consciously or unconsciously doesn't matter, but the fact that this is zoe's character and it's IN the musical absolutely does.

[nerdle-turdle]

"evan is a bad person" yeah so is everyone that's the point

Heidi is neglectful and gets angry that someone else cares for her son.

Cynthia was trying to fix Connor, and when a method didn't work she immediately moved on to something else and had no consistency, and let him get away with everything. She didn't pay attention to Zoe because she was too focused on Connor.

Larry wanted to punish Connor, and said he was threatening suicide for attention.

Connor was abusive towards Zoe and lashed out at everyone around him, he was paranoid and had anger issues.

Zoe was a stuck-up rich girl who didn't care about Connor's death.*

Jared made fun of Evan and didn't care about Connor's death, only was entertained by the chaos it created.

Alana was using Connor as another thing to put on her list of accomplishments, put out what she thought was his suicide note to hit a monetary goal, and removed Evan (who she thought was Connor's best friend) from the project he started when she thought he didn't do enough.

On the inverse,

Heidi was trying her best to care for Evan as a single mom who was working to provide for both of them and going to school.

Cynthia just wanted her son to be happy again.

Larry genuinely cared for Connor, and was worried that Cynthia was letting him get away with too much.

Connor didn't get the help he needed and was struggling.

Zoe wasn't paid attention to by her parents, and was trying to figure out how she's supposed to and if she's allowed to mourn Connor.

Jared was lonely and insecure.

Alana was unseen and threw herself into her work in hopes that she'd be noticed, and was focused on building up accomplishments so people might care about her.

The entire point is none of them are good nor bad. They're human. We all are.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

People who are like “Omg gen z theatre kids only know *proceeds to list every single musical that came out after 1999*” are the most annoying assholes like hey maybe we just don’t like shit from the 1960’s or we have specific tastes have you ever considered that

[biscuitbakerbecca]

HELP I SPENT SO MUCH MONEY ON THE MERCH AHHHHHH

[intricate-ritualz]

fics where connor is written as just a strange fucking guy >>>

[maitaiwiththecorpses]

“On the outside always looking in” shut UP Evan Hansen at least you haven’t set up over seven successful couples in your life, one of which got married and has a BABY now while you yourself can’t even find love. Shut. Up. Evan Hansen.

[this-is-ali]

Y'all, it's 2023. Can we please stop pretending it's cool to hate on Dear Evan Hansen?

[roseworth]

it’s so hard being a theatre kid and trying to explain that ben platt is genuinely so talented and he was great in dear evan hansen on broadway but he was nepo babied into the role in the movie when he did not deserve it and now that’s how people know his name

[querido-eh-dump]

Periódicamente siento la necesidad de dibujar a estos dos siendo felices. Según yo, está es una recopilación de los bocetos más presentables de la reserva que guardo, más una ilustración.

[rubiatinctorum]

the whole cultural idiot thing is part of why i find a lot of too-online musicals discourse absurd. the wise and brilliant critic is aware that dear evan hansen's evan hansen isn't very niceys, and the founding fathers weren't very niceys, and mr hyde and the opera ghost and sweeney todd aren't very niceys. but the critic also believes that the rest of the audience is a) fucking stupid. and b) so liable to be so mesmerized by the little songs and dances that they will leave the production believing that evan hansen was a hero and alexander hamilton in real life was a hero and erik poto was a hero. at some point we must recognise the other members of the audience were both not born yesterday and are here for an interesting experience, and yes, a crafted story, same as the critic thinks themselves to be, and they will not all pour out onto the streets to do great interpersonal violence because they saw a man on the stage do so.

and it's just like. funny to me. on some level. because as much as it boils my carrots to see bad takes about musicals i enjoy posturing as genuine analytical essay material rather than a scandalized reading of a summary (say essay and i WILL be checking for your thesis statement, your point evidence explanation, etc), it also doesn't escape me that the cognitohazard production that people are saying should not be allowed to exist because of the harm it is perpetuating is also the progenitor of such dangerous lines as "i'm sending pictures of the most amazing trees." PLEASE be real for a minute.

[yououghtaknow]

genuinely kind of terrified as to what will happen to me when i see bare live in three (three!!!!!!!!) days. i will either go fully insane or transcend mortality or perhaps both. either way i will most likely end up full weeping.

[cru5h-cascades]

Y'all I think months after the theater final incident of 2024 I'm starting to realize that Dear Evan Hansen kinda sucks...? Like idk I kinda think the play & movie's message kinda falls flat (the book does a better job at delivering the message the play wanted to though) and some weird choices were made (JARED DOES NEXT TO NOTHING IN EVERY VERSION OF THE PLAY BESIDES MAKING THE EMAILS WITH EVAN. AMANDA KINDA SUCKS AS A CHARACTER. AND THE ENDING ISN'T REALLY THAT SATISFYING IN RETROSPECT.) (there's probably more that I'm not mentioning but that's just a few things I wanted to point out).

Yeah I still think that the songs in the play are neat (for the most part, anyways) (I'm just so sick and tired of Waving Through a Window I had to listen to that song A LOT last year) but the play's story just... no... it's kinda bad. There was some wasted potential there...

[widevibratobitch]

me when theyre playing mozart ensembles too slow

[annisrealandsoami]

When I had originally been apart of the deh fandom, I hadn’t thought about the implications of what he did.

Spoilers, obviously. He didn’t mean to lie. Evan had made a dumb mistake, that at the time could’ve easily been fixed.(with an extremely awkward conversation. Or just not continuing the lie.). He instead, doubled down.(rookie move) Okay, he’s now lying to a grieving family. Let’s make fake proof that he’s not. Then let’s make even more fake evidence of a friendship that never existed. Let’s then get so invested in the lie that it over shadows the actual victim. Let’s get ‘Conner’ trending online, and then have to make even more fake evidence. Let’s implode every relationship you have, because of all this bullshit. Then after everything, come clean to the grieving family you have been fucking lying to for all this time.

Not to mention that he dated Conners sister immediately after he died, under guise of his friend. Zoey didn’t even like Conner, but Evan used his supposed connection to him to get close. Zoey just wanted to move on. And Evan couldn’t.

Was it the attention he was finally getting? It’s not even a good enough excuse or reason for his actions.

Conners memory is completely covered with Evan’s bullshit. The orchard is based on Evan’s lies. Like what the fuck?

And I know funerals and memorials are more about the living than they are actually about the dead, but the amount of continuous lies this man said, bonkers.

But when you’re 13, you just listen to the catchy songs and not really absorb the context.

Until randomly you listen to ‘Good for You’ and no longer can understand why Evan did all of it. No longer can sing along to Evan as he laments about how he feeling the consequences of his actions(which was your favorite part to sing for so long.)

There is no redeeming him, and maybe that’s the point. He did make good lasting change, but that doesn’t erase how he got there. How the good does not outweigh the horrendous mistake he made, then continued to make.

And yeah, he painted Conner in a good light, but he still painted over his memory. According to book, Conner was misunderstood, and maybe eventually his family would come to realize that. But to rewrite him? The dude didn’t even write a note. Dead men tell no tales. He was done. And Evan basically wrote self insert fanfiction of them being friends.

Why did I breeze past this? Why was I okay with it? I used to like Evan’s character. Used to relate to him and his social anxiety.

Sorry for ranting, but this occurred to me a while ago and I can’t stop thinking about it.

[doodle17]

I feel in a fankid mood all of the sudden yall should send me some zaquato troop au asks

[spirirsstuff]

ok but if i made an askblog of my au would people actually send asks

like the fandom is basically entirely dead but like. what if someone wanted the lore