#dr. horrible's sing along blog

[thepetitepiper]

I really enjoyed Neil Patrick Harris as The Toymaker in the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special!

Then, it got me thinking... Neil Patrick Harris plays a lot a musically inclined villains, doesn't he? I can name four just off the top of my head:

1. Dr. Horrible in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2. Music Meister in Batman: The Brave and the Bold

3. Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events

4. The Toymaker in Doctor Who

Guess that's what happens when you can sing, dance, and play fun, campy villains.

Any others that I'm missing?

[inbarfink]

Okay, so I accidentally thought about Stage Productions of Dr. Horrible Where There’s Not Enough Male Actors So Billy is Played By a Woman too hard again. And the thing is, well,  I say ‘Stage Productions of Dr. Horrible Where There’s Not Enough Male Actors So Billy is Played By a Woman’ and not, like, ‘Female!Billy Productions’ because in all of the ones I’ve seen the script is unchanged and so the character is still textually a man. Super-minor characters like the Mayor and the two Newscasters or even Bad Horse can sometimes get genderswapped, but usually the kind of people dedicated enough to DHSAB to want to create their own recreation of it don’t want to change the script too much. So Billy remains gendered the same way he is in the original.

But also… Dr. Horrible isn’t gendered that much in the text of the script. Like, he gets talked about in third-person way less often than the other two leads (so there’s less places where he would be called he/him/himself), he’s not referred to using gendered terms as often as the two other leads, ‘Billy’ can work as a gender-neutral name and ‘Dr. Horrible’ is 100% gender-neutral. As such, the only textual references to Dr. Horrible being a dude are:

Refers to himself as a guy in ‘My Freeze Ray’: ‘I’m the guy who makes it real/the feelings you don’t dare to feel’

Refers to himself as a man in the title line of ‘A Man’s Gotta Do’

Moist calls him a man in the line ‘look at me, Man, I’m Moist!’

Refers to himself as a guy in ‘Brand New Day’, ‘Go ahead and laugh/Yeah I’m a funny guy!’

The one time Dr. Horrible is called by a third person pronoun is during ‘So They Say’, when Moist notes that ‘he’s still not picking up’

During ‘Everything You Ever’, he sings ‘My victory’s complete/so hail to the king’. Implicitly calling himself a ‘king’.

So, like, what that means is that if a production did just want to genderswap Billy… it’ll be considerably easier than doing it with either of the other two leads. There’s basically just a few lines you have to change and basically nothing else.  

Like, ‘I’m the gal who makes it real’ is really a no-brainer. ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’ is an Idiom and I could see a woman quoting it without it meaning anything. (And in a pinch you can replace it with the gender-neutral ‘one’s gotta do what one’s gotta do' or maybe 'I've gotta do what I've gotta do').

“He’s still not picking up” often gets cut from stage reworks of ‘So They Say’ anyways or swapped for something like ‘Doc’s still not picking up’ to make it clear who’s Moist talking to without the Magic the Kuleshov Effect Really. The only line that offers any meaningful challenge is in ‘Brand New Day’ and 'Everything You Ever' cause that use of ‘guy’ and 'king' is part of a rhyme, but I still feel like it’s not the toughest one to solve. 

… of course, I keep saying the three main characters because Moist isn’t actually gendered once in the entire script. So basically every time a production gets a girl to play Moist that Moist has a Gender Quantum Position. 

But, with all due respect to Moist and their Quantum Gender, that’s just not a change I find as interesting as the possibility of a Female Billy. Like, hey! We’ve got a second female character who is not primarily defined through her romantic relationships and survives through the end of the narrative and has a kind of a Gross Power you don’t really see for a female super-character, that’s… kinda neat. But I don’t really think there’s anything in here that really shakes the basic thematic undercurrents of the movie the way Female Billy does. Female Billy has a really the highest rate of Implied Changes to the Meaning of the Text Caused by the Change Vs. Actual Changes Required to the Text

Because, okay, look… Would making Dr. Horrible a woman fix every single thematic problem people have with the DHSAB Narrative forever and ever and make it the Politically Perfect-est Musical Ever? Nah. Does it arguably create its own set of problems with the whole Tragic Toxic Lesbian Trope? Yeah… 

But that’s why I’m advocating for it not as some sort of Remake that’s gonna be the New Definitive Version That Fixes Everything, but as a stage production. A new version that exists in the Kaleidoscopic Multiverse of takes that the stage inherently creates. Not Ultimate, not Definitive, not ‘The’ version. Just A Version I think should exist. Because even if it’s not a change that’ll Fix Everything, it’s still gonna change things in a way I, personally, find very Compelling.

And I was thinking, as part of this train of thought, that if I were to do Lesbian Billy, that for Penny’s role, I would try and cast a girl with a very butch and/or nonconformist haircut. Cause, like, at the start, the one line Billy wants to tell Penny is

And that way you can connect it with how nonconformist hairstyles are used as a way to communicate queerness to other queer people with some plausible deniability from Mainstream Society. So it’s not just that it helps explain ‘oh, that’s why Billy even assumes her attraction could be mutual’, wanting to tell Penny that she loves her hair is a whole thing of

Or rather, because it’s Billy, more like

So that’s another layer of Added Thematic Meaning just via casting choices, without changing anything about the exact text of the script!

And, you know, charity, compassion and kindness are not Exclusively Feminine Traits. Penny could be kinda gender-nonconformist while also being innocent and maybe a bit naive. And, y’know, she’s a damsel in distress when compared to the characters who have super-strength and super-science at their disposal.

And then I thought, well, maybe we can also show Penny dressing more feminine during her time dating Captain Hammer, so there’s kind of an unspoken implication to the audience that maybe CH is pressuring her into being more gender-conformiming. Which isn’t just a New Way in Which Captain Hammer is terrible,  it also connects with how he, as a superhero, functions as an upholder of the status que that Billy is trying to upends (and again, it makes ‘love your hair!’ an actually Really Important Line! It’s Billy showing that, even if her attraction right now is kinda shallow. She is appreciating something about Penny that is her choice and CH is probably trying to take away from her.)

And, like, even in readings of the DHSAB narrative that try and make it as critical of Billy as possible, you always kind hit a snug that there is also an unspoken but present assumption, that while Billy does kinda suck, he could’ve been a good romantic partner to Penny if he just Got Over His Shit and is still always better than Captain Hammer despite… not really doing a good job establishing why. 

So this thread does give at least one clear reason for why Captain Hammer is absolutely worse for Penny than Billy is, without necessarily letting Billy off the hook for all the way she does still kinda Suck.

You know, since we’re talking about changing as little of the actual dialogue as possible, the audience might not be able to tell if Penny is an out-and-proud Bi woman and Captain Hammer is pressuring her to be less Obviously Queer or if she still hasn’t fully processed that her affinity towards gender-nonconformity is also somewhat connected to her sexuality and the whole debacle is her shoving herself deeper into the closet… but I think that if the audience notice Penny suddenly changing into girlier clothing after she starts getting close to Captain Hammer that’ll be enough to create a visceral “Oh, this guy is BAD” reaction of sort.

Plus, like, the way the narrative kinda treats Penny slowly sobering up to Captain Hammer’s bullshit and realizing she’s not actually in love with him

is treated as interchangeable with the process of her gradually falling in love with Billy

that would hit as less Weird, at least thematically, if we have that thread of Captain Hammer representing, like, Heteronormativity and the Patriarchy Billy and Penny both being girls....

And that’s when I came to realization

of what I was actually doing.

[oldinterneticons]

[dr-arasaka]

Billyさんカワイイすぎ💕

[systimming]

Dr. Horrible board! For @error-404-brainnotfound

- Mod ENA.

((Sources of gifs: x, x, x | x, x, x | x, x, x ))

[fizzcosplays]

I love this musical too much

[its-to-the-death]

Villain Song Showdown Bracket A Round 1

Everything You Ever (Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog) - Villain: Dr. Horrible

Get In the Water (Epic: The Musical) - Villain: Poseidon

Mod comment: A shame Ruthlessness didn't make it in because I have been listening to Epic's Ocean Saga on repeat.

[clairedelune-13]

Reblog if after you finished watching The Giggle you then watched/rewatched Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.

[violentalbino-real]

dr horrible fans should interact with me i love that series and have the books coming in the mail soon and i have a lot of feelings about it a lot of them are kinda negative but they are passionate and that’s why i love it is because i cam talk endlessly about it TALK TO ME ABOUT IT im fine im normal im so fine about this 15 year old web series.

[fionacle]

DOCTOR HORRIBLE IN DANGANRONPA NO WAY

[vikingsheep]

Megamind and Dr. Horrible are the same character, but one is on a hero arc and the other is on a villain arc.

[made-this-cause-why-not]

Months ago I got the idea for a Supercorp Dr.Horrible's Sing Along Blog au where Lena is Dr.Horrible, Mon-el is Captain Hammer and Kara is the girl (i don't remember her name it's been a while since I've rewatched) with Sam being Reign as the sweaty roommate, and I haven't even opened a doc to start writing it but I just wanted to share that idea incase any one was interested. I just think it would be nice to see season 2 but more angst you know. Plus, making Lex the head of the Evil League of Evil and adding that onto it all. Like, wow

(This is the link to the musical, it is 40 minutes long with Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion and a GEM, do yourself a favor and watch it Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Full [HD] [sub ita/eng/esp] (youtube.com) )

[inbarfink]

Anyways I know literally no one was asking this question but if Dr. Horrible were to ever watch ‘Megamind’, it’ll just get under his skin in such a visceral way. He’ll be so pissed off at it. Like, it’s got the brilliant, sympathetic Supervillain Protagonist who was bullied all of his life by the full-of-himself superhero and then… he has NO plan to improve the city once he takes it over? No ethos outside of the aesthetic? The superhero is played sympathetically?? The supervillain learns the error of his ways and becomes a superhero? This isn’t just an affront to how Dr. Horrible views supervillainy, but to his whole sense of identity.

For him, with his whole view of what supervillainy is and how the world works, this is like some Insidious Corporate Propaganda that exists for the sole purpose of watering down supervillainy, and the kind of resentment and frustrations at society that brought him into supervillainy, into something mainstream-y and placating that does nothing but uphold the status quo. 

And he would make a scathing review of it for his Blog, and he’ll try and play it, like, mocking and condescending and above-it-all. Like, this is just dumb slope for the masses, brainwashing junk food for babies - obviously he doesn’t really care about something so stupid. But, like, you can totally tell that it has touched a nerve. 

He would, however, have No Thoughts about Hal Stewart. Like, Hal’s storyline wouldn’t make him reconsider the way he thinks about Penny, and it wouldn’t make him feel insulted or defensive. He would mention Hal’s existence at, like, one line of his review and then go back into complaining how bullshit it is that Metro Man didn’t stay dead. Billy just doesn’t have the self-awareness to even notice any of the possible parallels between himself and Hal.

[oldinterneticons]

the status is not quo.

[pi-roach]

god help me

technically ocs. Technically. Gusy pl. ease guys I need an excuse to draw them like 6his

(Also, horrible is a nail because when he sings “slipping” he said “hammer meet nail”)

[fedehiko]

Nos the nightmare's real Now Dr. Horrible is here. To make you quake with fear, To make the whole world kneel. And I won't feel… A Thing.