#idk why the first picture is so low res/blurry

[smiisevenwhyplus]

=)

[manofmanymons]

Married life headcanons for your choice of survive kids m/f ships?

Okay my brain has never gone far enough into the future to think about this before but we HERE WE GO

Takuma and Aoi have "house in the suburbs with two kids" energy. They took turns being the stay at home parents until the kids were old enough to be home alone. Like maybe at first Aoi didn't have a job but Takuma did, but then years later Aoi got a chance to work her dream job around the same time Takuma hit a lull in his career and needed a break.

Sappy little shits, those two. Haven't missed a date night in years, always send those "life update" emails to the others, have Too Many family portraits on the walls.

If they send one more low res blurry picture of their kids with their partners to the group chat, their friends are gonna riot.

Takuma tried to learn how to cook so Aoi wouldn't always have to do it, but he's just...not good at it. Really, though, she doesn't mind one bit. Cooking is fun, and it reminds her of when they were kids and he used to joke that she was like a mom. At the very least, he can't fuck up breakfast, so that's his One Thing he gets to do.

They have a chore chart—and not just for the kids. It may seem silly, "you're adults, why are you following a chore chart?" but it ensures that work is split evenly and lets them account for times where one of them is a little busier than the other.

I know you said married life as in already married but with Saki and Ryo I wanna backtrack to actual wedding stuff for a minute. More specifically engagement.

Idk I just like the idea of Saki blurting out "we should get married" after a particularly nice date and Ryo being like "WHAT" not in a "I hate that idea" way but in a "did I hear you right and also are you serious" way

And her immediately backpedaling and trying to pass it off as a joke. "You should see your face." Except if they've been together long enough to even think about getting married, you know Ryo's not falling for that.

So within the month he's got a ring picked out and a Hallmark movie-esque proposal planned. Except he's Ryo, so the execution works out a little bit more like a sitcom proposal, but she says yes, so nothing else matters.

90% of the wedding planning falls to Aoi and Shuuji. Like Saki and Ryo tried doing it themselves but their Organized Friends were like "no you're doing it wrong." It was a little annoying at first but now they all just look back at it and laugh.

They're that couple that are just constantly falling back in love with each other. Y’know like maybe life will get a little busy, they'll accidentally go a little too long without doing something together, the house gets a little messy, and they get a little frustrated. But then one of them will tidy up a bit and throw together a little picnic, or buy a new co-op game for them to try out together the second they have free time, and they'll just talk and be honest and get caught up with each other, and it'll be the perfect reminder that "oh right, that's why we're doing this. Because they make me happier than anyone else can."

They don't have kids or pets. Kunemon and Floramon are more than enough, and they think Aoi and Takuma are insane. To each their own, as they say.

[fourteenacross]

ghost quartet - nytw next door - october 8, 2017

H'okay, so, this may all be a little blurry around the edges because the circumstances in which I traveled to and from New York on Sunday were not ideal and the anxiety around them muted parts of my brain more than I would have liked. BUT. Here we are.

First of all, it was humid as dicks and the house manager was very kind and let us inside the air conditioned lobby like, twenty minutes early, bless him.

Obviously "sixty-five seat black box theatre" implies that the space is small, but...man, the space is small. That was excellent, really--it added to the intimacy of the show--but it was still weird to walk into a space the size of my living room and dining room combined and have that be all. We sat in the section next to the door and, as I implied yesterday, I was directly behind Brent. If I could do it again, I probably would have sat in either of the other sections, just because that meant I really only saw Brent during "Fathers and Sons," but the place is so tiny it really hardly mattered. And, speaking of tininess/hardly mattering, the reserved seats were just the first row of each section and definitely not worth the additional thirty bucks, imo. This run is over, but if you're going to another Next Door performance that does a similar seating style, just...fyi.

The set dressing is great. It would have been cool if the seating was a little more informal, but it still felt like you were hanging out in your friends' basement, listening to them tell you an elaborate story. There were neat little touches around all of their stations--there was a little bear and a little pot of honey on the table next to Brent, as well as a mason jar, which I initially took to be a reference to his verse in "Four Friends," but it turns out Brent just takes water in his whiskey. (I mean, it might have ALSO been a nod to that, but it also served a practical purpose.)

I had listened to the music a few times last spring and a few times in August and a few times this month, in preparation, so I was familiar with the story and the songs, but seeing it live definitely adds another dimension. There were certain bits of staging that were surprises to me, and certain bits of staging that made things that pop up on the McKittrick recording make a lot more sense, heh.

Anyway, I'm gonna do this old school.

I Don’t Know - This song felt almost like a frame story, setting the stage for what's to come, except that the structure of the show is such that, with all the narratives twisting together, it was like framing a frame framing a frame. It was like an MC Escher frame, all twisted around and then turning into birds. I have theories about how this and "Four Friends" and "Any Kind of Dead Person" fit into the timeline(s) of the show, but I'm still trying to twist them into words.

Anyway, I was sitting right behind Brent and he's really good at the cello, in case you were unaware.

The Camera Shop - This opening is so interesting because of where it takes place in the larger narrative(s). Brittain/Rose comes in very, very nervous and unsettled, but as Gelsey starts behaving strangely, she starts to get more comfortable in the way you get comfortable when you assess that someone is kind of off-the-wall and you are a Rational Being and thus above them. There's still some of that nervousness as Gelsey starts to go into the story, but it comes off more as nerves from being around someone eerie than the nerves that we know Rose has around what she just did (or didn't do, as the case may be.).

Brittain and Gelsey work so incredibly well together, and this was the first time that the complexity of this piece, on an acting level, really set in. Everyone's playing at least four characters, sometimes several at once, and this is a good example. Brittain goes from Camera!Rose to Rose Red to Starchild within minutes, sliding seamlessly between them as the narrative dictates. It was pretty awesome.

Starchild - confession: I love Brittain's voice, I love her solo music, but this song didn't click with me on the cast recordings? Which is crazy, because it's super my jam, both musically and narratively. Seeing it live definitely changed that and I'm low-key obsessed with it now. She really acts with her whole body, as anyone who's seen Great Comet knows, and seeing all of that poured into "Starchild" just squeezed my heart.

Subway - This is one that I assumed worked better live than it does on the recording and I was right. The rhythm is a little clunky as a purely aural experience, but seeing the four of them perform it adds this incredible mounting tension. You can feel it in the room, the way that Gelsey bangs that drum and everyone sings over each other, the lighting flickering. (And, this is a whole other post, but I feel like that's maybe at the core of why some of Dave's stuff just doesn't click with people who are just listening to it. Fans obvs embrace his aversion to rhyme and the way he plays with rhythm in sort of non-traditional-musical-theatre ways, but when you're more a traditional-musical-theatre person and you're just listening to it instead of watching it, it's harder to grasp? idk, it's something that I've been thinking about, vis-a-vis friends saying, "I listened to the GC cast recording and it was fine and then I SAW IT and everything clicked and weird choices on the recording made sense!" and even my own feelings about listening to GQ vs. seeing it. Obviously, cast recordings are never going to substitute for actually seeing a thing in person and aren't 100% meant to, but I think that it's a particularly strong divide in GC and GQ. Anyway, I just said this needed to be a whole post in and of itself, so I'll stop now.)

Usher, Part 1 - I have not read this story since college, which was *mumblemumble* years ago, and I meant to re-read it before coming to the show, but I...didn't. Which is maybe better! Who knows! Anyway, this starts with just a light on Gelsey as she recites the opening monologue and plays the harp. It's simultaneously creepy and a little funny? She definitely plays up both sides of it, the funny and the creepy, which makes it get more creepy and less funny as time goes on, so by the time Dave comes in for the song, you're getting full-on chills.

Soldier and Rose - Gelsey is full-on Gelsey in this one. Which I say as the highest compliment, obvs. The juxtaposition of Brittain/Rose being awkwardly, desperately flirtatious and Gelsey/Soldier's utter Doneness is hilarious. Rose lays it on thick to a very impassive soldier who responds to all her entreaties by shaking a thunder tube at her.

Any Kind of Dead Person - This is just a fun number. Brittain hams it up and Gelsey gives out a succession of percussion instruments over the course of it, to people sitting all over the room, which just intensifies the feeling of this being your four weird friends telling stories in their basement and trying to get you to join in.

The Astronomer - Dave came out from behind the piano to sing this in front of Gelsey and Brittain's station and took some time to praise the other three as he got into position. He also tripped over the rug and then could not get it to lie flat. Otherwise, the patter is almost identical to the live show.

ANYWAY, I fucking love this song a lot, okay? It was my favorite song before seeing the show and remains my favorite after having seen it. I don't have much to say about it, performance/staging-wise, just lots of gushing about how much I fucking love it. The universality (is that a word) of the lyrics is just so sadly haunting, especially when you think of it as coming from the Astronomer, who's kind of a dick, but now also has this depth that I appreciate.

Family Meeting - Just as hilarious as you're picturing it in your mind, for sure. Brent and Brittain as kids are excellent, and Brittain's monologue is stellar. The transition between that little-kid-ness and flat out anger and frustration at the end is fabulous. (And the "and no Brent, it's not so perfect it's boring!" made me snort-laugh.) The "you're gonna be dead in like, thirty years" got a BIG laugh.

Four Friends - So, during this song, Dave pulled out three bottles of Evan Williams and plastic cups and passed them around, which was amazing, I would like all of my shows to come with a shot or so of liquor with the price of admission. I would prefer if it wasn't whiskey, which I don't particularly care for, but as I said yesterday, when Dave Malloy hands you whiskey, you suck it up and drink it, even if it's physically impossible for you to get over to the ice so you have to just drink it straight. Anyway, the sort of informal whiskey drinking again compounded that feeling of just hanging out with your buddies, so it was almost hard not to sing along. I was def bobbing a little. At the start of each verse, they poured a shot of the whiskey they were singing about that they handed out to the audience, which I probably wouldn't have noticed except when Dave went to hand out the Lagavulin, the girl who jumped up to get it was hilariously into it. I actually ended up standing near her when she talked to Dave after and she was like, "Uh, sorry if I was disruptive when I asked for the Lagavulin, I just love it and never get to drink it because it's so expensive?" which he commiserated with her about.

Fathers and Sons - They moved the drums to the center of the room, facing each other, and Brent and Dave moved to stand in font of them and play. Brittain and Gelsey held the mics out for them and I know I keep talking about how low-tech and "hanging with your buddies" this show is, but...I really love that aspect of it and I think it super adds to the narrative(s).

Usher, Part 2 - This was very eerie, overall, but "I'm right here" got a big laugh anyway. It's interesting, as Roxie's dying, the way that the walls of the narrative for this story, tenuous as the walls between the narratives in all these stories are, start to slip down. With Scheherazade being an "ancient" and all, it makes sense that the lines between narratives are more blurry there, and in the "Camera Shop" plot line, Pearl is already aware of what's going on, so despite a few references, "Usher" feels the most cut off from the other stories, but here that begins to fall apart.

The Telescope - This song is such an interesting counterpoint to "The Astronomer;" the dude seems like such a sleaze in this song, whereas we get him at this sort of open bareness earlier, where he's relatable and joyful. As Rose points out new stars, there's a spotlight on one of the lighting fixtures (the show is largely lit by lamps and a variety of thrift story chandeliers). Rose's intensity is breathtaking, but the music gives a very eerie quality to the shared refrain, even moreso when you take into account the upcoming split between Rose and the Astronomer.

Tango Dancer - This plotline was the one that it was most difficult for me to wrap my brain around from listening to the cast recordings, and seeing it def helped iron out some of that. I love the interactions between Brittain and Gelsey here--again, I love both of their ability to shift between these characters so fluidly and shift their chemistry just as fluidly as they change characters. The stiffness between them here is really the beginning of the end for me--Rose's awkwardness and the audience's knowledge of how these timelines are starting to come together. It's played really well.

Anyway, Gelsey really nails this, as if I even have to say that? And Brittain's awkwardness as she watches and tries to interpret all of it is excellent. "Myself didn't have time for me / didn't have time for anyone so used up" is too fucking true and haunting.

Monk - When sitting and seeing this bit live, for the first time it occurred to me that Rose's "Were they outside, in a park or something?" and Scheherazade's confirmation are Rose's past lives starting to leak through, giving her that knowledge. (Also "doesn't Lady Usher have a security system?" got a big laugh) Anyway, this is a nice little interlude before shit gets real. I was so into it that I almost forgot that shit was about to get real.

Light’s Out - It was fucking DARK. Which I did not realize was going to happen. I loooooved it. My eyes were def playing some tricks on me, the longer we stayed in the dark. Also, there was some light of something somewhere behind me (maybe the exit sign?) that kept reflecting off the inside of my glasses that was distracting me. Def a problem with my glasses rather than the show.

Anyway, this bit always makes me think of Can’t You Sleep, Little Bear?, so much so that I might ask Malloy about it on Twitter.

The Photograph - Goddamn this is creepy in the dark. And Gelsey going full Gelsey made it ninety times creepier. I want to hire her for my Halloween parties. I love the balance of the creepiness and rationality when the things that Rose believes in are rattled off. It's the sort of thing that makes me think of a horror novel, in the tense moments where the protagonist has to confront the impossible and spends a moment clinging all the more harder to their beliefs as if those beliefs will fight off something supernatural.

Bad Men - Super tense and frenetic. Rose losing it is so foreboding and perfect and intense. The confrontation with the bear as she reaches the pinnacle of losing herself to revenge and accepting that she wants this enough to do it herself. Yikes.

Usher, Part 3 - I love all the stories merging in this song, as we're all sitting in the dark with flashes of light and all of these threads are twisting together. It really ups the sense of danger and tension. Pearl's monologue at the end is so eerie. Those last few lines, shit. They are that much more intense when they're happening right in front of you.

Prayer - I think this was when the lights started to come back up? This always kind of blurs into other songs for me and I forget it's there a little?

Hero - Jesus, what a song, what a performance. I know Brittain talks all the time about how she's not an ~*~actor~*~ just a musician that got roped into acting in her friend's shows, but jesus christ, she's fantastic. This song just scrapes out whatever's left of your insides and leaves you feeling entirely hollow and shaky.

Midnight - This is such a neat way to tie up the end of the show. Again, you've got that "friends hanging out" vibe as things become clearer for everyone. Brittain and Dave dance, as Brittain's characters settle and sort of come to terms with all that's happened in all of the timelines. Malloy has excellent comic timing--his ramble about why Thelonius Monk's ghost is still kicking around and the way it breaks into Rose and Pearl's reconciliation. I snort-laughed at "Or maybe there just isn't Heaven. That's actually pretty likely." And then again with "I guess in the abstract, yeah...I don't really make a lot down at the MTA?"

Anyway, Dave and Brittain dancing was very sweet, and "You're a really good cello player, Brent!" got a big laugh.

Wind and Rain - I love this song a lot and the performance of it was lovely. As the song went on, they started handing out instruments again, but not just little percussion things--they kept going, moving up to their own instruments, until they'd given everything to the audience, at which point they walked off stage and left the audience to play out the song. I think they kept going for maybe a minute or two after everyone left before it fell apart, mostly, I think, because a couple of people were so wildly off-beat it was hard to keep on beat.

Afterwards, they came back to applause and gave a kind of informal, "thanks for coming, tell your friends, buy our merch or stick around and talk!"

We stayed to talk, though I didn't buy anything because I don't wear t-shirts and we have zero room for more glasses at this point. But I still took a moment to tell everyone they were great and the show was great and all that. I was wearing one of my ghost dresses and everyone commented on it.

ANYWAY, that's basically it, unless I remember anything else important! Maybe I will write some more of my thoughts about the narratives and storytelling and setting and all that shit a little more formally, but... probably not. Gotta finish the next ghosthunters story some time this year.