#my monkees meta.....

[cogneartive]

if you squint a bit or just believe in me the narrative of the monkees is almost epistolary or maybe multi-media in the way that you have to use video interviews, articles, other things, to piece together what they experienced and to know what people thought about them during the shows run

you could go even meta with this because i learnt about alot of the background stuff through older blog posts on tumblr which did impact my initial reading of head (1968) which could be a really interesting thing to think about - how other people talking about a certain work can also be influential on someone's interpretation of the text

and i kind of wonder to what extent all these things were known about the monkees when head (1968) first premiered because yknow the background info abt the real life monkees is an essential part of the narrative the film is telling. how did it influence how the film was received? how crazy would it be for a teen-young adult who watched all the episodes of the original tv show, maybe hear the 'monkees dont play their own instruments thing' and see them live, to see how the monkees as a concept are depicted within the film

[rig-a-rendal]

do you have any recommendations of which monkees episodes to show non-monkee people? I want to force my friends to watch the movie but they are interested in the show as well...also i really enjoy your series of watching all the monkee episodes :)

Hi! my personal recommendation would be to start out with the episodes that aren't too crazy self-referential fourth-wall-breaky like: The Chaperone, Monkee Mayor, or my personal favorite (for some reason I have no idea) 99-lb Weakling

[sweetertork]

mfw when my rival bandmate and colleague and the guy i dont really like even though we used to be close enough that i let him live in my house writes a good song about love in the modern era but doesn't know what to title it but i already have the perfect popular colloquialism that includes his name in it and somehow perfectly encapsulates the feeling of affectionate exasperation i sometimes feel towards him as well as the pleading lyrics of the song and now i have given the song another layer and a meta significance beyond the content of the lyrics and i have branded the song with the name of its writer so even tho my bandmate doesn't get much recognition in the overall existence of our band/TV show this song is now indisputably his and he didn't even choose that i did that for him and then it becomes the closing title of the show and in some ways the main theme and message of our "band"s whole deal but that doesn't even matter because the whole monkees phenomen is cardboard anyway but what does matter is the song and what is real is the fact that i did that for him and he didn't even ask me to and in a way this is a sign of how well we would work together if i or both of us put our differences aside and accepted the fact that we are more similar than we think but in the end this only makes our fallout more tragic and for decades to come it will be the biggest What If in both our lives. just think about that for a second

[monkee-mobile]

A bunch of things from the Monkees comic book I made my dad buy me for christmas. Part 2

coquette davy (we’re gonna ignore everything about mike right there except for the knowledge that his legs are bare. if only real life mike had his knees and arms out more. for shame.)

Brutal that even the monkee comics get meta about how they’re trapped. especially giving this bit to peter! jesus christ.

More bare-legged michael action. it’s weird girl summer Mike! ‘shot op’ and wear your slutty shorts!

More meta stuff… something something even in the comic world they’re trapped by their creators… something something they have no control… you know… just silly stuff… though I do love comic panels where the artist shows themself interacting with a character while working, it’s fun. but with the monkees it’s just a little bit… horrifying…

Okay, part 3 coming!!!

[incohorace]

so the thing about the monkees tv show is that during the first season it's mostly your run-of-the-mill sitcom the four actors musicians ie the titular monkees have little to no say in it at all artistically or musically but then during the second season it all starts going off the rails - they get a bit more creative freedom and fourth wall breaks start happening sporadically, mostly just them directly addressing the camera, and then get closer and closer together many many times an episode (them bringing out the script and consulting it going hey that's my line etc etc with occasionally even sequences like the one you just saw) - eventually culminating in the movie head (1968) which is so meta even the monkees themselves didn't understand what was going on at times and teeters on the edge of self-awareness about the horrors of fame and making the tv show while simultaneously still being a very fucked up experience behind the scenes. also i think you can see in this clip how fucking done they were with the whole tv show thing by this point lol

OK MAYBE I NEED TO WATCH THIS...................................

[nickiemoot]

*bursts into room* WHAT IF THE REASON DEDEDE FELL UNDER FECTO FORGO'S CONTROL IS BECAUSE HE'S A PENGUIN

hear me out. ok. listen. dedede is an evolved penguin and not really a beast, but hes still more closely related to beasts than other characters. forgo's mind control was not spreading across all living things, it was specifically targeting the powerful beast pack leaders. so when a penguin king showed up, he was a perfect target. this also explains why frosty (walrus) and bonkers (monkee) easily fell under control too. it doesn't explain gigant edge, but then again we don't really know what they are under all that armor...?

waddle dees are not powerful leaders, nor are they animal-like. kirby is not animal-like at all, and while it's not clear what species he and meta knight are they're sometimes implied to be from the stars (i hc them to be magical space beings made of starstuff, but they could just be aliens).

it could also partially be that dedede simply failed his wisdom saving throw and meta knight succeeded, because something something willpower or whatever. but what if. forgo was just focusing on powerful beasts (and beast-like beings)

*puts several more pins on my conspiracy cork board*

[verifiedaccount]

This may be apocryphal, but I think it was in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls that someone from the studio (BBS) said the idea of the title was that it was the studio’s first film, so on all their posters for movies afterwards, they would be able to put, “from the studio that gave you Head.” Head ended up being a notorious flop, and the next movie they released was Easy Rider, so they quickly moved on from Head and gave up on the poster idea.

They thought they would do a really hip ad campaign for Head, so the ads mostly consisted of a close-up of the face of John Brockman, a guy who worked in the promotional department:

Not all of the ads even indicated The Monkees were in it. It was also cowritten by Jack Nicholson, when he still wasn’t sure if acting was gonna work out as a career, and felt he had better odds making it as a screenwriter. But, then, he also had Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces shortly after, so Head, along with his screenwriting career, quickly became footnotes.

Head is a psychedelic meta sketch comedy that mixes some of the then (1968) cutting edge art film techniques with creaky old jokes, anti-humor, and some shocks, like a few uses of actual footage from the ongoing Vietnam War. I grew up on The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (also 1968, and not actually starring The Beatles) and that remains my personal preference (as do the actual Beatles movies, even Help!), but The Monkees made the more daring and innovative film, especially since it’s actively hostile to their whole thing and designed to end The Monkees, with reference to the “manufactured” reputation of the band (often dismissed as “the prefab four,” natch) and their image and a mock suicide opening.

reblog if 55 years ago the monkees gave you head

[monkeesque]

^ this is basically the thesis of the blue angel (one of my fav eighth doctor adventures). which is very doctor who deconstruction time war meta (reacting to one of my other fav eighth doctor adventures funnily enough) . but also. if you're insane enough. the box. the doctor trapped forever incapable of having adventures with no audience (he is nothing without an audience let's be real) vs the monkees trapped forever forced to have adventures and perform. rewrite, remake, replay, repeat! ha!

[motionpicturesforcarrie]

i havent rewatched evangelion 3.0+1.0 since it was released, but from what i recall, it has a few similarities with head…. or maybe it doesnt and ill do anything to connect my interests

in 3.0+1.0, shinji and gendo fight each other in nearly identical eva unit 01s. during their battle, they end up in different locations from the series/rebuilds, except it’s very obvious that these are sets (shinji’s unit 01 crashes through a plywood set wall of “misato’s room”, shinji’s unit 01 toppling buildings and landing on the backdrop)

when i watched head, all the fourth wall breaks made me think of evangelion… which sounds like a cringe statement i know.. but like when micky tore the backdrop paper or when the crew and camera could be seen, 3.0+1.0 was the first thing i thought of

i dont remember if there was anything else plot-wise that was similar (actually lets be real. what plot) but in a meta way, they’re driven by the creators’ desire to put their creation to rest. in 3.0+1.0, all the evangelions are finally gone from the universe of the film, but nge as a whole is completely over irl, and there will be no more movies or series or anything. at least i hope. and in head, the monkees literally all jump off the bridge; the film also acts as a subversion to the image of the monkees that was created for and by the series

OH i almost forgot. time loops duh. in 3.0+1.0 the loop ends but in head i guess it keeps going

[spaceorphan18]

Just thinking about things - and people talking about doing podcasts and listening to podcasts had me thinking about my old @todaydreambelievers blog and podcast.

So, some facts...

1. During Season 6 - Kurt and Blaine sing Daydream Believer by The Monkees. And I've always been emotionally attached to that song. Have I ever told you guys why? Well... Fifteen years earlier, when I was but a teenager myself, Dawson's Creek used a slowed down version of the song during a pivotal, emotional moment for the Pacey/Joey romance - which I supposed you could say was one of my first ships (though - we didn't use that term back then). The song has remained significant to me since then, and hence I named my blog after that.

2. It's not a mistake that it's 'to' instead of 'two'. When I was first coming up with the blog - a friend of mine said I should do a pun on the word 'to' -- so that it could be read like a toast - hold a glass up and cheer to daydream believers -- all of us. And then it puns with the word 'two' to reference both Kurt and Blaine. I don't think people got it, though, and often would write Today Dream Believers -- which doesn't make any sense, but I get people's confusion.

Also - finding a url based on daydream believer was a pain in the ass, hence me going with the pun.

3. TDB was originally just a fanfic prompt site - and if you go back far enough you can find the prompts. When TDB started doing the rewatch and podcast I created @todaydreambelieversfic

4. The friend I created the blog with actually had another blog. My blog would be fic related and hers would be meta/analysis related. For the life of me, I don't remember what it was - but she only did it for a few months. Fun fact, though - the color scheme of tdb is blue and purple to represent Kurt's proposal colors and the color scheme of her blog was yellow and green to represent Blaine's proposal colors.

We thought we were so clever. ;)

[bugpoasting]

ok so:

first off disclaimer: i don’t believe in canonical/only One headcanon so if u have other ideas i am absolutely happy to play in that space as well!!! please please please share any other ideas that you might have i would looooove to hear em. and ur familiar with my brand of girl!aus as well (tldr: dont think too hard about it, this is just a fun Sandbox to explore diff dynamics hehe)

anyways so. instead of being a full-bend, i actually see the monkees having a 50/50 girl-guy split, because while the beatles did make it big in america and around the world as four girl band, the bigwig exec is like, okay it worked for them because they’re the beatles, will the American public accept that?? are they ready for that??? no. so they split down the middle: davy and mike are the guys, and peter and micky are the girls 

(author’s note: while i do have the lore answer personally it’s just because a) davy’s schtick only hits if hes a manlet sorry 😭 and b) similarly the specific neuroticism i wanna explore w/ mike is made more fun if he’s a dude. rip)

ok so. their backgrounds are all fairly unchanged. micky’s still a child actor (circus girl?), similar personality, etc. i think that one semi-change to canon is that at first the studio exec felt a little ehhh at micky doing a lot of her physical comedy gags/getting really goofy with it because like “guys can be weird but girls are gross/unattractive when they do the same….” but pretty quickly let up on that sentiment because she is that damn funny. idk unfortunately i dont have many micky-related Girl brainworms atm but i will keep on cultivating them. I do loooove the image her with those long wild curls tho!!!!!

that being said. imagine the fairy tale castle and evil castle meme because that is. the experiences of girl micky and girl peter like i will be honest it is sooooooo bad for her. so yeah, same as irl, she gets cast as the dumb character but it takes on a muuuuch worse misogynistic slant (like, instead of being The Dummy, it’s her being The Ditz and a dumb blonde hippie etc. etc.) and it eats at her. she follows a similar arc i’d say to irl peter during the monkees period (being ok with being the butt of the joke for the laughs at the start, but getting more and more upset because it’s how the Entire World sees her now, losing her credibility as a musician when that was the world where she cut her teeth in, navigating this super shitty situation as a woman and as a neurodivergent person—its incredibly difficult!!!) 

ok changing tune a little bit but one company line for the show is that they’re explicitly banned from having them depicted as interacting romantically (maybe to keep the hijinks family-friendly? to keep the storylines open?) so like idk it’s a genuinely progressive and wholesome depiction of a mixed-gender friend group that all love each other equally but also on the other hand. they were fawkin behind the scenes. 

which is where i get to the fun stuff. and also sorry beloved mutuals but you are going to see now that i do love a tasteful m/f i am so sorry for my sins. anyways. as a relatively new fan i’ve noticed that there’s a jork and a torksmith meta and as a Make My Blorbo As Miserable As Possible enjoyer: i’m going to mash em together. ok so despite there being a blanket dating ban between the four of them because This Is A Money Making Vehicle You Were Assembled To Be A Product and We Cant Have You Fucking That Up With Your Stupid Feelings And Personal Lives. and they’re really harsh on micky and peter in particular because dudes can be sluts it’s called being a rockstar but Not Women we’re not there yet. but of course the general psychological terrorism they experience traumabonds them together and inappropriate workplace attachments Do abound. so first off early on peter has a crush on davy (as. is canon irl) and davy also likes her back but its early enough that they’re actually still scared of studio backlash so they never act on it but its. really fucking cute!!! just like two fumbling teenagers/young adults type adorable. awkward not-dates, making excuses to sit next to each other and spend time together and so forth!!!! but they do get frightened into dropping it and sublimating that All by the fear of backlash/cancellation/fucking everything up right when they’re hitting big but it is agony. but also it’ll pass as all things do. or so they say

which leads me to phase 2 aka torksmith aka hell hell hell. i dont have the best grasp on timeline yet but i say that it first happens around their first tour (so 1966-67, they’re all incredibly stressed and overworked and unhappy about their lack of control over their public images and the manufactured nature of their existence, etc). right off the bat peter and mike have a built-in solidarity as the Real Musicians/Non-Actors of the group and as the older ones. and like.

okay i need to shift into mike mode for a second. the biggest difference between irl mike and this ‘verse mike is that the universal constraints (homophobia) that would have prevented him from acknowledging or acting on his attraction to peter are gone so like. it is a definite universal fact that as mike was incredibly into peter from the very start. However, he also was very much Married With A Kid. this is where the hell starts. so the quote i keep on coming back to is from —“he couldn’t fit a whole woman in his head” from succ and that’s kind of the vibe im going for here. as a bozo kid raised in a misogynistic society, women To Him are either just Mothers or Wives and exist within these boxes and any other one outside of them don’t matter to him (he’ll fuck them, cheat on his wife with them. but they aren’t Real you know. even micky isn’t real to an extent because she’s Goofy and he doesn’t want to fuck her). but peter. she’s Everything he doesn’t expect a woman to be and just blows his mind from the start. she’s so incredibly intelligent and talented and can Hang with the men in the room and more, she’s so kind and vulnerable yet whip-smart and strong. bisexual (ahem). a better pure musician than the four of them combined, is connected to the Real music scene to an extent none of them were, and just the furthest thing from A Wife or a Mother or a random meaningless Other Woman but rather this singular bright burning presence seared into his retinas. has big massive huge brown eyes that make you want to drown in them and sadtragicvulnerabledoomed smile. its been so over for mike since the start its sooooo over for him. they fuck that one night during the tour in an exhaustion/alcohol/drug/fear/misery fueled hook up and continue to do it pretty consistently through the rest of the band’s existence. this devastates davy. it is also quite miserable to the two parties involved. for once mike actually feels guilty cheating on his wife Because peter is a Real Person and he has Real Genuine feelings for her and he’s miserable in that regard, the asinine nature of playing house with the wife you married too young feeling grating when you could have been Exploring Consciousness or whatever those damn hippies are doing (could he ever have been the person that peter deserved? could they have actually worked Without the apparatus of the monkees around them? the real answer is No but he doesn’t know that yet). whereas on peter’s side she also just feels miserable though all of this LOL because of the cheating (she lived with them and their kid she’s an awful evil person for homewrecking, sure she can turn a blind eye to mike’s endless infidelities because that’s not her fault but this really directly fucking is!!! and she’d like to think that she’s a good person and trying to contribute Good to the world and this is definitely Not Fucking Good!!!). and to make it worse mike is also awful to her Because he takes out his own anger at himself for his feelings and this situation on her. And she can tell that davy’s also really fucking upset as well but choosing not to open up to her about it because that ship has long sailed. PLUS the later studio disagreements where it’s later revealed that despite them actually being able to wrest musical freedom and Winning their fight, they really are not. that compatible as a real musical group it turns out. they clash over the music, the movie, the money, etc. and its bad. god i even more get in this universe why peter bought her way out of the band despite the insane cost. hell environment hell environment. idek if the love was there but it sure as hell did not save anything. can you count a trauma bond as love?

uhhh other miscellaneous worldbuilding details:

imagined the fairy tale episode but with BOTH peter and michael doing drag and ough I Think I Hauve Covid. they do fuck about it in a genderweird way after And michael does project his self-loathing/repression onto peter for being the Representative of this subversive desire and how bad he really wants it. misery wins once again. hell couple

i will be honest i havent ventured As Far into the laurel canyon group lore yet so i wont make any definitive statements abt them but peter is still very much enmeshed in that group here too

beatles girl!au related: peter and george do fuck that one time. also mike also sleeps with john during the DITL music video filming. if timelines are correct i do believe john has met yoko and is incredibly intrigued by her by then but has not yet consummated things (aka still in her #straight era but definitely questioning things). it’s kind of weird and michael is insanely starstruck the whole time. it also does solidify the fact to Him that he is insanely into girls who are strange and offputting. he is not happy about this. 

ok that’s all of what i have so far!!!! feel free to add on/spitball/brainstorm/throw rocks at me if you think it’s inaccurate (full disclosure i dont think i have a Super Perfect grasp of the monkees lore/dynamics yet so i def probably got some things wrong + the abby misery buff makes All situations 500% more sad and awful even if it may not be as character-accurate. sorry it comes with the brain (mine))!!!!! i love collaboration and Talking and discussing aus and hedacanons hit me uppppppp

Hey @bugpoasting do you have any thoughts on girl Monkees in the Sheatles universe

[cogneartive]

speaking of mcyt-monkees similarities I AM NOT DONE YET does anyone think about the distinction between the monkees's 'irl self' and 'show self' anymore ? i feel like people used to talk about The Show more, when i was younger and first got into the monkees anyways. like people used to talk about their headcanons and their interpretation of the monkees from a fictional character standpoint (hc as trans, gay ect) and u had kids kinning them

i feel like nowadays people talk about their irl selves more. like the meta mike punching the walls, talking abt their interactions with other musicians from the time and all that. and thats kind of interesting to me cus back when i first came it, it used to be show first and ur characterisation used real life as a supplement kinda

i still have more thoughts like how fanfics are on a scale of rpf. some fanfics are set in show!!!! and some are about the actual people and some weird mix where you have the monkees house and suddenly stephen stills is there. and also the difference between irl peter and show peter being really significant. but im typing this all on a phone and my fingers will cramp + this is already a long post + it wont be coherent but yeah 👍

[rig-a-rendal]

there's this very strange thing that happens where I have several mutuals who are MUCH Bigger Names than I am in the monkee online space. and whenever they interact with my meta posts/existentialism project posts, a lot of people seem to get a kick out of them! and that's awesome! but then all those people - and the other Big Names - interact with my mutuals' posts and send them asks and EXPLICITLY REFERENCE MY WORK USING SPECIFIC PHRASES I MADE UP FOR THE PROJECT... and completely ignore me. im not angry here I'm just feeling left out. :(

[mashymilkiesinc]

Another touchstone of my generation has died. Michael Nesmith, today, born December 30th, 1942; Died 10th, 2021 at age 87. I take his passing personally. He was so much more than a Monkee to me. He was a creative genius and a an entrepreneur in the best sense of the word. He created the first music video, ”Rio”, 1976. He produced and sold the idea that resulted in MTV. His direct-to-video show “Elephant Parts” (1981) was an epiphany to me. It was TV, Film and culture parody years ahead of its time. He was META before anyone used the term. He gave a lecture at the American Film Institute when I was still a teenager in college. I attended and listened raptly as he spoke extemporaneously about making music videos in his gentle, Texas-accented, folksy way. One thing he said became a creative aesthetic I follow to this day: “If you have a lyric about cutting someone’s hair, don’t mimic that visually, show something else, like someone mowing a lawn.” OK–not Earth shattering–but after dozens of viewings of Elephant Parts, I felt like I just was handed the Rosetta Stone. Mike called it “supercharging the medium” (thanks, Dan). He introduced me to aesthetic synthesis. Two unrelated ideas spontaneously merging into something of greater resonance. ART! Lateral, out-of-the-box, free association riffing is an exciting exercise to pursue in storytelling. Its served me well in my animation career. I am also grateful for him relating all the peaks and valleys of his life and career in his autobiography, “Infinite Tuesday”, 2017. Mike reinvented himself multiple times and his story gives hope for anybody who is exposed to the brutal, blinkered capriciousness of show business. It certainly helped me. Plus his book has a lot of cool stories. Rest In Peace, Naz. Here’s a good obit from Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/monkees-michael-nesmith-dead-1270079/

[monkee-mobile]

(get ready for a Mike Nesmith dump)

still seething we never got a recording of him doing the daddy’s song dance even though it’s rumored he learned it.

it would add so much to my little tie-along with Head and 33 1/3. Just some crazy meta-canon whatever-fucking Monkees jazz. I hold it true in my mind that it’s his song, even though Davy did it very well, because stylistically it suited him, and I do love his version. But I know why Mike was so enthusiastic to do that song, just as a personal thing.

I just want to see him hopping around in frilly monochromatic suits.

[rose-of-pollux]

Ooh! What’s the song of time about?

Ooh, so "The Song of Time" was something I was working on during the tail end of the Monkees Ring of Misery days (the Ring of Misery being a group of ficwriters who specialized in angst-with-a-happy-ending fics) and was meant to be the finale to my Zero Trilogy (the first to parts being "Red Sky, Take Warning" and "Somewhere Back in Time"). It would've dealt with the continuity errors of how, despite the very final downer endings of Head, 33 1/3, and the 80s MVs, the "canon" ending of the Monkees TV show is the happy ending in the 90s Justus special.

It would've eventually been revealed that the downer endings would've been the boys' fate (orchestrated by Zero), but Mike pulls a Marty and decides that if the Laws of Time dictate that his friends suffer, he'll just break the Laws of Time (which would've been a nice bit of meta, as Nez wrote the Justus special). This results in a paradox and timeline split, with the main timeline now being the good timeline, but the bad timeline still existing as an alternate timeline--and the main timeline Monkees find a way to give their alter-selves a happy ending, too.

I really hope to finish this someday, but here's an excerpt in the meantime--

"Yeah, well… An instrumental piece isn't going to cut it for this crowd. So, I guess we'll start off with 'Clarksville' for now and move down the usual setlist from there," Mike said. "On four, then. One, two, thr—"

The phone chose to ring at that particular moment.

"Gatdangit," the Texan hissed. He forced himself to be polite as he picked up the phone. "This is 1334 Beechwood; how can we help you?" He frowned.

"What is it?" Peter asked.

"Line's all fuzzy; I can barely hear whoever's talking. Hello? Hello?" He sighed and hung up. "We got cut off."

"You couldn't tell who it was?" Micky asked.

"It sounded like a chick."

"Oh, it must have been for Davy, then…" Peter said.

Davy gave a lopsided smile.

"Well, either you've got it, or you haven't…"

"Think you can lend it?" Micky asked.

"Alright, alright," Mike said. "Back to work, then. One, two, thr—"

He was cut off again, this time by a puff of smoke, and the appearance of an all-too-familiar figure.

"…You," Mike said, scowling at Zero. "Man, you never quit, do you?"