#narrative: Janie

[kitnita]

first shutout of the season! — DAL vs WPG — 11.28.23

[nihilismtrcit]

neighbor janie isn’t a fan of eden walking the halls in her underwear. “some people have kids and husbands, eden” 

[thecryptidcottage]

↳ ft. theo + janis ! ( @infiinitys ) at black ink revenge tattoo studio

❝ well, christ, ❞ come the first words tumbling out of theo's mouth the moment he pushes open the door to the tattoo parlor to rival his own. the competition. ❝ i wasn't expecting it to be bustling in here, but damn, i expected it to be a little busier than this. ❞ and that's not really fair, is it ? every shop's gonna have downtime and, in fact, it's only because he's got nothing he needs to be doing right now back at no regrets that he's here. dark gaze lands on the only employee within earshot ― a familiar face, one that's fond of antagonizing him at any chance. and theo, of course, returns the favor whenever he can. pushing the door the rest of the way open, theo steps inside and flashes her a devious curious grin. ❝ what, you scare 'em all away, cruz ? ❞

[tirednerddude]

Kids. They still thought they knew something the rest of us didn’t, the way every generation thinks they’re the ones who invented sex, the way every generation thinks they’re the ones who will be remembered. They still had I’m-better-than-this dreams, one-day-we’ll-leave-this-all-behind aspirations. What they didn’t understand is that it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from. No one ever leaves it all behind. The best you can hope for is to start off in the least horrible place. The rest of us just have to make do.

[internally-coherent]

okay so, I am NOT throwing shade on the OP, I just wanna share what I've learned when I googled this.

The notion that Janis Joplin and Peggy Caserta were dating at the time comes from the autobiography of Peggy which was later revealed to be ghostwritten by a man. It's basically RPF with smut written for drug money, and Caserta regrets ever associating with it. At the time this picture was taken, Peggy Caserta had been dating another woman openly and was, even then, known to be gay by everyone around her. She and Joplin would hang out, make out and do heroine together. Whether or not there was more, whether or not Joplin was queer, the story of them dating in 1969 had been a fabrication. That is, if you believe Peggy more than the ghostwriter she hired when she'd been far from clean (she is now, and has been for quite some time).

Peggy Caserta was later blamed for Janis Joplin's death.

Janis Joplin and her girlfriend Peggy Caserta at Woodstock (1969)

[blossoms-and-petrichor]

hi sorry im back guys. just met the love of my life, worked in the everglades until a hurricane hit, and had to shoot my husband because he had rabies from trying to save my life. im doing great actually.

[eretzyisrael]

By Francesca Block

On Wednesday, I reported that a trade magazine that promotes books refused to run an ad for Israel Alone because “customers might complain.”

Matt Baldacci, publisher of Shelf Awareness, said an ad for Bernard-Henri Lévy’s book about Israel post–October 7 could give booksellers “trouble they haven’t asked for and don’t wish to have.” The ad was originally scheduled to run on November 1 in the outlet’s weekly newsletter, which goes out to 645,000 general readers.

Since then, I’ve learned a June 14 newsletter from Shelf Awareness, which went out to more than 37,000 publishing professionals, contained an ad for P Is for Palestine, a children’s book that has stirred controversy for promoting an “antisemitic” ideology. P Is for Palestine was written by Iranian Swedish activist Golbarg Bashi and was first published in November 2017 by PM Press, a self-proclaimed “independent, radical publisher.” 

P Is for Palestine runs through the alphabet, presenting colorful illustrations and words that represent each letter. In the book, the letter I stands for intifada, which it defines as “Arabic for rising up for what is right, whether you are a kid or a grownup!” 

Intifada, in fact, translates to uprising or shaking off. The word is mainly used to describe two eras of violent Palestinian protest against Israel: The First Intifada, from 1987 to 1990, led to the deaths of dozens of Israelis and more than a thousand Palestinians, and the Second Intifada, from 2000 to 2005, culminated in the deaths of over a thousand Israelis and 4,000 Palestinians.

Jany Finkielsztein, a senior education analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, said that “P Is for Palestine serves as a tool of indoctrination rather than simple storytelling. For instance, ‘I is for intifada’ portrays violent uprisings in a favorable manner, conveying a harmful narrative to impressionable young children.

“Books that prioritize indoctrination aren’t literature.”

On Friday, Shelf Awareness released an apology for rejecting the ad for Israel Alone, addressing its statement “to everyone who is angry and disappointed about our recent decision.” 

The statement went on to “clarify” that the ad was canceled from its weekly newsletter “that we publish on behalf of more than 250 independent bookstores, reaching 600,000 readers, with the goal of helping booksellers promote reading and sell more books. Our bookstore partners cannot block titles that are advertised. As a result, we are careful to keep in mind that every advertised title we include appears to the bookstores’ customers as something the store itself is endorsing.”

[spacedykez]

janis ian/sarkisian/imi'ike is literally the character ever. shes an angsty traumatized teen. shes a bitchy mean girl. her best friend is a raging homosexual. Shes a raging homosexual. canon is wrong about her. shes a narrative parallel to regina. shes a narrative foil to regina. shes neither of these. shes completely defined by regina. she has three last names. her family and home life is never once mentioned ever. she does art and sews and is quite good at it. she is petty and wants revenge. she is herself and unapologetic. she is caught up in the plastics' games equally as much. she is at fault for her own actions. she is deeply hurt by cadys actions. she has three different hair colors. her love language is physical touch. she works at the mall.

[wereoz]

people trying to force mean girls into a simple heroes vs villains narrative make me want to vomit and force my sizeable head into a tiny crack until it explodes. actually the point is that they’re all horrible teenagers that either base their self worth on their privilege, making them believe basically every -ism and -obia except feminism, or they’re outcasts that desperately want to feel accepted no matter what, or they’re outcasts that want to feel accepted no matter what and feel vindicated as victims. being a victim sometimes instils this need to get revenge, to break things, at any cost. mean girls essentially asks the question- what if every revenge fantasy of yours came true? and what that actually means. at the end of the day, janis is unbelievably selfish!! and what was crucial to her development as a ‘villain’ was regina isolating her from all her friends and peers!! they’re just as bad as each other!! honestly mean girls somehow manages to hold up well because it dissects teen dynamics with compassion and criticism and humour: the plastics are the girls i hear insulting everyone and their mother in the toilet without consequences. janis and damien are the fellow weird gay friends i had that i sort of sympathise with but ultimately don’t ever want to see again because oh my god get over yourself. the fact people think ‘actually [x] is the villian so we shouldn’t criticise or evaluate [y]’s actions’ takes are interesting is beyond me

[elliesgaymachete]

I’ve now seen mean girls the movie the musical the movie a second time and it’s still just as good so here’s a full review

The Narrators bit was so much fun, the way they kept looking at the camera, breaking the fourth wall, and that one shot where they’re doing announcements and the name plate just reads “narrators”. The way the movie opens on them recording a video for social media in a garage and it ends in the same place with the garage door closing while they wave under it like the curtain on a broadway stage. Amazing.

The way it switches from fullscreen to widescreen just for songs where Regina controls the narrative like a fucking puppeteer. Like, at first I thought it was every song, but it’s only for Meet the Plastics, Apex Predator, Someone Gets Hurt, and World Burn. It’s SUCH a stylistic choice and I absolutely loved it

THE CONTINUOUS SHOT IN I’D RATHER BE ME!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!! IT’S SO COOL!!!!! I love me a good continuous shot and would have LOVED to be a fly on the wall on set that day

Also still on I’d rather be me, the way the huge iconic moment of regina getting hit by the bus is completely overshadowed by Janis getting her moment. Loved it.

There were also a lot more smaller continuous shots that were really cool!

The use of social media, especially since social media as we know it today didn’t really exist when the original movie came out. It was a big part of the broadway show and keeping that translated REALLY well to the big screen

I made a separate post about this but the fact that they actually made Janis canonically gay instead of it just being subtext or if you squint. It makes Janis a much more sympathetic character and makes her vendetta against Regina feel even more real.

Making Cady’s mom a single mom was a surprisingly nice change and Jenna Fisher was truly a delight in all of her scenes.

The tease when Tina Fey almost sang where do you belong 😂 (though I am still bummed they cut where do you belong 😔)

THE LINDSAY LOHAN JUMP SCARE

Avantika was a delight and her comedic timing + deadpan delivery as Karen was so perfect

Literally everything about renee rapp as regina was perfect, but especially at spring fling when she’s high on pain meds was so much fun

Someone Gets Hurt (Reprise) was absolutely phenomenal. I didn’t know it was gonna be in the movie and gave me chills the first time I heard it. Auli’i fucking crushed it

I also love how they took a homophobic insult from the original movie (“it’s not my fault you’re like in love with me”) and turned it into a new queer jam for the end credits song. Can a gay girl get an amen?

This movie is truly just a fun time

[jtl-fics]

Can I have some Smalls please? It’s so good and I am absolutely obsessed with how you write her interacting with the others

7/17/24 WIP Wednesday (Open) | Smalls AU

The smile that slides across Andrew’s face is deeply unsettling, she tries to remember how the books described Andrew when he was drugged up but she doesn’t really remember it. She’d been so interested in getting to the obvious crazy romance between Neil and Kevin that she had…well she had not partaken in the likely rich narrative that the author (god?) had been weaving.

She regrets it bitterly now because the author who wrote the original book probably actually knew how to play the god forsaken sport that Janie is now needing to know.

“Yeah, I heard him loud and clear.” Andrew says, turning his unsettling smile to Kevin, “Guess she’ll just have to be your sub.”

[totaldrama-showdowns]

Round 1 Match 9

Propaganda

Gwen v Heather: Regina and Janis coded

The entirety of season 1 was written with their rivalry in mind

Im sorry but gweather rivalry solos the lesheather rivalry. girl I have no idea what’s between you two, but it definitely isn’t any hetero relationship. they want to make out so bad

When Heather says "you messed with the wrong reality show mister!" To Alejandro and Gwen looked at her and smiled. As a gwalejandro, aleheather, and gweather shipper this was awesome. I think it's great that they both hate each other but have really nice moments ^_^

so narratively important that season 1 of td ends with them witnessing chris being thrown into the lake and smiling at each other. bc it was a game and it’s over now. and they might not like each other still but chris is being thrown into the lake. and they can relax. and maybe outside of reality tv they could even learn to become friends

those girls wanted to kill each other so bad s1. goth prep hostility

i still cackle every time i watch the aftershow stuff from Action why were they beefing online like that 😭 theyre hilarious

The OG. They are so fucking iconic…

Dakota v Anne Maria: The one-sided beef is crazy dude

The one-sided beef guys.

[bettsfic]

Ohh any thoughts or notes on their eyes were watching god? It's one of my very very favorite books!

their eyes were watching god is one of those books that reminds you that genius is a real thing, and that real genius often goes unrecognized during the lifetime of the artist. creativity is always walking the fine line between the familiar and the unknown, and the closer to the unknown your work is, the harder it is to find an audience. that's why the work of criticism is so important i think--critics are people who seek out newness and bring it to an audience. what brought me to hurston was alice walker's essay "in search of zora" which is imo one of the greatest essays ever written.

here's the end of it:

every time i read this it gives me chills. it's amazing to me how many great artists are buried in weeds. van gogh was so loathed in auvers that theo couldn't get anyone to approve a place to bury him.

it's so intensely tragic. i really get what walker means by grief feeling absurd.

since i read their eyes were watching god for funsies i don't have many critical thoughts about it. i love that it's an odyssey. i think it's a masterwork of voice and style. i admire the use of frame narrative. janie and tea cake are such iconic characters. there's just so much to learn from it in terms of craft, and i hope one day i get to teach it in an intermediate or advanced fiction class.

i'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well! i'm especially interested to hear what makes it one of your favorites?

[blankvort]

you've probably answered something like this but favourite songs from the stage show and i want details, GO‼️

pezberrywhoreee i cannot even begin to describe the dearth of times i have answered anything related to mean girls and the amount of times i have internally cried and screamed wanting to interrupt a conversation to talk about mean girls. i say that god is dead but you are doing his work right here. putting this under a read more because you said details and this became a study of why every song in the stage show is better than opioids and thin mints combined <333 no articulacy here just 8000+ words of vibes and ranting

first of all if cady sings a single line i am violently shoving every note of the song into a mental folder called faves in such eldritch fonts that my brain computer is halfway to summoning cthulhu whenever it loads the soundtrack. she is described as the heart of the story on the backstage casting call page for a reason and that reason is her absolutely incredible range as she struts from the plucky guitar gyrations and membranophone-focused percussion of it roars into the candid, confiding, crescendoing (and other c words you can probably guess based on the verbiage i use in dms) keys of stupid with love and then climb the vocal volcano that is apex predator and akfjskhfidbdihgshejfhiajw i love her and i love her songs and i need to shut up now i’m sorry

second (but not really because i’m still going on and on about cady i’m sorry) i’m upset abt most other productions burying cady’s fourth-wall breaks and kind of making the segue into revenge party less. i don’t know riled up?? because 1) where did my girl janis’s influence go it is so much more impactful when cady’s main reason for going along with the revenge plot and pushing it further is hearing about janis being outed from janis herself! when her main motivator becomes aaron, who she likes super superficially by the time more is better rolls around, you think wow! what a bitch! for even longer! like you don’t even have to cut the “your hair looks sexy pushed back”/”are his eyes gray or green” conversation that prods her into sending gretchen over the edge this isn’t a time issue 2) where did cady’s brain go bring me a whole box of profound regret and impulsive decisions let the people in the back hear the hows and whys of her descent into plastichood and moreover i would like her to sing more and most of all i love it when characters break the fourth wall. by that i mean i want the “sounds kind of bad right to spy on someone but they’re the first friends i’ve had and i don’t want to have none” things back because the narrative nudity and the way it follows the melody of the verses in fearless is a+++

now. my legitimate favorite songs from the stage show in chronological order

a cautionary tale: the repartee the art freaks have is elite and so are their riffs. The lyrics are 3am notes app poetry lines and that’s an amazing thing for mean girls. It’s not the typical broadway opening number but it’s rough and brash and brilliant. To me the cast of mean girls strikes the perfect balance between caricature and lived-in character and the insouciance of this song towards seriousness reflects that wonderfully. Janis assuming the worst of everyone by saying that the temptation to be popular and hot is far too great and saying that you can’t buy integrity at the mall is some nice, if blatant, foreshadowing regarding cady losing her integrity as she gets caught up in the perilous biome of shopping centers with such dangerous patrons as build-dat-bear. The last line of the chorus abruptly changing the amount of beats in the measure adds an extra kick layout fosse quality that i love too. The ending is the apotheosis of mezzo-soprano/tenor harmonization. Need both janis and damian to step on me but for different reasons. No i will not elaborate

it roars: i have a soft spot for wild life but it roars is superior in every way to me because it introduces cady, the show’s sense of humor, the cast’s incredible skill when it comes to singing and dancing (seriously i had never seen an ensemble that made me want to be ensemble before mean girls), and the perfect transition from a cautionary tale will always get me hyped. i have many thoughts about the many changes the mg script and score have gone through throughout the years but oh my god my jaw dropped at the breathtaking belting of “i have danced with the maasai, i have climbed kilimanjaro” when i first heard it mashed up with it roars and the callback the verse gets in fearless 2.0(?) totally dislocated it. Also i know that it’s a pairing so unpopular it’s basically nonexistent but hear me out when i say that it roars is just a more optimistic, afrobeat inspired version of what’s wrong with me. Cady never seems to think that it’s the student body that needs to change, she thinks she needs to fight and win to belong just as gretchen thinks she needs to serve the most powerful person in school to be deserving of… idk anything?? Of course you cannot trust me on this because i will ship cady with anyone if you give me the chance. Writing cady/the marymount girl fanfic as we speak

it roars is the first indicator that musical cady is pretty different from movie cady in that she earnestly wants to go to the us, wants to have more/better friends, wants to try high school and skateboards and rapping and starbucks venti chai. which makes sense because you know you gotta have that sick i want song so characters feel less tossed about and more thrusting into. there’s a better way to word that but i don’t have the skull size to summon a less immature dictionary right now. a curious thing about it roars, though, is that kenya, being a country and all, has high school and skateboards and rapping. no starbucks because apparently rwanda was an easier location to settle into but that’s a good thing actually nobody should support starbucks. either way you can really see that cady’s been sheltered from the realities of any society past the stone age and idolizes this incredibly abstract view of friends and people. she’s equal parts desperate and determined, artless and acute. it’s ironic, i feel that at first her speech patterns (lions and birds and stuff) seem at odds with her sub-saharan surroundings as though she’s already trying to integrate herself with this slangy teenage culture she knows nothing about and then when she finally finds herself in slangy teenage culture she compares everything to the survival-based rules of the savannah. i know this is probably for streamlining purposes but it’s also so interesting to me that her immediate reaction to her parents’ funding being cut is wow adventure wow possibilities. she knows that everybody wants connection but she doesn’t yet know why connection has to be culled by all these arbitrary rules like fashion or acting cool. like i don’t remember where i read this but some novel said that the only thing worse than being smart is being smart and sensitive because then neither the logical nor emotional explanations for any event can make sense. i swear i will find that book someday to take a photo but today i am bedridden because i walked the five or so inches from home to the grocery store

back to it roars. i hate the grammar in the line “none of my closest friends even has hands” but i love everything else about the song. the beat is so bouncy and the ostinati of the wind and brass sections are top tier. the comedic beats are underscored by cutting the music and then the vocals come back in soaring alongside the strongest bass since george perry and i could die happy if hospitals changed the flatline noise to any cady singing “so exhilarating”.

two paragraphs and we’re still going strong dead god help me. personally i feel like the best delivery of the ensemble lines have to be as obnoxious and deafening as humanly possible but i get people who feel differently. it’s just really great to me when cady is polite and confused and very presumptuous and sonja aquino’s actively going through act two of the exorcist in real time. i think that’s why danielle wade is my cady of choice too. love it when autism: the song is put through the epiglottic funnel of anxiety. also i’m wiping tears right now about the fact cady refers to phones as little screens in her first act one song and in the act two opener she’s glued to her phone because she wants attention so badly and still doesn’t feel like she has enough even though she talks about how america and the plastics are so much more than what she’s used to. Also very interesting that cady views inclusion as a game that needs to be won (and eventually comes to view baleful adoration as winning) even though she later exhibits a sort of survival of the fittest mentality that shows up as early as her mention of baboons attacking those that go near their pack. Fun fact i think her takeover of the plastics mirrors dispersal in male baboons wherein mature male baboons leave the pack they were born into to find another troop to temporarily stay in and usually if they end up replacing the alpha male of that non-natal troop they commit infanticide because then he can reproduce with the alpha male’s old mate/s. That’s not super fun but it is a fact to me. but i’ll talk about the strange views musical cady heron seems to hold about winning more in my do this thing essay which i am definitely going to write despite my best efforts to make this post under five thousand words

gonna slide the it roars reprise in here too because it’s not on the soundtrack but it still makes me feel things. “i’m sixteen just like everyone here but not like everyone here” and what if i said mean girls is the best dissection of the torturous dichotomy between being desperate to belong and being desperate to be unique. There’s a thing called theatrical exaggeration but for mental health purposes i choose to believe that north shore class of x immediately clocked cady as a weirdo utterly undeserving of trust or respect when they saw her wear socks and sandals. I know i just complained about people calling every iteration of cady boring but i feel like i haven’t seen actual hate for musical cady (at least not as much slander as i’ve seen sent to og movie and especially movie musical cady) because you can better bear witness to her most vulnerable moments when she’s singing directly at you instead of saying things in a soundproof recording studio. She’s not quitting she’s regrouping! Which is a fascinating choice of words to me because regrouping in math is basically carrying over values because they’re too much. She gets sucked into this idea that more is better even though she has to compartmentalize the information she’s learned from hostile classmates and teachers and draw connections to her experience with animals because more is not better without proper management. Also this bitch is gonna get e coli if the janitors don’t care enough to clean the slut-shaming graffiti on the wall they are not wiping down those cubicle doors

where do you belong: i love gay people. “so what if all the ducklings think you’re ugly it’s because they’ve never seen a swan” is ted talk worthy material. never getting over the fact that damian knew this girl for all of maybe one introductory french class’s worth of interaction, accused her of doing drugs, and then built her confidence back up from the seventh circle of hell. the “your mother called you baby girl?” “singing!” exchange is peak best friend banter and showcases the art freaks’ dynamic of frank, funny jerk with a tarnished heart of gold and budding broadway babe with a shocking amount of wisdom obscured by hilarity and hypocrisy. the debate team rejected damian because he was too fabulous to be deigned to one oregon-oxford role i’ve decided. i love unreliable narrators and damian shooing cady away from the mathletes as soon as she shows the barest interest in them is an entertaining way of showing that nobody in this story is free from social norms. the lunch tray percussion is something all marching bands should adopt and so are the lighting cues. janis’s reactions to damian killing his dance breaks are the best. rachel hamilton is my fave ensemble student i don’t care if she gets maybe two or three lines total.  she was giving bombastic side eyes before anyone knew the word bombastic. i desperately need to know if she knew what cady was actually saying or if she thought cady was just a lion king stan asking to be canceled. damian painting everyone but his two-person clique as problematic is also peak teenage behavior. everything at that age is just finding the lesser of two evils and figuring out whether or not you want to meet the bigger evil anyways. janis deriding “the geeks and the freaks” despite being labeled as an art freak by every mg promo is also amusing and barrett and mary-kate’s deliveries of “christian believers” could send me to heaven any day they want. the ending is so satisfying to listen to and even more satisfying to watch. also i do mean it when i say that cady was adopted by the local gays in this number. are janis and damian aware that having their own table in a school that makes juniors and seniors have lunch at the same time makes them more powerful than all the politicians of the globe combined

stupid with love: ALSKAJLDJASLDAJLLKJ. stupid with love is the best musical representation of how a crush driven by hormones and being treated with the barest sense of humor and dignity can devour a person taylor swift eat your heart out. the music really sweeps you up into this story like you’re a close friend privy to even her most embarrassing thoughts and the way her love life flashing before her eyes just shuts out whatever aaron was going to say about lebron james is the funniest thing because yeah! you can be convinced you’re totally in love with someone when you’re that age while ignoring everything that makes them a well-rounded human being! the way cady’s clearly grown up in a caring household that’s so chock full of trust that her parents can’t fathom that she’d do anything remotely dangerous while having the whole house to herself for more than one hour BUT also feels like she doesn’t “get” love is super interesting to me to like most sixteen-year-olds have the idea that their parents don’t understand them sure but has she come to the conclusion that familial love isn’t enough? that she doesn’t get enough familial love anyways? that love is unknowable? does she wholeheartedly believe that she fell in love at age five? stupid with love is a song of so many possibilities and it’s as giddy and delusional as you’d expect, every emotion heightened by cady’s new brand of eloquence. fetch may never happen but calculust absolutely should. the little snippets of dialogue in between are so endearing on both cady and aaron’s ends to the point where i can forgive ms norbury clearly not knowing how to conduct a class. who’s gonna tell cady to raise her hand before she answers. i’m kidding she can do whatever she wants, even ignore the existence of multiplication. multiplication is a bitch cady i get it

we once again see that cady is determined almost to the point of self-destruction and that she’s desperate to live a ‘normal’ life by getting together with the normalest boy of all time and the song so perfectly sets up why we should care about cady and aaron as a couple–he’s the only person thus far to not even suggest what she should think/do, encouraging her in a teasing way to be herself (ie smart) instead of telling her to be dumber so he can feel better about himself. cadaaron is the only straight ship ever argue with the wall. also the instrumental on its own is literally such a bop?? i’d drop a grand piano on myself daily if the keys could just perpetually play the song. quoth my own blog my heart belongs to every video out there of a cady opting up on the last “i learned math so i can learn love” it just fits so well thematically and makes the song even more satisfying because it makes you think yes!! summon that girlfailure swag and learn love. also this song is so next to me from twihard: a new musical coded with the pencils and/or feet providing the musical pulse. this is me very subtly begging you to listen to twihard: a new musical as put on by the esoteric ensemble productions and uploaded like a full decade ago starring danielle wade 

apex predator: i love women. i love bon jovi. i love zoology. this song was made for me tina fey told me herself. i can even forgive whoever made halls rhyme with dolls because of the regina furry confirmation. the first few chords kind of give me jaws theme vibes. it’s grinding and warning and doused in grit. you get the brightness of cady’s other songs cut with the flinty, darker strings of janis’s numbers. the heavy drum sort of sounds like a heartbeat, quickening as cady realizes the might of the pride and considers how regina’s help compares to janis’s in an almost clinical manner. shout out to erika henningsen’s “exotic pet” obviously. that line should be studied by every ivy league with a literary program because regina and cady considering the other an exotic pet instead of a real friend but still seeking each other’s approval……. maybe the narrative foils are really reflections of my tin foil hat but hear me out. it’s so interesting that they refer to regina as an apex predator because apex predators are animals without natural enemies but almost every single friend or admirer of regina’s exhibits an envious kind of awe when it comes to regina. regina’s so magnetic that you can’t be her enemy but close enough to pseudo-celebrity that you can’t exactly be her friend either. also the harmony at the end combined with the epic percussion deserves its own award. no longer does egot mean anything. One must be an egota (emmy grammy oscar tony apex predator singer) to be considered showbiz royalty

stupid with love (reprise): cady is so so smart and so so stupid. aaron getting confused at a genuine compliment not solely based on his looks is adorable but i also love it when the line delivery gets changed to be more like “wow i already know i’m cool but it’s nice to hear it from the cute possibly murderous girl who sits behind me”. same goes for cady’s “shit” right after aaron swears off dating–it’s funny as hell whether she’s smiling through the pain or so disappointed in herself she looks like she’s experiencing medical shock. her making love into a function is similarly messed up but funny as hell. i literally have a google drive folder full of audio clips of the “i just don’t get it–i’ll never get it–i just don’t get it–somehow…” part it’s so serious

sexy: this is modern feminism talking i expect to run the world in shoes i cannot walk in - the greatest mind of our generation karen smith. if the national emergency alarm was changed to the ending riff i would become an arsonist just to hear it over and over again. a youtube commenter said that she sings every line like she’s waiting to be shown the script and redo it and whenever acting and singing can waltz along in magnificence together i sob in joy even if that waltz is set to trashy pop. literally every costume shown is worthy of fashion week and then some. the sex doctor bit is beyond saturday night live. sexy rosa parks deserves the world. modern feminism is a mess but at least it built the last verse of this incredible song.

someone gets hurt: regina pretending to cry and aaron being confused again and then being manipulated into a makeout session is so so funny. so terrible but so funny. the incredible blare of noise after that first “until someone gets hurt” feels like being pushed off a cliff and into a sea of warning sirens which feels fitting. if any song from the stage show were to be played by a chamber orchestra i would want it to be someone gets hurt because everything about it is almost four seasons by vivaldi to me. as i said do not expect sensible comparisons from this review. it’s really dark and intense like all of regina’s numbers but this time her style of seduction is on full display, highlighted by some heavy timpani work and a male ensemble that’s carrying more than just regina on their backs holy cow. squidward would worship regina with how she made the bass clarinet sultry despite hitting something in the high fs during each “hurt” and holding that “go” for like five seconds. the ending is giving celine dion’s villain arc. it’s also maybe the first time the audience sees aaron through the eyes of anyone other than cady who’s so starstruck she might as well be blind and we see a guy who’s still susceptible to regina’s yknow reginaness. she guilt trips him about his potential infatuation with his body and then gets extremely touchy with him while wearing a playboy bunny costume. she asks if she was a game he wanted to play despite (maybe devoid of remorse) playing him just to get back at cady. she’s making so much shit up because peeling away too many layers of her perfection would be dangerous but so would losing aaron to cady’s actual openness. first she says “fine” to mean that she’ll be fine without aaron in the reverse psychology sense, then they say “fine” to mean that they’re both hot af, then he says “fine” to agree to get back with regina and possibly to convince himself that his interest in cady can and should be pushed aside because being with regina is better for them both. love this song. hate being unable to sing a single note of it.

revenge party: my overall fave song of the obc album, the stage show, and the movie musical. words alone cannot describe the excitement that electrocutes my nerves when i hear “now you know, caddy—” because everything from that line onwards is going to be stuck in my head for at least a week. some people can’t function until their first cup of coffee in the morning, i can’t function until my first listen of revenge party. in slight relation to that gretchen’s squawking will make me spit out any drink; such has been scientifically proven over the course of several years. i actually have a line-by-line analysis of revenge party drafted so i won’t go into detail right now because i need viewer retention but i mean it when i say art freak harmonization is the best kind.

whose house is this: if kevin g has one fan it is me. let the man rap even if half his lyrics don’t make sense. i have heard the big fun from heathers comparisons. i have heard the halloween from be more chill comparisons. all of them are so incorrect i could set several houses ablaze with the rage i feel at the very suggestion that whose house is this isn’t a masterpiece. no joke this is the first song on my workout playlist. the way nobody even cares about cady in this number is hilarious and so is kevin refusing to swear. gretchen deserves all the thank yous and so does the horns section. karen’s actions are just. Absurd as they always should be. the mario kart ass instrumentals during that “turn the freaking music up” segment make me pleasantly stressed. there are traces of jungle techno but little to no traces of cady’s signature sound and the usually lax but articulate and expressive rhyme scheme of her songs switching to frenzied verses full of immaturity and inconsideration makes me feel things that should not be felt while listening to a rave number with flatulent bass.

more is better: the only romantic duet to ever exist if you ask me. the fact that cady switches from the more sincerity-charged love to like most likely because the plastics’ philosophy is to be cool about things makes me want to bite the bars of alcatraz prisons. the way cady’s signature sound only really returns after aaron chooses to leave her because she’s become regina 2.0 without even acknowledging it is the stuff of emotionally resonant legend. as i said in my aaron review post the only thing that bothers me about this number is aaron kissing cady while she’s clearly drunk and he isn’t but cady kind of gets him back after do this thing so. yay equality. aaron’s so tired of being manipulated and told to shut up i feel so bad for him. cady’s so in denial about missing her old home in any capacity and being uncomfortable with the skin she’s tried to grow into for aaron’s sake and i feel so bad for her. the shimmering sound that comes with cady singing “stars” makes me feel better though. 11/10 would be sad again. say no to excessive air conditioning and light pollution

someone gets hurt (reprise): i like it when gays have bad breakups without even dating. what more do you want. but actually i am obsessed with the way this is blocked out because the way the chaos of cady’s house gradates into the dark street where there’s nothing but her and her crumbling friendships. the link between janis and regina is really reinforced by this song and it makes me feel insane.

world burn: the only way regina can redeem herself for wearing a black turtleneck and black pants is by slaying so hard you forget she’s just printing shit and polluting the corridors and she does it in world burn. her having a recurring set of notes to follow until she absolutely loses it is iconic. i learned so much about hernia formation through this song so i think it’s also an educational heritage site. the contrast of her 1984-esque lyrics and beats with lines like “trang pak is a grotsky byotch” is beyond hilarious but in the context of the show it makes my timbers shiver. she is both manipulated and the master manipulator. renee rapp’s opt up for the ending is golden but every regina brings their own flair and intensity to it. something that really interests me is how different actresses interpret the lines “this is what i get for helping / helping someone lame fit in” because to generalize regina either thinks she was actually helping cady or is trying to convince herself/the audience that her primary motivator was controlling cady’s every action before she got too hot to ignore or because she saw her hanging around janis and damian or because regina can’t ask a girl out like a normal person. idk it’s very fun and very satisfying to listen to and ramps up the ante for all antagonistic songs ever!

i’d rather be me: did you mean the feminist anthem of the twenty-first century? i’d rather be me is pure janis in her sort of jumpy, edgy, eleven o’clock exasperated glory tuned to this effusive fusion of pop and rock. the energy this has is soooo good because every girl in school is tired of being treated like shit because of the expectations placed on them by society and the idea that by i’d rather be me the female student body of north shore is so exhausted of the plastics’ bs that they parade janis around despite shunning her for years is amazing. most criticisms of this are abt how wordy it is or how it’s not worded right but hello janis is a teenager her inner and outer monologue is not going to be as mature as fucking grizabella the glamor cat and it can include words that anyone would study for the sats like sycophant. sycophant is not that fancy a word i learned the word sycophant from a star wars fanfiction i read when i was seven how could you not know the word sycophant at age seven squared after making a living out of reviewing shows written by wordsmiths like sondheim. sorry that was mean i’m just tired of people either going “they wouldn’t talk like that they’re teenagers” or “they shouldn’t talk like that they’re part of a theatrical production worth millions of dollars!” lmao

ok so i think that janis was losing herself just as much as cady over the course of the revenge plot taking place because okay she’s ruined regina but she’s barely changed anything about herself and if her plan had worked without hitches wtf was she going to do. was she going to keep hanging out with cady. was she going to fill the power vacuum left by the plastics herself. was she going to run regina over with a bus herself. i’d rather be me is the culmination of the crushing pillars of her revenge plot and the full realization that revenge wasn’t what she wanted–she wanted to change the way the world works, change it into a place where people can just do and be without being ostracized. to me the instrumentals and the mockery in the lyrics are almost stinging?? someone with even could describe this better than me but the strings during the instrumental section between verses remind me of a mosquito bite because they’re high and sharp and put against the heavy drums and cymbal crashes they really paint this picture of a dam of anger breaking and giving way to a new wash of awareness. 

also i cannot stand it when ppl say this song is the show giving endorsement to janis being a hypocrite there is a reason why all the lyrics are in future tense. she is wrapping her mind around the notion that there is no pleasing everyone, that there is no true gratification gained by holding grudges and letting them control your every thought, that if you don’t let yourself have the liberty of lashing out you’re only going to manifest your maliciousness in worse ways with longer-lasting effects. that being said let girls be haters

also the obc album should’ve let janis swear. every public performance of i’d rather be me should let janis swear. let her have a line with bite before her throat turns into a cavern where vowels go to melt into a singular solution

also janis’s costumes over the course of the whole show are amazing but her look in i’d rather be me goes so hard. if i had any of janis’s jackets i think i’d curl into it like a cocoon and wait until the heat death of the universe for metamorphosis into coolness

do this thing: no joke this is the second song on my workout playlist. i hate the title so much but i love also the audience reaction when ms norbury starts singing as if she didn’t just slay the what’s wrong with me reprise gets me every time. truly the actresses in the adult women track are so underappreciated and so are the adult women in general. kevin g’s unabashed doing of the thing regardless of the haters is iconic. the return of the heavy percussion is so enjoyable and so are the mathletes’ lines lining up with the steaming kettle sound somehow behind each buzzer even though i hate buzzers because in real life mathletes nobody wants to answer on beat. ms norbury best matchmaker ever i LOVED the detail of aaron being present for the mathletes’ win but cady clearly focusing on the competition above all else. i’m pretty sure the mathletes are also the only characters to drop an f-bomb in a song which is just fantastic + the gretchen/regina parallel between kevin and marwan regarding schquillz is phenomenal. “the limit does not exist” being both the answer to the question that signifies cady’s return to her old self with more self-assurance and the theme of the musical in terms of not limiting other people is a level of genius i will never reach.

i see stars: i’m sorry they gave cady a big finale where she calls everyone beautiful and bright and holds hands with the other girls she’s hurt and you expect me to not love it?? this one had to grow on me though because i was so bothered about the stars imagery coming up maybe like five songs before when we’d been following animals and math for the whole show. as we all know characters can only have one or two interests before they become completely incoherent. but now i know more about light pollution and have played the video of this song with the pride chorus more times than i’ve blinked so i get it. shane oman also breaking his crown during the escalation of the instrumentals from a very optimistic but singular combo of strings and cymbals into the violins and heavier drums and whatever else is such a good detail. i still get goosebumps with that “you stars” there is just so much emotion packed into this finale and the rest of the ensemble joining in is as effective as onions being cut directly into my eyes when it comes to crying. obviously my fave version of this is the one with cady and janis’s mini duet during the rhinestones don’t shine part but guaranteed this one will make me cry no matter what

now. for the songs that didn’t make it onto my absolute fave list they are still my children just bastard ones and i will go into detail about them too because there is no point in writing this post if it does not crash the tumblr dashboard for you

a cautionary tale (reprise): akin to its origins, the reprise of a cautionary tale kicking off act two is there to introduce the act, but unlike its first iteration, the reprise is literally just there. no jokes no nothing. would love to see it reworked into something that reminds the audience they’re north shore freshmen being told this story by janis and damian because i forget about that framing device until the dialogue break in i see stars every time lmao but other than that it’s serviceable and any song that involves art freak harmonization is a solid song

meet the plastics: maybe i don’t love women as much as i claim to. I don’t know why i don’t like this song more truly. Maybe i just need to listen to it more lmao because the lyrics are great, the tempo changing with each introduction is great, and gretch waiting until regina’s out of earshot to try and convert cady into a fetch truther is great. Maybe it’s the “humps my leg like a chihuahua” line that turned me off from it because nell benjamin i do not care that you wrote legally blonde i do not think regina george would bring up animal humping imagery considering what her mother puts her through unless she was hopped up on pain meds. All that being said i would die for the polyphony at the end and karen playing with cady’s hair near the end is so cute

what’s wrong with me: gretchen it’s not you it’s me and i like songs with a specific sort of climax and what’s wrong with me really does feel like a music box piece played by some dusty not-quite-antique you find in the attic that makes you feel a particular, peculiar strain of melancholy because it’s so cyclical and fragile. which is the point, probably! It just sounds really different from the rest of the show and i feel like the lyrics don’t quite fit the language we’ve heard gretch using so far but maybe that’s also part of the point. That being said the line “see that you see what’s wrong with me” makes me go mad because there are so many ways to interpret it. Is she telling the audience that they should be able to see what’s wrong with her? Is she saying that the audience sees something good in regina that she can’t see anymore because of her constant mistreatment? Is she once again asking what’s wrong with her or has she finally had a breakthrough about her dismal self-esteem?

fearless: oh my god a cady song and act ender that i’m not totally into sound the sirens. but really fearless without the revisitation of the it roars/wild life passage that tells the audience what makes her fearless aside from wanting to move to america (which might make her more fearless than i thought now i sound that out but still) isn’t my favorite songs despite it having some of my favorite moments like karen’s ribbon dance, gretchen’s very cool dance, cady mirroring regina’s pose on top of the cafeteria table at the start of meet the plastics at the end, the mini someone gets hurt reprise at the end, it isn’t my favorite to listen to because the lyrics are just all over the place. Cady why are you saying that she’ll go cry to mama do you think mrs george is sober enough for that. Cady why are you spouting live love laugh merchandise ass quotes. Cady why are you quoting dwayne the rock johnson “imagine stronger, better, bolder” are you going to play a lacrosse game against regina. Why does karen not wear more vests after this number

You know what made me care about fearless?? The fearless reprise. Oh my god the fearless reprise. I need to make a separate post about the fearless reprise but i can’t listen to it more than once a day or i’ll end up crying for hours on end.  

stop: is it homophobic of me to put three damian songs on this list? probably but i make up for it by filling that broadway cares bucket every time i can. and it’s not that i even really dislike stop!! I have so many thoughts about stop!! i just don’t like it when compared to the other songs that can hold up inside and outside the context of the show!! i just feel like it has to be experienced live to understand its award-losing enormity unlike where do you belong and even then it sounds noticeably different from the rest of the show + essentially pauses the narrative to talk about a whole other story that never gets resolved outside of damian being ghosted (i thought theater was supposed to provide escapism 😔) and then frays a bunch of threads out from the ensemble in a way that doesn’t feel quite as well sewn in as the worship we see during apex predator or after rockin’ around the pole because like. it’s funny sure but just the act before we saw that things can be funny while also moving the story along past attempting to hammer in the message “stop ignoring your real friends” in cady’s thickened-by-makeup head. 

also how does damian even know about her word vomit. cady barely even word vomits in the stage show. it’s all just word coughing fits of confusion and unintentional comedy under peer pressure. whenever she says something embarrassing she either gets cut off or turns it into a whole song. i’m sorry damian i love you and your stupid straw hat but we just saw the whole show we don’t need a recap of everything that happened in the last hour with almost zero internal rhymes and without the frantic pacing of ya got trouble from the music man. cmon.

onto things i love about stop tho which are a) the gaiety (and gay-ty) b) the dancing and c) the staging. i love it when gay characters just get to be silly goofy instead of singing themselves to their graves and even if damian was built off the dramatic thespian homostereotype he gives me the impression of a silly goofy teen trying to balance the interests of his best friends with his sanity through the medium he’s most comfortable in which happens to be literally show-stopping song-and-dance number. also we get cadnis content in the background and the choreo i’ve seen for how janis plays keep away with cady’s phone only gets better (which of course is a synonym for gayer. let the babies hold hands before they yell at each other in the street and see a 15-second death they’re both sort of kind of responsible for). the dancing of course is wonderful. i mean does it make sense in-story for damian to somehow be popular enough with the ladies to rally them into a giant dance break after asking them to divulge their biggest, darkest secrets like an hour after being kicked out of the girls’ bathroom and calling one of them danny devito? probably not. is it really enjoyable when you aren’t itching to get back to the main story? yes. it also makes north shore feel more authentic in a sense?? obviously there’s so much about the social hierarchy exaggerated for comedic effect but yeah public high school is that crazy one day you’ll hear that a classmate got into a drunk driving accident and the next you’ll hear that the same classmate scored an audition for the x factor. and the transition from the art classroom, which is one of my fave sets in the whole show because aghhhh i want to pause everything and analyze art whenever it comes up in a tv show or movie or video game or musical because it’s almost never just art present for the sake of filling the set! there’s a reason why the set designers put that there or downloaded that asset or whatever! based on the official yt video in stop we see a sort of cubist portrait of janis ian, a few monochrome figure studies, and some more abstract pieces and i so want to know what this number would’ve looked like in-universe. did cady legit just run out of class to confront damian and get swept into a gay tea spilling session until the end of the day. be glad you got suspended girl

so. while i cannot begin to fathom the stamina it takes for damian to go from that gorgeous dance break into the grand vocal ending—philip doesnt know what he’s missing out on for sure—stop is not something i play on purpose but if the obc album shuffles to it i won’t complain!

what’s wrong with me (reprise): is it homophobic of me to put every gretchen song sans whose house is this on this list? probably but again it’s just not something i can put on repeat/a number i think depends on the production to arouse much entertainment value. it’s fucking hilarious though i’ll give it that. like it might be in the top three of mg songs when it comes to unadulterated comedy. my heart breaks when gretchen realises she’s stuck in this cycle of servitude and is still being hurt by the people she most desires the approval of and her work is still going unappreciated and then i get a heart attack from laughing because regina’s reign of terror is so absolute even her own mother has feared her from the age of three onwards?? in addition to that what’s wrong with me reprise is why i cannot stand for mrs george hate she’s just a girl too. a toxic girl who never emotionally developed past high school but like. what do you want her to do. she has never had a heartfelt conversation with her daughter ever. also “why couldn’t it just be drugs” is so funny to me because yknow. reggie gets hit by a bus and spends the rest of the show so high she forgets her love languages are acts of slanderous service, passive-aggressive gifts, weaponized physical touch, quality time spent playing hard to get, and words of refutation. taylor louderman deserved a tony for pulling the kalteen bar scream off every night too i think it’s night queen aria levels of difficulty.

the funniest part of this song to me is probably the way it starts and ends so abruptly. usually you can tell when a song’s about to start in a musical but gretchen nearly breaking down into sobs as soon as cady turns her non-self-tanned back without missing a beat is both relatable and hysterical. my girl is clinging to les mis motifs and middle school herd mentality in a world meant for fosse tributes. the spotlight is only on her when she talks about how dim her light feels in comparison to other characters. then mrs george joins in and you get the first female/female duet to rival defying gravity since idk. everything in fun home. i take cash and credit not criticism.

but really the gretchen/mrs george connection is so interesting because they tether themselves to regina in a style that’s irreconcilable with happiness on either end and they know that but possibly for a mix of selfish and sympathetic reasons don’t want to leave in any capacity. the way they’re separated on stage by little more than a change in colored lighting is interesting too and raises the question of whether or not they’re aware that regina’s sun is burning those closest to her in general.

also. can plastic cady snap and yell at me i want to feel something

in conclusion i love you pezberrywhoreee thank you for asking this. i think i said the words “also” and “but” more times than i said the word “gay” and that’s a real hurdle to fly over. i think i expect many random things in your inbox hereafter as retribution/reward depending on how you see it

[constelationprize]

dead man walking is an intriguing name i’d love to know more

dead men walkin is my baby!!!!! It's my magnum opus. It is also so big (12 at least 10k planned chapters) I'm not sure if I'll ever finish it in this lifetime. BUT I'M TRYING.

It's a kandreil, canon divergence AU that follows my first instict in literally every fandom because people should not have let me watch Count of Monte Cristo as a child: but what if this story was about revenge? It is also a love letter to the kandreil narrative parallels because there are SO MANY of them. There's also a lot of themes AFTG fic could explore that I feel fit better in a canon-adjacent scenario.

I also really love the synopsis so I'll let it speak on the rest of the premise for me:

Dead man walking (idiom) 1. A condemned prisoner walking to a death chamber or other place of execution.  2. Someone who is soon to die. 3. (figurative) Someone who is about to face an unavoidable loss (though the person may not realize it). .... When his mother dies, a runaway is told the reason why his life fell apart. A year later, Neil Josten is signed by the Palmetto State Foxes right before the season starts, looking to get his revenge or die trying. He might find a reason to live instead.

RIP Janie Smalls your canon last-second suicide attempt was just too convenient. Sorry about the mafia hit girl get well soon.

Though the fic is going to span the AFTG original timeline, I'm not going for a beat-by-beat series rewrite because that's just not the kind of thing that interests me. I'm keeping the exy games and that's it, everything else is getting at least a make over. A REVENGE make over.

I have also decided to make this a triple POV situation which means I saddled myself into writing medicated Andrew's internal monologue for 5 chapters. This was probably a mistake!

(Anyway please give me more excuses to talk about this wip I love it so much.)

[blossoms-and-petrichor]

works that challenge internalized bigotry my beloved