#rtc 2018

[finleyforevermore]

Observation I made:

During this part of WftD, the closer the choir is to the front, the more violently they thrash around.

Ricky doesn't really thrash and only raises his crutches.

Mischa and Noel are slightly more intense but it mostly looks like they're reaching for something.

Ocean and Constance have the most intense and violent movements. Ocean's hair flips around and she twists; Constance flails then snaps right back into place

Maybe everyone knows that XD but hey I was the first person to make a post about so there's that! >:D

[somepancakeonline5377]

Anyone else notice how the 2018 Talia has random whistles in the rap section?

This sparked a headcanon that Mischa stole that whistle from a teacher and keeps it as a lucky charm and then goes on to use it in Talia cuz that’d be awesome and silly

[dailyoceanoconnellrosenberg]

Day 102: God I love Waiting For The Drop 😌😌

[justarandombrit]

Can we appreciate how hype Karnak is in 2018 Space Age Bachelor Man?

Like, yes, Ricky is the danger.

[undescribed1mage]

Still thinking abt the Seattle lines in which Constance calls Mischa 'The Russian boy' and Mischa insults the hell out of Putin

[septfair]

0-1-0-1-0-1-1

[rambiing]

i/me/myself by will wood is so noel gruber from ride the cyclone

[rtc-spin]

meooow beware ricky!!!!

[ohmydais]

If you think that 2018 RTC isn’t iconic then I apologize for the fact that you even have the ability to be that incorrect

apologies for the um. excessive amount of jane pics. i got excited and forgot to screenshot other ones.

[ricky-is-too-silly]

QUEENIE, YOURE REALLY QUITE THE LOVER. BEYOND MY FANTASIES, BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻

[neodimyum]

Ive seen one too many edits of donatello with noel's lament and i keep forgetting his voice actor isnt kholby

[finleyforevermore]

Reasons for liking them:

Waiting for the Drop:

The only opening that actually takes place on the Cyclone!

Makes the audience truly understand how they're all just kids who wanted to ride a roller coaster.

Perfectly walks the line between lighthearted carnival fun and tragedy.

Has probably the scariest (/pos) version of the crash.

Despite being the most separated from the earliest opening, Tragic Fact, it still works in the ascending scale and Jane's operatic notes.

Lots of pretty harmonies!

The Uranium Suite:

Is probably the best opening musically.

Subtly blends material from other openings into it.

Has this dreadful and ominous feeling throughout.

Feels too dark, but at the same time, the darkness is what makes it so good!

ALSO lots of pretty harmonies!

[ivorypiano]

nothing scratches my brain more then ocean and noel's trans atlantic accents in space age bachelor man

[cpvnksabm]

Things I Think RTC Did Well In Disability Rep (in 2016-2018 scripts)

exactly what it says in the title. i'm not touching on the pre-2016 scripts because i dont know enough about them and i'm not talking about the 2022 script changes for obvious reasons.

disclaimer, this is all my own opinion as one disabled person, other people may feel differently and that's fine.

Ricky's disability in general

Ricky is a young person who uses mobility aids. He can't talk, implicitly due to dysarthria. He has a degenerative disease, specifically a rare disease which is heavily implied to be neuromuscular. And it's stated outright that his disease is lifespan-limiting and that he's dealt with his own mortality in life.

And all of these things are very underrepresented!

I'm not going to claim that all of these things were explained perfectly or explored in detail in the canon. But just having them on-stage, in my opinion, is a big deal in itself. And it's also a big deal that Ricky is a main character, who has the same character depth as the abled characters, when so many characters like him are reduced to ableist props for other characters' story arcs.

I understand there's been some confusion about the specifics of ricky's disability, in the fandom. And I know part of the confusion comes from the fact that the script didn't explain everything, and glossed over most of the details. But honestly? The fact that so many RTC fans didn't initially understand parts of his disability - such as the fact that it's likely neuromuscular, or the fact that his inability to speak is implied to have a physical cause - just makes it more important that these things were represented on-stage in the first place. They're so underrepresented, little-known, and poorly-understood that many people don't pick up on them even when they are represented!

Just showing these underrepresented disabled experiences on-stage has potential to help a lot of disabled people feel seen, which matters.

Ricky as a victim of ableism

Okay, this one might be controversial, but i'm speaking from the heart here.

Ableism is a huge part of Ricky's backstory and character - the whole Zolar thing is stated to be a coping method to deal with isolation & cruelty. Throughout the musical Ocean infantilizes him in dialogue, and in her song she argues point-blank that he has no reason to be alive due to his disability. The rest of the choir aren't perfect either - sure, nobody else says anything ableist, but they're all bystanders to Ocean's overt ableism, nobody really holds her accountable or acknowledges that what she's saying is fucked up. On top of that, Ricky says after his song that nobody listened to him while he was alive which, combined with the whole choir being shocked upon learning about his deeper thoughts, pretty clearly implies that they all ignored him previously.

And it's so fucking realistic.

Look. I'm not saying that Ocean's ableism was ever handled perfectly in canon. I am saying that when I saw a post-2022 production with the able-bodied Ricky script, I got a sinking feeling in my gut when we got to *that* part of WTWN and I realized the ableist lines had been removed/replaced. Because facing ableism is a huge part of my disabled experience that I barely ever see even acknowledged in media, let alone represented accurately, and the more I face ableism in real life the more I feel I can relate to Ricky, and that is so important to me.

Depicting bigotry in fiction is always difficult to do right - it's a rough balance between "this is not okay and we should not imply that it is" and "many people believe this is okay, wrongly, and that needs to be shown accurately". Sure, you can make it so the antagonist character is overtly ableist and every sympathetic character explicitly says "I do not agree with your ableist views!" and that way it's 100% clear that the ableist actions are wrong. But real ableism isn't just like that. Sometimes real-world ableism is a group of perfectly nice people who just never think about the disabled kid, or how he's doing or whether someone should talk to him, because they've been taught to ignore him. And sometimes it's a girl who swears to God that she's a good person, who considers herself an ally, whose voice stays sweet and kind as she switches between talking to her disabled classmate like he's 5 years old and claiming he doesn't deserve to live.

I think the brutal honesty of ableism in RTC is important. Yeah, it's pretty fucked-up when you think about it - Ocean openly sings about why Ricky shouldn't live, every ableist character is presented sympathetically, nobody is ever actually held accountable for ableism on-stage - and that's just like real life. I'd like to think that it could act as a wake-up call to some abled fans, who are similar to Ocean (+ others) and who could learn to understand the flaws in their worldview when they realize you're not supposed to agree with what she says in WTWN. But even more importantly than that... it makes me feel seen, in a way that I couldn't feel if Ricky's experiences with ableism weren't shown so realistically.

SABM, like, all of it

Do I even need to explain this? Disabled person has a whole furry-themed musical number. That's cool as fuck. God I wish that were me.

Okay, seriously. I think SABM is wonderful and important for a number of reasons. Like all of the character songs, it's important for expanding Ricky's character - not only is it a main glimpse into his interests, but it sets up for us to learn more about his personality and the selflessness that would later lead to the touching Savannah scene. It shows us his deep internal thoughts - it confirms that he has deep internal thoughts - and explains how he's been coping with the ableism he faces.

SABM is weird. I like that. I like that Ricky gets to have weird interests and a weird self-insert fantasy, while being disabled - I like that being disabled isn't treated as his "weird" trait, such that giving him weird interests as well would be "too much". Because that happens a lot! Disabled people are expected to be completely average in every other way to "make up" for our disability. And, yeah, SABM is kind of horny - and that makes sense! Ricky is a teenager, he's in his final year of high school, most people his age do have sexual fantasies. Other characters also reference sex in various ways so it makes sense that Ricky would. And I think it makes sense for SABM to be weird because part of Ricky's backstory is being ignored and isolated due to his disability - that's the sort of thing that, long-term, can leave people without a clear reference point for 'weird' and 'normal', or just leave them having no reason to care about being 'weird' because they're ignored anyway.

But also, if I may get analytical for a moment. Throughout the musical until SABM, Ricky faces a lot of ableism from Ocean, which isn't really commented on - she infantilizes him, both by assuming he's incapable of deeper thought/understanding and by being shocked at the idea that he might talk about porn or sex, and she also argues that he doesn't have a reason to live with his disability. Ocean is a flawed character and an unreliable narrator, but for the first half of the musical, you could be forgiven for thinking maybe you're supposed to agree with her and view Ricky as some pitiable child.

And then in comes Ricky's introduction, followed by SABM. And clearly Ricky isn't mentally a child, in any way - he's developed a whole complex story with deep worldbuilding so that he can imagine himself having sex with alien catgirls. But it also makes it clear that Ricky does have valuable ideas to contribute and, heck, just things he enjoys - which feels significant to me when a few songs ago it was being argued that there's no reason he should be alive.

As I said earlier, the ableism Ricky faces is extremely realistic and relatable to me. And SABM makes it clear that Ocean's ableist views about him are untrue and harmful, without breaking the realism for her to turn directly to the audience and say "By the way, you aren't supposed to agree with most of what I say about Ricky - I'm an unreliable narrator speaking due to my own biases!"

Basically - SABM is a subtle deconstruction of all the ableist things said to/about Ricky throughout the musical. It's an incredibly important part of the musical and an important way to represent a disabled character. And it's also a fucking bop.

Why this is important

Representation matters. That's a concept that has been explained a lot, by people who can articulate it better than I can - I won't fully explain here, just google "why does representation matter".

Look - over the years, many aspects of RTC's disability rep have been criticised in various ways. And a lot of that criticism is completely justified. Many topics were handled confusingly, not fully explained, and not properly explored like they could have been; erasure was pretty much baked into the script, with Ricky becoming able-bodied in the afterlife, and while some productions have tried to alleviate this by retaining his mobility aids nobody has found a workaround for his inability to speak in a genre where it's important for him to sing; and in recent years his disability has been entirely erased from the script, in an incredibly ableist way.

I'm not saying RTC is perfect; far from it. But if I thought there was no value in RTC's disability rep, and Ricky was just some offensive caricature, I wouldn't be in the fandom.

In fact, it's because I love Ricky and see him as valuable disability rep that I think it's important to criticise the parts of the musical that aren't handled well & the issues with disability erasure. RTC had good disability rep - that's why I think it should be improved, why it can be improved, and why i think we should fight against erasure. That's a big part of why I hate the 2022 script changes! Because they erased something that was important to me!

A lot of the things I loved about RTC in the first place are things that I frequently see glossed over, or downright erased, in fanworks. I think sometimes people don't realize the significance of these details, so I wanted to share why I think it's important! Some of these details really need more exploration and more love!

Overall, I think it's important to understand that media can't always be sorted neatly into "good representation" or "bad representation". And that talking about the good things and criticising the flaws can both be important. I really wanted to share my perspective on this topic. Thanks for reading!

[kaleidoscopiccc]

hello here’s every rtc characters favorite musical as close to canon as possible [except I actually cite my sources]

ocean - Shakespearean plays [“othello? don’t be jealous! romeo and juliet? teen sex kills! king leer? maybe a mandatory retirement age isn’t such a bad idea…”], wicked if we’re talking strictly musicals [Tiffany tatreau loves wicked and I feel ocean would too], the outsiders if we’re talking strictly musicals AND ignoring the timeline [“the outsiders!” “easy, stay in school, don’t smoke”], if we’re being even more lenient she would also like glee [tiffany once dressed up as Rachel Berry for Halloween and ocean literally is Rachel guys come on]

noel- chicago [a lot of the choreo in Noel’s lament is clearly inspired by Velma Kelly], moulin rouge [its French. come on. also nick martinez is literally in it on Broadway rn], cabaret and rocky horror picture [literally just pure vibes]

mischa- mischa does not like musicals, I’m sorry to break it to you

ricky- cats [in the 2018 promo photos, the one where the choirs all celebrating his birthday, there’s a cats poster in the background]

jane- she is literally 20 minutes old, she doesn’t know what musicals are

constance- mamma mia [“watching my baby brother dance naked to ABBA!!”]

[randy-jester]

My Imaginary Ride The Cyclone Hybrid Live-Action and Animation Feature Film that only exists in my head: Part 2

Here's the link to Part 1!

Apologies for splitting it into 2 parts. Tumblr literally wouldn't let me post it as one big chunk. 😭

Continuing on:

To refresh: This would be a hybrid film that combines both live action and animated segments. The majority of the movie would be shot in live-action under a sepia filter, but all of the choir member's songs would be animated with different art styles. "What The World Needs" is in CGI Disney style, "Noel's Lament" is black-and-white 2D animation, "This Song is Awesome" is stylized graffiti, and "Talia" is in watercolor.

Of course, "Space Age Bachelor Man" will use an art style resembling Silver Age comics (which, fun fact, is around the time Silver Surfer was introduced). The song sequence will actually show most of the events Ricky details in his fantasies (ie., him getting abducted to Planet Zolar, laying with the sexy cat women, stopping the war between K-9 and Zolar, etc.).

Side Note: We don't actually see Ricky get freaky on screen. But we do see him and the kitties in snippets of suggestive action accompanied by on-screen sound bubbles every time Ricky says "Meow!". (This movie is already getting an R-rating for every time Noel says "Fucked Up Girl".)

Another side note: I know that in the 2018 version of RTC, Constance plays the "Zolarian Queen". But because this is MY movie concept, I get to do what I want. And I say Jane Doe is the Zolarian Queen instead (SpaceDolls 4 Ever! <3).

"Ballad of Jane Doe" will be in stop motion (either using paper or puppets). In the first half, we see her recount the accident. She looks like how she does now (with the doll head). She hits the ground right before "And from the ground beneath my feet", and her head falls off. We see her laying headless on the ground for a some time while other carnival patrons are screaming and getting away from her. On "Just John and Me" she stumbles back to her feet. And on "Forever Eternally Jane Doe" she screws her head back on.

In the next verse, we see Jane try to reach out to the other carnival goers, essentially trying to identify her family and friends. When she finds none, Jane boards the rollercoaster again on "Time eats all his children in the end"

Essentially, the idea is that because it's her only memory, Jane is forced re-live the accident over and over again through her song sequence. She desperately wants to find out who she is and what her past was. But the only memory she has to dig through is that of the accident.

She falls to the ground again on "Forever Eternally Jane Doe". Then gets dragged onto the ride a third time by carnies. She looks tired like she doesn't even want to do this anymore. On "Like John I'll be eternally a forgotten name, some lost refrain" we see her fly and float through the air (like how the other choir kids did during Uranium suite). But this time she never hits the ground. Instead, at the end of the song, she just reappears in the warehouse.

Constance's song, "Sugar Cloud", is the only individual segment that isn't animated. Instead, it's shot in live-action, but in full technicolor! Think like how vibrant Barbieland looked in the Barbie movie. Like that. The reason why "Sugar Cloud" is in live-action is because Constance is romanticizing her life as it was, rather than what it could have been.

Constance begins her first verses, still in sepia, at the warehouse. But when she goes "Let me take you away", she struts forward and the scenery changes behind her to that bright technicolor look. And instead of being at the warehouse, they're back at the carnival. But everything is bright and sunny and idealistic.

During Constance's recorder solo, the choir gets new outfits that reflect each of their personalities. The outfits magically poof on out of thin air. The choir members keep these new outfits for the duration of the song, then go back to their school uniforms after the sequence is over.

When Jane Doe is chosen to live again, her body fades away, leaving behind a roll of film. Ricky slides this film into a projector, and the choir watches the reel of Penny Lamb’s life together.

After Karnak’s death, we see the sepia filter lift off from the film. Along with it, we finally get to see how much decay and disrepair has taken over the warehouse. The choir members have a spiritual glow around their bodies.

The choir members perform the last song, “It’s Not A Game/It’s Just a Ride” inside the warehouse. As the sun rises, their bodies fade away.

Title card rolls at the sound of crashing metal.