#six liw

[sixaus-meaa]

Six The Musical as Messages pt10

(special edition: the Ladies In Waiting)

María / Maggie / Joan / Bessie / Rocky / Maud

[redladydeath]

return of the OG Parr costume

A couple very quick updates from this week. I’ll go into more depth on a few of these later on.

- Leesa Tulley was an emergency cover for Howard on the West End. She wore a dark Howard ponytail (not pink). Her eye makeup was initially done with orange alt in mind but by the time of the show she was wearing a Lady in Waiting costume. - Harriet Caplan-Dean also emergency covered for Parr on the West End. New hairstyle more akin to Roxanne Couch's Parr look, but otherwise she wore her own normal costume. - Hailey Alexis Lewis debuted as Parr! She wasn't planned to debut for a while yet and it looks like she was wearing band pants with a regular Parr peplum and top. Also saw some new wig designs which I'll include in the Canada wigs post later this week

(l.eesa, harrietdeany, haileyalexislewis)

[thebirdscomeback]

okay i need to make a sappy nmtdaily post!!!!!! ended up being too sincere for its own good soooo its under the cut

when i first found nmtd i knew i was a couple years too late to the party. there were still wonderful fandom things going in 2016 of course but i would look back at old, mostly inactive blogs and wish i hadn't missed that boat. i wished i could have been part of the joys of the fandom when it was at its peak, not just scrolling through archives. i've also also wanted to be able to watch nmtd in real time. the few liws i did get to see as they were coming out were so magical to me and i wished i had gotten to see my favourite as it was meant to be watched. i've loved this tiny, tight-knit fandom so much anyway over the past eight years and it's always the place i have come back to between other fandom explorations. even if i felt like everyone else already knew other and i didn't have much else to say.

when nmtdaily was announced i was coming out of a terrible anxiety period and really needed something to look forward to. i didn't have particularly high hopes to be honest. i didn't want to get excited for a fandom revival that didn't end up happening. i thought i was probably going to make a few jokey posts and, like i have pretty much annually since 2016, do a solitary rewatch which would be personally meaningful but still separate from a fandom which was sort of hanging on by a thread.

instead, nmtdaily ended up slotting into my life in a way i hadn't predicted. it held my hand, as it has for years, but tighter now, through all the parts of this year that have been stressful and terrifying and fun. i have loved having a new video in my inbox to look forward to so much. i really didn't expect to connect with these characters in a way i never have before. i know them inside out but watching them in real time, with others, has changed them for me and i love them in ways i hadn't found on my own. i didn't except to have so much more to say. i mean what more is there to add about a 10 year old webseries based on a 400 year old play? a lot apparently! (one thing about a series slotting into your life is if you are writing a million gender studies essays at uni, it will be hard to avoid in your non-academic analysis). i really didn't expect to make such a dear, dear friend who it feels like i have known for far longer than six months. i didn't expect to feel like i must have been missing something before we were talking every day (i also didn't expect to have a card jointly written from him and caleb wells on my bedside table right now, thanks ron <3). i didn't expect to make a fanzine. i didn't expect to feel so much more connected to this fandom and to watch it flourish so wonderfully even while it stayed tiny.

maybe too sincere of a post for such a thing, but i feel really grateful for this year and for nmtd being a part of my life and for everyone in this tag being a part of my life. i think fandom can be so so beautiful actually and it has been so much fun i love this webseries!!!!!!!!

[sixcostumerefs]

Courtney Mack principal Parr debut, Cecilia’s as-of-yet unannounced replacement, Erin Ramirez on standby; Tay Pearlstein’s B debut, Aryn Bohannon’s B debut, Jana Larell Glover’s P debut; shows with Cecilia Snow as Aragon and Seymour, Jana as Aragon and Cleves, Taylor as Parr; Aline with her HEB and ACL jokes and cowboy boots; casts featuring eight Texan queens and/or grads of Texas colleges, two LiW, and possibly more of both….oh Six loooves Texas

[violivs]

NMTDaily: And So It Begins

- Beatrice’s first vlog! What an opening line, I love it lol. I remembered the hand wave on “hello, people of the Internet” having a wider arc across the screen than it actually does, funny enough! Glad I didn’t specify the wide wave when I referenced this line in MARRIED, the fic I posted on the 25th.

- “I’m not too old for Halloween”, girl after my own heart!

- Always thought it was interesting that Bea’s mother is American. I wonder how/why they decided that. It’s the kind of super specific detail that makes Bea feel so real, because who would make that up? It’s also interesting that it means Bea and Ben’s families are both somewhat international. Another parallel for them, another thing they have in common.

- I bet the Aunties’ wedding was the cutest thing ever, imagine Hero and Leo standing up with them! That’s probably the last time all of the Dukes were together before the story starts.

- I’m surprised Bea’s parents moved because her dad got a promotion. I would have assumed her mom did, because we get the impression of her as the high-powered businesswoman. But good for Bea’s dad. Is it canon that he’s a university professor? (Promotion = tenure?) Or did I make that up for fanfic and/or confuse him with Ben’s parents being professors in canon? Listening for that. Maybe Bea’s dad was actually also a business person all along and that’s how her parents met. Who knows.

- Bea says Australia like I say Indiana, lol (no hate to anyone from Indiana though! Just another of those inborn rivalries with the neighbor, like the Oz/NZ one.)

- “A great science program” I forgot Bea was a science person!

- I always loved the set decoration in this room, I remember it’s Hero’s room, and it’s so artsy and cozy and pretty. Love the wall art.

- “Leo and I are in charge of the house for the next six months” Excuse me, does this series really only take place over six months? Well, it ends in the first week of November, so that’s seven full months. I think it felt like it lasted a whole year when it was airing though. Time slowed down during a certain arc for sure.

- “in-joke with myself!” Classic. I kind of love that the text on screen saying “good one Beatrice” is Bea talking to herself again in-world, but out-of-world it’s kind of the Candle Wasters talking, interacting both with their own main character and with the audience. Meta.

- “Sorry my life is so boring” are like, THE famous last words for an LIW protagonist. Honey, you got a big storm coming!

- I was always so incredibly impressed with Beatrice’s independence, her comfort with leaving her parents and essentially being on her own before she even finished high school. I was alone in a college dorm hours away from home when I first watched this, second semester of freshman year if I’m not mistaken, and I could barely believe I’d managed it. I couldn’t imagine doing that any earlier than I had. I thought she was so brave and cool. I think Bea actually shows more hesitation and nervousness than I realized she did in this episode, both because she’s not used to vlogging yet and because being in a new place is nerve-wracking, but I still think she’s so brave.

- It’s so interesting that in a reversal of the play, it’s our Beatrice who comes from away to Messina to start the story, instead of Benedick and the other men returning from war. Of course, we’ll see how the boys’ arrival on the scene is modernized soon enough!

- Harriett does such a great job making you care about Bea and like her right from the start. You just want to keep listening to her talk. I can’t wait to do just that over the next seven months.

- The Benedict Cumberbatch crush is a stroke of genius, but what are the odds that there happens to be a super famous guy named Benedict that you can reference who is at peak relevance in the exact year your MAAN modernization premieres? Truly, this series as it exists could only have happened in 2014. It was the perfect time and the perfect people. What luck.

- Oh, this is the wider arc hand wave I was remembering! It’s just at the end of the video and not the beginning. Funny!

- Covering the camera with her hand and ducking out of frame at the end of her first video is a direct parallel to what Bea and Hero do in their final NMTD video, sliding out of frame and all. Love that.

- I can’t believe how much there is to talk about even with these early episodes. These posts are gonna get so long they’ll have to go under a cut for the later episodes!

💖🦩🥭

[lightleckrereins]

Rhinestone logistics.

Weirder than you would think.

Anyway finally finished with the massive boot reformating. I do not want to get to the hair one.

Also this are changes you won't really see. Opening the game you will get more boot and hair colors, new hairstyles and a few things changing order. Nothing more. From my side things will be way different and way easier. A better structure where I can find and edit things faster, removing unnecessary steps, files that can be easily reused in the future instead of making new ones from scratch every time, a faster way to edit the master file, less layers in use which means more space to add things in the future, making it easier to find assets within my files.

And reminder that I have a ko-fi and all donations are highly appreciated and allow me tospend more time working on fun things like this.

Reformating the boot files will be worth it.

Reformating the boot files will be worth it.

Reformating the boot files will be worth it.

[redladydeath]

six show where the alt costumes don’t even remotely match the queens they’re representing

blue shorts aragon, LiW boleyn, silver skirt seymour, black seymour skirt cleves, orange pants howard, and pink skirt parr

[but-im-unbreakable]

there's the six chaos we knew would be coming sooner or later!! harriet caplan-dean west end debut as parr alongside harriet watson boleyn????? in the liw costume??? 3 weeks before tour cast change????? its giving march 6 2022...

after harriet watson left i thought we'd never get a double harriet show but we did... on the west end and not tour... six chaos has outdone itself. again.

[cavernfullofexistentialdread]

Dead People Musicals™️ explained badly

Hamilton: Pew bang bang write crap oh hell everyone is depressed and Ham is a sleep deprived writer (Cathy) with a list of bad ideas

Ride The Cyclone: Funky choir kids have a fun time talking with a rat, trauma, and realizing they don’t deserve what happened to them all while being the dorks that they are

SIX: Screw men, women hot! Pop band except filled with trauma covered by a chaotic group of friends who just so happen to all desperately need therapy (The LiW are throwing therapy and happiness at them as they screech and hiss like a cat)

[joysmercer]

misc six observations:

the pantages is the most gorgeous theater i’ve ever been in (not that i’ve been in many but u know)

it’s also along the walk of fame and kirsten chenoweth’s star is right by the door (lena horne's is just across the street)

they didn’t advertise my show as accessible but it was open-captioned and asl-interpreted (but it looks like both things were only viewable to ppl seated on the left side)

an old couple next to me were trying to figure out which “chopin composition” the pre-show music was? (they’re all piano covers of pop songs) v confused

the “queen bios” in the playbill list aragon’s interests as “religion, sewing, dancing, and a bit more religion”, boleyn’s says she’s remembered for “headlessness”. parr’s talks about her friendship w mary and that her mom was LIW to some previous wives, but makes no mention of the fact that aragon was her godmother(/namesake) or that she married seymour’s brother

the minute greensleeves started playing, people started cheering. it was so fun

khaila was born to play aragon that's all im saying. literally nonstop applause until the dluh intro

storm's boleyn tiptoed that line between "idk what's going on" and "smart and cunning" so so well

cleves did the ponytail-pull instead of seymour? idk if this is a recent change but it has Interesting implications characterization-wise lmao also it was just funny because olivia had to significantly reach up to get to courtney's hair

speaking of which, both nat and cmack's new wigs look a lot fancier than their old ones somehow

im pretty sure nmp actually started crying during hos (which, even though i've heard her sing it a million times, was every bit as beautiful as i thought it would be)

hoh live is an Experience in the best way, they just looked like they were having the best time bouncing around the stage

the audience member picked for get down was so good/confident olivia cheered for her the entire time instead of doing the "this is my song" bit after shfghjkl

get down is already such a lively song but olivia's version amps it up even more like i was in stitches during the intro and the entire audience was fired up by the end

the k-howard roast didnt get as many laughs as it should've :// i felt so bad for courtney because she delivered those lines flawlessly

and then loud and immediate applause after aywd??? L audience tbh

(also interesting note – the asl interpreter didn’t sign for applause after the song like she did for all the others)

natalie's "I DIED" was every bit as amazing as all the audios. also she basically chased khaila offstage while saying that line sdkf

i think gabriela is my new favorite parr im so obsessed w her take on idnyl and her acting (even in the background) is impeccable

there were some obvious mic issues – both cmack and storm were a bit quieter than everyone else and khaila was way louder; all three of them left the stage at various points for unknown reasons (but there wasn't a show stop and i dont think most people noticed someone missing)

this cast's chemistry was i n s a n e like the little interactions and they way they reacted to each other plus the harmonies…10/10 no notes

speaking of which. there was a really sweet moment toward the end of idnyl ("why should i tell that story?") where aragon puts her hand on howard's knee comfortingly

standing ovation after six!!! idk if this is a regular occurrence but they bowed an extra time because of all the clapping lol

except then people started leaving, so courtney had to start the megasix early and you could barely hear her over the audience

but it was ok cuz people stayed on their feet throughout the megasix too and again the girls took a really long time leaving the stage after bc the cheers kept getting louder!!!

tldr i had the BEST time and if the tickets weren’t so expensive id go again and again <3

[michaelgabrill]

New Paper Redefining Characteristics of Lightning-Initiated Wildfire Ignition

Christopher Schultz (ST11) led a team consisting of Phillip Bitzer (UAH), Michael Antia (Jacobs), Jonathan Case (Ensco), and Christopher Hain (MSFC) to examine 26-years of lightning-initiated wildfires (LIW) to understand the types of lightning that were producing wildfire events within the United States. Twenty-six years of lightning data were paired with over 68,000 LIW reports […] from NASA https://ift.tt/jfWNzhe

[sixaus-meaa]

only 6 more family trees - the ladies in waiting - and then I'm done with them and back to fanarts hauhsusu

[six-costume-refs]

No more scheduled shows for alts. No more alt costumes. The end of Swingo? Six definitely seems to be heading towards the end of its lifetime now.

Nowhere near it, at least for the West End!! I posted about it in quite a bit more detail here, but the show schedule is generally good business practice that will help optimize costs + reduce stress on the actors, LiW, and crew. It's actually a really good sign and says that they're feeling comfortable enough to focus on creating longevity.

[lightleckrereins]

Hannah Lowther’s story looks like she has Black alt (old design) or Seymour boots, I’m assuming this is just for rehearsal purposes, right?

Those are rehearsal boots. In the usual costume timeline UK queens get their boots between the second and third week of rehearsals as the rhinestones are finished. But they need to start wearing heels from day one for a few reasons. Including to get used to the height, to build up the strenght needed to wear the boots regularly, so they can learn the choreo taking into account the different step lenght and measure moves with the heels. Basically same reason they wear skirts, peplums and corsets, and have the LIW plattform in the rehearsal room. Simulating stage conditions as much as possible makes it possible for the cast to be better prepared.

But back to boots. Since the queen's boots are not finished by the time they start rehearsals they wear whatever fits best from retired boots. By now there are many that are still in good condition so its very likely they can find something that fits. During the past week the WE queens have posted many of them in their instagram stories and I've actually been trying to figure out who has what. Half out of curiosity half because some interesting combinations are happening.

So far:

Nikki Bentley: an Aragon pair

Thao Therese Nguyen: a pair with the original diamond design that I think is Howard

Reca Oakley: a pair with one strap that doesnt look like the six LaDuca boots

Inez Budd: a boleyn pair

Gabriella Stylianou: a cleves pair

Naomi Alade: a pair with the original diamond design in what looks like light blue rhinestones (a design that has never been used and has me incredibly curious)

Hannah Lowter: a Seymour pair

Nothing from Kayleigh McKnight, Janiq Charles, Meg Dixon-Brasil or Natalie Pilkington. I assume Natalie is wearing one of her old pairs. And on another story a few other boots were visible inside drawers including roxanne's pink alt boots, one set with silver heels that could be one of the 2022-23 UKT alt boots or a teal pair, a pair that doesnt seem to have rhinestones (I assume the one reca wears) and two I couldn't identify which rounds up the cast.

Gabriella and Naomi, Hannah, Thao.

Reca and Nikki, Inez, some of the drawers where the silver heel pair, Roxanne's boots and the Cleves pair Gabriella has are stored, another two pairs were under the table.

So a very random looking mix. I think its funny Boleyn and Howard are currently inverted and am very curious about the boots Naomi is wearing.

But tbh I am more excited to see the new boots that should start appearing this week

[thebirdscomeback]

not that anyone cares but this is just really interesting me and I think about it a lot. I watched LLL for the first time over one night from around 10pm to 5am about six months after it finished. having watched it full around ten times since I wonder how much better the experience would have been if I was around for its real-time run. I adored it that first time I watched it, not being able to fall asleep even with the sun rising because I was just *buzzing*. I had no time to compute anything I just seen but I knew it was something really special. on one hand, I know that I didn't have to deal with a lot of stuff that might have made the experience worse. I didn't have to spends weeks wondering when the hell something was going to happen (although I'm not convinced I would have minded) and I didn't have to deal with the fandom hate that came with it (I definitely would have minded). I was never confused by all the character arcs that only really make sense once they're over.

It also meant that I didn't get to analyse anything, or think about anything or even really process anything as it happened. it was over by the time I could understand what was so compelling that it made me watch it all in one go in the first place. I will always be a little sad that I never got to experience moments like the couple hours between sardines and i don't know what to call this, or, like was mentioned, the break between farewell and break 'dem rules. that kind of thing is just so unique to webseries and I wish I got to experience these characters lives alongside them.

it does make me wonder about people finding LIWs now, and what that experience would be like for them. I hate the idea that no one could experience them in the way they were intended, and could therefore, never get quite as much out of them as someone watching in real-time, but ultimately, that is what makes them so special, the waiting for updates and the feeling you had in the days after a dramatic episode dropped and the transmedia and the discussion. and most of all, the feeling that you really are watching these people's vlogs. the idea that that is only an experience that people who happened to find this genre between like, 2012 and 2017 will get to experience is honestly a little devastating because it was so cool! I miss it so, so much. there's a lot of great things about watching vlog-series after the fact, and maybe some of the time it's even better, but it just isn't the same.

anyway, I still stay up until five in the morning once a year on the anniversary of me first watching LLL, no matter the responsibilities of the next day, and it is always such a joy, so I guess that counts for something.

Hey, so I noticed you mentioned you came into lll at ACCOSTED, and so binged the episodes up till then. I have this working theory that lll is actually a better experience binged than watched as it was releasing. I've seen a lot of people express this, and I think it has something to do with the tension of the conflict being spread over months as opposed to a matter of hours, leading to the perceived strength or weakness of the resolution. I'm wondering if you have thoughts on this at all?

Oh, I have tons of thoughts on this.

The upshot is that I think you’re correct. LoLiLo is simply too tense, for too long, at too slow of a pace. It’s unpleasant to watch in real time. For me it was almost sickening. The only experience I’ve ever had that comes close was reading Chapters 51 - 53 of the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court as they were released – an experience that drove some other readers to take a break from the comic until the storyline was resolved and could be read all at once.

The small-doses release format works really well for telling stories on the internet; it makes stories part of your daily routine, and in some cases that creates a stronger connection to them than you might otherwise have. It allows stories to be told in real-time, and provides a system for creators to tell longer stories than they would if forced to release them in a single go. It gives stories time to build an audience via word-of-mouth.

But ever since those chapters of Gunnerkrigg Court, I’ve suspected that there are certain kinds of stories that the small-doses format makes too effective. Misunderstandings, undeserved reputations, people trapped in unjust systems, people trapped by their own faulty beliefs – pretty much any story that builds tension to unbearable heights so that it can be released, like a sigh, when the situation is resolved. The small-doses format prolongs the wait for catharsis, but it also prevents you from simply putting it out of your head for a few months, like you might do with a cliffhanger on a TV season finale. So you’re stuck in that tension for months, unable to really let it go unless you quit watching/reading.

Plus, LoLiLo is just generally slow-paced – it takes 19 episodes and nearly a month in real time to get to “RULES,” which is the first place where you can get a sense of what the story of LoLiLo is going to be. Compare The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which takes only six videos (two weeks, real-time) to “introduce” Darcy. There’s over an hour of footage before LoLiLo’s inciting incident; LBD gets there in 15 minutes.

I don’t mind the slow pace, but it definitely benefits binge-watchers, because an hour isn’t so long to wait, when watched all at once. We’re used to waiting an hour for TV shows to tell us what they’re about. The West Wing takes 40 minutes to introduce the President. Most of the first hour of Lost is an incredibly well-shot but fairly standard stranded-on-an-island story. About half of all procedurals spend their first hours setting up the status quo that will hold for the rest of the season.

That said… Watching LoLiLo in one big gulp would’ve been a more pleasant experience, but I’m not sure I’d be as committed to it if I hadn’t watched those last dozen videos in real time. It heightened the experience, and it drove me to rewatch – and only through rewatching have I gotten a real sense of the story of LoLiLo. And there are a couple of places – notably, the break between “FAREWELL” and “Break ‘Dem Rules” – where I think the story loses all emotional sense if you don’t watch it in real-time. Watched as-it-aired, “Break ‘Dem Rules” is a relief, giving a welcome sense of closure after two weeks of “FAREWELL”-inspired confusion and upset. Watched immediately after “FAREWELL,” I imagine that “Break ‘Dem Rules” would just read as emotional whiplash; you’d go from “Leo has cancer” to “singing about how much happier we are” in ten seconds. (This is one reason that I don’t love the way “FAREWELL” was handled. It doesn’t play well in *any* format: In real time it’s frustrating, and on binge-watch it’s confusing.)

For all of its experiments with and departures from the format, LoLiLo is a vlogseries, and vlogseries are meant to be watched over time. That’s how the genre is designed. So probably, if I were to introduce someone new to LoLiLo (which I’m wary to do, because getting the full story out of it is quite a time investment), I would use a viewing strategy that breaks the series into large chunks, watched over the course of two or three weeks, no more than one per day:

Episode 1: “A Merry Note” - “RULES” Episode 2: “FLAT” - “CEREAL” (+ interviews, viewed after Ben’s intro but before the challenge) Episode 3: “MYSTERY” - “STAKEOUT” Episode 4: “TRAGEDY” - “Fish In The Sea” Episode 5: “Relatives and Reunions” - “PUNISHMENT” Episode 6: “Bea and Ben Take on Embarrassment” - “BALTHDAY” Episode 7: “Vegan Fred” - “Berry Nice” Episode 8: “GUNGE” - “+confrontation+” Episode 9: “Beatrice and Ballads” - “FAREWELL”Episode 10: “Break ‘Dem Rules”

Zoos Job would be watched at the viewer’s own pace, any time after Episode 8.

This divides LoLiLo into stretches of videos that cover roughly the same subject matter, preserving cliffhangers and letting each episode build to a major story beat. That way, you have time to sit with the story, to experience the tension and the mystery, to theorize and make guesses and even rewatch as you go – but you’re not left hanging for so long that it becomes painful.

And then, you know, I’d recommend the new viewer rewatch at whatever pace they like. :)

[arty-e]

I have finished the video!! I hope you all enjoy this ridiculous thing!