#the authors look down

[build-a-problem-musical]

Picrews made with makowka character maker II! All actors featured were formerly in Matilda.

Emma: Gabrielle Guiterrez

Celeste: Zaris Angel-Hator (left Picrew is Celeste in most of the show; right is after the A2, S10 haircut)

Thomas: Luke Kolbe Mannikus

Theo: Ian Saraceni. We'll just use camera tricks to make him seem shorter than his apparent 5’6”, I guess. (Left Picrew is Theo prior to A2, S10; right is him in A2, S10.)

Not part of the main timeline, but have a bonus Starless Sky Zaris!Celeste after her second haircut (her first is the same length as in her right Picrew):

if someone made a movie about your oc, who would play them?

[build-a-problem-musical]

Here’s Stars Restitched Emma as an ambulatory wheelchair user (using saszor OC maker by saszor and 2c4ub)! She can stand and walk short distances on flat surfaces, hence the cane, but her weakened right side leaves her off-balance, and she uses the chair (aluminum alloy) for more demanding terrain and longer distances. She’ll need it less and less as she goes through a lot of hard work at PT, though her balance may never quite return to what it was beforehand and the cane will be a fixture in her life. (If her hair’s a bit too long, no, it isn’t. None of the short-haired options suited her. Maybe she can grow it as a treat.)

[build-a-problem-musical]

are Celeste's disabilities a metaphor for something? what and why?

*interviewed voice* This is a reference to her completely unintentionally written reactive attachment disorder, right? Or is this her potential depersonalization/derealization disorder that I left hazy? The show itself never properly defines whether she actually has it, though because she has "When" and "Before the Line" as solos, songs that dodie has stated are about her own experience with the condition, I played into it a little; staging elements distort around Celeste occasionally and her dialogue in the scene after "When" is vague enough to be taken either way:

"I don’t think I’m…entirely right. The world looks…different now, small and blurry. I don’t know why I’m always scared of everything I do, like I can’t trust myself. And I don’t know that anything ties me to what’s happening now. This isn’t…this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, that’s all I know. There’s everyone beside me, but I can’t say how real any of them are or how much they care. I can’t even say I’m here. I don’t know. Nothing I’ve planned is reachable anymore."

Whether she's talking figuratively or literally in this dialogue, her condition or conditions (neither of which would be labeled disabilities) are not themselves metaphorical and form part of her concrete experience. Focusing on her RAD because the DPDR is left in the air for the audience, she has no self-regulation to speak of and tends to overreact to a degree that someone else in her position might not. Emma tells a story at a presentation she has to give on unhealthy relationships and seems to be focusing her attention on her, so when Emma crumbles under the weight of her own material and runs, Celeste's response is to throw a screaming fit and pin her to the wall. After Thomas fights everyone and Emma impulsively becomes involved, Celeste lashes out, and stage directions confirm her cruelty near the end of this scene is driven by her belief that Emma deserves better than her. She comes home in the scene preceding "Before the Line" and spends a good two pages of the script trashing her room and shrieking implacably as she flops and flails. The girl is an open circuit and her first instinct is to place her overpowering emotions anywhere else. She rails like she's little because she's never learned that she's bigger than whatever she feels at the moment.

[build-a-problem-musical]

perhaps someone wants to draw Celeste and Emma. that someone would require photo references and in depth physical descriptions with lots of details please

Ooh! Well...the thing is, this is (theoretically) L I V E T H E A T E R. So anyone can be cast however the casting team sees fit. That being said...if you cast an Asian Celeste Anders, tell me you don't understand Asians without telling me you don't understand Asians. I say that as an Asian myself. That being said, I also designed my characters with Picrews based on their hypothetical VAs, and I did break that guideline because Celeste's hypothetical VA is an Indian friend of mine (though she won't sing the part, making Celeste's hypothetical singing voice a black girl I know on the Internet—hi, @mhmm-thatsinteresting!). VA-based designs also broke the white Thomas guideline because his hypothetical VA (with whom I'm working to bring you guys something special soon) is Filipino.

Throw those rambles to the wind now. Plenty of actors formerly in Matilda are now of age for BAP, so I'd go for Gabby Guitierrez as Emma, Zaris-Angel Hator as Celeste, Luke Kolbe Mannikus as Thomas, and Ian Saraceni as Theo. Alternatively (looks-wise, hence Thomas' absence from this list), Luján Blaksley or Destinee Mccaster could play Emma, ROSIE looks like a good choice for Celeste (even though her songs sound more like Emma's choice of music), and we could have a Nathan Levy or Marcus Harman Theo. Run with that! Draw my kids in your style!

[build-a-problem-musical]

Not a ship, but...Celeste and Emma.

shipping win! they have different but equally terrible coping mechanisms

[build-a-problem-musical]

so long-term, are you looking to literally get the rights to directly use dodie's music in your musical, or is it truly just inspiration for the writing of it?

Just inspiration for the writing because do you think I have the money to get the grand performance rights (rights to use music in storytelling, which are more expensive than the rights to use them like normal)? And I made a good number of lyric changes here and there for context and what would be appropriate for actors the ages of their characters to sing, so I'd imagine that would make getting these rights harder. It might be fun to do an audio version, though a silent scene (Act 1, Scene 4) becomes difficult in this format.

[daddysboydean]

i have discovered all (most?) of eugara's orphaned fics on ao3 and i will be unavailable until further notice

i made a list in the reblogs :)

[amywritesthings]

writers! do not! owe you! updates!

this is not tiktok. we are not content mills. we are posting our stories -- oftentimes short story or novel-length -- for FREE.

free. adverb / without cost or payment.

you get these stories (not content, they are actual stories people write out of their own blood, sweat, and tears) without having to pay a singular fee or monetary transaction. these authors often have day jobs or university or both. they even have families! children! pets! social lives! if we have other things going on or simply do not have the brain power, then we do not owe you our time nor our energy for updating our stories or wips or ideas we throw onto the dash or ao3.

i am fortunate that i haven't gotten a demanding anon in a minute, but i am so sick of watching my mutual writers get harassed about their update schedules. the ironic part is that you're only making us not want to write said update when you demand more. not ask, not hope, but demand.

learn some empathy, and above all else: learn to be less of an anonymous coward demanding someone's free time for yourself.

[build-a-problem-musical]

Emma is adopted in an implied-by-casting way.

when u come up with a tiny change for your story that not only makes the writing flow better but also hammers in the character motivations and story theme

[build-a-problem-musical]

The Anders family was...something in Celeste's early years.

Her parents had not at all accounted for the simple fact of her existence until it was staring right at them; they prepared the house and tended to her physically, but mostly they just pawned her off to Josh (17), Delia (12), or Laura (9) or left her to her own devices. Celeste was already very temperamental by nature, and this was exacerbated by the fact that no one exactly taught her how to behave and that she could turn vicious in search of attention. Her daycares would regularly call or send notes about her most recent disruption, which frequently involved any combination of her kicking, biting, hitting, scratching, throwing things, or knocking over chairs. None of the facilities could keep her for long, and she was once again treated as a problem for Delia and Laura to deal with. (Josh had moved out by then and was thus able to escape this.) Neither of them were exactly the most patient with her (the whole situation was one they didn't appreciate--they didn't really want to make it easy for their parents to do nothing) but managed to argue, threaten, or punish her into line. Delia and Laura moved out at 18 with the mentality of "I'm leaving this hopeless Anders household as soon as I possibly can," and Celeste plans on doing the same. Overall, the Anders family operated something along these lines with regards to her.

(The Anders parents were probably better with Josh, Delia, and Laura at first when they had enough energy for all of them--which is not remotely to excuse them, but just a side note.)

[theabigailthorn]

finally watched all of Hazbin, definitely cried a bit at Episode 7 and sent Morgana a tearful message

[build-a-problem-musical]

Fic idea where Emma, Celeste, Thomas, and Theo all have to do community service cleaning up a park together. Thomas is self-explanatory, and I feel like the rest would attract keyboard warriors. (Emma and Celeste would be falsely accused of abuse, and Theo would be falsely accused of purposefully manipulating the situation with Celeste.)

[nellasbookplanet]

I recently started reading (and ended up dropping partway through) an m/m retelling of an old legend, and it made me think of this reoccurring thing I've come across a handful of times now in m/m fiction and how they approach women, equality, and world-building.

Let's call it the omegaverse problem, because that's where it seems the most blatant (I've only come across it twice outside of fandom spaces that I can remember). Basically, it's when the writer looks at the unequal and sometimes oppressive roles women serve in society (today and historically), and goes 'this is a good basis for dark romance but there are too many women here' and then just. plops men into the roles traditionally served by women and recreates heteronormative tropes but They're All Men Now, none of those icky women.

Now, completely removing any and all gender based inequality isn't a bad basis for a queer-inclusive fantasy! But thing is, this type of narrative isn't interested in women, so they often read as if women have mysteriously disappeared from society (except for the occassional mom or sister). They don’t bother to include women in traditionally male areas (the book I dropped had plenty of male courtesans, with diplomats and bodyguards and advisors also being male) nor to create new roles for them.

They also generally don’t bother to look critically at the systemic and societal inequalities they're mimicking. The concept 'typically sexist society but they're all men (or all women)' could be used to alienate and deconstruct our ideas of what’s 'normal' and what’s oppressive, a way to compare the intersections of class and gender. Instead, this kind of story is only interested in using inequality as inter-character conflict and set-up for romance. And it sucks.

[hadesoftheladies]

"we need more men in--"

no. no we do not. we do not need more fathers, we do not need more men in healthcare, we do not need more men in universities, or boys in school or whatever

we do not need more men PERIOD

what we actually need is more women in all these fields getting paid their fucking dues

the less men there are, the less war, the less violence, the less terrorism, the less economic collapses, the more we have a chance at fixing these worldwide catastrophes and healing the earth (this has the entirety of human history's worth of documented and observable evidence)

women and girls are not only healing society but the earth; the fact that boys and men hate that school is no longer boy's club, the fact that they have made themselves useless if not destructive without their precious fabricated masculinity, the fact that they keep expecting a parade in their name for doing the barest of minimums isn't our problem, it isn't a human crisis, it is a crisis of the male identity

no one needs to resuscitate it; let it die a natural, deserved, overdue death

[andypantsx3]

urgh i was listening to a podcast where they alluded to some published romance authors dunking on other authors for writing "gratuitous" and "less tasteful" smut and it reminded me of the time i also accidentally implied something like that on here while i was talking about the less descriptive vanilla shit i write and i want to build a time machine and go back and break my own fingers before i could type that reeee

[build-a-problem-musical]

Emma already got Elaine to hug her and apologize. She could stand to have James do the same, though. She also needs to fix her sleep schedule. She has last month's chemicals still in her cerebrospinal fluid.

The Anders parents should also apologize to all their children. Celeste has suffered a fair deal.

Theo...ahhh. He needs to be convinced that he still has time to learn how to love properly. I don't think anyone will be able to do that for a while, though.

I'm not sure that we can arrest Thomas yet, but he needs to experience consequences for once! Maybe we can shake him by the shoulders and yell at him in the meantime.