#the outsiders musical critical

[christotokos]

I think I’ve learned that there’s a lot of changes in the musical compared to book/movie, what was interesting reading was some of the James Dean references. Especially as I learned about James Dean life. Dally saying being smooth like James Dean while Darrys like your only going to end up well down a bad path.

nnnn, nonny i totally forgot about that 😭😭😭😭 i remember the hamfisted paul newman parts the most. they had this miserable looking projection of him up that was just utterly weird. i'll have to check (probably jan/feb, don't have access rn) with the musical to see about those parts. every attempt they had to try and, uh, date it was very poor. it was so paul newman centric so i'm interested in combing back over it to check.

i... hm. i have a lot to say about how darry treats dallas tho and i certainly think it was wild for him to say that.

[chippedshake]

Based on a prompt by @amethyst-writer

It's been a couple weeks since Darry and Ponyboy agreed to stop fighting. Of course, months of a strained relationship, of barely contained hollering and silent tears at night aren’t going to vanish with a simple conversation. They're going to keep on arguing, no one could believe anything else, but at least Soda won't be forced to be a middleman anymore. They won't tear their family apart anymore because they're communicating and talking to each other and not bottling up their emotions until they explode in a slap and running away and two of their friends dying.

But old habits die hard and Ponyboy is late again.

"Where've you been?" Darry asks, trying to keep the accusatory tone out of his voice.

"M'I late?" There’s a testy undertone to Ponyboy's voice, daring Darry to disagree. Is he the only one putting any sort of effort into this whole "no fighting" thing?

"Yeah, buddy, you're late."

They aren't screaming. Two months ago, they would be screaming. Now they're trading tense, passive-aggressive statements with long stretches of silence in between.

Darry doesn't know which one he prefers.

"Sorry."

"Can you stop with the sarcasm for a second and actually talk to me?"

"I am talkin' to you, Darry, you just don't care about what I say 'cause you already got your whole speech prepared."

A scathing reply is crawling up Darry's throat and dancing around his tongue, tickling his gums and pulling at his teeth, trying to force his lips open.

Pony ran away and Soda ran away because you can't keep your temper down.

"Right." He shoves it back and down his throat "I'm sorry, Ponyboy."

Ponyboy can't meet his eyes and shifts his weight to his right leg.

"Don’t worry 'bout it, Dar. I'll try an' be on time next time."

He is. On time, that is, the next time he goes out. Which is the day right after, by the way. As if he didn’t want to spend time with his brothers.

The problem this time is that he's gone out with Curly Shepard and TPd their principal's house.

Pony didn’t even tell Darry. He had to find out when the school called him because they got caught.

"I just can't believe you were this stupid! Don't you ever think, Pony? How do you expect to get out of here when all you ever do is get into trouble with Curly Shepard, who spends more time in the reformatory than in his own house?" Darry takes his coat off aggressively as they walk inside the house and Ponyboy flinches back on instinct.

Darry freezes.

"Shoot, Pony, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to, I swear I didn't mean to scare you." His voice is soft and careful now; he's talking like he would to a scared child on the street who's missing his parents and scared of the big stranger talking to him.

Oh.

"I'm sorry, Pony." His voice is pleading and he's forcing tears back because he knows it won't help anything if he starts crying now. He's apologising for so much more than just taking his jacket off and they both know it, but Ponyboy won't meet his eyes. He looks anywhere but at Darry, his face drawing back awkwardly as his shoe tries to make a hole in the floor.

"S'fine Darry, I know you didn't mean to."

Pony may say it's fine, but nothing about their situation is fine.

Darry starts noticing. Every time he pulls a chair back. When he wanders out of the kitchen with a knife. A quick hair-ruffle without warning.

It all feels violent. Reminiscent of that night that gets further away with every day that goes by but still haunts Darry's mind the moment he closes his eyes.

And he's trying, he's really trying, to make sure Pony knows he doesn't mean it. Blubbering out apologies, moving slower, announcing actions.

None of it's enough.

Ponyboy doesn't seem to spend any time at home anymore. He's always out. With Cathy or Curly or Mark or even Bryon, who seems to hate him for some reason Darry can't wrap his head around.

He gets home right for dinner and hardly says a word.

It's Darry's fault, if course. No matter how much he apologises, no matter how much he tries to take back all the stupid yelling (and that night, that goddamned night that haunts every night that's come after), it's never enough. Ponyboy isn't going to forgive him and, honestly? Darry can't blame him.

But they promised. They promised Soda that they would try and that they wouldn't hurt him anymore.

And now they’re back in the same place: unspoken tension strung tight in the air whenever Ponyboy and Darry are in the same room, Soda trying his best to dissuade it without taking sides.

Darry doesn't know what to do anymore.

Is there even anything of his family left to save? Did their last hope at functionality die with their parents on those train tracks ten months ago? How can he get his little brother to forgive him?

Does he even deserve forgiveness?

Soda's gone to sleep and Darry's own eyelids are heavy but Pony isn't home yet and he's waiting up.

Ponyboy's fine. He's come home late before, always in one piece. Darry himself used to come home at ungodly hours of the morning when he was still in highschool, and his parents never waited up.

No one waits up for their kids when they go out with friends.

But the moment Darry thinks about going to bed, Ponyboy appears in the park, drowning because Darry trusted him to cool down and come back.

Sue him for being nervous.

The door squeaks open as Ponyboy comes inside and Darry leaps to his feet.

"Where the hell've you been?"

Ponyboy shrugs his jacket off and hangs it on the hook by the door before answering.

"Out."

"Out," Darry repeats sarcastically, "like you always are these days. I'd be surprised if you spent a single minute in this house that wasn't so we could feed you! You ever think about your brothers when you're off on joyrides with Curly Shepard – don't look so surprised, you know I talk to Tim –"

"If you know where I am all the time then you don't gotta worry about it, do you?"

"Yes, I do hafta worry about it because you’re my little brother and Curly Shepard is nothing but trouble."

"Like you ain't friends with Tim–"

"That’s different and you know it. I don’t know how you'd even know who I talk to since you never spend any time at home anyway, but–"

"You ever think that maybe I don’t wanna come home because all I ever get for doin' it is you hollerin' at me? Oh, it's all better now 'cause you apologise fer yellin' all day, but that don't change the fact that you do!"

"What else am I supposed to do? You know damn well we can't keep tearin' Soda apart and God knows you ain't puttin' in any of the effort. Tell me, Pony, what do you want me to do? 'Cause that's all I do, aint it? Just follow your every–"

"I want you to be a better brother!"

A beat of silence.

Ponyboy's breathing quickly, his chest shaking, and Darry can hear the tears he won't let fall.

"D'you remember when I lost your football a year ago?" His voice is fragile, tense, barely audible over the silence that's rushing through Darry's ears. "The one the whole team had signed. You hated me for days. Then we bounced back a week later without even a sorry. And now–" His voice breaks and a faint hiccup makes it through his defences. It takes all that Darry has not to wrap his arms around his little brother "–now ya can't even say two sentences without a sorry bein' in the middle of them and I'm sick of it! I'm sick of it because I ain't fragile and I ain't gonna break if ya tell me to do my homework! I just didn't want you on my case all the time, but even that's better than whatever this is.

"You wanna know why I'm always with Curly? 'Cause he calls me an idiot when I mess things up and he wrestles with me and only says sorry when he actually hurts me. 'Cause he don't treat me like I'm made of glass. And I'm not!"

Ponyboy ends his rant with a little stomp that looks so absurdly childish after their fight that Darry almost laughs.

But it's a stark reminder of the fact that Ponyboy is just a kid. He's just a kid and he's gone through about as much as Darry, who still feels unprepared for it. Ponyboy's fourteen but he isn't, not really. Fourteen-year-olds don't have to worry about their friends crumpling under streetlights or drinking so aggressively they end up in a hospital bed they can't pay for. They don't have to worry about carrying out their best friend's dying wish.

Ponyboy's sick and tired of everyone around him treating him like a kid when he can't really be called one anymore because kids are innocent and what part of Ponyboy can be called innocent right now? He's gone through enough loss to know what he can handle and how he should cope, and yet everyone's assumed he doesn't because he's a scrawny little kid.

Darry walks – stumbles – over to the couch and sinks down into it. He rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands and runs a hand down his face.

He can't look Pony in the eyes, not now. Not if he really wants to say it right. Instead he stares holes into the couch in front of him, trying his best to find where to start.

"God, I–" He cuts himself off with a sigh. "I'm so sorry, Pony. You're right. It's stupid, I wanted to protect you from the world, at first, make sure you got outta here." He laughs humourlessly. "Can't believe I didn't realise how pointless it was. You can't protect someone from the world they live in. Then I wanted to protect you from myself, which was even stupider, I don't even know what I was trying to do, but I was trying–"

He's cut off by a small body – too small, hasn't he been eating? – ramming into him as Ponyboy sits down on the couch next to him.

"I know," Ponyboy whispers as his arms snake around his older brother, his head buried in Darry's shoulder. "You're tryin' and you ain't perfect." He takes a deep breath. "And I also know I ain't exactly helped much."

Darry gives a breathless laugh. "It's fine, Pony. I wasn't a saint at fourteen either."

He wraps an arm around Ponyboy.

"We'll figure this out, someday, right?"

"'Course we will." Ponyboy's voice is muffled by Darry's shirt so he turns his head to awkwardly look up at him. "We did that thousand-piece puzzle that one time, remember? We're invincible."

He laughs again and ruffles Ponyboy's hair.

"Fuck yeah we are."

[raindrvq]

Spoilers for The Outsiders Musical

Dallas jumping in front of the train in the musical really made me think of this part of the book. (Disclaimer I have not watched the musical yet, this is just my opinion on this one change so)

In the book, while his death *is* a suicide, to an outside perspective, it doesn't seem so. To anyone outside the gang, he died a juvenile delinquent who got in a shoot out with the police, who robbed a grocery store and then ran away and pulled out a gun. To anyone else he had it coming, he deserved it. Only really to the gang was his death tragic and desperate. People weren't mourning him in the papers like they did Johnny. And that's how Dallas wanted to die. And by having him jump in front of a train, his death is now explicitly a suicide to anyone who didn't know him. Anyone simply reading about it in the news would feel pity and sorrow for this boy they never knew, they probably wouldn't see him as a criminal or a hood. He didn't want to be seen as a poor, troubled young boy who took his own life, and that is ignored in the musical by changing how he dies. Not to mention how it strips away the themes of police brutality in a story where that is so important. So not only is Dallas' death very important, but the way in which he dies as well.

[specific-dreamer]

and when i write a bob x cherry fic that follows their relatinship begining to end then what

[diskusaurus]

My biggest issue in Epic the Musical is Odysseus, actually. In this essay, I will....

[funkle420]

a great way to combat genAI in the future would be educating kids (and teens and college students and all ppl) on art way more.

[alaskan-wallflower]

is it true that brody and his 1st understudy are stepping back this week from shows? i keep looking at the accuser’s ig story and there’s just screenshots saying brody isn’t gonna be in the show at all this week. does anyone have speculation on this? where are these people getting their sources from?

is there anyone willing to talk about this and share opinions? because i’m twitching and i kinda need some reinforcing rn because im so conflicted

[qprpbj]

plz do the internalized homophobia one for the people. darry/paul are soooo river phoenix and keanu reeves in my own private idaho coded it’s insane.

oh they’re both coming at some point #trust. i need u to elaborate on this btw! idk who they are LOL

[maddyscrsideblog]

For the first time in over three years I miss a live cr episode and it was this fucking episode?? The universe punished me for missing my alarms this morning

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

Even since Michael's heavenly ascend, not just the music industry but, quite frankly, the entertainment industry as a whole has been left with a massive void that I don't believe will be fulfilled in the near future or ever again. That man had a star power equivalent to three Galactuses at their most powerful. You will never witness someone like that ever again, not in this lifetime nor the next one. He was and still is one of a kind.

[christotokos]

alright first musical post mortem is that it makes sense how parts of fandom have reacted to this. the part of fandom that really enjoys brotherfic and the bonds or whatever, the part of fandom that wants diversity without deeper thinking, the part of fandom that really wants socs to be ""redeemable""? yeah. makes sense why they all like this. it appeals to those parts of fandom but in ways that are just... unappealing, bland, and overall really bad character portrayals. how a darry/paul fandom popped out of this is beyond me as paul is just as relevant (read: not) as he is in canon. cherry's whiteness is just... whew here.

anyway. i have two more rounds to go.

[ratatatastic]

i think my favourite thing is how increasingly agitated a player gets when defence does their job

if theres anything im particularly surprised by its the fact that oel got shaken about like a ragdoll by big rig and didnt raise to the bait at ALL because that mans one of the biggest hot heads on this team

so it is true what they say... cats can be disciplined...

that being said disciplined... to a certain extent... the smile as maroon gets seperated from really says it all... never change oel never change

later on in the first (after that first altercation with oel) maroon does in fact plow him down ignoring the puck in the process and oel for the most part doesnt engage. that highkick though? rockettes perfection hes got the legs of a dancer babey

florida panthers @ boston bruins game 3 | 5.10.24

note: do you think big rig got fomo from game 2 because he got kicked out early and couldnt rough it out w the boys so he picked oel to hound until he gave him a fight (he did not) because oel is now apparently a law abidding citizen which is so rich considering hes ranked 5th in PIM on the cats this regular season with a whopping 76

i know what you are (a criminal) (x)

[pallases]

my toxic trait is the way i physically grind my teeth every time i see a post comparing the wicked book and “movie” instead of “musical” for something that is not exclusive to the movie & also the movie is still a musical

[thefage]

I love the Epic The Musical soundtrack so much for so many different reasons. First, it feels really cyclical, the stories were originally told in poetic verse in the form of hymns, then written down, and now they're once again being told in poetic verse in the form of songs, and I think that's beautiful. Humans can't stop telling stories and making poetry and singing songs, and the musical honors the spirit of the original medium of telling the story really well but pots a modern twist on it. I also love the range of emotions the songs stir up. Each one inspires me to create or learn in a different way. Some songs make me want to ice skate, some make me want to learn more about various weaponry, some make me want to play the cello, and some make we want to draw. The only exception to this being Legendary, which, for the first half, makes me want to skate, but then there's the jarring transition to the second half, which just makes me feel like I've been body-checked by a bunch of hockey players, and then it's supposed to be followed by Little Wolf, which is a song that just generally makes me want to climb the walls and do stuff.

[theinfinitedivides]

can't believe i'm saying this but in the current Bollywood economy this absolute trainwreck/komèss of a fucking film that is Fighter (2024) could have been worse. like 'Kashmir Files' level worse. that being said the only way i am watching this all the way through ever again is if i transfer the file to my computer to try and make some fucking gifs and even that's not guaranteed

[fallloverfic]

Sailor Cosmos is so beautiful properly animated after over 20 years T-T I cry for my queen in joy