#the problem with tenors is that they are Like That

[howtodisappearcompletelyand]

20/10 stars little guy

[dogwhizzer]

i've been on t for a year and a half how come whenever i sing something in my tenor range i think i sound like andrew rannells until i recording myself and i sound. Exactly the same as i did a year and a half ago

[unproduciblesmackdown]

oh yeah also have to shout out the young queer theatre-enjoyer (as doer or audience) with christian parent experience of "at least i can be in the choir & be one of like 2-4 tenors & enjoy singing harmonies & most of practice is just chilling b/c it's 95% playing the melody 50x for the twenty sopranos who still don't have it down" while also not having to deal with sitting in the midst of the pews or whatever

[stargazingpsychotic]

Going to a music shop this week to bring my alto sax in for maintenance... But if I do come back with an instrument (or two 👀) that's because I'm making good choices

[quinnmorgendorffer]

I just want to put out there that when I was in my undergrad I played Cinderella in our mainstage performance of the opera. Our prince was played by a religious guy (Mormon) and he was married and felt uncomfortable kissing anyone but his wife. Our director accommodated and we didn’t do any kissing which is fine. I wasn’t like chomping at the bit to kiss him and I’d never want want to make anyone uncomfortable...

But I was then extremely uncomfortable, as I had to just look longingly into his eyes for stretches of time and be all up in his face in a way that felt very unnatural and a lot more “awkward” and “gratuitous” to me than if we had just shared a quick kiss. You don’t know how long just a few measures feel when you’re staring into someone’s eyes and not singing or saying anything at all.

i may get #canceled for this but i think all these people should be placed in a locked room with a copy of delta of venus by anais nin and the story of the eye by georges bataille with the only way to escape being reading one of them cover to cover

[ma1dita]

Hi Jo! So excited for your monster mash 🥰 Can I get one ticket for the graveyard mash starring Spencer Reid with a 🍫 and 🌭 please. Thank you!

freaks come out at night

[STARRING: SPENCER REID x reader ; “Really? Now? God, you have terrible timing.” “Please just play along.”] wc: 1.9k warnings: MDNI — afab!reader, semi-public van sex, choking with a belt, no protection p in v, totally against regulation, errrr i saw discourse that spencer doesn’t fuck but with the amount of smut on this hellsite… yeah right. anyways. that man is a freak. consent is sexy, enjoy. title from the whodini song

monster mash-terlist

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“Excuse me? Mr. Officer?”

Your heels clacking against the pavement catches Reid & Morgan’s attention. It’s dark on the street you’re on, the shadows of your face illuminated by the red and blue hues of light from the squad cars that surround the house where the unsub was apprehended. They've been on this case for a week, and everyone’s ready to shake hands and go home. And so are you, it seems; your confidence always gets you into difficult situations; however, asking cops for a ride home instead of staying with the creep at the club sounds like a better idea.

“Hi sweetheart, what’s wrong? This is a crime scene,” Morgan croons smoothly, leaning against the van as he looks you up and down, “you don’t look like you belong here.” It’s condescending almost, the suave tenor of his voice making you feel like you’re being talked down on.

All you want to do is go home, charge your phone, and go to bed. Spencer is too busy fidgeting with the buttons on his dress shirt as he rolls his sleeves back down to look more professional. But it’s hard to impress a pretty girl in a sparkly dress at three in the morning, especially when you don’t even glance his way.

“Yeah, there’s been this guy following me for a few blocks now. Can I get one of you to drive me home? It’s not too far,” you say dismissively, crossing your arms over your chest as the wind picks up. You shiver slightly, hands brushing the skirt of your dress down. Someone calls their attention from near the house, closing down the investigation and Morgan nods lightly with Spencer looking into the distance behind you, trying to find the person giving you trouble.

“Who’s giving you a problem? Want me to talk to him?”

He means it so earnestly, but nothing about Spencer Reid screams intimidating. Tweed blazer, clubmaster glasses, and Converse adorning his frame—-he looks like the kids you knew got bullied in middle school. It makes you giggle, “No offense, you’re not scary, Mr. Officer. Please just play along and let me ride it out.” Morgan hides a smile behind his shoulder and claps Reid on the back as if to say, all yours, pretty boy. You’re pointing at the black van, tapping it with your hand, “This one okay?” But you’ve already opened the door to the passenger seat and climbed in, dress riding up your thighs and giving them a view of your underwear. He swallows hard, looking at his friend who will surely never let him live this down, “Wanna come? I don’t like driving.”

Morgan rolls his eyes at how dumb the smartest man he knows can be when it comes to women, “Just get in the van and take her home, Reid. I’ll meet you back at the hotel.” The car keys are thrown (ie. fumbled) into Spencer’s hands as he sighs and walks around the front of the vehicle, mumbling, “Actually, I’m a doctor…”

“Your badge says you’re an agent,” you quip, watching him slide in and start the ignition. He turns the car lights on, looking your way as he pulls out onto the street, “I’m both.” 

Impressive.

Giving him the directions, you sit back and admire the profile of his face in the dark. He’s cute, you suppose—pushing his glasses up to avoid the glare of passing headlights, nose scrunched up in concentration as he tries to not let his mind wander while you tell him about your night.

“Yeah, and then after he was being nice to me, he groped me on the dancefloor. I mean, what a jerk! Can you imagine that, Doctor?”

“Spencer,” he mumbles, making you hum in acknowledgment. And no he cannot. He’s really trying not to. You’re expressive when you speak, hands flying in the air and touching everywhere from the dashboard, to his arm, and then his thigh. His hands clench around the steering wheel, wondering how you’re able to be so blunt with a complete stranger.

“You look like a Spencer.”

“Do I?”

Crossing your legs and leaning against the window to face him more, you look sinful in the passing shadows that blur behind your head. He blinks, reminding himself that he’s in control of the car, and redirects his focus on the road.

“Yeah. Too bad I’m not into nice guys,” you smirk, biting your lip, “Nice guys try to fuck me in public without even asking, apparently.” The car swerves the slightest bit, and neither of you says anything until he pulls into your apartment parking lot.

“Right here should be fine.”

He puts the car into park, lights flicking on as he unlocks the doors and the only thing you can see is his boner straining through the material of his slacks. The sheer sight of it and the hilarity of the situation make you bark out in laughter, “Really? Now? After I tell you about my shitshow of a night, you get hard after hearing that?” His cheeks redden in the dim light as he folds his hands in his lap, sputtering out a response, “I d-didn’t mean to… I’m sorry!”

“I’m not like him, I promise!” But you’re already getting out of the van and Spencer quickly files this into the section of his brain where he keeps suppressed memories because this is humiliating for him, actually— and then you’re opening the door to the backseat.

“Not like what, Spencer?”

His brows furrow as he watches you, frozen and calculating every possible way that tonight will go because it’s rare that Spencer Reid is surprised— “What?”

“Are you a nice guy, or are you a creep?”

And he pushes his glasses up, expression pressed into something you can’t read—maybe it’s something they’ve taught him in the FBI, you think, and he clears his throat, insisting, “I’m a nice guy. I’m one of the good guys.”

“You have terrible timing. Are you moving back here or not? I’m not fucking you in my apartment. I barely know you after all.”

So your confidence does put you into difficult situations. 

But you never thought it would get you bent over and fucked in the back seat of a cruiser with half your body sprawled over the center console. It’s a tight fit, your slick skin sliding against the leather and you don’t suppose a nice guy would do half the things Spencer is doing to you now, and his big hands are gripping the fat of your hips as he watches you bounce on his thick cock with bated breath.

The difference between him and other ‘nice guys’ you’ve encountered is that he’s verbal with his wants and makes sure that you’re enjoying yourself—and despite your eyes rolling to the back of your head and fervent moans, you’re still not sure he believes you.

“Ngh—fuck! Just like that…” you whine as he takes control, maneuvering you so that he can pull you up and down by his hold on your forearms. Spencer eagerly lifts his hips to meet yours, his length pistoning into your tight hole, the sound of skin and squelch echoing through the vehicle as he groans loudly, “This okay? Does this…feel good?”

“More! Mmm…harder, Spencer…I—”

“Not what I was asking, pretty,” he pants, thrusting into your soaked pussy with a jolt and stopping. Your cheek smacks against the gear shift and you cry, knees going weak at the sound of his voice, “I said, is this okay?”

“Yes! Stop asking!”

He slams into you again at the sound of your agreement, your belly hitting the console and squeezing around his cock as you lay there almost begging for him to do it again. But spit drips down the side of your mouth, along with the words you can’t string into a coherent sentence. The material of your dress is bunched around your torso, and his hands slither up your spine, feeling the way you breathe under his touch; you can’t see him from here but you know he’s smiling.

“I need to hear it, pretty girl,” he coos, tracing the letters of his name across your shoulder blades, and all you can do is laugh.

“Yes, your cock feels really good,” you hum, looking back at him and biting your lip, “In fact, you could go harder. You’ddo that for me, wouldn’t you, Mr. Nice Guy?”

“Doctor Reid…” 

He’s breathing heavily at your stare, noting the streaks of mascara down your cheeks and how your eyes seem to glint at him in the moonlight. So he yanks you up into the backseat with him, pressing you into the same position; ass up and face down and you shiver at the sound of his belt buckle clinking in the dark, “What are you doing?” you mumble, catchingyour breath while you can.

“M’gonna choke you if that’s okay.” 

It sounds so innocent coming out of his mouth and you’re grinning at the feeling of leather wrapping around your neck, fastened tight but not so much so that you’ll asphyxiate. You know he’ll be taking your breath away regardless, and he’s whispering into the shell of your ear, asking if you’re comfortable and pressing a soft kiss that feels incandescent against your skin.

One of Spencer’s hands spreads your cheeks open for his dick to make its way through your warm flesh, arching your back into his hold as the other hand tugs on the belt to pull you up. The choked sound that leaves your lungs is so filthy he has to try not to cum right then and there. 

“Please,” you whine, wiggling your hips as your hand slips down the glass pane, “Need you to fuck me.” Every inch that slides in has you moaning louder, and Spencer’s the one laughing now, “Should I still ask if you’re doing okay?”

“Oh…Just fuck me already Spencer!”

His jaw clenches as he starts fucking himself into your warmth, one hand on your shoulder and the other wrapped around his belt making you wheeze. Your ass shakes with the car, the force of his cock pounding into you with vigor, and Spencer moans, “F-fuck! You’re shaking…” His balls clap against the plump of your body as your throat feels the pressure of his efforts, and big hands pull you into a seated position so he can get a better look at your face. It’s puffed up with the lack of air and your pupils are unfocused, fucked stupid, and happy at the feeling of his rigid cock against the soft of your walls, mumbling incoherently as your eyes connect.

“Yes, yes, yes…So fucking deep…”

Spencer slides his hand around your torso, putting his fingers beneath sweaty fabric so he can touch your skin, thumb rubbing against your belly button and tongue licking up the side of your collarbone, still rocking into you as he loses it, finally letting go of the belt. You fall over with a shaking gasp and hear him groan, hot spurts of cum painting your motionless back. Noticing the car windows are foggy, you smile to yourself. What the fuck have you gotten yourself into? Reaching down to grab your underwear, you stop when you feel Spencer delicately wiping his cum off you with a handkerchief.

“Mmm. You really are a nice guy.”

He helps you readjust your clothes first before his, “I told you that.” It’s quiet in the car again, and you’re not sure what to say, but there’s no point in being shy now.

“You wanna see my apartment?” you muse, smiling sweetly at him, and he quirks his brow, “I thought you didn’t let strangers into your apartment.”

“I think we’re past that, don’t you?”

Spencer doesn't make it back to the hotel until right before check out the next morning.

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ma1dita's monster mash is closed for requests but ongoing for the rest of october!

[ddarker-dreams]

ranking the current husband rotation on how well they handle you crying.

even if he's the reason you're crying, chrollo is unfairly good at providing comfort. he considered himself numb to the sight of tears, but you plucked a cord buried deep inside his decayed heart. he assesses the scene before him with a quiet intensity. unless it's an event that just unfolded, he can always guess what got you this emotional based on past conversations and observation. his immediate instinct is to check you over for injuries. once he's assured that isn't the problem, he makes his presence known. softly saying your name, beckoning you toward him with open arms, offering an embrace deep enough to get lost in. the smooth tenor of his voice paired with his familiar warmth and scent envelop you in a comforting cocoon.

he doesn't tell you that it's okay, that there's no need to cry. he just allows your emotions to run their course. once you've settled down, he'll lead you by the hand to a couch and sit beside you. he'll quietly wonder if this is about so and so, gauging your body language for an answer if words fail you. he doesn't need to ask if you need anything. he just knows, his intuition has been sharpened to perfection by the time you've spent together. he's already thought through a myriad of solutions to whatever predicament you're facing, but he'll save that for later. the future is put aside so he can focus on you in the present.

scaramouche doesn't consider himself a sentimental person. he's allowed whatever goodwill he was born with to rot, gleefully accelerating the process so nothing but thorn and bristle remained. this garden turned necropolis returns to a shadow of itself at the mere sound of you sniffling. if that wasn't bad enough, the sight proves itself infinitely worse. he'll freeze as if his system powered down. this can't be right. you, the only being he considers worthwhile in this world, crying? he storms over, takes you by the shoulders and implores you to tell him what happened.

it's likely his abrupt appearance and grave demeanor won't prove an effective approach. he knew it before he took the first step, but his ability to rationalize succumbed to fear. fear that you were hurt, no matter what form this hurt takes. he wants an enemy to throw all this onto so he can tear it asunder. that'd give a semblance of control, something tangible to work with. if you can't provide him with names or details, he's at a loss. all he can do is think back to the many times he cried alone and trying recalling what it was he wanted then.

he'll hold you in a stiff, uncertain manner. the rough edges prove how genuine the act is.

blade is acquainted with grief and its numerous shades. the difference between you being that he's clawed at his retinas until he couldn't perceive those colors anymore, figuring it best to blind himself rather than granting outside influences the privilege. you cause the monochrome to revert. his empathy is raw, painful, and beyond verbal expression. he initially hesitates to confront this situation head-on. he couldn't offer sweet nothings if he wanted to — and he doesn't, platitudes are revolting — so what does that leave him with? he could say something insensitive, or his inability to form words might be an insult of their own.

he's fought few battles as fearsome as this. there's all the hallmarks of a bloody fight looming over the horizon. his breathing's picked up, adrenaline pumps through his abused nervous system. his hands itch to hold his sword. except there's nothing to slaughter here, no, he's tasked with the far more complicated task of imbuing life. he'll have you lay your head on his shoulder. he'll apologize, though he doesn't know what for. he just keeps you steady. you apologize for getting tears on his jacket as if he wouldn't let you tear him limb for limb if it made you feel a bit better. you probably don't want to hear that, so he presses a chaste kiss to your head instead.

[olderthannetfic]

It might just be me, but a lot of tone indicators, especially the weirder ones that are harder to guess, come off like they're making fun of me for not being that great with tone.

-- same anon Like, I thought that was the point at first. When I first started seeing tone tags I thought people were mocking autistics for needing clarification. I thought the joke was "who needs someone to come out and tell them that "I like your art" is positive? Isn't it funny how weird and dumb autistic people are for misreading tone?"

I think they're often meant as either condescending white knighting (generally without the person realizing that's the tenor of their thoughts) or they're genuinely being used by autistic people... but in that "If only we sorted all the things into tidy boxes! No one would ever misunderstand again!" way.

Sadly, no amount of clarifying or putting things in little boxes will solve the fact that language is ambiguous.

People don't always know what tone they want to convey or what they're feeling in the first place. Even when they do know, if they write something very poorly and most people would agree it conveys some other tone, they don't get to go "No, I meant X and not Y!" and have everyone ignore what they actually wrote.

Sometimes, a level of ambiguity is intentional and desirable. I don't mean for the purpose of confusing autistic people on purpose like a troll. I mean that a level of ambiguity is part of art and part of how a lot of people communicate.

And sometimes, people just misread one. Maybe they're bad at reading comprehension. Maybe they haven't had their morning coffee. Maybe one wrote something poorly. Maybe it's just a culture clash. The reality is that somebody is going to misunderstand, and that's life.

I often see "This one hack will solve [interpersonal thing] forever!" and it's always nonsense. People and language are messy. The end.

--

For my money, "Only half joking", "genuine question", etc. are perfectly natural phrasings and can just be written out in conventional sentences. (And if a platform doesn't have a long enough post length for that, then it probably sucks anyway and is full of people misunderstanding each other and screaming at each other.) I don't mind "/sarcasm", but I don't think most of the "/" notation is useful, and I dislike "/" + abbreviation.

My least favorite is "/pos", and it's not even for the piece of shit/point of sale issue. The problem, to me, is that this tends to be used in contexts where the person is saying something obviously hostile and rude and then going "tee hee, you aren't allowed to read it negatively". The sentence needs a rephrase if it's supposed to be positive. No amount of tagging it is going to help.

[hyun3hk3y]

Symbolism in "Portrait of Lady Edelgard Von Hresvelg"

This is something that I’ve usually never really felt comfortable doing. If you ever wonder why some artists are a bit more reluctant to actually *talk* about the “meaning” of their work, its because it strikes the same tenor as having to explain why a joke is funny.  If I have to actually lay it out for the viewer why certain decisions were made in the execution of a work of art, the magic of the whole experience may be lost.  Moreover, many artists avoid making definitive statements on their work because they do not wish to deprive viewers the opportunity to derive their own unique explanation. 

While I chiefly view myself as a fine artist, most of my artistic training was as an illustrator.  As an artist, this can lead to an interesting dichotomy when it comes to creating paintings.  During my studies, I was told that the job of an illustrator is to solve pictorial problems for people often by making pictures that tell a story or convey an idea.  Fine art’s definition, in contrast, tends to be more nebulous.  But I digress, on to the painting…

A number of people on reddit and Tumblr have remarked on the candle with the snuffed-out flame.  No interpretations on it have been offered, the mere presence of a candle with a smoldering wick is a strong enough implication.  However, this is one instance where I drew inspiration from art history so I believe it is worth elaborating on.  The animus for the candle originates in the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck.  Below is an image of the painting with the pertinent candle circled.

Art history scholars have a number of different readings about the candle’s presence, but the one I was taught in Art History is that the lit candle indicates the presence of the holy ghost or the watchful eye of God.  Three Houses draws from a number of religions for its world building, in the case of The Church of Serios, the developers took the majority of their cues from The Catholic Church.  If a lit candle would suggest Edelgard’s faith in the Goddess, then an extinguished one must imply Edelgard’s *loss* of faith. 

In addition to the extinguished candle, I would also like to direct viewers to the reflection of the candle in the polished wood table surface. In the reflection the candle is still burning very brightly, almost down to the base of the candelabra.

The purpose of this image is to recall a saying from old Taoism Philosophy in China: “The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long.”  Those who are familiar with Edelgard’s back story in Three Houses will find its relevance obvious.  I doubt I am the only one to make the allusion.

This brings me to the next major piece of symbolism I employed in the painting, the dagger and the drapery on the table.  The dagger’s significance should go without saying, but its application as a device will become more apparent after I explain the table cloth.  To put it succinctly, the majority of the dark shadow shapes made by the tablecloth are arranged to evoke the shape of the crest of flames.  Below is another visual to help illuminate this detail. 

The immediate implication here is the detail of Edelgard possessing the crest of flames.  As for why I decided to depict it in a more concealed way…When I first got the idea for this painting, the whole concept was that if a person saw this painting in a gallery, they would be looking at an actual artifact from Fodlan, one that created by an artist who actually lived there.  This is why the second row of the inscription reads “In the Imperial Year” on the left side and “1179” on the right.  This means the painting would have been completed just before Edelgard starts attending Gareg Mach, and long before the greater public would know she has the crest of flames.  How the artist came to know this would remain a mystery.  I like to imagine it as a detail that Fodlan’s historians would debate over for years after the game’s narrative.

There is also a second message that I have intended with the dagger’s placement cutting (heh) across the crest…Gripping the dagger over the crest of flames is a statement about what the path is that Edelgard will take, especially when the crest is examined as representing the Goddess Sothis.  In fact, there are two (technically three) lines of dialogue from Three Houses I had in mind for this symbolism.

That about sums it up!  I may do a couple more posts in the future where I show how the painting evolved from thumbnails, to studies to the finished image if theres interest in that sort of thing.

[anghraine]

I've been moving and navigating further departmental nonsense etc (my pseudo-dissertation got approved for defending, though! l o l). But it was interesting to see the Worst P&P Takes poll I reblogged accumulating more results and the general tenor of responses in the notes.

I mean, the results are definitely to be expected if you're familiar with the side of Austen fandom doing a lot of the reblogging etc. But still, interesting!

Many Tumblr polls specify that they're asking about personal preferences that may be irrational—favorite/least favorite, coolest/most annoying, or something like that. This one, though, asked for the worst interpretation of P&P, not the most annoying one—and the current leader is "Darcy is never really proud, he's just shy and probably has anxiety" against some very steep competition on the Bad Takes front.

I was thinking about why that seemed a kind of tediously predictable choice even though I agree that the take is wrong, and realized that while I do disagree with the shy Darcy interpretation and I particularly disagree with the specific formulation where he is never proud at all, it ultimately feels to me like a failure of nuance rather than just completely wrongheaded like some of the others. And this is probably my fundamental difference with a lot of Darcy takes I see!

In my opinion, a character who is introverted and who feels awkward in various social situations and who doesn't like common social activities and who has to work himself up to talking to his crush and who is repeatedly suggested to behave very differently in contexts where he's more comfortable being interpreted as shy and anxious is not that big of a leap.

Yes, it's important that he is actually fundamentally confident and haughty, that he makes his personal feelings of discomfort other people's problem, and that he thinks he's such a unique and special butterfly that he doesn't need to even put in an effort outside his personal social circle. But it's a misreading that is easy to follow (and long predates the 2005 P&P, as I've mentioned before!).

The additional misreading that a shy and anxious Darcy is also never proud at all is a much more drastic leap, and in my experience, condemnations of shy Darcy interpretations rarely differentiate between "Darcy is shy as well as arrogant" and "Darcy is shy rather than arrogant" as interpretations (although their basic arguments are quite different). But even that as the worst possible misreading of P&P when Darcy is not even the main character is ?????????

I mean, for one alternative (not even the one I voted for!), the idea that Elizabeth is an author avatar Mary Sue seems a far worse misreading of P&P than basically anything to do with Darcy at all. The center piece of the entire novel is Elizabeth's epiphany of self-knowledge about her own shortcomings that do not particularly resemble Austen's at all, but were ethically a concern for her, and she's a complex, interesting character in general whom Austen correctly regarded as a major achievement. Inverting that into Elizabeth as an improbably perfect, reality-warping self-insert is deeply wrong and frankly pretty misogynistic as well.

(ngl though, it's a little funny to see such a blatantly terrible reading of Elizabeth rank so far behind the shy Darcy votes. I've gotten "does anyone actually think/say that?" so many times on my posts about Austen fandom's prioritization of Darcy's character development over Elizabeth's and yet...)

And even just going with the Darcy-centric misreadings, the idea of Darcy as a "bad boy" seems easily the most absolutely wrong take on him. His pride is at least complicated and the finer points can be fairly debated and it's a quality that actually changes somewhat throughout the novel, and you can have discussion over what happened when, whose testimonies should be weighted more, etc. But there is no point at which "bad boy" isn't utterly wrong for him. However, there's definitely a tendency in some wings of the fandom to find the idea of Darcy being misread too favorably more objectionable than him being read too unfavorably, regardless of the particulars, so it's not a surprise.

I suppose you could argue about what "worst" means in the context of variously bad interpretations. Like, is an interpretation that is about a fairly trivial aspect of the book but extremely wrong about it "worse" than an interpretation that is pretty bad but at least comprehensibly so about something very important?

[dontforgetthefrenchhorns]

Just, like, in your experience which section has been the most intolerable to be around and deal with. Also I separated the saxophones this time because last time people were upset I kept them together lmao <3

I'm causing problems on purpose <33

[forsoobado137]

Seeing Hetalia and singing terminology in the same post has me literally jumping for joy. My brand!! My brand!! My thing!! Ecstatic. Thank you kind enabler.

Yes I love musicccc. I was in choir so I have a bit of background knowledge. I love thinking about how their voices work lol. Infact, here are some more voice/ choral singing headcanons!

Romano is an opera god. He has the range of Pavarotti, and literally sounds like an angel on earth. I love that this is canon.

Italy has the same classical theatre type of voice as his brother (but not at his level). He's an expert at reading sheet music (a lot of Italian terms).

America has a really powerful tenor voice + amazing breath control. The problem is he's sometimes a bit sharp. Also he loves improvising, which means he'll sometimes shout lyrics instead of singing or he'll experiment with a riff. It doesn't always land. Also, he doesn't really enunciate his consonants.

England sounds American when he sings. His voice is a kind of a generic baritone, though he can reach high notes with a decent falsetto. His strength is that he's always on tempo. He hates when other people clap at concerts because they're always off-beat.

France has a very seductive baritone voice. It's deep and elegant. He knows the differences between the dynamics. He's makes dramatic expressions when singing, which might make some roll their eyes. His range isn't really anything special, and he's annoyed that he gets stuck with the boring baritone melodies. He holds onto the long notes for just a liiiiiittle too long.

Switzerland is a tenor and has very good vocal control. This man can yodel.

Germany is kind of a bland singer. It's like he's never heard of vibrato. He is a bass/baritone who cannot hit the high notes to save his life. Very on tempo.

Prussia CANNOT SING. His voice is raspy, he's tone deaf, and has no sense of dynamics. Don't tell him though...

[sunsetseason8910]

Musical theater icks pt.1 (lmk if yall want more parts)

1. People hating on musicals just because they're popular, hating on them doesn't make you cool you pos (obviously if you just dislike the musical as a whole its fine but if you dislike it JUST because its popular then don't talk to me

2. Specifically mamma mia haters. Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean you should use it

3. Leads who hate on ensemble members (jokes on you toxic ass lead, the ensemble does more work than you do half the time)

4. Musicals being turned into movies but the creators were too scared to make it an all out musical so people who hate musicals don't get what they want and people who love musicals don't get what they want

5. Movie adaptations of musicals. The first few were good guys but its getting out of hand I need more original content or ill lose my ever mother loving mind

6. Sopranos and tenors getting all the love (altos need love too you meanies)

7. Being able to belt being the standard of good singing (what i mean is songs that don't have as much belting in them don't get as much love anymore even if they are musically perfect in every way)

8. CASTING DIRECTORS PICKING FAVORITES BUT THE FAVORITES NOT BEING DESERVING OF ANYTHING OTHER THAN A SHALLOW GRAVE

9. leads who complain about getting a lead.

10. Ensemble members who complain about not getting a lead (i get it, it can be disheartening and sometimes you just need to complain to let it off your chest, however when it's the only thing you're talking about or you're bringing down the one who got casted as the role you wanted, thats when I have a problem)

11. Pretty privilege when it comes to casting a role. Just cause someone is drop dead gorgeous does not mean they can eat up Hopelessly Devoted to You even a fraction as much as Olivia Newton-John did. A cute face doesn't automatically equal talent guys

12. When someone is super cocky and arrogant after their audition like "I'm totally gonna get the lead," and you want nothing more than to prove them wrong but then they get the lead

13. Leads not putting in the work necessary and relying on talent alone

14. Actors being rude to techies and vice versa (stfu, there wouldn't be a show without both parties, just work together gosh darn it)

15. When someone complains about the role they got because they "have so many lines," but they're complaining to the one who's playing like half the cast with multiple quick changes and a wide variety of characters that require different acting (this is targeted)

[gallierhouse]

Thought about the IWTV film and I really like Tom Cruise’s Lestat. Not as much as the show’s Lestat. But that man was definitely possessed. He did such a good job of hopping around and being a little crazy and very dramatic. Kirsten Dunst was great too. Brad Pitt did not try. He was so miserable, and the problem wasn’t even playing gay, because he did such a good job playing gay in Fight Club, so I don’t know why he lay there and did nothing. Perhaps because Louis in the movie is very boring. But the tenor of his voice is surprisingly similar to Jacob’s. Oh, and I really prefer Lestat’s rotting in New Orleans era in the film because it really drives home how deeply ridiculous and pathetic he is. I also love it when he pops out of the back of the car at the very end! Such a Lestat thing to do. It’s so obvious and it’s still so fun. Ominously hiding in someone’s car and then jumping out to scare them right when they think they’ve gotten out is so Lestat.

[jgroffdaily]

The New Yorker Interview

Jonathan Groff Rolls Merrily Back

The actor reflects on his journey in reverse: from his latest Tony nomination to his arrival in New York, waiting tables and dreaming of Broadway.

By Michael Schulman, Photograph by Thea Traff

June 2, 2024

Excerpts:

One of the problems with “Merrily” is its protagonist, Franklin Shepard, whom we first meet as a slick, philandering forty-year-old Hollywood producer. It takes two acts to arrive at the charismatic musician he once was, with a lot of mistakes in between. Putting effect before cause gives each scene a painful irony—but how do you get an audience to care about a guy who’s off-putting for so long? “Merrily” is back on Broadway, in a production directed by Maria Friedman, and it’s finally a hit. One big reason is its Frank, played by Jonathan Groff, whose natural warmth shines through even in the character’s older, sleazier incarnation. When this revival opened Off Broadway, in 2022, The New Yorker’s Helen Shaw wrote, “Groff’s silky tenor and angelic face elevate a part that can sometimes be contemptible—for the first time, I could see Frank as both the dreamer who believes in greatness and the glib charmer who believes every lie he tells.”

Groff, thirty-nine, is now nominated for a Tony Award, alongside Friedman and his co-stars Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez. He was previously nominated in 2016, for “Hamilton,” in the scene-stealing part of King George III, and in 2007, for the indie-rock musical “Spring Awakening,” as the rebellious schoolboy Melchior Gabor—his breakout role, opposite Lea Michele. Groff had come to New York three years earlier, as a stagestruck, closeted nineteen-year-old from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he grew up among Mennonites and was obsessed with the original cast recording of “Annie Get Your Gun.” “Merrily,” with its themes of aging, idealism, and the vicissitudes of show business, has had Groff thinking about his own path toward stardom. “Doing this show on Broadway at this time, moving to New York twenty years ago, I’ve now lived the time frame of the show,” he told me recently.

We were talking at a bakery north of Washington Square Park. Groff had glided in on a bicycle. As we spoke, he frequently welled up with tears—he’s a crier—but regained his composure by focussing on a pair of googly eyes affixed to the wall behind me. For our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, I had an experiment in mind.

Let’s start with the extremely recent past. Three days ago, you went to the Met Gala. How was your night?

The big headline for me was Lea Michele was pregnant, and I sat next to her at the table, holding her giant train thing while she peed. She took it off, and I was holding that and her purse. I saw Zac Posen, who was at our table, help Kim Kardashian up the little tiny stairs, and I said to him, “Wow, that was such a sweet moment of the gay helping the diva.” I was relating to him, like with me and Lea. It’s a zoo of famous people. I was going to go to the after-parties, but my body was just, like, “No.” I hit a wall from the shows and the epicness of the week, with the Tony nominations. So I was home by eleven-forty-five, and in bed by midnight.

The Broadway production of “Merrily” opened last fall. You told Jimmy Fallon that Meryl Streep came to your dressing room, where you have a bar named BARbra, and she took a video of you and sent it to Barbra Streisand. Who else has been there?

The first thing that comes to me is sitting in BARbra in October or November, drinking whiskey with Sutton Foster. I came to New York as a teen-ager and saw her six times in “Thoroughly Modern Millie”—now she’s in BARbra, dropping in for, like, an hour and a half after the show, and it’s so full circle. Who else? Patti LuPone was there—another big one for me. Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Martin McDonagh. Glenn Close sent back a bottle of champagne to be chilled in BARbra, which we drank together.

This show, like every Sondheim show, is very dense. Over the course of three hundred-plus performances, are there certain moments that have suddenly hit you a different way, or that you realize have a double meaning?

Double, triple, quadruple, infinity. I’m still having revelations, which really makes me believe that it’s a true work of art. Maria [Friedman] talks about how, with Sondheim’s writing, he “leaves space,” which is why it’s always new. He always needed to work with a collaborator, and she talked about the actor being an essential collaborator. She said the lyric he wrote in “Sunday in the Park with George”—“Anything you do, / let it come from you, / then it will be new”—is Sondheim’s directive to the actor.

The Tuesday after the Tony nominations, I got to the theatre, screamed with Lindsay [Mendez], screamed with Dan [Radcliffe]. [He chokes up.] Then I was singing “Growing Up”—“So old friends, don’t you see we can have it all?”—which has meant so many different things to me in the run of the show. At yesterday’s matinée, Dan and I were sitting on the roof singing “Our Time”: “Up to us, pal, to show ’em.” We’ve done it a million times. We look at each other, and Dan just fucking loses it crying. He had to look away from me. We talked about it afterward, like, “What the fuck was that?” I don’t know. Something just happened.

When you started the show, in 2022, at New York Theatre Workshop, were there kinks in your performance that you’ve since figured out?

I remember feeling shocked at being disliked for so long in the first half of the first act. It was very clear from the energy of the audience that they loved Mary in the opening scene—immediately, they’re on her side. I’m out here as a gay guy, playing this straight, two-timing Hollywood producer who’s cheating on his wife. I’m already having to feel confident in a way that I don’t in my everyday life, this sort of swagger. And the audience hates me. I remember feeling scared and self-conscious. Maria, in that preview process, really helped with that, because she talked about the value of when it’s real, and you’re not playing ugly just to be ugly. The one line that I really struggled with was “I’m just acting like it all matters so people can’t see how much I hate my life and how much I wish the whole goddam thing was over.” That is a really confronting thing to say.

People might say that this is one of the fundamental flaws of “Merrily We Roll Along”—that you’re confronted with this cynical, smarmy Frank in the first act, and you don’t really understand him until the show’s over. I can imagine going into this not knowing if that’s a solvable problem, because it hadn’t been for decades.

Well, Maria wanted us to find the truth. She really believed that these characters weren’t archetypes, that there’s humanity in the writing from beginning to end. I found it after that first week or two of previews, not being so afraid. The line that made me want to do the show was “I’ve made only one mistake in my life, but I’ve made it over and over and over. That was saying yes when I meant no.” I’ve done that a lot in my life, and there was something that felt like the closeted version of myself. George Furth and Stephen Sondheim—I can only imagine being gay at the time that they were gay. Even though Frank is straight, there’s so much repression that feels very familiar to me.

Except that you felt it at the beginning of your life and not the middle, as Frank does.

Yes and no. I still feel it. I’m still trying every day not to go back. I’m obviously out of the closet, so that’s a huge relief, but I’m always going to be reckoning with the Republican upbringing that I had. I’m always negotiating whatever homophobia I’ve got. It’s all in there, still. What we see as ugliness in the top of the show, to stand and say, “I want to fucking kill myself, I hate my life,” and not overdramatize it but try to find it in the most pure, truthful place—it’s still, every night, a meditation to go there.

Let’s wind back. In 2021, you played Agent Smith in “The Matrix Resurrections.” Any good stories about Keanu Reeves?

Getting to play Agent Smith really unlocked rage inside of me that I didn’t know was there. That’s helped me so much with “Merrily,” particularly in the first act. Learning the kung fu was, like, months of fight training. They called me the Savage, because I was so into it. We were shooting a big fight sequence with Keanu, and, after the first few takes, I remember Lana [Wachowski] at the monitor, like, “Jonathan, come over here. Who is that?” I was, like, “I don’t know.” And she was, like, “And what is that?” I said, “Gay rage?”

I’d never shot a gun before. I shot Keanu and thought I had peed my pants, because I had this hot feeling. You know when you pee yourself and it’s warm? It lasted about ten minutes and then it went away. I sat next to Keanu and said, “Keanu, I just had extreme heat from my groin for, like, ten minutes.” And he was, like, “You opened up your root chakra.”

You turned thirty that year [Hamilton]? How was that?

I remember it vividly. We were at the Public Theatre. There was a fire in the East Village, and the show was cancelled that night. I got a cupcake at the deli around the corner from my apartment, on Sixteenth Street, and ate it by myself. I can be a bit of a loner, so that was a happy birthday for me.

(On Looking being cancelled)

But, in 2015, Michael Lombardo was our executive at HBO, and I was crying into my salad at some restaurant in West Hollywood, trying to convince him to keep the show going, right before getting on the plane to come do “Hamilton” Off Broadway.

I loved Raúl Castillo, who played your love interest Richie on the show. I interviewed him around then, and he told me that, since he’s straight, you all had to teach him some of the mechanics of what gay people do.

Oh, yeah! God, I love him so much. I officiated his wedding in July.

Let’s go back to 2013, when “Frozen” came out. You voiced the iceman Kristoff and the reindeer Sven. How did that film change your life?

It’s funny—I remember recording some of “Frozen” in San Francisco. I would be teaching Raúl, like, how to lick my asshole while jerking me off—not teaching him, but sharing the ins and outs of gay intimacy—and then going into the recording studio on a Saturday and being Kristoff and Sven in a Disney movie.

When they showed me “Let It Go” for the first time, I was, like, Oh, my God, this will help millions of people come out of the closet. This is the gayest thing I’ve seen in my life! That was the thing about “Frozen”: I don’t think anyone who worked on it thought it was going to be a juggernaut. It’s so weird to think of this now, but when it came out it felt quite alternative, because there was no villain, really, and the love was between two women. Now there are, like, tissues with Elsa on it.

Now we’re moving backward to “Spring Awakening.” By the time it moved to Broadway, in 2006, you were the twenty-one-year-old lead of the coolest musical in town. What was your actual life like?

I was so not cool. The show was cool, and the music was cool. I had people dropping me off joints at the theatre. And I remember fully understanding the stark difference between who I was playing onstage and who I was in real life, which was an extreme theatre nerd who wanted to be in the ensemble of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and never would have imagined playing Melchior. It’s his gravitas. And trying to tap into that side of myself, which was a side I’d never experienced before.

Tell me about your audition.

I went to the open call and knew who Michael Mayer was, because he had directed “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” But it was “Spring Awakening” and I was, like, There’s a beating scene? This is so intense! They called me in for Melchior, then had me sing “Hey Jude” in a falsetto, and Michael was, like, “That was your falsetto?” And I laughed at him sort of making fun of me. Tom Hulce, who was our producer, told me years later that he moved my head shot from the “No” pile into the “Yes” pile because I had laughed at Michael in the audition, and he thought, This kid has the ability to let Michael roll off his back. We should bring him back in the next month or two.

It was, like, ten people up for Melchior. They brought me in first, because they thought they would just see me and cut me. But I had worked so hard on the audition material. I remember calling my dad the night before the final callback and saying to him, “I know I can’t be this character all the way yet, but I—”[He tears up again.] I really got to get my shit together! Why does this keep happening to me?

Because we’ve gone on an emotional journey.

I guess so, in reverse! Fuck me. [Pauses.] I knew that I had it inside, if they would just give me the chance. That’s all I was trying to say, but I guess I can’t stop crying while I’m saying it.

In 2005, you made your Broadway début, as an understudy in “In My Life.” Now, this was the weirdest musical I’ve ever seen. As I recall, there were dancing skeletons in a song about how everyone has a skeleton in their closet, a giant lemon that came from the sky at the end, and a girl on a scooter who turns out to be a ghost. And it was written by the guy who wrote “You Light Up My Life,” who then came to a dark end.

And his son!

Yes, his son killed his girlfriend. What the hell was going on with that show? Did you ever go on?

I went on for the ensemble members. I was so excited! I was in my first Broadway show, at the Music Box Theatre, walking in where it says “Stage Door.” And you couldn’t give away tickets to see the show. People were coming to laugh at the show from the audience.

Like “Springtime for Hitler”?

Exactly. And the cast had to do the show, even though people were laughing at them, which is devastating for the actors. But we formed a little family. It’s the plight of the actor. You’re just out there, like Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.” I was twenty years old, so I was lit.

Had you been waiting tables?

Yeah. The whole year before that, I was at the Chelsea Grill, in Hell’s Kitchen. The day I got to New York—October 21, 2004—I moved to Fifty-first Street and Ninth Avenue, before it was super gay, and I walked down Ninth and got a job waiting tables. A week later, I waited on Tom Viola, who runs the charity Broadway Cares, and became a bucket collector. I’d watch the second act of shows and then collect the money at the end. I went to hundreds of auditions, trying to get my Equity card. That, to me, was “Opening Doors,” from “Merrily”—that moment of sheer will and ambition and ignorance.

We’ve now reached our finale, which is 2004. Can you tell me about the decision to move to New York?

My mom was a gym teacher and my dad is a horse trainer, and they didn’t really understand anything about the performing world. But my dad grew up on a dairy farm, and he was supposed to take over and become a Mennonite preacher, which is what my grandfather was. My dad didn’t like cows—he liked horse racing, so he sort of rebelled and did his own thing. My mom always says that nurse, secretary, or teacher were the options for women in a small town at that time, but her passion was sports, so she ended up being a coach.

So they understood the power of fanning the flame of passion. When I was a kid and into acting, they drove me to play practice. They drove me to community theatre. My senior year of high school, my mom drove me to New York to audition for this bus-and-truck tour of “The Sound of Music.” I got that tour, and deferred my admission to Carnegie Mellon. I made ten thousand dollars after a year on the road, and I learned so much from getting to act every day. I wanted to take my ten thousand and move to New York, and my parents were super supportive: “If you feel like you need to go to college, you can always go to college. But take a gamble and move to the city.” I’d worked at this theatre in Lancaster called the Fulton Opera House, where I’d met this girl who wanted to move to New York, so she became my roommate.

To me, “Merrily We Roll Along” is about how difficult it is to stay in touch with the person you were as adulthood knocks you sideways and forward. When you think about nineteen-year-old Jonathan coming to New York, do you feel like you’re the same person? What’s changed?

[He bursts into tears.] I can’t tell why I cry! When we were about to start rehearsal for “Merrily,” I would listen to “Our Time,” and I couldn’t sing it without crying. And, when I think about that version of myself—I think it’s because that person who brings you here does diminish. Maybe it’s the grief for that person. The whole reason that I’m here now is because of that person, but that person no longer exists.

But that person is still in there, somewhere. That voice is so quiet now, but it’s still driving my choices. You have to make choices. You get older, that pure inspiration dies, but it doesn’t have to go all the way away. I think that’s the whole point of the show, why it goes backward. Maria says that Sondheim put all of his regret into it, so that we could have less regret for ourselves. And perhaps the reason it ends with these people, with these versions of ourselves that we remember when we see it, is that it’s an invitation to remember and honor that person.

Why does that make me cry? Is it grief? Is it joy? I don’t know, but I’m so grateful for that purity and that optimism. The first month that I was here, feeling so lost and confused, I pulled the Bible that my Mennonite grandmother gave me off the bookshelf. She gave me that Bible before I left town. I was alone in the apartment thinking, What the fuck am I doing in New York? Or not even “what the fuck”—I didn’t swear until “Spring Awakening,” and when I would sing “Totally Fucked” I would get beet red. And I remember putting the Bible down and thinking, This is not the answer. This is not making me feel good. And then running to Central Park and standing in front of the Bethesda Fountain. I was nineteen, and I was, like, This feels better—but, like, What? Who am I? What am I doing here? I know I want to act, but I’m so scared. And gay. But it was something—some voice, some passion, some inspiration. Some something brought me here.

[mispatchedgreens]

Hi!! For the fic ask game - ↻ ouyang pov of the sparring scene in "before i come undone" please

Thank you for putting together the evilest question you possibly could, here's 1k of raw sweaty unhingedness as reward

Ouyang’s left hand knuckles still ache from punching the wall yesterday. He thinks about that, about plaster cracking under his fist and about that half a second that Zhu looked scared, how her eyes flew to his hand on the wall, centimetres away from her face. The flinch made the tendons of her neck stand out sharply against the smoothness of her throat for the shortest moment before they subsided back. Ouyang thinks about that too, about crawling in there in his entirety, about taking a nap on her molars and about feeling the vibrations of her vocals from the inside. He hates her so fucking much. Every time he thinks they’ve found a modus operandi and settled down in it, she’ll say some shit like “You’ll sing with me for this one,” and make significant and prolonged eye contact. She’ll say “The track needs it, your highness” and she’ll mean I need it, Ouyang. He knows he’s protesting for the sake of it, because Zhu gets her way as naturally as the sun rising and setting. But he doesn’t want to fucking sing. He doesn’t want to record and immortalise his disgusting high voice, while Zhu acts like his tenor. It’d be less humiliating if she asked him to go on stage naked.

And then this. I could help out. He could help out? Fucking preposterous. Ouyang looks at him. He’s a beast of a man, neck to shoulders and arms. If Ouyang were to wrap his own arms around him, he wonders how much his hands would be able to touch each other. His hands are massive too. Ouyang remembers their hands next to each on the umbrella, and the disparity of their sizes. The tiny shorts he’s wearing have managed to ride even higher up on one leg, revealing a strip of paler skin, and it’s outside of Ouyang’s powers not to imagine what it would feel like for those thighs to be pressed up against the back of his own thighs, knees against the tender, sunless flesh of the back of Ouyang’s knees, an oppressive strength that could turn Ouyang’s brain inside out, make it leak out of his ears, and leave him a receptacle for its brutality.

His eyes are smiling, even when he’s not. Ouyang feels diseased with the fact that he can’t seem to look away from his face. He hasn’t been able to look away from his face for months on end now. This isn’t a problem that Ouyang has ever experienced before. Nor has any other man looking back at him managed to make his gut tighten into a burning hot coal in the same way that Zhu can. Not like this man can.

The man blushes at Ouyang’s scrutiny and he can’t help the spark of tenderness that fizzles inside him. “You don’t have to. It was only an idea,” the man rushes to say. His voice is smooth and deep and Ouyang wants to swallow it right up.

Maybe we should fuck instead, he thinks and the thought makes fury blast through him. They’re going to spar and he’s going to win and it’s going to be humiliating.

.

The sparring mat is no lei tai. It feels flimsy like a glorified yoga mat underneath Ouyang’s bare feet, and it is level with the ground. Still, the moment that the man lowers his stance, placing his centre of gravity towards the earth where he wants to go, where he wants to send Ouyang, Ouyang’s chest tightens like taking four steps back would be a fall to the death. The bet here is becoming fast enough to be able to dart into the man’s open embrace, do damage and extricate himself before those arms clamp shut around him. Ouyang isn’t so arrogant as to think that a properly executed wrestling hold won’t keep him down, especially from someone that outclasses him so much in weight.

Ouyang circles and dances carelessly. He stays high, utilising the length of his legs, kicking and kicking some more. He doesn’t think about it. Every move he’s ever used is stored up inside of him, a horrifying concoction of styles that barely fit together. His heart beats up into his throat, almost like it’s trying to fill it with blood, like he’s going to taste blood. He reaches up fast, to slap a palm flat on the man’s ear and instead gets punched in the mouth for his trouble. It is a consuming, sharp sunburst of sensation, knuckles against lips, lips against teeth. Ouyang wants it forever.

He gets low to sweep a foot at the man’s ankles but he evades it masterfully if not a bit awkwardly. Ouyang almost smiles. The steps back have left his right side open for half a second. Ouyang springs up with the might of a diver pushing at the sandy bottom of the sea and shooting up towards oxygen. His knee connects beautifully with ribs and gut. The whites of the man’s eyes flash with the shock of it and Ouyang is so well pleased he chances a second kick while he’s up there, jabbing with the knee and then hitting with the leg extended, consecutively. It’s not nearly as powerful as the first one and on the return, the man gets him.

He dives into Ouyang’s body like he’s certain he’ll be welcomed, cradled. His arms feel like huge slabs of stone around Ouyang. It’s this that causes his breathlessness, more so than his back hitting the mats with a thud. While he could do nothing to prevent this, he can stack his odds of escape while the takedown is happening. Ouyang gets an arm inside of the hold, right along his body, to crowbar his way out of there with his shoulder. His feet slip on the man’s leg, scrambling against him to find a vulnerable spot. Their sweat makes this an unrefined business, slippery and uncomfortable, fucking glorious. The man’s hair slips out of its ponytail to stick at his brow. He tightens his hold on Ouyang and his smell is potent, all consuming, masculine and thick and Ouyang thinks if he were to open his mouth right now, he’d surely fucking moan.

The need to stay there intensifies to blind him, as a rabbit stays on the road staring at the oncoming traffic. Ouyang puts his escape plan to action, and it requires all of his might and some more of it to grapple the man into the ground. His muscles tense and tense like they’ll all tear in a second, but he does it, he puts the man face first on the ground and sits on his back, victorious. There’s a churning in his gut, a tiny summer storm, hot rain and electricity, his idiot, tiny hands grasping all of that power, all of that man, and shaping him like plasticine, putting him in his place, where he should be, where Ouyang wants him.

He leans down, his mouth tingling from his gums to his trachea, making spit like it’s waiting for company. “Got you.”