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#and obviously it wasn't perfect or faultless
jankwritten · 2 years
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I just saw my local universtiy put on The Lightning Thief musical and GUYS. IT WAS FUCKING INCREDIBLE. LITERALLY ALL OF IT WAS SO FUCKING GOOD. Like the casting was good, the jokes landed, everybody stayed in character, all of the singing was fucking great (CHARON/MISTER D/HADES HAD LITERALLY SUCH A FUCKING PERFECT VOICE FOR THEIR ROLES I WAS LITERALLY IN AWE ANY TIME THEY WERE SINGING IT WAS THAT GOOD), all of the visual gags paid off, it was genuinely so fucking good!!!!
All my "theater" knowledge up until this point has been High School theater, and not great high school theater, so I was going into it expecting to have a pleasant but not overall mindblowing experience, you know, kinda trying to be chill about it. BUT THEN???? LIterally as soon as it fucking started I was like "Oh, oh this is like REALLY real."
And it was blackbox theater, which idk if that's a regular term of if it's just what my mom was calling it (she used to perform in this same theater that we were in, she's an alumni of this place) so it was super small, no real "stage", just a slightly raised platform and then chairs on risers along the perimeter. I kept making eye contact with the actor playing Ares/Gabe SOB that was really funny tbh. But I really loved it in that format because it felt way more intimate and like, real, if that makes sense? like it felt very On Brand for the musical to be taking place that close to the audience, and it genuinely sucked me in soooo much, sometimes I would register that there were other people across the room and I'd jolt like oh, right, this is a musical in this room we're all in aosiduaoisdu
I think Grover and Chiron were my favorite parts, though literally all of it was so fucking good I don't even know if I can say that. But Grover was jsut SOOO well done, like he was exactly how I envisioned him and also his faces and the physical gestures and everything were so Grover!!!! and Chiron of course was like, the perfect mixture of "I know everything and am your leader" and "i am a slightly bumbling idiot". His "tail" was a bunch of yarn stuck to the back of his pants and his "hooves" were the chorus making clopping noises every time he stepped (AND HE TOOK HIGH KNEE STEPS EVERY TIME IT WAS SO FUNNY. there was a gag where dionysus led him out of the scene by dangling a carrot and IDK if that's in the original musical or not but it KILLED ME)
I was so impressed by Percy and ANnabeth too!!!! percy's actor was for sure struggling near the end because, duh, it's a fucking hard musical, but the way they worked in water breaks for him and also the way that he handled it all was phenomenal! And Annabeth too, she had SUCH a hard role to play and she played it really fucking well, and confidently, and I believed that she and Percy's character genuinely were friends and liked one another. AND SALLY TOO!!! LIke she was soooo well played I really felt like she was Percy's mother, like she was there for him and loved him. And all of the scenes where there were like, interruptions, IE a character breaking into another character's lines like interrupting what they were saying, it worked out perfectly and was so natural which like, even in PRODUCED TV SHOWS AND MOVIES sometimes shit like that feels unnatural and that was genuinely part of what drew me in so much, it just all felt so NATURAL. Like I cannot even IMAGINE all the practice and hard work that these guys must've put into this production for it to be THAT good and well rehearsed. (again, all of my history of productions is high school productions so SOB BUT STILL!!!!!)
The fucking minotaruw as just two dudes running around in an enormous bathrobe on top of one another and THAT WAS ALSO SO WELL DONE LIKE LITERALLY
I could go on and on. I probably will go on and on (my friends and parents have already borne the brunt of my rambling because I want to REMEMBER THIS GODDAMMIT) in reblogs but wow. wowowowow. I HIGHLY encourage anybody who feels comfortable to go out and try and see a production of the musical if it's near you. Support your local productions and colleges and stuff. that was a damn good time.
oh damn and the fucking medusa scene? PErcy's actor literally running around waving his sword like a maniac WITH HIS EYES CLOSED and yet he didn't hit any of the people in the front row, who were on the same level as him. That was SO impressive, I was slightly in awe.
oh and YES, they did do the toilet paper visual. which ruled. obviously.
#the lightning thief musical#Percy Jackson#PJO#Annabeth Chase#Grover Underwood#i'm not gonna tag everyone I promise#my throat hurts from cheering for everybody at the end#I did wear my CHB hoodie but it was too hot (and I got embarrassed about it) so I took it off LMAO#and obviously it wasn't perfect or faultless#but I can excuse literally all of the mistakes and everything because of how fucking good the rest of it was#Did Grover miss a cue? yeah absolutely. did it 100% work with his character for him to hesitate at that moment so it actually felt natural?#yeah absolutely#(you could like tell that it was an error though bc he sort of broke character for a second about it)#BUT THEN HE ABSOLUTEly nailed TREE ON THE HILL AND I LITERALLY WANTED TO HUG HIM SO BAD BRO#Medusa almost tripped and fell on her shoes. also very on brand.#god that was just such a good time#and this is coming from a person who is SOOOO nitpicky and I generally latch onto all the negatives and bad things#I don't even care about all that. i loved it genuinely SO fucking much. oh my god.#I wish I had a recording of it so I could watch it all again rn not even lying#do i perhaps have a tiny crush on Chiron's actor? yeah of course I do don't at me about it he was cute and his voice was perfection#like percy almost flying off into tartarus was even so good. just all of it it was FUCK it was literally so good i'm just i'm crunching i'm#i love PJO so much man. it is UNHEALTHY how muc I adore this franchise.#i am also incidentally now 12 times more excited for the actual show to come out#but until then those stage actors are going to be how the characters look in my head fr fr
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mysterysolver · 11 months
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been reading NeuroTribes and it's actually really fascinating, especially wrt Hans Asperger. one of the most common phrases I see when talking about him is that he was a nazi but like... he actually supposedly never joined the nazi party, even when everyone else at his university had joined (or fled) and there was immense pressure (though he did probably have to sign a loyalty oath to Hitler a few years later). and while he wasn't totally inculpable, there's evidence that he did use his position to try and save kids across the spectrum.
plus, his view of autism was arguably way more progressive than his American counterpart (Leo Kanner, who basically defined early ideas of autism in the same era), in terms of recognizing the wide spectrum of autism across all ages, recognizing strengths and not just deficits, and with the ways he tried to support the autistic kids instead of change them. he very much wasn't a eugenicist by nature but he was ultimately in a really awful position.
obviously like, I'm not saying he was perfect or faultless or encouraging bringing back Asperger's Syndrome as a diagnosis (esp since I imagine he'd advocate for a unified spectrum anyways), but it's some really interesting history that I think gets misunderstood a lot. I sure didn't know a lot of it before.
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artemispanthar · 7 years
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Sorry if this is a weird thing to ask but like, am I the only person who still likes Rose Quartz? I am kinda worried about where the show is going with her atm with the Pink Diamond thing, but... the other day I saw one of those "thank you for x, NOT YOU" memes and it was "thank you for always being there for Steven" and NOT YOU over Rose and it frustrated me. I know Rose obviously did some shady things and wasn't perfect but sometimes I feel like the whole fandom hates her now. And I (1/2)
always see people talking about how bad she was, but I still feel like she was a complicated and conflicted but ultimately good person who had flaws just like everyone. Am I wrong? Is it wrong of me to still think Rose is a great character? Idk, I just really love her still and it doesn't seem like anyone agrees. It seems kinda like people are quicker to sympathize with the Diamonds than with Rose now :/
oh, you’re certainly not the only person who still likes Rose. I know plenty of people who love her. In fact, she’s become one of my favorite characters and it’s entirely because of how complex and flawed they’ve been revealing her to be. 
Early on, she was very much (and very deliberately) portrayed as an almost goddess that everyone loved and who was entirely pure and good and faultless. A symbol and ideal of goodness that Steven couldn’t possibly live up to, because nobody is truly like that. That sort of thing is a nice idea, a nice plot device, but not really a character. I found her interesting but I wasn’t really invested in her specifically. But as the show has gone on and they’ve revealed more and more about her, she’s become more flawed, more human (so to speak), and she feels more real, like a person rather than just an idea. I love it, honestly.
It just feels very true to the message of the show, that you can always change, that you can be flawed and still do good things. And I feel like Steven has a lot more in common with her than he thinks. Like, not just in power, but in this kinda of... being in the impossible position of kind of falling into being the leader everyone looks up to and having to help everyone and solve these impossible problems. In the insecurities and not knowing what to do and wanting to help everyone but not really being able to. 
Like, the whole point of the Rebellion was, to save Earth yes, but also to break free from Homeworld so that Gems could be free to be whoever they wanted to be and Rose lead that, she facilitated that, but I don’t think being a leader was something she ever wanted to be, it just happened and she got stuck in it and I don’t think she ever really knew what she was doing, as evidenced by how bad some of her decisions were, which just came off as a whole “enigmatic leader does wise things we couldn’t hope to understand” instead of “oh god I don’t know what I’m doing someone please help me”. But everyone looked up to her and drew inspiration from her and I think that makes it very hard to admit she didn’t know what she was doing, for fear of letting everyone down.
This isn’t a hard and fast rule, of course, but the reason a lot of people find it easier to sympathize with a “bad” character who shows some good/sympathetic traits than a “good” character who shows bad/unsympathetic traits is because we have this kind of... expectation of goodness within our social consciousness. We expect people to be good, on some level, like a lot of the time even when people aren’t surprised someone does something bad, they still feel disappointed.
When a “bad” character is shown as sympathetic or “good” even in small ways, it feeds into this expectation of goodness (which is lower, since we know they’re supposed to be bad), it makes you go “oh, they’re not all bad” or makes you relate to them and thus feel for them more. 
But when a “good” character is shown as unsympathetic or “bad” even in small ways, it breaks the expectation (which is higher, because we know they’re supposed to be good). It’s a disappointment and so it hits harder. Sometimes it’s because we already relate to them so this “bad” thing feels almost like an attack on ourselves so it’s rejected.
I also think that people, in general, do not like being told what to think. If you’re told this character is supposed to be good or supposed to be bad, then what you’re going to look for is something that disproves that. The evidence against feels much stronger because it’s like “Look, you’re wrong”
Really there’s a lot of reasons for it. That said, I find the Diamonds to be interesting characters as well.
Anyways, I have rambled enough. But just know that you’re generally never alone in any opinion you have.
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