how many men who say they’re in the friendzone are actually in the “I was just nice to him because I felt bad for him but now he’s getting all clingy and manipulative to the point that he is making me regret basic human kindness which I feel really guilty about but I just want to be free from this nightmare” zone
my fave thing about rey is that a tiny droid she just met tells her ‘hey that dude stole my master dude’s jacket’ and she just fuckin wrecks him as if she’s not going to hijack an enormous ship like 5mins later
Stormpilot is my favorite ship at the moment and I’m so happy that there’s so many fics already, and look, I made a rec list of some of my favorites so far.
updated: 28.12
how to fall in love with a fairytale by AndreaLyn |
Except here he is, now, thirty-two years old and starting to believe in fairytales again and that’s all Finn’s fault. | 2.8k
you don’t see what you possess by starstrung | Finn isn’t under any illusions. The only reason he’s made it this far is out of sheer dumb luck, and the skills of his friends. | 3.2k
waking by kirargent | When she speaks, Poe’s heart sputters like a bot without quite enough power to fully function. “Finn is awake.” | 2.6k
recovery begins by defira |
In the aftermath of the assault on Starkiller base, Finn struggles with his recovery, and Poe struggles with his feelings. | 2.7k
hyperspace by penthos | Finn has a tiny, tiny crush on Poe Dameron. Everything’s fine, situation normal. Except that Finn is overly dramatic, Rey is just trying to help, and BB-8 is the hero we all deserve.
| 1.6k
asterism 32 by black_nata | “Keep it,” he says. “It suits you,” and has to bite his lip to keep anything else from spilling out of his big mouth. | 4.6k
just like it should by fabrega | “You’re the Resistance’s best pilot, and he’s wearing your jacket. Just go talk to him!” | 2.6k
answers from jackets by dansunedisco | Finn wears Poe’s jacket, and people take notice. | 0.5k
awakenings by beetle | Finn wakes up and the first thing he sees is Poe. | 5.2k
I relied upon the moon by mnemosyne | tumblr prompt: How about the amazing trope of “you will recognize your soulmate by the first words they say to you (as it is tattooed on your skin)” but as finn was in the stormtrooper program his was removed. | 2.2k
helping hands by isloremipsumafterall | Poe’s squadron catches on that Finn and Poe like each other and decide to try to help Finn out; it’s not really helpful at all. | 1.9k
coming together by BlackRose2014 | I can fly anything. Are you Resistance? FN-2187 stared at the words scrawled in messy Standard on his forearm. He didn’t know what they meant. Well, he didn’t know what they were supposed to mean at least. What they meant for him, though, was extra protocol sessions and more scrutiny from his superiors. | 6k
climb inside my body (captive in my skin) by ShowMeAHero |
Poe’s parents took special care to explain soulmate marks to him, pointing to the blaster rifle fire on his left arm and explaining that, as he grew, so would the mark. It would become a whole picture, growing and developing as his soulmate grew and developed. Poe worshiped his mark, examining it every day for changes. | 2.7k
it felt like burning by 13thdoctor, JHarkness | The five times Poe kisses Finn, and the one time Finn kisses him back. | 4.7k
the defect of a defector by doctornemesis | The defect in the defector was not necessarily his moral sense of right and wrong, but his ability to love and be loved. The truest form of free will one could make. | 1.3k
a stitch in time by moss28 |
Finn and his jacket both make it off of Starkiller Base, though they’re in rough shape. Poe thinks he can fix at least one of those things. | 2.6k
the end of the red thread by cloudnine101 |
Poe is beautiful and funny and kind. Finn has no idea what to do with him. | 1.4k
Hi! I was wondering whether your awesome 'Poe is a space princess' trope/headcanon is something you're writing or a general prompt type thing because reading it kinda started an avalanche of plot ideas. Thank you! :)
Go for it! That was just an idea one of my friends had; I wrote her that story as a gift, but it’s certainly not my headcanon and it’s free to a good home. Write as many stories as you want about Princess Poe!
also fun fact: if you replace bb-8 with a puppy, the force awakens instantly becomes a rom-com about a tiny concerned dog going on a quest to find a date for its charming but lonely owner, and comes back with two excellent prospects in tow.
trying to find that one post where y’all speculate about Finn realizing he needs to provide a surname, and he just goes with “Dameron” because that’s the first one which comes to mind (none of his old friends had surnames or even names beyond their official designations, and he can’t remember that much of his family)
and Rey is like “yeah solid choice, makes sense, I like the sound of it” because Rey is a feral desert child and doesn’t know any better
and of course Poe is charmed, and is like “sure I am happy to provide jackets, surnames, my elite piloting skills, my hand in marriage: anything for my friends”
and idk at some point, someone is like “okay Rey do you have any other name, what’s with the mononym shit” and she’s like “uhhhhh DAMERON” because really if it works for Finn, it can work for her
and the long and short of it is: they see nothing unusual in this and completely miss any implications, and eventually this nonsense gets back to the Resistance fighters and Poe’s entire squadron smirks at him for days
Are Poe’s parents still alive? Because he’d be getting messages asking for an explanation why they had to find out third hand that he got bonded, at the very least?
I have been thinking about this and I have decided that I was completely wrong: this entire mess is Poe’s fault, he totally started it.
accidentally! and with the best of intentions! he woke up in the desert with the ship and Finn both missing, and while he feared the worst, he still had hope. when he made contact with the Resistance, he tells them about Finn and has him listed as MIA; he felt responsible for the kid, he felt awful that this boy took a courageous leap with a total stranger & got smashed to bits in the desert for his trouble.
Poe has some vague notion that if Finn was ever found, he’d ask him to join the Resistance, or help him get settled in a new quiet life somewhere safe. He knows Finn doesn’t have anyone else, so he writes “Finn Dameron” and lists himself as next of kin.
when they reconnect, he’s so happy that Finn is okay (a bit distracted by how gorgeous the kid is, he hadn’t had time to notice before), and genuinely touched that Finn kept his jacket, that Finn was equally worried and upset over him. it occurs to him that the name thing could be awkward, so he explains his concerns, he explains next-of-kin notifications, and “you didn’t have anyone else that I knew of, so I wanted to make sure you’d at least have me.”
after that, Poe doesn’t think anything of it.
…but Finn! Finn is like, COMPLETELY VERKLEMPT, that this cool dashing hero person was looking out for him! Finn has people now - he has Rey and Poe, and the entire rest of the Resistance have embraced him wholeheartedly. also!!! next-of-kin, that’s SO NICE, he has kin now, he’s not just cannon fodder whose passing won’t matter to anyone but his squadmates. he’s a person, he has kin, he has people, he belongs. it’s so great.
he tells Rey all about it and she gets why he’s excited; it IS awesome. he signs everything “Finn Dameron” and she addresses her messages to “Finn Dameron,” it’s all very exciting. and she thinks about it, too, she thinks about next-of-kin, about Finn coming back for her, Finn choosing her.
when she rejoins the Resistance, she asks Finn if she can be “Rey Dameron” so that they can have next-of-kin too. (it simply doesn’t occur to either of them that they can get next-of-kin notifications without exchanging surnames; Poe did it that way, and it made sense to them, and they never thought about it beyond that.) and of course Finn agrees!
he forgets to tell Poe for another five weeks, and then mentions it in passing. Poe is like, professionally unfazed, so he just finds the whole thing charming. they are so cute and he can’t stop smiling over them; they are the best. and again, Poe moves on & doesn’t think anything of it.
…..and then. AND THEN, eventually, Rey finds out that she’s a Skywalker. [This was foreshadowed so heavily in the movie, I’m 99.999% certain they’re gonna go there.] and obviously there’s a lot of feelings and drama, but when it dies down a bit, she’s hanging out with Finn and they’re drowsily curled up together on his bunk because they want to talk FOREVER but they’re so tired but the have SO MUCH TO SAY.
Rey doesn’t totally understand what all of this means for her, what it means to have that family and their legacy. but she does know what it means to have THIS family, the one she has with Finn. so it makes perfect sense to make him part of her new family, to mesh the identity she’s inherited with the identity she’s made, so she asks him, “you are my people, you are my next-of-kin. do you want to be a Skywalker too?” and of course he’s like “YEAH!”
and like. throughout all of this, Poe is their buddy and means a lot to them, and they think of him as their people. (the entire Resistance has noticed how much the kids adore him & hero worship him, it’s hard to miss; they would tease Poe more about it, but he clings grimly to his virtue and hisses “CRADLE ROBBING” every time it comes up, so they mostly let it go.)
so when there’s some Big Dramatic Space Mission, and his squadron goes missing briefly, Finn & Rey are both really messed up about it. and then one of them is like, “…you know what we forgot to do?” and the other one is like “OH OF COURSE.” as his next-of-kin, they have the right to get his records updated, so that’s what happens while Poe spends several miserable weeks fleeing across the muddiest, swampiest continent in the galaxy. when he finally makes contact with the Resistance, he has acquired (1) space cholera, (2) space ticks, and (3) a new surname, though he doesn’t learn about that last one for a while.
His mothers find out around the same time he does, and they are Not Amused. “Why wouldn’t you TELL US,” they ask, and “it’s hardly classified, apparently your whole base knows,” and “we had to hear about it from your commanding officer, young man,” and “were you ever planning to introduce us, what do you have to say for yourself”
and like, there’s a totally reasonable and rational explanation for all of this - “it’s not what you think,” he says feebly, and his moms huff, unimpressed - but he’s still shaken up from the influx of engagement/wedding presents and General Princess Leia herself visiting his bedside to fix him with a gimlet stare and a completely deadpan, “Welcome to the family.” He’s had a long day, he might be married, and he’s not sure how but it’s at least 30% his own fault.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND JOHN ADAMS ONCE HAD TO SHARE A BED IN A CROWDED INN, AND SPENT A CONSIDERABLE AMOUNT OF TIME ARGUING OVER WHETHER OR NOT THE WINDOW SHOULD REMAIN OPEN DURING THE NIGHT, AND WHETHER AN OPEN WINDOW WAS A HEALTHIER WAY TO SLEEP OR A SUREFIRE WAY TO GET SICK.
I wonder who was of which opinion
FRANKLIN WANTED THE WINDOW OPEN, ADAMS WANTED IT CLOSED.
I wonder who won.
FRANKLIN, BY TOTAL KNOCKOUT. HE KEPT EXPLAINING WHY FRESH AIR IS ACTUALLY GOOD FOR THE BODY UNTIL ADAMS GOT BORED AND FELL ASLEEP, ALLOWING FRANKLIN TO DO AS HE PLEASED RE: THE WINDOW.
#‘close the window ben the draft is intolerable’#‘FRESH AIR IS NOT INTOLERABLE JOHN. FRESH AIR REJUVENATES THE BODY AND MIND JOHN. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS INTOLERABLE JOHN. THIS IS WHY NOBOD#Y LIKES YOU JOHN.’
“bless your heart” is NOT a sign of goodwill that person wants you dead and buried, preferably while they watch from the comfort of their porch rockers
Seriously though bless your heart means fuck you in south
Actually though it’s more like an expression of pity
It’s like saying “this poor idiot is beyond help
lord have mercy on his moronic soul”
Well i learned smth today
In my experience, the other thing you should know is this sentnce: “Bless their heart, they’re doing the best they can.” This sentence, as far as I can translate (my dad was a good Southern kid, but I was raised in Minnesota and flunked my grandmother’s ‘how to be a lady’ lessons), basically means “If this person was burning to death in front of me, I would pour my sweet tea out on the ground before I let a drop touch them.”
People who don’t know anything about the french revolution aside from “the peasants wanted bread so they started a war and the king and queen got their heads cut off” should just not share their ignorant opinions about Marie Antoinette and the monarchy and the role they played in the revolution
Marie Antoinette wasn’t the materialistic empty-headed blonde bimbo that a lot of people think she was. She was, first and foremost, a young girl. She (along with Louis) was still a teenager when she was crowned queen, and anyway she knew she was too young to rule (“Oh God protect us, we are too young to reign” —when Louis XV died). On top of everything, she was lonely at French Court. In Austria, she had tons of siblings she could play with but in Versailles all she had were three aunts that were much older than her (and gave her pretty bad advice at one point). Plus in her first few years, she and Louis were still strangers so they didn’t talk much (that changed later on but that’s besides the point). SO, she was a) a 14 year old girl, b) a complete stranger to france and its culture, and c) alone and virtually friendless for some time. Not to mention, her so-called “friends” (her three aunts) gave her really sucky advice about ignoring Louis XV’s current mistress and upsetting both her father-in-law and a lot of the French Court—all because her aunts had some personal issues with Madame du Barry. And on top of everything, France was already in a tricky spot and she was pressured by her mother to have an heir and also make sure the French were not angered by Catherine the Great of Russia partitioning Poland and handing it out to Austria and Prussia. Imagine dealing with all that shit as a teenager.
Pretty sure most people know that the “let them eat cake” myth is already debunked, but that leads me to my next point—she had, and has, the image of being an apathetic, money-guzzling queen when in reality she was extremely compassionate and generous. This is from Marie Antoinette and the Decline of the French Monarchy:
“The first occurred when her carriage passed the scene of an accident. She insisted her driver stop, then tended to the wounded man herself while her attendants went for help. She refused to leave until he was safely on his way to a doctor.”
and also…
“A peasant was accidentally fatally wounded during one of Louis Auguste’s hunts and Marie Antoinette had him taken to his home in her own carriage, and when he died, she made her his wife and children were compensated.”
That “let them eat cake” phrase being attributed to her and making her seem cruel and indifferent to the starving poor is complete crap but it’s just part of the revolutionary propaganda that blamed her for the country’s inability to govern their subjects properly and justly. Which brings me to my next point…
The peasant’s weren’t actually the direct cause of the revolution. Revolts by the starving peasants were actually considered harmless just right before the official breakout of the French Revolution. And even during the revolution, it wasn’t the peasants that led that bloody and poorly planned revolution. It was middle class white men from the third estate who basically wanted to pay less taxes so they could have more money for themselves. As if they gave a shit about the starving peasants. The bourgeoisie were made of lawyers, bankers, merchants… in other words, they had enough money. They were educated, so they were the ones who led the French Revolution. Not the peasants. That’s why the Revolution shouldn’t be romanticized as some noble attempt to give the peasants food again—the leaders of the revolution had their own ambitions in mind. Once the educated and persuasive bourgeoisie rallied the support of the peasants, that’s when the peasants actually posed a threat to the monarchy (see: the women’s march on Versailles).
Revolutionaries were REALLY fond of pointing fingers, and Marie got the brunt of it. They called her Madame Deficit and blamed her for France’s financial crisis, but Marie’s role in the financial crisis wasn’t… actually …that big?? She did spend a lot of money, but the main cause of the crisis was the aid they sent to the American Revolution, taxes that the CLERGY set on the third estate, the ancien regime in general, the previous king’s lavish spending, along the king before that (Louis XIV) digging France into debt with war costs. So in perspective, Marie buying lots of dresses and perfumes isn’t that big of a deal, coupled with the fact that she didn’t have an idea what the hell was going on with the economy anyway!! Is it really fair to blame an woman who was kept in the dark about the country’s financial troubles over continuous, conscious mistakes made over the reigns of the past two French kings??
tl;dr Marie deserves all the sympathy in the world and the historians who condemn her probably only researched the French Revolution as a whole and not Marie specifically. Marie was an ordinary teenager girl despite her position and she wasn’t ready for the pressures put on her both when she was a princess and as a queen, and she was in no way deserving of death, nor was her husband. The people who are at fault, morally and/or otherwise, are the clergy, the selfish bourgeoisie, and also the incompetency of the people behind the king (financial advisors & etc). Not Marie.
Just also think its important to note that the same woman everyone portrays as self centred accidentally step on he foot of her executioner moments before her death and gave her sincerest apologies to the man who was about to chop off her head
If girls can wear pants then boys can wear skirts. And same for us non-binary folk.
We should be able to wear whatever we feel comfortable in.
So at first I read “shirts” and I was really confused. Upon a second reading I realized that I had erred terribly, but I was also much less confused. Honestly wear what makes you comfortable–I identify as female and I like button-downs and slacks, so I don’t see a damn reason why people who identify as male or none-of-the-above or any variant thereupon couldn’t wear skirts.
Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
You do not respect their rights as an individual.
You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
“I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me ”
“’You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?’”
I found these quotes particularly interesting. OP’s mother refused to listen when she tried to talk about her depression, but snooped through her things to see if she was depressed.
It’s amazing to me that parents need to be told something that I GUARANTEE they experienced themselves. This is something that predates text messaging. You search your child’s room for drugs, and they will find a better hiding place for anything they may be worried about you finding - even if it’s as innocuous as candy. You try to snoop on their phone conversations with their boyfriend, and they will 1) Find a different way to communicate with him, and 2) Never communicate with YOU about their boyfriend.
My parents doing this shit to me didn’t make me stop doing it and didn’t make me respect them any more. All it did was make me better at sneaking around.
It’s honestly true that if you snoop through your kid’s stuff, it’ll guarantee that they won’t tell you anything, because I don’t tell my mother anything now.
My mom demands that I log in to my email and allow her to look through it.
I keep a private email that I access only through incognito mode because of this.
She also demands to see my tumblr.
I have a fake account set up for that very reason.
My mom thinks she knows everything about me, accusing me of so many horrible things, but she doesn’t know I’m gay. She doesn’t know that this coming Friday is my and my girlfriend’s 6 month anniversary. She doesn’t know I self harmed (because of her). She knows nothing about me because I do not trust her, all for the very reason that she gives me no privacy and is volatile and violent when I try to refuse to let her go through my things.
my mom has ALL MY PASSWORDS EVER so i literally never talk to her about my emails or anything, mostly because im hoping she’ll forget about it and i dont have to have this constant know of anxiety in my stomach because holy shit my mom could go through all my emails and i can do nothing about it.
also i cant even talk to her about my adhd because she also has (an undiagnosed very differant kind of) adhd, and she just invalidates my feelings and makes me feel like im making it all up.
so yeah, no wonder i dont share stuff about my social life with my parents.
Flip side: from the time we were very small, my parents made it clear that everyone in the family has boundaries, and should expect a right to privacy. That’s right. Privacy was a right in our house, not a privilege.
That extended to and from the kids. We knew what closets and cabinets were off limits. And personal writings in closed books were not to be opened and flipped through, regardless of the writer. Others’ belongings were not to be moved or used without their permission.
To this day, my parents and I are close, and I know I can talk to them about anything I want to, and withhold anything I want to keep private.
So, mom, dad, you’ll never read this. But thanks. You got it right.
This is completely true and, I would add, extends beyond the immediate family. My parents were much like the above person’s: privacy was considered an inherent right in our home, I didn’t go through my parent’s things, and my parents always asked permission and explained their logic if they had concerns (my dad checked my email for viruses a few times when I was younger, etc). Any time I was uncomfortable or felt like they were invading my privacy, they stopped whatever they were doing then and there and we discussed the situation, and, if I still didn’t want them to pry, they didn’t. As a result, my parents probably still know more about my life than anyone else despite the fact that I’m now in college, because I trust that, one, they would never press if I didn’t want them to know something, and, B, they would never share information I told them in confidence with anyone else.
On the other hand, my extended family did not follow this policy. If I used my grandmother’s computer while I was at her house with my cousins, there was always someone physically watching over my shoulder and (more often than not) criticizing whatever I was doing. My cousins and aunt went through my backpack when I went over after school–not for any particular reason, just because it was there and I was too scared to stop them. Anything I wrote down was public property; anything I built (I used to be a building-stuff person) was Not Mine To Keep unless my mother intervened. My possessions were not mine–keeping toys or books for myself was selfish and rude beyond belief. Uh…in case it’s not immediately obvious, to this day I don’t get along with my extended family and I would never ever trust them with private information. I’m still pretty paranoid about my things: someone tried to take my computer away from me while I was writing once and I almost broke their wrist because I panicked so hard. I genuinely shudder to think of this sort of technology having been available to them when I lived near them and saw them frequently. Nothing will burn a bridge faster than taking away someone’s right to have their own things and their own thoughts.
For those of you with my in the new year, may the best of last year be the the worst of this one.
For those of you in a later time zone, I feel duty-bound to inform you that 2016 has robotic servants, the creation of winged human beings, and a park full of genetically engineered dinosaurs. Good luck…
Apparently my director went to see a production of West Side Story a few years ago, and the guy playing Chino forgot his gun before coming out for his final scene. Once it got to the big scene where he is supposed to shoot Tony, he screeched “Poison Boots” and kicked the actor playing Tony until he went down. The girl playing Maria then had to jerk the shoe off of Chino’s foot, and had to do the gunshot scene asking “How many kicks Chino? How many kicks, and one kick left for me”.
There should be a blog dedicated to theatrical urban legends. Like that opening weekend of Dracula where Dracula (still hungover) vomited all over the audience during the first stage direction that everyone has a friend of a friend that worked on the show and was there.
or the one where the bridge never came out for Javert’s suicide and so he just pretended to stab himself and then lay there until the lights went out
best story i heard was when a friend of mine saw a show where juliet forgot to bring the dagger out on stage so she just ripped the squib out of her chest and blood squirted everywhere
During a passion play a friend of my brother was supposedly in, one of the roman soldiers who was supposed to stab jesus on the cross and accidentally grabbed the wrong spear- he was supposed to grab one with a fake tip, but instead he grabbed one with an actual metal tip and, well
Jesus screamed “JESUS CHRIST YOU STABBED ME”.
Since that Jesus had to be taken down due to a bad case of stab-itis, the backup Jesus came in, but he weighed significantly less than the original Jesus- which would have been fine, except that at the end the cross was supposed to ascend upwards with Jesus on it, and the weights hadn’t been adjusted.
So Jesus, instead, ROCKETED UP into heaven (or, just, above the stage).
This is wild from start to finish
I was in Peter Pan once and one night at a performance, the adhesive holding our Hook’s mustache on was wearing off. It was near the end with a big fight scene and when he got attacked, he let his mustache fall and went “YOU RIPPED MY MUSTACHE OFF!” in a scandalized tone and it added a new note of hilarity to the whole scene (which was supposed to be funny anyway)
In my seventh grade play, which was a midsummer night’s dream, Thisbe didn’t have a sword so she stabbed herself with a coathanger
My junior year we were doing Romeo and Juliet and after Juliet poisons herself it was supposed to go dark and she’d get off the stage. well the light crew accidentally turned them back on and Juliet who was sitting up slammed back down on the wooden bed with a loud bang. To which my theater teacher says into the com “zombie Juliet” and everyone who heard that had to keep as quiet as possible while our eyes were filling with tears.
i attended my county’s performing arts high school majoring in vocal studies, (mostly geared towards musical theater and opera styles) and once a year we got a field trip to new york (we were in jersey, so it’s not exactly far). we would do one touristy thing, an actor’s workshop with friends of our teachers working in various performing industries in nyc, and then see a show.
my first year doing this, our industry contacts were 1 actor, 1 casting director, and 1 producer to get different aspects of the business, and they all gave us amazing advice and told fantastic stories. the actor in question was Zazu on Broadway’s The Lion King for several years, and told the best story by far.
in The Lion King, there are only two pieces of pre-recorded noise in the whole show. one, when Pumbaa does a MASSIVE fart while fighting the hyenas, and the other being Mufasa saying REMEMBERRRRRR as Simba climbs Pride Rock. the actor told us while struggling not to laugh that, during one night’s performance, someone forgot to flip the tape of these pre-recorded noises.
so, at the end of the show, the great climax where Simba finally accepts his place in the Circle of Life, the heavens parted and-
everyone froze. and then all ran off stage positively HOWLING with laughter.
the lesson: sometimes there are fuck ups you just can’t recover from.
During a high school production of Beauty and the Beast, where I was assistant costumer and assistant prop master, our director decided that we needed to spice up Gaston’s introduction. You know: in the movie, when Lefou runs in trying to catch the duck/goose that Gaston has just shot out of the sky?
Originally, the actors were going to stroll on stage with our Lefou hauling in the really neat (and real!) taxidermied deer head that we had found in a local thrift store. Now, two days before opening night, our director wants Lefou to run in from off stage and catch a stuffed duck that Gaston has just shot. This, of course, requires two things to work properly as a scene: a gunshot noise, and a stuffed duck.
The gunshot noise, we had covered. Blue-collar, redneck school? Guns a plenty to record. The stuffed duck? Harder than you might have thought to obtain.
Three hunting stores, two taxidermists, and one Pet Supply Store ™, I’d finally found a semi-realistic pheasant squeaky toy. What follows is an account of the ways this dog toy managed to be the nightmare prop of the six show run.
Opening Night: The stagehand, who was supposed to drop the bird from the ceiling catwalk, missed his cue and didn’t drop the it. Lefou’s actor rolls with it and does an excellent job of looking around foolishly before getting cuffed upside the head by Gaston. The stagehand then drops the bird squarely on Gaston’s head. Cue laughter.
Saturday Matinee: Different stagehand throws the bird instead of dropping it and beans Lefou directly in the face with the prop. Lefou falls over. Cue laughter.
Saturday Night: Bird is missing during curtain call. Director hauls the deer head down from it’s place on the tavern wall and tells Gaston and Lefou to revert to the old blocking i.e. no gunshot, no bird, just walk in with trophy. During Gaston and Lefou’s conversation, gun shot sound goes off and a stagehand throws the bird onto the stage…from the wrong side of the stage. Lefou and Gaston stare at it in awkward silence for a solid thirty seconds before Lefou makes off-script, subtle joke about Gaston’s gun going off late instead of early. Cue adults in the audience laughing.
Sunday Matinee: Director begs the stagehands to get the cue right at least once. Gunshot and bird prop go off without a hitch. Lefou accidentally catches the prop when it falls from the catwalk. He’s so startled that he caught it that Gaston runs right in to him. They drop both the gun and the bird props, and grab the wrong prop in their scramble. Gaston spends the rest of the scene gesturing dramatically with a stuffed pheasant, instead of a gun.
Sunday Night:
Director is fed up with bird prop, decides that Lefou should just carry bird prop in after gunshot happens off stage. Lefou accidentally squeezes the prop during the intro conversation, startling both actors into silence with the squeaky toy noise - apparently, neither of them realized it was a dog toy.
Monday Elementary School Show: Lefou walks on stage with the bird. Accidentally drops the prop during conversation with Gaston. Gaston doesn’t notice the dropped prop and steps on it. Cue depressingly sad squeaky toy noise. Cue ten years olds laughing.
In a dress rehearsal for Peter Pan, Wendy forgot one of her lines and started singing the star spangled banner and the audience was singing along and people got emotional
Once during the closing night of our high school production of south pacific, we were havin our pre-show pep talk, and our director reminded everyone (mostly seniors) not to go off script to try to be funny. Of course we had one lead who decided to ignore this advice. So during one scene where the sailors were “fishing” at the edge of the stage, he decides to pull up his rubber fish, make a comment about how it wasn’t big enough, and throw it back into the “ocean”, which of course, was the audience.
Now, this probably wouldn’t have been too much of a problem if he had gently tossed it, since it would have landed right behind the pit. But naturalt, he decided that this fish had to break free in the most dramatic way possible, so he winds up and chucks this fucking foot-long rubber fish with all of his strength.
So now imagine the stage crew, all of us huddled together, silently screaming as this limp fish goes sailing over the heads of the audience in what looks like a low-budget reenactment of free willy, only to slap some poor parent across the face.
I swear, you could almost hear the chorus of “mmmm whatcha saaayyy” rising from all those backstage.
From that moment on, all rubber fish were ferociously guarded by yours truly, under the direction of our stage manager.
This post gets better every time it shows up on my dash
My Junior year of high school our drama club put on Peter Pan,which involved the construction of a small boat fashioned out of scrap wood,plaster and an old wagon. A few of the actors who were cast as pirates had to ride the boat-wagon down the aisle to the front of the theatre,which had a concrete floor that sloped. About halfway down the brake they were using to control their speed gave out,and they crashed into the front of the stage at high speed.The entire boat imploded. The actors just sat there in silence for at least a full 10 seconds in the midst of the wreckage before my friend Adena screamed “ABANDON SHIP” and they all jumped out and took off running.
My school once did a parody of Cinderella and I was Cinderellas dog. At one point Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, and the dog had to flea the ball. I thought going down the stage steps wasn’t dramatic enough for “fleeing” so I launched myself off the stage and landed painfully in the center isle about three rows in accompanied with a very, very loud thump of face on concrete where I laid there like a dead fish for a while. At this point Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother got to me, not knowing what to do they stepped over me and continued running. But Cinderella had forgotten to loose her shoe so half way out of the room she chucked it back where it hit me in the head. I bolted upright and ran shrieking hysterically out of the room. A moment later the Prince came down to where the shoe was picked it up, looked dramatically at where I had exited and said “I hope that dog’s okay.” completely forgetting his line.
This may be my all time favorite post.
I was once in a production of “Hello Dolly!” and the two leads were complete jokers and would prank each other during rehearsals all the time. The rest of the cast never thought they would do that during a show, but they told the chorus (separately) that they each were planning to add some tongue into the final kiss between Dolly and Horace. Of course, we told neither of them about the other’s plan, so during the very last show, we were all waiting in the wings to see what would happen. What happened was we ended the show with the two leads violently frenching each other on stage as the curtain dropped. They started dating two weeks later.
Last year we did “Once Upon a Mattress” and the jester was supposed to do a somersault off of a stack of like 3 mattresses and then the minstrel and Lady Larken would be covered up with a blanket, but during one show the jester knocked down one of the mattresses and we had no time to fix it so we had to throw the mattress on top of them
So I went into TFA with no expectations, no real idea about the cast except the old-timers, and no strong feelings one way or the other. I really liked the original episodes, watched them a lot growing up, and hadn’t watched the prequels because everyone said they sucked. (I will be rectifying this over the long weekend, no worries.)
And the movie was so, so good.
But the moment that got me was Kylo Ren taking off his mask for Rey. Not in a shipper sense, not romantically, but just that moment. I had no idea who was cast as Ren, and the first time I saw his face felt like hearing that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. I knew what DV looked like under his mask, and I knew what villains were supposed to look like.
And he doesn’t look like a villain.
He has a soft face, a full mouth. He looks young, feminine. Villains are sharp boned and thin lipped (lookin’ at you, Loki) and Ren did not look like a villain.
He was beautiful. And I’m not saying this in a “Adam Driver is so hot” kind of way. I’m saying that he was beautiful, and that made everything worse.
Darth Vader wore his mask because of his injuries. Ren wears his mask because he doesn’t look like a villain without it.
He looks young. He looks soft. He looks *good.* He doesn’t look like the Dark Side.
And he knows it. He knows he has his father’s Aquiline nose and his mother’s eyes. He’s tall like Anakin, but not sharp and angular. He chews that full bottom lip that Han so graciously cursed him with. He knows he doesn’t look the part.
So why did he take off the mask for her? Why, when he wants something from her? Why show her his greatest flaw:
It really, REALLY bothers me when I hear people frame climate change and other environmental crises as something that everyday, average-ass people are responsible for, and not corporations and entire governments.
Like literally, how can a regular-ass person ~opt out~ of all damaging behaviors while still being able to function in society?
You literally can’t.
The future of our planet is not down to whether or not someone recycles their water bottle.
It’s down to whether or not governments and corporations decide to quit sucking up all our resources and poisoning the earth with reckless abandon.
I mean obviously people should still live as cleanly and as sustainably as they can manage where they are and with what they have, but like. THAT isn’t the major issue.
govts and corporations have deliberately put the onus on yr individual choices so the system can continue being as destructive/profitable
God bless this post this pisses me off so much
Also this hyper-individualist shift of responsibility is largely an American thing and consumerism is framed as a solution- e.g., buy more shit that’s sustainable! That’ll fix the problem (buy a new, green water bottle! buy a new, green car! buy a new, green whatever-the-fuck that’ll just ultimately produce more waste)!
I took a course in sustainable engineering.
The professor mentioned that even if every private individual in the world were to conserve resources and the environment the ol’ Jimmy Carter way- by turning down the thermostat, recycling your glass and plastics and metals, cut down on luxuries, take shorter showers, etc., it would only get us 10% of the way to where we need to be in order to avoid global catastrophic climate change.
this is like entirely irrelevant to art but i’ve seen a lot of people give this advice without a proper explanation and it’s really easy to dismiss anything without one so like?? an explanation on the Eat Something If You’re Feeling Especially Depressed thing also featuring Why Is Mental Illness So Fucking Exhausting
k so i know it really doesn’t feel like it especially when these moods hit you but your brain does a Lot to keep a lot of shitty things at bay, especially if you’re mentally ill. (this stuff applies to people who aren’t as well obviously, it’s just more of an issue if you are.)
it’s working at keeping stuff away p much constantly, and that’s on top of everything else brains do daily (which is a metric fuckton, our brains control absolutely everything that happens with our bodies and the cognitive processes even in something as simple as perception are absolutely batshit)
and it takes a lot of energy that neurotypical people would have spare for other stuff, so you’re obviously going to get tired faster with all that going on all day, right?
your brain getting run down trying to keep the bad shit at bay means it exhausts itself and isn’t able to keep the bad shit at bay, which is why when you’re hungry it can literally feel like the world is ending and why all the little things that didnt bother you that much just nyoom the fuck up and suckerpunch you in the throat out of nowhere
you don’t feel that bad just because you’re hungry (in case you needed to hear that bc know i end up feeling like a melodramatic little bitch) it’s because your brain doesn’t have the energy to fight back against stuff anymore, and that’s why it’s important to eat when things feel especially bad
*seconds this earnestly*
If eating seems really hard, literally eat anything that might appeal past the depression funk. Eat a candy bar. Eat poptarts. Eat a popsicle. Drink a glass of juice. Like, in those moments, don’t make “healthy” or dieting a focus, you’re getting emergency fuel to your brain so you can eat something else in a couple minutes. I have poptarts and little candy bars in my room for exactly this reason. Sometimes that little bite sized butterfinger is enough to motivate me to eat, and then whoops, wow, food sounds awesome now.
I hope I never get tired of the night sky, of thunderstorms, of watching cream make galaxies in my coffee. This world is ugly. I hope I never grow to be someone who can no longer see the small beautiful things.
Stravinsky’s rite of spring is about a girl who dances herself to death to appease the Russian god of spring.
When it premiered the crowd got so amped up they opened up a mosh pit in the theater and the night would be forever known as the “riot of spring”
There’s a piece in the bassoon repertoire called “Dead Elvis” and when you buy the music you have to contractually agree to only perform the piece in a full Elvis costume.
if you’re american and coming to australia, I’m gonna go ahead and say that you should be 100 percent way more worried about being king hit by a dude named “dane” in a bintang singlet than any fucking spiders that exist here
what does this say in english
“Good sir, if you are a resident of the United States of America and coming to visit the sunny land of Australia, allow me to inform you that you should be rather more concerned about being sucker punched by a gentleman named ‘Dane’ who is likely to be seen wearing a wifebeater with a beer company logo on it than by any of the dangerous spiders that exist on this lovely continent”.
ok so what does it say in american
“You’re more likely to get sucker punched/cold-cocked by an asshole than you are to be bitten by a spider”.
And translated back into Bogan Australian: ‘Oi mate if you’re comin’ to Straya I reckon you’re better off watchin’ out for that cunt Dane in the Bintang singlet ‘cause he’ll king hit ya sooner than a fuckin’ red back bites ya in the ass.’
I’m all for makeup and people doing makeup however they choose and makeup as an art form, but i’m also really concerned for the young girls in middle school and stuff with the new found pressure of makeup culture that wasn’t there five years ago. If you’re 12 or 13 and you’re reading this please please know you don’t have to contour to be beautiful, you don’t have to have amazing gradient eyebrows to be beautiful, you don’t have to be an Instagram model to be beautiful.
Makeup can be fun but you don’t have to look like all the rich girls on instagram with tons of money for mac and urban decay to be pretty or feel good about yourself. Just being you, and exploring your interests and learning new things as a young person is what makes you beautiful!! Never forget it!
