Writing this on my 29th birthday, September 25 - though I'll be publishing it a little later, waiting until an official announcement comes out of the theatre, 'cause I'm back in that old game. And under a little mini-NDA for like a week until they announce it properly.
So, let's see, how am I doing? Well, pretty good. My antidepressants are kicking in nicely, been feeling good and motivated. So, sticking with those. The anxiety pills just put me right to sleep, no good at all. Not even as a sleeping pill. I sleep fine, I don't want to sleep heavier. I might be okay, anxiety-wise; under the antidepressant I'm not as afraid of things, and as I may have said, I don't have much in the way of survival instincts or social perceptions when my anxiety clears up. So maybe I don't need an anxiety pill. Might be heading back to the doctor in a couple of weeks to ask about something for ADHD instead; I'm motivated and feeling good but I still can't concentrate, so that'd be the thing to look at.
Getting better at meditating and other things I've always meant to be daily routine; not quite on them daily, but I'm doing okay. Last time I took something for ADHD, er, I played Bloons Tower Defense for 24 hours straight and then went to work a 10-hour shift without being the slightest bit tired... not what I hoped for. Unnerving enough that I didn't take that pill a second time. Testing out some new medications during a rehearsal process sounds like a nice balance between trying them while they might interfere with a job, and trying them while I've got nothing going on and it's thus too hard to tell how they alter my life. Considering reopening my file at the employment office! To start looking for some work... after the production. We'll see how life is going at that point, y'know?
Also, going in to get my eyes checked soon. Gonna get some contact lenses, wouldn't do at all to be onstage with my big blue plastic-rimmed glasses. I got away with it in She Loves Me, but otherwise I try to be glasses-off in public performance. Actually, that's why I've worn such big and obvious glasses for the past few years, to discourage myself from wearing them, but I haven't actually worn contacts in a while, I can't keep them in for an entire work shift, and... beyond work and creative projects, I don't really go anywhere. But I definitely gotta get contacts again for this play!
And then after that? I'm gonna look into getting my wisdom teeth out. Got one out a year or two ago 'cause it had a big giant hole in it, and the other three, eh, they bug me a little, might as well. But yeah, that's another thing I'm waiting to do 'til after the play, I don't think having teeth out during a quick rehearsal process is a good call, hehe.
So... it's autumn! Had to take my AC out of the window 'cause the wind and rain was coming right through it. And then had to put it back in because it's getting hot again this week, but we had a couple of autumny days that I got a kick out of, did some walking all bundled up in my sweater, looking forward to more of that.
I met with Randy Wolfmeyer to talk about designing our still-nameless RPG, of which Keys & Kingdoms will be one campaign setting within. We talked a lot about how the magic system functions; that's really the crux of a lot of things, because the stories we're writing right now take place in the worlds of this RPG, and we want the magic system to be recognizable between the games and the stories. Anything else can come later: fight scenes work differently in a story than they do in a game, and any claim we make about creatures or the world in one, can easily be made true in the other. But the magic system needs a good bit of attention paid to it if a story is ever going to examine it carefully, which they definitely should, if not necessarily in the pilot episodes we're working on right now.
Randy talked a lot about how he wanted the system to involve building creatures and characters up from nothing, component by component... and that the principle of this building system might be the crux of two things I've been wondering about: the main selling point of the game, and its title. I like the concept. That'll take some thinkin'! Randy felt a campaign setting might be the way to sell the system initially, but I dunno, I want to emphasize how the system can work with anything, and present some generic RPG fantasy first, before diving into alternate genres like western, various science fiction, modern settings with or without superheroes... the specific fairy tale world of Keys & Kingdoms should definitely be presented early on, but I don't necessarily think it's the right call to open with that... we'll see how it goes! Randy hopes we'll have time to discuss things while we're rehearsing.
birthday collage!
So, yeah, it's my birthday! I'm 29 now. Eh... I was pretty excited about turning 25 because I really thought I'd seize the day that year. But I didn't pull it off. Haven't been enthused about adding another year ever since. But, got a good feeling about what we have going on. Maybe at 30 I'll feel artistically fulfilled. If not, you know, I'll live.
Presented above is a collage of the various pictures that people whipped out on my birthday, most of them from my mom, one from my uncle and another from my dear fiancee. I loved them. They go on the blog for sure, crude little collage of fun memories.
Anyway, let's talk about those rehearsals I've been alluding to - QCT is starting up their production of Beauty and the Beast. Been looking forward to this for over a year! It was announced for the final show of the 2020 season, but the pandemic hit in the midst of the production of Chicago. This year they resumed and completed that production, and are now firing up Beauty and the Beast as their winter show once more! I had hoped to get some TAPAS stuff done between Chicago and Beauty and the Beast so we could be sure everyone was relatively free but, er, didn't.
You know, for the longest time I was pretty alarmed by how the auditions were in mid-September for a production premiering in late November and early December, that seemed like such a short rehearsal process, and after thinking about that for weeks, I realized... I forgot October exists, there's a whole 'nother month in the middle there, that's... that's plenty of time. That explains it.
I'll be playing Monsieur D'Arque, the asylum keeper:
I'm listening...
And presumably, since he doesn't show up until the second act, a lot of costume-changing and background dancing until then.
In the film, D'Arque was played by the late great British actor Tony Jay, who's freaking awesome; he's got this insanely deep voice and just a fabulous villainous aura. The directors of Beauty and the Beast liked his small appearance in the film very very much, and five years later cast him as the main villain, one of Disney's most prominent villains ever, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Apparently, all of his dialogue in Beauty and the Beast was recorded in a single take... DURING HIS AUDITION. That's one of the greatest things I've ever heard.
Why, Tony Jay made an appearance in the first TAPAS project, that being the Icewind Dale playthrough with Irregular Webcomic characters. In Icewind Dale back in 2000, he played the ghost of the barbarian king Kresselack. Regrettably, I lost my gameplay footage of his best scene. Dang it all. Anyway, he was a cool dude. As a lot of people know, I'm pretty into big deep voices (my Johnny Cash impression is the stuff of legend), and I was delighted when they asked me to read a bit of D'Arque during my audition and I did pretty well at getting into that lower register. I'll have to adjust it a bit to carry in a big theatre... very excited!
So, the cast gathers on Tuesday night, and will probably be announced shortly after, and I'll post this blog whenever that happens. Once we have a rehearsal schedule down, well, the recording we'll need to do for the early Irregular Fantasy and Keys & Kingdoms material is fairly minimal, we can probably squeeze in bits and pieces of it during rehearsals for Beauty and the Beast, and have it all recorded by the end. Still got some storyboards and design stuff that's not quite finished yet; as of this writing, five of the eight characters from the previous post have been clothed and equipped, very awesome.
Relatedly, Bobsheaux sent me some vocal samples the other day. He'll be playing King Dworin in Irregular Fantasy, got a real YouTuber as a special guest star for credibility. Well, real-ish. They don't give out bronze play buttons... but if they did, he'd totally have one. They should, you know. Why is the first one you get silver? Ain't fair. (for myself, I'm very near to reaching the first rung of that ladder - so close to 100 subscribers I can taste it! I need to prepare my "Best of Phase One" 100-subscriber special video)
Anyway, he offered up three different options for the character's voice, and I picked one! And I had similar issues as I did when editing the scratch dialogue done for the Keys & Kingdoms pilot episode, and then my sisters' dialogue for the trailers. You know how a lot of people can't stand the sound of their own recorded voice? I've never had that problem, I like my voice. But I think it's by the same basic principle that I get really uneasy listening to recordings of people performing words that I wrote. I stand by the words, and no one's ever done the material badly to date, but listening to other people reading my scripts a real chore to do, and I think it's just a sort of self-consciousness, similar to how I just don't like being noticed in general. But I got through that, and Bobsheaux will get around to recording the dialogue proper, eh, whenever he gets to it! I'm hoping that we get all the dialogue done around October, from all directions.
Hey, a cool thing happened this week - I've been following this webcomic called Grrl Power for a long time, it's an interesting take on a superhero universe, and it's had a running gag from very early on in which the self-duplicating superhero called Harem drinks novelty sodas, and the names of her sodas foreshadow something which then happens immediately: in the first story arc, she's drinking "Spit Take" soda just before doing a spit take, then "Burst" soda which then boils and explodes... and then she's drinking "Supervillain Blitzkrieg" when a bunch of supervillains show up and start a brawl which is the comic's first major story arc.
And here's the thing: I've been reading the comic for years but had no idea this running gag existed, making today's strip nearly incomprehensible to me: Harem is drinking "Attack of the 50-Foot Ex-Boyfriend" soda, and the main character demands what the hell is wrong with her, how she can be so irresponsible. And then a big giant demon shows up and Harem insists it's not her fault. And I'm like... what? I spent like 20 minutes looking at the previous three strips this gag was allegedly calling back to before I finally noticed "Supervillain Blitzkrieg" and thus, knowing what to search for, sought out the other two soda names. Maybe I was aware of the gag at some point; this was its fourth occurrence and the first three were waaaaaay back at the beginning of the story, a lot's happened since then, so I may have simply forgotten.
So I finally got it and I was like... that's the best running gag I've ever heard and it's very possible to miss it completely. I wish I was that clever. I love my stories but I feel like they really don't measure up, like they're nothing truly special.
Mkay, the official cast announcement is taking longer than I thought, should be soon, I think? We're starting our second week of rehearsals. Thus far, we've mostly been learning big group numbers, nearly all of which are straight out of the film. It's been quite wonderful. The music is incredibly complex; I always knew Alan Menken was brilliant, but in working on this show the extent of that is quickly becoming plain. And yet, I've never seen a cast adapt to material so quickly, to seem so ready to perform so soon. This is gonna be a hell of a show. And... they have now made the cast announcement! Okay, time to whip out this blog...
our beautiful cast!
There are times we have to make it perfectly clear that TAPAS is not affiliated with QCT, but all the same, just about everything we do starts there. Why, four of the six cast members of Better Yet? are in this Beauty and the Beast cast, and three others are lined up to be in our next thing... and one other is in the secret TAPAS insiders Facebook group but has not to date been an active member beyond offering bits and pieces of advice now and then.
So, some other news before I get this blog out:
new books!
My birthday gifts to myself! I've been awaiting their release for many months. That their release dates should both happen to fall on my birthday week, well, feels like fate. I'm gonna read 'em! And vlog about it! And hopefully that opens floodgates for all sorts of book-readin' in my future. I used to be a voracious reader, but it's become so damn hard in recent years.
So I'm walking my dog the other day, as I do every mealtime, when a car skids into the auto shop parking lot to block my path - it's Michael D. Perkins, who happened to spot me in just a position he could stop and say hi. An Irregular Fantasy cast member reprising his role as Kyros from the Icewind Dale soundsets, he's been very enthused about the project, as I learned to my considerable shock when seeing him at the first cast meeting. Before having those conversations with cast members on Zoom, I'd been so convinced in my insecure little brain that I was basically strongarming a bunch of people who did not care into participating in my projects... likewise when asking people to watch them.
This blog, any project I put out there, any piece of progress I share with the crew, leaves me tearing my hair out crying to myself "why don't they care?!" And the answer would seem to be, it's a lot easier to spontaneously react with excitement than it is to type something out. Like, they're feeling me but just can't convey it in text. And that's so hard, because I crave their enthusiasm, I need it so badly in order to survive... but for me, it's so much easier to type something than to say it, plus I really don't remember much of what happens if it isn't recorded somewhere, so, I just don't see a lot of that enthusiastic boost I need, and every time I post a new update and see the response being two or three people hitting the like button, I'm right back to thinking "nobody loves me, and I'm in this alone", even as posts about actual events in my life rack up so much loving and thoughtful engagement.
I know it's a problem and I need to get the hell over it. I'm working on it. There's a Twitter thread I've spotted circulating a couple of times recently, about how that feeling of insecurity that people don't actually like you... that's a pretty hurtful thing to do to people, to assume they'd be so cruel. Yeah? You have to have faith in people's care and honesty sometimes.
Just... need a few more of those people who consistently express themselves. I get no engagement to speak of from those 90-odd subscribers, and those three comments on Better Yet that I shared in its first week of release? Still the only comments it has. It's weird. It's weird that my projects somehow have the ability to make everyone around me so much less articulate than I know they truly are, whether they're helping write it or performing it or just seeing it. But so it's always been...
Anyway, my encounter with Michael was well-timed in more ways than just the one, for I was able to inform him I had just gotten back in touch with Isaac David, our studio guy, back from a couple of months on the road, and arranged to meet with him later this week to start scheduling some voice work for those two fantasy projects... I think I already went into detail on that plan earlier in this very post. This is a long one. Thus I'll see all the cast members in the flesh and get to really talk about what we're doing and see the full scope of their enthusiasm! ...And then have to listen to them perform the dialogue I wrote, which as I've just learned is very difficult for me, but hey, it's cool I have that experience now, to know that that's the reaction it brings out, hehe.
I'd like to conclude with a topic near and dear to my heart. Traditionally, dragons are depicted with two arms, two legs, and two wings. Modern filmmakers today often design their dragons with forelimbs like a bat or a pterosaur, a pair of wings which they can also walk on, since in real life vertebrates never have six limbs; they want their dragons to have plausible anatomy. So, for starters, I don't like that, I think dragons have a mystique that precludes them being biologically sensible. Dragons should have six limbs.
That being said, there are a lot of people out there who'll tell you that if a dragon doesn't have arms, it's not a dragon, it's a wyvern. Fuck those people. A stinking wyvern did not conquer Erebor and burn down Laketown. Daenerys Targaryen was not the goddamn mother of wyverns. They're dragons if the story says they're dragons, whether or not I agree with their design scheme. Wyverns are actually cool, mind you, but they're their own thing, they're not just any dragon with no arms, they are a thing lesser than dragons, with their own brand of charm. And dragons, again, they possess that sense of mystique in the title of "dragon" that should not be taken away from them on a stupid technicality. So, in summary, if you're designing a dragon, please give it arms, but if you're looking at a dragon... don't count its damn limbs, just look at it, if it's gargantuan and majestic, and full of flame, and strikes terror into the hearts of puny humans, it's not a wyvern, it's a motherfucking dragon.
