100 subscribers

So, this happened like a month ago! Er, apparently I started writing this post like a month ago and I forgot about it, hehe.

Doesn't quite feel right, I must admit. I have absolutely no idea who any of these 100 subscribers are, because aside from five or six actual members of the TAPAS crew, none of them ever post comments, and only about a quarter of them actually appear on my list of subscribers. Why do I have so many completely anonymous subscribers? It's really unsettling.

Anyway, let's see, just finished the first week of Beauty and the Beast performances. Will have finished the entire run by the time this blog is posted. It was very rewarding... I always get super-depressed after a show is finished. It's over and it was all I had to live for, for a time.

I think I'm gonna be okay this time. As soon as it's over we're having a big meeting, everyone at TAPAS, to discuss getting the teasers done for our fantasy projects! All of it as soon as possible, allowing for a little holiday break.

Let's talk about theatre dreams! I always have a few whenever I'm doing a show. The most common is the one that comes very early in the process, where it's opening night even though we've only just started learning the show. Later, it's often followed by one in which a slight wardrobe issue results in me being sent onstage to perform naked. Ain't that always the way in dreams? Anything happens to the clothes you're wearing, you go about your day naked. You'd think there would be more reasonable solutions. Finally, a strangely specific dream sees me being asked to take over for another actor; it goes well for a time, until at one point I realize that in a few minutes, the character I was playing before is supposed to be onstage at the same time as the one I'm playing now, and that I'm still expected to play both roles even though that's impossible. And the terror starts to creep in, and I wake up the instant before I learn what the solution is.

Now that I think about it, being expected to do something logistically impossible is probably the most recurring theme in my nightmares, actually. I'm legitimately terrified of that. It's why I always try to give detailed explanations for my circumstances - and nothing triggers me more harshly than the accusation that I'm making excuses. Yeesh, just typing the word made the anguish and rage bubble up a little. Hm... I wonder where that comes from. Bits and pieces of it have been around for much of my life. I might have to think about that.

There's a thing been going around Twitter where you share four fictional characters who mean the world to you! I took some time to sleep on it, and thought what I wrote about them was neat enough to maybe take it beyond Twitter into a more readable location such as this~

Let's talk about these dudes! Much elaboration on top of what I said in the original Twitter thread:

Goliath: The lead character of Gargoyles... just a great hero, who, like the show itself, wasn't afraid to be melodramatic, dark and brooding and gothic in the old-school sense, on the Disney Channel in the 90s of all places. I have fallen very, very far behind on releasing videos, I recorded a whole series of Gargoyles videos nearly two years ago now, which I still haven't gotten around to releasing. Anyway, I do so love Gargoyles and its universe, a world where the fair folk are quick to point out that "all things are true" - while Disney in general inspired the Keys & Kingdoms universe, quite a bit of its atmosphere and concepts come directly from Gargoyles, and what Gargoyles could have been. Maybe it still could be; its creator, Greg Weisman, is enjoying some success currently running a revived Young Justice, but he's always hoping to revive Gargoyles... no sign of Disney giving him a shot at it, even though it's one of the greatest properties they're sitting on. Damn shame. A tweet in that thread where I complimented Weisman on the show and actor Keith David on his performance as Goliath was immediately spotted and retweeted by a Gargoyles fan account within five minutes, despite the fact that I did not tag Weisman or David in it nor use any Gargoyles-related hashtags, and subsequently blew up into what's probably safe to say is my biggest tweet ever. Not a big tweet, mind, we're talking four retweets and fourteen likes, but... that's big attention for me!

Discord: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic debuted in 2010, developed by well-regarded cartoon creator Lauren Faust, who sought to turn the brand away from the frilly, conflict-free slice-of-life it had been for a couple of decades, back toward the fantasy adventures she created in her childhood. She saw only middling success in that goal, and the Season 2 premiere was the last episode of the show she personally worked on before sensing she was losing creative control and deciding to quit while she was ahead; and what a premiere it was. She sought to introduce Discord, an imprisoned chaos spirit who can command reality itself, defeatable only because he often chooses to toy with the heroes instead of break their minds immediately. When she explained to the producers that the character's concept and dark-comedy style was inspired by Q from Star Trek, they were amused enough at the notion to actually hire John de Lancie to voice the character, in a show with an otherwise low-budget Vancouver-based cast. Cut to me, the following year, having heard that the new My Little Pony series was known for its wit and depth and was attracting an audience well outside the target demographic. Intrigued, I tuned in, on what was by shocking coincidence the day the Season 2 premiere first aired, thus hammering me instantly over the head with the realization that yes, this show had more meat and potatoes than you'd ever expect from the My Little Pony name. And so I rode that brony train! Er, not all the way, I fell behind after a while and never did get around to watching the ninth and final season of the show. Still, look at that: Faust's creation lasted nine years even if she only stuck around for the first one. It was quite a phenomenon.

Incidentally, my first time checking out Star Trek: The Next Generation was pretty surreal; I chose an episode I knew prominently featured Q, and it was weird to listen to a bunch of Gargoyles supporting characters being antagonized by Discord. Though I guess it's supposed to be surreal, just in the opposite direction, you're supposed to recognize those voices from TNG...

Drizzt Do'Urden: A Dungeons & Dragons character originating in the various novel series of R.A. Salvatore. Added to Salvatore's first novel at the last second when the D&D executives asked for the barbarian hero Wulfgar to have a sidekick, Drizzt thoroughly stole Wulfgar's spotlight and the novel series, over 30 years and well over 40 books in, now bears the title The Legend of Drizzt. Drizzt was a dark elf ranger, and when he debuted in the late 80s that was an inherent contradiction, as rangers were always good and dark elves were always evil - Drizzt's race prevented him from being respected in his chosen profession. Inadvertently, Salvatore had drawn attention to the odd politics behind fantasy "races", and as the years go by, D&D and its fellow fantasy worlds start to get better and better at a fair depiction of all sorts of different sapient beings living together and discovering their individuality. It's good stuff! Drizzt's story has had its ups and downs, but Salvatore doesn't regret a bit of it, he just seeks to take the parts he did badly and do them better next time, which is a stance I wholeheartedly agree with, much better than erasing the past. And how influential is Drizzt to me? Well, I start dual-wielding like a ranger every time I find myself with an oblong object in each hand; Salvatore is quite the choreographer and chose the coolest possible style for his hero. And... I initially intended to launch TAPAS with a Legend of Drizzt musical. I still hope to finish and produce it someday.

Minsc: Another D&D character hailing from the same universe as Drizzt, the Forgotten Realms. Minsc debuted in the Baldur's Gate video games which were made from 1998 to 2001. The Baldur's Gate "trilogy" (technically only two games, with the story concluded by a very lengthy expansion pack to the second; last year's Baldur's Gate III is no relation to the originals story-wise) is the standard by which all computer RPGs are measured. They're brilliantly written and balanced, and Minsc is their most famous attribute! He is an insane and violent barbarian warrior... and simultaneously one of the noblest heroes in the world. He unleashes that berserker rage on those who harm the innocent - "butt-kicking for goodness", as he calls it. To put it another way: sure, he thinks that the hamster he carries around with him is from outer space and talks to him, but he's also clearly very good at keeping a hamster healthy on his travels. It's also worth mentioning that he was voiced by Jim Cummings; being some of the earliest video games to feature a substantial amount of voice acting, the divide between cartoon voice actors and video game voice actors wasn't quite there yet. The realization that all of the actors in Baldur's Gate were also a constant presence in the Toon Disney, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network reruns I watched every day fascinated me, and my obsession with voice actors is, well, the other half of my life, the first half being D&D-style high fantasy, and I owe both to Baldur's Gate. D&D recently released a Forgotten Realms supplement meant to continue the story of the original Baldur's Gate games, presented as being derived from Minsc's own journals as he explored the Realms, and I absolutely adore it, it's great to see where some of my favorite characters ended up 100 years in the future, and when the book ended with a dedication in Minsc's own hand to the memory of Khalid and Dynaheir, I started crying. A wonderful tribute to my entire childhood and who I became because of it.

In conclusion... well, Beauty and the Beast indeed ended its run yesterday. It's bittersweet, but I'm very much prepared for what's next. Which is... a big TAPAS meeting to decide what's next. "At dawn... we plan." Lots of ideas to gather, including perhaps the creation of a "Best of Phase One" video to celebrate those 100 subscribers. Woo-hoo.