Cross-post from a lands_of_magic challenge. This is the first time I have done something like this since like 2010 and I feel youthful if not for all the random twinges of pain and exhaustion.

Preview:

• Doctor Who (13)
  
  • Text (2) - one text only; one with TARDIS
    
  • Martha Jones (2)
    
  • Martha Jones & Jack Harkness (1)
    
  • Clara Oswald (2)
    
  • Twelfth Doctor & Clara Oswald (1)
    
  • Rose Tyler (2)
    
  • Tenth Doctor & Rose Tyler (1)
    
  • Tenth Doctor (1)
    
  • Amy Pond & Rory Williams (1)
  
  
• Good Omens (3)
  
  • Aziraphale (1)
    
  • Aziraphale & Crowley (1)
    
  • Text (1)
  
  
• Hamilton Text (1)
  
• Narnia-inspired - Georgie Henley/Lucy Pevensie (1)
  
• Star Wars - Rey & Ben | Kylo Ren (1)
  
• General Text (1)
  

( Mauve Alert (there's a lot of mauve, I feel like) )

I'm feeling just a little bit better from yesterday. I spent a lot of the night watching episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend which has been my not-quite-fandom show lately. However, I found out that they recast Greg when bringing him back for the final season, and now I am weirdly bummed about that even though I don't think I quite shipped it. In any case, it is just one of those sort of relatably funny shows and it has a lot of really good points about social relationships and mental health that are filtered through comedy. Laughter is medicine, sometimes, and I find it nice to just let myself laugh freely to help myself through miserable days.

I still didn't get a lot done today, but I guess in a sort of test of my theory mentioned in yesterday's post, it has seemed that just having a narrative sort of story running in the background has helped me a lot to not feel so just... flat. I developed a habit of relying on YouTube and podcasts a lot for company, and while it serves much the same purpose, the lack of really... narrative-driven stuff is something that I miss in my life when I don't have it.

Like I have a couple of fic ideas - one for Good Omens and one for Doctor Who - that I would like to do serious work on, but they're plot-fic that would require multiple chapters, and no matter what I do I can't feel prepared enough to get started. Especially with Doctor Who, I kind of need to re-immerse myself more than I have so far. I would really like to start watching it with the tenacity that I have watched Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but it is just a more emotionally drawing experience for me than that even though it isn't always that serious a show.

I mentioned in a previous post, I think, about how I had a really weird relationship with music for a while. I think I still do, but weirdly it is less prominent when I skip doses of my antidepressant from time to time. Like I had all but stopped ever deliberately listening to music for a while, always favoring narrative (true crime usually) podcasts for some reason. It was like sensory overload and/or a sensory disconnect where I sort of got viscerally overwhelmed or irritated even by music I like. And I know of a couple of people, my best friend included, who say that they "didn't like music" when they were younger. And even though I am not really a music... understander as such, I think that the impulse to enjoy music is pretty much a baseline human compulsion. But I find that the same feeling applies to me binge-watching stuff that I find fandom-feeling-evoking.

It's like I'm avoiding emotionally evocative stuff because it doesn't... mesh itself with how I think I should be feeling? Or I don't know how to process the emotion anymore. I am working on it, and maybe it's one of those things where if I would just start peddling without the training wheels, I would be okay, but it's the WEIRDEST feeling.

Now on to a different topic, tangentially related.

On - I think - Thursday of last week I saw a tweet by a Reuters reporter with a picture of the room in which they held the televised impeachment hearings before everyone was settled. She just captioned it "the room where it happens," and so of course, since it wasn't a day when I felt entirely unable to listen to music, I wanted to listen to the song (from Hamilton in case you aren't aware). And so I started listening to Hamilton again, which feels like an emotional step forward.

Incidentally it is what gave me the Doctor Who fic idea. This way lies madness.

Anyway, I just wanted to talk about one particular sequence in Hamilton and how I think the span of the three songs is SUCH a powerful... like... span of emotions. It makes two very opposing viewpoints between Hamiltion himself and Eliza both sympathetic and understandable, while in the middle The Reynolds Pamphlet uses the bass keys (??? I know nothing about technical music) on a piano to create this just very kind of pleasing-but-ugly sound that's almost like dubstep using traditional instruments. It gives that same kind of drop-in-the-stomach feeling, I think.

Unmarked spoilers for Hamilton below because I assume it's a) based on history and b) everyone who wanted to avoid spoilers has heard it before.



I love so many things about "Hurricane." In the context of the show, this is when Hamilton is considering what to do after he has learned that his political opponents have procured his financial records and are going to try to make accusations of improper speculation. However, the lump payments he was making to the Reynolds guy in question were hush-money that had been extorted out of him to keep his affair with his wife quiet. (I don't know about the actual history of it, but in the play it almost seems like a honeypot scam to me? I don't know if that's true AT ALL, though. But then he was stuck paying the hush money so just... continued the affair for a while because he was already "paying for it"?) It is a really gross situation in terms of the morality and respect toward his wife and family.

However, you also feel for him because of the corner he is being backed into because of unscrupulous actions on the part of is opponents as well. And, like, let's be real. Real life Hamilton may have had a story that was interesting enough for Lin-Manuel Miranda to make this narrative out of it, but even with my fairly cursory knowledge of the true history involved, it's not like he wasn't a snob who sort of disdained the poor he'd "overcome." So again, I'm concerned with the fictional visage of this person. Historical RPF, I guess, but it's too long ago to be that weird to me.

Compulsively addressing a criticism I have seen: I did see a tumblr post once about how if somebody in three hundred years made a musical about the 2016 election and people were calling a musical version of Trump their problematic fave that they would rise from the grave to haunt them. And, like, I get that criticism but I also am not really sure what to do with it. After a certain point, history is just a story. There is no one who remembers anything but the story. To quote Doctor Who "we're all stories in the end." So, like, criticism aside, personally I think it is amazing that Lin-Manuel has created such a charged piece of art that influential people - political reporters with a following, Barrack Obama, the cast of The West Wing, and so on, will just reference and expect that everyone who has a stake in their conversation will understand the reference. Someone on a PBS show I watched about Hamilton's production said that it was not faint praise on his part that he felt like what Miranda had done was the nearest thing we have seen to Shakespeare in centuries in terms of how it touched on so many cultural nerves at once in a way that was relatable to anyone who heard it. And I am just really weirdly vicariously proud of him, ngl.

But back to "Hurricane," the part of me that is still a theater nerd LOVES how the chorus is used as, like, an actual Greek chorus. The "history has its eyes on you" refrain just sounds like a natural feature of music, though it is recalling to mind the audience's experience of previous parts of the play. But then when they are doing the refrain of "wait for it" and stop on this very desperate "wait--" you really feel like they are doing the Greek chorus role of both reflecting and informing the audience's feelings on it. Like "Wait, you idiot, don't DO THAT it is A TERRIBLE DECISION." And yet throughout the thing, Hamilton articulates his argument really well. You feel this war between his fear, self-righteousness, arrogance, and what is still... you know, like, a sympathetic character?

Also I have just loved the line "write my way out" since I heard it. Honestly it feels like a silly affectation with how little I get done in terms of writing these days, but it just evokes feelings in me.

"When my prayers to God were met with indifference, I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance," is such a good line in terms of philosophical curiosity. On the one hand it seems arrogant. Another take is "that is HOW you were heard," given that he talks about how he starts to pray later in the play. And yet it is also inspirational in a way, even to my "excuse you" sort of sensibility.

Also this is a great example of how good thinking can lead to a terrible conclusion.

But yeah, then I love how it transitions into this song which is just so... aggressive noise but also so pleasing:



Other than remarks about the way these seem to be traditional instruments that evoke a much more recent kind of music vibe, I just gotta say it's hilarious that THIS took Hamilton out of the running to ever become president despite his influence and supposed likability to those who were a lot of the voting society back then. Now we can just... have... WHATEVER as a president I guess. Cheated on his wife? Raped people? Is a violent racist? And on and on.

But then there is that subtle fade to "Burn":



There is such a feminine, soft power with Eliza throughout the play, but I just can't get over how powerful the concept of her erasing herself from the narrative as a way of taking power back over her own life and as a means of a sort of revenge is. Especially when it seems like letters were such a powerful force that they wanted to get married after a week of letter-writing. Different time, but just. Damn.

Anyway that was a weird tangent but at least it was something other than a babble about my mental health and mundane, repetitive experiences.