(no subject)

"But why did you post your last Deep Space Nine entry TWO EPISODES before we ended Season Two?" said Debi.

"I don't know!" I said. "I've been doing eight episodes per! I'm a creature of habit! I'M AWARE IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE."

But I'm still doing eight episodes per, because that's about the amount of time I can go before I forget all my thoughts on the first episodes in the batch. So it goes.

( The last two episodes of Season Two )

( And the first six episodes of Season Three )

(no subject)

lacewood asked me about my favorite musicals for the 21st!

. . . it is now I realize how distressingly frequently I have already talked about musicals for this meme. There go any of my pretentions to ever having taste! "Except all the musicals I love are great," I might say, but one of the ones that would go on this list is Frank Wildhorn's Scarlet Pimpernel, so that's not even true.

I also already dumped a ton of my feelings about Into the Woods when I talked about the upcoming movie, and I think in another post where I also talked about how I LOVE INTO THE WOODS SO MUCH, IT IS A CORNERSTONE OF MY IDENTITY. Which it is.

Then there are the ones I did not talk about for this meme specifically but have also gushed about extensively in the past nonetheless. Here is my post about Notre-Dame de Paris, my favorite over-the-top French musical, which is half the reason why I still understand any French. And here is my post about Pippin, which I would not have classified as a favorite until I saw it recently, but which I'm SUPER INTO right now.

. . . I'm not even going to talk about Les Mis. YOU ALL KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT LES MIS. Let's not even pretend.

So, hmm, let's see. What else falls into the 'favorite' category that I haven't talked about before here? Newsies in my heart I still think of first as a movie rather than a musical. Phantom of the Opera, in all its terrible glory, is less 'favorite' and more 'oh, my adolescence, there you are . . .'

OH. CABARET! How great is Cabaret? How much does Alan Cummings singing "I Don't Care Much" on my version of the soundtrack make me shiver every time? Why is it apparently required to have a musical about Nazis on my list of favorites? I DON'T KNOW, I'M SORRY, but I really do love it enormously; I love the glitter and the insouciance of it, and the desperate gaiety and all of its awful gutpunches. I've always been a sucker for the old Masque of the Red Death trope, the plugging your ears and dancing while the world falls apart.

I also love Aida, yes, Disney's Broadway Aida, DON'T JUDGE ME, I know it has problems but I still think it's really charming. Well, charming in the way where everyone ends up dead. But it was also deeply satisfying to Young Becca to watch a musical in which the heroine chooses her family and responsibilities over True Love and the hero ends up dumping his career (...as a despotic Pharaoh...) to follow her, rather than the other way around. Also the song where the evil vizier is followed around by a backup chorus of earnest architects singing "BUILD IT! BUILD IT! ANOTHER PYRAMID!" cracks me up every time.

One more? One more. 1776! Ah, awfully idealized American mythology. But how can I not love a musical in which all the founding fathers sing lustily about each other's sex life? "BUT I BURN, MR. A!" "SO DO I, MR. J!" Immortal dialogue I will quote at every opportunity. I will also never stop longing for the Sleepy Hollow/1776 crossover fic in which George Washington writes irritably to Congress to explain that he needs more funding because of the impending all-consuming apocalypse, and Adams and Franklin and the rest are just like "ugh, what a Gloomy Gus, does he think we're made of money? Anyway I bet he's exaggerating about the witch problem. WHATEVER, GEORGE."