Day 2: Party ⚔️🪄📖

So has anyone considered a Hadestown AU with Steph as Orpheus and Pete as Euridyce

Solomon Lauter is so underrated. I know we all hate him because he’s horrible to Steph, and he does suck for that, but he’s also such a compelling character, especially for the limited screentime he’s had. I want to know more about his backstory, I want to know the specifics of his deal with the Lords in Black, I want to know WHY he’s so desperate to keep his position as mayor because it seems like it goes deeper than just wanting to stay in power and he doesn’t seem to have any aspirations beyond it—at least so far, he hasn’t expressed interest in, say, running for governor or the senate, which I feel like he would if it was just about power and ambition. I think he needs to keep watch over Hatchetfield specifically (stand sentinel at the gates of hell, as he phrases it in NPMD) and he can’t ever leave his post. Something is keeping him tied there.

The way he immediately, blatantly directs everyone to start pointing fingers at each other in Hatchet Town and it works. The way he doesn’t seem to care about individual people very much, but is still invested in saving the world from Max, to the point where he’s willing to dig up the black book and trust Stephanie with it. The way he’s still unwilling to touch the book himself. The way he KNOWS Max cannot be reasoned with, but is still desperate enough in his final moments that he tries to plead with him and offers to buy him beer of all things. And the way Corey delivers his monologue right after he makes Pete Steph and Grace dig up the book?? The way the Nightmare Time leitmotif comes in on “to survive this night, you’ll have to strike a bargain with the Lords in Black”?? Fucking immaculate. So good, so chilling, I think it might be one of my favorite serious/non-comedic moments in the entire Hatchetfield trilogy.

In conclusion: he’s such a fascinating character and I really hope we get to see more of him at some point in the future.

Thank you for getting into starkid and going to see the show with me! This is definitely a core memory now 👑

Omg ok, just saw the show and it was amazing!!! The songs were magnificent and the acting was top notch. I loved how electric the audience was, they were so responsive and it made every reaction I had feel justified. I have so many thoughts but mostly I’m just glad to be able to unblock all of the spoiler tags.

Here’s a sad thought about Princess Jasmine in Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier, courtesy of listening to the soundtrack again and feeling the feelings about her and Ja’far: this version of the Sultan must be a really bad father.

We never see him interact with his stepdaughter. He already seems rather senile when he steals Scheherazade, and that’s sixteen years before the present day. His sanity may well have completely gone in that time. Even if it didn’t, he makes it clear in his one appearance that he considers everyone in his power to be objects defined entirely by how they can benefit him and remorselessly will torture, enslave and murder them on a whim. I doubt that he’d be sensitive or nurturing toward his child. Now, I think Scheherazade would be a great mother - but she never got to try.

The Sultan has evidently been very neglectful and distant, failing in his duties to teach the Princess how to be both a good person and a good member of royalty. Despite her being his only heir and old enough to marry and rule the kingdom, which apparently has no problem with a female sovereign, he’s let her grow up to be extremely sheltered and not at all adequately prepared for responsibility and politics. It doesn’t even occur to her that having her tiger assault a neighbouring country’s visiting prince might have consequences. The Sultan, and on his behalf the Captain of the Guard, don’t let her know important news and royal decrees: neither what a menace Aladdin is, leaving her vulnerable to him, nor the Sultan’s mass execution of the 2D Department, since for as insensitively egocentric as she is at the beginning, she’s still deeply sentimental and quick to empathize with the homeless peasant Aladdin, so I can’t believe that she wouldn’t be at least a little upset with the Sultan (or more likely Ja’far) over so many lost human lives.

More than that, her immaturity speaks to bad parenting on the most basic level. She hasn’t internalized the Sultan’s cruelty, but has learned his selfishness, entitlement, impulsiveness and poor emotional regulation. Her social skills are notably clumsy and underdeveloped (not picking up on Aladdin’s numerous red flags, “No high five”, “At least Abdul had a family who loved him!”, even cringing herself at the last one). The Sultan’s passed down absolutely zero wisdom of any kind.

Instead it’s Ja’far with whom she has a familiar father-daughter dynamic (“What’s up, are you mad at me?” “Where are you going?” “There she is!”). It’s him who shows concern when she runs away and gives the order to find her before all else, notices that she’s upset and talks her through her feelings, warns her about sexual predators, appreciates her idealism and effort. It’s him who provides the gentle but firm, healthy guidance and challenge that she needs to grow. Who sees her potential, respects and believes in her. Who loves her. However, he is ultimately in her service. Between the imbalanced power dynamic making him wary of treason (after all, the last time he had a stronger relationship than the Sultan with a woman the Sultan called his, it didn’t end well) and his other responsibilities taking away from their time together, he can’t be as influential a presence in his life as he’d like.

Maybe this why she’s initially so resentful of him. Subconsciously she does see him as a father all along, but he hurts her and lets her down sometimes. Like the Sultan, her only official parent, always has. That stings. The differences are that the Sultan hurts her much more, more consistently and without her best interests at heart… but Ja’far is the one she can lash out at and complain to and be a messy adolescent around, because firstly, he’s her subject instead of her ruler, and secondly, he’s actually involved in her life. He cares, and therefore yelling or halfheartedly trying to poison his wine will make an impact. The Sultan is untouchable. We know that she conflates the two in her head as unjust authority figures keeping her trapped and crushing her aspirations (“All the people who say I’m just dreaming, like Father and Ja’far”, one of the only times she mentions the Sultan). It’s easier to blame your problems on an employee everybody else hates than accept that your parent is a bad one.

Maybe this is the root of her discontentment as well, her yearning that she can’t articulate for something more than what the life she’s been given. The joke of “Everything and More” is that she doesn’t need anything besides what she has… but she does. She needs a competent, reliable parent. One who she can trusts loves her the person as her parent, not a servant of her bloodline, and she knows to love as such in turn.

No wonder she falls for “Orphaned at Thirty-Three” hook, line and sinker. She’s never known her mother. Her relationships with her paternal figures range from terrible to complicated. Having unconditionally loving, supportive parents and then suddenly losing them must be the worst thing she can imagine.

But in the end, the Sultan dies and her dad has to leave her. Although he found a way to live forever, it wasn’t enough to save her from the pain of being orphaned at sixteen.

Lautski day 6: storm ⛈️ ☔️🌩️

@lautski-week

the inspiration for day 2 shoutout to miitopia

cinderella's castle countdown day eleven: ella in labyrinth

Omg ok, just saw the show and it was amazing!!! The songs were magnificent and the acting was top notch. I loved how electric the audience was, they were so responsive and it made every reaction I had feel justified. I have so many thoughts but mostly I’m just glad to be able to unblock all of the spoiler tags.

Richie Lipschitz washing his binder in the bathroom sink, but he needs to sneak detergent from the washing machine and he is so loud about it

Like Paul will be in the living room and Richie will be stumbling around, opening and closing the bathroom door, and dropping the bottle of detergent before locking himself in the bathroom for the next half hour

Paul doesn't find the ruckus unusual, seeing as it happens every week, but he just calls out to Richie and tells him to be careful before going back to whatever he was doing

A reminder that Glinda having either dyslexia/dysgraphia or a learning disability is canon in the Movieverse.

This is the same paper that we see her get back in this scene, in which we can see this was a large essay too.

There's nothing rushed to her handwriting, this was not an essay done at the last minute, and still, it shows several signs of a learning disability and/or dysgraphia.

Misspells her name in the second line

Wrong and inconsistent pronoun usage

Her margin spacing is consistent with someone who can't do proper syllable division

Immature transcription (see: writes her "um"s)

Limited vocabulary

Shows signs of: difficulty expressing ideas in writing, having a limited vocabulary, mispronouncing words or using a wrong word that sounds similar, and having trouble organizing what she wants to say. Those are all symptoms of a learning disability.

Less of a checklist sign, but her handwriting is very round and careful, while still not being consistently sized (see unfashionable). This and the margin sizes are very common in kids with bad dysgraphia who are made to take rigorous calligraphy courses to "fix the problem". Courses that work on the visual without remedying its underlying issues and causes. Form over content if you will.

Looking at this very blatant sign that she has a learning disability and immediately defaulting to calling her names (yes calling her stupid and saying Elphaba is a moronsexual for this counts), asking how she got into Shiz, or defending Dillamond in doing the very first thing teachers are told NOT to do with disabled students (re: calling attention to it in front of the entire class) is ableist!