fucketh you

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

a new meme emerges. it follows you everywhere. it follows you all. you try in vain to catch up with it, to make timely content, but it’s too late. it’s always too late. the meme is already dead. 

people post things from other fandoms in the tag. you stare. “what’s a ‘jeremy heere,’” you whisper to yourself before continuing to scroll.

another novel-length fanfic appears. the ship in it isn’t necessarily your favorite, but you give it a try anyway. you stare at the flowing cadence of words and the eloquent language, the beauty of the writing. “hey,” you think to yourself, “i thought i didn’t ship this?” you do now. nothing can be done. the fic was too good, too powerful.

the last time someone mentioned disliking the understudies was May 3, 1655. no one’s heard from them since. the offending post is gone. to you, it never existed in the first place.

clenching your teeth, you watch as people on instagram repost your memes without giving you credit. they get twice as many likes as you. “good for you” plays in the back of your mind.

you look up at night, your hands together in prayer. “please, beyoncé,” you murmur. “please go to see the show. please. it would mean so much to ben.” you wipe a single tear from your eye.

however

saying that he kept building the lies because of the attention he was getting from zoe is… largely incorrect. zoe isn’t remotely outwardly receptive to anything evan’s saying until if i could tell her. the real point at which the lies escalate, for forever and subsequently when evan starts forging the emails, comes from an impulsive and misguided desperation to help the murphy family followed by panic when he realises that he’s backed himself into a corner by talking about the emails. at that point zoe is still totally skeptical, is being very cold towards evan, and barely even reacts to anything he says during for forever and the scene preceding it other than to contradict him

if i could tell her is the real grey area here. i think it clearly starts out as evan trying to comfort zoe re: her relationship with connor. and it absolutely all stems from a misguided place because like, obviously he doesn’t really know her or how connor felt about her so he has to use information that he’s gleaned from observing her because of having a crush on her, which makes the entire situation inherently extremely messy. there’s a distinct moment, shown in the script by the sudden disappearance of quotation marks around “i love you”, where evan goes from lying about how connor felt about zoe to confessing his own feelings. which is obviously bad like i’m not gonna argue that, but his intentions don’t change until that point

then evan kisses her. to quote the script, “it’s impulsive and rash and he does it before he even thinks about it”. it’s not an insidious decision at that point. by this point there’s a little underlying hint of evan starting to tell the lies for the wrong reasons, as indicated by the conversation he has with jared in the next scene (”you got to have some quality time with your fake family, snuggle with zoe murphy…” “that’s not why i was doing it. i was trying to help them”) but, again, he’s not deliberately going out of his way to continue the lies to hook up with zoe at that point

in fact, by this point in the play, he wants to back out. he’s convinced that he can never talk to zoe again, he’s tempted to just let things slide, but jared and alana both inadvertently tap into evan’s fear of being forgotten, which he then projects onto connor & uses as a catalyst to keep the lie going even further. the only time zoe comes into it at this point is when “connor” says to evan “zoe, my parents… they need you”, which is presented far more in a “the murphys need your lies” way than a “zoe needs you, personally, romantically” way

and then, the turning point. zoe kisses evan at the end of you will be found. to quote the stage directions again - “without warning, she kisses him. stunned, he pulls away for a moment. he knows that this is the point of no return. there is no going back. he makes a decision. he kisses her. they kiss.”

this is the point you’re talking about when you suggest that evan continues things because he sees where it gets him with zoe. by this point the lie is already going at full pelt; evan and jared have forged several emails, the connor project has been established, evan’s speech has just gone viral. at this point, evan’s actually uncomfortable with the things zoe is saying to him. and he realises that if he reciprocates the kiss, it’s bad. and he makes the decision anyway. and i think that’s his moral turning point, where he sees that this lie is benefiting him as well as the murphys and, to quote you, he sees a chance to get what he wants and he takes it. and of course i’m not condoning that, but the point is he gets through the entire first act of the show, and the vast majority of the escalations of the lie, before his motivations truly become actively selfish. and even at that point, although he ultimately makes the terrible selfish decision, he’s briefly hesitant about it. i think he completely understands the gravity of what he’s doing and that it’s a bad thing, and that’s not how i think he’d react if he was masterminding this whole thing specifically to get zoe’s attention

(and not even all of that selfishness stems from the attention he’s getting from zoe, although that’s absolutely part of it by that stage. he’s suddenly being noticed and accepted by his peers, people are looking up to him, he feels helpful and necessary, he’s basically being accepted into the murphy family by larry and cynthia after several months and possibly years of feeling like his own mother doesn’t have time for him or thinks he’s a problem that needs fixing. he sees that this lie is benefiting him in several ways and zoe’s only one part of that)

first off i’d love to know why you think zoe’s vain because frankly that’s an idea so out of left field that i feel like i can’t even refute it because i have no clue where you’re even getting that from textually. like… are you just saying this because she’s… a girl and on a different social rung to the other kids? (although i definitely wouldn’t even say she’s popular, to be honest. zoe has friends, sure, but she’s not like, the queen bee of their school or even in that ballpark)

we know that one person from her school thinks she’s a “stuck up bitch” but i think any perception of zoe as being stuck up comes from the fact that she’s prone to emotionally closing herself off which probably stems from years of living with her emotionally volatile brother and often being swept aside because her parents are so preoccupied with him (and she’s also just generally quite a blunt person which, sure, is not a great character trait to have but is anyone actually here for totally flawless perfect characters?). so she’s left to handle herself and her own problems meaning she’s simultaneously very mature for her age and quite emotionally lost because she ends up building emotional walls due to nobody else really having the time to help her work through her feelings. in reality we see that she’s actually very considerate and even friendly, including to people who are right at the bottom of the social ladder (she checks if evan is okay after being pushed over, and they don’t even know each other at that point), and she’s definitely not someone who gives a lot of thought to what other people think about her or the image she’s giving off to the world - the costume designer says of her “she’s a cool girl, but she’s not trying to be a cool girl”, and several of the things evan says about her in if i could tell her corroborate that. 

hell, if you’re looking for a straight up exposition dump of several personality traits and quirks zoe has, even if they’re viewed through the rose-coloured lens of how evan feels about her, just go to if i could tell her. she’s artistic, a little quirky, and, yeah, she doesn’t care what people think of her (”he wondered how you learned to dance like the rest of the world isn’t there”)

also, and i’m only going to touch on this briefly but calling zoe “dramatic” because of, presumably, how she responds to her brother abusing her and evan lying to her and betraying her trust? that’s gonna be a big old yikes from me, buddy

moving on, obviously, yes, a lot of what we see from her emotionally is related to evan and connor (and to her parents as well) but this is really because… this is a show with only eight characters and evan and connor happen to have direct impacts on zoe’s life. we could literally say the same of a lot of the other characters because that’s… how… the plot works.

but it’s definitely more nuanced than “love” and “hate”. and i think it’s interesting that you accuse zoe of being so black and white when that’s a phrase she uses herself in requiem. zoe’s relationship with connor and his memory is fascinating because he treated her terribly and she’s grappling with whether or not to forgive him, grieve him, etc as a result of that. despite what she says about him in requiem it’s clear that she was actually desperate to connect to connor again and find any indication that they could have repaired their relationship; she clings to the idea of “connor” mentioning her in his “note”, and only really starts to become receptive to the idea of grieving him and moving on once she has indication that actually he didn’t hate her after all. she loves and despises her brother at the same time, and part of her character arc is an insight into the complexities of dealing with the deaths of people who mistreated us. i think, really, zoe initially clings to her hatred of connor and viewing their relationship through a very black and white lens because it’s so difficult and painful for her to acknowledge any of the good parts of their relationship, or that she still sort of loves her brother, because it is confusing and scary and painful to grapple with those complex conflicting emotions

as for her relationship with evan, i think it’s interesting that you put “love” in inverted commas because i’m guessing that means you fall into the camp of “zoe only thought she was into evan because of the things he did pertaining to the lie”. i personally don’t subscribe to that. i think their relationship is messy and complicated, to steal evan’s words, and i think in the actual initiating of things there’s a few crossed wires in zoe’s brain between gratitude and love, but i also think it’s really clear that she genuinely cares about evan. i think the whole point of the conversation before if i could tell her is to show that there’s already this burgeoning chemistry between them before evan really brings connor into things (i think in particular laura dreyfuss’s delivery of the line “you’re weird” is SO flirty)

you say that zoe’s just there to impact other characters, but i think it’s the other way round - a lot of who zoe is as a person is influenced by how other people have treated her. i kind of brought this up with regard to how she’s quite emotionally closed off. but i also don’t think she’s a prop or not a great character herself - a lot of her arc, as i’ve said, is about learning to grapple with and accept her conflicting emotions (a lot of which relate to connor and evan because, uh, connor’s her brother who was horrible to her for probably years and also Just Fucking Died, and evan comes in and completely overturns everything zoe thought she knew about her brother like… do you really want and expect her to have her own totally independent plotline about like, competing for a solo in jazz band or some shit in the midst of all that?!). she’s struggling with suddenly becoming her own person after years of being in connor’s shadow, but she also can’t do that yet because everything’s still about connor even when he’s dead, which is where only us comes in (”my whole life, everything has always been about connor. i just want… i need something just for me”). and, yeah, she’s learning a lot about trust, and shades of grey, and forgiveness, which i think is where the end of the show comes in

i think zoe coming to the orchard and getting that closure with evan is a sign of how both characters have grown, and i think zoe actually has found herself by that point, or as much as any 18 year old girl can find herself by the time she graduates high school. even though evan is another person who’s mistreated her and betrayed her trust, zoe by the time of the finale is able to accept the nuance of the situation and that it wasn’t all horrible (”everybody needed it for something”). it’s clear that she doesn’t totally forgive evan, and they’re never going to go back to how they were, and she doesn’t want things to be that way even though she acknowledges and feels some longing for what could have been. but she also knows that what could have been wasn’t, and that’s okay, because that’s not how life works sometimes but she can cope with that. she doesn’t come running back to evan, because she doesn’t want or need to, and i think interpreting that scene as anything other than a sign of zoe finding herself (as a direct parallel to evan’s growth that he then goes on to verbalise more explicitly because he’s… uh… the protagonist) is a huge disservice both to her as a character and to steven levenson’s writing

Stephen’s first performance on Broadway! My master Tracked by @loser-geek-whatever

Dear Evan Hansen Broadway (Music Box Theatre) July 25th, 2018 Matinee

Cast: Stephen Christopher Anthony (alt. Evan Hansen), Rachel Bay Jones (Heidi Hansen), Alex Boniello (Connor Murphy), Olivia Puckett (t/r Zoe Murphy), Jennifer Laura Thompson (Cynthia Murphy), Asa Somers (s/b Larry Murphy), Sky Lakota-Lynch (Jared Kleinman), Phoenix Best (Alana Beck)

this kid, is the first evan to make me cry at this song in new ways since ben (p)

ive heard lotsa audios, lotsa really great singers and actors but this kid killed me

his voice is perfectly fine for this character! yes, he needs to adjust some vowels and some notes sounded great but more technically limited which resulted in less feeling

but the acting

i cant even see him and im crying, he sounds SO small, he sounds so so so hurt and ashamed while also not sounding or acting like ben at all! 

showclips from dear evan hansen ✯

This fic is about Zoe and Evan meeting for the first time in a corn maze and becoming friends. (Read: friends. You know. That kind. The pre-relationship kind.)

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It’s because Zoe Murphy gives me heavy Reagan-from-New Girl vibes.

you know im always a slut for ace characters

(Some questions are only for those who are at least a little obsessed with the show!)