AMATEUR INSECT ENTHUSIAST

write insane shit that’s way beyond your perceived ability and skill level even if you don’t finish it even if you think it sucks

the star and the island of stability

And then 40 years later, Andrew Lloyd Webber found a lost cat poem that T.S. Eliot had cut from the cat book for being too sad for children, and ALW was like “woahhh. A cat….that’s sad. That’s deep, man. I wanna make a musical out of this”

So the producer assigned to the project was like “okay, I guess you could maybe read these cat poems as a satire of 1930s British society? We could probably do something sort of interesting with that, I’m thinking a cast of about 5 and–”

And ALW was like “no. Forget the satire. Also I want a cast of dozens and the most advanced special effects technology ever seen on stage. I’ve taken out a second mortgage on my house to fund this”

And the producer was like “wh– you– wh– do you even have. a plot”

So ALW got a bunch of actors and writers and artists together and they holed up and did cocaine workshopped for 5 weeks, and at the end of it they emerged and said “the plot is that a bunch of cats are having a dance contest for the right to take a ufo to cat heaven :)”

@remitro here’s to you!!

so my Afrophage!Grace backstory… i’ve thought about it a lot in a “how did it get that bad, grace?” sort of way… and i think it is as follows:

grace is born. he’s an only child. his mom (Ryanne Grace) is Black, and she raises him with no help from his white father. i haven’t decided on the circumstances of him leaving yet but i think it would be really heartbreaking if they were dating but when she got pregnant, he dumped her because “you were just a casual thing, i wasn’t supposed to have a family with you” (because the family i’m supposed to have is upperclass and white)

he’s raised with Black people in the Black community, but as it becomes apparent he’s smart, he’s sort of… pushed away. not out of any malice, but. teachers encourage him to speak “correctly”. he spends less time with his friends and more time on Studying and applying for Scholarships. everyone wants better for him than they got, but… that means leaving them behind. at least temporarily.

meanwhile, his mom is his biggest cheerleader, his best friend. she knows her baby is gonna do great things someday.

he gets a full ride to a good school and leaves home. he still visits, but rarely. mostly in contact with his mom plus a few of his friends and his favorite teacher.

in the middle of his master’s program, his mom dies suddenly. i haven’t decided how yet, but he’s not expecting it at all.

he goes home for the funeral and never goes home again. he can’t be there without her.

he finishes his master’s and doctorate because that was her dream for him. when he gets shut out of academia, it feels like he’s let himself down, but more than that, he’s let HER down.

he still doesn’t go home. can’t face the “i’m so sorry”s or the “i told you so”s. teaches all the way across the country. denies every friend request. that part of his life is over, dead and buried.

that’s (at least part of) why he’s so afraid of getting close to anyone. it’s also why he’s terrified of dying! and it’s why he’s so disconnected from who he is and where he’s from. the severance is intentional to avoid heartbreak, avoid reminders.