Asexual Emolga for Life

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Everything in Dear Evan Hansen is intentionally messy. Everything has two sides. Social media is a positive place where people can come together to make a difference AND it's a breeding ground for hate and vitriol. Evan is a deeply caring, empathetic person AND he does a horrible thing. Heidi is a dedicated, loving mother AND she works so hard that she never spends any time with her son. Connor is agressive, angry, violent, AND he is a depressed, lonely person, ostracized by his peers and longing for connection. Larry Murphy is a domineering authority figure who treats his son like a criminal AND he's a frustrated parent that wants to help Connor get better the only way he knows how. Evan's lies are harmful and manipulative AND they give a family that was tearing apart at the seams time to come together, reflect, and grieve.

All of these things can be true at the same time, and one doesn't have to overshadow or cancel out the other. In ignoring one to focus on the other, you're wilfully missing the point of the story. Real life is messy and complex, and that's exactly what the show is trying so hard to emulate. That's not bad writing, it's just being realistic.

Pasek and Paul said that in its earliest form, the show was meant to look at why people insert themselves into tragedy through a much more cynical lense, criticizing people like Evan. But somewhere in the writing process they found that it's not that simple, because people don't just do that shit for no reason, and it's naive to believe they would. Evan didn't do what he did to be popular or get a girlfriend or gaslight a grieving family. He did it because he saw a chance to help people who were hurting. In the process, he found connection that he had longed for his whole life, and allowed that to complicate things, making him a lot more reluctant to do the right thing and come clean. But the show makes it explicity clear that his initial intention was rooted in helping someone else, not himself. And as bad as it was, it did force the Murphys to come to terms with their loss instead of running away from it, to come together instead of drifting apart.

We finally have a progressive supermajority in our district. Here are some things that are going on.

Lunch and breakfast are free for all students, regardless of income. They ask students at wealthier schools that don't federally qualify as an entire school for free lunch to apply for free lunch because it increases federal reimbursement, but they are simply not charging students for lunch or breakfast.

They fired the big corp that was handling lunches (sodexa?) and brought it in house and the selections include vegetarian, kosher/halal, and often local and organic foods. The quality is good. They pay attention to nutrition. My picky kid can usually find something to eat.

The schools are nut free. As the parent of a peanut-allergic kid, I'm grateful.

We're not banning books.

There's no shopping list for back to school because, get this, the district is providing supplies! They ask that kids bring a backpack. My kid's cheeseburger backpack has held up mightily and is still in great shape, so we're good.

Trans kids are protected at the state level, but also at the local level.

They're doing an overhaul of special education with an eye to eliminating ABA. This is a sea change.

Kids get a city bus pass, free.

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,” she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

First, Evan is established from the beginning of the show to be REALLY bad in social situations. The show makes a point of this multiple times in the first couple of scenes. And then he’s suddenly thrown in this situation where he’s mistaken for the friend of a classmate who recently killed himself. And the very first thing he does is try to correct the mistake by shouting “Connor didn’t write this!” He lacks the articulation skills in this highly stressful situation to phrase it any better than that. And in the next scene with Jared, we see that he has every intention to tell the Murphy’s the truth, and Jared convinces him not to.

But let’s get to the main point here - Evan does not start lying to the Murphy’s for his own personal gain. He lies because this family is desperate for some sort of confirmation that Connor was a good person who had a friend. And yes, there probably was a way Evan could have told the Murphy’s the truth here in a way that was empathetic, but again, Evan is not good at social situations, and he’s convinced that this is the best way to help the Murphy’s. I want to repeat that note - He’s not doing this for selfish reasons, he’s doing this to help the Murphy’s, and for a large chunk of the show, it really feels like he is helping the Murphy’s.

And don’t you dare say he’s doing this because he wants to get with Zoe. That was not part of the plan. Yes, Evan does have a crush on Zoe, but his intention when he started this was not to explicitly get with her. Saying that Evan is telling this lie ‘to get with Zoe’ is like saying that Hiccup in HTTYD only trained a dragon to get with Astrid. Yes, it ended up happening, but that was not the reason he did it.

And I am certainly not calling Evan a perfect person. He is undeniably a flawed character, and that’s part of the point. Evan’s social anxiety disorder (implied to be somewhere on the Autistic spectrum.) severely limits him in social situations, so he is probably going to behave differently than a neurotypical person. But I want to stress that Evan did what we did, first and foremost, to help a grieving family. And as soon as it becomes clear that this lie is no longer helping them, he immediately comes clean.

As a person on the autistic spectrum, Dear Evan Hansen made me feel seen. I related to this character at such a deep level. And if I had been in the same situation, there’s a good chance I would have made the same mistakes.