Storm Wolf

the 40th anniversary album of les mis pre-order is out, and on this, jordan shaw (the black actor playing enjolras) has been replaced with a white actor. the entire thing is directly recorded from the stage 40th show, and yet they've cut out jordan and replaced him with james gish. ONLY jordans songs have been changed!! no shade to james because he's also extremely talented but hes not jordan? he didn't play enjolras in the 40th? and the fact that only jordans songs have been changed makes this just UGH. this is terrible and we need to do something about it

i am also not the type of person to say "we need to do something about this" and stay silent, so do something! I sure as hell am!!! make a fuss about this!! post about it and yell about it and find the "contact us" page on the distributor form, and if you're feeling kind, shoot jordan a kind word on insta at jordanshawuk. this is bullshit and something needs to be done.

my friend's 5 year old recently got a toy veterinary medicine set - it's super cool, like one of those mini play kitchens a lot of kids have, but it's set up to pretend to be a vet (it's this thing) - it has stuffed animals and things to weigh them, give them medicine, take x-rays, write on their charts, etc.

so this kid, who is five and to my knowledge has no experience in the administrative bureaucracy of modern healthcare, puts a stuffed pig named Piggy on the exam table. she pretends to draw blood from Piggy using a fake syringe, and the blood goes into a toy test tube vial that she calls "the resulter"

i'm playing with her, right, so i'm like, awesome, what are the results of Piggy's blood test? and she says "we have to send it to the scientists." so we send the vial to the scientists (put it in her bedroom) and when we get back to the vet playset i'm like awesome what did the scientists say? and she says they have not gotten back to us yet

so she rolls her eyes, exasperated, and says we have to call the scientists. she pretends to call them. apparently, they tell her that Piggy's blood test is "at the bottom of the list" and "we have to WAIT." she frowns. we wait a bit longer and call them back. they tell us it will be a while! she says we should go ask the scientists in person so we go back to her bedroom and she inquires at this imaginary lab, at which point the scientists yell at her and tell her now they will make us wait even longer!

keep in mind she is 100% directing this play. she is making all this up. she is fully in control of this game, and she has decided that what we are going to pretend is that we are dealing with this exhausting nonsense, not actually treating Piggy.

finally the blood tests come back. they are inconclusive. the scientists do not know what is wrong with Piggy. the little girl walks back to the stuffed pig on the exam table, sighs deeply, and says in a very serious voice "we can never help you."

i'm obsessed with this kid. when given complete control over a make believe scenario, instead of becoming the heroic rescuer administering effective cures, she is instead a beleaguered vet making multiple calls to an overworked lab only to be left unable to help her patient.

When I moved, I’m certain they understood I was leaving because I had all my stuff and gave them lots of food and compliments.

But, they chased down my friend who lived in the next burrough over. They had recognised that friend with me several times and followed them to their house when they couldn’t find me.

They adopted my friend and it was now my friend’s job to bring them snacks and receive the presents.

This was maybe 6-7 years ago.

I visited London last year. Went to see my friend. The crows all not only recognised me, they tracked me down. We got into my friend’s flat and not twenty minutes later there was chaos on the balcony.

We open the curtains, the entire fucking murder is there shouting because they wanted to see me.

I did this the other day hi hello valvert tumblr uhh debut post I guess. I just really need a place to dump all of my les mis doodles in, is this the place or... 😅

So the other two in my group are used to my antics by now. We’re all friends, so the pair of them decide that the one guy in our group gets to be the nurse. Now, my Juliet and I have been friends for a couple months by this point, so I decide to be a little more dramatic.

We put Juliet on a spinny chair, and pump it up as tall as it goes, and my baby, closeted lesbian ass crouches on the floor, ready to be as melodramatic as possible. Like, I’m about to do a rendition that makes William himself walk into the class and tell me to take it back a notch or twelve.

And then I look up.

And holy shit.

There she is, Juliet, haloed in the worst fluorescent light known to mortals across the globe. Light just streaming down around her, that weird off-green colour that it always is. And she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. My little gay soul is barely holding on as the words barely leave my lips, breathlessly. “But soft… what light from yonder window breaks?”

And Juliet was the sun. Romeo was not exaggerating that line at all.

I graduated high school in 99.

There was a student at our school named Wayne.

Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.

Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.

The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.

Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help. He went to guidance counselors for help. He went to the principals for help.

He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.

Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.

So... no.

No one in my school talked about being trans.

The next year I had two younger friends who I met through theater start secretly dating each other. I was the person they talked to about it, I got the "Uh I think I might be gay" phone call when it started. One of the girls' parents worked at the school and when she found out about her daughter doing queer shit, well, among other things she was forbidden to speak to me or spend any time with me anymore. Did it matter that that queer relationship was what stopped her daughter self-harming and binge drinking to dangerous levels? No. The answer was obviously to isolate her daughter and not allow her any social life.

It was considered the worst thing to be, even though we as kids didn’t know why. It was talked about like this monster under the bed, the bogey man, something horrible and corrupting and perverted, which is just... peachy when you’re a baby queer and are being told even just existing makes you some kind of deviant and pervert.

Likewise at the time, if you were a queer adult working in a profession with/around children, you could lose your job, reputation, career, home and worse.

I've not kept in touch with anyone, but just by looking on classmates.com I know that -

- no less than 3 of the guys in my class now have husbands

- at least 5 of the women are lesbians

- at least 3 folks are trans

This is from a graduating class of 233 kids from Indiana. Only about half of those graduates are on classmates.com.