#rant warning

Because GOD I'm having a hard time nailing down fucking anything about this farmer character. I was inspired by playing with the mod Alchemistry a while back and the idea's been percolating of a character who starts growing a lot of medicinal plants to supply Pelican Town due to a medicine shortage in the Ferngill Republic (due to the war, you see), and slowly grows closer to Harvey because of it.

But I can't figure out anything else. In theory this story is meant to continue to be inspired by an upcoming Stardew playthrough (I've never actually romanced Harvey, though I know a lot of the gist just from having played for a decade), so I defaulted to a "female" (AFAB genderqueer) character. But that feels too much like a self-insert. I could just make her a literally female character - no genderqueer - but that takes away one of the few things I actually did know and like about the character.

I could also optionally change to an AMAB genderqueer character. Though for personal reasons I prefer not to - despite the 10k fic earlier this year based entirely on my own experiences as a genderqueer person, I struggle with games acknowledging and addressing me as anything other than a she/her woman, unless it's part of a preexisting character. (Like playing as Link from Legend of Zelda is fine, but as a GNC male character in Animal Crossing is not. Mario is no problem, but a gay male farmer in Stardew Valley is a deep struggle. Don't even get me started on how short a time I lasted with the Gender Neutrality Mod and being able to actually personalize my pronouns and forms of address. I fear that even at this fucking age, I remain utterly unready to be out. Even in the most minor of ways.) But maybe it would be okay if I come up with a whole-ass character before starting up the game? Or maybe I should just abandon the idea of taking inspiration from a real playthrough altogether and go watch all of Harvey's heart events and dialogue on YouTube?

If I write the character as AFAB and genderqueer, that's closer to my own experiences, which might be healing. Though considering how healing the aforementioned fic was, I doubt the character approaching from the other side of the gender binary would hurt things much. Certainly it worked well with Larry. And if I write them as AMAB (read as: perceived by everyone as a man) I could add in Harvey struggling with his sexuality, which could be very nice. But with an AFAB character (perceived by everyone as a woman), I could have the extra layer of her feeling very happy in the relationship but also but frustrated at and relieved by how it reinforces the way she's viewed as being a woman. (And a straight woman at that, which is irritating in its own way; not that there's anything wrong with straight women, but it's that itch under your skin when you're being misunderstood, you know??) Either way the character isn't out and hasn't transitioned in any way - part of the idea is the character struggling with that, completely closeted, unable to find the slightest happy medium.

There's a story in here to be told about common perception VS reality VS what a person is willing to reveal in the face of a deeply queerphobic society. (Though in this case, we the people viewing the story from the outside know that the residents of Pelican Town will largely be accepting of at least nonstraight sexualities, though gender is still an unknown quantity.) But either way I lose something - either Harvey's struggle with sexuality goes down the drain, or the farmer's struggle with being perceived wrong is taken down a notch (the gender struggle remains, but the sexuality perception doesn't), losing a layer of deeply personal experience that I as a genderqueer AFAB person married to a man would rather like to pour out onto the page. Or would I??? Do I want it to be that personal???

I love for The World Has Gone insane so much, and I will forever be mad that most productions choose just to remove it (what I wouldn’t give to see Coccioli perform this). Luckily some productions do keep it.

These productions are only from European productions. I’m not sure if this is a coincidence or if it's only ever been included in European shows, since it was cut Pre-Broadway.

Either way, I find it interesting to see how differently the scene is made.

The Vienna and Copenhagen productions really focus on the hallucinatory/nightmare aspect. Whereas Sweden is focusing more on Jekyll losing it. And tbh I think they’re all great in their own way.

I think it’s worth noticing that in the Copenhagen show the “old friends” are on stage and that it’s Utterson in the straitjacket, and Emma is wearing the bloodstained dress and her hair has been cut off.

I also really love Anders Ekborg singing in the Swedish show; it sounds like he is on the verge of crying.