#scribescribe

Hot take: more people should be writing musicals for the natural end of a musical's life cycle--the humble high school/community production.

I am not saying those musicals should be ending up on Broadway! I think I'm more saying that I wish there were companies that had a stable of musicals that are well-written, not too young or too twee, and have some variety from the same 10-20 shows that every school puts on.

Shows with a decent-sized main cast, gender-flexible roles, vocal ranges written that are in achievable and healthy places for high schoolers and don't expect belts that many high school treble voices have trouble learning how to do safely. Shows with a variety of ensemble vocal and dancing lift for schools with different-sized programs. Shows that are topical and interesting.

Like, I think shows like Lightning Thief and Monstersongs are almost there? But they're short and small-cast, and I want full-length musicals written for a company, because shows with chewy secondary roles that expect things (but not too many things) from their ensembles are how younger performers are trained and supported into being prepared to take leads on.

It was so good! The use of Swahili!!!

I love this question, and I do not love that every time I am asked a deeply fun question like this my brain promptly forgets every piece of media it has ever consumed.

This is half the fun of the firefighters for me, both in canon and in fic. So many near-death experiences in both, and so much presumed death in the latter! I've recced the fic Away from Us by Marchling here before, if you ever want to dwell in some presumed death grief for a good long fic. I'm reading a WIP that's another great one, you called me home by queenofwhump. (Sorry, I have like a million festivids tabs open (which is your fault, come to that) so I do not feel like opening new ones to properly link the fics!)

I was thinking fondly the other day of The Force Awakens, when that trilogy was still full of hope and joy for me, and the Finn and Poe reunion after they both thought the other died really was a Moment.

Westley and Buttercup's reunion in The Princess Bride is a classic for a reason.

Since I just watched the PBS Shakespeare in the Park Twelfth Night recently (well, fairly recently), the emotional sibling reunion between Viola and Sebastian! Never enough devotion tropes happening between siblings! (Yes I am aware that when devotion tropes do happen between siblings you get Supernatural, but it's a worthy price to pay!)

Oh shit! I thought of this when I saw your ask and then forgot about it in the intervening day or two! DAINE'S DINOSAUR SKELETON RAMPAGE and then the subsequent reunion! That's the level of rageful grief I want in my thought-you-were-dead moments!

RIGHT

Oooh, thank you for the rec, I'll have to check them out!

It is truly SUCH a good game. Like, as ever, very happy I was spectating and really only hanging out to solve some puzzles, because the running around nonsensical locations parts of video games drives me absolutely batty, but at least the locations were as beautiful as they were nonsensical while I was driven through them!

Okay this is not the version I would write but to start I must ask how there hasn't been a Pern AU for this fandom yet. It practically writes itself! Alanna disguises herself and impresses a bronze dragon! When she eventually admits she's a woman there's a scandal! Thayet impresses a queen and usually Jon's Weyrleader but when he sends Kally off to impress a queen at a different weyr Alanna ends up Weyrleader for one very awkward period! And everyone's just barely used to Alanna and then Kel up and impresses a BROWN.

For me, though, I think I'd go for something original rather than a fusion with another canon--and for me, here, I think the most fun place to start is by considering how to translate the fantasy elements over! So we've got immortals, we've got gods, and we've got the Gift.

Immortals are, of course, aliens. A few hundred years ago, in a period where many kinds of aliens were preying on human settlements, a group of scientists figured out how to put a barrier up around the planet's atmosphere that can prevent aliens from getting in, so people know they're out there, but they're mostly theoretical. The planet's safe from the invaders! Surely this state of things will not change!

I think the gods are a network of ascended AI satellites tasked with monitoring the barrier who also get up to playing some chess with people, beaming down images of themselves in humanoid forms to talk with the mortals.

And then the Gift pretty much has to be psionics? Mind powers aren't trendy in sci fi these days which I think is a dreadful tragedy actually, so we're getting them here. And I think that knighthood is people trained to pilot high-atmospheric craft to patrol the barrier (though the knights probably also fight each other in tourneys and wars and stuff, you know how knights are), and that the Gift can be dangerous for that, psionic powers can cause problems for the barrier, so instead of pretending to be a man in training, Alanna is pretending not to have the Gift.

Dutch/D'avin: Don't Ship (fairly neutral)

Why don’t you ship it? Generally I just don't think they're the most interesting versions of themselves with each other? D'avin didn't really hit his stride as a character until the second season, and all the chewiest and most interesting Dutch/D'avin stuff was in season one. It was rarely BAD, just uninteresting to me.

What would have made you like it? I think if it had tilted either more fun-bantery-this-is-the-person-I-let-loose-with or more we-angst-about-all-our-difficulties I would have had an easier time getting on board with it? But it ended up in a weird neutral limbo between those two places, when I needed one or the other.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it? They work so well together, they're such good teammates! And the dancing scene in season one is a classic.

Johnny/Pawter: Don't Ship (the show Sure Made Choices)

Why don’t you ship it? It was just handled with so little grace and so much weirdness from the start of s2 onward, and culminated with that egregious fridging. And I was so annoyed by it, because "Come the Rain" is one of my favorite episodes in s1 and their dynamic is so good in it. There was just ... no arc, come s2, so it pretty much felt like they got together to make her death poignant.

What would have made you like it? More of their s1 dynamic! A much slower arc of them feeling each other out, with more team-ups that let them work together. And then NOT KILLING HER would have been great.

They're hard boys to tell apart, in all fairness, they're Large Buff Television Handsome Men.