Title: Un

Edit:

My little Bird and Moon book, Birding Is My Favorite Video Game, comes out today!

What do you do if you find a turtle crossing the road? I collaborated with Dr. David Steen of the Alongside Wild Foundation to tell you how to save our shelly pals.

My dog not 5 minutes later:

you're doing amazing sweetie KPOP DEMON HUNTERS (2025)

bonus:

Shane gets his ginger ale nowhere! Except at his ex-situationship’s house, where it’s carefully chilled.

If you weren’t aware that there was a Howl’s Musical, here ya go. Go throw money at this production company and hope they release an album or a recording because the show was honestly fucking perfect. We were in the front row and all five of us flailed so hard that the cast thanked us specifically “for our enthusiasm and energy” after the show. 

This Sophie, played by Seattle actress Sara Porkalob, is your new god. 

She has micro-expressions down to an absolute art and the best comedic timing I’ve ever personally witnessed. She exists and was the perfect Sophie and now you know. You’re welcome.

Sidenote but the night we saw it Howl was wearing a NEON PINK WIG and SPRAY PAINTED SILVER JEANS for almost the entire show and NO ONE will ever be a better Howl tbh.

And Lettie and Martha were also great! The entire cast was great! Their physicality on stage was unbelievable!! The writing was superb!!! I can never see another musical as long as I live because of how perfect this one was!!!!!

I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT ALL OF THIS

Please please please don’t just reblog this post but also go check out the YouTube channel and give the songs some more views. It’s worth it the songs are amazing. And I desperately want more people to watch the current videos so Justin will finally finally release a recording of the best song from the show (it’s the witch’s solo and it’s Amazing).

Also before someone asks my second favorite song is the love theme Sophie sings when howl gifts her the flower shop and it’s fucking beautiful.

So very sadly, bookit theater, which produced and housed both runs of this musical and had been in Seattle for over 40 years, was not able to survive the pandemic and sell enough tickets to stay open after lockdowns were lifted. They announced they were shutting down this summer. I’m personally pretty bummed about it.

But if you want to support this musical PLEASE check out Justin Huertas’ YouTube channel and patreon. Let him know that his work in creating this musical is appreciated.

I am still holding out hope that he’ll be able to get this show produced again, maybe in a workshop or something.

Also I want to add a story from viewing this show in person.

My friends and I attended both of these productions dressed in the most over the top thematically appropriate outfits we could manage. We were in the front row and it was a small theater and we were Enthusiastic audience members to say the least, cheering, laughing, getting into it. And when the witch of the waste took the stage to deliver her extremely powerful theme song, we lost it. This woman was eating this song, an absolute powerhouse, fucking spectacular performance.

(Justin has still yet to post this song on YouTube…..Where is the witch’s song Justin…..let me hear it again………)

When the cast came out to the lobby after the show we found the witch’s actress to complement her and she recognized us from our very enthusiastic cheering and thanked us for being her coven for the evening, which is a complement I hold dearly.

Anyway, here are some of the fantastic songs from the show I mentioned above, usually featuring at least one cast member from one of the runs:

Early book sophie wishing she was a different person.

Newly cursed Sophie enjoying the start of her adventure and finding freedom in being cursed.

Sophie’s sisters explaining their scheme to switch places. This is a song about cake and it goes Extremely hard. The second run of this show added a reprise of this song at the end. Standing ovation.

Sophie reacting to the field of flowers gifted by Howl (this song made me cry in person). Sung by Sara Porkalob, original Sophie!

And last but not least, a song from the point of view of the cursed dog man mashup that is Extremely beautiful.

you hit play on episode 1. within 10 MINUTES the whole party starts LOSING THEIR FUCKING MINDS because right off the bat you're hit with THIS:

WHAT THE HELL THAT'S MY HOME???? like i get that this is supposed to be "Jianghu City" but BRO i fucking LIVE HERE!! I can see my office building in those aerial shots COME ON!!!! 😭😭😭

"Okay I want sustainable woodworking and logging to be kind of a core feature of this ethnic group's trade and relative self-sufficiency, so I'm gonna do some research on logging. What's that word for when you float logs down a river? I should probably put them near a river. Hell yeah geographical feature. That is a thing I can add to a map. I'm so good at worldbuilding. Oh you have to cure lumber before it can be usable--that makes sense, that's why it doesn't rot. Okay gonna watch this video on curing wood. Huh this video's kinda boring and a little too modern in terms of my worldbuilding. Oh! I had that really neat old-timey book on woodworking I stole from my dad! I'm gonna get it!

Huh New Jersey had cedar swamps?

New Jersey cleared out its cedar swamps so bad that by the 1800's they were literally mining hunks of dead cedar out of the swamp like how Irish people in peat bogs would haul perfectly-preserved centuries-old logs out of the peat and use them for firewood?

They cleared out the trees that bad?

Google New Jersey Cedar Swamps

Google New Jersey Cedar Swamps Restoration

Google Atlantic White Cedar

Google Who is Saving the Cedar Swamps

Oh shit my notes doc that's right I was going to write.

Google Cranberry Bog Rewilding

Google Cedar Swamps Restoration (again)