Post-Hamilton Post

It was amazing. It was glorious.  It was just what you want it to be.  The music that I know by heart, the same, but with enough subtle changes to make every bit worth listening to. The dancing was amazing--just the dance alone would have been an incredible show.  The acting was such fun to watch, and there are so many details in action and expression that it brought a whole new level to how wonderful the album already is.

Absolutely delightful.

And now I have a cold, thanks NYC, so back to our regularly scheduled posts next week!

This Hiatus Brought To You By....

Hamilton!

That's right, no bookish post today because I'm on Broadway, baby, with the hottest ticket in town in my hot little hands.  Full report to come!

In the meantime:

I Heart Patreon

I have a million more reviews I need to write, but I've wanted for a while to do a post about Patreon.

I love Patreon. I love being able to give money to creators I love, especially those whose product is online, or sporadic, or whom I consume through the library and don't pay directly.  I love the idea that I can pay a small amount for something I value online.  For the most part, if you're in my blog reader and you have a Patreon, I am very happy to be giving you money.

So who do I support?

Webcomics!

Tom Siddell's Gunnerkrigg Court is the big one; he was the first one I sponsored, and it was so exciting to see that he is making about the same amount from his Patreon per month as I am at my job. (That equates to less after taxes and fees, but either way, he's making a living wage from his art.)  I find this incredibly inspirational.  I will say that he is a complete professional--his posting schedule is like clockwork and I don't think he's ever missed a post.  I really hope he's living the dream as much as I imagine he is.

I also support Ngozi Ukazu's Check, Please!, which is insanely popular and another one that's making her a full time living. I support this one at a lower level, partly because there are WAY fewer updates. She does maintain an active Twitter feed for the characters and posts sketches pretty regularly, but the fact is that I don't follow all those (and actually find a lot of the supplemental material hard to navigate). But the comic is amazing and worth my money, so by gum she gets my cash.

Drew Weing writes The Creepy Casefiles of Margo Maloo, which I don't even remember how I found.  I got in on the ground floor of that one, though; I read the first couple of pages and it seemed to have potential, so I figured I'd give him some money and see where it went.  It's a good comic, and I feel like I'm watching the mythology get richer and the story get better as he goes.

Bloggers.

I am a complete sucker for an advice column; most of the ones I read are in newspapers (I pay for an online subscription to the Washington Post because of Carolyn Hax), but I've been reading Captain Awkward forever. I actually emailed her once and suggested she open a Patreon so I could sponsor her; I don't flatter myself that that's how it happened, but I'm glad it did.

Siderea is a blogger I learned about specifically because her sponsorship model is a bit unusual; it's per post, rather than per month.  If she posts, you pay; if not, you don't.  She actually posts small, casual posts at a fairly normal rate, but her long, carefully researched analytical posts are incredible and totally worth the money.  I've read her nearly-novella-length exegesis of the first part of Watership Down several times. She's been writing a lot about politics lately, and her realism and pragmatism are very reassuring to me.

I've been reading the Lady Business blog for a while; they just started their Patreon and it hasn't got a ton of momentum yet, but I'm glad to sponsor it.  They are a go-to source for feminist geekery, and where I get most of my non-Buffy fanfic recommendations, as well as a lot of great, in-depth recommendations for TV, movies, and books that are directly up my alley.

Creators.

There are a few artists who aren't producing anything special, but whose work I love so much that I sponsor them in a small way just so they'll keep creating things for me to read.  There's Ursula Vernon, on whom I've gushed in the past, and Linda Medley, whose Castle Waiting is so wonderful that it's worth the years of waiting and paying for in the interim.

I actually don't sponsor any podcasts yet; I've only recently become a real podcast listener, and some of my favorites aren't sponsored (Gin Jenny, Whiskey Jenny, I would sponsor you!). Ursula Vernon has podcasts; I already give her money.  But I've also been listening to StoryWonk's Dusted (Buffy podcast) and I've got a whole bunch of things that I want to try an episode of--when I get my lineup lined up, I'm probably going to add some podcasters to this list.

I love Patreon.  I love that I can be a small part of something that can make a big difference together. I love the idea of the artists whose work I value making a living doing what they love.  Patreon is something I'm so glad exists, because this is exactly how I want to be spending my money.

Non-Books

I've been so distractable lately, I'm having trouble focusing on what I'm reading for more than a few minutes at a time.  Life has been busy and interesting, but also kind of stressful (mostly because being busy stresses me out--in the best of ways!).

Anyway, I've been listening to some podcasts lately, because I can focus on them a little better than on audiobooks.  In addition to Reading the End (which is delightful) and This American Life, I've been listening to The Black Tapes.

This reminds me a bit of Limetown, premise-wise.  It's an NPR-style faux documentary with the premise of a weekly show examining stories of the supernatural, with the throughline of looking at the work of a paranormal debunker. A female reporter named Alex Regan is following the work of Dr. Richard Strand, looking into his unsolved cases--he's the Scully; she wants to believe--and also rummaging around in the mysterious circumstances of his own life.

Now, the show itself is, I would say, only okay.  The through story of Strand--his missing wife, his stand-offishness, his tenuous friendship with Alex--is actually pretty interesting, but the case-of-the-week material is quite thin. Each one is basically the outline of a case, rather than an investigation; it seems like just when the story gets interesting, when I have questions that would either get weirder or debunk it, they declare it unsolvable and move on.  (Note: I'm only about half a dozen episodes in; the teaser for next week implied that some of these stories might tie together in upcoming episodes.)

Anyway, what really has me fascinated is the format, and the mechanics of the show.  Like I said, it's NPR-style, and it's modeled on the tried-and-true This American Life style of storytelling.  I mean, I'm sure they didn't make it up, but that's where I learned about this kind of story, and maybe you did, too.  RadioLab, Serial, all these other shows that tell these little research/investigation of regular folks stories have a sound and a feel and this is going right up the middle for one of those.  The canned music that they use is *literally* music they use sometimes on TAL.

The acting, though, is not quite what I want it to be.  I feel like, in an effort to not make it sound theatrical or acted, everyone sounds very calm and quiet.  Not like they're reading, but very much like reality show characters reconstructing a conversation for the producers.  The guy who's described as a fidgety ball of energy delivers his answers softly and evenly.  People describe things in rehearsed sounding ways, even when they are theoretically having a spontaneous conversation. There are almost always pauses between questions and answers, even when, in context, you would expect the character to BURST out with the answer that you know is coming.  There's a very subtle note of human nature that's missing from the acting or directing here, and it puts a bit of a dent here.

(Also, Alex does not seem like a very good reporter in a lot of ways.  That, though, might be written into her character, because her producer sometimes calls her on it.)

But what this really has me thinking about is the podcast as a format for fiction.  A couple of friends and I have been talking about doing a podcast together (hit me up, E & L, we should make that happen in the new year!), likely talking about books. And there are a lot of fun comedy or talk-show style podcasts (How Did This Get Made is a favorite around here).  But what kind of fictional stories can you tell in this format?  Horror is one I keep seeing, especially based on the faux investigative reporting.  I wonder what other fictional podcasts are out there.  And I've been wondering what it would be like to make one.

Really, I've been thinking about making a bunch of things lately.  I'm considering doing NaNoWriMo this year (note that I've dropped by posts to two a week to spend some time thinking about that).  But I've also been thinking about writing a short play (seeing a lot of theater and I'm inspired).  A podcast script would be so interesting.  What's the premise?  How do you shape it around a recording in a believable way? What kind of non-horror story lends itself to serialized storytelling in an audio format--that is, through interviews, explanations, and conversations?

I'm messing around with something.  I have no idea whether I'll do anything with it.  But the challenge of writing in a way that truly sounds like people talk--that just seems so interesting to me. 

(I've also always wanted to cowrite an epistolary novel with someone, if any of my blog-reading writer friends has a great idea and would like to mess around on a project like that!)

As you can see, there's a lot going on in my head.  I didn't even mention the half dozen theater performances I've seen or bought tickets for lately--it's going to be a performance-heavy winter.  I'm pretty excited about it, actually.  Upcoming post for that, I guess!

My Favorite Thing About Hamilton This Week: Teach 'Em How To Say Goodbye

Well, the original cast of Hamilton is splitting up.  Lin-Manuel Miranda, Philippa Soo, and Leslie Odom, Jr. are leaving the show.  On one hand, it's the end of an era.  On the other, Chris Jackson, Daveed Diggs, Renée Elise Goldsberry--when I go see the show in February, I will still see some of the people I've been goggling over for months.

But, back to the subject: my favorite thing about Hamilton this week, in honor of LMM's big goodbye, is the song I can't stop listening to, sometimes with tears in my eyes:






The final curtain call was streamed live on Facebook, which is pretty cool, but I would also like to point out how incredibly cool it is that the theme song from The West Wing played there at the end.  LMM is so my kind of nerd.

My Favorite Thing About Hamilton This Week - Angelica: Tomb of the Unknown Wingwoman

I have been listening to "Satisfied" repeatedly for weeks and feeling a lot of Angelica love, and sympathy, and heartache. I got myself all Team Angelica'd up.


And then I was listening straight through the album for the first time in a while and I heard "Helpless" again.



And oh, Eliza!  She's not the brash one, but she doesn't mind watching Angelica charm the room.  And then she falls so hard.  Listening to them in order--"Helpless" and then "Satisfied"--is sweet and then heartbreaking, but listening in revers just really makes it about those two sisters, and how they love each other each in their profound and different way.

Props to Angelica, the best damned wingwoman in American history.

(Also, Peggy.  Never forget.)

My Favorite Thing About Hamilton This Week

Okay, I concede; I'm joining the chorus of people who can't stop talking about Hamilton.  I have listened to pretty much nothing else for weeks.  I have one of these songs or another in my head every day--yesterday it was "Satisfied," but today it's "Wait for It."  

My favorite song changes, my favorite character changes, my favorite thing about the story changes.  So let's start keeping track.  

This week, my favorite thing about Hamilton is the friendship between the four young men who fought the war together: Laurens, Lafayette, Mulligan, and Hamilton.  Lafayette is the brilliant general, of course, but Laurens the fierce abolitionist (who challenged Charles Lee after Hamilton was ordered not to), Mulligan the spy (who has one of my FAVORITE bits in the whole show; "Hercules Mulligan, I need no introduction"). They sing "The Story of Tonight," and reprise it later at Hamilton's wedding; they split up and pursue their roles in the cause, they come together to crow about it at the end. 

Hercules Mulligan is amazing; I looked him up on Wikipedia.  He was a tailor who spied on his Loyalist clients; his slave, Cato (about whom little is known), did much of the actual transportation of information.  Mulligan was later a founding member of the New York Manumission Society, which makes me wonder more about Cato and their relationship.

But these four boys--kids, really--and how they back each other and cheer each other and do this amazing thing together--that's my favorite thing about Hamilton this week. 

Also, JENNY SAW THE SHOW and there better be a WHOLE POST ABOUT IT very soon! You don't get to bury that in the tags for a review of a book you read on the bus on the way to the theater!