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[backstreetsbabyg]

Thank you so much for the birthday wishes (I noticed that the main page said the most online the other day was like 900 something… have bots finally discovered the forums?)

Mare, I watched through your vids so cool!

And Julie, if you need a more powerful word replacement libre office is a free open source word clone. I personally use scrivener on both my iPad and my Mac. But my brother uses the google suite stuff a lot. I had no clue about the word cap.

[nicksgal]

A'ight, I tried to catch up in one post. 

Happy (belated) birthday! Hope it was a great one!

All this makes me happy to hear!

What are your favorite tracks from Nick's album?  My favorite of the new ones is Storms.  I could definitely see that one inspiring a story someday.

I actually wrote about 450 words on Friday, so I'm calling it a good start. I was at least able to finish off a chapter I've been working on on-and-off for... oof, looks like four years.  Well, little celebrations. lol

I also really enjoy Storms from the newer ones! I'm sure y'all have chatted ad nauseam already, but I overall enjoy the rawness of the album. It feels like a journey through trauma responses, but with a hope spot and some catharsis mixed in. I think that's what I enjoy in Storms is the narrative that you've got your guard up, but you're trying to take action, and also still believing there's some peace in the end. Very beautiful stuff.

Don't Let Go gets me, because I always feel myself saying, "You're so right, Nick. If you do your job correctly, you're raising a person who'd got their own stuff to do besides being your baby." I don't think it was intended, but it also makes me think of the opposite, being the child who's, in some ways, also not wanting their parent(s) to let go.

I still love Hey Kid, even though it wasn't "new" when the album dropped. Right before the song came out, I got asked what I'd go back and tell myself in high school or what I'd try to change for myself. And you know I love a good joke, so I said "Don't worry, you still get to go to Backstreet Boys concerts, but you didn't get to marry Nick Carter." But my actual more serious answer was that we're who we are because of our journey and the people who help us through. And it's not so much that life only gives us things we can handle, it's that we're able to handle things and get stronger because of our journey. I did say I would tell myself to be less hard on my mom though.

And you know I love a good bop, so Made For Us is my jam. I think the only songs I'm lukewarm about are Easy and Dirty Laundry. And it's not that they're bad, they just feel kind of "eh" compared to everything else. Could be chord progression maybe?

According to comments I've seen on Reddit, there are definitely teenagers who type all their fanfics on their phones.

I hate the typos too! Those kids are brave. Especially the ones that use their phones to write on AO3 like you said. The rookiest rookie mistake. You forget to save one draft and poof! Good on you making your kids practice typing. I have the opposite problem where families will ask me for tech options for helping fine-motor skills and I'm like, uh, no... An app won't help with that. Go play with play dough or climb the monkey bars. 

There was an elevator and a ramp leading into the gym, but there was no way for someone in a wheelchair to get to the main school from the gym without having to climb steps. 

"Have the art teacher carry her" was the answer I got the last time I had a student who used a wheelchair and couldn't walk at all.

These sound like nightmares! Schools that are multi-level make me so nervous for ADA stuff. I'm so blessed that my kids are small, so our bathroom is in our classroom. Add to that that our school is only one level, except the gym/auditorium is a bit sunken, but has a ramp no issue.

"Just carry the kid" makes me so angry on multiple levels. That's not a feasible emergency solution and probably a clear violation of many ADA or OSHA policies. When I had a classroom on the garden level (see: basement), I had a student that was very concerned about what would happen if a fire was in our hallway and we couldn't get out our door. They were adamant about getting an answer, so I ended up saying that I would probably throw a chair at the window and we'd all climb out that way. I was never positive that the chair would break the window, but a couple years later, a car did crash into that window and break it (luckily, no one was in the room at the time, so there were not injuries), so my solution may have been feasible.

Stage Door has become a whole culture now. I know the Outsiders, even though there's no one famous in that show, they have a bunch of groupies that go to the plays all the time and religiously wait for them afterwards. Apparently, they are rude as well. They treat the play like a rock concert and yell out the actors' names. Since Broadway is right now comprised of a lot of A list celebrities it's been kind of crazy, although not many do stage door regularly. I think George Clooney comes out once in a while. No offense to Joey Fatone, but nobody seems to care about him. I don't even think they have a barricade for & Juliet. I might be wrong, but who knows? lol

I've only been to two Broadway shows (on actual Broadway), and both times, I was on a bus trip with a big group of people, so I don't think waiting at the stage door was an option, if that was even a thing back then.  I haven't been to NYC since 2009, so I'm sure the culture has grown since then.  That's crazy that people are yelling out the actors' names during the show.  No matter what kind of music it is, a musical is not the same as a concert.  I've been to musicals where I know every lyric and would love to sing along, but I don't because we paid to hear the actors sing, not random people in the audience LOL.  I do sing along at concerts, but quietly - and not when someone is recording next to me.

The Outsiders is part of our touring ticket package this year. I'm pretty excited for that one. For better or for worse, as far as I know, stage doors aren't a thing locally, so it's not really an issue. I've only been to one show on actual Broadway and I probably couldn't have convinced hubs to go to a stage door if I tried.

I was this person. I'm normally very good for all musicals I love. Like I've seen Les Mis several times and have never sung. But my Backstreet-loving heart could not help mouthing the words to the Backstreet Boys songs during & Juliet. I didn't actually say a word, so hopefully I did not bother the people next to us, but my BFF about died trying to hold in her laughter. There was a woman that sat in front of us when we saw The Wiz and she was dancing and having a great time; we joked about how many times she must have seen it or whether she was a huge MJ or Diana Ross fan. And my BFF was definitely like "You're The Wiz lady" after the show.  Don't judge me too much. 

The last time I went to Broadway before seeing this one was when I went to see Kevin in Chicago. There were only a small handful of people waiting at the backstage door and no barricades at all. When I was very young and living in the Bronx, we used to go very often to see a lot of shows and we almost always waited backstage afterwards. I was so young though, I don't really remember caring about anything except getting a NYC pretzel afterwards. lol

Snacks afterward are the best part. 100%.

YouTube is a great starting point!  I learn so much from YouTube LOL.

I have learned so much useless junk from YouTube and it has been wonderful. How much it helps my normal life is iffy. In theory, I could mount a horse without a saddle. But, I have also gotten some great cleaning and simple repair tips. lol

The only thing I miss about Word is that there's no limit to how long documents can be. Google Docs can't handle some of my docs. 🙃

And Julie, if you need a more powerful word replacement libre office is a free open source word clone. I personally use scrivener on both my iPad and my Mac. But my brother uses the google suite stuff a lot. I had no clue about the word cap.

Yeah, phone is definitely short and sweet. If I could text it, I can use my phone. If it's serious, even emails, it's a computer thing.

I used Scrivner once upon a time when it used to be free. Oh the good old days. I think the limit on Google Docs is less about how many words you've written and how much data you're storing. So if you get into the habit of "suggesting" changes to your work, so you can see your original thoughts and also your edited thoughts, it takes more data storage than just deleting and starting over. If you're also making several changes over several days, it will store a new version each time, making more data storage. So if you write it all in one go and edit it all in one go (or don't edit thirteen-year-old style), then you can probably fit more words into one document without it lagging. If you're writing and doing anything else that would hold extra data, you can fit less words.

It's not an exact science, but I've gotten about 15-20 chapters into one document before it lags, but then it may or may not open. The longer the word count of each chapter plus the amount of edits could make it less. I find ten chapters per document is usually a good chunk when I've mostly finalized things -- feels like an even amount of work and the document still works the way I want it to.

I'm glad you're both writing. I have about two more chapters to write on this one and then I think I'm taking a break. I've been wanting to paint again, and I can't do both.

You've got this Mare! May inspiration strike you! Painting would be fun too. Sounds relaxing.

I wish I was talented enough to paint freestyle. When I say painting, I mean those elaborate paint by number ones I make. They are hard and look really good when I'm done but I could never do it freeform. I would love to do that. I have so many visual images in my mind of certain scenes in my stories that I'd love to see come alive.

Ah, paint by number sounds fun!  I'm not a good freestyle painter or drawer either.  It is fun to bring your stories to life in a visual way.  That's what I do with The Sims.  My characters and settings never look quite the same as they do in my head, but I still have fun creating them and playing with them in my game.

I think painting by numbers are great! You get the relaxing bit of painting and end up with something cool. Freestyle painting feels more difficult than all other 2-D art forms and I have no idea why that is. I've drawn a few things for stories to work things out, but they are never immaculately beautiful, they're just sketchy. Julie can vouch for this. lol

I know there's people who are really dedicated to seeing their stories visually and commission people to help them out. I think there's many of us who think of our stories in a visual medium when conceiving them and not just as words on a page, so I think it makes sense that we'd want to see certain things visually.

Yes, the Vegas trip will be a nice way to sort of close out my summer before August hits and I have to get into back to school mode.  We are not doing a meet and greet because of how expensive it is.  The last time I went to Vegas in July, it was 120 degrees, so that's what I'm preparing myself for.  It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be because of the lack of humidity.  I never felt sweaty because it was so dry that the sweat evaporated instantly, and we were only outside for a few minutes at a time while walking between casinos.  The only thing we're hoping to do that's outside is the Neon Museum, which we'll do at night if it's not too hot.

It's going to be hot as hell, but the lack of humidity out west 100% helps! It's supposed to be 105 here by the weekend and I just want to hide in my house. Luckily, Vegas makes it really easy to avoid the outdoors whenever possible.

[mare]

When I went to go check in here yesterday the site was down again! Luckily it wasn't for too long this time.

I hate when we turn to another page on here before I respond because at least when everything is on one page I can constantly go back and read what people said, now I have to depend on my memory, and we all know how that goes. lol

I only have one and a half more chapters to go for this story and yes, even though I am taking a break, I do have another story all plotted out. I am going to work on it from time to time over the summer and hope to start posting it either in August or September. I want to make sure, I have enough of an idea for an entire story. There's also this little fear in me, that the farther we get away from the actual show the less people will want to read, but every fandom still seems to have a good amount of readers even long after the show fades away. We shall see.

The Sims does sound like a fun way to bring your characters to life. I have thought about getting into video games a bunch of times, but I remember even with the Sims when I did have it set up on my desktop forever ago, I lost interest pretty quickly. We shall see. Getting a game console might be worth it. Maybe when it's time to get a new laptop I'd just download some games, but this one is getting up there.

At least the Vegas heat is dry. It's the humidity that tends to kill me. And like you guys said, pretty much everything is indoors. I can understand why you'd skip the VIP. I was pretty sure it would be outrageously expensive, especially because of the nostalgia of it all. The show is probably going to be spectacular in that place. I hope you guys have the best time. I'm sad I never got the chance to do anything like that with you guys. I even have the panda skunk tee-shirt and everything. lol

I hope you had a great birthday, Lindsey. I'm glad you got a chance to see my videos. For some reason the Kieran one was fuzzy on the You Tube one. It's clear everywhere else. I've always had a love hate relationship with You Tube.

I haven't heard Nick's album, but I know he's released cartoons to go along with it. I thought I'd be inclined to want to listen to it on the train ride there or back, but nope. Didn't happen. I still haven't watched part two of that documentary yet. I keep forgetting about it. I really do keep waiting for my BSB spark to light up again. I thought maybe with everyone talking about the new album and them showing back up in the spotlight it might have happened, but not a thing. Maybe I need them to intertwine with Kieran. Maybe if they work on the Hungar Games soundtrack? I have no idea how my brain works. I am happy for their success though.

Dee, I've heard The Outsiders is a great play. I think the younger girls are attracted to the cast because they are all pretty young and cute. I loved that book. It would be one of the musicals I'd be interested in seeing. It's hard for me to picture it as a musical though.

Okay, I need to get a little writing done and then catch up on my book.

[nicksgal]

Oh man, I scroll down and intermittently quote like it's my job to try and help us all remember the conversation thread. lol!

I think all fandoms sort of wane over time in the writing world, but I think the ones based on media like books/television/movies tend to last a bit longer past the source material ending. I haven't deeply looked into this, so cannot confirm, but I think some older fandoms are still the most popular for works -- even new works. I think it depends on how much it all resonated with people. And on our end where it's quiet at times, I think it's good to write what brings you joy. You're the story's first reader, after all.

I have never been able to get into video games either! Even something like The Sims, which in theory feels enjoyable. Mario Kart is about where my interest ends. I think there's a lot of platforms these days for all that. I know during 2020, I was really into Jackbox Games -- which made social party games that you could connect to with your phone, so it was a great thing to do virtually with several people. And you could buy them on an online gaming platform (can't remember the name) or a console, like a Playstation. The ones I enjoyed were more things like trivia or superlative type games. In one round of the superlative game, you had to sort your friends into boy band roles -- I was dubbed "the cute one" -- and we all changed our names on Zoom to our boy band roles because of it, lol. At the end, you could feed your winnings to the mascot and it was so delightfully stupid to hear a bunch of 30-somethings chanting "feed the mouth" on a Zoom call. I'm sure they still make games, but it's obviously less of a thing in our lives these days, or at least mine personally.

Yo, I will take 100 in dry heat over 80 and humid any day of the week. You shouldn't feel like you have to take a shower just from stepping outside. We were on a trip last week in the South and you could just tell it needed to rain, it was like being in a greenhouse.

Overall they're good videos, but the story beats are a bit off because they're trying to match up with the songs versus what's coded in the visuals. Also there's a really stupid cat. Maybe once 2.0 is out, it'll spark again -- IWITW is what got you originally, yes? But just keep manifesting them crossing paths with Kieran! That would be cool. Although, I think he and Nick are worlds apart in the acting department. lol!

I haven't read the book, but the movie is great! I have yet to be disappointed by a musical based on a movie (or based on a movie based on a book) yet, which seems to be most of them these days. Mean Girls was amazing -- helps when the original script writer is writing the musical script. Back to the Future was great from a tech standpoint, but probably would have been less enjoyable if I didn't already like Back to the Future; the songs were only okay, but it was still a fun nostalgia romp. Beetlejuice was also fantastic. For all three of those, just enough changed that they still felt fresh even though the basic plot and ending were foregone conclusions. I think my favorite musicals that I've seen in the past year or so have been Gutenberg! The Musical and SIX. As a Shakespeare nerd and pop aficionado, I really enjoyed & Juliet too. I did also see a really great revival of 1776 where the cast was all women,  trans, or non-binary actors. It's been nice to see so many revivals getting cast updates -- I like to think Hamilton had hand in all that.

Good luck with your writing today! May the words flow on the page like a river meeting the seas.  I wrote 1000 more words yesterday, so things are brewing.

[mare]

And I thank you for your scrolling and quoting.

I do enjoy trivia games. I had one on my phone for quite a long time. I think it was called Trivia crack. I played it all the time, and it was one of those where you could challenge other people, but unfortunately, I don't like people, so I always just played by myself. lol I do the whole Wordle, Connections and Phrazle thing every day. I used to love Zelda. I played it a lot in college, but it's been a while. If I start feeling like I need some kind of change, I might try video games. I also have all these damn bracelet making accessories too now.

It's so humid here today, that my bedroom window is a tiny bit open, it's right by my desk, which is where I am sitting now, and I keep having to stop typing because my glasses keep fogging over!

Good lord, I do not want Kieran and Nick EVER in the same movie acting wise. Lord only knows that would mean that Kieran's acting career has met a huge downward spiral. Can you imagine, The Hollow 2 starring Nick Carter and Kieran Culkin? lmao yikes! A soundtrack would work. Since the Hunger Games is all I got at the moment, that's what I'll hope for. Animal Farm is coming out soon. (He plays one of the pigs) so no chance for a collab for that one.

I loved The Outsiders movie as well. A story about brothers and found family? That's my thing. I'm there for it. Tracy loved Beetlejuice too. That's another one that I can't seem to picture as a musical. I wish they would come up with some more original ones. Noone seems to have any creative ideas anymore. It's all just Disney remakes or old Movie remakes or Jukebox musicals. I hate the idea of a show with no original music.

We need Lin Manuel to stop with the Disney soundtracks and get his butt back to writing musicals. I bet that's a whole other kind of stress. Can you imagine trying to top Hamilton? Nonbinary 1776 sounds interesting. Seeing GGR has made me want to see more shows now. I really want to see Hadestown, it's one I would have seen if we could have stayed in the city for a few days. I love the music in that one. I also just watched Next to Normal on PBS Great Performances. I highly recommend that one. It was fantastic!

Good for you writing 1,000 words! I find when I'm nearing the end of a story I start slowing down. Reading has been distracting me from my writing, but I did write about 3 pages yesterday.

I am currently reading "The Reformatory" and it's SO good, I just read from 7 to 9:30.

Speaking of reading, I just spent way too much on books. It's Amazon's fault. I needed a playbill picture frame for my signed copy and of course, if you spend so and so dollars, delivery is free, so with my one little frame I bought 11 books. lmao that's a lot but all my favorite authors have new books out. I had to. 

[nicksgal]

I used to have Trivia Crack on my phone too. I liked it a lot, but I stopped playing it for some reason. I can't remember why. Ads might have made it unplayable? I know so much useless stuff, I am fantastic at trivia. lmao I suppose if phone games count, I have a couple I play. Tetris, there's one like Connections, but it's gotten more ad-heavy. I have one where you have to match colored squares to the rows in numbers and columns to turn it into a picture and that's pretty enjoyable. I should get back into the NYT games, I enjoyed all of those and Sudoku. And I've got plenty of time these days.

I'm in pants and a sweatshirt because hubs keeps our house at like 66 degrees year round.

I would pay so much money to go see the Hollow 2. I don't care who else is in it. I need The Hollow 2: But Was It The Good Side of the Bridge? in my life as soon as possible. If Justin can be a troll, I don't see why Nick couldn't be a talking pig. Feels like he would fit in more in a Babe-type movie than Orwell, but... stranger things have happened.

Yes, found family is my absolutely favorite too. If a story has that, I am in! With Beetlejuice, I think it really depends on the hammyness of the actor playing Betelgeuse. That really makes it or breaks it since the musical leans into that. I wish there were more original ones too. The ones I liked best were all original things, so I'm sure someone is working on something new and interesting. But I'm also really hoping to see Death Becomes Her soon, lol. Although as I'm thinking about it, even ones we would consider classic and original are derivative works. See: Phantom, Les Mis, shoot even Miss Saigon is based on Madama Butterfly.

Jukebox musicals have been around forever -- at this point, I would call Rock Of Ages a classic. My BFF and I chatted about this since she's not a huge fan of them either. We saw Jagged Little Pill and she loved it, but hated Margaritaville . We settled on it probably depends on whether you like the original version of the jukebox setlist and how much the story they pick feels interesting to you rather than how well it fits the music. Because I pointed out that Margaritaville's story really fit the music, but she is the opposite of a Parrothead and thought it was really stupid. We did both agree that without the stage show included, it's not worth it to buy a cast recording of a jukebox musical, though.

I'm sure that would be so much pressure to top Hamilton. And it's not like his other stuff was not well-received. In The Heights was very popular as well. So going from a good musical to an international phenomenon and then whatever is next would be tough. But heck, even Andrew Lloyd Webber has a Starlight Express for every Phantom or Jesus Christ Superstar -- and I love Cats, but it is very divisive on whether it's actually good or not.

Hadestown is fantastic; I would see it again in a heartbeat! It's very visually stunning and the underworld as an unending factory is a fantastic metaphor/allegory. The update of the myth to an industrial revolution/depression-era setting makes it feel modern/updated, but true to the ancientness and timelessness of the myth. You would already know it from the Soundtrack, of course, but those Orpheus actors have chops! (As far as originality goes, still derivative though, lol.)

And this has been my diatribe on musicals. Thanks for the recommendation on Next to Normal. It looks like our local company has it on the schedule this year. We recently saw them do Little Shop and it was fantastic, so I would go to a show put on by the theater company again as opposed to sticking with only the touring productions.

Three pages is great! I did a little over 1000 words yesterday too and finished up a chapter, so something is cooking. It feels nice to be writing again and doing research. Makes me want to go to the library and sift through reference books like ye olden times. There was a testbook-esque book called "The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt" that I used to check out from the library all the time and I ended up buying it a few years ago. Thank goodness for the internet though! Can you imagine buying every reference book you wanted for research?

That book does sound interesting! And clearly if you committed to it for two hours! My reading goal this summer is to finally finish American Gods. I've gotten into this bad habit of only reading on airplanes and it's hard to finish things that way.

I pay for Amazon Prime, so I get it. The lure of free shipping is too good.

[RokofAges75]

Just finished three days of professional development, so trying to catch up on what I've missed here!

And Julie, if you need a more powerful word replacement libre office is a free open source word clone. I personally use scrivener on both my iPad and my Mac. But my brother uses the google suite stuff a lot. I had no clue about the word cap.

I haven't used Libre Office. Is it all online or downloadable software? I do have Open Office, but I prefer Google Docs because it's cloud-based, so I can easily move between devices without having to use a flash drive or send myself documents the way I used to when I was using Word.  But a similar free, cloud-based option that did not have a word limit would be worth looking into.  I'd heard Google Docs' character limit was around 1.02 million characters, but I made it to 1,506,283 characters on my current story before it cut me off and literally wouldn't let me edit anymore.  I knew there was some kind of limit because Drive wouldn't open the largest Word Docs I'd uploaded when I backed up all my fics there.  I had to split my longest stories up into several different documents to be able to access them through Drive.

It's not an exact science, but I've gotten about 15-20 chapters into one document before it lags, but then it may or may not open. The longer the word count of each chapter plus the amount of edits could make it less. I find ten chapters per document is usually a good chunk when I've mostly finalized things -- feels like an even amount of work and the document still works the way I want it to.

The longest story I've written all in one Google Doc is My Brother's Keeper, which was 50 chapters and over 218k words. It got very laggy toward the end. Curtain Call is the only story that's longer (about 250k words) that I've been able to keep all in one doc, but I wrote that one on Word. Once my current story, TWWBW, hit the character limit, I started breaking it up into separate documents by year so I could keep track of my annual word count more easily.  I'm on my fourth one now.  They're all of varying lengths, but none got long enough to be super slow to load.

I actually wrote about 450 words on Friday, so I'm calling it a good start. I was at least able to finish off a chapter I've been working on on-and-off for... oof, looks like four years.  Well, little celebrations. lol

450 words is a good start!  That's not a bad day of writing for me lately, depending on how long I stick with it.  And finishing a chapter after four years is a major accomplishment!  Yay for you!

I also really enjoy Storms from the newer ones! I'm sure y'all have chatted ad nauseam already, but I overall enjoy the rawness of the album. It feels like a journey through trauma responses, but with a hope spot and some catharsis mixed in. I think that's what I enjoy in Storms is the narrative that you've got your guard up, but you're trying to take action, and also still believing there's some peace in the end. Very beautiful stuff.

Don't Let Go gets me, because I always feel myself saying, "You're so right, Nick. If you do your job correctly, you're raising a person who'd got their own stuff to do besides being your baby." I don't think it was intended, but it also makes me think of the opposite, being the child who's, in some ways, also not wanting their parent(s) to let go.

I still love Hey Kid, even though it wasn't "new" when the album dropped. Right before the song came out, I got asked what I'd go back and tell myself in high school or what I'd try to change for myself. And you know I love a good joke, so I said "Don't worry, you still get to go to Backstreet Boys concerts, but you didn't get to marry Nick Carter." But my actual more serious answer was that we're who we are because of our journey and the people who help us through. And it's not so much that life only gives us things we can handle, it's that we're able to handle things and get stronger because of our journey. I did say I would tell myself to be less hard on my mom though.

And you know I love a good bop, so Made For Us is my jam. I think the only songs I'm lukewarm about are Easy and Dirty Laundry. And it's not that they're bad, they just feel kind of "eh" compared to everything else. Could be chord progression maybe?

We really haven't discussed Love Life Tragedy too much here because not everyone has heard it.  I agree with you about the rawness of the album.  It has a completely different feel from All American, which makes sense, considering it's ten years later, and a lot has happened in Nick's life since then (mainly having kids, but also losing more of his siblings and all the legal drama he's had to deal with).  It's a lot deeper, more serious, and very personal.  Don't Let Me Go is another one of my favorites; it makes me cry!  I'm obviously not a parent, but looking at it from his perspective, or even just from my own as an aunt, I can empathize and relate to how fast kids grow up.  I also can see it from the kid's point of view, watching my own parents age and knowing they won't be around forever.  It's a tearjerker for sure.  Hey Kid is also great!  I still really love Superman too, and Made for Us and Nothing Without Your Love are bops.  I wasn't crazy about Dirty Laundry at first because it felt almost too simple compared to the 80s catchiness of the original.  But it has grown on me, and I've come to appreciate that it's just Nick's vocals and the guitar.  I don't like it better than the original, but I do like it as a cover.  I also enjoy the 80s rendition of Help Me - again, not better than the original, but it's fun as a fresh take on the original.  The only tracks I'm still not big on are Wild Heart and the two Cold Nights.  I tend to skip them so I can listen to Storms again LOL.  I'm kinda "eh" on Easy too, but I do like this solo version better than the original collab version.

I was this person. I'm normally very good for all musicals I love. Like I've seen Les Mis several times and have never sung. But my Backstreet-loving heart could not help mouthing the words to the Backstreet Boys songs during & Juliet. I didn't actually say a word, so hopefully I did not bother the people next to us, but my BFF about died trying to hold in her laughter. There was a woman that sat in front of us when we saw The Wiz and she was dancing and having a great time; we joked about how many times she must have seen it or whether she was a huge MJ or Diana Ross fan. And my BFF was definitely like "You're The Wiz lady" after the show.  Don't judge me too much. 

No judgment!  I would have a hard time not mouthing the words to the BSB songs in & Julie too!  As long as you're just mouthing and not singing loud enough to be heard by others are a Broadway show, I think that's fine.

[backstreetsbabyg]

Just finished three days of professional development, so trying to catch up on what I've missed here!

I haven't used Libre Office. Is it all online or downloadable software? I do have Open Office, but I prefer Google Docs because it's cloud-based, so I can easily move between devices without having to use a flash drive or send myself documents the way I used to when I was using Word.  But a similar free, cloud-based option that did not have a word limit would be worth looking into.  I'd heard Google Docs' character limit was around 1.02 million characters, but I made it to 1,506,283 characters on my current story before it cut me off and literally wouldn't let me edit anymore.  I knew there was some kind of limit because Drive wouldn't open the largest Word Docs I'd uploaded when I backed up all my fics there.  I had to split my longest stories up into several different documents to be able to access them through Drive.

The longest story I've written all in one Google Doc is My Brother's Keeper, which was 50 chapters and over 218k words. It got very laggy toward the end. Curtain Call is the only story that's longer (about 250k words) that I've been able to keep all in one doc, but I wrote that one on Word. Once my current story, TWWBW, hit the character limit, I started breaking it up into separate documents by year so I could keep track of my annual word count more easily.  I'm on my fourth one now.  They're all of varying lengths, but none got long enough to be super slow to load.
 

Libre Office is a downloadable program/application suite it is the successor to OpenOffice and it’s made by the same team. They were working on a cloud version and an android app but, they had to stop and focus on the main office suite instead.

[mare]

Look, I'm far too lazy to go and quote things so just know I'm talking Broadway now. lol

Obviously, almost every Broadway show comes from some other form. Mostly books - like Les Miz, Phantom of the Opera, My Fair Lady, Cats, even Hamilton to a point. In that case, to me it's still original because they added brand new music which brings the plot together and enhances it. Unlike shows that come directly from Disney movies that already contain the music and all they are doing is bringing it to the stage, maybe only adding one new song just so they can be considered a new musical when it comes to Tony considerations . Or the Juke Box musicals where they take a catalogue of work by one person or genre and from that try to stretch it into some kind of believable plot. I would imagine if you're a big enough fan of the artist, you'll love the musical but otherwise my guess is no. I love Alicia Keys so Hell's Kitchen might be fine for me, but no thanks to almost every other one.

I don't think I've ever shared this story before, but when I was in high school, for an end of year class trip for our music department, we went to go see Cats on Broadway. We had mezzanine dirt cheap tickets. What I did not know about this musical is that during the Overture, all the cats sneak out into the audience and sit in the aisles. I had an aisle seat. I was so engrossed in watching the orchestra, or trying to anyway, that I didn't notice the cat sitting right next to me. Towards the end of the Overture when it starts playing memory all of these cat's eyes start glowing. Anyway, I heard my friend gasp next to me and when I looked up, she was staring past me so when I turned, all I saw was this furry person with glowing red eyes and I screamed! And because I screamed and startled her, the poor cat screamed lmao EVERYONE looked at us at that point. I'm just glad the orchestra didn't stop. I was so embarrassed. She patted my shoulder and said sorry about that before she ran out the door to get to the stage. 

I also have to admit that I actually really enjoyed Starlight Express. I saw it twice. Once in London before it came to Broadway and then once on Broadway. I think it was the roller skating I enjoyed watching and I did like the songs as well. I have to say for the most part, Cats was the only show I've seen that I didn't really like all that much. South Pacific was another one I could have done without.  I haven't actually heard the entire soundtrack of Hadestown, but from what I've seen (mostly on TikTok videos of it being illegally recorded) I have really enjoyed it and the whole concept. The revised Sunset Blvd looks pretty good too, but I doubt they would be able to recreate the outdoor walk at the beginning for a touring company. There's still a lot of popular musicals I have never actually seen live like Hamilton or Book of Mormon or Wicked. (I saw an entire illegally tapes version though lol) I kind of wish I had gotten a chance to see The Picture of Dorian Gray, although I hated the book. I heard from everyone it was amazing.

My theater bug has returned because of me fully emerging myself into Broadway again. I have been in a lot of plays and musicals. I would never be able to do it now, but perhaps I'll try to catch a show or two if they come touring up this way. Who knows, maybe The Hollow - the musical starring Nick and Kieran will make its way up here someday. Then you guys can all road trip up here to see it with me!

12 more shows until Kieran goes back into his hidey hole. 

[RokofAges75]

I only have one and a half more chapters to go for this story and yes, even though I am taking a break, I do have another story all plotted out. I am going to work on it from time to time over the summer and hope to start posting it either in August or September. I want to make sure, I have enough of an idea for an entire story. There's also this little fear in me, that the farther we get away from the actual show the less people will want to read, but every fandom still seems to have a good amount of readers even long after the show fades away. We shall see.

That sounds like a good plan!  I also like to get a good start on a story and make sure it's going well before I post anything.  Better odds of seeing it through to completion that way.  I can understand your fear about interest dwindling the longer the show is off the air, but I think the die-hards will stick around.  I discovered when I posted my ER crossover that the ER fandom on AO3 is similar to the BSB fandom in terms of size and activity - 1700-some stories with new chapters still being posted daily.  Not bad for a 30-year-old show that ended in 2009.  I frequent the ER subreddit, and that show has seen a resurgence lately because of The Pitt - a lot of younger people who watched The Pitt are now watching ER for the first time and loving it - so I could actually see that fandom growing exponentially if these younger first-time viewers get into writing fic for it.  Similarly, it seems that the Millennium nostalgia has brought some old-school BSB fanfic writers - and probably also readers - out of retirement.  My point is that you never know what might happen that would spark new interest and bring new readers to an "old" fandom.

The Sims does sound like a fun way to bring your characters to life. I have thought about getting into video games a bunch of times, but I remember even with the Sims when I did have it set up on my desktop forever ago, I lost interest pretty quickly. We shall see. Getting a game console might be worth it. Maybe when it's time to get a new laptop I'd just download some games, but this one is getting up there.

I go through phases with The Sims.  I will play it obsessively for days, sometimes even weeks, spending 8+ hours a day glued to my computer without even realizing it, and then I'll abruptly stop and go months without even opening it.  I was the same way with the original Sims back in the early 2000s.  I stopped playing it for probably about 15 years because I knew what a time suck it can be, but I downloaded The Sims 4 three years ago to pass the time while I had Covid and discovered that it was just as addicting as the original game was when I was a teenager.  I enjoy building and decorating homes and other buildings the best; that's usually what I'm doing when I get super addicted to it.  I've built or redesigned multiple houses, an apartment building, a hospital, a funeral home, a movie theater, a couple of restaurants, a bakery, and a record shop in my current game.  I enjoy playing with my Sim characters, too, but that is usually not as addicting for me.  You can download the base game for free, so it might be worth trying when you get a new computer.  It does take up a lot of space, especially if you start buying the expansion packs and other add-ons.  You can play it on consoles, too, but I think it's better on a computer because you can download free custom content and mods from the internet that won't work on the consoles.  I don't really play any other video games.  I still have a Wii and my old Nintendo 64 and will get on those once in a blue moon, but otherwise, it's pretty much just The Sims.  I don't even play games on my phone very much anymore.

I'm sad I never got the chance to do anything like that with you guys. I even have the panda skunk tee-shirt and everything. lol

Maybe someday!  Next time they play Buffalo on a summer tour, we could come to you.

I've gotta run, but I'll be back to reply to more posts at some point soon.  It's been a busy week for me!

[RokofAges75]

I do enjoy trivia games. I had one on my phone for quite a long time. I think it was called Trivia crack. I played it all the time, and it was one of those where you could challenge other people, but unfortunately, I don't like people, so I always just played by myself. lol I do the whole Wordle, Connections and Phrazle thing every day. I used to love Zelda. I played it a lot in college, but it's been a while. If I start feeling like I need some kind of change, I might try video games. I also have all these damn bracelet making accessories too now.

I used to love Trivia Crack too!  I enjoy trivia in general; I like to play bar trivia with my teacher friends.  We're pretty good!  I also play Wordle and the other free NYT games sometimes, not every day like I used to.  I used to be pretty into Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells (a Candy Crush type of game), but I haven't even opened that app in months.

Good lord, I do not want Kieran and Nick EVER in the same movie acting wise. Lord only knows that would mean that Kieran's acting career has met a huge downward spiral. Can you imagine, The Hollow 2 starring Nick Carter and Kieran Culkin? lmao yikes! A soundtrack would work. Since the Hunger Games is all I got at the moment, that's what I'll hope for. Animal Farm is coming out soon. (He plays one of the pigs) so no chance for a collab for that one.

LMAO!!!  I would love to see Kieran co-star in Nick's next SyFy movie!  Maybe his acting talent will rub off on Nick.

Side note: I was over at my parents' house today, helping them put together this pergola they bought for their patio, and we ordered carry-out for dinner. My dad rode with me to go pick up the food, and I had Nick's new album playing. He was like, "Dirty Laundry by Nick Carter?  Wonder what Don Henley has to say about this..." and was teasing me about Nick, as he tends to do.  (He's also an Eagles fan, so Nick could never compare to Don Henley in his eyes.)  I was like, "If you think the song is bad, you should see the video" and was trying to describe the low-budget green screen effects to him.

I would pay so much money to go see the Hollow 2. I don't care who else is in it. I need The Hollow 2: But Was It The Good Side of the Bridge? in my life as soon as possible. If Justin can be a troll, I don't see why Nick couldn't be a talking pig. Feels like he would fit in more in a Babe-type movie than Orwell, but... stranger things have happened.

I would also love The Hollow 2! LMAO.  Too bad Melissa Schuman probably ruined his memory of the first film.  I still want him to do a follow-up to Dead 7.  Not a sequel, since his character died, but another campy horror movie starring fellow boyband singers would be right up my alley!  I was really excited to meet Jeff Timmons at 90s Con a couple years ago and have him sign my Dead 7 poster that was already signed by Nick, AJ, and Howie.

I don't think I've ever shared this story before, but when I was in high school, for an end of year class trip for our music department, we went to go see Cats on Broadway. We had mezzanine dirt cheap tickets. What I did not know about this musical is that during the Overture, all the cats sneak out into the audience and sit in the aisles. I had an aisle seat. I was so engrossed in watching the orchestra, or trying to anyway, that I didn't notice the cat sitting right next to me. Towards the end of the Overture when it starts playing memory all of these cat's eyes start glowing. Anyway, I heard my friend gasp next to me and when I looked up, she was staring past me so when I turned, all I saw was this furry person with glowing red eyes and I screamed! And because I screamed and startled her, the poor cat screamed lmao EVERYONE looked at us at that point. I'm just glad the orchestra didn't stop. I was so embarrassed. She patted my shoulder and said sorry about that before she ran out the door to get to the stage. 

Um, that sounds terrifying!  I've never seen Cats - never had the desire to, honestly.  The latest movie version also looked terrifying.

There's still a lot of popular musicals I have never actually seen live like Hamilton or Book of Mormon or Wicked.

Your conversation about musicals is making me realize how many of the newer ones I haven't seen yet, but I have seen all three of these, and they live up to the hype!  I've only seen Wicked and Hamilton once each and am okay with that now that you can stream them anytime, but I've seen The Book of Mormon four times so far and will happily go see it again any time I can.  It's coming to my town in December, so maybe I'll get tickets for it.  That was the last live show I saw before Covid hit.  If you ever get a chance to go see it, do it!  It's brilliant and hilarious, of course!

Who knows, maybe The Hollow - the musical starring Nick and Kieran will make its way up here someday. Then you guys can all road trip up here to see it with me!

Yes!!!  Honestly, if they made a musical of The Hollow, it would have to debut somewhere in New York because Sleepy Hollow is in New York!  Wrong part of the state from where you are, but same state, at least.  It would probably be an off-Broadway show, in any case LOL.  We'll have to get Rose to suggest this to Nick the next time she does VIP; she's never afraid to ask questions or make suggestions.  I would love to get his reaction to the idea of The Hollow: The Musical LOL.  His character would probably do a delightfully cringey rap!

[Carter-Orange]

Yay the site is working again, it was down before I went away on holiday so I missed a lot!

Mare, I'm so glad you got to the show and mey Kieran and all the other cast members, but not happy to hear about the train and hotel experience.  How awful that the train staff didn't help you, they would over here.  And that woman who barged past you and took the seat, how selfish of her when there were probably lots of other seats she could've picked!  But the hotel's attitude was really bad, they should've let you know there were no rooms so you could've booked somewhere else.  $50 refund is not good enough.  I'll have to look at your videos.

I've been away to Spain for a week and it was lovely there, although too hot for me which I knew it would be.  Thank god for aircon in the hotel and my little portable fan!  I've decided the next time I go away on holiday it will have to be somewhere cooler like Iceland lol.

[mare]

That sounds like a good plan!  I also like to get a good start on a story and make sure it's going well before I post anything.  Better odds of seeing it through to completion that way.  I can understand your fear about interest dwindling the longer the show is off the air, but I think the die-hards will stick around.  I discovered when I posted my ER crossover that the ER fandom on AO3 is similar to the BSB fandom in terms of size and activity - 1700-some stories with new chapters still being posted daily.  Not bad for a 30-year-old show that ended in 2009.  I frequent the ER subreddit, and that show has seen a resurgence lately because of The Pitt - a lot of younger people who watched The Pitt are now watching ER for the first time and loving it - so I could actually see that fandom growing exponentially if these younger first-time viewers get into writing fic for it.  Similarly, it seems that the Millennium nostalgia has brought some old-school BSB fanfic writers - and probably also readers - out of retirement.  My point is that you never know what might happen that would spark new interest and bring new readers to an "old" fandom.

Yeah, I'm sure there will probably be people around to read the story. I bet there are a fair share of The Pitt stories on there by now. Probably some crossovers between the two. I'm glad the whole Milennium thing has brought some old fanfic fans out of the woodwork. I still get random kudos from people for my BSB stuff.

Yes!!!  Honestly, if they made a musical of The Hollow, it would have to debut somewhere in New York because Sleepy Hollow is in New York!  Wrong part of the state from where you are, but same state, at least.  It would probably be an off-Broadway show, in any case LOL.  We'll have to get Rose to suggest this to Nick the next time she does VIP; she's never afraid to ask questions or make suggestions.  I would love to get his reaction to the idea of The Hollow: The Musical LOL.  His character would probably do a delightfully cringey rap!

Yup, Sleepy Hollow is in the Catskills I believe which is upstate as opposed to near me which is western NY. That's something that riles up the Buffalonians, when they call Buffalo upstate NY lol These people are easily ruffled. They also hate when people use ranch instead of blue cheese for their chicken wings. I'm serious they will publicly shame you if you ask for ranch here. I can't see anyone funding The Hollow musical unless it's off off off off off Broadway, like in someone's basement. True story, the only reason I used The Hollow was because I couldn't remember the name of his other movie, but since you said it, now I know. Dead 7 lol I forgot he does die in that, but does that really matter? He could just come back as a really bad acting zombie. You're right though, I bet he has blocked that one out of his head because of Melissa.

I used to love Trivia Crack too!  I enjoy trivia in general; I like to play bar trivia with my teacher friends.  We're pretty good!  I also play Wordle and the other free NYT games sometimes, not every day like I used to.  I used to be pretty into Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells (a Candy Crush type of game), but I haven't even opened that app in months.

All this Trivia Crack talk is making me want to go back to playing it again.

I didn't realize Nick covered an Eagles song. That's interesting. And people are worried about his weight? Why? He looks perfectly fine.

The Book of Mormon never comes up this way for some reason, but if it ever does, I'm going to try to get tickets to go see it as long as the whole accessibility issue is fine at the theater here. If it went to where we were going to see Macauley when he came for Home Alone, I know that would work, otherwise a lot of the theaters here are really old. I love that Hamilton was ProShot. I watch it every fourth of July. I've only watched the Wicked movie once. I heard they did a ProShot of Hadestown and Merrily We Roll Along with the original cast (Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe.) So, that's something to look forward to. There was a rumor that they ProShot Glengarry too, but I can't see it ever being on Great Performances, they'd have to bleep out every other word. Maybe HBO? I hope that's true. I doubt it though. We shall see. I would think more and more shows would do it because Broadway is so inaccessible to so many people. I love the fact that they are doing a version of Evita in London where every performance, she comes out and does the biggest song from that show out on the real balcony of the Palladium theater to all the passersby outside as part of the actual play. It pisses the people off who paid for a ticket because the one song everyone knows from there is being sung outside so they only see it on a huge screen, but it makes it accessible to people who can't afford a ticket.

I guess you can't please everyone.

[mare]

Yay the site is working again, it was down before I went away on holiday so I missed a lot!

Mare, I'm so glad you got to the show and mey Kieran and all the other cast members, but not happy to hear about the train and hotel experience.  How awful that the train staff didn't help you, they would over here.  And that woman who barged past you and took the seat, how selfish of her when there were probably lots of other seats she could've picked!  But the hotel's attitude was really bad, they should've let you know there were no rooms so you could've booked somewhere else.  $50 refund is not good enough.  I'll have to look at your videos.

I've been away to Spain for a week and it was lovely there, although too hot for me which I knew it would be.  Thank god for aircon in the hotel and my little portable fan!  I've decided the next time I go away on holiday it will have to be somewhere cooler like Iceland lol.

I loved seeing all your pictures while you were away, Steph. It looks like a beautiful place, but I can only imagine the heat. Was it humid? Hopefully you got a chance to be in many pools and thank goodness for air conditioning. I've always wanted to go to Iceland! That and Alaska! Nice and cold.

Yeah, that whole experience was pretty horrible. Kieran made everything else not feel so bad, although I cannot see myself ever doing it again. I watch my video at least once a day like a lunatic. My life sucks, everything sucks, but then I watch Kieran staring at me and smiling and it's all worth it. lmao I'm so grateful for that. If it was a meet and greet situation it would only be some kind of generic picture with no video. I'm going to be very sad when he's done with his run a week from tomorrow.

[nicksgal]

Just finished three days of professional development, so trying to catch up on what I've missed here!

You deserve a break! Go do nothing. And then more piles of nothing.

The longest story I've written all in one Google Doc is Once my current story, TWWBW, hit the character limit, I started breaking it up into separate documents by year so I could keep track of my annual word count more easily.  I'm on my fourth one now.  They're all of varying lengths, but none got long enough to be super slow to load.

450 words is a good start!  That's not a bad day of writing for me lately, depending on how long I stick with it.  And finishing a chapter after four years is a major accomplishment!  Yay for you!

I agree, it's the multiple platforms on Google suite that make it the most accessible.

Ooh, documents by year, interesting. I have a spreadsheet that does math for me.  By year isn't a terrible idea if you're writing regularly, but I'm just imagining a document with like 500 words from writing here and there for a year and that sounds pretty silly.

Y'all, I got two partially started chapters done. I'm killing it; I've written like 4500 words over the past week. Apparently, I just need uninterrupted time to myself and no other looming things and I can just crank things out. I think it helps not having to look at a computer for work for the bulk of the day too. I wrote a lot less when my role involved more computer work for sure. How much of that was computer work versus small child versus general life stress is a toss up though.

We really haven't discussed Love Life Tragedy too much here because not everyone has heard it.  I agree with you about the rawness of the album.  It has a completely different feel from All American, which makes sense, considering it's ten years later, and a lot has happened in Nick's life since then (mainly having kids, but also losing more of his siblings and all the legal drama he's had to deal with).  It's a lot deeper, more serious, and very personal.  Don't Let Me Go is another one of my favorites; it makes me cry!  I'm obviously not a parent, but looking at it from his perspective, or even just from my own as an aunt, I can empathize and relate to how fast kids grow up.  I also can see it from the kid's point of view, watching my own parents age and knowing they won't be around forever.  It's a tearjerker for sure.  Hey Kid is also great!  I still really love Superman too, and Made for Us and Nothing Without Your Love are bops.  I wasn't crazy about Dirty Laundry at first because it felt almost too simple compared to the 80s catchiness of the original.  But it has grown on me, and I've come to appreciate that it's just Nick's vocals and the guitar.  I don't like it better than the original, but I do like it as a cover.  I also enjoy the 80s rendition of Help Me - again, not better than the original, but it's fun as a fresh take on the original.  The only tracks I'm still not big on are Wild Heart and the two Cold Nights.  I tend to skip them so I can listen to Storms again LOL.  I'm kinda "eh" on Easy too, but I do like this solo version better than the original collab version.

I think overall, All American is my least favorite of the albums overall, but when I think of it as experimenting with different styles and genres, I like it a bit more. Plus if you just looked at the cover, you'd be like, sure All American kid, whatever. But then you've listened to it and remember that the title is from a song about butts and you just go "Oh Nick..." and you can't help but laugh at the humor of it all. Plus 19 in 99 is a bop, so.  For some reason, I forgot that I had heard Dirty Laundry before. I was trying to figure out why it was so eh to me, and I was thinking about the track list and was like, well of course Easy feels kind of eh, because Hurts to Love You comes directly after that. But Dirty Laundry, that's not the case. Now obviously, of course it didn't sound quite right when it's a cover. Makes so much more sense.

And yes, just listen to Storms like four times in a row.