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I guess it might be time to bring this blog back?

JELLY!

Aimee seems like so much fun, and I am never going to stop talking about her am I?

(Aimee Hodnett as Jellylorum, UK Tour 2022; 13 May 2022, opening night)

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Jellylorum

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An aesthetically pleasing collection pictures of Jellylorum being as cute as any kitten.

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Jellylorum and friends!

(From Carolyn Bacon's instagram story)

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drew this a while ago, I was supposed to add flowers to the background but never got around to it so here y'all go :')

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🎶

1. How much I like this character

Jellylorum is my favourite queen and I will shout this from the rooftops until I am blue in the face, probably.

Seriously, I love her, she is sweet and gentle and caring and excitable and sometimes a grump and this is all VALID AS HELL.

2. Who I ship this character with

I am a Jennyllorum, Jellydots, Jenny/Jelly, and "the dearies" gal until my dying day. It's such a soft ship and I want to see more of it. I like thinking about when they were younger and courting, like it was the most obvious thing in the world that they would end up being together because they were always by the other's side; the two of them were rarely apart when not in their human houses. I like thinking about Jelly being the shyer of the two but also the one who fell head over heels in love first and foremost. I like to think of them older and still just as in love and happy and sitting and judging youTM and gossiping just like when they were teenagers because they are QUEENS.

3. My favorite AU for them

AU where Jelly is treated with the RESPECT and LOVE she deserves by everyone.

4. A random headcanon I have for them

Hmm...how about a couple?

-She and her brother Asparagus are super lactose intolerant but like...in a "but I am still 100% going to eat ice cream tho" way (she doesn't indulge that frequently but sometimes...)

-Jelly tried really hard to learn to tap dance, first as a kitten and then later from asking Jenny to show her, but she has a lot of trouble keeping a percussive rhythm with her body so she never quite got as good at it as she wanted

-She hates crochet because she always forgets which loop she's supposed to be going through which forces her to have to count stitches which she also hates (she is DETERMINED and PATIENT though). She likes rug hooking and needle felting little animals instead.

-She maybe used to be a card shark but like...on the DL (she can shuffle cards really well and is pretty good at slight of hand card tricks, which should have been your first clue)

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6-10 for Gus and Jellylorum

I’m going to assume to do these separately!

Gus

6. Something they lost, but would love to have back

In his moments of clarity, Gus wishes he had *himself* back most of all. He’s lost a lot throughout his life, left behind his home, people he loved, friends, even just household things. He’s no stranger to loss. 

He says most often that he wants the old times back - the theatre the way it used to be when things seemed so much grander and larger than life - but in all honesty, in the deeper parts of his heart, he just wants to be himself again. He wants to be young and vibrant and able to traverse by himself and take care of himself and remember - the one thing Gus wants more than anything in the world is to remember and every memory he has trouble recalling is like a blow to him. 

7. This character’s favorite character

I’m going to have to agree with @theimpossiblescheme here and say that Cyrano de Bergerac is definitely one of them. I also think he’s very partial to Don Quixote, and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing

8. What kind of car they would drive.

Gus is the type of guy who bought a nice car *once* when he had the money to do so and has been driving that same car ever since. I don’t know a lot about cars, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you what kind it was, but I can tell you that it’s black, the inside is impeccably neat and he still has fabric seats.

9. What calms them when they are upset

Gus has always been very fond of radio plays, and finds that listening to those is a good way to calm him down when he’s stressed out. He just closes his eyes and listens and pretends the world doesn’t exist for a bit.

He had a bad habit in his 20s and 30s that prompted him to turn to drinking when he was particularly frazzled, but he’s since calmed down on that front.

10. How they deal with pain

Gus is so so with pain. When it comes to small things, like a paper cut or slicing his finger with a knife or jamming his hand in a drawer, you can bet anything in your pocket that my boy is going to make a *scene* about it to whoever is around. Jelly has called him a big baby on more than one occasion. Oh, woe is him! He’ll be bed ridden for weeks! He won’t survive! Lucky he’s updated his Will!

When it comes to serious things, like emotional pain or chronic pain, Gus is dead silent. He doesn’t like unloading that onto anyone, and he often needs to be prompted *several times* in order to get him to admit that his hip hurts, or that he’s having a bad time. 

Jellylorum

6. Something they lost, but would love to have back

Jellylorum would very much like to have her mother back; she lost her rather young, and only has soft wisps of memory of her, but nothing substantial enough that she would say at least she has memories. She mostly had to rely on what her older brother remembered about their mother, and would ask after her frequently over the years. 

When she was a little older, her father gave her her mother’s ring to wear if she so pleased, and Jelly’s had it on a chain around her neck ever since (that would be something she would be devastated to lose)

7. This character’s favourite character

Jelly likes a spectrum of characters, so it’s really hard for people to predict who she will like in a book or a play because *she doesn’t really have a discernable type*. Some of her favourites include Emilia (Othello), Wilbur (Charlotte’s Web), Emma (Emma) and Sam (LotR). 

8. What kind of car they would drive

Can I be completely predictable and say a mini-van? She has kids to transport around, she needs at least four backseats. She doesn’t have time for fancy cars with like four seats total; where on Earth is she going to store the things she needs to carry around??

9. What calms them when they are upset.

Jelly will often furiously pace back and forth when she’s upset and talk to herself until she’s calmed down. Her father used to call that her “angry spiral” and everyone who knows her knows to just step back and let her sort it out until she feels like she’s gotten a good grasp of what’s happening. 

10. How they deal with pain.

(TW for injury)

When Jelly was a little girl, she broke her pinky finger playing with her friends. I’m talking the finger was hanging there against her hand limp kinda broken. She looked at it for a long time, and then held her hand up and announced that she broke it and had to go to the hospital. Her friends, reasonably, all started freaking out when she showed them. Jelly barely felt anything. 

It happened again in her teens, where she burned her arm banging it in the oven while she was trying to take bread out, and she just held it under cold water after announcing to her brother - who was in the kitchen and *saw it happen* that she burned herself. Jelly has a lot of oven burn marks, tbh. 

(I think her adrenaline runs so high when she gets hurt that it basically puts her in a state of calm almost instantly)

Jelly deals with emotional pain by talking about it. She has seen what keeping your pain inside does to people, and she’s never wanted that. She tries her best to talk about what’s bothering her quickly and early on - so it doesn’t have a chance to fester. She encourages the kittens and her wife and her brother and her father to do the same, but they rarely listen to her. 

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What about your Jellylorum headcannons? 🥺

Of course!

Here and here are some old ones!

-While Asparagus was more of a mama's boy, Jelly has been her daddy's girl since she was a kitten. She used to follow him around everywhere, and would wait up for him when he was out late. She’s the last of the cats that he usually remembers. Jelly’s not sure how she’ll handle the day that he stops recognizing her, too (he already forgets she’s his daughter most days, but never her face), but she doesn’t like to think about it. 

-She's always had an insatiable curiosity about her that would frequently shift in interest, but never in intensity - everything was worth 100% of her attention and she *gave* it 100% of her attention. This is partially where her nosy nature comes from, but Jelly has always had a passion to *learn* and that's not something easily dissuaded (she has also always had a passion to *meddle* but she’s working on it).

-Jelly is that type of queen who is always thinking after other cats’ feelings - sometimes to her own detriment. She's the one in a group that will look at you after you’ve said something and it’s been glossed over and smile and nod or ask you to repeat it so you feel heard. 

-She’s also a number one hype woman! She’s always telling other cats how nice they look or encouraging them to go for things or clapping at impromptu performances. She doesn’t always have the exact right thing to say to be encouraging, but she’s got the spirit, and that makes up for the occasional “Yes, but you look like a very cute asparagus ^_^”

-Jelly has chronic “If I knew you as a kitten, you are still a kitten to me to this day and I will fuss over you” syndrome (and Munkustrap will attest to this). If she did *not* know you as a kitten or babysit you (and she used to babysit literally everyone - she was babysitter’s club level serious) that doesn’t mean you’re safe - you still may be fair game to impromptu babying. 

-She’s a very organized and tidy cat, who likes to operate within a premediated schedule (that she extends to her children), but she will also be, say, distracted from washing dishes because she started blowing soap bubbles with her son, or will be powerless to keep a nap schedule on track because her daughter fell asleep on her and she doesn’t want to move because she loves the cuddles too much. So let’s say she stays within schedule maybe 60% of the time (but she really does try). 

-When she was a very young kitten, she wanted to be a sailor or a first mate on a ship (very vehemently *not* a pirate, thank you) - but she gets sea sick very easy so that dream was quickly put to rest. 

-Jelly is in charge of fostering kittens who come to the Junkyard and runs the nursery den and daycares and she’s the best foster mama <3

-She’s also taken on the duties of being a special education teacher (or the cat equivalent of), and one of her favourite things to do with her kids is yarn crafts and cats cradle (however they are capable of participating; she always has a special job for everyone)

-Sometimes there is this...overwhelming look of sadness in Jelly’s eyes that you can’t quite place, but that hits you squarely in the chest. It’s usually there in a pinch and gone in a flash (since Jelly is the  generally more cheerful of the older cats), but it’s a truly devastating thing to see. 

-There’s a grace about the way she carries herself and moves from spot to spot (you’d swear she was floating), but she’s actually super clumsy with some things, and gets very flustered very easily. (She also may be one half of the matchmaker extraordinaire duo, but she’s a mess as well when it comes to her own romantic trysts - the gal is a hopeless romantic but also an *awkward* hopeless romantic) 

-She and Asparagus used to spend summers as junior stagehands at their parents’ theatre. Jelly still has horror stress stories from those times that would make you anxious by proximity - she loved being behind the scenes, but *man* was it ever difficult to navigate like twenty different diva personalities and an emergency situation every other hour. She prefers spending her time as the choir/vocal teacher for the younger kitten theatre camps!

-This is an old one, but Jelly’s whole family (her father, her brother, her mother, etc) is genetically predisposed to start going grey pretty early in their lives, so Jelly made her peace with greys when she was quite young. She started greying around her muzzle first when she was in her 30s, then started greying throughout her hair in her 40s. She’s completely secure and alright with this - she actually quite likes how they look.

-Jelly’s memory is very sharp - she takes moreso after her father pre-dementia, who also had a steel trap memory. Sometimes she remembers moments down to certain smells being prominent or a thread being on someone’s shoulder. It’s a little spooky. 

-Jelly’s voice is *also* particularly crisp and beautiful (she has *range* darling, all the way up to a whistle register) and she has perfect pitch to boot - she can recognize notes sang or played at her with an incredibly high rate of accuracy.

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MORE SWING DEBUT JELLY!

(Kelliann DeCarlo, 16 Oct 2021, US Tour 6)

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We have a Jelly debut! MORE JELLY!

(Carolyn Bacon, 16 Oct 2021, US Tour 6)

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EVEN MORE JELLY

(CATS US Tour 6, Kayli Jamison as Jellylorum)

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MORE JELLY

(still waiting patiently for even more)

(CATS US Tour 6, Kayli Jamison as Jellylorum)

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A post shared by 劇団四季 (@gekidanshiki_official)

In another installment of the Becoming Jelly series, here is Miki Okudaira from the Fukuoka 2021 production in Japan.

She also played Jellylorum in the Osaka 2016 and Tokyo 2018 productions.

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forgot to use a reference but oh well

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Jellicle Queen Appreciation Month - June 2nd → Jellylorum

Its name is JELLYLORUM And its one idea is to be USEFUL!

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Jemima and Jellylorum in “Grizabella the Glamour Cat”, Nagoya 2000