#bootleg discourse

[personinthepalace]

Lost Footage: Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods in the 1st US National Tour of Legally Blonde the Musical

This is the last 22 mins of the show and the only known video footage of LBB playing Elle in the US tour!

What is of particular interest to me is that this includes LBB's performance of the ballad without the door. I personally believe that there should be a door (a physical barrier) between Elle and Emmett when this song is performed so that Elle can't hear Emmett confess his love for her (the way it was played on Broadway). In the US tour version, Emmett confesses directly to Elle in the room, and she hears him.

However, I think that LBB's performance of this doorless version is quite beautiful. There are two distinct pauses she make during this piece (the music even stops with her). The first time is to touch D.B. Bonds' face (Emmett) with one hand (similar to how she touches Christian Borle's face before escaping into her room in the Broadway version). The second pause is to cradle his face with both of her hands before pulling him into a hug.

Even though I will always be a proponent of having the door during the ballad, I really love LBB's take in this performance. It is truly the only version of it that I like so far, and I actually kinda wish we could see her do this specific performance with Christian Borle.

[sofastuffing]

i have a headache

[dragonkeeper19600]

Palworld players: It's like Pokemon with guns, lol! Other gamers: Hey, these designs look like they were ripped off from Pokemon. Palworld players: NO. THEY'RE TOTALLY ORIGINAL. THIS GAME IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM POKEMON! YOU POKEFREAKS ARE SO TOXIC!

[vonlipvig]

gonna watch cabaret tonight!

[mantisgodsdomain]

"oh, yeah," we think, "we could probably cross this over into Li nked Uni verse if we actually draw out the canon for long enough, smacking different versions of the same character into each other is always fun especially when it has the potential for massive cultural differences and shit like running into things where the thing that has been forgotten has significance beyond the things that are remembered. Hey, we should probably check the comic in order to comply with the six-month rule, we don't think we ever finished-"

We return from the reference images. We have remembered why we didn't finish looking into the base comic.

[arttrampbelle]

Mk11 cons: where do i start? Legit the whole game can be summed up to kindergarteners and dudebros arguing over whos better and its nothing but a dick measuring contest cept all the writers have small micro penis energy and jack shit care for anything but a greedy quick buck and couldn't write a proper fighting game story if their lives depended upon it at gun point.

Mk11 pros: cary hiroyuki tagawa back as shang tsung. That's it.

[hyenabeanz]

why is there a bootleg Ace of Base cd at the top of my Tumblr? What is this? Why is this? What did I miss?

[halfmouse]

Nah-bric is fabric that makes you say, “Nah!” Often used in the production of bootleg plush toys, but not exclusively. Essentially what makes a fabric nah-bric is that nah-bric looks and feels terrible, it’s low-quality, it’s not soft, it doesn’t look how it should, in some cases it might even be hazardous in some way (bootleg plush toys are often toxic and/or a fire hazard), it’s not durable, it’s just really extremely crappy fabric. The essence of nah-bric is that anyone who knows decent fabric will say, “Nah!”

[lobautumny]

Alright, guess this toy's gonna talk about Palworld, because it's seen Discourse™️ start to crop up about how "supporting the game is immoral because it's stealing designs from Pokemon!"

Now look, this toy's not about to sit here and tell you that all of the monster designs in Palworld are completely original and the game isn't, on some level, a bootleg. Obviously a lot of the designs are bootleg pokemon. That's not the point it wants to get at. The point is that it doesn't really matter.

First of all, nobody is being hurt by Palworld having knockoff pokemon among the ranks of its monsters. Game Freak is not some tiny indie developer struggling to make ends meet having their work unfairly co-opted by a big, bad corporation. Pokemon is, in fact, the largest, most profitable media franchise of all time, and Palworld is an indie game. The reason that something like this would hypothetically be scummy/shitty is if someone were taking someone else's work, changing it slightly, claiming it as their own, and thus depriving the original creator of credit/visibility that they should've had. But that literally can't happen here, because everyone already knows what Pokemon is. So unless it gets found that they're stealing designs from fakemon artists or something (there was one alleged instance, but it seems to have just been a coincidence of two different people having the idea of "what if Chimecho but with big, bulky arms?"), Palworld is hurting nobody through having bootleg designs, so the moral argument against the game falls flat.

With that out of the way, there's a much more interesting topic to discuss here: Why is it that when someone's fangame gets C&D'd, everyone immediately jumps to the creator's support, accurately assessing that our copyright system is broken and primarily serves to hurt independent artists, but the moment a developer makes the changes necessary to make sure their fangame doesn't get hit with a C&D (and to allow them to make money off of it), it's suddenly bad and cringe and unoriginal?

The argument that "Palworld is lazy and unoriginal and therefore bad because the monster designs are too similar to Pokemon's designs" is something that this toy would be willing to hear out if Palworld were a turn-based singles-format RPG with similar systems/overall structure to those found in Pokemon games, but, uh. It isn't. It's a third-person shooter with monster-catching mechanics and, like, Factorio-ass automation and base-building, from what this toy can tell. And it doesn't know if the game is good, as someone who has not played it (or even really seen gameplay of it), but it can absolutely tell you that the game's not lazy.

Sure, they could have done more to make the monster designs feel more unique, and that's absolutely a valid criticism for the game. This toy doesn't want to come across like it's saying otherwise. It just wants people to recognize that that's kind of a nitpick when the game is, on a mechanical and genre level, something completely different from anything any Pokemon game ever has been or ever will be, and that nobody would be complaining about laziness or a lack of originality if this came out as a fangame literally just using actual pokemon. In that reality, people would've been popping off at how high-effort it is, actually. And like, even putting money aside, this game literally could not exist as a fangame. A while back, someone uploaded some videos on Youtube showcasing a fangame they were developing that was an FPS where the enemies were pokemon. They got hit with a C&D and their Youtube account was terminated within a couple days of the videos being uploaded. The game was not monetized, and in fact, never even had a download link, to this toy's recollection. Palworld would have suffered the same exact fate if it wasn't its own IP.

[jojotier]

Okay but like I wonder if earth c has a genre of media thats just modern retellings / retellings/ Reimaginings of the events of the game but like the denizens of earth c treat those events like we treat mythology.

Like imagine if you will. Youre like, Dirk or someone right, and you hear about this niche indie folk group called the Machinations or whatever who pretend to be immortal space pirates. theyre supposed to do a lot of tragedies. Not really your scene but whatever.

Then you learn that apparently the bit of the game where you chop your head off and ship it to Jake for a smooch is a bonafide Myth, with all the Trappings of religious ceremony and discourse. Very weird to think about, but again, whatever.

Then you learn that the Machinations have Retold This Story. In song form. And youre like okay wait what bc theres an entire subset of people going wild over it so you listen and the song is a jaunty electroswing deal where a half feral Brittish man pretending to be you sings about needing a lil love to heat up along with the heat of the literal volcano

So you are now realizing theres an entire album of these things reimagining your creation of the entire universe as a 1920s esque bootlegging operation gone horrorterrors with cosmic horror somehow and you gotta wonder. What goes through your head there? Hope no one knows yet? Indifference? Annoyance that the sole rap number on the album was given to Jane and Gumshoe Gunshow ? like what do you as god do when people are writing highly marketable fanfiction about you

[piosplayhouse]

I forgot if I ever posted about this publicly or privately but fully inspired by Harry's mdzs au my opinions on a svsss furry au will always be that

-Shen Yuan is vehemently "not a furry but just likes supporting artists" who was pretty active in closed species circles for having a ridiculous amount of super expensive rare species that he found really cool. Shen Jiu (no relation) is a very controversial popufur who runs in adjacent circles that sy has a huge grudge against after seeing sj bully a bunch of teen furries (binghe) for their half angle half devile wolf ocs, but even sy has to admit that sj's fursona Shen Qingqiu is really really cool. Sj eventually decides to cut ties with the whole community after getting into another new discourse and sells all of his accounts and fursona art to a broker, who then sells it to sy. Sy logs into the account and is about to reveal what happened, but Yue Qingyuan sends him a super long vent/crying dm and sy feels too guilty and awkward to come clean after getting that bombshell and so he ends up impersonating Shen_Qingqiu in the elite closed DeviantArt group Cang Qiong Mtn Sect group

-Binghe is in the group mostly as a punching bag for everyone to make fun of his half angel half demon oc Xin Mo, but sy recognizes him as the kid he saw sj bully despite being super humble and with great potential for art, so he decides to take him under his wing (I think I was imagining sqq as a dutch angel dragon but whatever you believe here you can replace that with an appropriate body part). Sy ends up buying binghe a super rare Sushidog named Zhen Yang and while sy is like well nbd some artist got a paycheck and some kid got a cute new adopt but as we all know Binghe is Irreparably changed Forever from this

-Airplane is a popular furry porn writer known for taking hyperspecific commissions and flagrantly ignoring closed species rules in his smut peddling. Sy hates him for this of course and also because his porn isn't that good, but he still reads all of Airplane's gay original werewolf species porn just because wolves are really cool ok!! Sy isn't even gay he just thinks it's so cool how the three headed demon wolf has a three tiered society and--. Airplane loves to fuck with sy by making sock puppet accounts advertising shoddy bootleg closed species like deltagens instead of primagens or something like that. Also btw airplane has a hamster fursuit but only the head and paws since he can't afford a full one, he just poodles at cons

- Mobei Jun is not a furry but his family owns a hotel chain that regularly hosts furcons. During one of these he was sent by his father to shadow staff addressing a misbehavior complaint against the furcon attendees and accidentally ran into half-fursuited airplane, during which it was somehow love at first sight. Airplane doesn't know that tho he thinks mbj is still mad at him for smoking weed in his hotel room at that con they met at when they were both 17

[futurebird]

*pretends to sting you*

Female Red Velvet wasps, Dasymutilla occidentalis are not aggressive, but if frightened they will sting.

Males can't sting. (In wasps, ants and bees the sting, if present, is a modification of the ovipositor.)

This doesn't stop males from *pretending* to sting.

If restrained my boy will curl his gaster around & sort of dab at you ineffectually? He's doing his best! This turns out to be a smart move for him. Predators (and annoying, curious humans) will freak out and drop him in response!

I like to imagine that on hymenopteran social media there is "discourse" over the ethics and impacts of pretending to sting.

FRVW Female Red Velvet Wasp MRVW Male Red Velvet Wasp

FRVW: Sting fakers put all our lives at risk. As soon as the Lumbering Beasts notice we can't *all* sting we'll all be less safe.

MRVW: Nonsense! Lumbering Beasts just think we missed.

FRVW: You see this shows you know nothing about how stinging even works. You can't "miss."

Hoverfly: I think it's fine.

FRVW: No one asked you! (mumbling) goggle-eyed, bootleg-ass yellow-jacket.

Hoverfly: EXCUSE ME?

[wckhamm]

Bad Batch Favorite Anime

Crosshair - Golgo 13

*ashes his cigarette into an empty tallboy*

“I could do that.”

Echo - Fullmetal Achemist

Multiple amputee fights god and fascism to save his little brother? Sign him the fuck up.

Riza Hawkeye is major waifu material and this is the only thing he and Crosshair enthusiastically agree on. He’s partial to the librarian too, to which Crosshair says “ugh, you would.”

Alphonse is his favorite character and Havoc lowkey reminds him of Fives. Prefers Subs over Dubs but doesn’t make a big deal about it.

Wrecker - Dragon Ball Z

It’s not an anime, it’s a training philosophy. He’s the only dude in the entire GAR that looks forward to high-gravity planets. Gohan is his favorite character and he cried big manly tears when Piccolo died.

Tech

The perfect anime will not exist until he and his discord server painstakingly animate and voice a Touhou Bootleg.

Phee thinks he’d like the Fate series but so far, no dice. Wrecker tells her not to bother because he’ll make her watch it in straight Japanese.

Omega - Inuyasha

Came for the badass ladies, stayed for The Discourse™️. Thinks Kagome should be legally allowed to beat Inuyasha with a sack of hammers. Has a big crush on both Sango and Kouga and isn’t sure what that says about her. Regularly gets bodied on the forums for sticking up for Kikyo. Kohaku and Kagura are two of her favorite characters.

Hunter - The Way of the Househusband

He’s not much of a TV guy and only watched it because it was already on, but he secretly got really into it.

He sneaks vegetables into Tech and Crosshair’s food. Mends Lula when everyone’s sleeping. Couponing. Retractable Clothesline. Can slice a cabbage like you wouldn’t believe. Echo is a bit bewildered by this sudden change of heart but is honestly just glad the Marauder doesn’t smell like feet and balls anymore.

[supercantaloupe]

being a primarily Musicals guy getting more into Opera as of late, it really makes me kinda disappointed seeing how much One Single Production of a musical (typically its original broadway or occasionally west end run) becomes The definitive version of the show. and analysis of the show then tends to treat production and text as inseparable or even identical

like man. opera ppl...y'all have it so good...so many wildly different productions of the same (popular) operas are available to watch filmed, or at your local opera company. i can google don giovanni and find like 10 completely different productions at the click of a button, and none of them are Inherently more the "right" or "wrong" way of being don giovanni. i can have my own opinions on which ones i think work best (and boy do i), but the fact that so many different versions of the same show exist at all is a sign that you CAN have different interpretations of the same text -- and they're all still the same opera, fundamentally. production ≠ text ≠ the whole show

but with musicals i very much feel like, because of how The Industry works, One Production easily becomes The definitive vision of the show. certainly this has to do with the scarcity of filmed musicals when compared to opera (along with bootleg culture + the broader trouble of accessibility in musicals), as well as the (over)prevalence of replica productions, and i think also the age of most musicals is much younger than most operas so there's less time for new productions to be made let alone become popular. like i don't think it's a coincidence that oklahoma!, arguably the oldest true book musical, is the only musical i can think of where a radically nonreplica production gained such popularity and acclaim that it challenges the previous (Very well established!) interpretation of the text as the Definitive version of the show for many audience members. and because of that, it's one of the only shows where the analysis and discourse of the show makes a clear(ish) distinction between the text and the production itself. the vast majority of musicals do not receive the same treatment

it kinda bums me out knowing that musical ppl don't get the same exposure to new visions of a text outside the dominant broadway/west end blockbuster productions. i know regional theater exists and by gd do i feel like it is underrated in its importance to the development of theater literacy in audiences but unfortunately regional productions only VERY rarely get publicized outside of their regions, and therefore can't meaningfully contribute to conversations about a particular musical the same way a broadway production can.

idk i've Long felt that the way musicals become defined by a single production is a fault both of the industry and of the fandoms, and i've been a snob about that here for years. but getting more into opera lately has made me realize just how prevalent the issue is, bc opera Does Not operate the same way.

[thatonenerdyloser]

i can’t believe i relogged into my tumblr FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL to talk about be more chill but here we go.

Seeing modern be more chill fans literally hurts me, and so I’m commenting on so much of the discourse.

1. “The bootleg”: A full bootleg of the two rivers version of be more chill did exist. I believe it was copyright stricken and wiped from the internet around the time be more chill broadway was in the works. Now it’s considered lost media, but I can absolutely without a doubt promise you that a bootleg did exist at one point. During 2019, many musical bootlegs were wiped from the internet. It was part of the copyright restrictions on youtube changing. Be more chill is unfortunately one of the the ones that never got reuploaded but I can without a doubt confirm that be more chill two rivers bootleg did exist.

2. “Will Roland”: I am not a will roland liker but it’s important to actually understand the history of why Will Roland was in be more chill in the first place. Will Roland had just finished his run in the obc of dear evan hansen. Because be more chill had a similar fanbase as dear evan hansen and will roland had become so popular during his run on dear evan hansen, joe thought that will roland would help promote bmc bway more than will connonly would. You see that a lot of the original cast from two rivers who were deemed less popular were replaced. Will Connonly himself said he would have loved to stay with be more chill. I believe be more chill broadway to be the case of a bad telephone game. The switch of jeremy being a selfish horny teenage boy in the book to a clearly neurodivergent cute queer coded character on broadway is horrifically insane to me. But be more chill broadway, and will roland, cared more about what sold than about artistic integrity. Which is why so many og bmc fans hate bmc broadway.

Anyway I have more to say on be more chill but those were the discourse I saw when I opened tumblr to see why yall were hating on assmuncher27.

[gothicprep]

so i was watching a babish video on my laptop where he rates jarred pasta sauces. my roomie sits next to me because she thinks, like sauce discourse is interesting. he moved onto carbone sauce and said something about it being $13. it's $7.50 where i live. it's unironically cheaper than it is on amazon. I said something about this.

ngl i've been buying my nonperishable groceries in pennsylvania when i'm there and basically bootlegging them to dc because fuck the prices here. mel, my roomie, got animated when i told her about this, and asked, "if i throw down some money, can your wife buy us groceries?"

wife's driving to dc tomorrow. and it's no skin off our asses, really. i'm just a bit concerned that i created a monster.