#i think this idea is really good

[fitzrove]

Anastasia rewrite

Today at work I listened to In the Dark of the Night, a song I first became obsessed with at like age 12, roughly 85 times on repeat. I have become enlightened. Spoilers for the Anastasia stage show!

this is very stupid on purpose

Ok so you know how the plot of the Anastasia musical doesn't actually make a lot of sense (I'm specifically thinking of the final confrontation between Gleb and Anya - his change of heart happens so suddenly and isn't explored properly), and despite the creatives' stated goal of making the story more realistic, it... really isn't? If the original had Rasputin being literally cartoon evil (he is a cartoon villain), communism is the cartoon evil in the show. I say we put back in more of the other kind of cartoon evil... I say we bring back Rasputin.

So, okay. Let's leave Act 1 for the most part literally as is. Journey to the Past is ending, thundering applause. BUT! Instead of the curtain... cut back to Gleb, who just made a vow to find Anastasia. But Paris is a big city... it'll be tough to find her there, what if he doesn't even get admitted to the upper-class clubs because of his awkward fashion sense? So, he's been consulting some occult books... even though the new regime has no time for fairytales, he has one in his hands right now, and the best way to fight a fairytale is with a dark counterpart.

[THE ENTRANCE TO A CAVE, night. GLEB is doing some kind of occult ritual idk maybe the lighting and projections people can make this look good and not silly. He seems deep in concentration until A RUSTLING SOUND makes him flinch. He draws out his gun and points it, but there's no-one there, only his own shadow. He warily begins to lower the gun, but then THE RUSTLE happens again. Out of the corner of his eye, movement. He FIRES! The bullet hits the stone wall and bounces off with a pathetic crackly click; the gunshot echoes within the empty space. His heart drums in his ears. And then, slowly but surely, something creeps into the circle of candlelight...

RASPUTIN [raspily]

Ha ha ha! It's been a while since I've had visitors.

RASPUTIN is not a cartoon character so we can't literally have his body parts falling off... but since this is (presumably) a Broadway musical, he can be a hottie. Maybe the cloak he's wearing is so ragged that we see a bit of chest idk.

GLEB

You're supposed to be dead.

RASPUTIN [hissing]

Many people who should be dead are still alive... and many people who would be better off alive have died.

GLEB flinches away from RASPUTIN's putrid breath as he leans closer to whisper his lines.

GLEB

That's why I've come. I know you have a grudge with the Romanovs.

RASPUTIN

What use is a grudge like that for me now... I rot, they rot. I can be content with that.

GLEB

There are rumors afoot. Rumors that my comrades and I find very concerning. They say that one of them may be still alive - the princess Anastasia.

RASPUTIN

The girl?!

THUNDER STRIKES, and a millisecond after that, lightning erupts, flashing over the entire stage and audience. RASPUTIN seethes; we can see that this has made him reconsider his entire worldview.

GLEB

Will you help me finish what was started, comrade?

RASPUTIN

I am comrade to no-one! I am... THE GREAT RASPUTIN!

[A dark and booming, lushly orchestral version of IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT begins to play. The lyrics remain unaltered save for one line - "tie my dash and a dash of cologne for that smell" becomes "I shall help you but first I must settle a score". During the song, RASPUTIN makes stuff blow up etc (we need the lighting ppl to do this). For the most of the song he is backed up by an invisible ghostly choir: the lines that the super deep-voiced bug has in the original ("find her / doom her") are given to GLEB, who's actively trying to hide that he's vaguely uncomfortable with the supernatural happenings around him. However, this changes with...]

RASPUTIN

COME, MY MINIONS! RISE FOR YOUR MASTER!

[Slowly, as theatre smoke pours in, ZOMBIE ROMANOVS and OTHER PEOPLE EXECUTED BY THE BOLSHEVIKS enter. RASPUTIN has reanimated them and is puppeteering them like some sort of freaky camp necromancer. GLEB, for a moment, is surrounded by the faces of people he thought he'd never see again - not outside of his frequent yet vivid nightmares - and has to brace himself.]

RASPUTIN

LET YOUR EVIL SHINE!

ENSEMBLE

IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT, IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT!

RASPUTIN

FIND HER NOW, YES, GO EVER FASTER

ENSEMBLE

IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT, IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT, IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT!

RASPUTIN

SHE'LL BE MINE!!!!!

[During the last line, GLEB casts a quick, wary look at RASPUTIN - RASPUTIN is too lost in his evil glee to notice. After the line - BLACKOUT. End Act 1.]

The thing about Anastasia is that it's a pretty short musical, running just a bit over two hours without the intermission. So we could totally keep every number in act 2 but just add a bunch of Gleb and Rasputin scenes. Obviously they're going to have an awkward time travelling to Paris together... they DEFINITELY won't be admitted into the Neva Club because Rasputin's fashion sense is even worse than Gleb's, but they do some occult magic and finally manage to come face to face with Anya. And in the confrontation, it's actually Anya and Gleb teaming off to fight off Rasputin and his army of evil zombies... Maybe the other characters get a swing at it too, I think maybe the zombies should try to take over all of Paris to add some drama? Rasputin definitely gets a hammy author vehicle line like YOU WANTED THE PAST TO RETURN... HERE IT IS!!!!

In the end Rasputin is defeated and Gleb, having learned not to make deals with the devil, agrees to leave Anya alone and never speak of this ordeal to anyone. I think this makes his character motivations make a bit more sense, as bonding with Anya by fighting Rasputin and the evil zombies would provide a more thorough reason for him to go back on his convictions and have such a sudden change of heart

And then every scene after the confrontation (is that called the "Still" reprise?) can play out exactly as they do in the original XD

[wasyago]

various tango doodles

[helloilikepurple]

DC X DP - Mirrors

Did Danny want to live in Gotham? No, of course not. Did he have a choice? Nope. When does he ever?

Now, he may be technically homeless, but he's also technically dead, so human laws technically don't apply to him. So, naturally, he pics out an empty mansion so big even if the owners were to come home, the chances they'd run into each other would be really low, and settles in.

This 'mansion' happens to be Drake Manor. Look, Danny lived in nowhere Illinois and kinda had his hands full dealing with ghosts, a double life, bullies, and being actively hunted. He doesn’t know much about celebrities. If you tell him the name of someone super famous, it might sound vaguely familiar, but that's about it. What he knew was superheroes and vigilantes (some of them, okay, give him a break). That's about it.

So the name Drake in connection with Gotham didn't ring any alarm bells. He did some surface level research: the Drakes are dead, survived by their only child, Timothy Drake-Wayne, who now owns their house but was adopted by some other super rich guy called Bruce Wayne and doesn't live in it, leaving it empty for the foreseeable future.

It was the perfect place!

Danny didn't explore much, partly because he didn't care to and partly because he was too tired to from healing. He cleaned up after himself, used only his bedroom (chosen for being tucked way back and out of the way), the attached bathroom, and the theatre occasionally as a treat. He lived off of the provisions packed for him, ectoplasm and water from the sink.

Cut to, few weeks in.

Danny's got a new routine, he's taken his stitches out, and is still super fucked up, but a lot better than when he arrived. He hasn't been outside since he arrived, but ghosts don't need Vitamin D anyway. Is he slightly depressed? Maybe. But he's also dead, so, bigger priorities.

Tim is looking through his stuff for something or other, and it occurs to him he probably left it next door. He hasn't been to Drake Manor in months, but he sort of really needs this thing, so he sucks it up and borrows a car because like hell is he walking the several miles from this front door to that one.

He goes to his old bedroom, opens the door, and comes face-to-face with himself.

And Danny doesn't know what he's supposed to do in this situation.

Listen, Danny doesn't always make the best decision in the moment. It's a very normal flaw to have! So he tells who can only be Timothy Drake-Wayne himself when asked, that his name is Timothy Drake, and this is his house, and, actually, who are you and how did you get in?

This causes Tim to assume Danny is himself from another dimension who he accidentally dragged to his dimension by messing with the Time Stream to get Bruce back. Danny continues to accidently fuel this misunderstanding without meaning to.

(This is not helped by the fact that a DNA test doesn't disprove this. Danny's DNA is corrupted, but what Tim does get is identical to himself. This is how Danny finds out he was adopted, and how Tim, much later when misunderstandings are cleared, meets the identical twin brother he never knew he had.)

[nibbelraz]

A writer and His number one fan hater

[h0nkshroom]

IM THE ARTIST AND I GET TO DECIDE IF MY LAMB IS TRANS OR NOT ❗❗❗

Bonus

[remxedmoon]

boo! old woman jumpscare

greyscale vers below!

[peachy-scars]

You ever wonder why Warriors just has costumes of the others ?

[lunacias]

these are the silt verses, and I name our disciples thus

[musubiki]

.🖤🔄🤍.

[mummer]

jace being the first one to jump to call valyrian exceptionalism a farce ties so well into his bastard identity and the fact that he’s had to baldly lie about himself for his entire life to fit the image of the perfect heir…. like of course he would understand that better than anyone. people have died to protect that lie, his lie! rhaenyra telling him this garbled incoherent nonsense prophecy like it changes anything about what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. little normcore guy in targ family hell beating down his bad rebellious thoughts with a hammer every morning trying to reconvince himself of the lie, of the idea he could be the perfect shining promised prince but he knows something is Wrong. a totally mundane trivial death at the centre of the spiral. quentyn voice i must be the hero the hero never dies.

[robosuta]

Everyone moved on but I'm still stuck at Hobie being mayday's #1 enabler

[canisalbus]

Building on the favourite animal ask, another Very Important Question: favourite PREHISTORIC animal? And why? (I've always loved gorgonopsids and pterosaurs like anurognathus, but a new favourite is aquilolamma the eagle shark. They're just very cute).

I feel like my top favorites are pretty pedestrian, but I like prehistoric deer a lot!

Megaloceros giganteus aka Irish elk

Sinomegaceros ordosianus & Sinomegaceros yabei

Eucladoceros dicranios

Cervalces scotti

[civetside]

the doodles i doodled while i listened to the nona audio book babay! (plus my favorite pyrrha dve quotes)

[hotluncheddie]

Thinking about Eddie opening the door to Steve for their first date.

His hair is combed back with water, his bangs parted to the side and curls slicked back away from his face, but the waves are still unruly at the back of his head. He’s wearing an old denim shirt of Wayne’s, buttons done up all the way and it’s tucked into his jeans. No handcuff belt and his sneakers look freshly cleaned. He’s clutching wildflowers in his fist, eyes wide and scared. He bounces on his toes as his mouth fights against his grin.

Steve can’t believe what he’s seeing. He’s never been so exited for a date before. He’s never had a date look so exited to see him. He spins his keys on his finger, once, twice; a nervous habit.

‘Yo-you look, uh, really nice.’ He stammers, and watches Eddie’s nervous smile bloom.

[phoenixcatch7]

Dp x dc twin au where Danny and Damian were in fact conjoined/siamese twins, but the most dangerous type - one head, two bodies.

Their early removal from talia being because their shape would not have allowed for natural birth, they were written off but talia begged for the chance to send them off in the lazarus pit.

By some bizarre miracle, before she turned to leave, two small bodies bobbed to the surface - identical in every way, except for the eyes. The previous blue eyes now split in two, one left, one right, and the new eyes, pit created, a bright green.

She took her child, her two children, and together, they survived.

Being removed prematurely, their early years were tough, but soon they blossomed into promising heirs for the league. In sync with every step, the closest of brothers, the league was certain the old fairy tale of twins being telepathic had been granted by the pit that separated them, the remnants of being born as one mind, one brain, one skull.

But then Danny had to flee, and leave his other half behind. Stretched by distance for the first time, the bond grew thin and stretched, and Damian grieved his brother as dead. When he started being sent on public missions, he hid his distinctive heterochromia, choosing the green in memory of the pit that had given him and his brother life.

Danny, hiding his pit aura in the ocean's worth that was Amity park, took to blue, the colour that he and Damian were born with.

Damian moves to Gotham, and continues to mourn his brother as dead, right until one day when he is twelve, when he learns what the death of your other half truly feels like.

-

Their reunion is a thing of family legend. Violence runs hot in both bloodlines, ghosts are highly emotional and prone to fighting a the drop of a hat for bonding, playing, testing, every reason under the green sun. Their training and play often consisted of friendly spars, competitive spars, furious spars, venting spars. Both have been exposed to unhealthy amounts of ecto since before their birth.

There is a long, long minute of staring, before they rip themselves away and lunge at each other like wolves.

The bat family are horrified by their brutally efficient youngest suddenly barreling towards a clone (?) and trying to claw his throat open with his bare hands while openly sobbing.

It ends with them wrapped around each other crying into the others shoulder as their minds finally meet again and relax from the painful stretch for the first time in years.

But nobody else has any idea what to do.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 7: Time moves sideways

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