Chaos Attraction

Pirates and Forests

2020-06-05, 10:46 p.m.

Tonight I dreamed we were having a zombie apocalypse. Hasan Minhaj, BigBoss, my coworker Hannah were all in this for ... some reason. It was really depressing and no one could get out of town. I was still tired as heck but wanted the damn dream to END and it would NOT as long as I kept trying to sleep, so I had to give up and wake up to make it end. Grrrr. GOD, I HATE DREAMS.

I did wake up to find a text from my shrink, a photo of herself in full on face shield/masks/protective gear. SHE'S ALIVE! Whew! On a related note, I will give my boss credit for one thing: she did send me the resources to the giant org's counseling service since I said I hadn't been able to get therapy for a while. So there is that, at least.

I did get a SUPER complimentary Slack message from one fellow in another office saying that everyone there raves about me and if there's anything they can do to help me out... I thought about asking for a job if they need to hire again even though I am not particularly into their office (I find what they do confusing), but at least it'd be nice people who like me...but well, everyone has hiring issues these days, so I didn't say that. Took a screenshot though!

Other than that, I spent all day at work writing emails. Told Coworker Sarah what went down, she made a face at that. She has applied for the job, so good luck to her. God knows she'll do better here than I do. Finished the name proofing project. I wrote an apology email to the coworker I insulted (according to my supervisors--though I would never intentionally hurt her!), she was nice and understanding and actually ah, got that I was stressed out. Thank you.

We had Yarn Club at lunch and people told me that they loved the links I sent out for the week on the mailing list--i.e. all cute animals and aquarium stuff. I played Show and Tell at lunch and showed projects I had around the house to people. Dawn has requested a stuffed dachshund for her birthday, so we'll have to figure out which one she wants of the available patterns.

And I got to leave early, huzzah. OUTTA HEAH.............. by which I mean, moving to the other end of the kitchen table for the weekend.


I "left" work early tonight to watch Heart of Oak, (cast list here),the opening show of the Femme Fatale Play Festival. I loved it very much. I don't quite think I fit the casting of it and that's fine, but man, I loved the plot and characters. The words "runaway princess turns pirate and her designated fiance thinks that's AWESOME and runs off to join the pirate crew" delighted me no end (hey, they asked in the talkback what sold you).

The plot: Princess Alvida of Sweden ran off with various castle servants and they all became a pirate crew on the Heart of Oak, which sounds delightful. I said in the talkback to the playwright that I wanted a prequel to see how they got there. SO BADLY I WANT THIS. However, when we come in, the ship is at the point of mutiny. After killing a guy who tried to surrender, Alvida now thinks that being a scary pirate who's feared is who she was meant to be, and she's gotten MUCH less pleasant to deal with, especially when some of the crew want to leave the ship and Alvida secretly plans to shoot all deserters. Her first mate, Johanna, who is sorta-secretly in love with her (well, it's obvious to everyone but Alvida, who seems a little too self-absorbed to be into loving anyone in general), finds this out and is trying to dissuade her, but that's not going well. It's even more awkward when Johanna's sister Eva is determined to leave the ship and Johanna won't spit out WHY she says it's a bad idea to try to leave.

Meanwhile, Alvida's designated fiance Prince Alfred of Denmark absolutely LOVES the stories he's heard about Alvida being a badass pirate queen and he thinks he's in love with her from the stories alone (though he does admit he needs to find out what she's like in person) and runs away to join her. I really did like his character (and the actor's cute too) and he managed to work well in a crew of ladies. Alvida is quite the hardass--she's a little dubious to me, but then again, we're meeting her during her "kinda turning into an asshole, drunk on power" stage of life rather than at her most charismatic. Johanna is very endearing in her love/conflict for someone who might not be worth it. And I appreciated how Alvida realizes that she's heading towards the edge and Alfred says he won't let her go over the edge.

(Note: for those of you hoping for lesbian romance, not so much. It seems to be one-sided/conflicted on Johanna's side and oblivious/kinda self-absorbed on Alvida's. Plus as the playwright pointed out, a princess ending up with her seamstress wasn't likely given the situation/times of piracy.)

I super recommend seeing this show if you ever can, in any form you can see it, if you ever get the opportunity. I hope the playwright gets it into other places for that since this was a one time Zoom meeting show that wasn't recorded. I don't know if our world will ever get back to the point where we can have pirate fighting on a stage again (god, I hope), but even without standardized pirate fighting it was great fun. Most of the cast Just Happened to have swords around the house to wave around, or to quote the director, "Somehow, a bunch of theater people had swords."

Lines I wrote down from the show:

"So now I'm chasing the stories and being stupidly optimistic."--Alfred on hoping he can love in-the-flesh Alvida.

"The finest women I know." -Alvida
"They put you in the brig." -Alfred

"If she wanted to shoot me, she would have shot me." -Eva

"You had the legend I came looking for, you're so much better. And so much worse." -Alfred after meeting Alvida

"I've been overthrown and tossed into the brig, and rightly so." -Alvida, coming off her power high and back to her senses.

"I was going to kill two members of my own crew. I had my reasons....I wanted to be feared. I thought that was what I was supposed to be." -Alvida

I didn't get the whole line down, but Alvida said something about how she goes too far and can't tell when she's about to fall off the edge, and Alfred said he wouldn't let her fall. D'awww. I'm not sure about them as a romance per se (like I said, Alvida is self-absorbed and she's kinda barely met him, I think), but I really liked Alfred as a person and wished him all the best. What a supportive, adventure-wanting guy!

There's also a amusing line in which Johanna says something like "You're the most brilliant, passionate, dangerous..." and Alfred is all, "That about covers that."

Quotes I wrote down from the talkback (I'm quoting people's character names):

* “weird hybrid between film and theater.” -the director
* “I want to know what makes my character so MEAN all the time.” -Liv
* When asked what drew them to the role, Alvida and Sibyl broke out their swords and guns.
* “I’m just impressed the we pulled off a whole pirate crew in our homes.” -the director
* “She’s my personal seamstress, she probably sees me naked a lot.” -Alvida
* “Whatever happens at sea stays at sea.” -unknown
* After someone referred to Alvida as a “mascot,” she said, “I was thinking of letting you all come back to Sweden to see your families, but now? No.”


After that, I rehearsed reading “All’s Well That Ends Well” with Coleman. We hung out for three hours and it was AMAZING. Turns out that she is also a member of Team Unicorn in that she has random ones around her house (I fished up the ones I had on the table), she also keeps a Christmas tree up all year round (I fished up my entire Christmas tree collection), and she declared, “Oh, we’re the same person!” That was adorable. This is pretty similar as to how I hit it off with Redhead Sarah and I LOVE IT!!!!!!!! Very quick hitting it off with someone delights me no end. (Oh, speaking of, did get a brief email from Redhead Sarah saying she loves and misses me.)

On a less fun note, Robert hasn’t signed up for this week’s show, which is not usual for him. Coleman said that he’s gotten completely depressed over the news events of this week, it sounded rather Blue Screen Of Death levels of the special brain hell. She said she tried to talk him into feeling better for FIVE HOURS and got nowhere. That’s really concerning and sad.

I know I’m not as befucked mentally from that shit as everyone else is right now, since (a) I’m a shitty white lady, (b) I’m literally not experiencing any of this IRL by seeing or going to protests, just through the computer, and (c) I am having my own damn mental crisis going on already individually this week. I talked about (c) with her some and she said something about “the divine you vs. the stories in your head,” which is a good point. At this point I’d be feeling better about myself except for the fact that the two people in charge of keeping me alive can’t stand me and I piss them off all the time, and that’s dangerous. But really, what it boils down to is, I’m not what they want in the job and the job has changed into more and more of a job I don’t fit with or want, but I can’t move on even though I’ve needed to for 8 years. We’re just gonna be semi-unhappily married and that’s it.

Moving off that topic...I found myself getting thrown when she was talking about crushes/people she’s had feelings for and whatnot and mentioned someone she called “da Vinci Scott,” because he reminds her of da Vinci. And I was all, THERE’S THAT NAME AGAIN, IT KEEPS FOLLOWING ME AROUND.* And then she mentioned going with this guy to Robert’s house and I was all, wait, what, is this the same Scott? No, it was not, “da Vinci Scott” is also in LA, they were just visiting NorCal for work at the time.

* I was amused at during Yet Another Pick-A-Card Reading, someone has a custom card deck with a card that says, “Your name is following me everywhere!” That was supposedly happening to him rather than me, but fucking seriously, his name comes up like 4-6 times a day under normal browsing the Internet circumstances, and now this?

So yeah, I ended up spilling the beans about the whole thing, though I did say that Robert’s figured it out, I just haven’t been able to talk to him about it or spit it out because he knows him. She thinks I should just talk to him already. I said that I feel like I have to treat him like a scared deer and she said, “a deer just wants a safe forest, so be his forest.” I think that is the sort of thing that was happening before....just not at all sure how to do that when there’s no other trees for him to hide behind and all that.

After finally going to bed, I had a realization: I’d grumbled that he’s ignored anything I’ve emailed to the Winters group about performing opportunities, shows, my birthday, what have you. None of that has been intended for just him, mind you, I am delighted to get any interest from anybody at this point so we can keep up connections, and I’m happy that it’s slowly working better with others at least. That way I can see folks at shows, we have reasons to chat, etc. Props go out to those I’ve heard from, big time.

But with regards to him, I can’t help but think, “Look, dude, I AM TRYING TO FIND YOU GROUP ACTIVITIES HERE so we can see each other in a way you consider safe when there’s enough people around. You don’t want to have me around one-on-one except for the rare moment where you’re not feeling afraid about it, so I’m trying to come up with something, but you won’t go for it.” Which is the problem with texting: I don’t have a forest of people for him to hide in on a group text and I just don’t feel like he’s okay with talking with me one-on-one most of the time either. Too, I dunno what, intimidating or getting too close when he's not ready yet, or whatever. Admittedly, I’m sure work/lack of Internet is a factor at least a good chunk of the time, and also I am being a whiny selfish brat who needs to shut her trap and accept that dudes need their space and all that.

(But seriously, this whole thing is dumb and I should give it up if "too scared to be around me even though he likes me" is a fucking factor of life. Well, was.)

Then I realized what with the forest comment that oh yeah, he wouldn’t go to karaoke if he was going to be alone or mostly alone or if not enough of our friend group was there, then he’d run for it. Clearly, anything that isn’t Linda sending an invite has too many strangers involved for him to want to join in, even if I and Robert are involved. That explains that, at least (sigh). I still can’t solve the problem of “He needs a forest of people in order to feel comfortable enough to poke his head out,” especially when the only option is virtually now. But it’s good to have an insight, at least.

I definitely hope I get to talk to Coleman more in the future. We had great fun doing this. I love this whole “making new theater friends in other locations” thing big time. Silver linings of coronavirus, y’all.


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