“The shell must be broken before the bird can fly.”
~~Jennifer Worth, The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times



Hi all,

Sorry for another weird newsletter.  Firstly, I'm still decompressing from all that writing so just wanted to do a debrief of sorts before I move onto the next story.  And then I had a seizure this morning.  So that doesn't go really well with writing newsletters.  I had some of this written beforehand but will try to finish it.  I may have to come back and edit later in the week.

God bless,
Jenni


Decompressing with Some Story Q and A



Do you think the changes St. G's has made to their production of Jesus Christ Superstar would be acceptable in real life?

I started thinking about this in the wake of the "Scamilton" and The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical controversies.  I believe in artists' rights and the need to protect intellectual property.  So, in real life, I'm not sure one could put on a production of JCS like the St. G's one without it causing some issues.  But... I think within the context of the stories, it's all morally ethical because it's being done at the behest of the title character.  And even pretending Joshua wasn't Jesus Christ, I think his identity as a Jewish man would entitle him to challenge some elements of the production as it's usually put forth.  JCS has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past and while I don't experience it in that way, I can see how it could provide fodder to a person who has already bought into anti-Semitism.  I think the main issue is that the high priests are universally depicted as scheming to bring about Jesus' death when that's not supported by the Bible or tradition (Hi, Nicodemus.  Hi, Joseph.)  Further, while virtually all the characters are Jewish, the only ones given Jewish iconography are the high priests aka the problematic ones.  So, to me, it seems infinitely reasonable to do a production that stresses 1. not all the high priests were looking to kill Jesus and 2. Jesus and the apostles were Jewish, too.  I think it would be a bad look for the creators of the show to balk at those changes when they have made millions of dollars off the story of a Middle Eastern Jewish man. 

The other big change is giving the song "Pilate's Dream" to Claudia Pilate who, if she appears at all, is a non-vocal role in JCS.  I don't think that would really be a problem since gender shifts are fairly frequent in musicals.  The narrator in Joseph is sometimes male, sometimes female.  The same can be said of the Leading Player in Pippin.  I even saw a production once where John/Judas in Godspell was played by a woman.  I believe the most recent revival of Company did a lot of swapping, too.  So if completely changing the gender of a character is a fairly established practice, I would think splitting a role between male and female actors would be acceptable... especially when the source material gives the eponymous dream to a woman.  Even if the creators didn't love it, I could see where them speaking out against said change could bring them unwanted backlash.  I mean it's not a great look when you write a musical with only one female part and then gripe about a second female being given one little song when you bent the source material and wrongly gave it to a man, anyway.

The change I do think would maybe be a little questionable is adding the Resurrection because it does really change the tone of the musical.  I might even raise my eye brows a bit if I saw that in real life.  At the same time, I don't think it's really fair to make a musical off of the central story of a major religion and then get mad when members of that religion decide to finish the story.  Hamilton was never about a religious figure so injecting more religion into it than is already there feels really wrong to me.  I think that's substantially different than writing a musical about someone loads of people think is God and then getting irked that they want to portray said character as God.

But, again, within the confines of the story and their reality that Joshua is telling his own story through this musical... I would defer to him over TPTB behind the musical.  Even taking the God element out, I'm just gonna say that if a couple of white guys made a bunch of money off of the story of a Middle Eastern Jewish man and said man was like "I don't like that you edited these parts out thus changing major aspects of my life, I'm changing it back" and the creators didn't say "Sure, sounds good.  Sorry about that"... I would probably boycott them. 

How exactly do principalities work?  It seemed like there was only one per a society but maybe not?

While the concept of principalities is not new, I'm not really drawing on any sources for my particular interpretation of them.  But I think I would say that if you met one principality... well, you met one principality.  In the stories there is a hierarchy which I'm only just now getting into.  But also hierarchy is maybe not the best word since I think two angels could be principalities tied to a place without one being more powerful than another.  For example, I assume there is a principality of North America.  But they are not necessarily more powerful than Wahkan (principality of the Sioux Nation) even though he's only assigned to a portion of people in North America.  A bit more a of a true hierarchy was touched on in "The Lost Sheep" in which Hahana, the principality of Aotearoa, was the supervisor of Edgar, the principality of a particular Māori iwi.  But that wouldn't always be the case. 

I did decide that principalities tied to entire ancient nations and land masses are Watchers.  But principalities tied to newer societies and groups may not necessarily be.  They could be younger.  You may have noticed that no one has yet been designated as the principality of Dyeland/Asteriana.  When that happens, it will definitely be a non-Watcher.  In the grand scheme of things, Asteriana is neither ancient nor does it have a large population so I don't think it requires someone with memories of Creation.

So what's the deal with an angel becoming human?

Yeah... can't say I planned to do that.  But it just seemed right.  And, the more I thought about it, putting Edgar in that position could help resolve an issue I've been dealing with ever since Andrew and JenniAnn really leaned into the anam cara thing.  I don't want to get into it too much just yet but while I've not outright said it in a story yet, my headcanon right now is that angel/human anam caras are in a Renaissance period and will still be rare but more common.  In that case, I would think it would make sense to have someone who specialized in helping people in those relationships... and who better than someone who has been an angel, a demon even, and a human?



This newsletter is dedicated to John Dye and everyone who worked on TBAA which I think did a good job of representing people with disabilities.  I just don't think I give them credit for that enough so wanted to say it now.

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