Author: Caroline Nations

I’ve talked before on how much I love listening to musicals. I have always loved many different kinds of musicals, but I have presented myself with a question: what musicals are my top five favorites? Well, here it is: my top five musicals, listed by my person opinions on music and plot. Y’know, the usual.

#5. Phantom of the Opera

“Phantom of the Opera” is probably the first musical I ever listened to. My dad played it in the car when we went on long trips in the car. I watched the movie, and I must say, to this day, it’s still one of my favorite movies to this day. Years later, I saw the musical on theater in Texas. It was an amazing experience. Even so, I find the music to be a little bit repetitive at times. The sanme theme is used over and over again, and honestly, I could go without hearing “Phantom of the opera” repeated about fifty times throughout the whole thing. Overall, if the acting is good, the performance can be amazing.

#4: Les Miserables

Ah yes, Les Mis. One of the best musicals out there. The music is fantasic, and the lyrics are very well written. The plot is interesting, and it keeps my attention for a long time. However, I do have my gripes about the movie production of it, however. Hugh Jackman wasn’t the best singer at this time, and his production is lackluster at best. Anne Hathaway did a very good job, however, and the rest of the cast does well with their performances.

#3: Hamilton

You all knew it was coming. Hamilton was an excellent musical, and it still is. Lin-Manuel Miranda did an excellent job writing the score, and did an excellent performance as Alexander Hamilton. I can proudly say that I learned the entirety of “Guns and Ships,” as well, which is one of the fastest songs on the album. I still listen to it, four years later.  Overall, a fantasic musical, and a fantasic soundtrack. However, some of the lyrics are still repetitive, and it being a fatastic production overall doesn’t excuse this. And may I add, I’m still sad the original cast stopped performing after just a year. I wish I could have some day seen Daveed Diggs fly across the stage as Lafyette as Washington chews out Hamilton…. okay I’ll stop gushing now. I’m just very partial to the original actors. And really… don’t get me started on the mixtape. Some may call it a fantasic addition, I personally do not care for it. I don’t find any of the songs to have any of the original impact the songs they were based off of did, espeically the rendition of “Hurricane,” if you can even call it that once it’s said and done.

#2: Be More Chill

Now, if you’ve been around me, you’ve probably heard me gush about Be More Chill before. Be More Chill is a great musical, and you can’t change my mind. I mean, who else would have come up with the concept of a teenager taking a pill that has a super-computer inside that implants itself in his brain and directs him on how to act cool, ultimately leading to him abandoning his best friend in pursuit of the girl of his dreams, while the Squip tries to take over his entire school, and then he has to put an end to the Squip’s deeds? No one. No one would have come up with that. I will admit, though… “The Pants Song” is a little lacking overall, but I can excuse it for an overall great album.

#1: Something Rotten

Now come on. What else did you expect for me to put as #1 on my list? Something Rotten is by far  one of the most interesting musicals I have ever listened to. Having listened to several different musicals, I can definitely say that Something Rotten stands out as the most original and most interesting when it comes to it’s songs and overall performance. I could go on for days about the soundtrack, the silliness of the dialogue, the awesome historical accuracy… but I won’t. Becuase I’m about to exceed my word count.

So those are my top five favorite musicals! If you don’t agree, that’s completely fine with me, since these are mostly opinion based. Thank you for taking the time to read over this list!

I think I may have an addiciton. Not to a drug, or a hobby. No, I have an addiction to a beverage. It’s tea.

Seriously, I don’t know why I love tea as much as I do. It’s literally one of the only things I will drink, besides water and the occasional Sprite. Hot tea, cold tea, strawberry tea- in my mind, it’s all fair game. I love to slurp that dirty leaf juice.

I usually drink tea before I go to bed. It helps calm me down, and gets me in a sleepy mood. I also drink tea during some of my literary classes- I just finished a cup a minute or so ago.

Do I have a caffeine addiction? I don’t think so, becasue I don’t really drink tea for the caffeine. I drink it for the *~flavor~* alone, honestly.

Some tea tastes like normal tea. It’s a special flavor, that leaf water from the gods. Just the right amount of a tang, mixed with sugar, but not too much, or else it becomes almost like syrup.

Some tea has a fruit flavor added to it. Like tea with lemonade- that’s pretty good. Or tea with any sort of tangy fruit, really. I don’t usually drink it all that often, but when I do, it is a gift. 

—

Hot tea. Let’s talk about it. Oh my god. 

I’ve been drinking hot tea longer than I have cold tea. My parents would make it whenever I had a sore throat- and because of allergies, I had a sore throat a lot. Hot tea with honey was, and still is, a favorite of mine. I don’t think my childhood would be the same if I had never experienced the glory that is hot tea. 

I know what you’re thinking: “wow, you’re really obsessed with hot tea.” And you’re completely right. I am obsessed with it. Maybe a little too much, if I’m being honest. But really, what harm am I doing?

I don’t put a lot of honey in my tea these days, because one time I got sick after I had put some in my tea, so these days I mostly stick to my good old friend sugar. Sugar is a friend. He really is sweet. 

Okay I’ll stop with the personification now. Maybe. 

What was the point of this blog? To tell of my love for tea. Did I do that? I like to think that I did, at least partially. If you take anything away, let it be this: 

I love the dirty leaf juice that is tea.

The most sought after form of game these days are Indie games. What are Indie games? Indie games are games that aren’t published by a company like Nintendo, SEGA, Sony, or Activision. Famous Indie titles include: “Undertale,” created by Toby Fox (who also worked on Homestuck); the Five Nights at Freddy’s games, created by Scott Cawthon and currently include seven main series games, a spinoff game, three story books, a game guide book, and an activity book; and “Bendy and the Ink Machine,” created by a person known only as theMeatley.

Well, things are starting to get interesting for such Indie titles.

Recently, a game came out on the app store called “Granny.” It’s a horror game that follows a simple enough story line- you are trapped with an old woman known as Granny, and you have to escape within five days or you lose the game. Actually, it sounds a lot like FNaF… but that’s not the point.

Well, during a recent update, they decided to add more plot. Yay.

This same group of developers also developed a game a few years ago about a female Slenderman, and it was just another survival horror game. So what does that game have to do with Granny? Well, during the game, if you put a teddy bear into a cradle that can be found in one room, during the end credits, Granny can be seen with the bear, and Slenderwoman (that’s not what she’s called but I don’t know what else to call her, really) can be seen standing behind her.

Well, you can imagine how people reacted. They started clue hunting. Were the two characters connected? Was the Granny Slenderwoman’s mother, or grandmother? HOW WERE THEY CONNECTED?!

Five Nights at Freddy’s was the first game to use this sort of storytelling. When you played the game, you could find newspaper clippings scattered throughout the building that alluded to a case that happened at the restaurant: five kids went missing, and the place was shut down becasue the animatronics were “oozing.” People began to dive into the lore, and of course, a series of (in my opinion) lore-heavy games with mediocre mechanics was born.

Why do I bring up FNaF? Well, because of this technique, many Indie games after it used this same method to tell a story: they had simple mechanics, and hidden within the game, you found bits and pieces of lore, and people would try to solve the “mystery” these games held within their code. And honestly? It’s starting to get old. So many Indie games have the same basic concept, and it’s starting to become a staple for these games, just like Mario’s jumping on turtles and Sonic’s speed.

Indie games were once about doing things that had never been seen before- they were Indie because people didn’t want to sell their ideas to a big company that would just end up merchandising their games until they were just stale. Unfortunately, Indie games have started their own market, and are becoming just as merchandised as their name-brand counterparts. In fact, I’m currently wearing a “Bendy and the Ink Machine” lanyard.

What was once a fresh and unique market has quickly turned stale, with the same kind of storytelling and the same kind of gameplay. FNaF was the first, and becuase of it’s success, people all across the world stole the idea for their own. And now, what happens? Will games of a similar vein continue to be produced by famous Indie developers? What happens when wer’re no longer interested in solving the mysteries hidden within these games?

Sometimes I think about all the things in my life that led me to this point in my life. All the people that I’ve grown up with, helped me become the person that I am today. When I do that, I always feel like I’m giving in to some sort of invisible force that wants to hold me back from moving forward. “You’re forgetting everyone, you just want to go on with your life.” And in a way, that voice is right. 

Sometimes, however, when I do that, I end up thinking about all the people I know that aren’t here anymore. They’ve left this world. And that just makes me feel more saddened. Yes, I loved them, but I feel like sometimes, I should just… never forget who they are, no matter where I am. And that has led to a lot of problems with me making progress in the most mediocre of things. 

I just want to move on. I just want to go on with my life and live happilly and healthily. But I just can’t seem to do that. 

My own mind is like a sandpit; the more progress I make out of it, the higher the chance is that I will inevitably fall again, back to square one. So many times, I have tried my best to go on with my life, to live in my own way, to just tell my brain to leave me alone for just a minute so I can live my best life. But I just can’t seem to do that.

I just want to be able to live to my fullest potential, but as long as these hands have hold on my mind and my spirit, I will never be able to go forward. 

I want to be free. 

I’m mediocre. I wear mediocre clothes. My face is mediocre. I make mediocre grades. I don’t really do anything that makes me rise above the crowd. I’m just mediocre.

For a long time, I had high standards for myself. I wanted to be one of the best. I wanted to dress nice. I wanted to look the best. I wanted to make the best grades. I wanted to be one of the best.

As I got older, I found myself not wanting to be the best. I found that it didn’t matter as much to me as I had always thought it would be. I felt myself getting more and more satisfied with my mediocrity.

I don’t know if it was because I simply started to get lazy, or if I was getting more and more of a sense of apathy. But I think that, in the long run, being complacent with my mediocrity helped me through some hard times. I didn’t push myself to try to be the best when I was too tired. I didn’t try to push myself ahead when others were ahead of me. I didn’t want to be the best.

Being the best comes with it’s expectations. When you become the best, you’re expected to always be the best, no matter what. And do you know how hard of an expectation that is to live up to? I know it caused me a lot of negative thoughts when I was younger. As I grew up, I realized that maybe I just wasn’t meant to be the best. I was just meant to be mediocre.

As a society, I feel like we celebrate greatness too often. There’s so many people we see as “the best” at whatever they do. Those people are always expected to do their best, no matter what. I would never be able to live with that sort of pressure.

Why don’t we celebrate mediocrity? We don’t all have to be the best. I’m not saying to not try to do your best, but if your personal best is mediocre for the world, be proud of what you’ve done. You did your best, and even if everyone doesn’t think it’s the best they’ve ever seen, you can be happy in knowing that you tried the hardest that you could, and you should celebrate that.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, I feel like we put too much focus on trying to rise above everyone else. The world can be more than just a “dog eat dog” world. It can be more than everyone pushing themselves to always do more than that next person. I think it can, at least. And I wish more people had this feeling about the world.

Let’s celebrate mediocrity, for all the people who always feel like they’re inferior because their best isn’t perfect. But that’s okay, because there’s hundreds of people like you out there. And I am one of them. So maybe we can all celebrate our mediocrity together, and though this, we can show the world that there can be more than perfection.

I love musicals. Absolutely adore them all. Hamilton, Be More Chill, Heathers, Les Miserables- that’s just some of the many that I love.

Recently, while browsing my social media, I came across a video of a song that was about writing. The song was called “Hard to Be the Bard,” and let me tell you, the song spoke to my soul. It was about a writer struggling to write, and I identified strongly with it.

After doing a little more research, I found out that the song was from a musical called “Something Rotten!” The musical was set in the Renaissance and focused around a character named Nick Bottom, who is a struggling playwright. He has an immense hatred for Shakespeare’s success, and wishes he could be as successful as him. He goes to a soothesayer, and the man tells him that the biggest hits in the future are musicals. So, Nick goes out to write the first ever musical.

The songs in this musical have a certain… vibe to them. I don’t exactly know how to describe it. All the songs contain clever wit and metaphors that are easy to understand but will make you laugh out loud every time. My favorite song is still the first one I listened to, “Hard to be the Bard.” The song is sung by the man himself, William Shakespeare, where he complains and bemoans the struggles of being a famous writer. Honestly, I think this song is a whole literary mood. 

“So you write a new word, but it’s not the right word, so you try a new word, but you hate the new word, and you need a new word, but you can’t find the word, oh where is it what is it what is it where is it whatisitwhakdkjdk-” (the last bit indicates a mental breakdown).

I find that the more I listen to it, the more references to other musicals I can find within the songs. The most referenced musical seems to be “The Music Man,” which I am very happy about since it doesn’t seem like TMM is very popular within the musical scene. I can also hear references to “Les Miserables,” “Annie,” and a slight nod to “Dear Evan Hanson.” I enjoy the little nods the play gives to its predecessors. I also enjoy the part where Nick and William have a tap dancing fight while they argue between each other on who is the better writer. 

If you would like to find a new musical to listen to, I highly recommend this one, especially if you want one that breaks from the norm in the best way possible- by poking fun at other plays that take themselves way too seriously. 

The ear of the world is deaf.

The people scream
And they cry
And they try to save themselves
But no one can hear.

Every day, the cries
Of the persecuted
Grow louder
But no one can hear.

Screaming, crying,
There is pain
And heartbreak
And suffering.
But no one can hear.

The African Americans
Want to be free
And women
Want to be safe.
But no one can hear.

Men and women
Around the world
Want love and peace
And acceptance.
But no one can hear.

Millions of people
Scream out to the heavens
Hoping that someone,
Anyone, will hear their cries
And save them
And deliver them
And love them
And accept them.

But no one can hear.

Over the summer, I made it a point to read as much as I could. I had a goal in mind before I started school: to read some of Shakespeare’s most popular works. I bought about five of his plays from Amazon; specifically, I read the SparkNotes’ “No Fear Shakespeare” versions (if you want to read Shakespeare and have a hard time understanding the language, I highly recommend this, because it puts an easy-to-read translation of the original text right beside each other, and you don’t have to spend fifteen minutes trying to understand what each word means).

I read Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing. My expectations for these plays were low: I didn’t expect myself to be able to understand what was happening the first time I read through them. However, I ended up exceeding my expectations. I enjoyed reading these plays, and I was quickly able to understand them entirely.

I read most of these plays while I was on a mission trip to Honduras, because I had a lot of time to read when I wasn’t doing bible school or doing a water run to one of the nearby villages. And just like that, I was enraptured by the worlds that these plays contained. I often found myself whisked away so much that I would sometimes miss the call that dinner was ready until someone pulled me away.

My favorite, by far, was Hamlet. I know that sounds like a somewhat stereotypical thing to say, but it’s the complete truth of the matter. My mind was enraptured by the story. I made it a point to myself to try to memorize his “To be, or not to be” monologue- I never succeeded, but I got pretty far.

I started to find that, over time, those plays gave me a new outlook on my creative nature. They turned on the creative switch in my mind, and I was all for it. I wrote as much as I could in that week, and I found myself making some pretty decent progress in my world-building efforts. Through these hundred year old stories, I found a new spark of energy.

I think I’ll keep reading more and more of his works. Maybe I can read some of the historical plays, or find more of his comedies. I feel like his words would definitely help as I go on this journey to find my true creative spark- but a little boost from Shakespeare wouldn’t hurt.

(This is a continuation of my last post, so if you want any of this to make sense, you might want to read that first.)

As I have previously stated, I never really had a lot of friends growing up. I had some “acquaintances,” but looking back now, none of them were ever really my “friend” per se. I had one friend in second grade, but she moved away midway through the year, and it’s been a long time since I last had the chance to talk to her.

I wonder what she’s doing these days?

But that’s beside the point. I never really found my friends until around… ninth grade, I would say. I finally started to find a group of people like me: they had been ostracized by the rest of our grade, and they didn’t really have a lot of friends. That was when I finally found my good friends.

I’m going to make up names for them, so that they won’t be just known by everyone who reads this. There were Samantha, Gavin, Lorin, and Ray.

Samantha was my best friend. We had been friends since sixth grade, and through time, our friendship grew stronger. I had defended her multiple times when people bullied her, and she did the same for me. We had each others backs, no matter the circumstance.

Gavin was a pretty good friend; we started hanging out when he started dating Samantha. They broke up after a little while, but they stayed good friends. Gavin was kind of a know-it-all at times, but I didn’t have any problems with him. He was fun to be around, and he provided a lot of interesting discussions to our lunch table.

Lorin. The only reason I hung out with him was because he was friends with Gavin, and I don’t think Gavin had it in him to just throw him out of the group. If I had gotten a say? I would have left him in the dust in a heartbeat. He was hardly ever nice to me. The only reason we were ever “friendly” was because we both liked Star Wars and the Harry Potter series. Other than that, we tolerated each other, at best.

Ray was my other best friend; he actually also transferred to MSA, and he’s been a really good friend to me. We’ve both struggled with a lot of the same issues, both externally and internally. We have the same sense of strange humor, and I can usually count on him to make me laugh if I need to. I’ve only known him for four years, but the bond we’ve managed to grow is stronger than most of my other friendships.

Honestly? I was sad when I had to say goodbye to Samantha and Gavin. It was a hard thing to adjust myself to, and I’m still adjusting to it. We used to be around each other every single day, and now I hardly ever see them. But honestly? I think that with time, we’ll be back in our same group as before.

At least, I hope so, because I miss them. Every day.

I don’t think I’m allowed to say what school I came to before I came to Mississippi School of the Arts, but I just wanted to talk about some of the things I felt about my old school. If you know me, you should be able to know where I’m talking about, and if you don’t, you may just have to guess.

In any case, I wanted to talk about the differences between the schools, and how I feel about where I was before.

I never really fit in at my old school. I was a bookworm throughout a lot of elementary school, and as I got older, my anxiety got worse, and that prevented me from fitting in even more. A lot of kids in my class were sports kids, and I, being a chubby, short girl,  never really found the appeal to them. Imagine why?

It felt like there were certain “groups” within our class. Last year, there were about four distinct groups.

The first group was “the cool kids,” or as I liked to call them, snobby girls and guys who only ever really cared about themselves and acted like they owned the class. They never really talked to those outside of their group, unless it was to tease them or they were forced to because the teacher put them in a group together. I was put with two “cool kids” during a biology assignment- we dissected frogs- and I remember being annoyed out of my mind by the way the other girl in the group would ignore the assignment and would talk to her friend in another group.

The second group was “the boys,” better known as all the boys who didn’t fit into the cool kid group. A lot of them were loud, obnoxious, and rude, and often they would get on my nerves to the point that I just wanted to scream, despite the consequences of doing just that. One in particular stuck out to me. It always amazed me how he managed to be just the right amount of annoying at the one time when I needed silence the most.

The third group was “the girls,” also known as the girls who didn’t fit in the cool kid group. For the most part, they were nice enough. A few of them were on the rude side, but amazingly enough, they didn’t act all that mean. There was one girl who seemed to flop back and forth between the “cool kid” group and “the girls.” Man, sometimes I wished I could have that ability.

And then there was the last group, the one I was a part of. I’ll coin us as “the misfits.” We were a small group, only about five or six people, but we made do. We didn’t really fit in anywhere else, and we never found a proper “place” to be. The group consisted of myself and a few friends, and we made do. We sat together at the lunch table, away from everyone else. We made jokes, some of them only we would understand because of past experiences. Most of all, we were there for each other. If one of us had a problem, we were a support group. We were there to comfort one another and lift each other up.

The other groups couldn’t really say that, I think.