Selah CJW

@seekjustice One of my favorite songs is titled “Without a Song” with the opening lyrics being “Without a song the day would never end; without a song the road would never bend; when things go wrong a man ain’t got a friend without a song.”

I always thought The Sound of Music wasn’t about a war.  It was about a family who happened to live during…[Read more]

@valtmy Its fine. I didn’t think you were addressing those complaints at me 🙂

Haha 😛 I remember writing a novel set in old Japan and windows and doors were constantly an annoying thing for me. Not that I was trying to add window scenes or anything. They just annoyed me

@rochellaine

I think you started a trend 😉

@seekjustice

Oh. All right then. 🙂 It’s just that I remembered that SFI had some dark and depressing bits (not that it was that depressing to me since I already knew all the deaths were coming) and realised that my complaint about edginess could be taken the wrong way…

@rochellaine

Yeah, I too am surprised that you like Seekjustice’s books…[Read more]

@rochellaine

Oh that’s true! And Newsies as well, even though its not a massive favourite of either of us.

Nope, I still adore Anastasia.

@rochellaine

When you were talking about why musicals should be happy just reminded me of the lyrics in a song from one of the German musicals I listen to: “How can it be that all the rules/ of reason and society/are undone by music’s magic spell?”

I feel though that one of my main reasons for disliking The Sound of Music is that its always…[Read more]

@seekjustice I have thought of two musicals we both like!!  One’s my recommendation and one is yours.

Mine: Brigadoon

Yours: Anastasia

There!  We have at least two musicals which we can both agree are wonderful. 😀 (unless you’ve changed your mind since our last discussions of them…)

@seekjustice Your description of The Scarlet Pimpernel and conclusion that you have no idea why I like your books is absolutely hilarious.

Put it down to good writing. 😉

Yeah, I get that.  I think each of these theological questions has to be viewed separately and you can’t apply the rule from one question to another question.

I grew up…[Read more]

@valtmy I honestly didn’t think you were! I was just agreeing with you.

That’s a really good list. Especially “something to hope for” and “no loners”. Those two things annoy me to no end.

@valtmy Uh…yeah.  Sorry about the rants. 😛  I’m really bad at being concise, so most of my explanations seem to turn into rants. 😉

Why do I think musicals should be happy and fun?  Well, there’s a precedent for that.  Musicals have all been happy and fun until very recently.  Sure, there have been a few dark ones here and there, like Lost…[Read more]

@seekjustice

Noooo please don’t misunderstand. I wasn’t accusing you of trying to be “edgy” with SFI! 😛

I generally only like two kinds of stories: Stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things and stories about extraordinary people doing ordinary things. But there are several things I look out for in stories that usually determine…[Read more]

@rochellaine

Fictional magic is a whole other debate 😛 Though I will say that I grew up reading almost exclusively two types of stories: fantasy novels and missionary stories. As a child I never even thought about the magic in fantasy novels as witchcraft because I knew what real witchcraft was. Having said that, I have given up reading several…[Read more]

@seekjustice Oh yes, I see where you’re coming from.  Hm, I was about to argue that you seem to believe the fantasy world doesn’t have to match up with the Bible, since you like fictional magic, but if I use that argument I’ll have to be on the side that says Carousel is bad.  So…now I have something to think about.

Carousel could have been i…

[Read more]

@valtmy I agree with you, though the thing I tend to go for is realism, rather than darkness or “edginess”. For me, the thing I love about Les Mis is that it shows the plight of people who still live today, both in my society and societies all over the world.

@rochellaine

I guess maybe my problem with it is that I don’t believe God gives second chances (which I’m sure you believe too, so I’m not trying to insinuate that you don’t)

God makes it very clear that death is it. You have to live with your choices for eternity after that. I think Carousel could have been very interesting if he hadn’t died…[Read more]

@rochellaine

Oh dear. Did I just trigger a rant war? 😛

But why do you think musicals should be happy and fun? I mean, I don’t think you have the same expectations for books, films etc.? Just because there’s singing and dancing doesn’t mean it shouldn’t go for dark and depressing.

For me, I don’t really like dark and depressing stuff across all…[Read more]

@rochellaine

I actually think you’d really like the Scarlet Pimpernel. It’s much lighter than Les Mis or ATOTC, no one dies, its got a sweet romance and the characters are already married so there’s no sappy proposal 😛

After that explanation I am left wondering why you like my writing at all. 😀

Well…I could…but we’d be here all day.

@seekjustice There have to be!  Back when we started talking about musicals I don’t remember disagreeing all the time.  I’m going to have a look back at some old Writers’ Corners and see what I can dig up. 😉

I feel funny arguing for this side, since usually I want heroes and heroines I can look up to and am very adamant about that.  But I wi…[Read more]

@valtmy I didn’t like the fact that one of them contained curse words.  I think that was Les Mis.  Other than that there are two reasons.

One: I like musicals where the songs help the plot along, not where the songs are the plot.  Those musicals are too much like opera, where they sing the dialogue.  That’s probably because I like songs you can…[Read more]

@Rochellaine

Are there any musicals we actually agree on???

I already knew how it ended before I watched it and of course I’d read Liliom, so I might have been projecting too much onto it, but I found it difficult to care at all about Julie or Billy. Why was Billy so deadset against getting a job? And why on earth did Julie just put up with…[Read more]

@rochellaine

I know what your beef is with Phantom but what is your problem with Les Mis and ATOTC? (I assume you are talking about the musicals and not the original books since you wouldn’t be reading @seekjustice‘s books otherwise)