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Fun Home: Musical vs. GN
I've read Fun Home a few times, but I just got around to listening to the musical soundtrack last week. Now, I loved the book, but for such an intimate story, it was presented in a sort of detached or investigative manner. That makes sense (especially if you read How I Met Your Mother Are You my Mother (thanks Jay!) and get a more complete picture of her childhood). I imagine it was really hard to make being that it was so personal and this made it easier. The musical (or at least the soundtrack, since I haven't seen it), however, takes all of the emotion that was muted in the book and brings it out hard. Telephone Wire completely wrecked me. I think it's a really interesting example of how different creators in a different medium adapting the same story can make art that produces a completely different reaction.
Also I keep hearing Telephone Wire in my head once a day and getting choked up, so I wanted to talk about it.




Ohmygosh, you are singing my song. On several fronts.
My favorite thing about Fun Home-the-comic is the intricacy and the deliberateness of its construction--I've literally used pages from it to teach pretty much every aspect of comics storytelling, as well as craft annotation--and I was floored by how much of that translated to the show, even more so when you see it staged.
And YES. "Telephone Wire" wrecks me. It's just--it's perfect, and perfectly devastating.
P.S. I suspect you mean Are You My Mother, not How I Met Your Mother.
LOL How I Met Your Mother and Are You My Mother are pretty different, huh? Yes, thank you, I fixed it in the post.
How do they translate it in the show? From what I've seen I think they have Allison The Cartoonist on the edge of the stage adding captions during the scenes with the younger Allisons? I really want to see if live, I know it's going on tour next year, but I live close enough to NYC to maybe go. The only problem is figuring out how to keep it together and not lose it in public.
And yeah, it really is devastating. As a queer with issues with his father who is currently struggling with coming out, it feels like a spotlight being shone in my eyes. And the way it transitions on the OST to Bruce's song breaking down is...ugh, excellent.