It's not fursuiting if it's on Broadway! Or: CATS the musical thread

I'm pretty sure they're defs gay for each other

 

Aaah this was Baby's First Fandom for me! My sibling and I used to drive our parents crazy playing our copy of the vhs over and over. Unfortunately my favorite fic, In The City, is long since deleted and I can't find it on the wayback machine. Everyone was werecats, the Jellicle Ball was their full moon get-together, there was plot and worldbuilding and the writing was actually quite good as far as I remember! I wish it still existed, I'd love to see how it measures up today.

Did anyone else read the Official Fanfiction University of Cats? It's the only other fic I can remember reading that wasn't super angsty Tugger/Misto and I think it's still around on ffnet. Also really good writing and it inspired me to start writing a mary sue parody about a self-insert who slowly became aware of what she was and tried to restore balance to the canon.

I always used to think that Bombalurina and Demeter were sisters because that was what most of the fandom thought, but on reflection, they were totally gay. I think they both used to be with Macavity - or at least Demeter was for sure - and then they managed to escape together.

 

Bombalurina/Demeter OTP. ...with the occasional Macavity OT3 action, lol.

 

There was also some love triangle garbage I played with Munkustrap, Victoria and Misto. Tugger/Misto wasn't as big in our circle back then despite a lot of people wanting it because the girl who owned the board and played Victoria hated it.

 

i was always confused as to if victoria and misto/plato were mates or siblings

(... i think misto is plato? or at least they were played by the same actor in the dvd i had, i think...)

edit: whoops, i was thinking of quaxo :P

 

Depends on your interpretation of Victoria's dance, imo. A lot of us were under the assumption that her solo thing was about coming of age and being Ready To Fuck and Plato joining her was an allegory for mating.

 

WAIT my bad misto is quaxo, not plato

plato is the one who joined her in the dance

 

@adisagestar was...the full moon one on dA because i FEEL LIKE I KNEW THE PERSON WHO WROTE IT?!?

also yes i absolutely read the fanfiction university it was...a trip omg

the fic i remember most fondly had misto driving a carriage for some reason? and he had like, intense road rage. a classic

ALSO RAYBOT I'M SO GLAD YOU MENTIONED QUAXO! there was spicy discourse (for some fucking reason?) as to whether or not misto and quaxo were different characters or the same dude, people got HEATED

(as for me if i bring in quaxo as a name it fits really well like...mr. mistoffelees, first name quaxo)

 

i think it's just a classic feature of musical theater? like they were p clearly implied to be the same character on the dvd (p much every Special Cat had a regular counterpart) BUT they can be played as seperate characters if the director in question wants them to be/cast size permits

also i like it as like.... quaxo is his Incognito™ identity, can't have everyone knowing that he's magic or he'd never get any time alone

also also im reminded of those stories of outdoor cats with two/multiple families, like here and here

 

yeah, the live production i saw had a distinction of "non sparkly is quaxo, sparkly is misto"

i also really like the incognito name, yee!!!

 

I have no idea if it was on dA, I read it on ffnet because that was the only fanfic site I knew about back then. According to google the author's ffnet username was Megera? and someone named Mystitat wrote a spinoff apparently. Oh man if it turns out to still be buried on dA somewhere i would be UNBELIEVABLY PSYCHED

I always loved the incognito identity headcanons, both for quaxo/misto and for plato/macavity. I can't remember if there were any other pairs... alonzo/the Great Rumpuscat? I think live productions tended to do that so they could use cast members in multiple roles, and various members of the chorus could also have more major parts.

 

yeah, alonzo was the rumpus cat! there were also different costumes for grizabella, tugger, old deuteronomy, and jennyanydots but they aren't seen much and in the case of tugger and jenny just got treated as the same character :p

ETA: fjsjdbdh nah that wasn't the one i was thinking of, weird! this person's username was, hmm, something something clover, sorry ):

 

rum tum tugger, grizzabella, and skimble all had counterparts in the dvd but i dont know if they were named? but the actors who played them all wore kinda "dressed down" versions before their intro song

fakeedit: ninja'd!

i think all the song cats had incognito versions, but idk if they were all given official names. i think that's done a lot w theater tho so that they can employ less people and so the actors aren't just sitting backstage for large periods of time with nothing to do

 

In Tugger's case I think the only difference was he didn't have that floofy ruff, and honestly he would absolutely find a way to acquire a fancy cat wig for the Big Party and reveal his hot new look in his big intro song

 

After being enabled and spending my evening watching CATS in terrible quality on YouTube:

• Holy shit I'm surprised I'm not a huge furry considering how much I watched this as a kid, the costumes are awesome and there are some fine dancers in them
• Gus the Theater Cat made me cry, oh my god
• So many catchy songs
• So many
• I want a costume like that
• Andrew Lloyd Webber looked at those T. S. Eliot cat poems and decided "This would make a great musical!"
• Which I'm very happy about but
• It just struck me that the person who wrote The Waste Lands also wrote a bunch of poems about cats and then those poems were used as the basis for a furry musical.
• The world is incredible.

 

yeah, i tend to treat the dressed down versions as the same people, whereas ones like plato and alonzo are their own characters, but CATS is like...there's some plot but basically anything you want is just as canon as anything else :p

ALSO DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE A REALLY HARD TIME TELLING POUNCIVAL AND TUMBLEBRUTUS APART BECAUSE I SURE DO

 

ngl my cats halloween costume was baby's first fursuit

 

WAIT NO

im remembering i wore a tiger costume when i was like 1

and a lion costume when i was 5

oh dear

 

FURSUITING FROM THE WOMB

 

IT'S TRUE

im so glad the version i saw live did growl tiger though, the great rumpus cat was... weird

is it just me or did the character not actually look very much like a cat? like for ages i thought it was a weird not-cat thing