"Trauma dump" is absolutely a spot on description for this song. lol. I do like that this song gives insight to JD though... How he is lonely as hell, and desperate to experience something permanent/stable, but the closest thing he can ever get is a 7-11 Slurpee... Because even though he is moving all the time because of his dad. 7-11s are everywhere.
I love when people listen to songs multiple times and were clearly not fully listening to the lyrics the first time, cause it means we get gems like this JD: "when the voice in your head says you're better off dead, don't open a vein!" Casper, solely listening to the belt: "NICE!!!"
On the concept of the 7-11 being a comfort location, a lot of kids who have had their families move a lot growing up will report finding comfort in certain chain restaurants or stores because they stay on some level the same no matter where you go, especially, like in the case of JD, if the home life does not grant the child any level of stability or safety to anchor themselves to.
A common coping strategy for managing suicidal ideation and urges to self harm is to hold ice, throw ice, or dunk your head in cold water so drinking a slushie and getting a brain freeze is just a variant on that strategy. This song was a favourite of mine when I was struggling, I drank so many slushies.
I love how in the song , JD is like "I don't learn the names don't bother with faces" and then later on is like "Veronica Sawyer" 😭 that proves he somewhat cares about her 😅
Using ice as an alternative to self-harming is actually a real recommendation from experts that JD has stumbled upon. By inducing brain freezes he's fighting emotional pain with physical pain. He's able to cope enough that he passes under the radar of the teachers (who are honestly pretty terrible at their jobs in this musical) and doesn't get the help that he so clearly needs :(
9:40 you are exactly right - if you find a video clip of the off Broadway version of this, Veronica actually cringes in horror in exactly this moment. 😂
My absolute favorite song from this musical!! here's where we find out that JD isn't well, and why Veronica really falls for him. My interpretation is that he simply hasn't thought about it, he can't really fathom anything different from the shitty way he feels so he simply doesn't think about how bad things are. So he freezes his brain metaphorically as well. And if he stops to think about it he might fall apart. But it also means that he hasn't processesed anything (understandable) So all of those dark thoughts are just paused, not gone.
You can tell the animatic was done for a viewer who had already watched the entire musical: I dislike it in that regard, but your reactions are great as always :) Also, something to notice, I don't know if it's already been said before: both the original movie and the musical as well rely on color coding the characters to represent them. Like how Heather Chandler is wearing red, it represents her leading role and bold personality. Since the animatics are usually missing colors, I think it's best to know what everyone is wearing. Heather Chandler wears red, Heather McNamara wears yellow, Heather Duke wears green (there is a scene where this changes, and an added song, "Never Shut Up Again" in the West End version to highlight this change), Veronica wears blue, JD wears mostly black, Martha wears pink and Ram and Kurt wear red and white, but theirs is more of a standard footballer outfit to represent their role as jocks I think. I feel it's also important to say there is an added song for Veronica later on called "I Say No" that ties the plot together better as well as another song, "Blue" in the original recording which was wildly changed and now goes by "You're Welcome" in the latest version.
So, there are some of us for whom this song strikes a very personal chord. TW: depression, mentions of self-harm and suicide. When I listened through Heathers for the first time, I was a teenager with undiagnosed depression, and I was soon going to go through the worst time of my life where I started genuinely considering permanently removing myself. And I remember that I really latched onto this song. I think I may have quoted it to my first therapist? When you have clinical depression (and especially when it’s undiagnosed and you don’t have a support network set up), there’s a sort of slow building mental/emotional pain. That’s why a lot of people with depression have self-destructive habits. A momentary physical pain can distract you from - or even feel like a release for - emotional pain. Like JD says, “fight pain with more pain”. And even when you don’t have that urge to actually damage yourself, there are a lot of other behaviors you can use to chase that “release” that are still bad in the long term. I pulled on my hair, tore my nails, and would scribble on my skin with a pen. Some people might snap a rubber band or hair tie against their wrist, some people binge eat junk food, and some - like JD - eat cold foods to get a brain freeze. When you’re undiagnosed, if you have one of those habits instead of an obviously self-destructive one, it’s easy to think that you’re not depressed, and that the problem is the world around you being cruel. But it’s not. It’s just your brain not making enough of the right chemicals. Men are significantly less likely to be diagnosed with depression, even when they do have it, and Heathers is set during a time when (in America, at least) you didn’t talk about mental health issues at all. It’s sort of generally accepted among Heathers fans that JD has a pretty bad case of depression, and a lot of other mental health issues. Combined with constantly moving around the country, he latches onto a gas station chain for a sense of permanence, and finds his pain-release in Slurpees. He’s a fascinating character.
Here is the usual announcement, any spoilers or hateful comments will simply removed without any further warning. So please be mindful and remember that you are talking to and about a human being like yourself.
EEEEEEEE, so excited for this video, I’m interested and very excited to see what you think of this song and character! My friend recently played JD (trench coat guy) and absolutely killed it, and has thus rekindled my hyperfixation on heathers 🤣 also might I add this entire show hits different in person like, holy crap. But yeah, I’m genuinely so excited to see your reactions to this song and the rest of the show!!
8:55 that was me!!! okay, no, but I did sound design and live mixing for a community theater Heathers production in 2019 and that was my favorite sound effect of the whole show to run. I hit the slurp button
I heard dear Evan handson so this is my time to scream about BE MORE CHILL i love that musical so much it's my favorite and I got to see it Broadway (small theatre but still)
This song was one of my favorites from the musical when I was going through a tough time. It really captures how intense and overwhelming emotions can be during certain mental struggles. Those feelings can be so suffocating and blinding that it feels like the only way back to reality is by turning the emotional pain into something physical, just to make sense of it all. The animatic here does an incredible job of visualizing that, too.
J.D is a complicated character. Ill just say that. In the movie back in the 80s they make him out to be this monster and hes evil and there was nothing good about him. In the musical, youll see the theme is the first song. Everyone can be beautiful, just life can change us and make us ugly, and some choose to be ugly.
I still think Veronica was the worst thing that could have happened to JD. If he had meet someone else here, if she had fallen for someone else, a lot of things later on in the story might have been prevented. Those two where a terrible match for each other.
There's two other Zealands, actually One in Denmark, being the one Casper was talking about And the other in the Netherlands, which is the one New Zealand is named after
I love Ryan McCarthy who plays JD in this version (the original JD) he has a TH-cam channel that he talks about his experiences in theatre with his friend Sam, called Stage Door
I highly recommend reacting to Dear Evan Hansen. It’s one of my absolute favorites! Ben Platt’s singing makes me swoon, but honestly the whole cast is fantastic. The DEH movie is not a great adaptation, skips important songs, and has a very different tone from the stage production. I recommend watching animatics with additional audio recordings like you’ve done with Heathers. It’ll be a much better experience. Anyway, really enjoying your reactions. Hope you continue your awesome stage musical journey!
Oh I am so onboard if you wanna check out Dear Evan Hansen, that was one of the first musicals I ever really got into (along with Be More Chill) and I still love it
Watch the ENTIRE Heathers R/A Series UNEDITED on Patreon - www.patreon.com/collection/594325?view=expanded
"Trauma dump" is absolutely a spot on description for this song. lol. I do like that this song gives insight to JD though... How he is lonely as hell, and desperate to experience something permanent/stable, but the closest thing he can ever get is a 7-11 Slurpee... Because even though he is moving all the time because of his dad. 7-11s are everywhere.
I love when people listen to songs multiple times and were clearly not fully listening to the lyrics the first time, cause it means we get gems like this
JD: "when the voice in your head says you're better off dead, don't open a vein!"
Casper, solely listening to the belt: "NICE!!!"
This man can be so so accurate and also speak complete nonesense. Seems it depends on the weather
... thanks?
@@CFEntertainsdon't worry about it Caleb
JD: *talking about suicidal thoughts*
Casper just listening to the voice: NICE!!!!!😀😀😀😀😀
On the concept of the 7-11 being a comfort location, a lot of kids who have had their families move a lot growing up will report finding comfort in certain chain restaurants or stores because they stay on some level the same no matter where you go, especially, like in the case of JD, if the home life does not grant the child any level of stability or safety to anchor themselves to.
A common coping strategy for managing suicidal ideation and urges to self harm is to hold ice, throw ice, or dunk your head in cold water so drinking a slushie and getting a brain freeze is just a variant on that strategy. This song was a favourite of mine when I was struggling, I drank so many slushies.
I love how in the song , JD is like "I don't learn the names don't bother with faces" and then later on is like "Veronica Sawyer" 😭 that proves he somewhat cares about her 😅
Using ice as an alternative to self-harming is actually a real recommendation from experts that JD has stumbled upon. By inducing brain freezes he's fighting emotional pain with physical pain. He's able to cope enough that he passes under the radar of the teachers (who are honestly pretty terrible at their jobs in this musical) and doesn't get the help that he so clearly needs :(
the way jd says veronicas name scratches my brain so good
Same especially Dan saying it
9:40 you are exactly right - if you find a video clip of the off Broadway version of this, Veronica actually cringes in horror in exactly this moment. 😂
My absolute favorite song from this musical!! here's where we find out that JD isn't well, and why Veronica really falls for him.
My interpretation is that he simply hasn't thought about it, he can't really fathom anything different from the shitty way he feels so he simply doesn't think about how bad things are. So he freezes his brain metaphorically as well. And if he stops to think about it he might fall apart.
But it also means that he hasn't processesed anything (understandable) So all of those dark thoughts are just paused, not gone.
pretty sure this is ryan mccartan as jd, he’s so good!
Yes, this is the original cast recording so it is indeed Ryan Mccartan as the voice of JD
I can’t wait to see the reaction to dead girl walking 😍
If you want to watch it a tiny bit earlier, it is already up on his patreon (where he is up to "Me Inside of Me")
You can tell the animatic was done for a viewer who had already watched the entire musical: I dislike it in that regard, but your reactions are great as always :)
Also, something to notice, I don't know if it's already been said before: both the original movie and the musical as well rely on color coding the characters to represent them. Like how Heather Chandler is wearing red, it represents her leading role and bold personality. Since the animatics are usually missing colors, I think it's best to know what everyone is wearing.
Heather Chandler wears red, Heather McNamara wears yellow, Heather Duke wears green (there is a scene where this changes, and an added song, "Never Shut Up Again" in the West End version to highlight this change), Veronica wears blue, JD wears mostly black, Martha wears pink and Ram and Kurt wear red and white, but theirs is more of a standard footballer outfit to represent their role as jocks I think. I feel it's also important to say there is an added song for Veronica later on called "I Say No" that ties the plot together better as well as another song, "Blue" in the original recording which was wildly changed and now goes by "You're Welcome" in the latest version.
Ryan McCartan plays J.D in this. He's also a youtuber who frequently talks about his time as an actor
I never noticed how many spoilers are in the animatics, dang...
If you do "Dear Evan Hansen" and like it, i suggest you check out "Be More Chill" a banger in my opinion
Agreed! My top 3 favorites
I LOVE be more chill, my first musical!
Be more chill is freaking hilarious 😂 I love it😂
Yeah I love those two! Also random musical but also slap on ride the cyclone and beetlejuice on there aswell
@@RandompersonJ3892 Agreed!
So, there are some of us for whom this song strikes a very personal chord. TW: depression, mentions of self-harm and suicide.
When I listened through Heathers for the first time, I was a teenager with undiagnosed depression, and I was soon going to go through the worst time of my life where I started genuinely considering permanently removing myself. And I remember that I really latched onto this song. I think I may have quoted it to my first therapist? When you have clinical depression (and especially when it’s undiagnosed and you don’t have a support network set up), there’s a sort of slow building mental/emotional pain. That’s why a lot of people with depression have self-destructive habits. A momentary physical pain can distract you from - or even feel like a release for - emotional pain. Like JD says, “fight pain with more pain”. And even when you don’t have that urge to actually damage yourself, there are a lot of other behaviors you can use to chase that “release” that are still bad in the long term. I pulled on my hair, tore my nails, and would scribble on my skin with a pen. Some people might snap a rubber band or hair tie against their wrist, some people binge eat junk food, and some - like JD - eat cold foods to get a brain freeze. When you’re undiagnosed, if you have one of those habits instead of an obviously self-destructive one, it’s easy to think that you’re not depressed, and that the problem is the world around you being cruel. But it’s not. It’s just your brain not making enough of the right chemicals. Men are significantly less likely to be diagnosed with depression, even when they do have it, and Heathers is set during a time when (in America, at least) you didn’t talk about mental health issues at all. It’s sort of generally accepted among Heathers fans that JD has a pretty bad case of depression, and a lot of other mental health issues. Combined with constantly moving around the country, he latches onto a gas station chain for a sense of permanence, and finds his pain-release in Slurpees. He’s a fascinating character.
Here is the usual announcement, any spoilers or hateful comments will simply removed without any further warning. So please be mindful and remember that you are talking to and about a human being like yourself.
EEEEEEEE, so excited for this video, I’m interested and very excited to see what you think of this song and character! My friend recently played JD (trench coat guy) and absolutely killed it, and has thus rekindled my hyperfixation on heathers 🤣 also might I add this entire show hits different in person like, holy crap. But yeah, I’m genuinely so excited to see your reactions to this song and the rest of the show!!
8:55 that was me!!! okay, no, but I did sound design and live mixing for a community theater Heathers production in 2019 and that was my favorite sound effect of the whole show to run. I hit the slurp button
This man can somehow look at a song and go into deap detail. It sounds like gibberish but somehow it's exactly on the fucking dot😭
I heard dear Evan handson so this is my time to scream about BE MORE CHILL i love that musical so much it's my favorite and I got to see it Broadway (small theatre but still)
I second this!
I still listen tp Be more chill's songs to this day!
I will say to keep in mind that the animatics are not necessarily cannon (canon?)
yup canon is the right spelling :)
XD that Roblox meme had me internally screaming. Officially love the editor.
i really hate that there are so many spoilers in all these animatics 🥲
This song was one of my favorites from the musical when I was going through a tough time. It really captures how intense and overwhelming emotions can be during certain mental struggles. Those feelings can be so suffocating and blinding that it feels like the only way back to reality is by turning the emotional pain into something physical, just to make sense of it all.
The animatic here does an incredible job of visualizing that, too.
Cannot wait for M.D.G.S
J.D is a complicated character. Ill just say that. In the movie back in the 80s they make him out to be this monster and hes evil and there was nothing good about him. In the musical, youll see the theme is the first song. Everyone can be beautiful, just life can change us and make us ugly, and some choose to be ugly.
The in between Jd actor is Dan domenench which is Ryan Mcartans (og musical JD) understudy
so excited for this
Oh one of my favourite songs in this musical! Happy to see reaction
I still think Veronica was the worst thing that could have happened to JD.
If he had meet someone else here, if she had fallen for someone else, a lot of things later on in the story might have been prevented.
Those two where a terrible match for each other.
You should absolutely check out Be more chill the musical, its a really good musical!
brain stalled for a moment when i heard Zealand, as a frequent watcher and new zealander I never thought to question if Zealand is a real place
There's two other Zealands, actually
One in Denmark, being the one Casper was talking about
And the other in the Netherlands, which is the one New Zealand is named after
I love Ryan McCarthy who plays JD in this version (the original JD) he has a TH-cam channel that he talks about his experiences in theatre with his friend Sam, called Stage Door
I highly recommend reacting to Dear Evan Hansen. It’s one of my absolute favorites! Ben Platt’s singing makes me swoon, but honestly the whole cast is fantastic.
The DEH movie is not a great adaptation, skips important songs, and has a very different tone from the stage production. I recommend watching animatics with additional audio recordings like you’ve done with Heathers. It’ll be a much better experience.
Anyway, really enjoying your reactions. Hope you continue your awesome stage musical journey!
IT REFERENCES A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS HOLY-
I would love to see your reactions to Lydia The Bard Disney Villain Songs!!! 😆👍
i would love to see Casper do Dear Evan Hansen i just finished the book
⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️ SPOILER ⚠️ ⚠️ ⚠️
“This is a high school musical, no ones gunna die”
I never considered it but there really are some DEH vibes in this song
Oh I am so onboard if you wanna check out Dear Evan Hansen, that was one of the first musicals I ever really got into (along with Be More Chill) and I still love it
YIPPEEE
As a positive person.. Most of the time i can not use ..
"Uuuuse youur brain~"
😂 Every day😅
great reaction 😍
YOU HAVE TO REACT TO "I LOVE MY DEAD GAY SON"
Freeze your braaaaaiiiiin 🎵
spoliers Kinda
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JD in the Basment " im am the monster Rwar Rwar Rwar"
This may not be the strongest song, but it (along with MTBY) are _ super_ fun to belt out! (Not that i can sing, mind)
Oh my gosh I would LOVE for you to watch dear Evan Hansen 😮
THE ROBLOX MEME ☠️☠️☠️
Ooh, would love to see you react to Dear Evan Hansen. DEH was the second musical I really got into (Hamilton was first lol).
i was sleeping so i couldn’t come watch sorry casper
" no one gonna die" 😐😐😐😐
I never noticed how many spoilers are in the animatics, dang...