Fandom: Drumline: A New Beat and Varsity Blues

[escritoireazul]

I've been watching a bunch of marching band and football movies and tv shows lately (because I'm working on a college marching band story that is just different enough from the type I'm watching that I can still watch them).

Earlier, I watched Varsity Blues, which is so, so terrible and cheesy in so many ways, but still hits me right in the feelings at a couple key points. (Also, I used to listen to the soundtrack during music competitions in high school, when I needed to clear my head from what we were actually playing. I have this sharp memory of stretching out in the sun a couple hours before my district solo competition one year and listening to "Horror Show" and "My Hero" on repeat.

I'm in the middle of Drumline: A New Beat (which is still pretty much the perfect college drumline story for me), and it is a little bit too close to what I'm actually writing for me to really want to be watching it, but I've already been sucked into the rewatch, so I'll finish it. It is so much fun, and I was charmed anew by the fact it actually addresses gay black men and the intersectional identities they have to navigate. (I wish it did the same for queer black women.)

This is my favorite time of year because of marching band (and Halloween and family holidays), but it is a difficult time of year, too, and I can feel myself slipping into a depressive cycle. I'm hoping to be able to keep writing this draft; I'm about 30k into it, and I think it will finish at around 75k, so I'm well underway.

Comments

[havocthecat]

I've never been too into either marching band or football movies, except The Replacements, which I love for some reason, probably because it's more a redemption story that happens to have football in it, rather than being about football. If that makes sense. What's so alluring about them to you? I ask only because I don't get it at all, so I'd like to hear from the perspective of someone who likes those films.

[escritoireazul]

I'm happy to talk about it!

For me, a big part of it is the nostalgia of it, because I spent a great deal of time in high school and college marching and spending time at football games. So those stories feel real to me, or even when ridiculous, touch a place that was very important to me for a long, long time. (And still is, really. Nephew is marching with my high school band and I still go to watch his halftime shows and to some of his competitions, my siblings marched with me and so sometimes we still go do band stuff, I would march with an adult marching band in a heartbeat.)

Plus I like high school and college football, so I find stories about it interesting. (And sometimes terrible, when it accurately addresses the shit that goes with the sport.)

I think there are interesting stories being told. Drumline 2, for example, deals with a main story about sexism on the drumline and a black woman trying to find her place, with a side story about gay black men (including a football player) trying to find love and also protect themselves in a world that sometimes hates them for many, many reasons.

And I really, really enjoy writing marching band stories (I would not have figured that out without writing Glee fic, weirdly enough), so I like breaking down the stories to see how I can do something different.

But a ton of it is nostalgia.

[everbright]

You've incepted me with marching band music, all I can hear is complicated parade drumbeats in my head.