a side note before i begin: apparently buttondown has been sending my first-ever email to new subscribers. the one about teeth, from when i planned for this to be a solely horror-focused endeavor. i don’t know why it’s been doing this! i am sure it’s my fault, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i’m trying to fix it.

okay. 

if you’ve known me for any significant amount of time, you probably know what my greatest weakness and guiltiest pleasure is. (you probably also know that i don’t believe in guilty pleasures, but i’ve been known to make an exception here.) 

anyway. it’s rent. i am absolutely stupid for that damn show. saw the original cast in ‘97 stupid for it. kept the tape in every car i had until we switched to CDs stupid for it. wrote a dumb medium post about it nearly a decade ago that still gets dozens of hits a week stupid for it. if i could have one trip back in a time machine i would use it to yell at jonathan larson stupid for it. (that last one is a lie. i would go see raul julia and diana davila in two gentlemen of verona.)

the other day i was listening to the rent obcr and, as usual, making fun of roger, when i had a revelation about what roger’s songs can teach us about writing romantic arcs. hear me out. 

the third song in rent (not counting tune-ups and voicemails) is “one song glory,” roger’s “i want” song. like any disney princess, he goes way harder than he needs to, and the result is effective as fuck. it’s the late eighties (probably—the precise date is never mentioned) and roger is dying, which is to say he has AIDS, which was a death sentence one hundred percent of the time until about the time the show premiered in 1996. (roger and mimi take AZT antiretrovirals, which were approved by the FDA in 1987, and the show was workshopped in 1993, so it could take place anytime between those dates.)

skipping ahead to act two, roger runs away to the southwest and mimi almost dies. he returns in the finale, having finally written his one song: “your eyes,” the second-to-last(ish) song in the show. it is, not to put too fine a point on it, a disappointing fart of a song. i have often wondered whether the song would be better if larson had lived, but it surely wouldn’t; the show was workshopped three years before his death. he either thought this song was good, or made it bad on purpose.

the first lesson we can take from this is that wanting something, and expressing that want, can be much much louder than getting the thing. when you spend time in the wanting phase, you can become real damn articulate about the thing you want (see also: my text history with my friend lyndsie when we were both querying literary agents); once you get the thing, there’s no need to be loud about it—you’ve said what you needed to say. (of course this isn’t always true! it’s just one way it can go.)

but i promised to talk about romance arcs. how does that apply? let’s look at roger’s big songs. (as one of the main characters, he sings in a lot more of the show, but these are the relevant ones!)

“one song glory”

roger is desperate to create something meaningful before he dies. (this idea is later reflected in hamilton, which lin-manuel miranda has said was largely influenced by rent, when the titular character talks about his legacy.) he used to be in a popular band, but now he’s barely surviving and considering using his guitar for firewood to stay warm. if he could just write this one song, he would have something to leave behind. 

“would you light my candle?”

mimi inserts herself into roger’s life, disrupting his plans (which, in case you already forgot, were to finish his life alone but with the glory of writing that one last song). i mean this very literally—she bangs on the door as he’s playing the last notes of “one song glory,” a very literal interruption. and he can’t take his eyes off of her and the way her hair looks in the moonlight. but she does drugs, and he cleaned up after he and his girlfriend april got HIV from dirty needles and april killed herself, so he wants nothing to do with mimi. except he can’t stop looking at her. 

“another day”

roger rejects mimi immediately following “out tonight” (my favorite song in the show), because he’s a scared baby. i don’t really mean that as an insult. i think we are all scared babies about some things. possibly it’s even the default way to feel about change, and when you have roger’s history and outlook, it makes sense to be a scared baby about pretty much anything.

“i should tell you”

roger and mimi realize that no matter their plans, they’re falling in love with each other (this song includes both of them crying out “oh no!” repeatedly, which is fucking perfect).

“without you” and “goodbye, love”

it’s the third act break-up, baby. and it’s…kind of spread out over the entire second act? (storywise, but also the second act of the play. lol.) look, i know this isn’t a romance but i wouldn’t mind giving this jerk a speech about storytelling conventions. anyway, they break up.

not every love story needs one of these, but there does (usually) need to be some final hurdle to their HEA. in this case, mimi falls back into old patterns, with drugs and with benny, and roger has to go find himself, or whatever. it’s so often a woman who has to learn to love herself before she can accept love, so it’s honestly refreshing that larson did it this way. and in 1993! (tbh “what you own” probably belongs in this group as well!)

“your eyes”

on mimi’s not-actual-deathbed, roger sings her the song he wrote in santa fe. it turns out he doesn’t need glory, he just needs love. which is good, because this song isn’t very good, even if it is heartfelt. 

and that is the point. it doesn’t matter that his one song sucks, because his dream of glory has been supplanted by the reality of love. (there’s even a line in the song that says this, something like “you were the song all along.”)

in a lot of romance novels, this point in the story involves a declaration and/or groveling. in the most heterosexual interpretation, the hero realizes what he lost and begs the heroine to give him another chance. when she does, the door is opened to their HEA. i like a good declaration (and am sort of neutral on groveling, verging on dislike) but they often fall flat for me.

in the process of working out roger’s arc, i figured out why: the grovel means nothing if the romance wasn’t given a solid foundation. if that hero didn’t sing a good enough “i want” song, if he didn’t fall hard while crying out “oh no,” if we don’t already believe in the couple, we aren’t going to care when he sings a shitty love song at the end.

but if they have that foundation, it doesn’t matter what he says, just that he says it. or sings it, as the case may be. 

the reconciliation is (one of) the best part(s) to write. i’ve been known to skip ahead and write it, because i can’t stand writing the journey there if i haven’t proved to myself that it will work out. but the falling in love is actually way more important. i promise. for me, writing the reconciliation first motivates me to write a good arc to get there. (also, i’m lying a little. i write the first kiss first, then get them there, and then i write the reconciliation and get them there.) ymmv—my adhd brain needs to have a little win before i can do the hard stuff, but for other people it’s vital to save the little wins for a post–hard stuff treat—but the important thing is (sorry, so cringe) the journey. 

okay, i gotta go listen to rent again and maybe write another romance novel! byeee!