Okay okay I need to talk about Ocean and Ricky and how they almost directly parallel each other- now you might be think "dingo you're crazy" or maybe you're rocking with the shit I'm dropping but wait as I explain because it's been eating away at me, it's all I can think about
So I started thinking about this because of their conceding scenes. Let's break down Oceans first, now her "conceding" is more forced onto her by Karnak which she immediately rejects and goes into what the world needs right? A song that's just her being a dick, harping about her superiority. Now, stay with me, Ricky sings space age bachelor man, setting up his religion and character, just a silly song- right after he sings sabm he willingly concedes, why? The sole commandment of his religion, "don't be a dick" and the fact that if he voted for himself that would be the ultimate dick move. Ocean up to this point is shown to only be thinking of voting herself, her song was just her bragging and showboating while Ricky concedes for these exact reasons, he doesn't need to brag or parade around the fact that he's the best choice because he was never considered the best choice, yet he's content with the life he led, short all be it, but straight to the end he's loyal to the space age bachelor Bible and the things that made his life whole. Next, Ocean and Ricky just have very opposing views and that's expressed multiple times during the show, the porno monolog and the chaos theory monolog being the 2 that pop into my mind right away. Now my favorite little part of their parallel happens in 'its not a game/its just a ride' the part where it goes "no one will measure, how hard we try" It's literally only sung by Ricky and Ocean, facing head on to each other, it really drives home the fact that in life they were measured as the extreme options on either end of the scale of "worth", the best and the worst respectively, Ocean was seen as the "most successful", some how her life weighed more because of her accomplishments while Ricky was subjected to being viewed as lower quality both in life and worth due to his disability. God I love this musical and I could rant and nitpick it for more details but I'm a bit tired