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dancing-the-hellfire-rumba · 5 years

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Dear Hannah,

Pairing: technically Destiel, but that’s not what this is about Word Count: 4.9k (wow wtf) Warnings: mentions of self-harm, cancer, shitty father John (as per usual), angst and angst and father-daughter love and angst. Summary: When Dean, strapped to a bed, coughing up a storm, catches sight of his newly-adopted baby girl, he decides that, if he is to leave this world, he has to leave something behind for his favorite person. So he writes a booklet, trying to tell her all the things he would’ve if he was alive. Author’s note: This was originally done for @welldonebeca ‘s 2019 Song Challenge but I fucked up thinking the deadline was the 31st of October instead of the 15th. Whatever the case, my prompt was movement, by Hozier, which I interpreted as Dean being fascinated by his daughter enough that he’s inspired to write a letter book to her. Of course this wouldn’t be the entire thing, but I had to keep it under wraps.

Feedback is always welcome! No beta, all mistakes are my own.

~~~~

Hannah,

Christ, it’s the third time I’m starting this. The truth is, I’m coming up with blanks as to how to actually start. This has got to be the best I’ve got.

I’ll tell you the moral of this story, my story, from the get-go. Life’s a fucking bitch, okay? I want you to know that from now. I’d try to hold back on my swearing, but I want you to know me as the person I am, the person I’ve always been. I know what having an absent, terrible father’s like, as you’ll soon see, and I don’t want that for you. I wish I could tell you all this up close, give you advice, tell you all my crazy-ass stories as the dumbass of the teenager I was, and all the shenanigans your uncle (wow, Sam really is a friggin’ uncle!), by a campfire, while you drink your first beer.

Sadly, my odds aren’t looking so great, honey. So this is all I got. I know it’ll never be enough but something is better than nothing.

Enough with the chick flick introduction, though. Let’s start.

The pen’s heavy in his hand, and it’s equal parts the mental heaviness, the weight of the task, as it is his fatigue. Dean’s really just started this. He can’t believe it. The heaviness of uncertainty, of whether or not he’ll get enough time to finish it settles on his chest like an anvil. There’s a solid chance he doesn’t make it before his time comes.

Hannah’s sitting right there, carelessly looking at the plastic, grinning stars above her crib. She’s so innocent, skin creamy, chocolaty and bright, a young, fearsome woman that’s gonna turn out to be so incredible, he’s certain. A small baby who’s soon to walk.

Dean already knows, this kid is destined for great things.

She’s gonna grow up, past the tutus and the miniature racing-car collections, she’s gonna have a movie she’ll play on repeat for ever and ever, with a song that he’ll learn by heart after having heard it so many times. She’s gonna go to high school and she’ll be bullied but she’ll learn to kick some serious ass. She’ll develop interests, she’ll have mediocre grades but a fiery passion and a love for anything alive.

She’ll, then, go to college. She’ll fall in love, with people and life itself. She’ll do what she loves most and she’ll be so damn good at it, she’ll excel.

And Dean… Dean will be nowhere near her to see all of it.

The bitterness… it makes his eyebrows stitch together, his lip curl in clear frustration and sadness. After everything he’s been through, finally finding the person he loves most and creating a full-ass apple pie life, and it’s all gonna be gone as soon as it started. Because, as he told his favorite Hannah, life’s a fucking bitch, and there’s no denying it.

As he lays there in his bed, pale as a sheet, watching her giggle for a while, reaching for the stars, soon yawning, small eyelids shutting softly and rocking just slightly, he… he falls in love with her. This tiny, tiny happy-beyond-words creature that could ask anything of him, and he’d do it, god damn it. He really would.

A giant bubble grows in his chest, a bubble that makes him feel like he’ll protect her at absolute all costs. He’ll grab the moon and fucking move it if that’s what she needs. And all she has to do is yawn and fall asleep.

A tear appears in the corner of his eye, lingering and falling down his ashy cheek. He can’t believe he brought this bright ray of sunshine to this world, and he’s about to make her live with an absent father. That he won’t get any memories with her at all. It’s torture. All of it.

He doesn’t know what else to do, so he grabs his pen with more determination. If he’s to leave her with something, it’ll be a part of him and that is that.

~~~~~

I was born on January 24th, 1979, the first son of a, dare I say, colossally unlucky family. Your uncle, Sam, my brother, is four years younger and will ALWAYS be a wimp, don’t let the height fool you. He always had terrible, shaggy hair and was always the sharpest tool in the box. Hell, the boy went to freaking LAW SCHOOL of all places! That’s kinda crazy!

My parents, your grandparents, were Mary and John.

Mary was a sweet, incredible, fearsome blonde woman, kindest of them all. She’d cut the crusts off my toast, sing Hey, Jude to me before bed and tell me angels were watching over me. (While we’re on the topic of the Beatles, make a note to listen to them. “Hey, Jude” must be your first song, but beyond the classics [Let it Be, Hard Day’s Night, I Saw Her Standing There, I Wanna Hold your hand etc] I hope “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” will hold a special spot in your heart, much like me.)

So, Mary. Sweet Mary. She was a real badass, you know. This one time, Sammy was hungry, so I decided to make, get this, French fries. I think I was seven. She caught me getting ready to pour oil in a very hot pan. When I say she swooped in, I mean it, quite literally. I think she saved me a hand that day.

Now, about John…You’ll have to forgive the mess that I’m about to make with this, but John was a fucking sorry excuse of a father, alright? He got piss-drunk every night after Mom died, and naturally, Sam and I were the punching bags, sometimes literally. The best nights were the ones he wasn’t home.

For years, the house was silent. Sam and I tried to keep everything clean, stock up on canned food, because at times we would only have ten bucks to hold us for over two weeks. I took him to school, fed him, made sure he studied –not that I really had to- and kept John of his hair. At sixteen I picked up a shift at Bobby Singer’s garage, a man that, at this point, deserves the Dad title significantly more than John.

Whenever Sammy was sick, it was my fault. Was anyone loud? Dean’s fault. House dirty? Dean’s fault. Did we wake him up? …Let’s just say we learned not to do that.

I tried to put myself before Sam, did anything I could to protect him. There were times when that wasn’t even enough.

I dropped out of high school at seventeen. The second I saved up enough money, I rented a hole of an apartment at the other side of town, in an attempt to help Sam have a normal life, and we hauled ass out of there.

Before I tell you about our shitty apartment, let me tell you about the highlights of my high school career. Starting off with me “unintentionally” kicking a ball at my least favorite teacher’s face (and hitting him) ((Don’t take your father’s example, kid, violence isn’t the answer.)) (Did feel pretty good at the time though), making out with Jenny in the Janitor’s closet and with Arthur at the locker rooms afterhours (I don’t know what age you’re reading this at, but I sure hope it’s over 16). Also, that one time I pulled a prank at my friend, Cole. I spray painted his entire locker. He didn’t like me very much, to be honest…

~~~~~

An important story I feel inclined to share with you, would be the fact that I was once a bully.

Kids are just mean, but also, I couldn’t understand that troubles at home, traumatic pasts and anger are not to be taken out on other people who are not at fault. Instead of finding a healthy way to deal with everything that was happening at home, I decided that every happy person that was weak enough to meddle with, didn’t deserve any happiness.

I picked on a couple of people, but I think the one I will always regret will be Kevin Tran.

Kevin was a freshman when I was in junior year. He was in the Math club, the Science club and the Robotics club. He had maybe two friends, he was skinny, short, shy as hell, he drowned himself in oversized clothes and always carried a neon green book bag around, that worked on me like red cloth to a bull.

Every time I spotted the bag in the hallway, the drill would start. Shoving the poor kid against the locker, calling him names and laughing at his face for no apparent reason. I’d steal his calculators when I found out he had chemistry tests, spray paint the door of his locker and cause rib bruises from my shoving him against walls and furniture.

I soon find out Kevin was severely depressed. In fact, I saw him in the back of the school, where I’d usually go out to smoke because I thought it was cool (it’s not, it makes you light headed, unfocused and struggle to breathe. Just an all-around terrible experience, but this is just a side-note.)

It was a Friday after school. I didn’t wanna go straight home and Sam still had one more period, so I decided to go smoke and listen to some music in the back of the school building. And that’s where I found him.

I don’t know into how much detail I should go here, but Kevin was harming himself. With a small pocket knife, he sat on an old basket and made incisions on his arms, tears running down his face like a faucet. My God, Hannah, I’ve never felt like a bigger piece of shit in my life, because I knew, and I knew very well, that at least part of those incisions were caused by me.

I called out to him, and the look on his face, as he scrambled away from me, made me feel so much worse. I was the scum of the earth at that moment. I was the biggest asshole on the planet.

My initial reaction, I’ll admit, was pretty harsh. I grabbed the pocket knife out of his hands and threw it as far as possible in the grass. I grabbed a small first aid kit I had in my bag (in case anything happens to Sam), made him sit down by force and bandaged him up. He’d been reduced to sniffles by the time I was done.

Somewhere in between, I remember, he asked me why I was doing this. I didn’t answer.

Eventually, when I was done, I sat on the ground in front of him, ripping blades of grass from the ground. I apologized. Something along the lines of “I didn’t know, not that that’s an excuse. What I’m going through is not an excuse, but I hope it makes you understand that it was nothing to do with you. I’ll stop. I’m sorry. Don’t do this to yourself, man.”

That evening, Kevin was one of the very first people who found out about John. His own dad had passed away, and things at home were rough with his mom. That, along with the whole depression thing… it wasn’t a good combo.

After a solid two hours of talking with him, making amends, apologizing profusely and getting my apology accepted (which I absolutely didn’t deserve by the way,) we made it back out front.

From then on, I stopped picking on anyone. Kevin and I actually became really good friends, though we drifted apart eventually. I think he works in Google now.

This is really important. I want you to pay attention and take heed of my words. There are a couple lessons in this story.

One, be kind. Always be kind. To everyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re going through a rough time or not, the same way it didn’t matter that Kevin’s father was dead. You don’t know the other person. There’s never a reason to not be kind, if the person has done nothing to you. A smile can make somebody’s day, a compliment can go a long way, and being open and honest and kind will make people who are looking for help find you, it will make other’s lives better, and if you’ve helped even a single person, your life has been successful.

Two, never, and I mean never take your emotional pain out on yourself, or others. There are healthy ways to deal with ugly emotions. There are people who can help. Find a new hobby, as silly as it sounds. Start doing something creative, something that draws your attention elsewhere, like art of any kind, or, in my case, fixing cars. Something to keep you busy. If you’re in trouble, emotional or otherwise, there are people who love and support you, who will do their mightiest to be by your side, and if those aren’t your friends, they’re definitely your family.

Bottling up emotions, or dealing with them in horrible, unhealthy ways has been my go-to. Don’t be like me. Express yourself in different ways, and don’t keep your feelings shoved under the carpet, because it will, absolutely, unceremoniously explode, and you’ll take people down with you. And that’s when you’ll feel like the worst person in the world. The guilt, the residue of said ugly feelings isn’t worth it. Trust me.

If you make mistakes, if you hurt people who don’t deserve it, learn from it, grow, be better. Do not sink into yourself , don’t hate yourself. Apologize, make amends and move on, try to never do the same thing. It’s okay. We’re all human. The only thing that matters is that you try to be better.

No matter what, remember that I will always love you.

~~~~

So. Our apartment back in Kansas was, as I told you, a real dump. It had a tiny-ass kitchen with a miniature stove, two mattresses that were creaky and lumpy and were left there by the previous owners, as well as the TINIEST bathroom you’ve ever seen. It didn’t have shower walls, it had a shower head and a drain on the floor and was not in any way separated from the toilet. The walls of the place were peeling, the floor was tiled and cracked in a bunch of places and the humidity must’ve been over 80%.

I fucking loved that place.

On our third day there, I borrowed some spray paints from Cole, carried them in a cardboard box up the claustrophobic, green stairs, and opened the door in absolute triumph. That day, Sam and I opened the two windows, scratched the paint off the walls with two spatulas and went WILD. It must’ve been the only day Sam didn’t study.

Actually, no, now that I think about it, there was another time, when little ol’ ten-year-old Sam fell off a ledge and freakin’ broke his arm. I dumped him on Cole’s bike and pedaled to the hospital like a maniac. That was the first day he didn’t study.

Anyways, that apartment wall made our crappy little living situation a home. Our own sanctuary. We finally got agency over our lives, from staying up late, to choosing which type of dish soap we’d use because it smelled better and didn’t remind us of the terror chores once were. Eventually, we got soft blankets, books, board games, decorations… Finally, after 18 years, we’d started our lives.

I think one of my favorite memories would be coming home from my first date with a guy. I was just 18 and Benny, the dude, kissed me before I left, his fists clutching at my flannel. I was driving home with a giant, dopey-ass smile, stretching from one ear straight to the other. That same night, with new-found confidence, I told Sammy to drop his book, bought ourselves some beers and snacks, and drove to my favorite clearing.

There, right under the stars, with Sammy trying out his first beer, I told him I’m bisexual, and the cute bastard hugged me and told me he loved me no matter what. That same night, he thanked me for everything I did for him while living with John. We talked until the sun was rising.

I’ll tell you this right now, kid, in case you haven’t gotten it yet. I love Sam. Love him to bits. I raised that kid all on my own and will do anything to protect him. I know he cares for me, I know it kills him to see me like this, in a bed, pale, miserable and coughing every three seconds. I just want you to know, honey, that whatever you need, anything at all that, for some reason, you don’t want to tell Dad, you go to Sam, okay? You can trust him to be supportive, loyal, to be there for you when no one else is and to love you like you’re his own daughter and best friend. I promise you, he will always, always be there when I’m not.

That night made us grow so much closer. The lesson here, I’d say, is be bold and confident in what you believe in and who you are. Be your own, unique self, be brave, and love whoever you choose to fully and with your whole heart, without shame, ever. If you are yourself, I promise, you’ll find the people that love you for you, not the person you’re pretending to be. You’ll inspire other to be themselves.

A good example of this would be my best friend, Charlie. When I came out, I was armed to the teeth to deal with whoever wanted to bully me for that part of me. To tell you the truth, my school coming out was a mishap. It takes nothing but a risky make-out session in the janitor’s closet and nosey students that rip doors open far too violently. Nevertheless, I was literally out of the closet, fists up. And that’s exactly when I met Charlie.

With her comic book stories and her books, her bubbly personality and bright smile, she wiggled her way into our lives and permanently stayed there. She was a freshman when I was a senior, but she seemed to find sanctuary by my side, as I did by hers. She was just one of those people who clicked, you know? Far too mature and interesting for her age, with an obsession with computers, even back when they were barely even a thing.

She now lives with her long-term girlfriend, Gilda, who owns the best bakery in the state. Ask for the apple pie, you will not be disappointed.

Charlie demanded of me to tell you, first off, to watch Marvel and screw DC right to hell (with which I have to agree, though Batman still remains one of the coolest Superheroes of my childhood (and Joker, the coolest villain)). She also told me that, if you read this, go ask her for her comics, She’d love to let you borrow them and she’s certain you’ll love them. Second off, she asked of me to tell you the Impala story…

It’s not as grand as she makes it out to be, honestly. However this is the part where you’ll learn all about the one and only Bobby Singer.

Bobby was my boss, an old friend of dad’s John’s and the first person who ever saw the bruises under my sleeves. He gave me a job, a family, and later on… a car.

Bobby owns a scrapyard. He taught me everything I know about cars, including driving, and for my seventeenth birthday, he brought a dusty, beat-up car in my workspace. The hood was bent, the seats were torn, and the engine needed immediate replacing. The customer never paid the price for the compartments the garage had paid, so under store policy, the car was ours.

Hannah, I can’t exactly describe to you how long it took me to repair that car. Buying the spare parts and assembling them would’ve probably taken less time. I built her from the ground up, it took me almost a month and a half of daily, eight-to-six work, but I made it. I fixed her up. She was in prime condition, and I had completely fallen in love with her.

I finished working on her early January, dreading the moment I would see her drive away. Bobby had seen all the effort, by then I’d worked at his place for over a year. So, on the day of my birthday, I opened my locker to put on my jumpsuit, when I saw a box placed on my neatly folded clothes. I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now. Yes. It was the keys to my dream car. A beautiful, sleek, black 1967 Chevrolet Impala, the one I had brought back to life. And it was all mine.

I don’t think I’ve hugged Bobby any tighter since then. Hell, I don’t think I’ve hugged him period.

That car… That car is probably the most stable thing in my life, apart from Sam, obviously. I’ve cried in that car, I’ve escaped from my terrible past, I’ve laughed, I’ve had my first time, I’ve been through breakups and I’ve spent my best days with it. I cherish it more than any other item I know. It’s not even an item, it’s my baby. I love it almost as much as I love you.

I met your dad, and kissed him for the first time in that car.

It’s actually a pretty fucking hilarious story. Cas was on a date with this guy who was completely disgusting and creepy as hell, so in true movie fashion he decided to, get this, jump out the bathroom window and escape.

Yeah.

So just as he was running out of the bar, the guy must’ve caught wind of him or something, because he stepped outside in order to find Cas. What did your dad decide to do, I hear you ask? He ducked behind a car in the parking lot, opened the first unlocked door he found, and jumped in.

Spoiler alert. It was my car.

I was sitting in the front seat, fighting with Sam through text when the door opened. It was highly comical, watching this guy duck behind the bench seat, mumbling “oh God, oh God, oh God, please don’t see me, oh God.” I cleared my throat.

“Oh, I see you, buddy.” That’s the first thing I told him. The look on his face and the genuine yelp, made me laugh a full belly laugh, and completely forget about my fight with Sam. He apologized profusely, explained panicked what had happened and begged me to stay in my car just for a couple minutes so the guy can lose him.

Long story short, we ended up going out ourselves. I don’t know how to explain it… we just clicked immediately. Like, there was a connection. Him and his big words, his baby blue eyes, his steady, deep and rough voice… I knew right away that all I wanted was to spend time with him, learn everything he was willing to share with me.

I’m so glad to have met your Dad. He was, is and always will be one of the best, kindest, most humble and genuine people on the planet. He sees the world from such a beautiful point of view that contradicts my eternal realism (he enjoys calling me pessimistic.) He’s a genuinely great person, and I can’t wait for you to figure so out yourself, if you haven’t already.

Of course, it wasn’t all fine and dandy. Meeting his parents was hellish. Let’s just say, Chuck and Naomi aren’t… the best people. They tried really, really hard to stop us from seeing each other, and eventually, they completely disowned Cas. He doesn’t like to talk about them much. His brother, Gabriel is an asshole, but a loveable one, while his other brother, Michael, you probably don’t know about. And you shouldn’t. Let’s just leave it at that. If Cas wants to share that story with you, he’ll do it at his own time.

I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned here. Something about, when finding your person, to keep them, fight for them, don’t stop loving them because everyone else is telling you (unless of course that person is toxic). But I don’t think I can give you solid love advice through a dumb book. Every relationship is different, and your Dad’s better at this than me anyways.

I don’t know exactly how long this thing is, by this point, but I’ve almost finished the pages of this booklet. I was really, really worried I wouldn’t finish it in time, but here we are. However many thousand words later, and I’m clueless as to how to wrap this up.

My life isn’t over yet, however it looks like it soon will be. I will confess to you, I’m scared, but most of all I’m angry. I’m angry at the world, at life and fate, if that’s even a thing, at God even. I’ve fought my whole life for peace and quiet, and right when I have found it, it’s being ripped from under my feet. Cancer fucking sucks.

No matter, my chin is up, and so are my fists. Winchesters don’t give up easy. I will fight this until my last breath, even if the chance of watching you grow up and being able to tell you everything I’ve written face-to-face, is nothing but a sliver. After all, impossible odds were always my favorite.

Sweetheart… I don’t know what to say. This might be the only thing you have left of me for the rest of your life, and it tears me up inside. Of course, I will not be able to write thirty five years of experience in a small book such as this, but this is a part of me, memories you can keep all to yourself. Ask Dad or Sam about any of it, I’m sure they’ll fill some gaps, tell you things I haven’t written.

I don’t want you to cry much, even though I’m not sure you will at all, given the fact that you’ve never met me. Either way, whether you feel or think anything of me or not, I want you to know that I love you so much. I’ve only known you for a couple of months, and, already, you’re the brightest ray of sunshine in my life.

I promise I will be by your side no matter what happens, through every milestone and hardship, I will love you from wherever I am.

Honey, please stay true to yourself. Never give up, no matter what curveballs life throws at you. There’s always reason to keep going, even if you can’t see it. Always keep fighting, ‘till your last breath, ‘cause you’re a Winchester and you’ve absolutely got this.

If there is something I want you to remember from the scribbly mess I’ve made, it’s this:

I love you. I’m proud of you. I believe in you.

Go get ‘em, tiger.

Bonus:

Tears streaming down velvety soft cheeks, dainty fingers gripping the book tightly, like her life depends on it, Hannah stares at the ceiling and groans at the mess she is. It’s the second time she read that last bit, and just as she thought she’d gotten over it, here she is, crying just as hard as the first.

She gets off her bed, pulling on her sweater sleeves. Feet in slippers, she makes her way down the corridor, knocking on the door, and opening when she gets an answer. Her fingers grip the doorknob, the other clutching the book, and she stares at the bed, watching as green eyes look up from his laptop.

“Why did you give this to me, you ass, you’re not dead,” she sobs, and Dean pushes his laptop to the side, arms opening wide to invite her in them.

“Aw honey,” he coos, a gentle, loving smile on his face. Hannah climbs on the bed and slides to his side, curling up in his arms. “It’s okay.” Fingers stroking her hair gently, as sobs wrack through the poor girl’s body. Dean almost feels bad.

Just then, Cas appears in the doorway, having heard Hannah’s cries. He sees the booklet clutched in her arms, her face buried in Dean’s neck, hidden behind her spring-curly hair. He makes eye contact with his husband, a knowing half-smile on his lips, as he leans on the doorway.

“I love you,” Hannah says, nose stuffed and running. “Thank you for not giving up on a relationship with me, even when you didn’t think you’ll survive.” Tears wet Dean’s eyes, as he presses a kiss on the crown of her head.

“I love you too.”

#dean fluff #dean angst #destiel #daddy!dean #destiel dads #supernatural au #spn fanfiction #supernatural #spn angst #spn fluff #oc

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the-desolated-quill · 6 years

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Quill’s Swill - The Worst Of 2018

Congratulations dear reader. You survived 2018. And you know what that means. It’s time for another best of/worst of list. Welcome to Quill’s Swill 2018. A giant septic tank for the various shit the entertainment industry produced over the course of the year. The films, games, TV shows and various other media that got on my bad side. As always please bear in mind that this is only my subjective opinion (if you happen to like any of the things on this list, good for you. I’m glad someone did) and that obviously I haven’t seen everything 2018 has to offer for one reason or another. In other words, sorry that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald isn’t on here. I’m sure it is as terrible as some have been suggesting. I just never got around to watching it.

Okay everyone. Grab your breathing masks and put on your rubber gloves. Let’s dive into this shit pile.

Hold The Sunset

The news that John Cleese would be returning to the world of BBC sitcoms was incredibly exciting, being a massive Fawlty Towers fan and all. Unfortunately Hold The Sunset was not quite what I had in mind. It’s one of those rare breed of situation comedies that chooses to offer no actual comedy. It’s not a sitcom. It’s a sit. Like Scrubs or The Big Bang Theory.

An elderly couple plan to elope abroad only for Alison Steadman’s son to barge in, having left his wife, and forcing them to put their plans on hold. Hence the title ‘Hold The Sunset.’ It’s like a cross between As Time Goes By and Sorry, but if all the humour and relatability were surgically removed by a deadpan mortician. The characters are weak, the plots are thin on the ground and the humour (hat little of it there is) feel incredibly dated. The middle aged mummy’s boy is something that hasn’t been funny since the 90s. It’s an utter waste of great talent and what hurts even more is that this tripe is actually getting a second series. I can only assume the people watching this are comatose. Either that or there’s an epidemic of people in Britain who have lost the remote.

Avengers: Infinity War

Yes this is one of the worst movies of 2018 and no I don’t regret saying that one little bit. Avengers: Infinity War was fucking terrible. Period. There were too many plots and characters going on, which made the film hard to follow (and what staggers me is that the so called ‘professional’ critics have condemned movies for having too many characters and plots before. Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice and even Deadpool 2. But because this is an MCU movie, it gets a free pass. Fuck off). The characterisation was weak due to sheer number of characters they try to juggle, resulting in characters coming off as one dimensional caricatures of themselves and scenes where characters such as Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Star-Lord sound completely interchangeable. The villain, Thanos, is a stupidly and poorly written villain, but that’s hardly surprising considering what a shit job Marvel have done building him up over the course of these 20+ movies. And let’s not forget that pisstake ending. A bunch of prominent Marvel characters die and it’s all very, very sad... except all these characters just so happen to have sequels planned, which makes this ending fucking pointless and have less impact than a feather on a bouncy castle.

I don’t know which is more shocking. That Marvel and Disney think their audience are that stupid and gullible, or that their audience are actually validating their view. Fuck you Disney.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery

I’ve always wanted a Harry Potter RPG, where you could customise your character, choose your house and actually live a full school life at Hogwarts. This year, Warner Bros and Jam City gave us just that.

That was a mistake.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is the epitome of everything that’s wrong with the mobile gaming market right now. The gameplay is boring and involving where you just tap images on a screen until a progress bar fills up. Wizard duels are little more than rock-paper-scissors challenges that require no kind of skill. Bonding with friends and caring for magical creatures just consist of pathetically simple pop quizzes and yet more boring tapping. Oh and of course you only get a certain amount of energy to complete these tedious tasks. If you run out of energy, you wait for it to fill up... or pay up for the privilege. So determined are they to extract your hard earned cash from your wallet, there’s actually a bit where Devil’s Snare strangles your eleven year old avatar and the game effectively tries to guilt trip you into paying micro-transactions to save them. It’s sleazy, gross and manipulative. Honestly, you’re better off just playing Candy Crush.

Agony

When the developers of this game said they wanted to give the player a trip through Hell, they had no idea how true that statement really was. Agony is dreadful on a number of levels. The design for Hell itself, while visually interesting at times, is often not very practical and gets quite dull and repetitive after a while. The stealth mechanics are a joke and the AI of your demonic enemies are pitiful. All of this alone would have been enough to put this game on the list, but then we also have the casual misogyny. Agony is a gorefest trying desperately to shock the player. We see men and woman get tortured, but it’s the women that often get the extreme end. The violence inflicted on them is often sexual in nature and the game seems to go out of its way to degrade and dehumanise women at every turn. The orgasmic cries of ‘pull it out’ quickly become a staple of the game’s experience as we see naked women raped, tortured and murdered, all for the purposes of ‘entertainment.’

I would call Agony sexist, but honestly that would be giving it too much credit. Agony is like a little child trying desperately to be all dark and edgy in a pathetic attempt to impress everyone around him, and we should treat it as such. Go to your room Agony. No ice cream for you.

Peter Rabbit

If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of Beatrix Potter rotating in her grave.

Yes we have yet another live action/CGI hybrid, but instead of something innocuous like the Smurfs or Alvin and the Chipmunks, Sony instead decides to adapt Peter Rabbit, with James Corden in the title role.

It’s about as bad as you’d expect.

Their attempts to modernise the story are painful to say the least with pop culture references, inappropriate adult humour and twerking rabbits. Plus rather than the gentle, but slightly mischievous character we got in the source material, here Peter is a sociopathic delinquent who seems to revel in making the farmer’s life a living hell. He’s unlikable and unwatchable as far as I’m concerned and the film doesn’t in anyway earn the emotional moments it tries so desperately to sell to the audience. And the worst part is it’s getting a sequel.

Wait. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of Beatrix Potter tearing out of the ground, ready to kill whatever idiot came up with this shit.

Fallout 76

I was excited for Fallout 76. A MMORPG where players band together to rebuild society after a nuclear apocalypse. Could have been great. Pity it wasn’t.

Fallout 76 is a dreadful game. Not only is it a buggy, glitchy mess that requires a constant online connection to play, which could result in you losing hours of progress if your WiFi went down, it’s also unbelievably tedious, and that’s because there’s nothing to do in the game. There’s no other characters to interact with, the various robots and computers you come across are really little more than quest givers, there’s no actual plot so to speak, and because of the sheer size of the world and the number of players allowed on a server, the chances of you actually meeting any actual players is remote. And let’s not forget all the behind the scenes drama. Bethesda falsely advertising Fallout themed canvas bags and players getting shitty nylon ones. Bethesda accidentally releasing the account information of various players trying to get a refund for said bag. Bethesda failing to program the year 2019 into the game code, meaning that the game’s nukes don’t work.

Maybe there’s a chance that Bethesda could pull a No Man’s Sky and fix everything over the coming years with various patches and DLCs, but the damage has already been done. It’s incredibly disappointing. The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to have be fucking incredible to win everyone back.

Mama Mia!: Here We Go Again

I can’t stand jukebox musicals anyway, but Mamma Mia was always one of the worst. Its boring, meandering story with its one note, obnoxious cast of characters screeching out ABBA songs like they’re at some drunken karaoke session at some poor sod’s hen party has always grated on my nerves. So imagine my delight when they announced we were getting a sequel. Ever wondered how Meryl Streep met her three lovers and founded her hotel? No? Well tough shit, we’re going to tell you anyway.

Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again is basically just Mamma Mia again. The actors still can’t sing, the characters are still annoying and story is still boring and meandering, completely at the mercy of the chosen songs rather than the filmmakers using the songs to compliment the story (you know? Like proper musicals do?).

How can I resist you? Very easily as it turns out. Gimme, gimme, gimme a fucking gun so I can end my misery.

The Cloverfield Paradox

A lot of people were unhappy about the direction Cloverfield was going. They wanted a continuation of the found footage, kaiju movie from 2008, not an anthology series. I was personally all in favour. Partially because I thought the first Cloverfield was a tad overrated, but mostly because I thought it would be a great opportunity for more experimental film projects and could be a great launchpad for new writers and filmmakers. 10 Cloverfield Lane was a great start. Then The Cloverfield Paradox happened.

The Cloverfield Paradox is basically JJ Abrams trying to have his cake and eat it too. Maintaining the anthology format whilst connecting everything together in a ‘shared universe’ (yes, yet another shared universe). The result was a cliched, poorly edited and idiotic mess of a film that actually took away from the previous two films rather than added to them. Everyone hated it and, as a result, 2018′s Overlord, which was totes going to be part of the Cloververse, was made its own standalone film and Abrams double pinky promised to make a true sequel to the original Cloverfield. A complete and total disaster. No wonder it was a straight-to-Netflix film.

The Handmaid’s Tale - Season 2

This is probably going to be the most controversial entry on the list, but please hear me out because I’m not the only one who has a problem with this season.

I was reluctant to watch The Handmaid’s Tale simply because of how gruesome the original book was, but I forced myself to watch the first season and I thought it was pretty good. It remained faithful to the source material for the most part and included some nice additions that helped to expand the story and mythos. If it was just a one off mini-series, everything would have been fine. But then they made the same mistake as The Man In The High Castle and Under The Dome did where they commissioned another season and attempted to tell a story that goes beyond the book.

There’s a reason why the original story ended where it did. The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t meant to be an empowering story about women sticking it to the patriarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how fragile our civil rights truly are and how easily they can be taken away from us. It’s designed to shock, not to satisfy. So seeing a handmaid blow herself up in a suicide bombing feels very incongruous and just a little bit silly. It would be like doing a TV adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 where the first season followed the source material and then the second season turned Winston Smith into this heroic freedom fighter trying to overthrow Big Brother. It would represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what the book was about in the first place.

And then of course there’s the increased level of violence in Season 2, which many have complained about. In Season 1 and the original source material, the violence was justified. In Season 2, the motivation behind the violence has gone from ‘how can we effectively demonstrate how easily a fascist patriarchy can happen in the West?’ to ‘what brutal act can we inflict upon Ofglen to shock the audience this week?’ It’s purely for shock and nothing more. And with the showrunner (who I feel I should mention is a man) announcing that he has planned ten seasons of this, it seems that The Handmaid’s Tale is going to go even further with this depravity until it effectively becomes the equivalent of a Saw film.

The Handmaid’s Tale exists as a way of shining light on and critiquing misogyny in its most extreme form. Season 2 however demonstrates that there is a serious risk of it becoming the very thing it’s criticising in the first place.

The Predator

I love the Predator franchise, but The Predator is the worst.

People thought that this would be good because director Shane Black had actually starred in the first Predator movie back in 1987. Instead we got this bloated, confusing, obnoxious and insulting mess of a film that seems to go out of its way to ruin everything that makes Predator so good. There’s no tension. No suspense. No intrigue. Just a bunch of gore, explosions and shitty one liners from annoying and lifeless characters. They essentially took this big alien game hunter from outer space and turned him into a generic monster from a bad summer blockbuster. It no longer hunts for sport. It wants to take over the world and splice our DNA with theirs. But don’t worry, a rogue Predator doesn’t want to kill humans (even though he himself kills a bunch of humans), so he gives us a Predator Iron Man suit to set up a sequel that will probably never happen because this movie was a box office bomb and it fucking SUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKEEEEEDDDD!!!

This film also has a very nasty streak towards those with disabilities. There’s a lot of jokes at the expense of a character with Tourette’s and it has an extremely ignorant and patronising view of autism, portraying the main character’s kid as being a super genius who can decipher the Predator language and even going so far as to say that he represents ‘the next stage of human evolution.’ Presumably the Predators want social communication difficulties because apparently it helps them hunt somehow.

What with Disney acquiring 20th Century Fox, the future of both the Alien and Predator franchises were very much in question. This film needed to be a success in order to make a case for Disney to keep making more of them. It wasn’t. Congratulations Shane Black. You might have just killed off this franchise for good. Thanks arsehole! :D

So those were my least favourite stories from 2018. Join me on Wednesday where we shall discuss something more positive. Yes, it’s awards season. Who shall win the coveted Quill Seal Of Approval? Watch this space...

Or don’t. It’s up to you. I don’t want to force you or anything. It’s a free country.

#quill's swill #quill's swill 2018 #worst of the year #review #opinion

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ioftenthinkoftragedies · 6 years

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I got tagged by my beloved @kingink2 (thank you so much dear! sorry for the delay)

1: A song you like with a color in the title

Lavender Fields by Lebanon Hanover.

Great band, I really like them. This song is so great in so many ways.

2: A song you like with a number in the title

Sweet Sixteen by Billy Idol

It’s always been a favourite song of mine, it brings back good memories of my teenage years. Quite dear to me as a matter of fact.

3: A song that reminds you of summertime

Nancy From Now On by Father John Misty.

I love this one, it has such a sweet melodie. Somehow it has always given me summer vibes, I don’t know if I’m correct but at least that’s what I feel.

4: A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

There are quite a few but I got over him. Forgave him. He was a music lover like myself, so you can figure there are a few songs but even though they still remind me of him, I think of him now with fondness and tranquility.

5: A song that needs to be played LOUD

Beyondless by Iceage. One of my favourite songs by my favourite band, I get endless goosebumps with this song. I love it so so much.

6: A song that makes you want to dance

Better Looking Brother by Lust For Youth

I loooove dancing so I could probably list a lot of songs here, however, this is one of my favourite songs to dance to lately. It’s amazing.

7: A song that makes you happy

Let The Night Come Seeping In by Josiah Konder

If you haven’t listened to this band, I highly reccomend it to you, it’s one of the finest new stuff, their debut album Songs For The Stunned is so good and beautiful. This song always makes me feel happy no matter how bad my day gets to be sometimes. It just makes my heart warm up, so-to-speak.

8: A song that you never get tired of

Talk To Me by Stevie Nicks

It never gets old

9: A song that you would 😍 played at your wedding

I don’t know if I’ll get married, but if I ever do, I would like to slow dance to If You Were The Woman And I Was The Man By Cowboy Junkies. When I fall in love, I act a lot like the lyrics in this one, like, being quite romantic and just wearing my heart in my sleeve I suppose.

10: A song that is a cover by another artist

Chelse Hotel No. 2 by Lana Del Rey

I know this is from the great and all around amazing Leonard Cohen, and I also know a lot of people don’t like Lana, but as many of you know, I’m a huge fan of hers, and I love both versions, but I think Lana did a great job when she covered this.

11: A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke

Interlude by Morrissey and Siouxsie Sioux.

I love this song, as I likely remember it is also a cover. It has a very special place in my heart, sometimes I listen to it when I’m about to sleep.

12: A song that makes you think about life

Autobahn 66 by Primal Scream

I always feel like life is such a mysterious thing whenever I listen to this. Plus, I’m such a daydreamer it’s hard not to relate. Sometimes I listen to a song and I’ll think to myself “this is life”. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it happens to me a lot. Another example is when I listen to a song and I’ll go “this sound like (insert here name of a person), it just sounds like their essence”. Anyway, got to deep in this answer hahaha.

13: A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

Believe Me Natalie by The Killers.

I think this is an underrated song, when Hot Fuss came out, everyone just stuck with Mr. Brightside and trust me, The Killers are waaay more than just Mr Brightside. The last 44 seconds of the song are everything.

14: A song that you think everybody should listen to

Lion’s Den by Marching Church

I know I am saying this a lot, but fuck man I love this song sooo much. So fucking much. It just puts me in a trance I swear.

15: A song by a band you wish were still together

Oh Baby by Siouxsie & The Banshees

16: A song by an artist no longer living

Waiting For That Day by George Michael.

17: A song that makes you want to fall 😍

I am terribly in love at the moment, and the song that has seen me lose my shit to this current boy is Some Days by Mrch.

18: A song that breaks your ❤️

Another No One by Suede. I have a playlist I made full of songs that make me cry, you know, for the sad days. This one gets me everytime.

19: A song that you remember from your childhood

Fly, Robin, Fly by Silver Convention

My parents used to play this a lot when I was like 4 or 5, I remember running around our apartment, playing with my toys, as my mum was doing household chores.

20: A song that reminds you of yourself

Duchess by Suede

Not to sound cocky at all, if you listen to the lyrics you’ll see why. I’ve always thought I sort of come from the same world Brett Anderson has written about, I relate to his words so much. So, ever since I became a Suedehead xD I noticed I was like this character Brett describes a lot, the lonely, sensitive girl who dreams a lot.

I now tag @blue-disorder @iariotact @new-brat-in-town @psycho-rats if you want to do it, if not it’s totally ok. Love you all, thank you for reading

#future reference

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gothic-fiction-in-space · 7 years

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Recently, the AVP Galaxy website, released two new early scripts for Alien: Covenant. Now we can read online three early scripts:

1) Paradise (John Logan, August 8, 2015): the early script of the part of the story that lately would have become the prologue video The Crossing;

2) (Alien:) Paradise Lost (John Logan, August 19, 2015): the earliest script of the movie we have now,

3) Alien: Covenant (John Logan, November 20, 2015): a subsequent old script of the movie.

Thanks to those scripts, we can now elaborate an idea of the creative process that was behind David’s character. Why? Because between Alien: Paradise Lost and Alien: Covenant there is a huge difference in David’s characterization, in David’s personality, a difference that has an impact on the story, especially on the relevance of Elizabeth’s figure in the whole picture.

In Paradise and Alien: Paradise Lost David doesn’t love Elizabeth. He doesn’t have real emotions. Only a big ego and big ambitions. This aspect was changed in Alien: Covenant, where David really was in love with Elizabeth (in an unhealty, obsessive way). In Paradise David plays the part of the sad, lonely, broken robot who doesn’t want to die alone and uses Elizabeth’s kind hearth and loneliness to his advantage. Elizabeth puts him back together and the two grow very colse to each other, even physically.

“They grow more and more comfortable … Cooking meals … Exploring the ship … Washing in the Water Room… Then, one day, they are working side-by-side, chatting easily … Her hand reaches out. Takes his. Holds it for a moment. Tears in her eyes. He looks at her. Then, they are curled together in one of the Engineer’s huge sleeping pods. Asleep. Lovers perhaps. Intimate certainly” - Extract of Paradise

From David’s side, it‘s only an illusion to obtain her trust. This really makes me think to what Ridley Scott said about David in an interview in 2014, about the plot of “Prometheus 2″:

“Once that head goes back on, (David) is really dangerous, but he’s also very seductive. So maybe he’ll persuade (Shaw) to help him put the head back.”

Then, in Paradise, when the Juggernaut arrives on Planet 4, David lets Elizabeth watch the planet, the Engineers’ structures from above, and then abruplty breaks her neck when she least expect it. Right after we cleary understand, by the text, that David was lying all the time, that he was faking his emotions, entirely.

“And all the clever simulations of humanness fade from his features. He has no need of them now. He can just be himself. His eyes are glacial as he stares down at the world at his feet” - Extract of Paradise

This old characterization of David had an impact over the subsequent story. In that old version Elizabeth arrives on the planet awake and never manages to see the Engineers. She didn’t manage to learn about their gruesome fate. David builds a grave for her in the garden and says to Walter he loved her, but probably only to emotionally tempt Walter (David uses emotions to tempt Walter in the final version of the movie too, trying to convince him he loves Daniels), and nothing more. He talks less fondly of Elizabeth in Alien: Paradise Lost. He doesn’t make references to her kindness. He only pretends he loved her, and thanks to Paradise we know that in that script it was a lie, entirely. In fact there aren’t the David’s drawings of Elizabeth in Alien: Paradise Lost. Why?? Because in that version of the story David had no obsession over her. No emotions. He probably didn’t even used her to create the facehuggers. In the subsequent script: the Alien: Covenant old script, David’s obsession becomes extremely important. The drawings appear and for example, they are even considered a sort of pornography by Walter (it’s only his opinion, nothing confirmed). The drawings are a relevant clue to David’s emotions in the final version of the story too.

“Oh he (David) absolutely did (loved Elizabeth). In many ways, not all of them healthy. She encapsulated humanity for him in the end, even more than Weyland I think. Look at the religious adoration even as he eviscerated her. Hence the iconography!” - Matt Hatton (one of the two set decorator and art illustrator that made David’s drawings, and the owner of the hands we see in Advent)

In the old script of Alien: Covenant David says to Daniels he loved Elizabeth enough to want to make her immortal like him, and that he wants to turn her (Daniels) into the first one of a “new species”, hinting that he tried to do the same to Elizabeth. All of this arrived, partially, more subtly, in the final version of Alien: Covenant, where we know, thanks to Fassbender, Scott and other people, that David loved Elizabeth.

“A.I don’t love their mistress or master, they respect them but technically they don’t have emotions. But he had emotions, that was a problem, emotion is a problem, emotion can lead to bad behavior (…) Confusingly but understandably, the monster had fallen in love with the woman. All right? So, this is real. He said this is an ode to my dear Elizabeth, ‘cause he knows he’s about to leave. He thinks. ‘Farewell Elizabeth” - Ridley Scott (Alien: Covenant, blu-ray, the director’s commentary)

Thanks to the Advent video we learn that David wanted to create a “second Eden” with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth refused to be part of his projects and he had to kill her. In Advent we also learn that David tried to make Elizabeth “more than human”, “evolved”, hinting a bit to what David says to Daniels in the old script of Alien: Covenant, that he wanted to make Elizabeth immortal (probably always to use her to produce his creatures, but as a living being, not as a corpse; he says a “second Eden”, and Eden means Adam and Eve but means creation too, and we know by interviews and by the final movie that David has always wanted to create something). This may connects to what David says at the end of Advent, that he’ll make “his queen” with Daniels. As if he previously tried to make the “mother creature” with Elizabeth but couldn’t entirely finish the job as he initially had planned it and that he’ll perfectionate that concept with Daniels. This ties beautifully, to me, with the plot of Prometheus, where Elizabeth cries because she can’t “create life”, becaue she can’t have children, and where David experiments on Holloway managing to get Elizabeth pregnant, effectively creating a proto-facehugger (the trilobite) thanks to Elizabeth’s reproductive system.

I think that probably in the last version of the story, Elizabeth does manage to land on Planet 4. I have this “theory” because David puts her to sleep in The Crossing, and because Elizabeth was meant to ask help for the Engineers and then to pray for them in the hologram found by the crew of the Covenant, in the last version of the story (but then Scott changed his mind and decided to make Elizabeth to simply sing a song, just to make the scene looks better, not for more relevant reasons). In the final version of the story Elizabeth probably arrived alive on the planet, and probably she came to learn about David’s terrible plans. And so, she refused to cooperate, as David says in Advent, and probably tried to go away, or let David understand she would have gone away.

“He (Walter) doesn’t incorporate concepts like vanity or jealousy or gratitude. He doesn’t fall in love with characters like we saw the strange relationship between Shaw and David. There is a bond that develops there which is a very human one, and human flaws that come with it. You get the impression that Shaw is wary of David, and I think he just wears on her nerves. He’s like this love sick stalker in space… The idea is that these human traits have started to overcome the synthetic ones - and I’ve treated him like a serial killer really. He’s afraid of things leaving him, so he incubates them. Like a Jeffrey Dahmer-type character, David doesn’t want things he loves to leave him, so he kills them and keeps them in caskets or preserved one way or the other. He (David) killed her, essentially, to prevent her from leaving him” - Michael Fassbender

“What choice did I have?” Says David in Advent. There is a “bond” there, says Fassbender. And he was right. Because some elements of the story, from Paradise to The Crossing, changed, but not the entirety of the story. For example we know for sure that the Paradise scene where David’s broken body floats outside the juggernaut managed to come into the final version of the story, but was cut from the final version of The Crossing (as I explained on this blog in an older post: https://gothic-fiction-in-space.tumblr.com/post/171624040368/gothic-fiction-in-space-davids-head). But the part of Paradise where Elizabeth grows fond of David too managed to arrive in the last version of the story. It’s confirmed by another statement of Fassbender (and we are discovering, day after day, that Fassbender’s statements in interviews are believable):

“ - How has David’s relationship with Shaw changed (post Prometheus)?

- Like any good marriage it’s, you know, there’s a real affection there between the two of them. I think they get on each other’s nerves, well he gets on her nerves rather, but I suppose they went through quite a lot together in Prometheus, so there is a bond there for sure”

So yes. Maybe they weren’t so much close, aslo physically, in the last version of the story, but anyway, yes: Elizabeth grew fond of David too, more or less. Probably it went like we can read in Paradise: David played (but not entirely faking it) the part of the broken lonely robot, Elizabeth pitied him (it’s confirmed in interviews that he convinced her to bring him back inside and that she pitied him) and so David’s obsession for her developed into something more, and Elizabeth started to get affectionate to him too, probably out of loneliness, as we read in Paradise. And so we see Elizabeth trusting David, in The Crossing, and smiling to him.

So, in my opinion, at a certain point it was decided that David really loved Elizabeth and that this element had to become relevant in David’s characterization and in the creation of the Xenomorph too. This fits better with Prometheus too, where David wasn’t meant to feel real emotions (a change that can be explaind by how synthetics work in the Alien franchise according to Ridley Scott: I talked about that in some old posts) but was already very interested in Elizabeth, as several people who worked at Prometheus already thought back in 2012.

“He’s (David) always been interested in Elizabeth, remember that: he’s watching her dreams when she’s sleeping in much the same way that he watches ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. He’s a strange robot that has a curious crush on a human being” - Damon Lindelof (scriptwriter of Prometheus). (I wrote about the several connections between David, Elizabeth and T. E. Lawrence in some old posts here on my blog).

I like the final version of the story more than the old one. All the themes regarding creation/reproduction, philosophy, and more, tie perfectly together from Prometheus to Alien: Covenant, and David is even more complex than before. He’s more intriguing now.

“What’s interesting about David is that he’s very needy. He feels like he needs validation from those around him. He’s looking for love in all the wrong places” - Michael Fassbender

In the final version of the movie Elizabeth’s figure has more relevance: being David’s obsession and being an important part of the process of creation of the Xenomorph. A process full of twisted, meaningful, extremely fascinating elements that give depth to the alien and reinforce all of its old violent simbolisms, even the “sexual violence” related ones that it had in the first Alien movie (and also in the subequent ones, to an extent).

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minervajeanlupin · 7 years

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My Dad Reacting To Hamilton (Act 1)

Hamilton: "They literally just said his entire life story- for the first song!"

Aaron Burr, Sir: “Wow, he’s even worse at making friends then you are. And what did that guy just say about horses? Isn’t that a Disney character name?”

My Shot: "Oh, never mind, he’s much better at making friends then you are, he just made three friends during one song."

The Story of Tonight: "Wait, I though you said he had an affair with a woman?"

Me, confused: “Yeah...”

“Then who’s this guy?” *talking about John*

Me: “Oh! That’s John. Alex might have had an affair with him too, but historians aren’t sure and it wouldn’t be an affair anyway as he wasn’t married yet.”

“Okay...”

The Schuyler Sisters: "Why do they keep saying Manhattan is the greatest city in the world?"

Me: “That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“Oh, Burr is kind of creepy.”

Farmer Refuted: "Why does Hamilton keep fighting everyone?”

You'll Be Back: "Oh... okay.”

Right Hand Man: "Oh, it’s Washington! Wait, is this why Burr turned evil?"

A Winter's Ball: "But is it actually true?"

Me: “What?”

”Did Martha Washington actually name her feral tomcat after him?”

Me: “I think so?” *looks it up* “Yeah, it’s true.”

Helpless: "You’re never like around boys."

Me: *sweats nervously cause I’m gay*

Satisfied: "Wait he had an affair with her sister?! That’s terrible!"

Me: “What?”

”He had an affair with the woman singing right now, right?”

Me: *sigh* “How about I just tell you when the affair happens?”

”Okay. This guy must be really good looking if so many people want to get together with him!”

The Story of Tonight: "Don’t do that at your wedding."

Wait For It: "Why did he have an affair too?! Why is everyone having affairs??"

Stay Alive: "Oh that’s sad because he didn’t stay alive."

Ten Duel Commandments: "Wait there are more duels in this? I thought there were only two!"

Meet Me Inside: "I thought they got along well though!"

That Would Be Enough: "Oh... ohhhhh. Well he doesn’t seem like the type to be a very responsible parent."

Guns and Ships: "Wait is this about Hamilton? He already broke his promise and went back to the war?! Wait... what is happening?"

History Has Its Eyes on You: "You just told him to go home!"

Battle of Yorktown: "Oh it’s the Disney horses guy!"

Me: “He deserves more respect then that, he was a spy-”

”On the inside! I know, they just said so!”

What Comes Next: "Well joke’s on him cause America is still standing today."

Dear Theodosia: "Awww. But why is Hamilton so aggressive even when singing a lullaby?”

Laurens Interlude: “The guy he had an affair with before he got married died?! Wait his wife is reading the letter, does that mean she knew?”

Non-Stop: “Hamilton is kind of a jerk to his wife sometimes.”

Me: “Yeah, but he really cared about her...”

“And why didn’t Washington decide whether Hamilton should be treasurer or secretary of state before meeting him? And why are so many people singing at the same time now?”

#me #hamilton: an american musical #hamilton #my parents react #alexander hamilton #lams #hamliza #eliza schuyler #the schuyler sisters #george washington #John laurens #hamilton act 1 #lafayette #hercules mulligan #angelica schuyler #peggy schuyler #aaron burr

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ts1989fanatic · 7 years

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All 115 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked

From teenage country tracks to synth-pop anthems and little-known covers, a comprehensive assessment and celebration of Swift's one-of-a-kind songbook

Taylor Swift the celebrity is such a magnet for attention, she can distract from Taylor Swift the artist. But Swift was a songwriter before she was a star, and she'll be a songwriter long after she graduates from that racket. It's in her music where she's made her mark on history – as a performer, record-crafter, guitar hero and all-around pop mastermind, with songs that can leave you breathless, or with a nasty scar. She was soaring on the level of the all-time greats before she was old enough to rent a car, with the crafty guile of a Carole King and the reckless heart of a Paul Westerberg – and she hasn't exactly slowed down since then.

So with all due respect to Taylor the myth, the icon, the red-carpet tabloid staple, let's celebrate the realTaylor – the songwriter she was born to be. Let's break it down: all 115 tunes, counted from the bottom to the top. The hits, the flops, the deep cuts, the covers, from her raw 2006 debut as a teen country ingénue to "...Ready for It?" – her latest offering. Every fan would compile a different list – that's the beauty of it. But they're not ranked by popularity, sales or supposed celebrity quotient – just the level of Taylor genius on display, from the perspective of a fan who generally does not give a rat's nads who the songs are "really" about. All that matters is whether they're about you and me. (I guarantee you are a more fascinating human than the Twilight guy, though I'm probably not.)

Sister Tay may be the last true rock star on the planet, making brilliant moves (or catastrophic gaffes, because that's what rock stars do). These are the songs that sum up her wit, her empathy, her flair for emotional excess, her girls-to-the-front bravado, her urge to ransack every corner of pop history, her determination to turn any chorus into a ridiculous spectacle. So let's step back from the image and pay homage to her one-of-a-kind songbook – because the weirdest and most fascinating thing about Taylor Swift will always be her music.

115. "Bad Blood" (2014)

Melodically parched, lyrically unfinished, rhythmically clunky – this was a mighty strange pick for a single from an album as loaded as 1989. There are a million things Taylor has in common with Paul McCartney – one is that celebrity grievances tend to sound like a penny-ante waste of their time, even when they're totally understandable (unless you're a fan of Macca's "Dear Boy," where John Lennon is his Katy Perry). The single remix is improved by Kendrick Lamar – but he wasn't saving his A-game for this one.

Best line: "Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes."

114. "Santa Baby" (2007)

Yes, she made a Christmas album, which is full of contenders for the basement of this list. But an oldie about a gold digger wooing Little Saint Nick was perhaps a dubious pick for a singer still in her teens.

Best line: "I've been an awful good girl."

113. "A Place in This World" (2006)

Apprentice work from the debut, when she was still learning the ropes as a country songwriter. Yet, the seeds of greatness are already there. Historical significance: This was the song where Tay discovered rain imagery, which in her hands was the equivalent of Sir Isaac Newton inventing calculus.

Best line: "I'll be strong/I'll be wrong/But life goes on."

112. "Christmas Must Be Something More" (2007)

A hymn about how Jesus is the reason for the season, with the hook, "So here's to the birthday boy who saved our lives." Unlike most boys Swift sings about, Jesus didn't comment publicly.

Best line: "What would happen if God never let it snow?"

111. "I'm Only Me When I'm With You" (2006)

Could there be a less Swiftian sentiment? For better or worse, this girl is always herself. That's kinda the point.

Best line: "I'm only up when you're not down/Don't wanna fly if you're still on the ground."

110. "Two Is Better Than One" With Boys Like Girls (2009)

A long, long, very long duet with former Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy tourmates Boys Like Girls, who are either from London or Nashville (they seem to switch accents at random).

Best line: "You already got me coming…undone."

109. "Out of the Woods" (2014)

Taylor loves to sing about boyfriends who are terrible drivers, but this guy takes the prize – he crashes her snowmobile and gets 20 stitches in the hospital. Call a cab, girl.

Best line: "Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying."

108. "Silent Night" (2007)

This bizarre version manages to miss almost every single note in the melody. They sure were in a rush to get this Christmas album out.

Best line: "Shepherds quake at the sight."

107. "Both of Us" With B.o.B (2012)

Nice try at remaking "Airplanes," but that Hayley Williams lightning does not strike twice.

Best line: "Your money's all gone, and you lose your whip."

106. "The Last Time" With Gary Lightbody (2012)

Her duet with the guy from Snow Patrol. Unfortunately, their voices don't mesh at all – what, is he auditioning for a Spandau Ballet tribute band? The funny moment is the très Eighties synth-horn blurp at the three-minute mark.

Best line: "This is the last time I'm asking you this/Put my name at the top of your list."

105. "The Outside" (2006)

Still a rookie, still learning, still trying to get away with "read between the lines" and "the road less traveled by" in the same verse.

Best line: "Nothing ever works the first few times/Am I right?"

104. "Girl at Home" (2012)

A perfunctory cheating-is-bad homily, with barely any chorus.

Best line: "I feel a responsibility/To do what's upstanding and right."

103. "Come in With the Rain" (2008)

She leaves her window open overnight, just in case her ex falls out of a cloud. There's a great "oooh" in the second chorus – one of those moments you can tell she's an Oasis fan. (This song makes you suspect "Don't Look Back In Anger" is a fave.)

Best line: "I could stand up and write you a song/But I don't wanna have to go that far."

102. "Half of My Heart" With John Mayer (2009)

The real prize from his Battle Studies album is "Heartbreak Warfare"; this is lesser J.M., with an underexploited T.S. cameo and an increasingly irritating premise of hearts having fingers, which they don't. No wonder the girl in the dress cried the whole way home.

Best line: "Half of my heart's got a grip on the situation."

101. "The Other Side of the Door" (2008)

Again with the slamming doors. Tay Tay – even the great songwriters can get away with exactly one slamming door per career. And just to be on the safe side, she throws in pouring rain, photo albums, a little black dress (which rhymes with "mess" and "confess"), a guy throwing pebbles at her window….In other words, this would be the ultimate Swift song – except there are a hundred better ones.

Best line: "Me and my stupid pride, sitting here alone/Going through the photographs, staring at the phone."

100. "Superman" (2010)

A Lois Lane fantasy, left off Speak Now for good reason.

Best line: "Tall dark and beautiful/He's complicated, he's so irrational."

99. "Cold as You" (2006)

"I start a fight because I need to feel something" – give her credit for honesty, even in this raw phase.

Best line: "Oh, every smile you fake is so condescending."

98. "If This Was a Movie" (2010)

"Good evening, sir. May I help you? You're a guy in a Taylor Swift song who wants to stand outside the window in the pouring rain, begging the love of your life to forgive your sorry ass? Take a number and get in line. No, that line."

Best line: "But I take it all back now!"

97. "Sweeter Than Fiction" (2013)

A warm-up for the synth-pop of 1989, from the One Chancesoundtrack.

Best line: "What a sight when the light came on."

96. "A Perfectly Good Heart" (2006)

"It's not unbroken anymore"? Paging the eminent cardiologist Dr. Toni Braxton.

Best line: "Why would you wanna make the very first scar?/Why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?"

95. "White Christmas" (2007)

Unlike "Silent Night," this was a yuletide carol she could handle, with a straight-down-the-middle country rendition.

Best line: "Where the treetops glisten."

94. "Never Grow Up" (2010)

A folksy fingerpicking change of pace on Speak Now, pining for childhood innocence – though it feels more like a leftover from the debut.

Best line: "You're mortified your mom's dropping you off."

93. "I Don’t Wanna Live Forever" With Zayn Malik (2016)

Neither she nor Zayn sound deeply interested in this dueling-falsettos battle from the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack. Maybe it works in the movie, but who wants to go find out? Really, they sound like two ghosts standing in the place of…sorry, sore subject, let's drop it.

Best line: "I've been feeling sad in all the nicest places."

92. "You Are in Love" (2014)

One of her through-the-years romances, this one featuring a snow globe.

Best line: "For once you let go of your fears and your ghosts."

91. "Mary's Song (Oh My My)" (2006)

Another through-the-years romance, but with a sweet homespun touch.

Best line: "I'll be 87, you'll be 89/I'll still look at you like the stars that shine in the sky."

90. "Highway Don't Care" With Tim McGraw and Keith Urban (2013)

A duet from McGraw's album Two Lanes of Freedom, with a guitar solo from Keith Urban. The plot: His ex is driving away, listening to a Taylor song on the radio, as Tay tries to coax the woman into turning the car around and going home. Perhaps McGraw's finest duet since his great lost Nelly jam, "Over & Over."

Best line: "I bet you're bending God's ear talking 'bout me."

89. "Change" (2008)

Oh, the fall of 2008 – Chuck and Blair were still an item, Suede was killing it on Project Runway, and "Change" was a de facto victory song for Obama, complete with a thumbs-up for "the revolution." Yeah, those were different times.

Best line: "These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down."

88. "Nashville" (2010)

A cover of an obscurity by country singer David Mead, tucked away as a bonus on the Target edition of the Speak Now Tour Live DVD.

Best line: "Was that a blood or wine stain on your wedding dress?"

87. "The Sweet Escape" (2010)

From the same live DVD, a remake of the Gwen Stefani solo hit. Taylor's vocal sure fits the Gwen just-a-girl sensibility.

Best line: "I must apologize for acting stank."

86. "Look What You Made Me Do" (2017)

The reason fans once cared about rap beefs: They inspired great songs, whether it was Queens vs. the Bronx ("The Bridge" vs. "The Bridge Is Over" vs. "Have a Nice Day") or LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee ("How Ya Like Me Now" vs. "Jack the Ripper" vs. "Let's Go" vs. "To Da Break of Dawn"). But this just sounds like a trivial time-waster by her standards – Swift's celebrity feuds are not really one of the hundred most interesting things about her. The main attraction here is the retro Panic! at the Disco vibe. Here's hoping it gets outshined by the rest of Reputation, the way "Shake It Off" was instantly eclipsed by the rest of 1989.

Best line: "It's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality." Oh wait – that actually is Panic! at the Disco.

85. "Stay Beautiful" (2006)

An early stab at a take-the-high-road breakup song.

Best line: "He whispers songs into my window."

84. "I Want You Back" (2010)

A live acoustic tribute to the then-recently departed Michael Jackson, with a bit of Motown tremble in her voice.

Best line: "Now it's much too late for me to take a second look."

83. "The Way I Loved You" (2008)

She meets a low-stress boy who doesn't want love to be torture. Alas, this suitor is toast, because he reminds her how much she misses the manic pixie drama vampire she dated before. Sorry, dude – she loves the players, and she loves the game.

Best line: "He respects my space/And never makes me wait."

82. "Thug Story" With T-Pain (2009)

The classic T-Pain and Taylor duet from the 2009 CMT Awards, still T-Swizzle's finest rap performance.

Best line: "No, I never really been in a club/Still live with my parents, but I'm still a thug/I'm so gangsta you can find me baking cookies at night/You out clubbing, but I just made caramel delight."

81. "I Wish You Would" (2014)

One of her many, many songs set at 2 a.m. – clearly the most inspiring hour on Swift Standard Time – with a staccato disco guitar lick.

Best line: "We were a crooked love in a straight line down."

80. "Umbrella" (2008)

The Rihanna hit, briefly covered on the Live in SoHo digital album. Her finest Ri tribute remains her 2011 version of "Live Your Life" with T.I. onstage in Atlanta – sadly unreleased, but a duet that deserves to be enshrined for the ages.

Best line: "Stand under my umbrella, ella, ella."

79. "I Heart ?" (2008)

The trad country sound she soon left behind, from her Beautiful EyesEP.

Best line: "Wake up, and smell the breakup/Fix my heart, put on my makeup."

78. "Breathe" (With Colbie Caillat) (2008)

A gorgeous duet full of low-key nuances – her humming after the first verse, that "sorry, sorry, sorry" fade, the way Colbie's voice lifts hers.

Best line: "It's tragedy, and it'll only bring you down."

77. "The Moment I Knew" (2012)

A somber piano ballad about getting stood up on your 21st birthday.

Best line: "There in the bathroom/I try not to fall apart."

76. "Untouchable" (2008)

A rare case where she retools somebody else's song on one of her proper albums – the all-but-unknown Y2K-era rock band Luna Halo, who went on to open for Hoobastank. Her Fearless version sounds practically nothing like their original (though both name-check .38 Special's Eighties classic "Caught Up in You"). In fact, it's tough to fathom how she heard the original as raw material she could use – now that's ears.

Best line: "In the middle of the night when I'm in this dream/It's like a million little stars spelling out your name."

75. "Pour Some Sugar On Me" With Def Leppard (2008)

She makes a daring leap into the hair-metal mom market by teaming up with Def Leppard on CMT Crossroads, a move that works almost frighteningly well. Peak glam, especially when she asks the gender-torching question, "Demolition woman, can I be your man?"

Best line: "Do you take sugar? One lump or two?"

74. "Christmases When You Were Mine" (2007)

Taylor writes her own ace lovelorn holiday standard, ambushing her ex with one of those squirm-packed Merry-Christmas phone calls. Awkward question: "When you were putting up the lights this year/Did you notice one less pair of hands?" Eat your heart out, Mariah.

Best line: "I bet you got your mom another sweater."

73. "American Girl" (2009)

A bang-up claim on the Tom Petty classic – she used his original as her live entrance music for a while. Then she switched to Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman."

Best line: "Oh yeah! All right!"

72. "Invisible" (2006)

A teen ditty about a boy who doesn't realize she's alive, from pretty much the last moment in history that was possible. Clever pop-obsessive touch: The final steel-guitar twang echoes Elton John's "Rocket Man." If you think that's an accident…this is Planet Tay. There are no accidents.

Best line: "We could be a beautiful miracle, unbelievable, instead of just invisible."

71. "Jump Then Fall" (2008)

Ironclad rule of pop music: Songs about jumping are never a bad idea. Dig that "listens to Sublime once" vocal.

Best line: "I watch you talk, you didn't notice."

70. "Breathless" (2010)

Digging deep in the Nineties modern-rock crates, she does right by a previously obscure (to me) nugget from the New Orleans band Better Than Ezra – from 2005!, 10 years after their MTV hit! – as a charity benefit for the Hope for Haiti Now album.

Best line: "I'll never judge you/I can only love you."

69. "Superstar" (2008)

"You smile that beautiful smile, and all the girls in the front row scream your name." No relation to the 1970s Leon Russell ballad immortalized by the Carpenters – except they're both poignant ballads about groupies crushing on distant guitar boys. Well, as Journey warned, lovin' a music man ain't always what it's supposed to be.

Best line: "You sing me to sleep every night from the radio."

68. "Crazier" (2009)

Her ballad from Hannah Montana: The Movie, snagging her a cameo in the film. (But the highlight of the soundtrack will always be "Hoedown Throwdown.") This is where Taylor and Miley crossed light sabers – although they'd meet again. Great title, too – even Taylor might probably admit Miley had her beat in this department, at least until the "Blank Space" video.

Best line: "Every sky was your own kind of blue."

67. "Innocent" (2010)

Little-known fact: Did you know Kanye West once went onstage to interrupt Swift's acceptance speech at the VMAs and threw a misogynist tantrum about how she didn't deserve an award? Strange but true! "Innocent" was her song publicly forgiving him – seven freaking years ago – then they both released brilliant albums, and we all moved on with our lives. Dear Lord, if only this story had ended there.

Best line: "It's okay/Life is a tough crowd."

66. "Come Back…Be Here" (2012)

A yearning prayer for a rock & roll boy on tour, weak in the knees as she pleads for him to jet back on any terms he chooses.

Best line: "I guess you're in London today."

65. "Tied Together With a Smile" (2006)

An unsung highlight of the debut – a teen pep talk about self-esteem.

Best line: "Seems the only one who doesn't see your beauty/Is the face in the mirror looking back at you."

64. "Last Christmas" (2007)

Tay does the Wham! legacy proud – she should have also covered "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." The ache and quaver of her voice fit the George Michael melancholy; this might be the saddest "Last Christmas" since the original. Plenty of us communed with this version last Christmas, the night we said goodbye to the guy who wrote it. R.I.P., George Michael.

Best line: "A girl on a cover, but you tore her apart."

63. "Tell Me Why" (2008)

From Neil Young to the Beatles, "Tell Me Why" songs are tough to screw up, and even at 19, Tay's too seasoned to let that happen.

Best line: "I need you like a heartbeat/But you know you got a mean streak."

62. "Beautiful Eyes" (2008)

If you're a fan of Swift's Nineties modern-rock radio jones – one of her most fruitful long-running obsessions – check out this shameless tribute to the Cranberries. (But did she have to let it linger? Did she have to? Did she have to?)

Best line: "Baby, make me fly."

61. "Everything Has Changed" (2012)

She and Ed Sheeran wrote this duet together in her backyard while bouncing on a trampoline, because of course they did.

Best line: "All I've seen since 18 hours ago is green eyes and freckles and your smile."

60. "Love Story" (2008)

Romeo meets Juliet: proof that star-crossed teen romances never go out of style. She's kept going back to the well of Shakespearean tragedy, quoting Julius Caesar in the "Look What You Made Me Do" video. It's never been clear what the line "I was a scarlet letter" is doing in this song, but now it's a hint that Tay was just a few years away from going full Hester Prynne in "New Romantics."

Best line: "Just say yes."

59. "Speak Now" (2010)

In real-life weddings, the preacher hardly ever invites the groom's ex up to interrupt the ceremony. But if you're a fan of Tay in stalker mode, this is priceless – crouching behind the curtains in the back of the church, waiting to pounce. "Horrified looks from everyone in the room" – you don't say.

Best line: "It seems I was uninvited by your lovely bride-to-be."

58. "Shake It Off" (2014)

A clever transitional single – great verses, grating chorus, pithy lyrics with a shout-out to her obvious inspiration, Robyn's "Dancing on My Own." As a lead single, "Shake It Off" might have seemed meager after 1989 came out – she was holding back "Blank Space" and "Style" and (Lord have mercy) "New Romantics" for this? But "Shake It Off" got the job done, serving as a trailer to announce her daring Eighties synth-pop makeover.

Best line: "It's like I got this music in my head, saying it's gonna be all right."

57. "Better Than Revenge" (2010)

One of the basic rules of stardom is "never punch down" – don't go after somebody one-thousandth as famous as you – but rules were made to be broken, and Taylor is the girl made to break them. Here, she goes Bruce Lee on a sexual rival who may or may not be the actress who had Alyssa Milano as her babysitter in the erotic thriller Poison Ivy 2. But as usual with Swift, her self-owns are the funniest part of the song.

Best line: "She thinks I'm psycho because I like to rhyme her name with things."

56. "Welcome to New York" (2014)

People sure do love to complain about this song – in fact, the most authentically New York thing about it is how it sends people into spasms of mouth-foaming outrage. An explicitly queer-positive disco ode to arrivistes stepping out in the city that invented disco – "You can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls" – that will be bugging the crap out of you in rom-coms for years to come. (It made me throw a napkin at my in-flight screen during How to Be Single, when Dakota Johnson's cab is going the wrong way on the Brooklyn Bridge – and I love this song.) Bumped up a few bonus notches for pissing everyone off, since that's one of this girl's superpowers.

Best line: "Searching for a sound we hadn't heard before/And it said welcome to New York."

55. "Drops of Jupiter" (2010)

I mistakenly thought this Train hit was deep-fried garbage until I heard Swift's version and realized, "Hey, she's right – this is the best soy latte I've ever had!" Props to Tay for bringing out the hidden greatness in this song – the stargazing lyrics and her voice go together like Mozart and tae bo. (The astrophysicist in my life would like me to point out that you can't "make it to the Milky Way" because that's the galaxy we already live in. In fact, you couldn't leave the Milky Way if you tried. Science!)

Best line: "Tell me, did Venus blow your mind?"

54. "Haunted" (2010)

Enchanted to meet you, Goth Taylor. We'll meet again.

Best line: "Something keeps me holding on to nothing."

53. "Today Was a Fairy Tale" (2011)

Don't let the title scare you away – it's a plainspoken and genuinely touching play-by-play recap of a worthwhile date. In fact, "Today Was a Fairy Tale" and "If This Was a Movie" should trade titles, since this one feels realer and would make a better movie. It could rank higher, except she hugely improved it when she rewrote it as "Begin Again." (Docked a couple notches for coming from the soundtrack of Valentine's Day, which is the most dog-vomit flick Jessica Alba has ever made, and I say that as someone who paid money to see The Love Guru.)

Best line: "I wore a dress/You wore a dark gray T-shirt."

52. "All You Had to Do Was Stay" (2014)

A 1989 banger that could have made an excellent single – it sounds a bit like "Out of the Woods," except with a livelier chorus and a stormier range of electro-Tay sound effects.

Best line: "Let me remind you that this was what you wanted."

51. "Eyes Open" (2012)

Finally, her long-overdue metal move, from The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond.

Best line: "Every lesson forms a new scar."

50. "Treacherous" (2012)

"Put your lips next to mine/As long as they don't touch" – now there's an entrance line. Taylor braves the ski slopes of love, with a seething acoustic guitar that finally detonates halfway though.

Best line: "Nothing safe is worth the drive."

49. "You Belong With Me" (2008)

One of her most pop-friendly early hits, singing in the role of a high school geek crushing on her best guy friend. When he comes out in college, they'll have a few laughs about this. (And never let us forget the wisdom of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless: "Searching for a boy in high school is as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie."

Best line: "She wears high heels, I wear sneakers/She's cheer captain, and I'm on the bleachers."

48. "I Almost Do" (2012)

A Red slow jam that could have worked even better sped up into a punked-out rocker – though it's plenty affecting as is.

Best line: "Every time I don't, I almost do."

47. "...Ready for It?" (2017)

If by "it" you mean "literally any song that isn't 'Look What You Made Me Do,'" the answer is "extremely ready." A major rebound from her previous release, a week earlier – the chorus of this one actually sounds like a Swift song, with a little air in the mix, giving the room she needs to pull off her intricate breathy effects. Max Martin knows how to shape a production around her voice. A hopeful omen for the rest of Repu TAY shun (hey, I just got that).

Best line: "You can be my jailor/Burton to my Taylor."

46. "Stay Stay Stay" (2012)

"Before you, I only dated self-indulgent takers" – but here she turns into a self-indulgent taker herself and (surprise!) she likes it, a phone-throwing nightmare dressed like a grocery-shopping daydream. She finally meets a guy who can roll with her mood swings – even if she's more in love with the mood swings than with the guy.

Best line: "You came in wearing a football helmet and said, 'Okay, let's talk.'"

45. "Safe and Sound" (2012)

She ventures into rootsy folkie territory on the Hunger Gamessoundtrack, teaming up with the Civil Wars and producer T Bone Burnett, exploring crevices of her voice she hadn't opened up before. Everyone steps out of their comfort zone, and it works. The Swift-Burnett connection raises the question of how long it'll take her to collaborate with Elvis Costello, a songwriter with whom she shares some fascinating affinities. At the very least, Tay should cover "New Lace Sleeves."

Best line: "Don't you dare look out your window, darling/Everything's on fire."

44. "Ronan" (2012)

A little-known charity single for cancer research, unlike anything else in her songbook. She wrote this about Ronan Thompson, a four-year-old Arizona boy who died of neuroblastoma, after she read his mom's blog. She turned the blog entries into a disarmingly eloquent ballad (crediting Maya Thompson as co-writer) and performed "Ronan" at the Stand Up to Cancer benefit. You might expect it to be manipulative and obvious; it isn't.

Best line: "We had our own secret club."

43. "You're Not Sorry" (2008)

A dramatic piano-and-strings ballad from Fearless, showing off how much her voice has deepened between her first two albums.

Best line: "It's taken me this long, baby, but I figured you out."

42. "I Know Places" (2014)

She goes all Kate Bush, pursued across the moors by the hounds of love. This 1989 deep cut is underrated, but count on "I Know Places" to loom large in her canon over the years.

Best line: "My love, they are the hunters, we are the foxes."

41. "Bette Davis Eyes" (2010)

Her kickiest left-field cover, from Speak Now Live. "I'd love to play you some music that I'm a fan of that's come from L.A. – is that OK?" she asks the West Coast crowd, strumming her guitar. "This one came out in 1981 – eight years before I was born!" Virtually nobody seems to recognize it or sing along. Kim Carnes hit Number One with "Bette Davis Eyes," but it was written by the great Jackie DeShannon, the only songwriter to collaborate with both Randy Newman and Jimmy Page. (Page wrote "Tangerine" for DeShannon!) The fact that Swift loves this classic ode to romantic espionage explains a lot.

Best line: "She's pure as New York snow/She's got Bette Davis eyes."

40. "Wonderland" (2014)

Why did it take her five albums to get to Alice in Wonderland? Needless to say, Taylor Alison Swift fits right in on the other side of the looking glass, with white rabbits and Cheshire cats. Feed your head!

Best line: "It's all fun and games till someone loses their mind."

39. "The Lucky One" (2012)

She's so lucky, she's a star. For the record, T.S. did cover "Lucky" live once (and damn well, too), as a Britney tribute in Louisiana back in 2011.

Best line: "It's big black cars and Riviera views/And your lover in the foyer doesn't even know you."

38. "Wildest Dreams" (2014)

You rang, Goth Taylor? At first this might have seemed like a minor pleasure on 1989, but it really sounds stronger and stronger over the years, especially when she hiccups the words "my last request ih-ih-is." The video features giraffes and zebras.

Best line: "He's so tall and handsome as hell/He's so bad, but he does it so well."

37. "White Horse" (2008)

Teen Romantic Tay meets Bitter Adult Tay in a superbly disenchanted breakup ballad that gives up on princesses and fairy tales.

Best line: "I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet/Lead up the stairwell."

36. "Starlight" (2012)

"Oh my, what a marvelous tune" seems like a dauntingly quaint chorus, yet she makes it stick, in what sounds like an F. Scott Fitzgerald-themed whirlwind romance. That hook comes straight from the AC/DC playbook (specifically, the opening lines of "You Shook Me All Night Long") – the sign of a truly sick pop scholar.

Best line: "We snuck into a yacht-club party/Pretending to be a duchess and a prince."

35. "Picture to Burn" (2006)

The dawn of Petty AF Tay, as she serves her ex beatdown threats. Every boy who ever complained when Taylor wrote about him – this is where you officially got fair warning.

Best line: "Let me strike a match on all my wasted time."

34. "Forever and Always" (2008)

She added this to Fearless at the last minute – just what the album needed. It's a blast of high-energy JoBro-baiting aggro on her most anomalously shade-free album. "It rains in your bedroom" is a very on-brand Tay predicament.

Best line: "Did I say something too honest? Made you run and hide like a scared little boy?"

33. "Back to December" (2010)

One of the rare ballads where she goes crawling back to an ex she treated like dirt – and she's surprisingly effective in the role. Although breaking into the guy's house is a little extreme. (If she's blocked by the chain on his door, that means she already picked the lock, right?) And sorry, but you're seriously dreaming if you think I'm bothering to Google the name of that Twilight guy, don't @ me.

Best line: "It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you."

32. "The Best Day" (2008)

Her tribute to Mama Swift. A weapons-grade tearjerker and not to be trifled with in a public place. NSFW, unless you are a professional crier.

Best line: "You were on my side/Even when I was wrong."

31. "The Story of Us" (2010)

You could credit this hit with single-handedly driving John Mayer out of the pop heartthrob business and into the Grateful Dead – which is just one of the things to love about it. Along with the Joey Ramone-style way she says, "Next chapter!"

Best line: "See me nervously pulling at my clothes and trying to look busy."

30. "How You Get the Girl" (2014)

She busts out her trusty acoustic guitar, teardrop stains and all, just to turn it into a beatbox.

Best line: "Stand there like a ghost shaking in the rain/She'll open up the door and say 'Are you insane?'"

29. "Hey Stephen" (2010)

Loaded with classic girl-group flourishes, right from the opening "Be My Baby" drum beat. Plus, it begins and ends with her finest humming solos. If she wanted to hum on every song, she could make that work.

Best line: "All those other girls, well, they're beautiful/But would they write a song for you?"

28. "Should've Said No" (2006)

A pissed-off highlight of the debut, with an Oasis-worthy chorus. Savor the perfect Liam Gallagher way she milks the vowels of "begging for forgiveness at my fee-ee-eet."

Best line: "It was a moment of weakness, and you said yes."

27. "Last Kiss" (2010)

Toward the end of Speak Now, when you're already wrung out from sad songs and begging for mercy, this six-minute quasi-doo-wop ballad creeps up on you to inflict more punishment. One of those flawless Nathan Chapman productions – so sparse, so delicate, flattering every tremor of her voice.

Best line: "I'm not much for dancing, but for you I did."

26. "Teardrops on My Guitar" (2006)

One of her defining early smashes – and the one that marked her crucial crossover to the minivan-mom adult audience, where country stars do most of their business. It also inspired the first anti-Taylor answer song – Joe Jonas sang, "I'm done with superstars/And all the tears on her guitar" in 2009, on the JoBros' instantly forgotten Lines, Vines and Trying Times.

Best line: "Drew walks by me/Can he tell that I can't breathe?"

25. "Sad Beautiful Tragic" (2012)

She must have heard a Mazzy Star song on the radio that morning and thought, "Hey, this sounds like fun." All the details are in place, from her woozy Hope Sandoval mumble to the way Nathan Chapman nails Sandoval's exact tambourine sound. Such an underrated Red gem, one she's almost never done live. Would any other songwriter on Earth have the sheer gall to get away with that title? Let's hope nobody tries.

Best line: "You've got your demons, and, darling, they all look like me."

24. "Mine" (2010)

"You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" is one of those hooks where she seems to cram a whole life story into one line.

Best line: "I was a flight risk with a fear of falling."

23. "This Love" (2014)

A meditative 1989 nocturne – half acoustic introspection, half electro reverie – as she genuflects in the midnight hour.

Best line: "I could go on and on/And I will."

22. "22" (2012)

Approximately 22,000 times more fun than actually being 22. The best song about turning the double deuce since Neil Young's "Powderfinger," if not the Stratford 4's "Telephone," it's also her first shameless disco trip, with that Nile Rodgers-style guitar flash. But the power move is that "uh oh" into the chorus – the oldest trick in the book, except she makes it sound brand new every time.

Best line: "This place is too crowded, too many cool kids."

21. "Mean" (2010)

A banjo-core Tay-visceration of people who are mean, liars, pathetic, and/or alone in life, including the ones who live in big old cities. Always a concert highlight, showcasing her murderers' row of a band, the Agency.

Best line: "Drunk and grumbling on about how I can't sing."

20. "I Knew You Were Trouble" (2012)

It slams like a lost Blondie hit, from somewhere between Parallel Lines and Eat to the Beat. The way she sings the word "drown-i-i-i-ing" alone makes it.

Best line: "He was long gone when he met me/And I realize the joke is on me."

19. "Tim McGraw" (2006)

We knew she was trouble when she walked in – or at least we should have guessed from her debut single. You couldn't make this up – a nervy high school kid shows up with a country ballad she whipped together after math class one day, about slow dancing in the moonlight to the pickup truck radio: "When you think Tim McGraw/I hope you think of me." Within a couple of years, she's an even bigger star than McGraw is.

Best line: "He said the way my blue eyes shined/Put those Georgia pines to shame that night/I said, 'That's a lie.'"

18. "Style" (2014)

Not always a subtle one, our Tay. This extremely 1986-sounding synth-pop groove is full of hushed-breath melodrama, where even the guy taking off his coat can feel like a plot twist. (Why would he keep his coat on? This is his apartment.) And the long-running songwriting badminton between her and Harry Allegedly is pop call-and-response the way it ought to be – no matter how much misery it might bring into their personal lives, for the rest of us it means one great tune after another. (Yeah, OK, plus the one about the snowmobile.)

Best line: "You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye/And I got that red lip classic thing that you like."

17. "State of Grace" (2012)

She opens Red with one of her grandest love songs in arena-rock drag, and the U2 vibe makes sense since she's also got a red guitar and the truth. If "State of Grace" is her U2 song, what's the U2 song that sounds most like Taylor? Probably "All I Want Is You," though you could make a strong case for "A Sort of Homecoming."

Best line: "Up in your room and our slates are clean/Twin fire signs, four blue eyes."

16. "Sparks Fly" (2010)

"Drop everything now! Meet me in the pouring rain!" Oh, this girl loves her precipitation scenes, but "Sparks Fly" really brings the thunder. It shows off her uncanny power to make a moment sound gauchely private and messily public at the same time. (The new Waxahatchee album has another excellent song called "Sparks Fly" – no relation.)

Best line: "Just keep on keeping your eyes on me."

15. "Fifteen" (2008)

"In your life you'll do bigger things than date the boy on the football team/I didn't know that at 15." Still south of her twenties, she sings her compassionately, sisterly yet hardass advice to her fellow teenage girls. (Spoiler: Boys are always lying about everything.)

Best line: "We both cried."

14. "Ours" (2010)

Like so many of her songs, "Ours" sounds like it could be channeling the 16-blue mojo of the Replacements' punk-rock bard Paul Westerberg. (Melodically, it evokes "When It Began," though it feels more like "I Will Dare.") Especially the best line, which is possibly the best-est "best line" on this list, and which I sing to myself a mere dozen times a day.

Best line: "Don't you worry your pretty little mind/People throw rocks at things that shine."

13. "Begin Again" (2012)

"You said you never met one girl who had as many James Taylor records as you," indeed. Sweet Baby Tay drops a deceptively simple ballad that sneaks up and steamrolls all over you, as an unmelodramatic coffee date leads to an unmelodramatic emotional connection. She's always been outspoken about her mad love for her namesake JT and Carly Simon, but "Begin Again" could be the finest collabo they never wrote.

Best line: "You don't know why I'm coming off a little shy/But I do."

12. "Fearless" (2008)

Oh, Fearless, it's easy to take you for granted sometimes. The first time I heard her sophomore record (the record company literally played it over the phone for me because they were so afraid of it leaking) I thought, "Holy cats, this is a perfect pop album. She'll never top this." Then she topped it three times in a row, to the point where it's one of history's most curiously overlooked perfect pop albums. The title anthem gathers so many of her favorite tropes in one chorus – rain, cars, fancy dresses, boys who stare at her while driving instead of watching the damn road, shy girls posing as brave and faking it till they make it – and builds up to a swoon.

Best line: "You're so cool, run your hands through your hair/Absent-mindedly making me want you."

11. "Enchanted" (2010)

The moment where this bittersweet symphony leaps from a nine to a 10 comes at the 4:25 point, when it feels like the song has reached its logical conclusion, until the Interior Monologue Voice-Over Taylor beams in to whisper: "Please don't be in love with someone else/Please don't have somebody waiting on you." In the final seconds, for the coup de grace, she duets with herself.

Best line: "The lingering question kept me up at 2 a.m./Who do you love?"

10. "Our Song" (2006)

The hit that made me a Swift fan, the first moment I heard it in 2007 – it knocked me sideways in the middle of lunch. (The CW played it as interstitial music between afternoon reruns of the Clueless sitcom and What I Like About You.) "Our song is a slamming screen door," what a genius hook. I Googled to see who wrote this; it turned out the songwriter was also the singer and – how strange – she was just starting out. I hoped she might have at least another great tune or two in her. This song and that voice have kept slamming those screen doors ever since.

Best line: "We're on the phone, and you talk reeeeeal slow/'Cause it's late and your mama don't know."

9. "Red" (2012)

The mission statement for Red, this century's most ridiculously masterful megapop manifesto. Eurodisco plus banjos – the glitter-cowgirl totality Shania Twain spent years trying to perfect, with a color-tripping lyric worthy of Prince himself, faster than the wind, passionate as sin. Plus, her all-time gnarliest pileup of Swiftian metaphors. (Nitpick: What kind of crossword puzzle has no right answer? What self-respecting puzzlemaster would sign off on that?)

Best line: "Lovin' him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street."

8. "Clean" (2014)

Love is the drug. "Clean" is the stark synth-folk ballad of an infatuation junkie struggling through some kind of detox, with a big assist from Imogen Heap. An intense finale for the all-killer homestretch of 1989.

Best line: "Ten months sober, I must admit/Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it."

7. "Holy Ground" (2012)

Nobody does zero-to-60 emotional peel outs like our girl, and "Holy Ground" is her equivalent of Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon. Note the sly brilliance of how she steals that Eighties guitar riff from none other than Billy Idol, making this her "White Wedding" as well as her "Rebel Yell." (Though the lyrics are about dancing with herself.) A highlight on the Red tour, showcasing Tay's drum-solo skills.

Best line: "Hey, you skip the conversation when you already know."

6. "Dear John" (2010)

A slow-burning, methodical, precise, savage dissection of a failed quasi-relationship, with no happy ending, no moral, no solution, not even a lesson learned – just a bad memory filed away. "Dear John" might sound like she's spontaneously pouring her heart out, but it takes one devious operator to make a song this intricate feel that way. ("You're an expert at sorry and keeping lines blurry and never impressed by me acing your tests" – she makes all that seem like one gulp of breath.) Every line stings, right down to the end when she switches from "I should have known" to "You should have known."

Best line: "I'm shining like fireworks over your sad empty town."

5. "We Are Never Getting Back Together" (2012)

Like, ever. Her funniest breakup jam, because it's her most self-mocking. She could have made the guy in this song a shady creep—a cheater, a liar, a scarf-stealer, etc. But, no, he's just a needy little run-of-the-mill basket case, exactly like her, making the same complaints about her to his own bored friends, though his complaints can't be as catchy as this chorus. And the video is a gem, especially when she's wearing the Tay Is Seriously Mad Now glasses. Where is that indie-rock bar that still has a pay phone?

Best line: "I mean, I'm just like, this is exhausting, OK?

4. "Blank Space" (2014)

A double-venti celebration of serial monogamy for Starbucks lovers everywhere, as Tay zooms through the whole cycle – the high, the pain, the players, the game, magic, madness, heaven, sin. Every second of "Blank Space" is perfect, from the pen clicks to the "nasss-taaaay-scarrr" at the end. The high might not be worth the pain, but this song is.

Best line: "Darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream."

3. "Long Live" (2010)

This is her "Common People," her "Born to Run," her "We Are the Champions." An arena-slaying rock anthem to cap off Speak Now, for an ordinary girl who suddenly gets to feel like she rules the world for a minute or two. "Long Live" could be a gang of friends, a teen couple at the prom, a singer addressing her audience. But like so many songs on Speak Now, her secret prog album, it reaches a point where it feels like it's over and Tay's bringing it in for a landing, except that's when the song gets twice as good. In the final verse, she makes a gigantic mess. (Actual lyric: "Promise me this/That you'll stand by me forever." WTF, girl, you were doing so well there.) Yet that's the moment that puts "Long Live" over the top – a song nobody else could have written, as she rides those power chords home. That's Taylor: always overdoing it, never having one feeling where six would do. Long live.

Best line: "I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you."

2. "New Romantics" (2014)

The way Taylor exhales at the end of the line "I'm about to play my ace-aaah" is perhaps the finest moment in the history of human lungs. "New Romantics" is where she takes the Eighties synth-pop concept of 1989 to the bank, with a mirror-ball epiphany that leaves tears of mascara all over the dance floor. She tips her cap to the arty poseurs of the 1980s New Romantic scene – Duran Duran, Adam Ant, the Human League, etc. – yet sounds exactly like her own preposterously emotional self. (One of my weirdest moments of recent years: explaining this song's existence to the guys in Duran Duran.) "New Romantics" is hardly the first time she's sung about crying in the bathroom, but it's the one that makes crying in the bathroom sound like a bold spiritual quest, which (when she sings about it) it is. The punch line: Having written this work of genius, exceeding even the wildest hopes any fan could have dreamed, she left it off the damn album, a very New Romantic thing to do.

Best line: "We show off our different scarlet letters/Trust me, mine is better."

1. "All Too Well" (2012)

So casually cruel in the name of being awesome. This towering ballad is Swift's zenith, building to peak after peak. For "All Too Well," she teams up with her trustiest collaborators – songwriting sensei Liz Rose, producer Nathan Chapman – to spin a tragic tale of doomed love and scarves and autumn leaves and maple lattes. It's full of killer moments: the way she sings "refrigerator," the way she spits out the consonants of "crumpled-up piece of paper," the way she chews up three "all"s in a row. No other song does such a stellar job of showing off her ability to blow up a trivial little detail into a legendary heartache. (That scarf should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though in a way it already is.) You can schaeden your freude all over the celebrity she reputedly sings about, but on the best day of your life you will never inspire a song as great as "All Too Well." Or write one.

Best line: "Maybe we got lost in translation/Maybe I asked for too much/Maybe this thing was a masterpiece till you tore it all up/Running scared, I was there, I remember it all too well."

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magicalthoughtsendinterriblefics · 7 years

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Fights and Cries - Request

Requested by anon: - Can you make a fic where the reader and Sherlock argue so the reader leaves Baker Street for a while. While she's gone Sherlock is having flashbacks of her and their time together. He puts his emotions into composing a song for her on his violin to play it when she returns. With just a lot of fluff please!! & anon: Could you do something where you call Sherlock a freak in the heat of an argument and he's really hurt by it :( because you're the only one who never called him that (John also, but for dramatic purposes yanno)

Pairing: Sherlock x reader.

Word count: 1.776

Warnings: Sad Sherlock, Sad (Y/N).

A/N: I have never written the words “I love you” so many times in one fanfic before this... Also, I’m soooo tired right now that there are probably loads of mistakes. Sorry about that.

Enjoy!

How foolish had he been by acting like that, by talking to her like that. She had been the only person ever not to call him like that, the only person in the world to understand him and now that was over.

She had called him a freak, and she had done so because he had called her a lot of things he wouldn’t dare to repeat out loud ever again. It was in the heat of an argument, a very silly argument – but Sherlock always took such things seriously.

It was a dumb argument. Sherlock didn’t even remember why it started, but he knew that it escalated slowly until it exploded and she left. She had stomped out the room furiously, shutting the door and running down the rainy street without caring to grab an umbrella first.

“You are going to catch a cold.” Sherlock insisted as she danced under the rain, around him.

“And you will die bored and unimpressed.” She snapped back. Sherlock looked up at the umbrella he was holding.

“I’m impressed you enjoy getting wet under this awful rain.” Sherlock commented with a smug smirk.

“I’m impressed you don’t.”

Now she was all over his head, invading his thoughts with memories of their time together.

Were they real memories? Or what that just a case of a broken heart romanticising common moments to make them look magical? Or even so, inventing moments just for the sake of it? Sherlock did not know; all he wanted was to apologise, to have her back in his arms.

But he couldn’t call her. She had left her phone on the kitchen counter, and even if she had taken it with her, she wouldn’t answer.

“Your ringtone is ridiculous.” Sherlock mocked her as her phone broke the silence of the room.

“Says the man whose text messages sound like moans.” She pulled out her tongue and read the text message she had gotten.

“How are you not jealous about that?” John inquired.

“Because she does use her brain,” Sherlock snapped with a sassy smirk.

“Also, because I still have the undying fantasy of us having a threesome,” she said and John made a vomiting face.

“Gross.”

“Nice way to dodge a rough subject,” Sherlock complimented.

She had always been so nice to him, so understanding, so comprehensive and merciful…. She knew how much Sherlock needed the moan ringtone, just because Irene Adler’s tone was that “and why would I change it for?” or the fact that she didn’t get jealous because she was aware that Sherlock had made his choice and that choice had been her and not Irene.

She was always kind, but also fierce whenever someone insulted him or called him a freak. Always ready to jump in his defence, one time even by beating Donovan’s arse for teasing Sherlock.

“That was a very nice right hook,” Sherlock complimented as he pressed a cotton swab with alcohol at the edge of her broken lip.

“Is that sarcasm?” She inquired weakly.

“No, you really do look appealing when you’re angry.” Sherlock replied listlessly, “Nobody has ever done that for me.”

“Nobody has ever had the balls to do so.”

“You don’t have balls… Not literal balls.” Sherlock furrowed.

“How can you tell?” She cocked an eyebrow mockingly and then they were busting in laughter.

(Y/N) was the funniest and most clever woman Sherlock had ever encountered, she had a charm that nobody else had, the kind of charm he was always attracted to.

He was desperate, in pain, suffering… He had never felt like that, but the closest feeling was when Irene turned her back on him, so he figured those were matters of the heart. What to do in such cases?

The heart, always so complicated and stubborn. The heart, were passion lived and… Passion, that was it, he would use passion to heal his broken heart and maybe amend his relationship too. Passion was the answer, passion was his saviour.

He ran all around the flat, looking for his violin somewhere in that messy labyrinth he and John had created with time.

“You need a maid.” She said as she slid her finger down the bookshelf, lifting all the dust bunnies.

“I’m against new people.” Sherlock replied listlessly as his blue eyes focused on the microscope in front of him.

“Then you need to clean, it’s not healthy to have all this dust.” She commented, walking over to him and wrapping her arms around his waist as her head rested lazily over his shoulder.

“It is also not healthy to smoke, use drugs, stay awake for many days in a row, and not eat for elongated periods of times, etcetera… Yet, I do all of that and am still alive.” He muttered, looking down to meet her (Y/E/C) eyes. He sighed heavily and turned back to the microscope. “Fine, I will try my best to dust more often.”

She always got what she wanted with a bat of her eyelashes, or simply by looking straight into his eyes. Sherlock always surrendered to her, even if he regretted it later, and everyone mocked him for that.

He finally found the violin. He took it out, and set the empty music sheets on the stand as he searched for a pen on his desk.

Sherlock wrote with a trembling hand, at the very top of the paper, the title of the song and then scratched it and wrote something else, and then scratched it and wrote another thing, and so on until he found a proper name.

“(Y/N)’s ballad song waltz melody apology?”

He started playing, feeling every emotion in his body. He closed his eyes, ready to feel the music, when yet another memory hit his mind.

“You always do that when you play.” She commented.

“Always do what?”

“Forget the world, close your eyes and swing with the music…” She replied in a dreamy voice tone.

“I do enjoy playing it…” Sherlock mumbled shyly.

“I like it… You seem more…”

“More…?”

“Human.”

The son was slow, and tender and full of pain and love. A tear slipped down his eyes as he continued to play, always making enough pauses to write the proper notes on the sheets he had prepared.

Memories invaded his mind as he played; memories of her smell, her smile, her hair, her eyes, her laugh, her touch, her body, her soul… She was his whole wide world, and only now that she was away, he understood that.

He played and played over and over again, even after finishing the song, he would continue to play it from the beginning like a never ending loop. He was in love, truly, madly, deeply in love with a woman who had stomped out of the flat almost two hours ago.

He cried and groaned in desperation as he played the song he had written for her, wondering if she would ever hear it? Of course she would she had left her phone, purse and other possessions there, she had to get back some time.

Maybe he was being over dramatic… John always called him a drama queen, and maybe he was right. But his pain was such… He couldn’t help but to think she would never come back to him.

Suddenly, the door opened slowly.

(Y/N) was dripping wet, and her eyes were redder than ever because she had been crying too. She was frozen there, at the door, not knowing what to say next.

“That song is beautiful.” She whispered.

“I wrote it for you…” Sherlock replied, also in a whisper. “You will get sick.”

He left the violin over the desk and ran to the bathroom, from where he took a towel and then got back to the living room, wrapping the towel around (Y/N) and guiding her inside and over to the chimney. He turned it on and sat by her side, with his arms around her as a way of heating her.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called you a freak.” She whispered, leaning in to his touch.

“The fault is mine… I shouldn’t have said all those awful things.” Sherlock replied, leaving a soft kiss over her temple, “I don’t think you are any of that…”

“I know.”

“I feel terrible.”

“I know.”

“I love you…”

“I…” Her eyes widened as she moved to look at him straight in the eyes. “I love you too.”

They remained quiet, by the chimney, lost in each other’s eyes, not knowing how to break the silence.

“Play it for me,” She begged suddenly, “play that song you wrote, play it for me, please.”

Sherlock didn’t hesitate. He got up in a jump and walked over to his violin. He set himself in place, reading all the notes he had written a while ago. They were messy, his hands were trembling, and he started to think that it wasn’t a good song – but she wanted to hear it, and so Sherlock played it.

The song reflected his feelings perfectly. It was slow and soft at the beginning, depressive in the middle and then it turned into the most intense tune ever, with fast swings of his bow and loads of high notes. It was anger, and passion, and love… It was beautiful.

When Sherlock finished, he noticed his movements had been so intense that a bit of sweat had formed on the top of his forehead; not enough to drip, but just the right amount for him to notice its stickiness.

“It’s…”

“Bad? Awful?” Sherlock interrupted, giving her his puppy eyes.

“It’s gorgeous.” She finished, getting up from the floor to hug him.

“You really like it?” Sherlock asked and she nodded.

“I love it.” She whispered and so Sherlock leaned down to leave a soft peck on her blue lips. She was still cold, still shaking, still wet, but his touch seemed to have a healing effect on her.

“I am so in love with you…” Sherlock whispered painfully.

“It’s mutual, my dear.” She cried and then both of them melted in each other’s arms, only crawling closer to the fire when she started coughing, but always together.

Sherlock needed to assimilate the brand new information about his feelings, and she needed to warm up somehow. They both needed each other by their side, listening to their heat beat, in order to achieve such things.

“I love you, I love you, I love you…” Sherlock repeated, “I will never get tired of saying it… Unless of course there are people around, I don’t believe in public display of affection.”

She giggled. “I know, and I love you for that.”

Masterlist.

Forever Tags: @dekahg @myfriendmagislit Cumberbitches Tags: @newts-fan-case @resurrection-huntress @narnianroyalties Sherlock: @procrastinating-my-life-away @charlottemalfoy @zena-dukmak @just-a-blog00 @wefracturedmotivation @beccamullz @sugarshai @vancepter @roseyhxnt @thisisjessicatalking @foureyedsiopao @nicole-pierce @captain-sherlockomg @kissed-by-white-wolf @samanthasmileys @love-charmer-sketch @givemeamemoryicanuse @diesintheshower @demonminnion3 @thatmoodindigo @sexyporntime @jennajoseh @destiel5100 @peachyoshi64 @1enchantedfantasy1 @thesherlockblr @yehummno @jaspar-error404 @spaghettiicat @duubaduu @milychetto @frayedphan @violenttgod @comicnerdmia @shadyladyperfection @thisisafanficblog @dandonish

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock holmes #bbc sherlock holmes #sherlock x reader #sherlock holmes x reader #sherlock au #sherlock reader insert #sherlock fanfic #sherlock fanfiction #sherlock imagines #imagine sherlock #sherlock imagine #sherlock oneshot #sherlock one shot #sherlock one-shot #sherlock benedict cumberbatch #benedict cumberbatch

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princessasmosprincess · 7 years

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The Ultimate Musical Theatre Questionnaire

This is not originally mine, the link is below. I just filled in my answers.

Ultimate Musical Theatre Questionnaire

Some of these will include a Top 5-10…

1. What is your “go-to song” when you’re feeling sad?

It really depends on what “sad” means that day. If I need a boost of confidence “Watch What Happens (Reprise)” or “Once and for All” usually does it. If I need to get out some anger “I’m Done” from Rocky is a fun one to sing. Comforting songs are good too, like “A Little Fall of Rain”.

Honestly, playing a cast album like Newsies or Cinderella really lifts my spirits.

2. What Broadway song do you relate to?

SO MANY!

Watch What Happens ~ Newsies

Santa Fe ~ “

If I Loved You ~ Carousel

Before the Parade Passes By ~ Hello, Dolly!

3. Favorite female voice? Favorite male voice?

This one is so hard. Obviously this isn’t a complete list but this is what comes to mind at the moment.

Female:

Barbara Streisand

Laura Osnes

Laura Benanti

Sierra Boggess

Megan Hilty

Kelli O’Hara

Lea Salonga

Phillipa Soo

Male:

Jeremy Jordan

Alfie Boe

Ramin Karimloo

Santino Fontana

Aaron Tveit

Christian Borle

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Hugh Jackman

4. What is your favorite show based off the music?

Bonnie and Clyde

Death Takes A Holiday

Meet John Doe

The Secret Garden

Chaplin

Literally anything Rodgers and Hammerstein. Even if I don’t care for the show, I usually love the music. I love the wit behind the lyrics.

5. An overrated song.

Seasons of Love ~ Rent (I love to hate this one. It’s catchy and fun to sing… SOMETIMES…)

All I Ask of You ~ The Phantom of the Opera (I read the book, I’ve seen the movie, the live tour, and the 25th anniversary, but I just don’t like Raoul...)

I’m Not Afraid ~ Songs for a New World

Sixteen Going on Seventeen ~ The Sound of Music (there are other really great songs in this show!)

Tomorrow ~ Annie

I Feel Pretty ~ West Side Story (I mean, really, this is one of the defining songs of this amazing show? America, Maria, and Tonight are so much better in my opinion).

Green Finch and Linnet Bird ~ Sweeney Todd

6. An underrated song.

Without You ~ My Fair Lady (everyone always does “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “I Could Have Danced All Night” but I don’t think those two songs are the best in the whole show).

How Can Love Survive ~ The Sound of Music (this one wasn’t in the movie but it is an amazing song. It’s so witty and the tune is beautiful. Actually I did this one as a solo for a cabaret show).

Raise A Little Hell ~ Bonnie and Clyde (This one gives me chills every time)

7. An overrated musical

Avenue Q ~ I am so tired of hearing about this one, and I don’t like the concept or the music.

Book of Mormon ~ I know there are a few good songs but as a Mormon and as a decent human being I find it offensive… Jk about the decent human being thing, but still, I don’t like this one…

Rent ~ I do appreciate that it’s based off of La Boheme, and that it’s a very revolutionary piece, but I’m tired of hearing about it.

Cats ~ why?

Chicago

Little Women ~ Everyone has Sutton Foster Fever and they need to stop. She’s a great actress, but there are other actresses out there and these songs are played too much.

Into the Woods

Songs for a New World ~ BIG TIME. It really bothers me that the songs I like from this show are less popular than the ones everyone raves about.

You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown ~ Any of the Charlie Brown musicals… I don’t really have a connection and I don’t think the music is particularly clever…

Seussical ~ I’ve been in one full production of this and I also played the Cat in the Hat in a dance recital (that one was actually fun), but I LOATHE this show. It’s very childish, and I get that that’s the point, but it’s really childish. It’s on a similar plane to Charlie Brown in my eyes.

Grease ~ Seriously, the story to this one is terrible. Yeah, go ahead and change yourself for your crush because he’s not man enough to tell his friends and society that your social status shouldn’t matter when you’re in love… Also some of the music gets on my nerves, and I don’t really like the movie either.

A Chorus Line

The King and I ~ Personally not my favorite Rodgers and Hammerstein show. There are some good songs but I like some of their other shows far more.

How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying ~ Ugh…

Cabaret ~ Another really poignant show but no one really focuses much on the story, they just like the suggestive and scandalous songs.

Pippin

Annie

Oliver

Sweeney Todd

Falsettos ~ Now I know I’m going to get a lot of hate for this one but I still had to say it. It is a really great show and I don’t hate it. It’s just there was so much hype before the Tony’s and so much hate directly after. I just don’t like how negatively people acted when it didn’t win Best Revival. (I thought that Miss Saigon was going to win but whatever). I just really dislike the hate that goes along with not liking this show. I don’t think the writers would have appreciated that, and I don’t really think the actors would either.

I’m adding an extra category because there are some shows that are overrated but I still like them a lot...

The Lion King ~ -ish… I still like the show, but everyone raves about it when there are some other really great shows out there.

Hamilton ~ Again, I like the show, but everyone is obsessed…

Dear Evan Hansen ~ I don’t know whether it really deserved to win best musical… But then again the lyrics and staging were really on point.

In The Heights ~ There is so much good about this show but I do think it’s a bit overrated...

8. An underrated musical

Rocky (I think the music is adorable, but then again I’m a South Jersey girl so Rocky holds a special place in my heart)

Love Never Dies ~ Lots of people hate this but I really like it. This is definitely one that you need to actually see to appreciate it. I really like the character development, if you can get past all of the weird Coney Island stuff. Plus, you know I hate Raoul.

The Scarlet Pimpernel

Dracula

Show Boat ~ This one is a classic but still, it doesn’t get nearly enough attention.

Death Takes A Holiday

Bonnie and Clyde

Meet John Doe

Chaplin ~ I will never get over how CRIMINALLY underrated this one is.

The Woman in White ~ Why doesn’t anyone talk about this?!

9. How many cast recording albums do you own?

Technically… I own Newsies, Cinderella, and the celebrity version of Finding Neverland...

Of course thanks to the library I was able to download quite a bit to my computer so…

Wicked

Beauty and the Beast

The Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary

Bombshell ~ Smash, I count this one.

Mary Poppins

South Pacific

I also have various songs from some different shows.

10. Do you buy the whole cast recording, even if there are songs you are not fond of?

Depends. I don’t really have that many. If there’s only a few songs I like I’ll just buy the songs separately, but if I like the majority of the album I would definitely buy the whole thing.

11. What was the first cast recording you owned?

Newsies, but I think I had some songs here and there before that.

12. How many playlists do you have on your mp3 or iPod? If just one playlist, how many songs?

I’ve got at least 5 different Spotify playlists. Usually I listen to songs on Pandora so I can get some new suggestions.

13. Song that reminds you of someone else?

Beauty and the Beast ~ Technically the movie version but… This was going to be my parents’ wedding song.

The entire album for Show Boat

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again ~ The Phantom of the Opera

The Love I Meant To Say ~ Smash. Also not really from a show but this one touches my heart so much.

14. Stephen Sondheim or Andrew Lloyd Webber?

This is a really tough one. I think ALW’s music is a bit more accessible to me and he has many great shows (and some really overrated ones). Stephen Sondheim is also extraordinary, but I like his more melodic songs which can be few and far between. Sondheim is challenging to sing and understand sometimes.

15. Favorite choreographed number?

King of New York ~ Newsies

I’m sure there are others but I can’t think of any right now.

16. What do you think of shows based around the music of other artists? (i.e. American Idiot, Mamma Mia)

I like Mamma Mia, and I’ve heard that All Shook Up is really good. If the storyline is as compelling as the music, then I’ll love it.

17. Favorite song cut from a show?

The Truth about the Moon ~ Newsies (I want sheet music so bad!)

One Man ~ Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

18. Most powerful (vocally) song

Female:

Once Upon A Time ~ Brooklyn

When It All Falls Down ~ Chaplin

Male:

Who Am I ~ Les Miserables

Raise a Little Hell ~ Bonnie and Clyde

Music of the Night ~ The Phantom of the Opera

19. Favorite song from your least favorite show.

I’ll just name one, “Stars and the Moon” from Songs for a New World

20. No-Dry-Eye Broadway song.

I cry in almost everything…

Letter from the Refuge ~ Newsies

Santa Fe (prologue) ~ Newsies

Santa Fe ~ Newsies

The entire score to Les Mis

I’ll Be Here ~ Ordinary Days (listen to it and you will bawl your eyes out if you have a soul)

Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again ~ The Phantom of the Opera

When the Phantom sings a reprise of “All I Ask of You” during “Past the Point of No Return”. Also his reprise of “Masquerade” at the end and when he sings, “Christine, I love you…”

Dyin’ Ain’t So Bad ~ Bonnie and Clyde

Hold On ~ The Secret Garden

You Don’t Know This Man ~ Parade

21. Your favorite Broadway duet

Love Songs

If I Loved You ~ Carousel

Something to Believe In ~ Newsies

Non-Love Songs

A Little Fall of Rain ~ Les Mis

How Can Love Survive ~ The Sound of Music

Chip on My Shoulder ~ Legally Blonde (can’t actually remember if this is a duet or not…)

22. Do you reenact/sing in front of the mirror/pretend you’re the character when you’re singing along to a song?

All the time.

23. Top five Broadway songs.

Nope, can’t do it.

24. A broadway song that makes you cringe. (i.e. least favorite)

I’m Not Afraid of Anything ~ Songs for a New World

Seasons of Love ~ Rent

25. What shows have you seen?

On Broadway:

Newsies (Once with Jeremy Jordan and once with Corey Cott)

Cinderella

Wicked (With Aaron Tveit when I was 13 and didn’t even know who he was…)

On Tour/Professional:

Mary Poppins

The Phantom of the Opera

Emma The Musical (I don’t think this one has been on broadway but Colin Patrick Hanlon and Annelise Van Der Pol were in it)

Peter and the Starcatcher

26. If you could play any role on Broadway, what would it be?

Katherine Plumber

27. Name some stars you’ve met at the stage door.

Jeremy Jordan, Corey Cott (I chased him down the street before the show…), Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Annelise Van Der Pol, Carpathia Jenkins, Andy Richardson, pretty much the entire OBC from Newsies.

EXCEPT FOR TOMMY BRACCO...

28. If you could go up to New York and see any and every Broadway show you want to, what would you go see?

There are so many shows… Right now maybe Dear Evan Hansen or The Great Comet (if it’s still running…)

29. Which Broadway star do you want to see live more than anyone else?

Laura Osnes, Hugh Jackman, Neil Patrick Harris, Laura Benanti, Christian Borle, Andy Mientus, Santino Fontana.

30. Favorite Tony Awards host?

Neil Patrick Harris

31. Least Favorite Musical

Any of the overrated ones, but for the sake of time Cats.

32. What is your go-to shower song?

A crazy patter song like “Watch What Happens” (Newsies)

Also “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” from South Pacific. My grandmother used to sing this song to me when she gave me baths when I was a toddler and young child.

33. What does Broadway mean to you?

It’s my life. I love Broadway and everything about it, and one day I will be performing there.

And I’m too tired to write anymore...

#the ultimate broadway theatre questionnaire #broadway questionnaire #broadway #theater #theatre #broadway musicals #musicals #musical #questions #answers

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aupairadventures · 6 years

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I’ll be Home for Christmas

Several weeks ago, on December 19, I returned to my hometown of Lenox, Massachusetts, USA to spend the holidays with my family. It would be the first time I had been in my hometown and seen my family and friends for the last four months, and I couldn’t have been more excited. I channeled my excitement (and nervousness, too) into planning obsessively for the trip; I made countless packing lists, packed, weighed my suitcase, unpacked, re-packed, repeated, studied maps of the Paris metro system, and went over my travel route until I had into committed to memory. I think by now I’ve established that I absolutely hate flying, right? So, it should come as no surprise that I was feeling quite anxious in the days before my trip. As my stomach felt sick and my chest felt tight, my mind raced with thoughts like, “What if I get lost in the Paris metro? What if I take the wrong line? What if I lose my passport? What if my wallet gets stolen? What if I don’t make it to the airport in time? What if I miss my flight?” I knew that the journey ahead of me would be long and probably stressful at times. I knew that to get from Nantes to Paris, and then from Paris to Boston would consist of driving to the bus stop, taking a bus, then taking a train, then taking the line 4 metro, then taking RER B, then taking an airport shuttle until I finally arrived at Terminal 1 of the Charles de Gaulle airport. After I arrived, I would have to check in, go through customs, go through security, find my gate, board my plane, and then take a 7-hour flight. Only after almost 24 hours of traveling would I finally land in Boston. On the night before I left Nantes, as my mind ran wild with all kinds of terrible potential scenarios, I eventually had to tell my anxiety that it needed to shut up and leave me alone, that I would be absolutely fine and that I am more than capable of succeeding. “I know you’re scared,” I said to myself, “But when you finally reach home, it will have all been worth it.”

The journey was certainly long, and at some moments, quite stressful. But guess what? I did it. I made from Nantes to Boston in one piece, and none of the awful scenarios my mind conjured up happened or even came close to happening. Some moments of the journey were even fun and enjoyable; I spent my train ride to Paris listening to music and writing in my travel journal, I had fun watching “Love, Actually” during my flight, and I met a really sweet woman at the airport, with whom I had a nice, long conversation while in the security line. (Some of the airport employees were on strike that day, so the wait to go through security was rather long…. France. Typical.)

The moment when my plane began its descent into Boston Logan International Airport is a moment that I’ll never forget. I remember looking out the window and seeing thousands of beautiful city lights shining in the nighttime darkness, as if to say, “Welcome home!” The site was so beautiful that my face couldn’t help breaking into a huge smile. It’s truly an incredible feeling to look outside of a plane window and see something familiar when the last months have been filled with so much newness and exploration of uncharted territory.

Walking into the airport and setting foot again on American soil was the weirdest, most wonderful feeling. It felt strange to see a huge American flag on the wall as I walked into Customs, rather than a French flag, which I become so used to seeing. It felt weird to see the airport signs written in English when I expected to see them written in French. I felt a bit out of place and disoriented, but simultaneously felt totally at home.

The most amazing moment, of course, was being greeted by family at the arrivals gate. It was such a special moment that will forever be in my memory. I remember so vividly walking into the arrivals gate and looking into the massive crowd of people. I search for the faces of my mother and sister, until I heard my mother’s voice ring through the airport chatter, as she called out my childhood nickname at the top of her lungs. I turned towards the sound and was met with the beaming faces of two of my favorite people in the entire world. Feeling so happy that I could have burst, I ran at a breakneck-pace towards my mom and sister, as they simultaneously ran towards me. When we reached each other, I practically threw myself into them and wrapped my arms around them, holding them tightly. The three of us enveloped each other in a fierce hug, laughing and shrieking and causing quite a scene. A similar phenomenon occurs whenever I was reunited with any other member of my family or one of my friends; lots of hugging and excited shrieking. After only seeing their faces on the screen of a laptop of hearing their voice through the speaker of my phone, to actually be able to hug my loved ones and speak with them in person was nothing short of miraculous. I think I can safely say that this moment at the airport was one of the happiest moments of my life. As I write about this memory, I can’t help but be reminded of a very similar moment that took place four months ago; when I walked into the arrivals gate in the Nantes airport and meet my host family for the first time. I’m reminded of how magical and unforgettable that moment was, as well, and how happy I felt. Why is it two of my happiest memories have taken place in the arrivals gate of an airport?

(My favorite picture of my younger sister, Trinity, and I, taken on the night before I left for France back in August.)

While I was only home for a little over a week, (which I came to discover is just too short an amount of time,) I had an amazing visit and made countless memories with my loved ones. I felt so happy and grateful to be able to spend time with my family and share the magic of the holiday season with them. I suddenly became aware of how special the things that I used to take for granted are; waking up in my old room, getting coffee with Mom at the café that I used to work at, or laughing at vines with my sister. Some of my favorite memories from my visit home are as follows; going out to dinner with my Grandmother at our favorite restaurant, eating breakfast and drinking smoothies with my Grandfather, cooking Christmas dinner with my mom and my aunt, watching Empire with my grandmother (our favorite show), Eating waffles with my family on Christmas morning, watching all three of John Mulaney’s Netflix Comedy specials in one night with my sister, going to my little brother’s basketball games, Christmas shopping with my Mom in Target in Marshalls (One of my only complaints about France is that neither of these stores exists!), spending the day in Northampton with my mom and sister, and visiting New York City with my sister and aunt. While this is a long list, these are just some examples of the many memories I made that week. Every moment at home, no matter how simple, felt like a miracle.

(An old photograph of my grandmother and I.)

(An old photograph of my grandmother, aunt, mom, and I together.)

(A family photo taken last summer, at my high school graduation from Miss Hall’s School.)

(One of my favorite old photographs of my mom, aunt, and I.)

(My sister and I in Rockefeller Center in New York City together, happy and full after eating lots of vegan cupcakes.)

One night, my mom and I were driving home from Target, blasting music in her car, and dancing and singing along to all of our old favorite songs. As we drove through the familiar streets of my hometown, the sights of all the houses lit up with millions of flashing, multi-colored Christmas decorations made me feel happy, nostalgic, and entirely at home. The route from Target to my house is one that I know like the back of my hand. During my lifetime, I’ve driven on these streets countless times; every pothole, bump, or twist and turn are dear to my heart. Along the way, we drove past my high school. My mom turned right and pulled into the driveway so that we could see the school up close. When I looked at my old school, glowing with warm yellow light from the inside out, I was hit with a wave of emotions. At that moment, so many old memories came flooding back to me. I was reminded of how much life I had lived in this town. This town was where I grew up, and this town has seen me through all of my many phases. This town has seen me in both my darkest and most joyous moments. In this place, I have made so many memories, both good and bad. In the halls of my high school, I grew from a shy, insecure fourteen-year-old girl into a bold, confident young woman. In the halls of that school, I both fell in love and had my heart broken for the first time. In this place, I have both cried a thousand tears and laughed until I could barely breathe. Like I said, so much life has been lived in this tiny little town. No wonder this place is so special to me. No wonder coming back made me so happy, and no wonder leaving it was so hard. No matter where in the world my body physically is, there’s a little piece of my heart that will forever remain in this town. If coming home last month taught me one thing, it’s that I wouldn’t be the person I am today with Lenox, Massachusetts.

(The Berkshires in wintertime is truly a magical sight.)

On New Year’s Eve, after an incredible week spent with my family, my mom drove me to Boston for my late-night return flight to Paris. Before we went to the airport, we stopped at a little restaurant and got vegan pizza together. I tried to eat my pizza and slowly as possible; every moment that I delayed would be another moment that I could spend with my Mom, another moment I could spend in my home country. While I was looking forward to returning to France and was excited to arrive in Paris the next day, my heart felt heavy with the sadness of yet again leaving home. I felt so torn; On one hand, I was so excited to see my host family and friends in France. On the another, the thought of not seeing my family and hometown for the next six months broke my heart. I’ll be honest, as I said goodbye to my mom at the airport, I threw my arms around her and cried on her shoulder for quite a while.

As we said goodbye, I thought about how similar this moment felt to when we said goodbye four months ago. We were yet again standing in the same airport, in the same terminal, in the exact same spot. But as I reflected, I realized just how much has changed since August. I have grown so much and in so many different ways. When I left home back in August, I boarded my Paris-bound plane with so much excitement, of course, but also with so much anxiety and fear. I felt so unsure of myself and of my ability to succeed. I worried, Could I really move far away from home, across an ocean, at 18 years old? Could I really live in a foreign country? Would I make friends, would I find my place? Would I really be brave enough to pull this off? On New Year’s Eve, as I hugged my Mom goodbye and boarded my plane, my emotions were very different from my emotions of four months ago. Four months later, I now know the answers to all of these questions. I have proven to myself that I indeed am brave enough and that I am capable of anything I put my mind to. I now know that I absolutely adore France, I have found an amazing group of friends here, and have truly found a home in a country half the world away from my birthplace. I’ve been so lucky to have expanded my family to include many people who I may not be related to by blood, but who are no less my family. I am greatly looking forward to all the adventures that the new year in France holds for me. I feel incredibly grateful for all that the past year brought into my life; 2018 was an amazing year filled with joy, discoveries, difficulties, and many lessons learned exploration and growth. In 2019, I can’t wait to see what happens next.

(A photo of the path in front of our old house, taken last Autumn.)

#france #travel #nantes #au pair #photography #new york city #berkshires #massachusetts

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h0ldthiscat · 8 years

Text

How To Talk To Your Son

Read it here or on AO3.

2016. Look in his eyes for the first time in nearly fifteen years. He doesn’t look the way you thought he would. More like Mulder than you anticipated, which is startling. He also looks a little like the dumpy woman fluttering about the porch, still in disbelief that a government helicopter just landed on her front lawn. He looks like her in way that old married couples are indistinguishable from each other, in the way that dogs start to look like their owners. Or is it the owners who start to look like the dogs?

“William?” you ask, even though you know.

“Yeah?” His voice hasn’t dropped yet.

“I’m Agent Scully, I’m going to need you to come with us.”

He looks to the woman on the porch, her colorless brown hair coming loose from its braid. “What is this about?” he asks.

“There’s not much time to explain,” you say, “but there’s a man in this helicopter who’s very sick and we think you might have a certain… element in your genetic makeup that can help him.”

His blue eyes flash--at least those are yours--as he tries to process. Then he says, “Okay.” Just like that, he believes you, and finally you think you understand how Mulder feels, after all these years.

2015. “Just think about it,” Walter says, and you do. You really do.

You have forgotten what it would be like to come home not smelling faintly of antiseptic and bile every day. You and Mulder are friendly. It wouldn’t be terrible to work with him again.

2014. Don’t think about him as much as you used to. Recall less and less the way his tiny fingers seemed curved in a perpetual half-fist, ready to close around anything that came into his path.

You can’t remember anymore whose father you named him after. Yours, Mulder’s, or your son’s own. Well, you could hardly name him Fox. I mean, really.

2013. Do not answer the phone when Mulder calls. Talk to your mother every day, like some sad woman in a book you read once. Silently assess the measure of her. She’s survived everything you have, but she had to watch it happen to her daughter. It’s worse, somehow, to see your suffering through your mother’s eyes. Guiltily, remember how long you waited to tell her about the cancer.

“I thought it would just go away,” you say one night on the phone in your new apartment, your mother an arm’s length away in Bethesda. “That if I didn’t tell you it wouldn’t be real.” Don’t tell her how you pictured it shriveling up like a grape and becoming a raisin and one day sneezing it out into a tissue, curling your lip at the dark mass in your mucus, and then tossing it into the trash.

“Dana, dear, you’re a doctor. You know that’s not how it works.”

She is the only person who calls you Dana anymore. You asked everyone at work to call you by your last name years ago. Tell them you’re used to it. They comply, except for one intern who calls you “Doctor D.” For some reason, it doesn’t bother you.

Huff: “I know that’s not how it works, Mom.”

She suggests, not for the first time, that you get a cat. You try to laugh it off even though the thought grips you with a cold hand and makes your stomach roil. To get a cat would be admitting defeat and you are not there yet. Quickly think of a reason you have to go and wish her good night with a smile in your voice.

Answer the phone without looking two minutes later when it rings again, assuming it’s her. Start to apologize for your quick sign off. Realize it’s Mulder. Grip the phone with both hands like you used to when a phone was big enough to hold with two hands. Listen to each other breathing for a while.

Say his name, Mulder, like an invocation. When you worked together you learned that many demons can be summoned by the mere utterance of their name at a certain time of day under specific conditions. Allegedly. Feel as if you are summoning him now. Say it’s nice to hear his voice, because it is.

Meet up for coffee two days later and enjoy yourself.

2012. Leave. Take his picture, nothing else.

2011. Feel as if the world is coming to an end when the internet connection goes out one night at the house. Mulder hems and haws, fiddling with the router. He’s emerged from his study. He can’t hole up and scour the deep web without an internet connection, of course.

Say: “It’ll probably be back in an hour or so. You know reception is spotty up here.”

Lounge on the couch with a book for the first time in ages. Notice the swell of your breasts beneath your tanktop and feel incredibly sexual all of a sudden. Stand and take off all your clothes, chilly in the breeze from the open window. Feel like a different person, the kind of woman with a name like Jacquelyn or Isobel with an o. Go to the front room, where the router is. Pose behind him in the doorway and say something ridiculous like, “Why don’t you quit working on that and come to work on me.”

He looks up and says, “Come on, Scully, quit messing around and help me with this.”

Wipe your eyes with the backs of your hands and put your clothes back on. Announce you are going back to the hospital, there is something you forgot to do and it’s got to get done before morning.

Stay there for three or four days until you spill coffee on both your extra sets of scrubs and can’t justify going out to buy new ones. Say you’re sorry and almost mean it when Mulder clutches you and says he was so worried.

Then why didn’t you call me? Don’t say that.

2010. Go to a support group for parents who no longer have children. That’s how they word it, a carefully constructed aphorism because no one wants to say they’re dead. No one wants to talk about tiny faces caked in pallid makeup, every indentation on their lips outlined, little boys buried in their boy scout uniforms, girls in their first communion dresses.

You and Mulder worked a case once--somewhere in the midwest--where a series of graves were upturned and their clothes stolen. Men, women, and children thrown haphazardly back into their padded box-beds in various states of decomposition. Local law enforcement had found a ripped piece of a communion veil on a tree. You touched it without gloves on because you needed to know what it felt like. Soft, impossibly soft, more precious than the top of his head with his swirl of dark hair like his father’s.

Dana, would you like to share today, the group leader asks. You say no thank you and get yourself another cup of coffee. You are jittery on the drive home. When you pull up in the driveway, all the lights are turned out. In the living room, pick up a pillow and scream into it until it feels like your throat bleeds.

2008. After the snowiest winter you can remember (although your memory’s not so good these days), go somewhere warm. Bermuda. Puerto Rico. Belize. Hawaii. The week before, stand in dressing rooms at the mall and tilt your head at your reflection in the mirror. Is that you? Is that what you look like? She’s not so bad, you suppose. Turn profile and admire the curve of your ass. Push your breasts together, then apart.

Decide you have aged well. Buy a long, flowing coverup. “Forget” to pack it.

2006. You begin to write him letters, advice for primary school and how to talk to kids who seem mean. How to do taxes and establish a line of credit. The lyrics to a Dionne Warwick song. You never send them. They live in a box in the guest room. You paint it a bearable sort of green and during a fight you accidentally refer to it as “William’s room.” Mulder just sort of stares at you, stunned.

2005. Buy a house. Pay in cash. Pick out furniture at Pottery Barn and Pier One. Think that things are finally looking up. Knock on wood. Lay between sheets you finally own again and think blissfully, I could get used to this.

You do not.

2004. Toast miserably to nothing on election night.

“Four more years,” Mulder intones sarcastically.

Snap at him, “What do you have to be miserable about? You can’t even vote.”

2003. On his second birthday, stare at a stain on the hotel wall while Mulder takes you from behind, his hands like vice grips on your waist. Let him finish quickly and sloppily kiss your shoulder and then go to the bathroom to clean up. Think about finishing yourself off. Slide your hand between your legs and realize you don’t feel like you used to. For years you were the only one who knew yourself, but it’s different now.

2001. Split in two with the weight of him, the size. When Monica wipes the sweat from your brow and tells you you’re doing great, you’re doing wonderfully, Dana, joke: he has broad shoulders like his father. Do not scream where the hell is Mulder, even though you want to. Breathe the way you’ve been taught, the way they do in movies and the way you did on a yoga mat in that studio above an Indian restaurant on K Street, imagining this moment in a hospital bed and not some shantytown near the thirty-third parallel.

Wonder why John has that terrible accent if he was born here, where they drawl their r’s and their e’s sound like i’s. Try to scream. The pain is a bubble in your throat and you want to bite something, want to push your shoulders back and together until your arms snap off and you dissolve into stardust. But you don’t, and neither does he, all eight pounds nine ounces of him, wailing into the darkness in late spring.

He is perfect.

2000. Feel him growing inside of you. He is the size of banana, your obstetrician tells you. Hate how people always liken fetuses to fruit. Why not little animals or the shipping boxes at the post office? Your baby would fit in a standard large overnight envelope, the kind with the accordion sides. You’ll take it? Lovely. And how will you be paying today?

1997. Nod somberly at the diagnosis and wonder how to tell your mother that you won’t be giving her any grandchildren.

#my writing #xf fanfic

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newyorktheater · 6 years

Text

My seventh annual Broadway gift guide below includes links and information on shopping for theater tickets, theater subscriptions, cast recordings, play scripts, librettos and new and cherished books about the theater and theater on screen! I also suggest some souvenirs and knick-knacks intended as tangible reminders of an evanescent experience.

A special recommendation this year: Make sure you visit (in person or online) the Drama Book Shop, which is closing in January after 101 years in business, although they are trying to find a new, more affordable home. (Details in the new and cherished books section.)

THEATER TICKETS

Gift cards: Telecharge gift cards , TKTS gift certificates and Today Tix gift cards allow the theatergoers on your holiday list to pick their own show to go to (or several shows – depending on how much money you put on the card.)

Some suggest it’s better to give a gift card from Visa or Mastercard,because the theater-specific gift cards charge fees for each show.

If you know what specific show your theater lover would love, or are willing to guess, you can buy tickets for them yourself directly from the show’s website or from the box office, or from the secondary ticket seller whose links I provide below.

Some popular Broadway favorites, listed alphabetically:

THE BANDS VISIT

Ethel Barrymore Theater Opened: November 9, 2017 Twitter feed: @TheBandsVisit The surprise winner of 11 Tony Awards, including Best Musical of 2018, this wonderful adaptation of an off-beat Israeli film, about an Egyptian police orchestra that gets lost and winds up in a dinky desert town in Israel, features David Yazbek’s exquisite Middle Eastern score and delicious lyrics, a spot-on cast led by Katrina Lenk, and a story adapted by Itamar Moses that’s both doleful and droll. Click on the My review link to watch a video excerpt of “Welcome to Nowhere.”

My review

Buy tickets to The Band’s Visit

THE BOOK OF MORMON

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Opened: March 24, 2011 Twitter feed: @BookofMormonBWY This musical by Trey Parker and Matt Stone (book), the creators of South Park, and Robert Lopez, one of the composer-lyricists for “Avenue Q” (music and lyrics) is about both the founder of the Church of Latter-Day Saints and modern disciples. It is outrageous, irreverent in one way, but also deeply reverent to (even while parodying) the best traditions of the Broadway musical.

My review

Buy Book of Mormon tickets

DEAR EVAN HANSEN

Music Box Theater Opened: December 4, 2016 Twitter feed: @DearEvanHansen

Winner of six 2017 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, this original story by songwriting team Pasek and Paul (“A Christmas Story,” Oscar winners for the lyrics on “La-La Land”) and playwright Steven Levenson is about an anxious outcast high school student who, through a well-meaning lie, is thought to have been best friends with a classmate who commits suicide. The lie gets way out of control. Its intelligent commentary on several pressing current issues, its tuneful and moving songs and its compelling performances made this a cult favorite, but the cult now could hardly be wider. The original Evan Hansen, Ben Platt, has departed.

My review

Buy Dear Evan Hansen tickets

HAMILTON

The Richard Rodgers Opened: August 6, 2015 Twitter feed: @HamiltonMusical

When Hamilton opened Off-Broadway in 2016, I called it groundbreaking and breathtaking – and I was trying not to gush…Analyzing the importance of ‘Hamilton’ misses the main takeaway from the musical: It’s thrilling to watch. It seems always in motion, thanks to a creative team including director Thomas Kail, and especially choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, who keeps the sexy ensemble very busy. They help enhance what are some terrific performances. (All the original principals have left, but the replacement cast are worthy heirs.)

Everything Hamilton

Buy Hamilton tickets

THE LION KING

Minskoff Theater (200 West 45th Street) Opened: November 13, 1997 Twitter: @TheLionKing Based on the 1994 Disney animated film about the coming-of-age of a young lion in the African jungle, this musical offers African-inflected music by Elton John, lyrics by Tim Rice and the visual magic of Julie Taymor. Taymor is the director, a composer and lyricist for some of the songs. But above all, she is the designer of the costumes, masks, and puppets — and it is these visuals that make this show a good first theatrical experience.

Buy The Lion King tickets

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Majestic Theater (247 West 44th Street) Opened: January 26, 1988 Twitter: @TheOperaGhosts The Phantom of the Opera, based on a 1911 French novel by Gaston Leroux, is about a disfigured genius named Erik who lives in the catacombs of the Paris Opera House and falls in love with Christine, an aspiring singer whom he helps…until an old flame of Christine’s named Raoul steps back into the picture. However, the story in the musical, written and composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber — with more than its share of 1980′s heavy power ballads — is starting to take second place to the story of the musical, which is the longest-running Broadway musical of all time.

Buy Phantom of the Opera tickets

SCHOOL OF ROCK

Winter Garden Theater

Opened: December 6, 2015

Closing: January 20, 2019

Andrew Lloyd Webber has chosen to adapt a movie with a plot that could hardly be sillier, and supplies a new score that could hardly be more addictive. ‘School of Rock’ is full of both hard-charging rock n roll and supremely catchy melodies…The kids don’t just sing exquisitely and dance with infectious abandon, they also play the musical instruments themselves

Buy School of Rock tickets

WICKED

Gershwin Theater (222 West 51st Street) Opened: October 30, 2003 Twitter: @WICKED_Musical The musical tells the story of “The Wizard of Oz” from the witches’ perspective, more specifically from the Wicked Witch of the West, who was not, as a child, wicked at all, but just green-tinted, taunted, and misunderstood. There is so much to like about this musical, the clever twists on the familiar tale, the spectacular set, and music that is a lot more appealing in context (such as the song “Defying Gravity”) that I will forgive the contortions necessary to tack on a happy ending.

Impossible to get (or at least to afford) Broadway shows

Springsteen on Broadway

Buy tickets to Springsteen on Broadway

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Buy tickets to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

My Favorite Broadway Shows So Far This Season

The Ferryman

By the time “The Ferryman” has ended, we have been treated to a breathtaking mix of revenge action thriller, romance, melodrama, family saga, and a feast of storytelling – ghost stories, fairy stories, stories of Irish history and politics, stories of longing and of loss.

Jez Butterworth’s play about farmer Quinn Carney and his sprawling, colorful family is rich, sweeping entertainment — epic, tragic….and cinematic.

Recommended for 10+, barred to children under 4.

Tickets to The Ferryman

The Waverly Gallery

Elaine May is back on a Broadway stage after more than 50 years, and making the most of it in The Waverly Gallery, Kenneth Lonergan’s meticulously observed, funny and sad play about a woman’s decline and its effect on her family. May is not alone. She is one of five stellar cast members, notably Lucas Hedges making a splendid Broadway debut. They turn this 18-year-old play into…if not required, certainly well-rewarded viewing.

Recommended for 10 +, barred to children under 4.

Tickets to The Waverly Gallery.

Broadway Shows Not Yet Opened

Don’t forget the shows this season that have not yet opened, although let’s hope that your theater lover is adventurous enough to avoid blaming you for any disappointment. I can’t recommend shows I haven’t seen, but here are links for tickets already on sale that have been generating some buzz.

The Cher Show

Buy tickets to The Cher Show

Network

Buy tickets to Network

To Kill A Mockingbird

Buy tickets to To Kill A Mockingbird

For details on these and other current Broadway shows, check out the

Broadway Season Guide 2018-2019

What about Off-Broadway?

There are many terrific shows Off-Broadway, although their generally shorter runs can be problematic when looking for a gift.

Buy Off Broadway tickets

Off-Broadway Preview Guide Fall 2018

The best thing about tickets is that this is a gift that gives pleasure twice – at the time you give it,and then when the theater lover actually goes to the show, which can be many months in the future. Back to top

THEATER SUBSCRIPTIONS/MEMBERSHIPS

Many theaters – the non-profit ones — offer subscriptions or memberships, which can be a wonderful gift that lasts an entire season…or a terrible burden for the increasing number of theatergoers who are commitment-phobic. (I’ve written a whole article about the waning popularity of theater subscriptions.)

Still, this can be the perfect gift for the right recipient if you pick the right theater, some of whom offer more flexible alternatives to subscriptions, such as flex passes and memberships.

Here are a sampling, listed alphabetically. I’ve had a membership/subscription to each one of these at one time or another. One of the problems you will see when you click on the links is that the subscriptions to some of these theaters this season are already sold out. (You might be able to purchase memberships for next season.)

The Brooklyn Academy of Music, which makes it easy to buy a gift membership.

Classic Stage Company

Lincoln Center Theater

MCC Theater

New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater

Playwrights Horizons

Roundabout Theater Company

Vineyard Theater

THEATER ON SCREEN

There are an increasing number of companies that offer online screening of what could be called theater-on demand.

BroadwayHD. ($8.99 a month or $99.99 a year) offer dozens of shows that were recorded live, such as the Broadway productions of “She Loves Me” and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” but also a good number of shows Off-Broadway, and the offerings from the American Film Theater from the 1970s, such as “The Maids” starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York and “Rhinoceros” with Zero Mostel.

Other theater-on demand online services include Cennarium ($9.97 a month; $95.64 a year), which focuses on offerings outside the United States, and Shakespeare’s Globe (Available worldwide, 3.99 to 5.99 pounds to rent, 5.99 to 11.99 pounds to buy).

One has to hunt for “theater” on film on Kanopy, which mostly has art films and documentaries; on the other hand, if you have a library card, it’s free (although you are limited to 10 films a month.) It would be a good gift just to tell your theater lover about Kanopy.

Similarly, Great Performances from PBS streams theater mostly for free, although some require a membership in the local PBS station. That would be a great gift!

Throughout the year, the National Theatre Live broadcasts its productions in movie theaters throughout the United States. The 2015 production of Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch, for example, will return starting in March; it’s not too early to buy tickets.

For those who would prefer something more old-fashioned, both the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company sells DVDs of its productions, although you have to pay in pounds.

THEATER BOOKS, PLAYS, SCRIPTS

There are some wonderful evergreen, expensive gift ideas. My favorites:

August Wilson’s complete 10-play Century Cycle, which includes such gems as “The Piano Lesson,” “Fences,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” – one play for each decade of the twentieth century, which together offer a compelling look at African-American life through the eye and ear of one of the nation’s greatest dramatists.

Buy August Wilson Century Cycle

Stephen Sondheim’s two-volume collection of his lyrics, Finishing The Hat and Look, I Made A Hat, a collection of lyrics , anecdotes, fascinating scholarly notes, and strong opinions from the composer and/or lyricist of such seminal musical theater as “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “Company,” “Sweeney Todd,” “A Little Night Music,” “Assassins.”

Buy Hat Box: The Collected Lyrics of Stephen Sondheim

There are three recent lavish coffee table books that offer behind-the-scenes looks at favorite musicals, and include the entire script, annotated.

Hamilton: The Revolution is a book for fans, with page after page of full-color photographs from the production, and lots of personal anecdotes. But if it’s a souvenir book, it’s one that—like the musical and its creators—is unusually ambitious. It includes the complete lyrics, annotated by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, alternating with chapters that explain the evolution of the musical but also the historical and political significance of Alexander Hamilton.

Buy Hamilton: The Revolution

The other two: Dear Evan Hansen: Through the Window and The Great Comet: The Journey of a New Musical to Broadway

The three-volume set of Arthur Miller’s plays — 42 in all — from the Library of America/ Buy The Collected Plays of Arthur Miller (Library of America)

Buy American Musicals: The Complete Books and Lyrics of 16 Broadway Classics, 1927-1969 (Library of America)

This readable book focuses on the structure of successful musicals, going chronologically step by step from the overture to the finale. It is written by Jack Viertel, who is both an executive at Jujamcyn Theaters (owners of five Broadway houses) and the artistic director of New York City Center Encores! series that attempts to gain new reputations for old musicals, He knows his musicals, and his is invaluable in its summaries and discussions of specific shows we might not know (or not remember well) but should. And he includes a final chapter with his recommendations for the best recordings of the 37 musicals he has analyzed, and for 20 more musicals “that can’t be ignored even though they are not quoted in the book.”

Buy The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built

The downside of many of these books is not their size or their price — it’s that anybody who would die to get one of these as gifts may well already own it.

Other books, recently published, of interest (Click on links to learn more about them or to purchase them):

Coffee table books: American Theatre Wing, An Oral History: 100 Years, 100 Voices, 100 Million Miracles

Fraver by Design: Five Decades of Theatre Poster Art from Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Beyond

Leonard Bernstein 100: The Masters Photograph the Maestro

A Novel Novel

Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel

Memoirs and biographies: Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry

In Pieces

Take You Wherever You Go

Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked Revised and Updated Second Ed.

Making Oscar Wilde

Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry that Changed Acting Forever

Criticism/History

Rise Up!: Broadway and American Society from ‘Angels in America’ to ‘Hamilton’

Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution

Check out more in the books section of this site.

My suggestion if you wish to select as a gift a script or a theater or entertainment book is to check out The Drama Book Shop, at 250 West 40th Street, which has generally friendly, knowledgeable staff, and is one of my favorite hang-outs in the theater district (I should point out that I don’t drink.) Its hours are from Monday—Saturday,11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Thursdays until 8:00 p.m. They also have a website from which you can order. And, as I mentioned up top, they’ve lost their lease and will be closing up shop at the end of January — perhaps forever if they can’t find an affordable storefront. Another excellent place for scripts is Samuel French, the “definitive” publisher of plays and musicals in English – mostly in relatively inexpensive “acting editions.” Also now available are “e-plays” and cast recordings. You can visit at 45 West 25th Street, but it’s not a place to hang out. Their redesigned website has some cool features: Click on “Now Playing” and you will get to a map showing the location of current local productions of the plays it has published.

Applause Theatre and Cinema Books closed their bookstore on the Upper West Side, alas, but remains a publisher of quality theatrical books, which you can order online.

The online bookstore of Theatre Communications Group offers some wonderful plays it publishes. (Check out the TCG Gift Guide

You also might want to consider one (or a bunch) of the 50 Best Plays of the Last 100 Years

Bookstores in Theaters: Some of my favorite theaters also have books for sale, mostly scripts of the plays they have produced. This includes Playwrights Horizons

CAST RECORDINGS

Broadway Records sells gift cards, and a special treat — a limited number of CDs signed by the casts or individual perfomers. Their digital offerings include current and recent Broadway musicals such as Anastasia, Groundhog Day, My Fair Lady, as well as a 2017 Tony Award® Season compilation album, (no evidence of a 2018 edition.) They also offer live performances of such Broadway stars as Patti LuPone, Aaron Tveit, Norbert Leo Butz and Laura Benanti at 54 Below.

(A night at 54 Below itself, “Broadway’s supper club,” would make a nice present.)

Buy the 2017 Tony Award Season CD

PS Classics — Fun Home, Lady Day At Emerson’s Bar and Grill starring Audra McDonald, On The Town, On The Twentieth Century with Kristin Chenoweth, and a huge catalogue of Sondheim shows.

Ghostlight/Sh-k-Boom — Their bestseller is in Be More Chill…in vinyl. They also have The Band’s Visit, A Bronx Tale, Falsettos and War Paint. Their bestseller is Lin-Manuel Mirand’s In The Heights. Their releases run the gamut, Aladdin, Beautiful: The Carol King Musical, Bridges of Madison County, Daddy Long Legs, First Daughter Suite, Fortress of Solitude, Something Rotten, The Last Five Years (available as original cast album, 2013 Off-Broadway cast album, and movie soundtrack)

Masterworks Broadway, a division of Sony Classics, offers the music of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (yes, we know it’s not a musical), as well as Head Over Heels, The Prom, and Jesus Christ Superstar Live. Also: Kinky Boots, The King and I with Yul Brynner, the 1949 recording of Kiss Me Kate, and the original 1992 recording of Kander and Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, and lots of albums that don’t begin with the letter K, including the A-list album An American in Paris, and The Essential Sondheim, featuring songs from 16 of his musicals, and one movie score.

Buy The Essential Stephen Sondheim

For an extravagant gift, they sell Broadway in a Box – The Essential Broadway Musicals Collection — 25 (!) CDs of original cast recordings, from Annie to West Side Story.

Buy Broadway in a Box – The Essential Broadway Musicals Collection

Atlantic Records, not normally in the original cast album business, is the company that put out the best-selling ‘Hamilton” album.

Buy Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording)(Explicit)(2CD)

Also available from Atlantic

The Hamilton Mixtape [Explicit]

BROADWAY BAUBLES

— posters, calendars, t-shirts and knick-knacks (magnets, mugs, keychains, umbrellas etc)

The Lion King beach towel

King Kong window card

Olaf plush doll from Frozen

Dear Evan Hansen t-shirt

School of Rock cap

Hamilton t-shirt

A t-shirt, “Bad Idea,” a song from Waitress

cufflinks from the Royal Shakespeare Company

Wicked Emerald City umbrella

Phantom of the Opera mug

Each Broadway show offers a range of merchandise that you can buy at the theater itself and in gift shops in the theater district, and online at each show’s website, as well as on a variety of other sites, for example at the Playbill.com store. Playbill covers are plastered over all sorts of items — posters, mugs, magnets, Christmas tree ornaments, and the 2019 On Broadway Wall Calendar

There is an $80 pair of Playbill pajamas for men, which I’d love to get as a gift, and a 1,000-piece Playbill jigsaw puzzle, which I’d only consider giving to an enemy.

The more artistically inclined might want to hire Stephen Winterhalter, proprietor of The Art of Broadway etsy store to turn their Playbill(s) into a frame collage.

A good place to purchase theater knick-knacks is Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, which has an online store using the logos and/or program covers from the best-known Broadway shows for everything from umbrellas and clocks to iPhone covers and shower curtains. They offer “Broadway Legend” tree ornaments, this year featuring Harvey Fierstein as Edna Turnblad. They also sell gift certificates Proceeds from their products help the needy.

Theater-related calendars strike me as a good gift — they last all year. Examples include the Hamilton 2019 Wall Calendar: An American Musical and Royal Shakespeare Company – Angus McBean Wall Calendar 2019 (Art Calendar)

Those who don’t want to feel forced to discard their theater images at the end of next year can opt instead for theater posters, past, present and future. Many are available at Triton Gallery (which has an online store and a brick and mortar one in the theater district), but be aware that many are reproductions (and identified as such) yet can still be as pricey as a ticket to a Broadway show.

Still, it’s worth browsing in either store, as it is in the several gift shops in the theater district and the many theater websites. I’m personally partial to Cafe Press, whose Broadway pages are bursting with individual entrepreneurial spirit, if not consistent wit or sense of design. But where else could I find a “Vintage Hamlet Laptop skin” and 76 Hamlet-themed shower curtains?

Holiday Gifts for Theater Lovers 2018 My seventh annual Broadway gift guide below includes links and information on shopping for theater tickets…

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