#* ( VERSE / PRIVATE ) ･ﾟ THE SIX STAGES OF FALLING IN LOVE WITH HER

[riotkissedarchived]

the   silence   between them is undercut by the garbled bass of party they’ve abandoned.     quinn hugs her arms tightly around herself.     something in her chest   trashes   and    shrieks .     jealousy unleashes something wild and feral in her ribcage to replace a wounded heart.     not that she has any right to envy. 

shaky breaths cloud the crisp city air the surround them.    fuck ,   she should have grabbed coat.    

hazel eyes   f l i c k e r    between her old love and her own hand ,   white knuckle grip around the off brand fifth of vodka she’d managed to steal from the bar.    it’s an   open bar ,   after all.    would they really care ?     she brings it to her lips and lets it   burn   down her throat.    pretends that the chill around them doesn’t make the tears welling in her eyes string.  

❛❛    can i ask you something ?    ❜❜      quinn’s worked so hard to develop a matured rasp since she’d settled in the city ,   but it   dissipates   in to the night.     all at once ,   she’s that same would-be prom queen from   nowhere , ohio ,   trembling and girlish and   broken .     a delicate ,   unassuming doe turned wolf   :    when wounded she’ll take    everything    down with her.     another swig.     anything to spare herself the pain of eye contact.     ❛❛    why her  ?     of    everyone ,    just    ––   HER .    ❜❜

  »   @awesomegaydar​

[inkmonster21]

Showtime

Kensy Bixby, popular, attractive, talented. The youngest child of two Broadway stars, she could have it all. She could have anyone she wanted. What on earth is she doing with a guy like Judd Birch?

Judd Birch x OC

Big Mouth

Do I know why I’m writing about a cartoon hottie? No. I do not. Please enjoy!

~0o0~

Kensy POV:

I sit on the cold tile ground of the hallway, running over my lines. Leah stomps through the halls at a fast pace from the theater. "Kensy! We need you! They're running the number!" I get up and stretch out, Connie appearing next to me stretching as well, "we got this, baby. Just like we rehearsed! Loud and proud!" She rubs my shoulders as I walk into the large theater of the school.

The music director smiles as I step onto the stage, "and our star! Running Voulez-Vous, from the top! Sound, on my count! And a five, six, seven, eight..."

The coronagraph starts at the exact time the middle schoolers in the theater audience have the time of their lives as we run the number over and over again.

~

Third Person POV:

Nick, Andrew, and Jay sit in the audience watching the rehearsal of the production, Mama Mia, the high school was performing this year. "How the hell did she get so fine? I swear she's been sexy since birth. Sexy baby." Jay says as he stares down Kensy. Nick follows her movements with his eyes, "dude, I know! Leah said they're friends." Jay's mouth falls, "you know what that means? You can get her in private, honk on those horns, ya know what I mean?" Andrew nods his head, Maury propped up in his velvet seat watching the sea of high school students dance. "Look at her spinning around, Andrew! She's the perfect ballerina. Just imagine her in those tights." Andrew smiles, his mind wandering.

~

Kensy POV:

I back up into the fake rock wall, as Ashton presses up against me, singing his verse. I lean as far away from him as I can when he dips his head down. I escape under his arm, singing, "don't go wasting your emotions, lay all your love on me!"

"Stop! Stop!" The director calls waving his hand high. Ashton stands tall, chest buffed out in such an obvious way it makes his look uneven. He's let this role go to his damn head.

"Ashton, work on your pitch. I need you down here... but you're a little up here... drop the balls, boy." Ashton scratches his neck, nodding as he takes his criticism.

I cross my arms waiting for Mr. Director to criticize me, "and Kensy," he takes a pregnant pause, "I need to see the want." I jerk my head back in confusion, "I'm sorry?"

Connie stops on stage, her hoofs echoing, she screams down at the director, "what the fuck? Look at your lead! She's holding the whole show! What more do you want you high-demanding bitch?"

"He has to be your Sky! You're Sophie, you're getting married, you're in love, you're so obsessed with him! But, honey, I just don't see it..."

Connie rolls her eyes, "he looks like a melted Ken doll, damnit!"

I look back to Ashton, he's sat on the ground doing sit-ups, he looks back to me sending a wink, I cover my mouth in disgust. Connie stumbles over, puking into a trash can. I gather my attitude, facing the director. I'm seriously about to do this...

"That's right! Tell him to fuck off! We'll be on Broadway one day, baby! Then they'll see!"

I smile before saying, "next rehearsal you'll see the change, sir, I promise." Wow... Connie falls at my feet, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" The director claps his hands, "fantastic! I'll see you all on Wednesday! Dismissed!"

I grab my bag feeling the frustration build in my bones. "Why the hell did you do that? We'll have to have god-level acting to finish this job!" I take my jazz shoes off tossing them in my bag before looking up at Connie, "because mom wanted to see me play Sophie! Plus, Dad said he would come opening night if I was playing the lead." Connie rolls her eyes, she sits next to me. "Aw baby, I'm sorry. I know it's important, but we got to think about ourselves once in a while. You don't always have to prove things to them. I'm tired of waking up at 4 I'm the damn morning." I laugh tossing my head back, "sure! You try being the kid of two Broadway professionals! They've had me on the way to stardom since conception. I have to do all I can."

Leah waltzes over, positioning her flower back into her hair, "hey, Kensy! You were so good today! I don't even know what the director is talking about." I smile, thankful for the support of my friend. "It is what it is. I'll just have to ask my mom for some pointers." Leah gushes over the mention of my mother, "ugh she is so talented! I wish she would come to teach us for one rehearsal!"

"Oh yeah, that'd be great." I internally roll my eyes, biting my tongue. I'd rather light myself on fire than have my mother come to hover over a rehearsal. Getting ridiculed at my school and home? No thanks. I'll just take one.

"Do you want to come over? I'm having trouble with the third section of Honey, Honey. Would you come over and run it with me? It won't be rehearsal the entire time, I know you're tired. We could watch a movie or something afterward."

Connie smirks leaning on my shoulder, "you'd be home late, no time for mommy or daddy to demand more sweat, blood, and tears."

I smile at Leah, nodding, "I'd love to come over! Let me text my mom." Leah jumps with excitement.

Kensy: Hello, Mother. I'm going to Leah Birch's house to run more numbers for the play. I will be home late.

Mother: Fantastic! That's almost 7 hours of rehearsal today. I could take up to 14 hours at your age. Practice your pitch, I know you like to wave your voice. Soften it. Don't forget to send me your dietary sheet for today.

And there it is. The forever shadow I can never step out of. I shove my phone into my bag following Leah into the audience.

She stands with a group of boys, middle school at most. "Kensy, this is my brother, Nick, and his friends, Andrew, and Jay. They're staying over." I wave at the kids, "Hey, dudes. You like the show?" They all chattered up loudly at once. "It was great!" "You're amazing!" "Marry me!"

I stare at them blankly, before directing my gaze to Leah. "So... who's riding upfront with me?" I jingle my keys, all three boys jump out of their seats racing to me. Jay falls on his face at my feet, "Me! I made it first, fuckwads!"

Leah and I gasp out laughing at their behavior. Connie slaps her knee, "little pee-pees will murder for you, my love!"

[weirdlandtv]

Like the 1960s generation had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, the Big Three of the 1980s were Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. Their new albums weren’t just song collections, they were messages uttered by the Oracle up on the mountain, echoing across the valley. They were events, statements, re-incarnations. Each new album presented a new persona for fans to imitate and for critics to evaluate, or, in the case of Prince, decipher. (Artists, back then, had to change with each new release or else be considered irrelevant. David Bowie entered the 1980s a smart yuppie, George Michael in the span of 7 years went from sparkling teen idol to sensitive, searching biker cowboy.)

Michael Jackson and Prince were regarded as rival gods, with the former more commercially successful but the latter preferred by most serious music critics (though in reality, fans, like me, liked both). Michael Jackson played games with tabloid journalists, who in turn responded with growing hostility; Prince played pranks on music critics, who wilfully allowed themselves to be deceived and wowed by this inscrutable prodigy.

Michael Jackson’s Avalon was Neverland, a fantasy dream that always invited ridicule (though not from me); Prince’s Mount Olympus was Paisley Park, a place deemed so mythical that fans constructed their own maps from the few photos and bits of footage that existed of it, and then endlessly speculated on what life was like inside of it: the parties, the concerts, sacred rituals, whisperings, the spontaneous nightly sessions. “Did you know,” they’d say, wide-eyed, “Prince has this huge vault of original masters and unreleased music right under Paisley Park? Only he knows the key code.” Whole albums (all masterpieces of course) had disappeared into that vault, never to be heard by ordinary mortals. And he never slept: nobody had ever caught him sleeping. He just went on and on, creating music. That was Prince, the enigmatic wonder, the living love symbol, and flamboyant question mark.

I still find it strange to realize so many of the artists I just mentioned, who so energetically populated my childhood and early teens, are dead. Michael Jackson, Prince, David Bowie, and George Michael all died within 7 years of each other; but there’s also Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, and so many more. (Compare 1960s giants Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, who are still touring and releasing records.)

When Prince died, a little more than three years ago today, I was on Texel, an island to the north of Holland, where I live. I checked my phone, checked the news, like you so stupidly do every now and then, and then saw the incredible headline. A sunny day, clouds seemed to appear that moment. Some people love celebrity deaths and follow juicy rumor sites about who punched who and who stepped out of the limo without their knickers on; me, I get depressed. It’s like having swallowed a stone. The sensationalist cries around every celeb death to me are like a beehive of bad vibes, a pest, and I have to stay away from it as far as possible if I want to protect my mental health, or what’s left of it. Prince’s death made me take things slow for a week or so. I have to mentally chew on such things, change my settings, ease into the new reality, let my heart adjust to its new weight. I’ve often had to deal with death in my life, sometimes it’s as if every high-profile death shocks me back into that familiar feeling of dread and despair.

Though Michael Jackson’s Neverland has turned into a derelict theme park that carries the curse of being unsellable, Prince’s Paisley Park has become a museum. Occasionally, browsing the internet, I see photos of it, and I’m always struck, kind of uneasily, about how soulless it seems. What does the lair of an extravagant hermit look like? What did I expect? Not something that looks like the atrium of a New Age company maybe. Looking at the interior, those sad police photos that were released last year, I can’t help but see the stupendous mundanity of it all. The building itself, somewhere in a suburb outside of Minneapolis, resembles a bunker, and though the pyramid skylights, that vaguely resemble guard towers, provide some natural light, the rest of the building is artificially lit, but dark. The recording studio is just that. Some of the walls have sayings like “Everything You Think Is True”. Stained glass with stars, clouds, and guitars. There’s a potted plant here, and an ugly tangle of phone cords in the corner there. Prince’s bedroom was sparse with empty green walls, and a plastic trash can you can buy at your local Walmart (but he never slept of course). The legendary vault reminds me of the storage room of my dad’s old electronics company, with its disorderly shelves and half-opened cardboard boxes. And everywhere, in every corridor and every space, there’s Prince iconography, but it’s rather bland, like the cover of a cheap unofficial biography.

For Prince, it must have been strange living in your own mausoleum.

The music that came from that place though. I believe PARADE (1986) was the first full album he recorded there, and then everything that came afterwards. My uncle was a real Prince fanatic, taking a slew of albums with him whenever he stayed with us, bootlegs too, so from an early age I became quite well-versed in all things Prince. Bits of his lyrics are as familiar to me as old family sayings. Personal favorites are the albums 1999 (1982), BATMAN (1989), and the LOVE SYMBOL ALBUM (1992). I like the street-smart humor of his early stuff, the raw passion, the in-your-face sex metaphors, with symbols as loud as cymbals, just the wild mercury sound of it; later on, his work became more spiritual, and harder for me to follow. His whole being though was music, every movement was a melody, every step a beat; he created music the way other people breathe. He had more songs in him than a duck has quacks. If you listen to the posthumous release, PIANO AND A MICROPHONE 1983, it’s as if the piano, microphone and artist aren’t three separate things, but one organism, bleeding and generating music; it features some wonderful, loose playing. It seems to me that towards the end of his life, in physical pain and unable to play a piano or guitar unless stuffed with elephant tranquilizers, he started to drift, and drift further, until he fell over the edge.

Like Bob Dylan, whose mystique and inaccessibility he shared, Prince had a habit of frustrating his fans, by deliberately excluding a great song from an otherwise so-so album and storing it in his vault, or by making his music hard to buy or even find (online, before he died, there was almost nothing). That’s one reason I kind of stopped following him; the other is the depressing decline of his songwriting since the 1990s. Looking at his later albums, which I first dutifully bought until I didn’t anymore, there’s hardly anything I really like. None of the best-of compilations collect anything from after the 90s. What happened? Age is part of it of course. A decline in quality is inevitable, most musical artists do their best work in their 20s and 30s. It’s also possible Prince’s brand of singing about his women like they are divine vaginas simply went out of style. Once cheeky and outrageous (his work was why Parental Advisory stickers were invented), his songs no longer shock us 21st centurians. We’ve seen so much already. Dirty sex wasn’t the only topic he sang about of course (far from it), but it’s the one he pushed forward the most as part of his image; his “royal badness” was part of his appeal. (The BATMAN soundtrack originally was going to feature Michael Jackson as Batman, the force of good, and Prince as the Joker, representing decadence, sin, evil.)

But his supposed “badness” was an act of course. The cocky poses, flashy gestures and mean diva looks were an obvious shield against the outside world, a theatrical defense mechanism. An attempt to dazzle people before they can get to you. When you’re shy—and he of course was the shyest—you feel like everyone is constantly watching you, and you become overly aware of how you look, how you walk, how you come across; you are constantly aware of your physical being taking up space. So what do you do when you’re an artist? You perform. Everything you do becomes a kind of performance, a conscious act. It gives you a feeling of control: you know why people are watching, because you’re making them watch you. But the essence of it is always shyness and nerves.

There’s something endearing about that 1983 footage of him being invited on stage for an impromptu jam by James Brown, who a few minutes earlier had invited Michael Jackson up. Ready to upstage his rival, who had just performed some killer moves, Prince takes the stage, struts, plays some random riffs, struts some more, suddenly takes off his jacket and does some tricks with the microphone stand, claps to whip up the audience—and then as he wants to make a fast and sudden exit, he clumsily goes down knocking over a prop, stage hands hastily arriving from all sides to help him up.

He died in an elevator near the lobby, but the spot itself has been covered up by a new wall (it’s near the watchful eyes in the third image). I keep wondering what happened. Was he making his way down to the ground floor from his production offices, or was he going up from the recording studio to his bedroom to maybe sleep? One associate, questioned by police, stated that Prince had told her he “was depressed, enjoyed sleeping more than usual and was incredibly bored”, and that at his last concert, he felt like he was going to fall asleep on stage. Those were rare remarks. An intensely private person, he mostly hid his problems, not just from others, but even from himself. The end, then, was inevitable. As with Michael Jackson six years before, the drugs relieved him of his pain, and then of his life.

He never slept, and when he did, it was 4ever.

[bccity]

JUNE 2020 BC ENTERTAINMENT SCHEDULES & REVIEW

Members may earn 3 points each (up to 6 points) for writing, by the end of July 7 KST:

A solo para of 400+ words based on their monthly schedule (does not count toward your monthly limit).

A thread of six posts (three per participant, including the starter) based on the monthly schedule.

Threads and solos do not have to take place directly during an important date listed on the schedule, but must be related to what the muse is mentioned to be doing in the paragraph explaining their schedule/the company’s schedule for the month and/or their thoughts on the mentioned activities or lack thereof.

These schedules may be updated throughout the month if new information needs to be added.

Reminder: May schedule posts are due by the end of June 7 KST. Please do not post schedule posts in the fmdschedule tag.

Overall Company

BC executives were pretty hands-off in choosing this year’s retreat and it shows in the final product being less their style, but it looks good to the public to let their idols relax and pushes the business bond the three companies have forged, so there was no opposition to the venue for the retreat

Important dates:

June 19-22: Wellness retreat with Dimensions and Gold Star.

BC Soloist 1

With album recording and choreography done, June is set to prepare the promotional materials for the album, from the photo book to the music video. She’s expected to continue rehearsing the performances of her songs, but will be learning and filming a cover choreography for “7 Rings” for another YouTube upload by the company to keep eyes on her. She will also be performing at KCon New York mid-month, where her set will consist of ‘Why Don’t You Know” and “Roller Coaster”.

Important dates:

June 13: Performance at KCON NY at the Javits Center in New York, NY, USA (also performing: Dimensions Soloist 1, Lucid, and Gold Star Soloist 3).

June 24: Comeback photo book shoot.

June 25: “Love U” M/V filming.

June 30: Release of 7 Rings dance cover.

Decipher

While their maknae is in LA with CHAMPION, the other Decipher members will have a little more free time to do as they please, though it’s not an official vacation of any sort where they can leave the country. Once the maknae returns, it’s on to comeback preparations with fittings beginning on the eleventh, followed by MV filming and the photo book shoot for their album. The group has also been chosen to sing an OST for the new drama Mr. Sunshine which they must record mid-month. They’ll be filmed during the studio recording in order for the clips to be used dispersed throughout an official video upload for the OST. The leader and the main rapper will also film a music video for their unit track on the album, and dance practice continues throughout the month.

Important dates:

June 11: MV and comeback stage outfit fitting.

June 13: “And I” Mr. Sunshine OST recording.

June 15: Comeback photo book shoot.

June 16: “Love Paint” M/V and teaser videos filming.

June 25: “Daybreak” M/V filming (leader & main rapper only).

           ↳ Decipher R & V

No schedules for the month.

Important dates:

N/A.

           ↳ CHAMPION

All members of the sub-unit will fly out to Los Angeles on June 3 and will stay in Los Angeles through June 10. They’ll be filmed during their time in Los Angeles for a reality show that will be released called CHAMPION The Beginning. During their weeklong stay, they’ll be staying in a house in Beverly Hills instead of a hotel in order to encourage more bonding between the sub-unit members. Their rooms will be assigned by random draw and will end up as follows:

Room One: Main rapper/lead dancer/vocal (Unity)

Room Two: Main dancer/vocal/rapper (Knight) & Main vocal (Knight)

Room Three: Main dancer/lead vocal (Decipher)

Room Four: Main dancer/rapper/vocal (Unity) & Lead rapper/vocal (Unity)

On June 5, the night before their debut showcase, the members will be treated to a special dinner made by private chefs paid for by BC and Dimensions. When they return to Korea on the morning of June 11, they’ll begin their promotions on Korean music shows, which is when they’ll fall into a more normal promotional routine.

Important dates:

June 4: Beats 1 radio show guesting in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

June 4: Press conference in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

June 5: Release of “Jopping” & CHAMPION album, promotions continue through July 5.

June 5: Filming of The Ellen Degeneres Show appearance [2] [3] [4] in Los Angeles, CA, USA (to air: June 10).

June 6: Debut showcase at Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

June 7: Fan sign at Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

BEE

As comeback preparations continue, it’s time for the BEE members to master the comeback choreography. It’s not very technically challenging, so practice time will be spent more on ensuring the members are comfortably delivering the cuter and brighter concept that comes with it than their recent comebacks. For their tenth anniversary on the third, BEE will hold a surprise VLive from the dance practice studio and unofficially spoil the news of preparing a comeback. It’s also time for the members to begin preparing for their upcoming concert, so they’ll shoot a teaser video for that as well as have outfit fittings and VCR filming. Each member will get to choose and rehearse a solo cover stage for the concert as well (admin note: please avoid choosing songs that could be claimed as points claimed songs and have not been released in-’verse, @fmdjiah has the choice of performing a cover stage or a stage of her upcoming promoted solo “Rose”).

Important dates:

June 3: Tenth anniversary surprise VLive.

June 5: Live Concert “B” teaser video filming.

June 7: Live Concert “B” stage outfit [2] [3] [4] fitting.

June 10: Live Concert “B” VCR filming.

           ↳ 2BEE

The whole month is spent promoting on music shows. BC has opted not to do many promotions outside of that as BEE has the name recognition on its own and they seem to be right, as the song does well on the charts, even if it falls short of becoming an official number one hit. It’s not even summer yet, but 2BEE’s debut could very well be in the running for song of the summer.

Important dates:

June 28: End of music show promotions.

Knight

While two of their members are in LA with CHAMPION, the other Knight members will have a little more free time to do as they please, though it’s not an official vacation of any sort where they can leave the country. The day the members return, Knight will fly out to New York as a group from June 11 for KCon NY where they’ll perform “Love Shot”, “Now or Never”, and “Enough”. The group, excluding the members of the Knight Light sub-unit, will return to Seoul in the early morning hours of June 14. 

Important dates:

June 12: Performance at KCON NY at the Javits Center in New York, NY, USA (also performing: Dimensions Soloist 2, Alien, 7ROPHY, and Gold Star Soloist 2).

           ↳ White Knight

No schedules for the month.

Important dates:

N/A

           ↳ CHAMPION

All members of the sub-unit will fly out to Los Angeles on June 3 and will stay in Los Angeles through June 10. They’ll be filmed during their time in Los Angeles for a reality show that will be released called CHAMPION The Beginning. During their weeklong stay, they’ll be staying in a house in Beverly Hills instead of a hotel in order to encourage more bonding between the sub-unit members. Their rooms will be assigned by random draw and will end up as follows:

Room One: Main rapper/lead dancer/vocal (Unity)

Room Two: Main dancer/vocal/rapper (Knight) & Main vocal (Knight)

Room Three: Main dancer/lead vocal (Decipher)

Room Four: Main dancer/rapper/vocal (Unity) & Lead rapper/vocal (Unity)

On June 5, the night before their debut showcase, the members will be treated to a special dinner made by private chefs paid for by BC and Dimensions. When they return to Korea on the morning of June 11, they’ll begin their promotions on Korean music shows, which is when they’ll fall into a more normal promotional routine.

Important dates:

June 4: Filming of The Ellen Degeneres Show appearance [2] [3] [4] in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

June 5: Release of “Jopping” & CHAMPION album, promotions continue through July 5.

June 6: Debut showcase at Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

June 7: Fan sign at Barnes & Noble in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

          ↳ Knight Light

After the full group performs at KCON NY, the pair will fly from New York to Los Angeles from June 13 to June 15 to film one of three music videos and shoot teaser photos for their debut mini-album. They will film a vlog of the three days of their LA trip while they’re there, beginning with the flight from New York to Los Angeles.

Important dates:

June 15: Teaser photo shoot and “What A Life” M/V filming day one in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

June 16: Teaser photo shoot and “What A Life” M/V filming day two in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Lipstick

Early in the month, Lipstick will get together to film their comeback MV (which will end up receiving a 19+ rating) a little under two weeks before its release. Promotions begin on the eighteenth with the members pre-recording their first stages before leaving for the retreat. and the song does decently well—a bit better than “Glue” but not as well as “Lil Touch”. On June 15, the group will be called into a filmed meeting at the company headquarters to officially confirm with them that they’ll be appearing on a new MNet competition show called Queendom where they’ll compete against five other female idol acts. During the meeting, they’ll be informed one by one that they’re competing with 7ROPHY, Aria, two NPC junior groups, and one NPC senior soloist and their reactions will be filmed. The show will begin airing in late August, but they must begin preparing a brief introduction stage, which they will go to the MNet studio to film on June 27. While they are there, they will be interviewed and asked what they want to show through their performances and will be heavily pushed towards answers that push the storyline MNet has planned for them: proving themselves after losing a member (though BC will not be allowing the members to mention Goeun’s name on camera). 

Important dates:

June 6: “Wild” M/V filming.

June 18: Release of “Wild” & Wild mini-album, promotions continue through July 18.

June 27: Queendom Opening Performance filming.

           ↳ Lip Gloss

No schedules for the month.

Important dates:

N/A

CHARM

From June 4 to June 18, the members of CHARM will be touring the US. Before their first concert, they’ll make an appearance on Good Day New York for an interview and a performance unit performance of “Lilili Yabbay”. Any member(s) who consider English their first language will be instructed to take the lead on the interview. The same day, they’ll also do a superlatives video interview with Seventeen Magazine where they’ll be asked to identify the member fitting the descriptions of most aegyo, messiest, biggest flirt, most romantic, best looking, funniest, etc. Due to the number of members, they’ll be split into two different groups as follows:

Group 1: Main rapper + Lead rapper 2 + Vocal unit leader/lead vocal + Main vocal 2 + Performance unit leader/main dancer/sub vocal + Lead dancer/sub vocal 1 

Group 2: Group leader/hip hop unit leader/main rapper + Lead rapper 1 + Main vocal 1 + Vocal 1 + Vocal 2 + Lead dancer/sub vocal 2 + Maknae/main dancer/lead rapper

Important dates:

June 5: Good Day New York appearance filming in New York, NY, USA.

June 5: Seventeen Magazine interview [2] in New York, NY, USA.

June 5: Ode To You tour concert at Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, USA.

June 7: Ode To You tour concert at United Center in Chicago, IL, USA.

June 9: Ode To You tour concert at Toyota Music Factory Pavillion in Dallas, TX, USA.

June 10: Ode To You tour concert at Smart Financial Centre in Houston, TX, USA.

June 12: Ode To You tour concert at Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City, Mexico.

June 14: Ode To You tour concert at The Forum in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

June 17: Ode To You tour concert at ShoWare Center in Seattle, WA, USA.

           ↳ CHARM U

No schedules for the month.

Important dates:

N/A

WISH

WISH are touring Japan this month as they get back to the tour they left off on last year. They’ll be in Japan from June 2 to June 11 and June 23 to June 28, but they won’t have any schedules while they’re there other than their concerts. The concerts are leading up to the release of their &WISH Japanese album, but with their popularity in the country, BC hasn’t deemed additional promotion beyond the concerts necessary for WISH to do.

Important dates:

June 3: WISHlights Tour concert at Makomanai Sekisui Heim Ice Arena in Sapporo, Japan.

June 7: WISHlights Tour concert at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan.

June 9: WISHlights Tour concert at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan.

June 10: WISHlights Tour concert at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan.

June 24: WISHlights Tour concert at Osaka-jō Hall in Osaka, Japan.

June 25: WISHlights Tour concert at Osaka-jō Hall in Osaka, Japan.

June 26: WISHlights Tour concert at Sekisui Heim Super Arena in Miyagi, Japan.

June 27: WISHlights Tour concert at Sekisui Heim Super Arena in Miyagi, Japan.

June 30: Release of &WISH Japanese album.

[leah-halliwell92]

Too Much Love Can Kill You

Summary: Soul marks are found through touch and song, one must sing to find their half and touch completes their connection. To reject your mark is to sentence them to death. You have been on tour with Brian, Roger and Rufus for a year and have known them for nearly four. What happens you find out along the way that you are the mark of one Brian May?

Prologue

Chapter 1

“You should tell him,” Rufus said as he stood next to you a little ways away from the actual stage.

“I can’t and you know it,” you said giving him a strained grin.

“Can’t do what?” Roger asked walking up to the young couple.

“Ask uncle Bri out,” Rufus said as if he were talking about the weather.

“Tye!” you yelled punching his shoulder as hard as you could.

“Ow! It’s true and you know it!” The younger blonde said rubbing the spot you hit, “Besides...you need to especially if you want to complete the bond.”

Roger’s eyes blew open as he listened to the conversation.

“Rufus,” You say angrily ready to punch him again. “I can’t and you know why!”

You wrapped your arms around yourself and waited for either Taylor to say something.

Roger looked from his son to the woman who is as much part of their family as Bri and his own are.

“She’s...” he said looking to You before pointing to Brian in awe.

Rufus nodded in the affirmative after.

The trio stood there and faced the stage where Brian fixed the acoustic over his shoulder as he sat on a stool in front of the microphone.

You sigh quietly and longingly as Brian begins to play the chords for “Love of my Life.”

Love of my life, you've hurt me

You've broken my heart

And now you leave me

Love of my life, can't you see?

Bring it back, bring it back

Don't take it away from me

Because you don't know

What it means to me

You’d froze transfixed by his voice and the tender care that is coming through as he sings.

The Taylor men saw how your right hand wrapped your left wrist where your mark is and wondered if you had noticed. They saw the anger from earlier melt and your features soften with each note of the song and pluck of the six string. How you seemed to glow with love admiration and respect.

Love of my life, don't leave me

You've taken my love

(All my love)

You now desert me

The mark at your wrist hummed at each word and you found yourself singing along with him as if in a trance and world all your own.

Roger and Rufus looked on as she harmonized with Brian perfectly not a note out of synch.

“Can you hear that?” Roger asked his son quietly nodding to you.

“I have only heard one other person sing that song with as much feel as she is,” Roger said eyes shining with tears.

Rufus looked at his father curiously.

“Fred,” Roger said quietly as he worked to compose himself.

Rufus nodded in understanding eyes wide and noticed how you caressed your covered mark tenderly as you sang on.

Love of my life, can't you see?

(Please bring it back)

Bring it back, bring it back

Don't take it away from me

Because you don't know

What it means to me

“Do you think he knows?” Rufus asked Roger carefully over your head.

Roger shook his head in shock and quietly said, “He has absolutely no idea. And believe me when I say that he’d have said something if that were the case.”

Rufus nodded and turned his gaze back to the stage where his uncle played on.

Brian for his part looked completely unbothered, normal even. Clear proof that he has no idea of what You mean to him and he to you.

“This is bad isn’t it,” Rufus said sadly gaze still on the stage.

“Yes,” Roger says solemnly and carefully wrapped his left arm around Your waist.

You will remember

When this is blown over

And everything's all by the way

When I grow older

I will be there at your side

To remind you how I still love you

I still love you

Rufus and Roger were both in awe and concerned as your loved filled voice sang on with Brian and changed as the end of the song drew near. Each note grew sad almost desperate as you tenderly ran your thumb over your soul marked wrist. The boys saw the pleading look in your eyes as your gaze remained glued on the curly haired man. Her heart as well as her mark thrummed at the sight of him as his voice encompassed her in its sweet dulcet tones warming her from the inside out.

The boys grew even more concerned as you sang the final verses of the song, pain filled resignation evident in your voice as you sang thickening with tears. And as awestruck as they were at how well you both harmonized and how lovely your singing voice is, they can’t help but feel like they are invading a private, intimate even, moment between lovers.

Back, hurry back

Please, bring it back home to me

Because you don't know

What it means to me

You closed your eyes, in a silent plea, as you finished the song. You pulled your marked wrist to your lips pressing a gentle kiss on her mark taking a selfish moment to dream that this is your song he is singing. Your soul song...and it is to each other that you are singing this to.

Love of my life

Love of my life

The final chords of the guitar thrummed signaling the end of the song. This marked the beginning of her tears as your thrumming heart seemed to stop and your mark grew cold. You kept your eyes closed as you dreamed of him coming to you loving grin on his face as he took hold of you in a love filled embrace before pressing a tender, lingering, kiss on your forehead before pulling you on stage to perform with him.

You pulled your hand away from your wrist, a soft his escaping your lips as your mark burns, bringing you back to reality. You open your eyes applaud Brian as the rest of the crowed was doing and drew a deep breath.

You looked to your right and saw Roger for the first time noticing he’s holding onto you, and you can’t be more grateful to him as you sank into him as your body seemed to fall into itself.

“Can we take a mo...please?” You asked Roger quietly, barely keeping it together.

Rufus went to take you from his father but was stopped by a firm negative head shake from Roger.

“I’ll take her,” he said and gently pulled you closer to him and almost dragging you away from the stage entrance.

In a corner safely tucked away from prying eyes Roger held you as sobs took over your small frame.

“It’s alright love,” Roger said rubbing your back tenderly as he held his own tears back.

You worked double to gather yourself being mindful of your breathing.

“Slow even breaths love...that’s it,” Roger said worry prominent in his voice, “Breath with me if it helps.”

He started taking deep even breaths and you did as you were told grateful to have him there. You breathed together until your shaking stopped and tears had dried.

“He’s your other,” He said gently as he held her close to him.

You nod fisting your hands into his shirt on his back.

“Why not tell him?” He prodded gently.

“Because...” You drew a deep calming breath, “Because he won’t accept this...us...the bond. He will get it into his head that I can’t be his or vice versa because I’m too young and he’s too old,” your voice quivered and long dry tears fell again as your mark burned on your wrist.

Roger kept his breathing in check as her walls crumbled and her pain and fear was revealed.

“That he will only be in the way of my future. Not only as an artist away from the shadow of rock legend and Queen member Brian May but as a scientist in your own right as well,” you stopped and worked on your breathing again.

Roger pulled away from her and reached into his back pocket for an unused hanky. He was careful when dabbing away your tears before whipping away his own.

“And you know it’s true,” you said bottom lip trembling up a storm as you fought your emotions from breaking free fully.

Roger pulled you back into a strong hug nodding sadly, agreeing with your statement.

“I know its a fine line I’m walking Rog,” you say after getting yourself back under control again, “But I rather have him like this and take what I can get from this than not have him at all.”

Roger drew away again and looked you straight in the eye a serious and concerned look in his eye.

“What will you do the day he finds someone else?” he asked.

You gave him a sad grin and say, “Then if he ever finds out about me and the song then I’ll be as right as I can be in this situation...should he find out and I be rejected then I’ll take one out of Harry Potter and greet Death as an old friend. I rather fade than willingly than deal with the onslaught that will be his rejection.”

Roger sighed holding onto the second wave of tears that hit him at the thought of losing you. He’d taken you under his wing from the day Rufus came home with stories of you. As odd as it sounds, you’d become part of the family long before you were introduced to them directly giving you the support you didn’t know you you needed and a niche to call your own with them.

A sad grin appeared under his beard and mustache and pressed a kiss on your forehead, a secret promise. That no matter what happens he’d be by your side until the very end.

(If you wanna be tagged shoot me an ask!!! Thanks for reading don’t forget to like and reblog!!!!)

Tag list: @pansexualqueendarling, @queenattheopera, @brianandthemays, @theborhapboysawakenedmywhatever, @ramibaby, @captain–americanna, @awkwardangelshezza, @avengerraven1023, @danamaleksworld, @pastywhiteperson, @readinghorn, @i-was-born-like-this, @redspecialstardust

[thepenguinhbo]

27 for beegni on the kiss writing prompt

27.  Kisses exchanged while one person sits on the other’s lap.

this one got out of hand lmao but i also rly enjoyed writing it. it was... good to focus on something pleasant, for a change.

anyway, this one builds up slowly and is about their first kiss.

“Do you remember our first time like this?” Bee asked, resting her back against his chest. “With me in your lap?” “Of course I remember.” Igni replied immediately; even though it did take him a moment to remember. “It was... At the Honeycomb. Right?” “Mmmhmm.” she muttered in response, opening her book. “This feels like it happened... A lifetime ago.” “In a way, it did.” he replied, opening his eyes and abandoning his - somewhat feeble - attempts at communing with Rakdos. “Tell me about it.” “Again?” she asked; not impatiently. Softly. Eagerly. Like a storyteller, being asked by her favorite audience to once more tell their favorite tale of hers. “Again.” In the mirror in front of them, he could see her gentle smile; and without looking up from her book - Bee started to talk.

***

Igni muttered out a quiet apology to the man he just bumped into, already looking around the main room of the Honeycomb, his eyes searching for the peppy singer whose face was on all the posters advertising the club. She was young, and inexperienced; but her voice was strong and sweet at the same time, and something about her just made it impossible to look away when she was on stage. “G’evening, mister Hobblepot.” the bartender - a menacing-looking minotaur named Zul - greeted Igni as he sat down on the only vacant bar stool; and Igni had to stop himself from wincing at the sound of this ridiculous surname he was forced to use for the sake of the con he was trying to pull off.  “Evening, Zul.” Igni replied, doing his best to stop himself from looking around. “Is she here tonight?” “S’funny.” Zul said calmly, wiping the counter. “You’re the tenth person tonight to ask this question.” “And what did you say to the other nine?” Zul opened his mouth to answer - and in that moment, Igni heard an excited squeal coming from behind him. “You’re here!” Bee exclaimed excitedly, tapping against the counter with her violet fingernails; and Igni bit his cheeks, doing his best to conceal a lovestruck smile as she stared at him, her cheeks flushed and her eyes hopeful. “I’m so glad to see you again, mister Hobblepot!” “Likewise, miss Honeybee.” he replied, his heart pounding. “Did you write anything new recently?” “Only a very inappropriate song about Rakdos trying to get Isperia to crack a smile.” she giggled in response. “But imagine this - the club owner says I am not, under any circumstances, allowed to perform it on stage. He says, and I quote, this place only opened six months ago, I’m not looking forward to having the Boros thugs burn it down because you insulted that sphinx harlot.” “Isperia doesn’t control the Legion.” Igni stuttered out in response, doing his best to not stare at her soft, perfectly kissable lips. “And that’s exactly what I said! But I guess having this place burned down as a sign of appreciation by the cultists wouldn’t be great either.” she added with a sigh; and at the back of his mind, Igni could hear Rakdos chuckle. “But... He can’t stop me from a private show.” she added with a playful spark in her eyes; and he practically stopped breathing for a moment. “Would you be interested, mister Hobblepot?” “Hm.” he muttered, pretending to be considering her offer. “Hm. Yes, miss Honeybee.” he said finally; and Bee jumped up in joy, her heart-tipped tail swaying left and right. “Just name time and place.” “Come to my dressing room after tonight’s show. I’ll be waiting.” she said before disappearing in the crow, leaving him at the bar - longing. Yearning. Distraught over only walking into the Honeycomb - and into her life - to take over it in the name of the Cult, in the name of setting it all aflame.

***

After the main show, he found his way into her dressing room; it was surprisingly small, considering she was the lead singer at the club - or maybe it simply appeared so, because she scattered her things everywhere. “Did you enjoy the show?” she asked with a playful grin, looking at his reflection in the well-lit mirror in front of her; Igni gulped quietly, biting his tongue to not tell her the way she lowered her voice a bit and tilted her head when singing her signature song, The Ballad of A Caged Bird, set his blood on fire and made his skin ache. “Yes.” he said instead, sitting down in the nearby chair and putting his top-hat down at the table. “I just so happen to thoroughly enjoy all of your shows, miss Honeybee.” “Aww.” she giggled; but he could see her cheeks turn purple. “You’re very sweet, mister Hobblepot.” “Please, call me Oswin.” he forced himself to say; by the gods, he hated that name. It wasn’t his. It wasn’t even chosen by him.  “Only if you start calling me Bee.” she replied, turning around in her chair.  “Of course, miss Bee.” She laughed, getting up from the chair; and finally he noticed she was no longer wearing her frilly dress and her golden dancing shoes - instead she was wearing a silk robe and a pair of flat, fluffy slippers. It took a lot of self control for him to not stare at her thighs; but she seemingly didn’t notice. “Alright, so. The song about Rakdos and Isperia.” she said, climbing atop of the nearby chest of drawers and sitting down on it, modestly crossing her ankles and folding her hands in her lap; her robe slid off her shoulders slightly, but she seemed to not’ve noticed it (but he did, by the gods, he did, and he wanted to kiss her shoulders and her neck and her collarbones and every other part of her he could see.) and instead looked at him, her lips curled up in a sweet smile. “I don’t have a title for it yet. But I suppose not all masterpieces need a title.” He nodded silently; she giggled again - and began to sing her tale of Rakdos, lord of the riots, trying to get Isperia, the supreme judge, to crack a little smile in increasingly more ridiculous, often salacious ways. Being a member of the Cult of Rakdos, and once of his warlocks, Igni had heard a lot of songs about his patron - but none of them were quite as sweet as that one. Being a tiefling, Bee was born with the ability to speak Abyssal, the demonic language often considered to be created by Rakdos himself; it sounded like crackling fire - but rolling off Bee’s tongue, it almost sounded sweet. Igni listened intently, his hands folded on his knee, his expression stern and static, as if his face was a stone sculpture; but it wasn’t easy, as the song was oftentimes vulgar and the way she sang of Rakdos pondering if Isperia’s nipples are ticklish made him absentmindedly ponder what color would Bee’s nipples be - would they be blue, like all of her skin? Would they turn purple when erect and aroused? And what about her groin? What color would her flower be? (Ignatius, my boy, Rakdos purred in his head. Oh, how she makes you burn! How she makes you ache! Such a delight to watch. A quiet torture. A silent spark, ready to engulf all of Ravnica in flames.) “So, what did you think?” she asked after finishing the last verse; she crossed her legs, causing her robe to slide up and expose her leg, and watched him with her eyes half-closed.  “It was... Spicy.” he said cautiously, silently cursing himself for allowing himself to think about her so much. “But I think Rakdos would like it.” (You’re damn right, my boy. I do like it. Wish it had a verse about setting a Senate courthouse on fire though.) “But did you like it, mis... Oswin?” she asked; and he almost groaned out of want to hear her say his actual name, to hear her moan it- “I did.” he said, against his better judgement, despite knowing damn well that the man he was pretending to be would not like it. (But he wouldn’t fall for her either; so to hell with being reasonable.) She smiled proudly. “I’m very happy to hear it.” she said softly, swinging her leg slightly. “To be honest, I... Assumed you’re too serious and stern to enjoy something as silly as this song.” Igni coughed, doing his best to conceal a bitter chuckle, doing his best to not let the terrible truth of their situation get to him. She doesn’t know me. I’m a cultist, and she’s good and kind and sweet, and I’m a liar, and she would never love someone like me. Even as a tiefling.

***

“Can I ask you something?” “Go for it.” “Why do you always tell this story from my point of view? Doesn’t it bore you? Never getting to tell how you felt back then?” “It’s very simple, my love. I find the fact you pretended to be a serious merchant very amusing... And very poetic. And I am a poet. And there you were - a con artist, trying to turn a legitimate business into a spot for the Cult to launder their funds... But then you fell for the sweet, honest, peppy singer.” “But you had a secret too.” “I did. But me living a double life is not nearly as compelling as you pretending to not be a warlock of Rakdos.”

***

“Can I offer you something to drink?” she asked, getting off the commode. “I have... Well, I don’t have anything, but Zul has a bit of everything stashed away. And he’s contractually obliged to make sure I get all the drinks and snacks my heart desires.” “Perhaps I could assist with that as well. I... Have a wide variety of exotic snacks among my goods.” he added quickly as she tilted her head in a silent question. “Both sweet and savory. So if you ever crave something Zul doesn’t have... Just let me know.” “You know exactly what a girl wants to hear.” she said softly, looking at him; and her golden eyes almost made him crack, almost made him melt. “But, in the meantime... Can I offer you something sweet?” “Of course.” “Close your eyes then.” she said hesitantly; and he raised his eyebrows in a silent question. “I promise I’m not going to stab you.” she added, turning around; and after a moment - he closed his eyes obediently, focusing on listening instead. “Don’t open them yet.” she said, walking up to him; and moments later - much to his surprise - she climbed atop of him and sat in his lap. She was a little bit heavier than he thought she would be; just a bit. He opened his eyes - and saw her face, inches away from his, and he looked at her in silence, admiring her long lashes, and purple markings, and freckles and soft lips - lips that currently had a piece of chocolate sticking out from between them. “I-” he said hesitantly, his heart pounding, his voice raspy. “Miss Bee, I-” She tilted her head slightly, and the corners of her lips curled up in a smile; and he groaned quietly and leaned in, promising himself he’ll back out as soon as she- the moment he cautiously locked his teeth around the chocolate piece - she practically swallowed it and pressed her lips against his tightly, wrapping her arms around his neck; and he didn’t back out, instead kissing her back and pulling her closer, his hands trembling against her body. His blasted monocle fell off his face; but it didn’t matter, all that mattered were her lips and her breath. She was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted; and he instantly knew - it was not going to be enough.

***

“Gods, back then I was so horny for you.” he sighed; and Bee laughed, her laughter light like wind chimes. “Well, so was I for you.” she said, reaching up with her hand to stroke his chin; she turned her head to look up at him and he smiled sheepishly, wrapping his arms around her. “Oh, you were driving me crazy. Tall, handsome, muscular, perfectly polite, distant... Mmmm. Delicious.” “And now I’m a touchy-feely mean bastard who can’t get his hands off you. Are you... Still happy?” “Well, you’re still my Igni. And you can still act like a gentleman. So... I can’t imagine a scenario where I’m happier.” she said, putting her book down and clumsily turning around in his lap to face him. “Now... All that talking made me want to be kissed.” she added, batting her lashes at him.  He grinned, and pulled her closer; and he kissed her, he kissed her all over, again and again and again.

that was long and fun and im glad i had the opportunity to write it.  also, here’s a younger bee from back when she was the lead singer at the honeycomb (made in a now-defunct mega fantasy avatar creater by rinmarugames)

[makistar2018]

All 125 Taylor Swift Songs, Ranked From Worst to Best

By NATE JONES April 30, 2019

In this business, there are two subjects that will boost your page views like nothing else: Game of Thrones and Taylor Swift. One of them is a massive, multi-million-dollar enterprise filled with violence and betrayal, and the other airs on HBO. I find it hard to explain why exactly, and I’m sure Swift would, too: Somehow, this one 27-year-old woman from Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, keeps finding herself at the center of our national conversations about race, gender, celebrity, victimhood, even the economics of the tech industry. And, outside the legions of fans who eat up everything she puts out, no take on her ever stays solid for long. She was a precocious teenager, and the ultimate embodiment of white privilege. She’s been feminism’s worst nightmare, and an advocate for victims of sexual assault. Some people say she’s a goddess of the alt-right. Other people say she’s Jewish.

And yet, unlike Madonna or Bowie, Swift got through the first 11 years of her career without any major reinventions. (For 1989, she embraced feminism and threw away the last vestiges of her Nashville sound, but those were basically just aesthetic changes.) If the word on her has shifted since her debut, it’s because we’ve changed, not her. Swift — or at least the version of Swift on her albums — has remained largely the same person since her debut: a thin-skinned, bighearted obsessive, with a penchant for huge romantic moments. People don’t slowly ease into a relationship in her songs; they show up at each other’s doors late at night and they kiss in the rain. An unworthy suitor won’t just say something thoughtless; he’ll skip a birthday party or leave a teenage girl crying alone in a hotel room. Listen to her songs and you’ll ache at the resemblance to the most dramatic moments in your own private history. Listen to too many and you might ache again at the nagging feeling that those stories of yours have all been a bit uneventful and drab by comparison. What sort of real life can stand up against fantasies like these?

So, uh, I don’t recommend you listen to this list top to bottom.

But I do recommend sampling as many of these songs as you see fit. Even with the widespread critical embrace of poptimism — a development I suspect has as much to do with the economics of online media as it does with the shifting winds of taste — there are still those who see Swift as just another industry widget, a Miley or Katy with the tuner set to “girl with a guitar.” If this list does anything, I hope it convinces you that, underneath all the thinkpieces, exes, and feuds, she is one of our era’s great singer-songwriters. She may not have the raw vocal power of some of her competitors, but what she lacks in Mariah-level range she makes up for in versatility and personality. (A carpetbagger from the Pennsylvania suburbs, she became an expert code-switcher early in her career and never looked back.) And when it comes to writing instantly memorable pop songs, her only peers are a few anonymous Swedish guys, none of whom perform their own stuff. I count at least ten stone-cold classics in her discography. Others might see more. No matter how high your defenses, I guarantee you’ll find at least one that breaks them down. 

Some ground rules: We’re ranking every Taylor Swift song that’s ever been released with her name on it — which means we must sadly leave out the unreleased 9/11 song “Didn’t They” as well as Nils Sjöberg’s “This Is What You Came For” — excluding tracks where Swift is merely “featured” (no one’s reading this list for B.o.B.’s “Both of Us”) but including a few duets where she gets an “and” credit. Songwriting is an important part of Swift’s spellbook, so covers are treated more harshly than originals. Because Swift’s career began so young, we’re left in the awkward position of judging work done by a literal high-schooler, which can feel at times like punching down. I’ll try to make slight allowances for age, reserving the harshest criticism for the songs written when Swift was an adult millionaire.

125. “Look What You Made Me Do,” Reputation (2017): “There’s a mistake that I see artists make when they’re on their fourth or fifth record, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting,” Swift told New York back in 2013. “The most terrible letdown as a listener for me is when I’m listening to a song and I see what they were trying to do.” To Swift’s credit, it took her six records to get to this point. On a conceptual level, the mission here is clear: After the Kim-Kanye feud made her the thinking person’s least-favorite pop star, this comeback single would be her grand heel turn. But the villain costume sits uneasily on Swift’s shoulders, and even worse, the songwriting just isn’t there. The verses are vacuous, the insults have no teeth, and just when the whole thing seems to be leading up to a gigantic redemptive chorus, suddenly pop! The air goes out of it and we’re left with a taunting Right Said Fred reference — the musical equivalent of pulling a Looney Tunes gag on the listener. Other Swift songs have clunkier rhymes, or worse production values, but none of them have such a gaping hole at the center. (I do dig the gleeful “Cuz she’s dead!” though.)

124. “Umbrella,” iTunes Live From Soho (2008): Swift has recorded plenty of covers in her career, and none are less essential than this 90-second rendition of the Rihanna hit recorded at the peak of the song’s popularity. It’s pure college-campus coffeehouse.

123. “Christmas Must Mean Something More,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): One of two originals on Swift’s early-career Christmas album, “Something More” is a plea to put the Christ back in Christmas. Or as she puts it: “What if happiness came in a cardboard box? / Then I think there is something we all forgot.” In the future, Swift would get better at holding onto some empathy when she was casting a critical eye at the silly things people care about; here, the vibe is judgmental in a way that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever reread their teenage diary.

122. “Better Than Revenge,” Speak Now (2010): A nasty little song that has not aged well. Whether a straightforward imitation of Avril Lavigne’s style or an early attempt at “Blank Space”–style self-satirization, the barbs never go beyond bratty. (As in “Look What You Made Me Do,” the revenge turns out to be the song itself, which feels hollow.) Best known now for the line about “the things she does on the mattress,” which I suspect has been cited in blog posts more times than the song itself has been listened to lately.

121. “American Girl,” Non-album digital single (2009): Why would you cover this song and make it slower?

120. “I Want You Back,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2011): Another 90-second cover of a pop song that does not particularly benefit from a stripped-down arrangement.

119. “Santa Baby,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Before Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me,” there was only one holiday song about falling in love with Santa, and for some reason, we spent decades making all our young female singers cover it. Swift’s version leans out of the awkwardness by leaning into the materialism; she puts most of her vocal emphasis on the nice presents she hopes Santa will bring her. (The relationship seems to be fairly quid pro quo: She’ll believe in him if he gives her good gifts — even at this early stage, Swift possessed a savvy business sense.) Otherwise, this is a by-the-numbers holiday cover, complete with sleigh bells in the mix.

118. “Sweet Escape,” Speak Now World Tour – Live; Target edition DVD (2011): Swift’s sedate cover of the 2006 Gwen Stefani hit — those “ooh-ooh”s are pitched way down from Akon’s falsetto in the original — invests the song with a bittersweet vibe, though like anyone who’s ever tried the song at karaoke, she stumbles on the rapid-fire triplets in the first verse.

117. “Silent Night,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Swift’s cover of the Christmas classic veers significantly away from Franz Xaver Gruber’s original melody, and even gives it a Big Taylor Swift Finale. Points for ambition, but sometimes you just want to hear the old standards the way you remember them.

116. “The Last Time,” Red (2012): Red is Swift’s strongest album, but it suffers a bit from pacing issues: The back half is full of interminable ballads that you’ve got to slog through to get to the end. Worst of all is this duet with po-faced Ulsterman Gary Lightbody, which feels about ten minutes long.

115. “Invisible,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition (2006): A bonus track from the debut that plays like a proto–”You Belong With Me.” The “show you” / “know you” rhymes mark this as an early effort.

114. “…Ready for It?,” Reputation (2017): The second straight misfire off the Reputation rollout, this one sees Swift try her hand at rapping, with some ill-advised bars about Elizabeth Taylor and a flow she borrowed from Jay-Z. (Try to rap “Younger than my exes” without spilling into “rest in peace, Bob Marley.”) Bumped up a spot or two for the chorus, a big Swift hook that sounds just like her best work — in this case, because it bites heavily from “Wildest Dreams.”

113. “I Heart ?,” Beautiful Eyes EP (2008): Swift code-switches like a champ on this charmingly shallow country song, which comes from the Walmart-exclusive EP she released between her first two albums. Her vocals get pretty rough in the chorus, but at least we’re left with the delightful line, “Wake up and smell the breakup.”

112. “Bad Blood,” 1989 (2014): When Swift teamed up with Max Martin and Shellback, the marriage of their dark eldritch songcraft nearly broke the pop charts. But when they misfire, the results can be brutal. The lyric here indulges the worst habits of late-period Swift — an eagerness to play the victim, a slight lack of resemblance to anything approaching real life — attached to a schoolyard-chant melody that will never leave your head, even when you may want it to. The remix hollows out the production and replaces Swift’s verses with two from Kendrick Lamar; it’s less embarrassing than the original, which does not make it more memorable.

111. “White Christmas,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007):The most bluegrass of Swift’s Christmas tunes, this gentle rendition sees Swift’s vocals cede center stage to the mandolin and fiddle.

110. “Crazier,” Hannah Montana: The Movie soundtrack (2009): When approached by the filmmakers about contributing a song to the Hannah Montana movie, Swift sent in this track, seemingly a holdover from the Fearless sessions. In an admirable bit of dedication, she also showed up to play it in the film’s climax. It’s kind of a snooze on its own, but compared to the other songs on the soundtrack, even Swift’s leftovers shine.

109. “I’d Lie,” Taylor Swift (2006): A bonus track only available to people who bought Swift’s debut at Best Buy. It’s as cute as a study-hall MASH game, and just as easily disposable.

108. “Highway Don’t Care,” Tim McGraw’s Two Lanes of Freedom(2013): After joining Big Machine, McGraw gave Swift an “and” credit here as a professional courtesy. Though her backing vocals are very pleasant, this is 100 percent a Tim McGraw song.

107. “Superman,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): A bonus track that’s not gonna make anyone forget Five for Fighting any time soon.

106. “Change,” Fearless (2008): A bit of paint-by-numbers inspiration that apparently did its job of spurring the 2008 U.S. Olympic team to greatness. They won 36 gold medals!

105. “End Game,” Reputation (2017): Swift tries out her blaccent alongside Future and Ed Sheeran, on a track that sounds unmistakably like a Rihanna reject. The only silver lining? She’s better at rapping here than on “…Ready for It?”

104. “The Lucky One,” Red (2012): A plight-of-fame ballad from the back half of Red, with details that never rise above cliché and a melody that borrows from the one Swift cooked up for “Untouchable.”

103. “A Place in This World,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift’s version of “Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” this one feels like it missed its chance to be the theme tune for an ABC Family show.

102. “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever,” Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack (2017): In Fifty Shades Darker, this wan duet soundtracks a scene where Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele go for a sunny boat ride while wearing fabulous sweaters. On brand!

101. “Last Christmas,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): Swift does George Michael proud with this reverent cover of the Wham! classic.

100. “Breathless,” Hope for Haiti Now (2010): Swift covered this Better Than Ezra deep cut for the Hope for Haiti telethon. With only one take to get it right, she did not let the people of Haiti down.

99. “Bette Davis Eyes,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2012): “There’s some unbelievable music that has come out of artists who are from L.A., did you know that?” Swift asks the audience at the beginning of this live track. The crowd, not being idiots, responds with an enthusiastic yes. This cover loses the two most famous parts of Kim Carnes’s original — the synths and Carnes’s throaty delivery — but the acoustic arrangement and Swift’s intimate vocals bring out the best qualities of the tune.

98. “Eyes Open,” The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (2012): One of two songs Swift contributed to the first Hunger Games soundtrack. With guitars seemingly ripped straight out of 1998 alt-rock radio, this one’s most interesting now as a preview of Swift’s Red sound.

97. “Beautiful Eyes,” Beautiful Eyes EP (2008): The title track of Swift’s early-career EP finds the young songwriter getting a lot of mileage out of one single vowel sound: Besides the eyes of the title, we’ve got I, why, fly, cry, lullaby, even sometimes. A spirited vocal performance in the outro saves the song from feeling like homework.

96. “The Outside,” Taylor Swift (2006): If you thought you felt weird judging songs by a high-schooler, here’s one by an actual sixth-grader. “The Outside” was the second song Swift ever wrote, and though the lyrics edge into self-pity at times, this is still probably the best song written by a 12-year-old since Mozart’s “Symphony No. 7 in D Major.”

95. “SuperStar,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): This bonus track is a relic of an unfamiliar time when Swift could conceivably be the less-famous person in a relationship.

94. “Starlight,” Red (2012): Never forget that one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2012 contains a piece of Ethel Kennedy fanfiction. The real story of Bobby and Ethel has more rough spots than you’ll find in this resolutely rose-colored track, but that’s what happens when you spend a summer hanging in Hyannis Port.

93. “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” Red (2012): Another glacially paced song from the back half of Red that somehow pulls off rhyming “magic” with “tragic.”

92. “Innocent,” Speak Now (2010): The disparate reactions to Kanye West stage-crashing Swift at the 2009 VMAs speaks to the Rorschachian nature of Swift’s star image. Was Swift a teenage girl whose moment was ruined by an older man who couldn’t control himself? Or was she a white woman playing the victim to demonize an outspoken black man? Both are correct, which is why everyone’s spent so much time arguing about it. Unfortunately, Swift did herself no favors when she premiered “Innocent” at the next year’s VMAs, opening with footage of the incident, which couldn’t help but feel like she was milking it. (Fairly or not, the comparison to West’s own artistic response hardly earns any points in the song’s favor.) Stripped of all this context, “Innocent” is fine: Swift turns in a tender vocal performance, though the lyrics could stand to be less patronizing.

91. “Girl at Home,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): This Red bonus track offers a foreshadowing of Swift’s interest in sparkly ’80s-style production. A singsongy melody accompanies a largely forgettable lyric, except for one hilariously blunt line: “It would be a fine proposition … if I was a stupid girl.”

90. “A Perfectly Good Heart,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition (2006): A pleading breakup song with one killer turn of phrase and not much else.

89. “Mary’s Song (Oh My Oh My),” Taylor Swift (2006): This early track was inspired by Swift’s elderly neighbors. Like “Starlight,” it’s a young person’s vision of lifelong love, skipping straight from proposal to old age.

88. “Come in With the Rain,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): An ode to a long-lost lover that follows the Swift template a tad too slavishly.

87. “Dancing With Our Hands Tied,” Reputation (2017): Reputation sags a bit in the middle, never more than on this forgettable ’80s-inspired track.

86. “Welcome to New York,” 1989 (2014): In retrospect, there could not have been a song more perfectly designed to tick off the authenticity police — didn’t Swift know that real New Yorkers stayed up till 3 a.m. doing drugs with Fabrizio Moretti in the bathroom of Mars Bar? I hope you’re sitting down when I tell you this, but it’s possible the initial response to a Taylor Swift song might have been a little reactionary. When it’s not taken as a mission statement, “Welcome to New York” is totally tolerable, a glimmering confetti throwaway with lovely synths.

85. “Tied Together With a Smile,” Taylor Swift (2006): When she was just a teenager with a development deal, Swift hooked up with veteran Nashville songwriter Liz Rose. The two would collaborate on much of Swift’s first two albums. “We wrote and figured out that it really worked. She figured out she could write Taylor Swift songs, and I wouldn’t get in the way,” Rose said later. “She’d say a line and I’d say, ‘What if we say it like this?’ It’s kind of like editing.” This early ballad about a friend with bulimia sees Swift and Rose experimenting with metaphor. Most of them work.

84. “King of My Heart,” Reputation (2017): Swift is fond of saying that “songs are what you think of on the drive home — you know, the Great Afterthought.” (She says it’s a Joni Mitchell quote, but I haven’t been able to find it.) Anyway, I think that’s why some of the love songs on Reputationdon’t quite land: Swift is writing about a relationship from inside of it, instead of with hindsight. It’s a different skill, which could explain why the boyfriend character here is less vividly sketched than some of her other ones.

83. “Come Back … Be Here,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): A vulnerable track about long-distance love, with simple sentiments overwhelmed by extravagant production.

82. “Breathe,” Fearless (2008): A Colbie Caillat collaboration that’s remarkable mostly for being a rare Swift song about a friend breakup. It’s like if “Bad Blood” contained actual human emotions.

81. “Stay Beautiful,” Taylor Swift (2006): Nathan Chapman was a Nashville session guitarist before he started working with Swift. He produced her early demos, and she fought for him to sit behind the controls on her debut; the two would work together on every Swift album until 1989, when his role was largely taken over by Max Martin and Shellback. Here, he brings a sprightly arrangement to Swift’s ode to an achingly good-looking man.

80. “Nashville,” Speak Now World Tour – Live; Target edition DVD (2011): Swift gives some shine to singer-songwriter David Mead with a cover of his 2004 ballad. (Listen to the screams during the chorus and try to guess where this one was recorded.) She treats it with a delicate respect, like she’s handling her grandmother’s china.

79. “So It Goes,” Reputation (2017): Unfortunately not a Nick Lowe cover, this one comes and goes without making much of an impact, but if you don’t love that whispered “1-2-3,” I don’t know what to tell you.

78. “You’re Not Sorry,” Fearless (2008): An unflinching kiss-off song that got a gothic remix for Swift’s appearance as an ill-fated teen on CSI. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

77. “Drops of Jupiter,” Speak Now World Tour – Live (2012): The best of the covers on the live album sees Swift commit to the Train hit like she’d written it herself. If you had forgotten that this song came out in 2001, she keeps the line about Tae Bo.

76. “The Other Side of the Door,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): A bonus track saved from mediocrity by a gutsy outro that hints that Swift, like any good millennial, was a big fan of “Semi-Charmed Life.”

75. “Gorgeous,” Reputation (2017): In the misbegotten rollout for Reputation, “Gorgeous” righted the ship by not being completely terrible. Max Martin and Shellback pack the track with all sorts of amusing audio doodads, but the melody is a little too horizontal to stick, and the lyrics have a touch of first draft about them. (You’d be forgiven for preferring the actual first draft, which is slightly more open and real.)

74. “I Wish You Would,” 1989 (2014): Like “You Are in Love,” this one originated as a Jack Antonoff instrumental track, and the finished version retains his fingerprints. Perhaps too much — you get the sense it might work better as a Bleachers song.

73. “Cold As You,” Taylor Swift (2006): A dead-serious breakup song that proved the teenage Swift (with help from Rose, who’s got a co-writing credit) could produce barbs sharper than most adults: “You come away with a great little story / Of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you.” Jesus.

72. “Haunted,” Speak Now (2010): In which Swift tries her hand at Evanescence-style goth-rock. She almost pulls it off, but at this point in Swift’s career her voice wasn’t quite strong enough to give the unrestrained performance the song calls for.

71. “This Love,” 1989 (2014): Began life as a poem before evolving into an atmospheric 1989 deep cut. Like an imperfectly poached egg, it’s shapeless but still quite appetizing.

70. “Untouchable,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2008): Technically a Luna Halo cover (don’t worry about it), though Swift discards everything but the bones of the original. Her subsequent renovation job is worthy of HGTV: It’s nearly impossible to believe this was ever not a Taylor Swift song.

69. “Wonderland,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): A deranged bonus track that sees Swift doing the absolute most. This song has everything: Alice in Wonderland metaphors, Rihanna chants, a zigzag bridge that recalls “I Knew You Were Trouble,” screams. As she puts it, “It’s all fun and games ’til somebody loses their MIND!”

68. “Sweeter Than Fiction,” One Chance soundtrack (2013): Swift’s first collaboration with Jack Antonoff is appropriately ’80s-inspired, and so sugary that a well-placed key change in the chorus is the only thing that staves off a toothache.

67. “I’m Only Me When I’m With You,” Taylor Swift: Special Edition(2006): A rollicking pop-rock tune that recalls early Kelly Clarkson. As if to reassure nervous country fans, the fiddle goes absolutely nuts.

66. “Tell Me Why,” Fearless (2008): A bog-standard tale of an annoyingly clueless guy, but it’s paired with one of Swift and Rose’s most winning melodies.

65. “If This Was a Movie,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): The mirror image of “White Horse,” which makes it feel oddly superfluous.

64. “How You Get the Girl,” 1989 (2014): The breeziest and least complicated of Swift’s guy-standing-on-a-doorstep songs, which contributed to the feeling that 1989 was something of an emotional regression. You probably shouldn’t take it as an instruction manual unless you’re Harry Styles.

63. “Don’t Blame Me,” Reputation (2017): A woozy if slightly anonymous love song that comes off as a sexier “Take Me to Church.” [A dozen Hozier fans storm out of the room.]

62. “The Way I Loved You,” Fearless (2008): Written in collaboration with Big and Rich’s John Rich, which may explain how stately and mid-tempo this one is. (There’s even a martial drumbeat.) Here, she’s faced with a choice between a too-perfect guy — he’s close to her mother and talks business with her father — and a tempestuous relationship full of “screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain,” and if you don’t know which one she prefers I suggest you listen to more Taylor Swift songs. Swift often plays guessing games about which parts of her songs are autobiographical, but this one is explicitly a fantasy.

61. “New Romantics,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): Like “22,” an attempt at writing a big generational anthem. That it was left off the album proper suggests Swift didn’t think it quite got there, though it did its job of extending the singles cycle of 1989 a few more months. Despite what anyone says about “Welcome to New York,” the line here about waiting for “trains that just aren’t coming” indicates its writer has had at least one authentic New York experience.

60. “Sparks Fly,” Speak Now (2010): This one dates back to Swift’s high-school days, and was destined for obscurity until fans fell in love with the live version. After what seems like a lot of tinkering, it finally got a proper studio release on Swift’s third album. It’s like “True Love Waits,” but with more kissing in the rain.

59. “Me!,” Untitled Seventh Album (2019): Well, what did we expect? The run-up to “Me!” was preceded by a weeks-long guessing game about what precisely would be the nature of Swift’s April 26 announcement. Would she come out? Would she come out and reveal she had once dated Karlie Kloss? Cut to the fateful day, and the news was … Swift, who is a pop singer, was releasing a new pop song. After the Sturm und Drang of the Reputation era, “Me!” is a return to anodyne sweetness, a mission statement that says, “I’m through making mission statements.” The result is blandly inoffensive, emphasis on the bland.

58. “All You Had to Do Was Stay,” 1989 (2014): Just like the melody to “Yesterday” and the “Satisfaction” riff, the high-pitched “Stay!” here came to its writer in a dream. Inspiration works in mysterious ways.

57. “Delicate, Reputation (2017): With multitracked, breathy vocals, this is Swift at her most tentative. Would any other album’s Taylor be asking, “Is it cool that I said all that?”

56. “Stay Stay Stay,” Red (2012): Swift broke out her southern accent one last time for this attempt at homespun folk, which is marred by production that’s so clean it’s practically antiseptic. In an alternate universe where a less-ambitious Swift took a 9-to-5 job writing ad jingles, this one soundtracked a TV spot for the new AT&T family plan.

55. “Call It What You Want,” Reputation (2017): Many of the Reputationsingles aim at sexy; this airy slow jam about losing yourself in love after a scandal is the only one that gets there, though the saltiness in the verses (“all the liars are calling me one”) occasionally betrays the sentiment.

54. “Ours,” Speak Now: Deluxe Edition (2010): It’s not this song’s fault that the extended version of Speak Now has songs called both “Mine” and “Ours,” and while “Ours” is good … well, it’s no “Mine.” Still, even if this song never rises above cuteness, it is incredibly cute. I think Dad’ll get over the tattoos.

53. “The Best Day,” Fearless (2008): Swift’s parents moved the family to Tennessee so she could follow her musical dreams, and she paid them back with this tender tribute. Mom gets the verses while Dad is relegated to the middle eight — even in song, the Mother’s Day–Father’s Day disparity holds up.

52. “Everything Has Changed,” Red (2012): “We good to go?” For many American listeners, this was the first introduction to a redheaded crooner named Ed Sheeran. It’s a sweet duet and Sheeran’s got a roughness that goes well with Swift’s cleaner vocals, but the harmonies are a bit bland.

51. “Today Was a Fairytale,” Valentine’s Day soundtrack (2010): How much of a roll was Swift on during the Fearless era? This song didn’t make the album, and sat in the vault for a year until Swift signed on for a small role in a Garry Marshall rom-com and offered it up for the soundtrack. Despite the extravagant title, the date described here is charmingly low-key: The dude wears a T-shirt, and his grand gestures are showing up on time and being nice.

50. “Last Kiss,” Speak Now (2010): A good-bye waltz with an understated arrangement that suits the starkness of the lyrics.

49. “You Are in Love,” 1989: Deluxe Edition (2014): The best of Swift’s songs idealizing someone else’s love story (see “Starlight” and “Mary’s Song”), this bonus track sketches Jack Antonoff and Lena Dunham’s relationship in flashes of moments. The production and vocals are appropriately restrained — sometimes, simplicity works.

48. “The Story of Us,” Speak Now (2010): The deluxe edition of Speak Now features both U.S. and international versions of some of the singles, which gives you a sense of how fine-tuned Swift’s operation was by this point. My ears can’t quite hear the difference between the two versions of this exuberant breakup jam, but I suspect the U.S. mix contains some sort of ultrasonic frequencies designed to … sorry, I’ve already said too much.

47. “Clean,” 1989 (2014): Co-written with Imogen Heap, who contributes backup vocals. This is 1989’s big end-of-album-catharsis song, and the water imagery of the lyrics goes well with the drip-drip-drip production. I’d be curious to hear a version where Heap sings lead; the minimalist sound might be better suited for her voice, which has a little more texture.

46. “Getaway Car,” Reputation (2017): Another very Antonoff-y track, but I’m not mad at it. We start with a vocoder she must have stolen from Imogen Heap and end with one of Swift’s most rocking outros, and in between we even get a rare key change.

45. “I Almost Do,” Red (2012): The kind of plaintive breakup song Swift could write in her sleep at this point in her career, with standout guitar work and impressive vulnerability in both lyrics and performance.

44. “Long Live (We Will Be Remembered),” Speak Now (2010):Ostensibly written about Swift’s experiences touring with her band, but universal enough that it’s been taken as a graduation song by pretty much everyone else. Turns out, adolescent self-mythologizing is the same no matter where you are — no surprise that Swift could pull it off despite leaving school after sophomore year.

43. “The Moment I Knew,” Red: Deluxe Edition (2012): An epic account of being stood up that makes a terrible birthday party seem like something approximating the Fall of Troy. If you’re the type of person who stays up at night remembering every inconsiderate thing you’ve ever done, the level of excruciating detail here is like a needle to the heart.

42. “Jump Then Fall,” Fearless: Platinum Edition (2006): An effervescent banjo-driven love song. I get a silly kick out of the gag in the chorus, when Swift’s voice leaps to the top of her register every time she says “jump.”

41. “Never Grow Up,” Speak Now (2010): Swift’s songs where she’s romanticizing childhood come off better than the ones where she’s romanticizing old age. (Possibly because she’s been a child before.) This one is so well-observed and wistful about the idea of children aging that you’d swear she was secretly a 39-year-old mom.

40. “Should’ve Said No,” Taylor Swift (2006): Written in a rush of emotion near the end of recording for the debut, what this early single lacks in nuance it makes up for in backbone. I appreciate the way the end of each verse holds out hope for the cheating ex — “given ooonnne chaaance, it was a moment of weeaaknesssss” — before the chorus slams the door in the dumb lunk’s face.

39. “Back to December,” Speak Now (2010): At the time, this one was billed as a big step for Swift: the first song where she’s the bad guy! Now that the novelty has worn off “Back to December” doesn’t feel so groundbreaking, but it does show her evolving sensitivity. The key to a good apology has always been sincerity, and whatever faults Swift may have, a lack of sincerity has never been one of them.

38. “Holy Ground,” Red (2012): This chugging rocker nails the feeling of reconnecting with an ex and romanticizing the times you shared, and it livens up the back half of Red a bit. Probably ranked too high, but this is my list and I’ll do what I want.

37. “Enchanted,” Speak Now (2010): Originally the title track for Swift’s third album until her label told her, more or less, to cut it with the fairy-tale stuff. It’s a glittery ode to a meet-cute that probably didn’t need to be six minutes long, but at least the extended length gives us extra time to soak up the heavenly coda, with its multi-tracked “Please don’t be in love in with someone else.”

36. “I Know Places,” 1989 (2014): No attempts of universality here — this trip-hop song about trying to find a place to make out when you’re a massive celebrity is only relatable to a couple dozen people. No matter. As a slice of gothic pop-star paranoia, it gives a much-needed bit of edge to 1989. Bumped up a couple of spots for the line about vultures, which I can only assume is a shout-out.

35. “Treacherous,” Red (2012): Swift has rarely been so tactile as on this intimate ballad, seemingly constructed entirely out of sighs.

34. “Dress,” Reputation (2017): An appropriately slinky track that gives us an unexpected payoff for years of lyrics about party dresses: “I only bought this dress so you could take it off,” she says in the chorus. The way the whole song starts and stops is an obvious trick, but I like it.

33. “Speak Now,” Speak Now (2010): The rest of the band plays it so straight that it might take a second listen to realize that this song is, frankly, bonkers. First, Swift sneaks into a wedding to find a bridezilla, “wearing a gown shaped like a pastry,” snarling at the bridesmaids. Then it turns out she’s been uninvited — oops — so she decides to hide in the curtains. Finally, at a pivotal moment she stands up in front of everyone and protests the impending union. Luckily the guy is cool with it, so we get a happy ending! All this nonsense undercuts the admittedly charming chorus, but it’s hard not to smile at the unabashed silliness.

32. “22,” Red (2012): Another collaboration with Martin and Shellback, another absurdly catchy single. Still, there’s enough personality in the machine for this to still feel like a Taylor song, for better (“breakfast at midnight” being the epitome of adult freedom) and for worse (the obsession with “cool kids”). Mostly for better.

31. “Christmases When You Were Mine,” The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection (2007): The clear standout of Swift’s Christmas album, with an endearingly winsome riff and lyrics that paint a poignant picture of yuletide heartbreak. If you’ve ever been alone on Christmas, this is your song.

30. “White Horse,” Fearless (2008): You’d never call Swift a genre deconstructionist, but her best work digs deeper into romantic tropes than she gets credit for. In just her second album, she and Rose gave us this clear-eyed look at the emptiness of symbolic gestures, allegedly finished in a mere 45 minutes. Almost left off the album, but saved thanks to Shonda Rhimes.

29. “I Knew You Were Trouble,” Red (2012): The guiding principle on much of Red seems to have been to throw absolutely every idea a person could think of into a song and see what worked. Here, we go from Kelly Clarkson verses to a roller-coaster chorus to a dubstep breakdown that dates the song as surely as radiocarbon — then back again. It shouldn’t hang together, but the gutsy vocals and vivid lyrics keep the track from going off the rails.

28. “Teardrops on My Guitar,” Taylor Swift (2006): An evocative portrait of high-school heartbreak, equal parts mundane — no adult songwriter would have named the crush “Drew” — and melodramatic. It’s also the best example of Swift and Rose’s early songwriting cheat code, when they switch the words of the chorus around at the end of the song. “It just makes the listener feel like the writer and the artist care about the song,” Rose told Billboard. “That they’re like, “Okay, you’ve heard it, but wait a minute — ’cause I want you know that this really affected me, I’m gonna dig the knife in just a little bit deeper.’” (In a fitting twist, “Teardrops” ended up inspiring a moment that could have come straight out of a Taylor Swift song, when the real Drew showed up outside her house one night. “I hadn’t talked to him in two-and-a-half years,” she told the Washington Post. “He was like: ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ And I’m like: ‘Wow, you’re late? Good to see you?’”)

27. “Begin Again,” Red (2012): Swift’s sequencing genius strikes again: After the emotional roller coaster of Red, this gentle ballad plays like a cleansing shower. (It works so well she’d repeat the trick on 1989, slightly more obviously.) Of all Swift’s date songs, this one feels the most true to life; anyone who’s ever been on a good first date can recall the precise moment their nervousness melted into relief.

26. “New Year’s Day,” Reputation (2017): Like a prestige cable drama, Swift likes to use her final track as a kind of quiet summing-up of all that’s come before. Here, she saves the album’s most convincing love song for last: “I want your midnights / but I’ll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year’s Day” is a great way to describe a healthy relationship. The lovely back-and-forth vocals in the outro help break the tie with “Begin Again.”

25. “Shake It Off,” 1989 (2014): Swift’s second No. 1 was greeted with widespread critical sighs: After the heights of Red, why was she serving up cotton-candy fluff about dancing your way past the haters? (Never mind that Red had its own sugary singles.) Now that we’ve all gotten some distance, the purpose of “Shake It Off” is clear: This is a wedding song, empty-headed fun designed to get both Grandma and Lil Jayden on the dance floor. Docked ten or so spots for the spoken-word bridge and cheerleader breakdown, which might be the worst 24 seconds of the entire album.

24. “Safe and Sound,” The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 and Beyond (2012): Swift’s collaboration with folk duo the Civil Wars is her best soundtrack cut by a country mile. Freed from the constraints of her usual mode, her vocals paint in corners you didn’t think she could reach, especially when she tries out a high-pitched vibrato that blends beautifully with Joy Williams and John Paul White’s hushed harmonies. Swift has worked in a variety of emotional palettes in her career, but this is the only time she’s ever been spooky.

23. “Picture to Burn,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift’s breakup songs rarely get more acidic than they do in this country hit. By the time she’s twanging a line about dating all her ex’s friends, things have gotten downright rowdy. The original lyrics — “Go and tell your friends that I’m obsessive and crazy / That’s fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay” — show how far standards for acceptable speech in nice young people have shifted in the past decade.

22. “Fearless,” Fearless (2008): The title track from Swift’s second album has more of her favorite images — in one memorable twofer, she’s dancing in the rain while wearing her best dress — but she invests them with so much emotion that you’d swear she was using them for the first time. The exuberance of the lyrics is matched in the way she tumbles from line to line into the chorus.

21. “Tim McGraw,” Taylor Swift (2006): If you by chance ever happen to meet Taylor Swift, there is one thing you should know: Do not, under any circumstances, call her “calculating.” “Am I shooting from the hip?” she once asked GQ when confronted with the word. “Would any of this have happened if I was? … You can be accidentally successful for three or four years. Accidents happen. But careers take hard work.” However, since the title of her first single apparently came from label head Scott Borchetta — “I told Taylor, ‘They won’t immediately remember your name, they’ll say who’s this young girl with this song about Tim McGraw?’” — I think we’re allowed to break out the c-word: Calling it “Tim McGraw” was the first genius calculation in a career that would turn out to be full of them. Still, there would have been no getting anywhere with it if the song weren’t good. Even as a teenager, Swift was savvy enough to know that country fans love nothing more than listening to songs about listening to country music. And the very first line marks her as more of a skeptic than you might expect: “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia pines to shame that night / I said, ‘That’s a lie.’”

20. “Dear John,” Speak Now (2010): “I’ve never named names,” Swift once told GQ. “The fact that I’ve never confirmed who those songs are about makes me feel like there is still one card I’m holding.” That may technically be true, but she came pretty dang close with this seven-minute epic. (John Mayer said he felt “humiliated” by the song, after which Swift told Glamour it was “presumptuous” of him to think that the song his ex wrote, that used his first name, was about him.) She sings the hell out of it, but when it comes to songs where Swift systematically outlines all the ways in which an older male celebrity is an inadequate partner, I think I prefer “All Too Well,” which is less wallow-y. I’ve seen it speculated that the guitar noodling on this track is meant as a parody of Mayer’s own late-’00s output, which if true would be deliciously petty.

19. “Red,” Red (2012): Re-eh-eh-ed, re-eh-eh-ed. Red’s title track sees the album’s maximalist style in full effect — who in their right mind would put Auto-Tune and banjos on the same track? But somehow, the overstuffing works here; it’s the audio equivalent of the lyrics’ synesthesia.

18. “I Did Something Bad,” Reputation (2017): It’s too bad Rihanna already has an album called Unapologetic, because that would have been a perfect title for Reputation, or maybe just this jubilant “Blank Space” sequel. Why the hell she didn’t release this one instead of “Look What You Made Me Do,” I’ll never know — not only does “Something Bad” sell the lack of remorse much better, it bangs harder than any other song on pop radio this summer except “Bodak Yellow.” Is that a raga chant? Are those fucking gunshots? Docked a spot or two for “They’re burning all the witches even if you aren’t one,” which doth protest too much, but bumped up just as much for Swift’s first on-the-record “shit.”

17. “Forever & Always,” Fearless (2008): This blistering breakup song was the one that solidified Swift’s image as the pop star you dump at your own peril. (The boys in the debut were just Nashville randos; this one was about a Jonas Brother, back when that really meant something.) Obligatory fiddles aside, the original version is just about a perfect piece of pop-rock — dig how the guitars drop out at a pivotal moment — though the extended edition of Fearless also contains a piano version if you feel like having your guts ripped out. I have no idea what the lines about “rain in your bedroom” mean, but like the best lyrics, they make sense on an instinctual level. And to top it off, the track marks the introduction of Swift’s colloquial style — “Where is this GOoO-ING?” — that would serve her so well in the years to come.

16. “Mean,” Speak Now (2010): It takes some chutzpah to put a song complaining about mean people on the same album as “Better Than Revenge,” but lack of chutzpah has never been Swift’s problem. Get past that and you’ll find one of Swift’s most naturally appealing melodies and the joyful catharsis that comes with giving a bully what’s coming to them. (Some listeners have interpreted the “big enough so you can’t hit me” line to mean the song’s about abuse, but I’ve always read it as a figure of speech, as in “hit piece.”)

15. “Wildest Dreams,” 1989 (2014): Swift is in full control of her instrument here, with so much yearning in her voice that you’d swear every breath was about to be her last. For a singer often slammed as being sexless, those sighs in the chorus tell us everything we need to know. Bumped up a few spots for the invigorating double-time bridge, the best on 1989.

14. “This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things,” Reputation (2017): Put aside the title, which can’t help but remind me of the time Hillary Clinton tweeted “delete your account.” The same way “I Did Something Bad” is the best possible version of “Look What You Made Me Do,” this is a much better rewrite of “Bad Blood.” Swift brings back the school-yard voice in the chorus, but also so much more: She does exaggerated politeness in the bridge, she spins the “Runaway” toast, she says the words “Therein lies the issue” like she’s been listening to Hamilton. The high point comes when she contemplates forgiving a hater, then bursts into an incredulous guffaw. Reader, I laughed out loud.

13. “Style,” 1989 (2014): The much-ballyhooed ’80s sound on 1989 often turned out to just mean Swift was using more synths than usual, but she nailed the vibe on this slinky single, which could have soundtracked a particularly romantic episode of Miami Vice. Despite the dress-up games in the chorus, this is one of the rare Swift love songs to feel truly adult: Both she and the guy have been down this road too many times to bullshit anymore. That road imagery is haunted by the prospect of death lurking around every hairpin turn — what’s sex without a little danger?

12. “Hey Stephen,” Fearless (2008): Who knew so many words rhymed with Stephen? They all come so naturally here. Swift is in the zone as a writer, performer, and producer on this winning deep cut, which gives us some wonderful sideways rhymes (“look like an angel” goes with “kiss you in the rain, so”), a trusty Hammond organ in the background, and a bunch of endearing little ad-libs, to say nothing of the kicker: “All those other girls, well they’re beautiful / But would they write a song for you?” For once, the mid-song laugh is entirely appropriate.

11. “Out of the Woods,” 1989 (2014): Like Max Martin, Antonoff’s influence as a collaborator has not been wholly positive: His penchant for big anthemic sounds can drown out the subtlety of Swift, and he’s been at the controls for some of her biggest misfires. But boy, does his Jack Antonoff thing work here, bringing a whole forest of drums to support Swift’s rapid-fire string of memories. The song’s bridge was apparently inspired by a snowmobile accident Swift was in with Harry Styles, an incident that never made the tabloids despite what seemed like round-the-clock coverage of the couple — a subtler reminder of the limits of media narratives than anything on Reputation.

10. “Love Story,” Fearless (2008): Full disclosure: This was the first Taylor Swift song I ever heard. (It was a freezing day in early 2009; I was buying shoes; basically, the situation was the total antithesis of anything that’s ever happened in a Taylor Swift song.) I didn’t like it at first. Who’s this girl singing about Romeo and Juliet, and doesn’t she know they die in the end?What I would soon learn was: not here they don’t, as Swift employs a key change so powerful it literally rewrites Shakespeare. The jury’s still out on the question of if she’s ever read the play, but she definitely hasn’t read The Scarlet Letter.

9. “State of Grace,” Red (2012): Swift’s songs are always full of interesting little nuggets you don’t notice until your 11th listen or so — a lyrical twist, maybe, or an unconventional drum fill — but most of them are fundamentally meant to be heard on the radio, which demands a certain type of songwriting and a certain type of sound. What a surprise it was, then, that Red opened with this big, expansive rock track, which sent dozens of Joshua Tree fans searching for their nearest pair of headphones. Another surprise: that she never tried to sound like this again. Having proven she could nail it on her first try, Swift set out to find other giants to slay.

8. “Ronan,” non-album digital single (2012): A collage of lines pulled from the blog of Maya Thompson, whose 3-year-old son had died of cancer, this charity single sees Swift turn herself into an effective conduit for the other woman’s grief. (Thompson gets a co-writing credit.) One of the most empathetic songs in Swift’s catalogue, as well as her most reliable tearjerker.

7. “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” Red (2012): Flash back to 2012. Carly Rae Jepsen had a No. 1 hit. Freaking Gotye had a No. 1 hit. LMFAO had two. And yet Swift, arguably the biggest pop star in the country, had never had a No. 1 hit. (“You Belong With Me” and “Today Was a Fairytale” had both peaked at No. 2.) And so she called up Swedish pop cyborg Max Martin, the man who makes hits as regularly as you and I forget our car keys. The first song they wrote together is still their masterpiece, though it feels wrong to say that “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” was written; better to say that it was designed, as Swift and Martin turn almost every single second of the song’s 3:12 run time into a hook. Think of that guitar loop, the snippets of millennial-speak in the margins (“cuz like”), those spiraling “ooh”s, the spoken-word bit that could have been overheard at any brunch in America, and towering over it all, that gigantic “we.” Like all hyper-efficient products it feels like a visitor from some cold algorithmic future: The sense of joy here is so perfectly engineered that you get the sense it did not come entirely from human hands.

6. “Our Song,” Taylor Swift (2006): Swift wrote this one for her ninth-grade talent show, and I have a lovely time imagining all the other competitors getting the disappointment of their lives once they realized what they were up against. (“But nice job with that Green Day cover, Andy.”) Even at this early stage Swift had a knack for matching her biggest melodic hooks to sentences that would make them soar; that “’cause it’s late and your mama don’t know” is absolutely ecstatic. She’s said she heard the entire production in her head while writing, and on the record Nathan Chapman brings out all the tricks in the Nashville handbook, and even some that aren’t, like the compressed hip-hop drums in the final refrain.

5. “Mine,” Speak Now (2010): As catchy as her Max Martin songs, but with more of a soul, “Mine” wins a narrow victory over “Our Song” on account of having a better bridge. This one’s another fantasy, and you can kind of tell, but who cares — Paul McCartney didn’t really fall in love with a meter maid, either. Swift packs in so many captivating turns of phrase here, and she does it so naturally: It’s hard to believe no one else got to “you are the best thing that’s ever been mine” before her, and the line about “a careless man’s careful daughter” is so perfect that you instantly know everything about the guy. Let’s give a special shout-out to Nathan Chapman again: His backup vocals are the secret weapon of Speak Now, and they’re at their very best here.

4. “Blank Space,” 1989 (2014): You know how almost every other song that’s even a little bit like “Blank Space” ranks very low on this list? Yeah, that’s how hard a trick Swift pulls off on this 1989 single, which manages to satirize her man-eater image while also demonstrating exactly what makes that image so appealing. The gag takes a perfectly tuned barometer for tone: “Look What You Made Me Do” collapsed under the weight of its own self-obsession; “Better Than Revenge” didn’t quite get the right amount of humor in. But Swift’s long history of code-switching works wonders for her here, as she gives each line just the right spin — enough irony for us to get the jokes, enough sincerity that we’ll all sing along anyway. Martin and Shellback bring their usual bells and whistles, but they leave enough empty space in the mix for the words to ring out. Who wouldn’t want to write their name?

3. “Fifteen,” Fearless (2008): For many young people, the real experience of romance is the thinking about it, not the actual doing it. (For an increasing number, the thinking about it is all they’re doing.) Swift gets this almost instinctively, and never more than on this early ballad about her freshman year of high school, which plays like a gentle memoir. Listen to how the emotional high point of the second verse is not something that happens, but her reaction to it: “He’s got a car and you feel like flyyying.” She knows that the real thing is awkward, occasionally unpleasant, and almost guaranteed to disappoint you — the first sentence she wrote for this one was “Abigail gave everything she had to a boy who changed his mind / We both cried,” a line that became exhibit B in the case of Taylor Swift v. Feminism — and she knows how fantasies can sustain you when nothing else will. “In your life you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team / but I didn’t know it at 15,” she sings, even though she’s only 18 herself. That there are plenty of people who spent their teenage years making out, smoking cigarettes, and reading Anaïs Nin doesn’t negate the fact that, for a lot of us squares, even the prospect of holding someone else’s hand could get us through an entire semester. Virgins need love songs, too.

2. “All Too Well,” Red (2012): It’s no wonder that music writers love this one: This is Swift at her most literary, with a string of impeccably observed details that could have come out of a New Yorker short story. “All Too Well” was the first song Swift wrote for Red; she hadn’t worked with Liz Rose since Fearless, but she called up her old collaborator to help her make sense of her jumble of memories from a relationship recently exploded. “She had a story and she wanted to say something specific. She had a lot of information,” Rose told Rolling Stone later. “I just let her go.” The original version featured something like eight verses; together the two women edited it down to a more manageable three, while still retaining its propulsive momentum. The finished song is a kaleidoscopic swirl of images — baby pictures at his parents’ house, “nights where you made me your own,” a scarf left in a drawer — always coming back to the insistence that these things happened, and they mattered: “I was there, I remember it all too well.” The words are so strong that the band mostly plays support; they don’t need anything flashier than a 4/4 thump and a big crescendo for each chorus. There are few moments on Red better than the one where Swift jumps into her upper register to deliver the knockout blow in the bridge. Just like the scarf, you can’t get rid of this song.

1. “You Belong With Me,” Fearless (2008): Swift was hanging out with a male friend one day when he took a call from his girlfriend. “He was completely on the defensive saying, ‘No, baby … I had to get off the phone really quickly … I tried to call you right back … Of course I love you. More than anything! Baby, I’m so sorry,’” she recalled. “She was just yelling at him! I felt so bad for him at that moment.” Out of that feeling, a classic was born. Swift had written great songs drawn from life before, but here she gave us a story of high school at its most archetypal: A sensitive underdog facing off with some prissy hot chick, in a battle to see which one of them really got a cute boy’s jokes. (Swift would play both women in the video; she had enough self-awareness to know that most outcasts are not tall, willowy blonde girls.) Rose says the song “just flowed out of” Swift, and you can feel that rush of inspiration in the way the lines bleed into each other, but there’s some subtle songcraft at work, too: Besides the lyrical switcheroos about who wears what, we also only get half the chorus the first go-round, just to save one more wallop for later. The line about short skirts and T-shirts will likely be mentioned in Swift’s obituary one day, and I think it’s key to the song’s, and by extension Swift’s, appeal: In my high school, even the most popular kids wore T-shirts.

Vulture

[shadowsong26fic]

Let’s Go Steal A Crossover: Part 1

No real plot here, this is mostly the background/backstory details.

Note/Disclaimer: this particular outline features an OC of mine and as a result is fairly self-indulgent. Because what else are crack outlines for?

That out of the way, here we go!

For the Leverage crew:

This is more or less in a S3 sort of environment--they may or may not be chasing Space Damien Moreau, but in terms of their team dynamic, etc., that’s where they are.

(Let’s be real, though, they are TOTALLY chasing Space Damien Moreau.)

(Who is, as in Leverage canon, very much a power-behind-the-throne kind of guy.)

(I.e., he is not a Moff or an Admiral or a planetary ruler or a sector governor or anything like that.)

(He just happens to have quite a few of them in his pocket.)

(He’s not affiliated with Black Sun or any of the Hutts or any other established syndicate, either. He’s his own thing.)

Nate--

He’s from a fairly prosperous Mid Rim world, went to a Core World university (probably either Coruscant or Alderaan).

The Clone Wars started right around when he graduated, if I’m parsing the timelines and ages right.

So, granted I’m making this up on the fly based on things I half-remembered, but while there are non-clone non-Jedi military officers, they’re mostly High Command types.

However, Nate does not have the background, experience, or connections for that kind of work.

He spends the War working for his home sector/planet's senator, as an investigator/learning about security/etc.

(How he manages to pull this off, despite his father’s legit Shady Past, is probably a Story in and of itself.)

Postwar, he goes into the private sector, working for an insurance company.

(Where he meets Sterling.)

(And Maggie.)

(And Sophie.)

Incidentally, while he doesn’t have the inside information to really disbelieve the late-stage propaganda, he’s a little Perturbed by exactly how quick and bloody the end of the war and the transition to the Empire was.

Something Is Not Right here, but he’s not sure exactly what, and is not yet so disillusioned to do anything about that doubt. But it remains, in the back of his mind, to resurface when everything falls apart.

This is, however, a large part of why he leaves public service.

From here, Nate’s backstory is more or less the same as in canon.

(I did toy with having Sam dead of Inquisitors instead for a while, but that would not translate right and, more importantly, is too mean to Maggie.)

(I love Maggie, have I mentioned that?)

Sophie--

What can one say about Space Sophie Devereaux.

...about as much as one can say about the canon version, honestly.

She’s Kuati, that much everyone knows for sure.

Whether she’s actually of the minor nobility is up for some debate.

(Yes, there was an equivalent of the King George Job)

She was in her early/mid-teens when the Clone War happened. Kuat itself seems to have been mostly untouched, but under heavy military guard because of the valuable shipyards.

She left Kuat three or four years postwar, and began creating her various aliases and legend.

(And occasionally working as an actress, of course.)

...yep, that’s pretty much what I have here.

Hardison--

Also pretty similar to his canon backstory, except that he’s slightly younger--probably closer to Jyn Erso’s age/two or three years older than the Skytwins.

Like Nate, he’s from the Mid Rim, but he’s from a planet that was heavily contested during the War.

(i.e., it ended up pretty bombed to hell)

(his parents died towards the end of the war, which is how he ended up with Nana)

His particular brand of invention/cleverness is particularly useful in a slowly-recovering warzone, though.

Parker--

Parker is actually from Coruscant.

The underlevels.

One of the kids who consistently slipped through the cracks, under both the Republic and the Empire.

Until Archie Leach found her.

And then unleashed her on the Galaxy.

And now, the fun part--Eliot!

Eliot is, in fact, a clone.

He was part of the so-called Last Batch; born (decanted?) about six months before the end of the war, so he never saw action during that conflict.

There were whispers, among the older cadets--the ones who were mature enough to hear echoes of a voice in their heads, who knew at least bits and pieces what the adult clones had done and why.

(The whispers are carefully, carefully encouraged by some of the adults who were able to fight through the compulsion. Not well enough, or fast enough, to save their Jedi, but damned if they wouldn’t protect their little brothers. Who will grow up to be men, not weapons. Which means that most of the Last Batch and varying proportions of the older cadets had their chips removed before leaving Kamino.)

(....and now I’m going to have to do something completely unrelated with the Last Batch and their relationships with their various older brothers at some point, aren’t they.)

Eliot, like most of his generation, goes into the Stormtrooper corps when he’s mature enough.

He stays in for a while--a good couple of years. He’s separated from his brothers, for the most part, but a few are with him. One by one, they die or desert--he covers for the ones who get away.

He’s the last. He bonded with a few of the non-clone troopers, and it isn’t until there’s no one in his unit he feels like he needs to stay for that he leaves.

(He promises himself, when he leaves that armor behind, that he’s not going to find himself in that situation again. He has only himself to look after now, and he is damn sure going to stay that way.)

He starts wandering, working as a bounty hunter/assassin for hire.

(He does have one brief, slightly surreal encounter with Boba Fett.)

(Who is Not Thrilled that one of the millions of men with his face is trying to do his job.)

Occasionally, he’s even hired by the Empire.

(Any jobs he does for them, he of course does from safely behind a mask.)

He spends some time on Mandalore, carefully connecting with his roots and finding plenty of work in that planet’s increasing unrest.

(There is a Story to tell here, I’m sure, possibly one involving Bo-Katan and/or Korkie Kryze...)

And, of course, he spends about six months working for Space Damien Moreau.

He occasionally, in his travels, has come across his brothers--ranging decommissioned Clone Wars vets, to older cadets, to others of the Last Batch.

He tends not to seek them out, though, and to avoid interacting when he can.

There’s too much baggage, positive and negative, with all his brothers of every generation.

Besides. He promised himself he wouldn’t put down roots with a unit or a team again.

Miscellania--

Their first job together runs much as in canon, and they settle in as a team and loosely follow the same overall storyline as in canon.

Nate knows damn well that Eliot is a clone, though he didn’t until they met in person.

(While he didn’t work directly with the GAR and never met any Jedi, he did meet several clone soldiers. It’s a hard face to forget, when you’ve seen it several times over the course of three years.)

Sophie figures it out, too--she met several soldiers assigned to guard the shipyards.

Their marks generally don’t figure it out, actually.

Not a lot is known about the Last Batch.

I mean, sure, if any of these industry/corporate titans actually thought things through, they’d remember that the clones were in production up through the very end of the war, so obviously something must have been done to the ones who were too young for combat at that point.

But, honestly, even if some part of you is aware/acknowledges that there are younger clones running around, are you really going to expect one to wander through your door pretending to be a chef/caterer or a pro baseball player or a country music star or an IT tech or...

(Parker and Hardison figure it out when one of their marks actually does identify Eliot as a clone.)

(They don’t particularly care, except Hardison remembers/learns about the rapid aging factor and starts using his downtime to try and find a fix for that.)

(When he’s not playing Space WoW, anyway.)

(Or helping Nate with whatever sketchy and underhanded Long-Term Scheme he’s got in mind right now.)

(They’re not on the black box yet, of course, but probably right now most of Hardison’s not-active-job time is spent on tracking Moreau.)

(He and Parker have probably been tossing ideas back and forth about robbing Kamino to try and find a fix, though...)

(Or at least the Last Batch’s records.)

(But that is a plot for another fic. And possibly one of the things they end up doing during the six-month break between S4 and S5.)

The Skytwins’ Team:

Here’s where the super self-indulgent part comes in.

So, this is technically an offshoot of an offshoot of Masks!Verse, which is a very near-canon AU (what I call an In Spite of a Nail AU) where Lavinia exists. Essentially, in Masks!Verse, nothing we see onscreen during the OT happens any differently, but there’s some Interesting Stuff happening elsewhere that sets up a different post-ROTJ timeline. Nothing at all changes until three years after ROTS, when Lavinia is born, and after that only things she’s Directly Involved In change, and most of that is internal Imperial power plays, at least through ROTJ.

(TFA more or less happens because I like it, but the road there is a little bit different and the canon I was operating from is locked there. I.e., due to what Lavinia and her daughter in this timeline end up doing, things go much more AU starting with the opening sequence of TLJ.)

Masks!verse, incidentally, is technically Lavinia’s core timeline, in that it’s the first one I created of the three base timelines I have for her (Masks, Precipice, and PT-generation), but that’s a whole separate conversation. It does probably explain why Masks!Verse has like a million variants/offshoots, though...

Anyway. Digression aside, this crossover actually draws from a Masks!Verse offshoot that I call the Lavinia Organa AU.

(You can probably guess where this is going.)

(It’s very much an Exactly What It Says On The Tin type thing.)

(And, honestly, could do with its own outline for the rewrite of ANH alone...)

But the Cliff Notes version:

When Lavinia is born/announced, Breha goes to Bail and says “we managed to successfully rescue/kidnap one Sith Lord’s baby daughter, we should rescue this one, too.”

They had never really decided on only having one kid, after all. Just at least one, and they wanted a daughter.

(It just ended up not happening in canon because of the need for secrecy/not wanting to complicate things and put Leia at risk.)

(I saw a meta post the other day that points out that Bail was clearly ready to take both Skytwins, but then Yoda said to separate them.)

(This may or may not have come up in primary Masks!Verse, incidentally, but there, they decided it was too risky and they had to focus on protecting the daughter they already had.)

(It’s arguable how much kidnapping was technically involved in adopting Leia. But they do just straight-up kidnap Lavinia. They also fudge some records and release carefully-timed photos and do not make any in-person appearances with her so they can claim she’s three months younger than she actually is.)

How do they pull this off? ...IDK, magic? Handwave for now, it is out of the scope of this project.

Leia and Lavinia grow up pretty close.

(Not that they never fight--they bicker constantly, especially in the years before Leia starts taking a more active role in the Rebellion and a more official role in Alderaan’s government.)

(Lavinia, at thirteen, isn’t really allowed to do much at that point, but she backs Leia in everything and helps a lot with the background research/legwork.)

A couple notable details: Bail and Breha decided pretty early on that they wanted to tell each of their daughters a shell of their bioparents’ stories, leaving out the key details but sticking more or less to the truth as best they could without putting their girls at risk.

So, Leia knows basically what she was told in canon--that her birth mother was a close friend of her parents, they didn’t know her birth father well, and both her bioparents died at the end of the Clone War.

That’s enough for her. She knows who her real parents are, and doesn’t especially care about her bioparents at this point. She has other things to worry about/deal with.

Lavinia is told that her birth mother died shortly after she was born, and her birth father was Not A Good Person and lost custody of her.

So, the thing about Lavinia--it’s less prominent in this AU because she had a functional childhood and parents who treated her like a person and not a spy/asset, but she’s very...the way she puts it in Precipice!Verse is that she doesn’t like walking into a room unprepared. And this shell of a story about her birth parents feels like the kind of thing that could bite her actual parents and her sister (and her) in the ass in a major way.

So, very quietly, around the time Leia starts working as an active Rebel agent, she starts digging into it, trying to identify her bioparents.

She doesn’t find any stories around her official age that match what her parents told her, and she doesn’t think they would lie.

But, she reasons, they might have skewed things or lied about her age to protect her from her biofather.

And then she learns Emperor Palpatine had a daughter, who died, who’s approximately the right age.

When she asks her parents about this, they don’t lie. They confirm it for her

(They would have done the same for Leia, if she had done the legwork and asked them point-blank, but like I said it’s not something she particularly cares about at this point.)

Lavinia then asks if she can tell Leia--they’ve actually been getting closer since Leia suddenly developed all these Adult Responsibilities, and the events of the Princess Leia novel happened.

This pretty much cements their relationship. While they still bicker a fair amount--they’re both pretty strong personalities, and not always compatible ones; Leia being a Soldier and Lavinia being a Spy, plus they’re teenage sisters who are fairly close in age--but they are Ride Or Die Full Stop from this point out.

By the time ANH actually rolls around, they’re both active Rebel agents--Lavinia works mostly with Intelligence and to a point with supply/other support forces, because she’s good at reading people and mapping interpersonal networks and figuring out who to approach, while Leia does more or less what she does in canon.

Again, the actually rewrite of ANH would be its own outline, so the important bits (with minimal detail in case I do end up doing this one properly at some point):

Lavinia and Leia are both on the Tantive.

Lavinia takes a shuttle/tender ship/something and separates, hoping to act as an additional decoy, that Vader will assume that the big ship is the Obvious Decoy and focus on her instead so Leia can get the plans to Kenobi safely.

Vader, of course, has the resources to track both of them so this doesn’t work.

Lavinia ends up tagging along on the Falcon and ending up on the Death Star with the others.

Everyone, including Obi-Wan, actually makes it off the station alive.

Lavinia was running around in the air vents for a while, and left behind a blood sample. On impulse, Vader runs it--he wants to identify all of Obi-Wan’s co-conspirators as quickly as possible and while there are no clear shots of her face on the surveillance footage he has, this is an available resource he can use.

Obi-Wan tells Luke and Leia who they are to each other (though sticks to the Certain Point Of View story about their biodad for the time being).

They have a moment of “...well, that explains a lot” and just accept it and move on.

So, at this point, there are some Key Secrets going on:

One, that Luke and Leia are the twin children, biologically, of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Naberrie Amidala.

People who know this: Obi-Wan, Luke, Leia, and Lavinia (they tell each other pretty much everything of this level of importance.)

Two, that Anakin Skywalker is now Darth Vader.

People who know this: Obi-Wan, Vader, Palpatine.

Three, that Lavinia Organa is Palpatine’s biological daughter.

People who know this: Lavinia, Leia, Vader, Mon Mothma (who they told in a “so this might be a Thing and we want to make sure Someone in High Command is prepared JUST IN CASE).

(They probably tell Luke before too much longer, but they do not share this detail with Obi-Wan.)

Right, so. Those are the Most Important Details for the purposes of understanding Let’s Go Steal A Crossover, I think.

Anyway, I’m drawing from this AU for two reasons:

(Or, three, if we include the fact that I Like It And I Can.)

First, it’s an easy way to get the Skytwins’ team connected/integrated with a minimum of Drama.

Second, because it’s kind of where the whole crossover concept came from. I was babbling at my very patient roommate about the Lavinia Organa AU (specifically about potential ESB/Cloud City plot points), and realized “lol, I could make a religion Leverage team out of this.”

“....WAIT I COULD MAKE A LEVERAGE TEAM OUT OF THIS!”

Here’s how it works:

Hitter: Leia. Who is a tiny ball of rage a lot of the time, and takes after both her bioparents in a large degree. She is definitely, definitely their combat specialist, even if she hasn’t really played that role in her previous work.

Hacker: Han. He’s the one who’s good at improvising tech, etc.

Grifter: Lando. Quick, act shocked.

Thief: Luke. Very different style from Parker, of course, but still.

Mastermind: Lavinia. Who, while not in any way going to use it as he did, inherited her biological father’s aptitude for strategy and manipulation.

The dynamic isn’t 100% the same, of course. For example, Lavinia may be the strategist, but Leia is more the team lead in the field. But it still lines up really great and then I started poking at the Leverage backstories above after the initial concept occurred to me and here we are.

Miscellania:

This crossover takes place in a vague “timelines mean nothing” sort of state. As I said before, the Leverage team is more or less in S3. We’ll say the Skytwins team is somewhere around ESB, though obviously the background leading them there is going to be Very Different.

The actual plot is going to start with The Two Live Crew Job In SPACE and go from there.

(Possibly getting more complicated, as we throw in Sterling and/or Vader and/or Obi-Wan and/or the Ghost crew.)

(In that last case, the Ghost crew never split up/Kanan never died/Ezra never went on a road trip with Thrawn and a bunch of space whales.)

And...that should cover it! Sometime this week (I’m hoping before Solo comes out), I’ll put up Part Two, which will cover the Actual Plot.

[donalsgirl]

Oscar Isaac’s Mom Died. Now He’s Working Out His Grief in ‘Hamlet.’

Oscar Isaac spent most of the fall and winter at a hospital in Florida, caring for his dying mother, Eugenia. As her condition deteriorated, he found himself reading aloud to her from “Hamlet.”

“I would just read the play all the time, do bits for her,” Mr. Isaac said.

An Elizabethan revenge tragedy with a substantial body count and heavy existential dread isn’t obvious bedside comfort. But Mr. Isaac, his mother and his sister were all Shakespeare obsessives. When he was growing up, they watched Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” over and over. “Me doing Shakespeare was her favorite thing,” Mr. Isaac said.

So reciting “Hamlet” to her at the hospital felt like the right thing. Sometimes it felt like the only thing. “I didn’t know how to process any of this, but this I knew how to do,” he said.

As her health declined, Shakespearean questions that had seemed abstract — What drives the dissolution of a family? How do you overcome crippling loss? — felt immediate and real, he said.

Continue reading the main story

“I know it happens to everybody, but it’d never happened to me,” he said. “I know people’s mothers have died, but this was mine.”

Mr. Isaac’s mother died in February, but “Hamlet” is still with him. For most of this heat-struck summer, he is performing as the tortured prince grieving the death of his father, six times a week for nearly four hours a throw at the Public Theater.

Mr. Isaac certainly has other ways to spend his days. For one, his first child, a son, was born in April. And his film career is booming. In a few short years, he’s graduated from indie artisan, with films like “Inside Llewyn Davis,” to bona fide star with roles in “X-Men: Apocalypse” and “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” He can probably take whatever theater job he wants to or not take any theater job at all.

That said, “Hamlet” is a play that exerts a strange pull on a lot of movie and television stars (Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant, Jude Law, Ethan Hawke), and it’s a role just about any classically trained actor and plenty of actresses have dreamed of playing.

But it’s also a tragedy that asks Mr. Isaac to relive the anguished death of a parent at every performance. In Sam Gold’s rowdy, deconstructionist staging, every time Mr. Isaac mud-wrestles, or lofts a prop skull or performs a mad scene in just a T-shirt and briefs, he seems to be working through his own loss, transforming raw private grief into riveting public performance.

“It’s for my mom that I’m doing it,” he said. “It’s to honor her life, but also her death, which was so awful.”

ON A RECENT WEEKDAY, an hour before rehearsal, Mr. Isaac hunched in a booth at the back of the Library, the Public’s restaurant. Looking slighter in person than onscreen, he was sitting underneath a skull-bedizened poster for an earlier production of “Hamlet.” His black warm-up jacket was a modish update of Hamlet’s “inky cloak.” It wouldn’t have been a huge surprise if he had drawn a sword from underneath the table or spotted a ghost over by the bar.

This symbolic brazenness seemed like a joke; Mr. Isaac was probably in on it. He has a roguish sense of mischief that underlies even his more serious roles (“Ex Machina,” “A Most Violent Year”). And he’s one of the few actors of his generation who can combine the unrestrained volatility of a Method actor with pedigreed classical chops.

His Hamlet is antic, mercurial, unpredictable, but each line of verse comes across clearly, almost conversationally. As Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater — who helped cast a Juilliard-fresh Mr. Isaac in “Two Gentlemen of Verona” in 2005 and “Romeo and Juliet” two years later — said, “That combination, particularly in such a handsome man, it’s amazing.”

It’s that charisma that helped the “Star Wars” director J. J. Abrams decide not to kill off his character, Poe Dameron, who will reappear in the coming “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” “The idea of Oscar Isaac as Poe coming back into the movie and being an ally to the cause got my blood pumping,” Mr. Abrams wrote in an email.

MR. ISAAC LOVED THEATER early. Born in Guatemala and raised by evangelical Christian parents in Miami, he had his first roles in religious plays. Even then, he played antiheroes. His first lead? The Devil. He devised an entrance from underneath the bleachers, scaring an adored teacher and exciting the interest of the popular girl he had a crush on.

“For that little moment, I thought, this is what I want to do,” he said.

Eventually he fell away from the church, and though his parents supported his acting ambitions, for a while he stopped that, too. He turned to music, migrating from soft rock to grunge rock to heavy metal, before landing in third-wave ska groups like the Worms and Blinking Underdogs, which attracted a local following.

Still, he never really shook theater. He studied it at community college and apprenticed at Area Stage Company in Miami. The artistic director got him reading Shakespeare again. “I didn’t really understand it,” Mr. Isaac said, “but I liked it a lot.”

He even developed an infatuation with the film soundtrack to the Zeffirelli “Hamlet.” On an impulse, he auditioned for Juilliard, using a monologue from Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” and arguing about its interpretation with the head of the drama division in the middle of his callback.

Richard Feldman, one of Mr. Isaac’s Juilliard teachers, remembered sensing in him “the best kind of artistic ambition,” adding: “I’m not talking about fame, I’m not talking about fortune. I’m talking about the hunger to be really good.”

At Juilliard, he met Mr. Gold, at the time a directing student. Mr. Gold was immediately struck by Mr. Isaac’s “easy energy and an easy relationship to his talent and having an incredible amount of talent” and a shared belief that “acting shouldn’t look hard,” Mr. Gold said.

The two of them fooled around with some comic scenes from “Hamlet,” making a pact to work together one day on the whole play. They both got “bit by it and obsessed by it,” Mr. Gold said, speaking by phone. Those talks continued, and two years ago, Mr. Isaac signed on, saying he felt he had to do it “before the knees give out.”

“You can only be so old and be upset that your mom remarried,” he said.

Once he’d agreed, Mr. Isaac began reading academic books, watching famous past performances, playing a recording of John Gielgud’s Hamlet “and just listening to the beauty of that man’s voice,” he said. After creative tensions with the production’s original home, Theater for a New Audience, “Hamlet” shifted to the Public Theater, where Mr. Isaac had made his post-Juilliard debut, and dates were set.

But then his mother got sick and his partner, the documentary filmmaker Elvira Lind, got pregnant, and suddenly “there were a lot of things that really connected on a very personal level,” he said. As Mr. Isaac explained, performing has always helped him come to terms with his emotions. “This is how I’m able to function,” he said. “The only way that I’m really able to process stuff is through reflecting it.”

Some of the visual language that he and Mr. Gold settled on — the syringes, the IVs, the PICC lines — make his memories and associations even more visceral. His Hamlet wears rumpled clothes and has a 5 o’clock shadow (if you’ve seen Mr. Isaac’s movies, you know his facial hair is a key to character) to approximate “the look and feel of spending long hours visiting a loved one at the hospital,” he said.

In the first days of rehearsal, Mr. Gold worried “that there would be things in this play that would be such deep triggers that he wouldn’t be able to make it through the show,” he said. But he watched Mr. Isaac use the play’s words “to contextualize what he was going through,” he said.

Mr. Isaac didn’t worry about making a timeworn speech like “To be or not to be” sound new. As soon as he says the words, he is instantly reminded of his personal loss and “the feeling that grief can just make you want to stop,” he said.

At the same time, he never really discussed that personal life in the rehearsal room. “It was always a very subtle thing hovering in the air, ” Mr. Gold said. Instead, he threw himself into experimenting with the role — physically, vocally — and worked on making his colleagues laugh.

Keegan-Michael Key, who plays Hamlet’s pal Horatio, noted that Mr. Isaac, who bought a Ping-Pong table for the rehearsal room, “likes to have fun.” Onstage he’ll often monkey with a pronunciation or arch an eyebrow just to get a rise out of a cast mate.

“He’ll do it on purpose just to keep everyone on their toes,” Mr. Key said. “The more alive it is, the more uncertain it is, the more dynamic it is.”

Mr. Isaac said that performing the play hasn’t felt especially dour. When he comes offstage after four hours he feels energized, he said.

That’s in part because the play isn’t only for his mother. When he acts, he’s also thinking of his 2-month-old son, Eugene, named after her. The baby has Eugenia’s lips, he said, and her hands.

He brought Eugene to the first run-through (“I think some of the more philosophical and theological aspects of the play were above his head,” Mr. Gold joked), and it’s Eugene he thinks of when reciting the “to be” part of the “to be or not to be” soliloquy.

As Mr. Isaac explains, the speech is about dying — that’s the “not to be” part — but it’s also about choosing to go on living. And Mr. Isaac has better reasons to go on than Hamlet does.

“You have a child,” he said, “and you must — you must for their sake — you must say yes to life.”

Source

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 26th May 2019 (Tyler the Creator, Halsey, DJ Khaled)

Top 10

“I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran featuring Justin Bieber sits at the top spot for a second week, and it seems pretty stable, even if the song itself is pretty lazy.

Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus is also steady at the runner-up spot.

At number-three, Lewis Capaldi trumps Stormzy up one space with “Someone You Loved” thanks to the release of Capaldi’s probably dreadful album.

This of course means “Vossi Bop” by Stormzy has flailed down one spot to number-four.

“Hold Me While You Wait” by Lewis Capaldi gets a short album release boost up three positions to number-five.

Billie Eilish’s “bad guy” is still at number-six since last week.

MEDUZA’s “Piece of Your Heart” with Goodboys suffers thanks to Capaldi, down two spaces to number-seven.

As does the late Avicii’s posthumous release “SOS” featuring Aloe Blacc, down a spot to number-eight.

Also thanks to Lewis Capaldi’s album release, we have number-nine, which is up 19 spaces from last week after squandering in the top 40 for a while. It’s “Grace” by Lewis Capaldi, peaking this week and becoming his third top 10 hit in the UK. Great. I’m not all that upset though because this means we won’t be seeing any new Capaldi this week, since all three singles were the most popular songs and UK chart rules prevent any other songs from appearing on the chart if they’re not the big three.

Also entering the top 10 for the first time is the mediocre house track “All Day and Night” by Jax Jones and Martin Solveig – presenting EUROPA – featuring Madison Beer, up oe space to #10, becoming both EUROPA as a group act and Beer’s first ever Top 10, as well as Jax Jones’ fifth and Solveig’s second, his first since 2015.

Climbers

There’s not much at all here to talk about, neither will there be many fallers, however there are a handful. First of all, we have an unexpected and unwelcome rebound for “Giant” by Calvin Harris and Rag ‘n’ Bone Man up five spaces to #24. Also, thanks to some more exposure that was inspired by a Hardy Caprio cosign on “Guten Tag” (that also just entered the Top 20 this week, which is pretty epic), Digga D’s “No Diet” is up eight spots to #25. “Late Night Feelings” by Mark Ronson featuring Lykke Li is also up six positions to #33 off of the debut.

Fallers

Going in reverse order, at #38, we have “Homicide” by Logic featuring Eminem absolutely collapsing down 12 spaces to #38. Oof. Speaking of collapses thanks to a lack of streaming after its first two weeks, “Greaze Mode” by Skepta featuring Nafe Smallz couldn’t even have that second week down 13 to #35, but it’ll rebound due to the album release in a few weeks’ time. “Just You and I” by Tom Walker might have had a streaming cut down 15 spaces to #29, but I think a lot of that is genuinely wavering popularity.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

Out of the top 75 completely is “i’m so tired...” by LAUV and Troye Sivan from #37, mostly due to streaming cuts and dumb UK chart rules, which have also affected “Don’t Feel Like Crying” by Sigrid out from #30. Otherwise, “Falling like the Stars” by James Arthur thankfully falters after people realised the song is absolute trite without the video, and it’s out from #34 off of the debut. Sadly, “Boasty” by Wiley featuring Sean Paul, Stefflon Don and Idris Elba has also had streaming cuts and is out from #17, because it’s a hip-hop song, and they are effectively streaming-exclusive. Also out are two not premature losses, in fact, these are very expected, as they’ve been in the last half of the top 40 for a while, and today was a big week, so, I feel like we can safely say “Good riddance” to “Don’t Call Me Up” by Mabel out from #36, and “Swervin” by A Boogie wit da Hoodie featuring 6ix9ine out from #40; Mabel might rebound though. There are no returning entries this week.

NEW ARRIVALS

#39 – “3 Nights” – Dominic Fike

Produced by Capi – Peaked at #3 in Australia

Now for the first time in a while, maybe since MEDUZA, I’m intrigued by this new artist’s debut on the charts, but I’ve seen his name buzzing up for a while... he only has six songs yet thanks to this massive worldwide smash, has 10 million monthly listeners, yet he’s completely passed me by. His Spotify bio is a yellow heart emoji, which is the worst heart emoji. I’m disgusted. Of course, I’m kidding, but I have heard him pop up on Kevin Abstract’s recent solo record ARIZONA BABY and he’s been an indie pop star for a while now, I imagine, I just haven’t cared enough to check his EP out, I suppose. Nevertheless, this is his first ever Top 40 hit in the UK, and I love it. It starts pretty abruptly with a bouncy clap beat and some stringy guitar that you can hear in a lot of vaguely indie pop nowadays, except unlike a LAUV, Dominic Fike has a soulful albeit somewhat reminiscent of pop-punk voice that backs up the acoustics (which may be a bit too much in the front of the mix than I’d like), as the bassline’s fun, energetic groove just kicks and kicks, Fike keeps going on with a fine-tuned, double-tracked vocal performance until he breaks down on the second verse, where he starts yell-rapping and I honestly start to think there was an uncredited Trippie Redd guest verse that made this blow up. Like I said, though, Fike is much more refined than a Trippie Redd, who just kind of belts relentlessly without any care for how it works musically. The falsetto backing vocals are cute, and the plucking guitar becomes a real driving force for the rhythm, especially when the first verse is mostly bare. Whilst most artists in this lane of indie-pop/singer-songwriter guy who’s actually pretty manufactured and generic would let the instrumental breathe in an airy, cloudy mess of synth, Fike is all over it, not letting the instrumental get a second of breathing room before he explodes on the track. The content matter is interesting, as well, as it paints imagery of street lights that have been such a familiar sight for Fike over the months of having a relationship, those three nights representing three stages, from not caring to being absolutely smitten in love, before they just drift apart and there’s nothing to do about it, and Fike is frustrated that he can’t repair this shattered relationship. Oh, yeah, and:

And she sent me naked pictures from her neck down to her waist

I feel this downplays the romance and emotion here a bit, though. I’ve personally always found it more compelling when it’s the man admitting he sent naked pictures, as that’s more rough and emotionally revealing than the inverse.

She found pictures in her e-mail / I sent this bitch a picture of my d*** - Kanye West, “Runaway”

I still absolutely love this song though. I’d say check it out, but everyone has. I’m late to the party.

#37 – “Jealous” – DJ Khaled featuring Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Big Sean

Produced by Tay Keith and Nova Wav – Peaked at #57 in the US

I feel I’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick here with these album cuts. With Tyler, the Creator instead of the fun introduction “IGOR’S THEME”, which is at #41, I get the much worse “I THINK” at #30. With DJ Khaled, instead of the beautiful Nipsey Hussle tribute “Higher” with John Legend at #43, I get Chris Brown. Thanks, I hate it. I don’t have to do any research, you know who these guys are, and I’m sure you don’t care, I’ll get through this quickly after turning on Private Session because my last.fm having Chris Brown scrobbles is a nightmare. Might as well list the insane amount of Top 40 hits these dudes have, DJ Khaled surprisingly having the least with five, with who I expected to have the least, Big Sean, racking up... also five, mostly because those sell-out features really pay off, Lil Wayne on the other hand having twenty-freaking-four, and Chris Brown trumping them all with about 38. What a delightful thought that is. Uh, so what’s happening here? DJ Khaled is pointless once again, as I doubt he had any element of involvement in this Tay Keith beat, who doesn’t even get to have his full producer tag play in the intro, which is insanely cluttered. His dated synth patterns and tones are still there with the rattling hi-hats, though, and there’s way too many Chris Brown on this song, because he sounds muddy and awful, with Auto-Tune that’d make a metalhead want to shoot a frog’s brains out. I like Lil Wayne’s verse, mostly because he actually has some well-constructed bars, but he drowns out into the chaotic pre-chorus and DJ Khaled ad-libs... and his flow is lacklustre, cut short by Chris Brown. Big Sean is fun and discusses Jhené Aiko, whilst interpolating the “In My Feelings” flow of all flows, but he also is cut short by Chris Brown. Please listen to CHVRCHES and stop collaborating with this pathetic abusive excuse for a human being. Seriously, why so much of that Chris Brown hook? Honestly, Big Sean can barely get a “Straight up” ad-lib in there. I hate this, actually, that hook has a falsetto Lil Wayne harmonising for some reason, and the bridge is multi-tracked with awful, low-fidelity chipmunk vocals, and yeah, this is awful, why did I consider this passable? I never want to hear this again, the instrumental’s so cluttered and over-polished so you can barely hear the vocalists except Chris Brown who is all over the place. DJ Khaled sounds like Quavo sometimes here, what is happening? I’m confused, who has played themselves? Why is Khaled just shouting over the outro? He’s supposed to only do this on the video skits, what the—

#36 – “Summer Days” – Martin Garrix, Macklemore and Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy

Produced by Martin Garrix – Peaked at #4 in Belgium

And the Cactus Award for What the Ever-loving Frick Did I Just Read? goes to... Martin Garrix, Patrick Stump and Macklemore on the same song. This is the whitest thing I think has ever been produced and released, but besides that, we should be questioning why these guys thought it was okay to collaborate, and that this was going to go unnoticed. Should I care? Isn’t this just a pop singer-rapper collaboration and the connection to Fall Out Boy is what’s making me overreact? I mean, Fall Out Boy is a shill now too, especially with that disgusting Lil Peep collaboration. It’s weird to see Macklemore out of his natural habitat of being only barely existent but good to know he’s hopped out of his shell to collaborate with some EDM doofus and I’m sure who was his favourite emo singer as a teen. This is Garrix’s tenth UK Top 40 hit, Macklemore’s eighth and third without Ryan Lewis and Patrick Stump’s fourth as a solo act, his first since 2007. Is it good? Well, no. It isn’t, really. Patrick Stump essentially whispers through the first verse, but his oddly nasal tone at least in the first verse doesn’t fit EDM production, and he’s yet to realise this, as while he’s more soulful and bassy afterwards, he immediately goes to a falsetto... and it gets better. A lot better – in fact, the distant acoustic guitar strumming (that may be too front in the mix once again for my liking) and cute fake finger-snaps make a pretty good foundation for a beat that both Stump and Macklemore perform pretty well on, especially since that rough electric guitar comes in for Macklemore to spit about his fascination and close bond with this woman but who cares, that drop is epic. That drop is insanely good, and the electric guitar build-up within Macklemore’s verse is subtle but excellent. This is actually more of a rock song than EDM, when I think about it, and the drop perfectly crafts the acoustic guitar strumming and cloudy synths with the guitar line, chopping up Stump’s vocals and leaving him recognisable, whilst still sounding warm and summery, mostly because of how slick the guitar is and the finger-snaps do allow for some kind of bounce and groove. The touches of strings in the second build-up is a nice additional touch, and I love when Stump cracks out of his falsetto briefly to signify that the drop is coming, and it is crashing hard. A better music critic would call this a trainwreck, a disaster on all fronts, but I like it for what it is. God, I’m so dumb.

#30 – “I THINK” – Tyler, the Creator featuring uncredited vocals from Solange

Produced by Tyler, the Creator – Peaked at #51 in the US

I knew Tyler’s hype was growing immensely but I didn’t expect an album bomb from Tyler on the Hot 100, and this sudden boost of popularity seems to come out of nowhere, especially since the last time he was this big he was having threesomes with a triceratops and stabbing Bruno Mars in his goddamn oesophagus. Nevertheless, Tyler’s back in the UK as Theresa May leaves, as are his songs, as he has a second but we won’t be talking about it for reasons explained later. This is “I THINK” from his most recent effort IGOR and while I’ve been a pretty long-term and semi-diehard Tyler, the Creator fan for a while, I’d argue IGOR may be one of his worst efforts yet, not because it’s bad but I’m incredibly indifferent on a lot of the songs, mostly because of a lack of substance from both the lyrics and the aimless instrumentals. This in particular is one of my least favourite songs, next to “GONE, GONE / THANK YOU” and “RUNNING OUT OF TIME” as pretty boring, dull listens, however it does differentiate itself from songs like that by being largely a hip house track, which is a genre you don’t see on charts anymore. This is Tyler’s first ever Top 40 hit in the UK and Solange’s second as a solo act as well, her first since 2008, and I don’t feel it that much as other tracks from the album. The groove is there, and the tribal house beat is fun, but Tyler’s Kanye-like droning delivery, with a bassline ripped from “Stronger” and fancy synths that cover Tyler’s nonexistent upper register that pitch-shifting can’t really fix or mask. Solange sounds beautiful here as well, but she’s relatively underused I feel, only having a chorus and refrain, but she’s very oddly mixed, as she’s much louder than Tyler for the most part, despite being a guest on the album, as the others are mostly quieter than Tyler due to the personal aspects of the album and how it wants to focus on Tyler, meaning it’s kind of inconsistent. The wonky 80s synths in the back-end of the track are very typical of Tyler and do add to the track in making it pretty fun, but it does get a bit too messy and cluttered in the final chorus, which is insanely catchy, may I add, and I do love the piano that ends the track, but overall, this feels very half-hearted. The aimless nature of the song is intentional, I’m sure, as it’s all about feeling that first spark of love and having no idea what’s going to come of it, but the pacing is dodgy here as it comes right after deeply saddened break-up song “EARFQUAKE”. Maybe I’m missing the point, but I’m not a fan of this one. Sorry.

#26 – “Nightmare” – Halsey

Produced by benny blanco, Cashmere Cat and Happy Perez – Peaked at #15 in the US and... #7 in Slovakia. Huh.

And now to ruin any potential credit given to me as a music critic, reviewer and enthusiast, especially right after that Tyler, the Creator review. Now, there’s a lot to hate about Halsey’s seventh UK Top 40 hit, trust me, I know that. The pointless prayer at the beginning that doesn’t add anything to the song or its content and is completely irrelevant, the abrupt drop into the belting chorus, the Billie Eilish rip-off in the first verse with the minimal, multi-tracked sing-rapping over a trap beat that she can’t flow over at all, especially in the second verse where she is sloppy as hell, the janky pre-chorus and the chorus as a whole being kind of pathetic and really short, the line “I’m no sweet dream, but a hell of a night” not working within the context of the song. However, let me give you this as a rebuttal. Those floaty, gliding guitars in the intro are absolutely beautiful and the prayer, whilst probably making more sense when the album comes out, is about giving the Lord her soul, essentially having to give men their all and get nothing back, which is implied by how it drops immediately to the rock-infused chorus, which attempts at being empowering at least but it is catchy as hell, especially with Halsey’s memorably raspy delivery. The sing-rapping works on the first verse, and is mostly about self-harm, actually, which is influenced by how men have lied to her, but it goes on a bit of a tangent that isn’t relevant to how the song is about empowering women, and that women don’t have to always smile for the camera, as mentioned in the pre-chorus. The main lyric as mentioned before makes sense now because like in the second verse, the media and/or G-Eazy is being dominant over her and she won’t stand for it, she won’t be patronised and the last line in the second verse exemplifies that with a line I really like:

I’m tired and angry, but somebody should be

Somebody SHOULD always be speaking out about society’s BS, and—wait, how the hell does this makes sense if it’s also about G-Eazy and/or break-ups in general? With this and “Bad at Love”, I’m actually really confused about Halsey’s songwriting. That song also had an obnoxious hook, huh. Hell, “Without Me” had all these problems as well... as did “Closer”, actually, and that’s not even her song. I stick by this being pretty okay though, especially by Halsey standards, even if it feels very mish-mash, and the distorted electric guitar being back in the mix does dampen the effectiveness of the chorus, which is still anthemic – or at least tries to be. Oh, yeah, and Halsey’s really attra—

#17 – “EARFQUAKE” – Tyler, the Creator featuring uncredited vocals from Playboi Carti, Charlie Wilson and Jessy Wilson

Produced by Tyler, the Creator – Peaked at #13 in the US

I love this song to death, it’s by far my favourite off of IGOR. As you can see by its US peak, however, this will probably be eligible for my best list by the end of the year and I’m planning in advance, it’s probably going to be very high on that list. I know this means I only give Tyler a negative write-up this episode, which saddens me too, but don’t worry, I’ll make up for it when December/January rolls around and it’s time for list season. This is Tyler’s second UK Top 40 hit, Carti’s first ever charting song in the UK (It surprised me too), as well as Jessy Wilson’s, and Charlie Wilson has a few but his discography page is messy as hell so I won’t try and count them, they’re all uncredited as well so that makes it harder. Imagine having more than three UK Top 40 hits as a solo act and you don’t get credit for any of them. Anyway, even though I can’t cover it...

Conclusion

Tyler, the Creator gets Best of the Week for “EARFQUAKE”, no contest. In fact, I’m hesitant to give “3 Nights” by Dominic Fike the Honourable Mention, just because “EARFQUAKE” is THAT good. Dishonourable Mention goes to Tyler, the Creator as well (Unfortunately), for the pretty dull “I THINK”, whilst Worst of the Week goes to DJ Khaled, Lil Wayne, Big Sean and Bowser Jr. for “Jealous”, what a trainwreck. Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank for more musical ramblings and Jonas Brothers content because that’s the Tweet they decided to push, and I’ll see you next week!

[akatsuki-shin]

Stammi Vicino, Non Te Ne Andare - Ch. 03

--- Yuri!!! on Ice Musician AU

Pairing: Viktor Nikiforov / Katsuki Yuuri

Rating: M

Genre: Romance, Drama, Fluff & Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Disability

Summary: The story of a violinist bereft of inspiration and a young man who speaks through his music.

Also Available in:

Archive of Our Own

FanFiction.net

CHAPTERS: 01 | 02 | 03

Author’s Note: Hello, guys. First of all, I’m terribly sorry for the extremely late update for Chapter 3. A lot of things are keeping me busy and when I did have time to write, I got writer’s block so many times that I kept re-editing everything I’ve written before.

Nevertheless, I want to confirm something that has been asked by a couple of readers before. I will not drop this story. I know I can’t guarantee that the next update will come fast, but one thing for sure is that I’m going to continue this fic until the last chapter.

That said, I apologize once again to have keep you waiting. I’ll try to find more time to write, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this update.

Thank you very much for reading my fic. :)

With a sword I wish I could cut those throats singing about love I wish I could enclose in ice The hands that write those verses of burning passion  

This story that has no meaning Will vanish tonight together with the stars

A scrap of crumpled paper fell to the floor.

There was another one falling afterwards. And another…and another…until the small room that was supposed to be a private studio looked as if it had been changed into a garbage bin to dump discarded papers.

Sitting on the desk was supposed to be the world’s phenomenal composer, Viktor Nikiforov. At this moment, however, he looked nothing like the grandiose, magnificent figure that people were accustomed to see on stage. His silver hair was unkempt; his shirt was messy and looked as if it had been worn all day long. His hand kept writing notes after notes on the manuscript pad, but at the same time he kept tearing the pages off and tossed them away to the floor, crumpled and completely ruined.

He had been engrossed in it for hours, and yet after discarding the last sheet of paper, the young Russian let out a frustrated groan as he threw himself on top of the desk.

“I can’t do this.”

Viktor took a brief glance from his arm. His faithful violin was there, cold and useless, leaning against the wall for its owner had left it there since hours ago. It was the only thing Viktor could do to prevent himself from slamming the instrument to the floor out of frustration. Of course, before attempting to write down notes on the manuscript pad, he had tried playing random melodies on the violin in hope they might turn into good music. It was what he had always done most of the times after all, allowing his inspiration and instinct to take over his body, giving birth to masterpiece after masterpiece over the years.

And yet this time, not only did he fail to find the right melodies, but forcing himself to create one only served to make him sick of hearing the sound of violin – or any other musical instruments in that matter.

“I should not have accepted Chris’ offer. Now I’ll just end up disappointing everyone.”

A doorbell ring brought him back from his self-deprecating. Makkachin’s cheerful barks could be heard from outside, and Viktor had no choice but to lazily drag himself out of his studio. While crossing the living room, he caught the sight of his poodle already sprinting to the front door, scratching at the wooden texture.

“Now, now, Makkachin, calm down. You’re going to scare our guests, whoever they are,” he cast a gentle smile at his four-legged companion. To his words, the poodle made a small whimper before sitting down on the floor, wagging his tail when the Russian playfully patted his head.

Just like that, Viktor turned the knob and pulled the door open.

“Hi, Viktor! Long time no see—Ugh, you look terrible!“

“Oh, hello, Mila and Georgi. It’s been awhile.”

Having no excuse to explain his unusually pathetic appearance, Viktor could only smile as he made way for his two guests to come in. The first was a young girl with vivid red hair and blue eyes, while the other a black-haired older man who was about the same age as him. He had known them for several years, even before he left Yakov’s orchestra and became independent. Obviously, since the two of them were also part of the entourage. Although Mila and Georgi could both play a couple of musical instruments, however, they were in a different group than that of the violinist.

“Good grief, Viktor. We haven’t seen each other for months and when we finally do, you look like you just woke up from a bad sleep,” Georgi commented with a sigh, “Were you pulling an all-nighter?”

“I apologize for this messy getup, but yes, you’re right,” the silver-haired chuckled, “Come on in, you two. Let’s not talk on the doorway.”

He led his former colleagues to the living room and offered them coffee. Before long, the three of them already settled on the comfortable sofa, each sipping on their warm drink until Mila finally decided to strike a conversation.

“So this is where you’ll be staying in Moscow,” she said while sweeping her gaze around, “It looks somewhat similar to your place in St. Petersburg, doesn’t it?”

“Let’s just say it makes me feel closer to home, although I couldn’t really hear the sound of seagulls around here,” replied the violinist, then he shrugged his shoulders with an apologetic smile, “I’m really sorry for showing you guys this unsightly side of me. I’d planned to visit everyone in Bolshoi one of these days, but you beat me to it.”

“It’s quite alright. We just returned from practice ourselves when Georgi remembered that you’re staying around this area,” Mila said, “That, and since we will be working together again for the next months, I think it’s not too bad to surprise the maestro who would compose new songs for us. Don’t you think so, Georgi?”

“Well, it’s always a pleasure working together with an old friend, but I heard the current project’s a bit different from usual?” asked the older man, “Yakov said it’s a musical theatre written by Director Giacometti.”

“That’s right. Chris and his team already decided on the main casts, but I proposed that both Yakov’s orchestra and choir should be involved. The overall theme is a classic, so I figured having the choir’s support will add to that feeling,” Viktor leaned forward, smiling while resting his elbows on his knees, “I’ll be counting on you guys to become the voice of my lyrics.”

“If you said it like that, it would be an honor for us,” the red-haired giggled happily, “Oh, by the way, have you heard about Yuri?”

“Yuri?”

“Yuri Plisetsky. Who else?” replied Mila as she frowned, “Do you remember he won first place in last year’s International Music Competition? Recently, he’s become an official member of Yakov’s orchestra.”

“Ah, about that… He’s been terrorizing me ever since to fulfill my promise.”

“What promise?” Georgi cast him a questioning look.

“To compose a music piece exclusively for him. I promise I’d do it if he won first place in that competition,” Viktor laughed, “But that’s great. If he’s already in the orchestra, I could probably compose one for a specific scene in Chris’ musical and let Yuri plays solo on that part.”

“It would be wonderful, as long as you don’t make him play solo during JJ’s part,” said Mila with a mischievous smile, “Or maybe you could try it. I’m sure it’s going to be interesting.”

“Don’t listen to her, Viktor. The kid will murder you if he knows about this.”

Georgi’s words were welcomed by a hearty laugh from the other two. It was happy news for Viktor, nonetheless, to hear that one of his juniors had started to show such promising development. After all, he, too, used to compete in the same events for many years during his younger days. There had never been an occasion where he didn’t become a finalist, and of course, in most of those occasions the first place always went to him. Although it wasn’t his intention to brag, the violinist wouldn’t deny that he was quite proud of it.

“Have they decided when and where this year’s competition will be held?” he asked.

“I forgot the date, but I recall Yakov saying it will be six months from now, in December,” replied Georgi, “And as for the venue, apparently it’s been decided that Moscow is going to be the host this year.”

“That’s interesting. If it’s in December, then the selection must’ve started already.”

It has,” Mila said, “The professors have recently screened the students to choose who are to be sent to the Russian preliminary next month. Yuri will also be there, of course, but he will be representing his own school.”

“Oh? And who will be the representative of our conservatory?”

“You will be surprised to hear it’s not a Russian this time.”

At the red-haired’s remark, Viktor raised his brows. While their conservatory had indeed been housing many foreign students, it was extremely rare for the said foreign students to be appointed for an event of this level. Obviously, since talent wasn’t the only category used for the screening. But still that did not mean not a single foreign student had ever been chosen. There were some, and they were really outstanding musicians. To think that another had been selected this year, this student must’ve had extraordinary talent.

“You look surprised, Viktor,” Georgi chuckled in amusement, “But I was showing the same reaction when Yakov told us about it earlier.”

“Well, it was something unexpected, even to me,” the violinist seemed a little embarrassed as he scratched the side of his face awkwardly, “Out of curiosity, do you guys happen to know who this  amazing student is?”

“I’m not sure if you know him, but it’s a Japanese,” replied Mila, “I’ve shared a few classes with him. His name is Yuuri Katsuki.”

A string of melodies; the sound of piano were streaming from a certain chamber in the conservatory. It wasn’t necessarily happy or sad, but the tunes were calming enough for whoever listening to them to enjoy.

Viktor was walking through the corridor on the first floor. There weren’t a lot of students roaming around at this time of the day; most likely they were all attending classes with their respective professors. The atmosphere felt pleasantly serene, and the further he stepped forward, the clearer those melodies sounded. He didn’t need any guide to find the source of the music and before long, the Russian had arrived in front of the music room.

“Now this feels like a déjà vu, isn’t it?”

The Russian smiled to himself. Again, inside was a young Japanese man, playing the black grand piano. He did not seem to realize that another person had entered the room. Even when Viktor was standing only a few meters away from him, the pianist continued to recite notes after notes as his fingers skillfully treaded on the keys. Viktor had thought of this since the first time they met; this man was so ordinary that he could not point even one distinct feature of him.

And yet ironically, the sight of the black-haired playing the piano in this room dominated in white had burnt itself into his mind that Viktor could never get it out of his head.

“…Was that an original piece, too?”

The violinist asked casually after the younger man removed his hands from the monochrome keys. It was a normal question, but apparently the Japanese was indeed way too engrossed in his play that he jumped from his seat; his brown eyes went wide upon seeing the maestro standing beside him. Viktor chuckled as he tried to calm him down.

“There’s nothing to be surprised about. It’s just me, Viktor Nikiforov,” he said with a smile, “This is the second time we meet, Yuuri. Are you doing well?”

The Japanese nodded shyly. He seemed to be fiddling with his fingers, looking up at the older man before him only to cast his eyes down again in nervousness.  Viktor thought he looked cute. Even though Yuuri didn’t say anything, for some reason he could sort of tell what he was thinking and the violinist felt strangely amused.

“I heard from a friend that you have been chosen to represent us in the preliminary competition. Congratulations, Yuuri,” Viktor offered him a handshake, to which the younger man timidly responded to; his face turning even redder, “The piece you played just now… It was different from the one I heard back then. Were you the one who composed them?”

Again, Yuuri nodded, only this time it seemed that he was anxious about something. Perhaps it was because he found him playing those songs in secret, Viktor guessed. But having no other way to prove his assumption, the Russian decided to put it to test.

“I only heard you playing those songs when I was passing by coincidence, but I must say I enjoyed listening to them. They sound really nice, you know?” the Russian smiled, “Do you come here often? Would you mind if I drop by again to listen to your music?”

To his words, the pianist’s face brightened in both surprise and excitement. So it was true… This guy was probably worried he might say the songs were bad or something along that line. He didn’t ask for his opinion, however, and jumped straight to that conclusion. In a sense, somehow it felt rather sad. Someone with this much talent shouldn’t be having so little confidence in himself.

“I wonder what I could do to motivate him?”

Viktor had no idea why such a thought emerged in his mind. This person was a stranger to him after all. Nevertheless, at the same time he saw the younger man taking out a cell phone from his chest pocket, typing something before hesitantly showing it to him.

[“I only come here whenever I don’t have classes or assignment, so I can’t give you an exact time.”] was what written on the display [“But if it’s not too much trouble, I will be very happy if you come again.”]

“Of course. I will be staying in Moscow for awhile, so I’ll make sure to visit whenever I’m free,” Viktor replied almost immediately, “Also, Yakov allows me to borrow the instruments in this room if the students are not using it, so I guess I really would be coming here pretty often.”

The black-haired tilted his head; a look of confusion was clear in his eyes. At first, Viktor wasn’t sure if he should tell him what he was working on since this guy was technically an outsider in their project. However, something inside him said that it would be alright to let Yuuri knew.

“Are you familiar with the name ‘Christophe Giacometti’?” he asked, and the Japanese nodded in affirmation, “Recently, he invited me to join a new project of his. It’s a musical theater, and he wanted me to compose songs for the performance. Yakov— I mean, Professor Feltsman is also part of our team.“

Yuuri seemed to be brimming with curiosity. He started typing another response into his cell phone, visibly correcting typos here and there as his fingers were moving too fast.

[“When is the musical going to premiere? Would it be in Moscow?”]

“I can’t give you a precise date yet because we’re still just starting, but I’ll let you know if something comes up. And yes, it’s going to premiere at Bolshoi,” Viktor laughed, “Are you interested to watch the show, Yuuri?”

The younger man nodded vigorously. It was funny; for awhile now Viktor had been having this impression that Yuuri might be the quiet, gloomy kind of person. He didn’t expect the black-haired would get excited over something like this, but it wasn’t a bad thing either. Just earlier today, he was losing more and more motivation about working on the music for Chris’ project, and yet knowing that there was someone out there so looking forward to it, the composer thought he could at least try a little harder for this guy’s sake.

“And here I was, thinking what I could do to motivate him. He ends up to be the one giving me motivation instead.”

Unconsciously, a smile was drawn on the violinist’s face. He only came to realize it when Yuuri stared at him with a questioning look, but even then his smile didn’t vanish. On the contrary, a sudden idea rose to his mind and he decided to bring it up.

“Yuuri, while we’re here, let’s play a song together,” he said, “What do you have in mind? Waltz? Jazz? Anything is fine, actually. I’m not that picky of a person.”

Being asked something like that out of the blue, the younger man became so baffled he ended up standing frozen in place. He looked like he had a lot of things he wanted to ask, but his hands holding the cell phone remained stiff that only his brown eyes expressed the countless questions he had for the older man. Viktor only grinned wide in response, however, and approached the startled pianist nonchalantly, holding his shoulders and made him sat down on the piano chair. Like that, he circled his arms around the Japanese from the back, resting his chin on top of those strands of black hair.

“Wow, I can feel your heart beating so loud through your clothes,” he laughed, obviously making the younger man even more flustered, “Try naming a song, Yuuri. You can pick anything you like and I’ll try to adjust to your tempo.”

He could feel the black-haired quivering in his arms, nervous and confused. Viktor didn’t plan on letting him go, however, but at the same time it wasn’t his intention to tease him either. Hugging him closer, the Russian whispered into the other’s ear, this time with a more reassuring voice.

“Do you have anything in mind?” he asked, “Don’t worry. Take your time and pick a song that you like best.”

To his question, Yuuri looked back at him; his hesitant eyes seemed as if they were saying “Are you sure about this?”. The Russian laughed softly. Nodding in confirmation, he made a small distance between them, and yet his hands were still placed on the younger man’s shoulders. Yuuri took a long, deep breath, turning to face the piano and after a brief pause, put his fingers on the piano keys again.

A string of melodies began to stream throughout the room.

“……?!!”

“…Is it not good?” – that question appeared to be written all over the Japanese’s face as he halted his performance at once, turning back with an anxious face. Realizing that Yuuri had misunderstood his reaction, the violinist immediately responded.

“Oh, no, no. That’s not it,” Viktor shook his head, “I was just surprised you pick that song.”

[“Do you prefer a different piece?”] Yuuri wrote on his cell phone.

“No, this is fine,” the Russian smiled to him, resting his chin on the other’s head like before, “Actually, I’m quite curious to hear your version of this score. Could you please play it again?”

Despite the brief pause, eventually Yuuri nodded and placed his hands on the black and white keys once more. Just like that, for the second time, a flow of melodies resounded throughout the room.

— The Lilac Fairy

The strongest of the six fairies invited by King Florestan XXIV and his Queen on the Christening day of their baby daughter, Princess Aurora. Beauty, courage, sweetness, musical talent and mischief – all these virtues were bestowed on the child as gifts from the good fairies. However, just as the Lilac Fairy was about to give her blessing, there was a clap of thunder and the entire palace grew dark.

Carabosse, the evil fairy, arrived in fury for not being invited to the Christening. She placed a curse on the infant, that on her sixteenth birthday, she would prick her finger on a swindle and die. Nevertheless, the Lilac Fairy intervened. Albeit not having a power strong enough to undo the curse, she was able to alter it. Instead of dying, the princess would fall into a peaceful slumber. And after a hundred years, she would then be woken up by a kiss from a handsome prince.

The score, created by a renowned Russian composer, was part of one of the world’s most famous ballets – The Sleeping Beauty, which consisted of a Prologue and Three Acts. “The Lilac Fairy” was in the Prologue, and far before the ballet was first performed in 1890, the story of “The Sleeping Beauty” itself had become a tale known to all.

Of course, Viktor was also more than just familiar with this fairytale, but it wasn’t the reason why he was so taken aback upon knowing that the younger man chose “The Lilac Fairy” as their first incidental duet.

Why, this was the score he performed on that day eleven years ago, the day he claimed a golden trophy that marked the beginning of his musical career.

“…Keep playing,” he gently whispered to the black-haired while slowly distancing himself, letting go of those thin shoulders he’d been holding. There were many other instruments in that room aside of the grand piano, but it was obvious to which instrument his decision would fall. Without wasting another second, Viktor took up one of the violins, returning to the younger man’s side and placed his bow on the strings.

A mellow, tender melody then blended in with the lone piano tunes.

“It feels so long since I last played this score…”

He could not help but feel nostalgic. That day, in Vienna’s Musikverein, on the stage of the Golden Hall, his younger self was performing this piece in front of hundreds audience and the juries. They were expecting a flawless performance from him, and a flawless performance was what he delivered to them. He was certain of his victory, that his music would surely surprise those watching him on the stage. The “Viktor Nikiforov” from that day was still so full of inspiration, so full of dreams that whenever he took up his bow and violin, he could never wait to bring out more and more new songs for all to hear.

Compared to that time, seeing himself right now almost felt like a joke.

He kept creating songs after songs, attempting to please the countless admirers he had gathered for himself over the years. But in the end, none of those really matter. Because what good would it do, if by the end of the day, there was just him and his drying well of inspiration?

“When I approach a music like a new beginning, I know I will surely be able to surprise everyone. But does that mean…I can only find new strength on my own?”

Viktor cast his eyes down. He thought his heart had become lighter when he started to engage in this duet, but that was proven to be wrong. Although he kept playing his violin until the last note, the sound of the instrument felt somewhat empty that he had no idea why he started all this in the first place. It was just like last night; if the song were to last even a bit longer, he wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to keep playing until the end.

And yet those thoughts shattered immediately when he lifted his face, looking at the sight waiting right in front of him.

“…Yuuri?”

What he saw before him was none other than the young pianist who had been his duet partner in the past few minutes due to his whimsical request. The Japanese appeared startled at first, fiddling with his fingers as his cheeks flushed in red and his eyes looking down in embarrassment. He still looked the same; an ordinary black hair, an ordinary pair of glasses, a rather old-fashioned set of clothes that left no distinct impression on others. But when he lifted his face then, his expression was painted with a smile.

So genuine was that smile, that Viktor could barely realize how it had moved his heart if not for a little bit.

“Amazing! I’ve never heard a duet like this.”

A sudden applause broke the silence between them. A male student was standing by the door, clapping his hands with a look of amazement beaming all over his face. His appearance was rather unique; natural tanned skin, black hair and dark eyes – just like those coming from tropical countries in Southeast Asia. He appeared friendly, nonetheless, as he approached the two of them with a smile.

“I’m really sorry to bother. I was looking for Yuuri when I heard a lovely song coming from this direction,” he said, “I thought it was a recording. To think that the two of you were the ones performing it… That was so beautiful!”

“Why, thank you for the compliment. Glad to hear that you enjoyed listening to our little performance,” replied Viktor as he then turned to the pianist beside him, “Is this a friend of yours, Yuuri?”

[“Yes. He is my roommate.”] to his question, the Japanese nodded and typed those words as an answer. He smiled to the other student, waving his hand as he arrived in front of them.

“Hello, my name is Phichit Chulanont. Yuuri and I share the same room in the dormitory. Pleased to meet you, Viktor,” he said cheerfully.

“The pleasure is mine. I’m terribly sorry for monopolizing your friend,” replied the Russian with a kind smile, “I hope I wasn’t bothering any of your activities?”

“Don’t worry about it. As his friend, I’m happy that Yuuri finally gets to meet his idol. He has been admiring you for a very long time.”

“Is that so…?”

“Yes! You see, a couple of weeks ago when he met you for the first time, Yuuri was so happy that he started to—Mmpffhh?!“

[“PHICHIT, STOP!!”]

Before they knew it, the Japanese had sprung from his seat, face beet red all the way to his ears. He muffled the other student’s mouth with one hand, while the other hand was holding his cell phone with those words written in bold capital letters. Nevertheless, even though he nearly choked on his own breath, the student named Phichit appeared to be grinning wide from ear to ear. He barely seemed to have any regret, which was understandable, Viktor thought.

After all, Yuuri’s reaction was quite priceless.

“I see. So you’re a fan of mine, Yuuri. That’s really an honor,” the violinist said, winking purposely towards the panicking younger man, “Would you like to take a commemorative photo?”

“Go for it, Yuuri! It’s not every day you get a chance to take a picture with Viktor Nikiforov.”

Being attacked from both sides, the pianist furiously shook his head. By this time, his face had turned so red that Viktor was afraid he might start blowing smokes from his head. As funny as it seemed, perhaps it was time to show some mercy.

“Well, it’s alright. Just let me know if you feel like taking a picture, okay?” he chuckled happily before turning at the other student, “So… Phichit, was it? You were looking for Yuuri, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Phichit clasped his hands, looking at his still flustered roommate, “Yuuri, I have a message from Celestino. He said he wants to talk to you and he’ll be waiting in his office.”

[“About what?”] replied the Japanese, showing his friend the display of his phone with a confused face.

“It’s about next week’s charity concert. He’s talked to Leo and Guang Hong earlier and just needs to confirm a few things with you.”

Yuuri nodded in response. In the meantime, Viktor threw a curious look at the two students.

“Pardon my interruption, but… This ‘Celestino’ you’re talking about, could he be Celestino Cialdini?” he asked.

“Right, that’s his name. Do you know him, Viktor?” Phichit turned at him, seemingly surprised.

“I’ve never been in his classes before, but yes I know him. He started teaching in this conservatory around the time I was on my second year,” the Russian smiled. However, he then peered at Yuuri’s face with a secretive smile, to which the younger man became quickly overwhelmed by confusion again. “And? What is this talk about charity concert, Yuuri? You never mention anything like that to me before.”

[“I thought…you wouldn’t be interested.”] replied the black-haired timidly.

“If you’re going to perform in it, of course I will be very much interested to attend,” Viktor playfully smacked him on the back before turning at the other student, “May I know when and where this concert will take place? If you don’t mind, that is.”

“No, no, we don’t mind at all! It’s would be amazing to have Viktor Nikiforov visiting our small event,” Phichit said with a delighted smile, “Do you know that public park nearby? We will be there next Saturday starting from nine in the morning.”

“I see. I’ll make sure to keep my schedule open on that day.”

He noticed the Japanese staring at him with an indescribable look. Either Yuuri did not expect him to be interested to come, or the pianist might be thinking about something he could not yet understand. Viktor returned his look with a smile, and in a kind voice, he asked the younger man.

“What is it, Yuuri? Is something the matter?”

[“You will come?”] hesitantly, Yuuri showed him those words. Only those three words, but it was impossible to mistake how his brown eyes glistening behind those glasses. Not in excitement or happiness, but in anticipation and worry, as if he was preparing himself to hear the worst.

“...Of course I will. It’s a promise.”

Viktor told him those words, only those words, and yet it was all it took to bring the smile back to the younger man’s face. He had lost count how many times the color of red had painted Yuuri’s pale cheeks, but this time Viktor knew it wasn’t embarrassment that turned him so.

“How could he become so happy just with this?”

“Yuuri, Celestino is waiting for you, you know?” Phichit’s laugh broke the momentary silence between them, “I know you’re happy that Viktor’s going to watch your performance, but you shouldn’t keep your instructor’s waiting.”

“Ahh… Now this one’s a face of embarrassment” – was what Viktor thought upon seeing the Japanese flinched at his friend’s teasing, abruptly collecting his belongings and putting them all into his bag. He stood up at once and seemed to be ready to sprint towards the door. However, Yuuri stopped after only one step, looking back at him with those brown eyes of his flickering again.

There were no words said, but Viktor understood what he meant to convey.

“See you next Saturday, Yuuri,” he smiled, and the next thing he saw was the pianist’s expression of relief before he jogged away and left the music room. Viktor watched him until that shy figure disappeared from his sight.

“……Will you really come?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean anything bad by that,” Phichit quickly corrected his remark. The student looked like he was trying to tell him something, but unable to find the right words to say so. Scratching the back of his head, he looked at the Russian again. “I mean, it’s just that… I haven’t seen Yuuri this happy in awhile, so…”

“Are you worried that I may break my promise?”

“No, well… Yes… I guess, a little bit…” with the cheerful smile now gone from his face, Phichit averted his eyes, seemingly conflicted, “A lot of students here are your fans, Viktor. I’m also one of them, so I’m sure everyone’s going to be happy to see you visiting a small event we organized. But Yuuri… Yuuri is different.”

“What do you mean?” the Russian tilted his head.

“Sorry if I’m confusing you. What I mean to say is… This is Yuuri’s last year in this conservatory, so I want him to have as much fun as possible. You coming to our concert would mean so much for him.”

“Of course, I will come. I won’t go back on my own words,” the violinist said. He saw Phichit’s expression gradually becoming one of relief as the student brightened once again. However, still Viktor did not miss the slight bitterness in his smile when the black-haired said his next words.

“Thank you so much, Viktor. I’m really happy to hear that,” he replied, and then the younger man let out a soft laugh, casting his dark eyes to the floor and mumbling as if there was something running in his mind that he would not reveal. “With this, I hope… I hope I won’t get to see Yuuri’s sad face again.”

“Phichit?”

“Ah, no, never mind,” the student shook his head once again and showed him his usual friendly smile, “Thank you again, Viktor. Looking forward to see you at the concert.”

With that said, Phichit bid him farewell and trotted away after his friend. Viktor could only stare at his back until the black-haired, too, could no longer be seen after he stepped out of the door. But even though he was now left by himself, the words murmured by that student earlier remained ringing in his ears.

“I don’t think Yuuri has any more room left for another disappointment.”

Note: "The Lilac Fairy" was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. In "Yuri!!! on Ice", young Viktor Nikiforov skated to this program during the Junior World Championship, wearing the "Eros" costume. Young Yuuri Katsuki was first introduced to Viktor by Yuuko Nishigori when they saw this program on TV at Hasetsu's Ice Castle.

[flyrtreynolds]

The Fader: Even At His Peak, Lil Wayne Was Never Invincible

(Courtesy of Ethan Miller/Getty)

Between the years 2006 and 2009, do you remember anyone who didn’t fuck with Lil Wayne?

The question is pretty ridiculous in nature, but seriously, think about it. Maybe you had a friend who was a hip-hop snob and stuck to underground shit, like Sean Price or Madvillain. Or maybe your country-blaring neighbor, still bitter at rap’s dominance on the charts and in pop culture, chose to ignore him. And yeah, that verse on the remix of T-Pain’s “Can’t Believe It,” which sounded like it was gargled out of a throat full of mouthwash, probably drew some hate. But damn, how untouchable was Wayne back then?

When I think of that time period, I think of Weezy performing with Kid Rock at the Country Music Awards, playing a guitar that probably wasn’t even plugged in. I think of then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama warning kids on his campaign trail that not everyone can be as God-gifted at rapping as Wayne — that they should focus on more tangible things, like school, instead. And of course, I think back to my friends and I, drunk to the core at parties in college, enthusiastically dissecting the lyrics off Dedication 2 and Da Drought 3. In my lifetime, only one other artist — a pre-Get Rich or Die Tryin’ 50 Cent — had such a massive hype leading up to an album drop. When Wayne finally released Tha Carter III, it was a mammoth event: The repeating vocal sample of “Let The Beat Build” was seemingly coming out of every dorm window, while the cheesy intro on “Lollipop,” the album’s first single about letting “her lick the rapper,” was awkwardly stuck on the tip of everyone’s tongues. We loved to say he wasn’t from this planet. This was partly because of his skill, which made other rappers seem mere mortal in comparison, but also because dude was a straight-up weird, giggling like a Muppet character on songs and rapping in a croak that’d eventually be intimated by a slew of generic wannabes. We fully believed it when he declared himself a Martian on “Phone Home” off TCIII. He seemed invincible.

I like to harken back to that era when I think about Wayne today, who’s viewed in a much more human light. I’m not using it as evidence to demonstrate how his star has fallen necessarily; despite the lukewarm responses to his most recent projects, his impact on the genre is undeniable, influencing a notable shift in its sound (Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky once explained it by saying, “Wayne made everybody switch their flow up”), look, and style. Rather, I’m painting a picture of how connected the world felt for a time to a former kid rapper from New Orleans whose first stage name was Shrimp Daddy. “I always said my whole life, ‘I’mma be like Lil Wayne,’” said an 18-year-old Chief Keef back in 2013, when the Chicago phenom was on the brink of stardom. Like Keef, a generation of hip-hop fans saw themselves in Wayne and wanted to emulate him. Looking back, it was probably unfair to put so much relatability in Lil Wayne, the persona, when none of us really knew much about Dwayne Michael Carter Jr, the actual person, a polarizing and very private figure.

A contrast to his isolation can be found in Kid Cudi, an artist who cites Wayne as an influence and has deemed him a “legend” in the past. Cudi recently entered rehab after years of struggle with anxiety and depression. Upon putting his music career on hold, he posted on Facebook an emotional and revealing letter to his fans, admitting that he’s suffering from suicidal urges. The letter was met with a flooding of moral support, which ranged from celebrities opening up about how his music saved their lives to fans angrily coming to his aid when a certain Canadian MC questioned the letter’s motive. He completely opened himself to his supporters.

Wayne, meanwhile, has done the opposite; as he’s suffered through multiple health scares over the years, including a string of seizures, he’s given little insight to what their cause is. Following a six-day stint in the hospital in March of 2013, brought on by three seizures in a row, Wayne stated in a vlog that he actually has seizures all the time and that we “just never hear about them.” He added that he now felt “more than good” and, in a radio interview a week later, said his condition was actually a result of not taking his epilepsy medication. Fans reacted warily, wondering out loud if his condition was in fact caused by his infatuation with codeine cough syrup — a prescription drug that’s taken the lives of numerous beloved rappers. Erratic behavior over the years, including him tweeting a vague message earlier this fall that he was “mentally DEFEATED,” has added to the concern that something more serious is at play.

Wayne doesn’t necessarily owe us answers. Privacy, especially when it comes to health matters, should be respected. But combined with his unawareness toward seemingly everything that young rap fans care about, including next-generation upstarts like Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, and Kodak Black, his unwillingness to speak on his brushes with death have created a divide. Even his peers from the late aughts, when he was unquestionably king, are scratching their heads. “You have to get outta that bubble that you’ve been living in,” rapper T.I., who’s collaborated with Wayne many times, recently said on Instagram in reaction to his Nightline comments surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement.

Still, every once in awhile, Wayne drops his guard and lets us in. His recent book, Gone Till November, which is a memoir of his time at Riker’s Island in 2010, is an example of this, pulling back the curtain at times to show what it was like for a multi-millionaire to have everything stripped from away for eight months. And then there’s his verse on Solange’s “Mad,” a highlight off her recent A Seat At The Table record. It’s perhaps his best in years, both for its technicality — Wayne can still effortlessly glide over a beat when he wants to — and its honesty. The line about his failed suicide attempt of course caught our ears first, coinciding with what we’ve feared. Over the track’s fluttery piano, it comes off especially jarring: “And when I attempted suicide, I didn’t die/I remember how mad I was on that day/Man you gotta let it go before it up in the way/Let it go, let it go,” he rhymes. It’s tempting to take the verse at face value, but it’s also important to remember that it’s an admission — not only of the attempt, but also that the aura of invincibility that followed him for years wasn’t real. The Martian, he’s saying, is actually like the rest of us, flaws and all.

http://www.thefader.com/2017/01/13/lil-wayne-health-scares-legacy