6. a collection of unreleased Ellie Goulding songs
This is not a proper album, but it is nonetheless a go-to.  This is a tricky business, because about half of the songs in this collection are not particularly good for this purpose (“Fly,” for example, is rather light and introspective) and even the ones that are aren’t explicitly ragey.  I mentioned a bit back how much I adore “Black and Gold,” for example, and the thing is — that’s not an angry song.  It’s actually kind of strangely devoted and sweet if you read the lyrics.  But it is somehow also cathartic.

5. La Roux, La Roux
Again, I’m… not exactly sure why this works.  I think being alone and trying to sing in my upper register (which is probably even worse than my lower register, but as long as nobody has to listen, it doesn’t hurt anyone, right?) in a British accent is helpful somehow.  It might also be songs like “I’m Not Your Toy,” that might be part of it.

4. the Repo! The Genetic Opera soundtrack
Oh my goodness, but this helps too.  This one has actual legitimate angry moments, lots of them (I mean, really, when you’re angry is it better to go punch a pillow or pretend to be teenage-angsty-with-a-fake-blood-disease Alexa Vega?) and some more of that upper register mess.  Also I enjoy the concentration it takes to sing group numbers in a musical by myself.  Some of the tracks I don’t sing all of the parts (this is because I don’t sing most of the guys most of the time) but, well, I’ve mentioned my exceptionally self-satisfying ability to do all but the opera of “Chase the Morning” by myself, for example.

3. Show Your Bones, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
This is probably the only one of these that I don’t sing along to ever.  This is my “I am at home and I am doing something but I am also aggravated” album.  I’m not sure why it’s this one and not any of the other Yeah Yeah Yeahs albums, I listen to all of them regularly, but this is the one I turn on when I’m in a mood.

2. the Spring Awakening cast recording
Always and forever and always.  This has been true since I was in high school, and as such I know every single word of this album (and also some of the choreography, she admitted sheepishly).  Obviously this one is full of plenty of rage, so that’s a big part of the helping, but it is also a full emotional journey, which is also cathartic.

1. Girl Talk, Kate Nash
She said, surprising nobody.  I cannot even begin to explain how many times this has been a helpful album for me since I acquired it.  How many times I have been aggravated by a stranger or acquaintance and then at the next possible opportunity gone and blasted “All Talk” or “Rap for Rejection” and felt quite a lot better.

–your fangirl heroine.

Usage: “Is so-and-so on the television show really dead?” someone asked.  “Maybe, but you can’t know for sure until you’ve seen their decapitated corpse,” someone else replied, rather morbidly applying Westeros logic to the situation.

–your fangirl heroine.

(HGTV’s Carter Oosterhouse and another man stand examining a treehouse in a backyard.)

Carter: Not bad.  This tree has deep roots, strong limbs, things are perched and not pinned.  Nicely done.

Man: The boys love it.  They are up there day and night.

Carter: Well, that might be because you overlooked one thing.

Man: What?

Carter: It looks into your neighbor’s window.

(They stare.)

Man: Oh, boy.

(Three little boys are shown in the treehouse with binoculars.)

One boy: Hello, Mrs. Kozlowski.

Man: Boys!  …I’m going to get the hose.

(And insert Allstate information.)

The narrative of the ad doesn’t condone peeping on a female neighbor exactly.  “I’m going to get the hose,” presumably to… spray on the boys until they stop being miniature perverts?

But there is still an uncomfortably “boys will be boys” attitude to this ad.  Carter Oosterhouse says it as if obviously because the treehouse is where it is and the window is where it is, the boys are going to spend the entirety of their time spying on their female neighbor.  (Because all she does all day is stand in her window and undress?)  He says it like it’s inevitable, like all little boys are going to be perverts, it’s just what happens at that age!

I admit, I didn’t know a lot of boys at that age.  When I was little, most of my friends were girls.  But I’ve known enough little boys to at least hope that maybe, just maybe, not every little boy is going to spy on their neighbor just because it’s easy?  That not every little boy is going to see their neighbor as someone they can spy on, it’s their right because well, she’s there?  And that not every otherwise friendly enough television personality is going to not excuse them but expect it of them?

Point being: someone’s age and/or gender does not make bad behavior inevitable, and it should not be treated that way (or excused by that fact).  End of story.

–your fangirl heroine.

By “this,” I mean hipster riot grrl Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka).  Poor darling Sally Draper.  There’s just so little actual good in Sally’s life and I want to hug her.

This one is cut a little more Spring Awakening than 1960s, but if dealt with properly, it can contribute to the hipster riot grrl aesthetic.  Also, it’s actually plaid in the right colors, so that’s a thing.  I Plaid a Lovely Time Dress, ModCloth.

I’m never going to argue excuses for headbands.  Go To Headband, Tasha.

Because it is the 1960s and because I will gladly include tights with everything, here goes nothing.  Tights for Every Occasion in Ivory, ModCloth.

I swear, I will find every possible use of every single color of this shoe.  Dance Instead of Walking Heel in Blue, ModCloth.

I feel like the American Girl-iness of this is kind of ironic, all things considered, and I like that.  Be Still My Locket Necklace, ModCloth.

–your fangirl heroine.

I then set out to find examples of other notable Broadway genderswaps.  Not crossdressing parts like Edna Turnblatt or Peter Pan, but genderswap roles/portrayals.  This is… harder than it would seem.  The only clear list of examples I can find is, oddly enough, on TV Tropes.  Many of these examples are not actually from Broadway proper, but are adaptations (many of them in film) or regional productions.  Many swap genders from their original source material (turning Rafiki into a girl in the stage production of The Lion King, the official Neil Simon Female Odd Couple).

Shakespeare, of course, is often cross-cast: two examples of female Hamlets are given (I saw a production like this once, at a local high school) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream‘s flexibility with the fairies, particularly Puck (the watered-down production of Midsummer I was in in junior high did this and also cross-cast some of the Players, myself included, which… was a mess unto itself).

They also mention that some productions of Oliver! play the Artful Dodger as a girl.  That’s cool, I guess.

So.  More, please?

–your fangirl heroine.

Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar): For one, I am fascinated by how ghostly-pale she appropriately looks in this photo.  Not all of the pictures from this set look quite this pale, and one of them is even strangely of her grinning, but there you go.  Here, the color focus is dark red, “vigor, willpower, rage, anger, leadership, courage, longing, malice, and wrath.”  Vigor, which she has to regain after being dead, willpower, which she has a hell of a lot of to get over being brought back from the dead, rage and anger, which she sure has because she was brought back from the dead, leadership and courage, which she has always, longing, which she has because she was in heaven before she was brought back from the dead, malice and wrath, which she deals with after being brought back from the dead.

Willow (Alyson Hannigan): No, I’ve never, ever been able to figure out why she is wearing a midriff top in this photograph.  The “fire and blood… energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love” of red all go quite well with Willow, but the top cinching it all together… less so.  Anyway, though, season six is Willow’s snapping point, where blood and danger are very much found in her problem with the magicks and all of the violent badness that come of it, where power and determination set her on this path, where passion, desire, and love are the reasons she uses to justify some of her bad choices.

Xander (Nicholas Brendon): Xander’s wearing blue.  Some things never change.

–your fangirl heroine.

So with your permission, I’m going to put off talking about the Game of Thrones finale in any detail until next week when I’ve had time to mull it over a bit more (I think a lot of it is that only a couple of aspects of it sucker-punched me, so for example while I really want to scream “no no Jon and Ygritte why” even though I knew/know what’s going to happen, that’s not a particularly articulate post, and as of now I haven’t had a chance to think too excessively about the parts of it that didn’t sucker-punch me but that were still worth noting in a positive fashion probably) and just combine the end of Game of Thrones and the beginning of True Blood into one giant post.  And tonight, more cocktails.

This week’s theme is “excellent ladies who should really have had more to do these last two episodes.”  Which is a vague category, because that’s true of… really almost all of the ladies, both in the last two episodes and most of the time, but it’s the best commonality that’s coming to mind.  Also, gin and lemon flavors.

Brienne
1 shot blue curaçao
1 shot lemon sorbet vodka
1 shot gin
Lemonade

Gosh, I mean Brienne sure looked like a badass as she… walked through a door.  But that’s not enough for me, no.  Brienne is fabulous and I would very much like for her to have had more to do.  So, liquor.  This one mostly wound up being Brienne because it’s blue and ~sapphires~ and whatnot, but it’s a nice flavor.  Just the slightest of kicks.

Missandei
1 shot lemon sorbet vodka
1 shot caramel vodka
1 shot butterscotch schnapps
1 shot gin
Lemonade

Gosh, I mean I enjoy listening to Missandei speak in made-up languages (or really at all, she has a lovely voice to listen to) but… no I want more.  I understand all of the reasons why there was not in an objective sense but I want them.  I am head-over-heels for Missandei in an unsurprising way, I really am.  This one was one where I consciously set out to make a drink for her, because of that head-over-heels thing, and after caramel and butterscotch things can taste pretty darn sweet, so the gin acts as a balancer.  Not that Missandei isn’t sweet, but she’s not purely dessert-y.  She has very much potential as an individual and I will choose to imagine what this entails if I am never given it outright.

–your fangirl heroine.

5. A Fine Frenzy
I’ve enjoyed her since I started listening to her, but it wasn’t until Pines that I shifted her onto this list.  There are some really excellent and beautiful tracks on One Cell in the Sea (she said, pointing to everything she’s fanmixed with off of that album, particularly “Rangers” because of currently relevant reasons) and Bomb in a Birdcage is really cute and a lot of fun, but Pines… well, I’m exceptionally bitter that I didn’t actually realize it had come out until this year, because otherwise it would have been on all of my end-of-year lists that it could have been on.  (It might end up being on this year’s anyway, even though that’s sort of cheating.)  I am the opposite of a nature person, but this album makes me want to go wander around in a forest and/or field of wildflowers like no album has since my high school days with friends and the Spring Awakening cast recording.  It’s a little darker and mystical even though it’s not really that overtly mystical at all, and I like that.  (It’s possible that it also just happened to hit me right when I needed an album like this, for those above-alluded reasons.)

4. The Raconteurs
Literally their name means storyteller, i.e. raconteur: “a person who is skilled in relating stories and anecdotes interestingly.”  Luckily, they live up to it.  I think they are my overall favorite Jack White project; while “Love Interruption” is still going strong as one of my all-time favorite songs of all time, the overall Raconteurs catalogue makes me the happiest.  Which is funny because most of it isn’t happy really at all, but I just adore the vibe of it.  It’s hard to mix with sometimes because the songs are so specific and self-contained, but I don’t mind because this makes both Raconteurs albums great for listening to at any time.

3. Regina Spektor
Also difficult to mix with sometimes, at least for me (since I mix less to a feeling and more to lyrical content combined with a feeling) but totally excellent and wonderful.  I love how much piano there is and how weird it can be at times, I love her multilingual singing, I love her “nobody else would dare to write or sing this” lyrics, etcetera.

2. The Decemberists
Case in point, The Hazards of Love.  That album alone would be enough to get someone on this list.  “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” alone would be enough to get someone on this list.  Or at least a third of their other songs.

1. Eisley
Guess what I haven’t stopped listening to since last week?  Why, that would be Currents.  I love Eisley because while their whimsy is often at least somewhat specific, narratively-speaking, they can also hit me in ways relevant to whatever places I happen to be living at the time.  In this way, they’re very cathartic and versatile.  Also, their harmonies are the most beautiful things ever.

–your fangirl heroine.

This is not to say that the shows and productions aren’t lovely.  Maybe they are, I don’t know.  I haven’t seen any of them or heard most of the albums.  I’m only even familiar with two of the revivals (and I don’t particularly care for either of them at this stage in my life, but that’s neither here nor there.  Neil Patrick Harris is an endearing host, and I did really like the number that he did with Andrew Rannells and Megan Hilty and Laura Benanti.  (Does it make me a terrible theatre person to never have watched but half of an episode of Smash?)  The transitions from the actors-in-characters’ introductions to the performing numbers were hilarious (“my father Mufasa taught me that one day I would be king of all that I could see, but there were other kingdoms!  And one of them is where Pippin lived!” or some such).  But… eh, I don’t know.  I just feel like this isn’t quite my world at the moment, and that makes me sad.

I’m not even talking about the plays, because while I have absolutely no idea about any of the nominees, at least the musicals performed a thing tonight so I could get a handle on it.

Kinky Boots (Original Musical, Original Score [Cyndi Lauper], Leading Actor [Billy Porter], Choreography [Jerry Mitchell],  Orchestrations [Stephen Oremus], Sound Design [John Shivers])
Well, all right.  Of the nominees that performed, I liked this one the best.  They were dancing on moving conveyor belt things, that was pretty cool, I don’t remember the song but I don’t remember any of the songs, they all looked like they were having a good time, so I’m good with it.

Matilda the Musical (Book of a Musical [Dennis Kelly], Featured Actor [Gabriel Ebert], Scenic Design [Rob Howell], Lighting Design [Hugh Vanstone])
If I was a little girl, I imagine I’d probably have been into this, in the same way that little girl me used to be into Annie ages and ages ago.  But I am a woman grown, and I… just couldn’t bring myself to care.  I couldn’t understand most of what the kids were saying, except what was being projected on the digital chalkboard behind their heads (and gods, I am so worn out of digital projections on the backdrop of musicals right now), and I don’t have a particular connection to the material to predispose me to it (I’ve read the book, actually earlier this school year for class, but I’ve never seen the film).  So, eh.

Pippin (Revival of a Musical, Leading Actress [Patina Miller], Featured Actress [Andrea Martin], Direction [Diane Paulus])
The only song I know from Pippin is “Magic to Do,” the one that was performed tonight.  And I’ve never been particularly predisposed to find out more  (my alma mater put it on a few years ago, but I didn’t attend, thus perpetuating my ignorance).  Also, I tend to get weirded out by anything overtly circusy, so this… didn’t totally appeal to me.  But it seemed good for what it was.

Rogers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella (Costume Design [William Ivey Long])
I rather have issues with the material of this show, mostly the lyrics and script (the music is very classic-standard-solid, but it’s mostly my issues with love-at-first-sight tropes).  From what I saw, though, the costumes were splendid.

And wow, not a single other musical won anything.

–your fangirl heroine.

So.

• Overall, a cast of characters that I didn’t find insufferable.  Which is exciting.  Usually with movies like this, I end up wanting to punch at least one character (usually one of the dudes) in the face, and I… didn’t, really?  Except in those moments where the characters were being intentionally douchey so you were supposed to want to punch them and the narrative seemed aware of that.  Good on you.
• Woody Harrelson was sure sporting a nice collection of douchapeaus.
• Dave Franco is much less hard for me to handle than James Franco.
• Isla Fisher is lovely, and while I (predictably) would have been happy with more exposition on her, there wasn’t a terrible lot of exposition on any of the characters, so I can’t complain too terribly.  I liked that her solo magic act at the beginning could have been taken as somewhat of a criticism/subversion of girl magic if you wanted to.  I liked that with the guys, she wasn’t treated differently particularly (sure, Merritt was making some douchey comments to her, but he was making douchey comments to everyone) and she partook of the magic and the crime pretty equally.  I also like that she kept wearing cute leather gloves with little cutouts.
• Jesse Eisenberg… yeah, I am okay with him, he was a cocky little twit some/most of the time but I could deal with it.  Also, he had elbow patches on his sweater at one point.  This is clearly important.
• Mark Ruffalo is someone who I don’t think I’ve ever taken real issue with.  I haven’t seen his entire catalogue of work by any means, but I haven’t disliked him in any great capacity.  He works as someone to center stories around.
• Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine.  Naturellement.
• Melanie Laurent.  Melanie Laurent.  One of my people thought she was going to be the plot twist, and I admit I would have liked that, but je suis content, because I really do just appreciate everything about her.  I enjoy her character’s enthusiasm for doing her research and I enjoy that she was until recently desk job girl but she could still slam Mark Ruffalo’s head against the bar.  I enjoy that she was caring but also not soft per se.  I also enjoy her accent and her excellent not-quite-smirking eyebrow raising faces.
• This is not my sort of magic, but it was fun.  And okay, Robin Hood stuff, that’s fun too.

–your fangirl heroine.