I think "For Forever" is an amazing song because it so strongly fulfills the basic requirement of being great as a *musical theatre* song and not just a great song That the power of the song is amplified 10,000x by knowing what happens in the show that it's from
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It's a very pure dramatic irony Like if you don't know the show, and you just hear this song out of context, it's a pretty song about childhood nostalgia and that's it ...If you *do* know the show and know that Evan is lying through his teeth it hits like a ton of bricks
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I don't know that there's another example I can think of off the top of my head where that irony is so strong and so direct There's plenty of songs from musicals where you can say "Yeah in the actual show he's lying" and it adds maybe one more layer to it but not like this
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Like if you know the story and you listen to the song in the right mood the tragedy is overwhelming, it's unbearable He's making up detail after detail of a perfect day that never happened with a best friend who in real life despised him
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The joyous climax of the song is the moment that (SPOILERS) in real life is the moment he gave in to despair and tried to kill himself
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I think this is one of those things we genuinely need a word for "Nostalgia for events that never occurred" A feeling sharper and more painful than the nostalgia for things you actually had and then lost An emotion powered entirely by the boundless capacity of imagination
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @rgibson103
Saudade is translated as "bittersweet", it's a positive emotion and not really what I mean
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Saudade connotes a sense of acceptance, it's almost the opposite of what I mean It's the Wonder Years kind of nostalgia, where part of the emotion is the pain of having lost those things is this feeling of safety that those things are in the past and tucked away in memory
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Like you're happy that your teen years are over because that's right and proper, you wouldn't want them to be different even if they were imperfect, they were a stepping stone to a future you're anticipating That's almost the *opposite* of what I mean
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What I'm talking about is what
@BootlegGirl describes as a sense of *desperation*, of terrible fear and dread It's the kind of "nostalgia" in the "Again" of "Make America Great Again" that drives MAGAs to madness and violence2 replies 1 retweet 3 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
It's what drives Evan in the play to almost kill himself, and then to build a ridiculous and doomed edifice of lies for the tiniest chance of realizing his mad dream of no longer being alone
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