#and match highlights of when she broke onto the tour

[jazda-iga]

The tennis legend explores her career trajectory in a new ESPN+ docuseries, In the Arena

[finelinevogue]

for tour content, maybe you could do an imagine that’s like a series of small moments like little interactions on stage or picking tour outfits or nights in the tour bus/airplane ! just little domestic things <3

i’m going to do this because i have so many weird ideas and just no way of putting them all together ! ;

Grilled Cheese Conversations

The tour bus smelt like it was on fire.

You had been sitting in the living room with Harry for a couple of hours, both of you just skimming through photos from the Met Gala together - judging obviously, before Harry announced he wanted to make himself some food and so left for the kitchen.

He’d been in there for 45 minutes now and the smells that were diffusing from their smelt bloody awful. Harry could cook really extravagant foods, like caviar and lobster, but when it came to something as simple as making a sandwich he was absolutely terrible for some reason. The point was proven when he walked back into the room with a burnt coal looking sandwich.

“What, is that?” You laughed, still sitting with your phone in your hand and waiting for him to come back so you could continue judging these Met outfits together.

“It’s a grilled cheese sandwich?” He spoke as if you were dumb and you should have known that instantly. He walked over to you, sitting down next to you and resting the plate on the table in front of him.

“No, that’s a piece of char.” You raised your eyebrows disapprovingly and watched as he scowled at you for being mean to his culinary skills.

“Well i’m sure it’ll taste great.” He looked smug, up until he took a bite from the cheesy melted - burnt - bread. As soon as the food touched his tongue he was quick to spit it back out again, you groaning in disgust. He pushed the plate away and looked at it in anger. “45 bloody minutes and it tastes of burnt wood.”

“I’m not even going to ask why you know that.” You raised your hands and laughed, watching as he turned to scowl at you again. He had quite the angry face when he wanted to. “Sorry, alright! Do you want me to go make you one?” You asked, sitting up to go and make him one if he wanted.

Harry pulled you into his lap so you were sat with your back to his front, his arms looping around your waist tightly to keep you with him. His chin rested on your shoulder and he kissed your cheek because he could. “No. Stay w’me.” He got all cuddly and soft and you loved it when Harry was like this. He was like a life-size version of your stuffed teddy bear you used to sleep with at night - all cute and cuddly.

“Okay, okay.” You calmed him when he thought you were just going to get up and go. “Let’s judge some people again.” You pulled out your phone and opened it to a twitter account which had posted all of them.

“Where did we get up to?” Harry asked, fiddling with the skin on your stomach as his hands snaked beneath your hoodie.

“Um, Kim K.” You clicked on the image of her and tried to hold back the laugh. It was a dreadful outfit and highly meme worthy, so you’ve heard.

“Well…” Harry sighed, reaching his own hand to swipe seeing as he didn’t have anything more to say on this particular one.

“Billie looked beautiful.” You smiled as Billie’s huge dress came on display, looking a fluffy pink marshmallow dream. She looked very Monroe with her makeup and you were always so shocked when people told you her age, because she looked so mature.

“She must’ve taken inspiration from Marilyn Monroe.” Harry added, nodding in approval of Billie’s outfit.

“More so than bloody Addison Rae.” You laughed, thinking about how far that had been from the truth.

“Addison who?” Harry asked and it made you smile and turn your head around to look at him. He looked down at you, noticing the cheeky glint in your eyes and couldn’t help but steal a glance at your beautiful lips.

“This is why I love you.” You sighed happily and gave him a kiss on the lips, cupping his cheek to direct him better. You were only going for a peck, but Harry made it that you got the full taste of him and kissed you for a minute longer. He felt perfect against you and you really did just simply love him.

“Yeah,” Harry broke from the kiss for a brief moment to tell you something important, “and I love you.”

••••

All Things Sparkles

It was an hour before the Dallas show and Harry was getting ready for another big show.

Dallas were known for being crazy and you were so excited for the energy they’d bring for Harry tonight. Harry always enjoyed the shows more when the crowd was actually ecstatic to be there and he knew Dallas wouldn’t let him down.

He was putting on his silk trousers, Lambert just to the side as he was ironing the shirt to get rid of all its crinkles. Your Harry currently looked so funny in his Gucci silk trousers, his bright yellow socks with bananas all over them, his suspenders hanging down by his sides and no shirt on as of yet. It was the socks that really pieced everything together. He had just had his hair and makeup done, just needing to get dressed before he was completely ready.

He was really glowing tonight. It made you happy to see him like this.

You were watching him through the vanity mirror as you touched up your own makeup, adding highlighter to the areas you wanted to shine a little brighter. You also started adding some gems around your eyes, wanting to be a bit different tonight along with your glittery eye shadow that you didn’t normally do. You were glueing your gems when you felt your boyfriends presence behind you, the heat of his bare chest radiating against the skin of your back.

“You look stunning, m’love.” You looked up through the vanity to catch his gaze, he smiled and you smiled back.

“Thank you. Not too bad looking y’self.” You cheekily replied, motioning towards his bare chest. “Are y’going to be keeping that out all night?” You asked, being hopeful that he would, because fuck it was hot, but also wouldn’t, because you wanted this part of him all to yourself.

“You’d like that wouldn’t y’yeah.” He squinted his eyes at you and nodded, a clear sign that no his tits were not going to be out for Dallas. “Up.” He spoke, lifting you up from under your armpits and walking around the chair so that he could sit down himself. He plonked you right back on top of his lap and watched as you leant forwards to add another gem to the corner of your eye.

“Y’putting me off.” You whined, your ass leaning right back onto the hard of his cock. He couldn’t keep soft around you, that was his kryptonite.

“Oh i’m sorry. It’s not like m’girlfriend is just sitting there looking ridiculously beautiful and yet so innocent.” He leaned forwards to whisper the rest of his words, because they were only for you. “Just look so fuckable right now.”

You had to bite your tongue from turning around and shoving it down his throat, because god did his words make you want to jump his bones. “Shut up, before y’get us both in trouble.” You wiggled your ass back over his cock as you sat back to admire the work of the gems brightening up around your eyes.

“Then stop being a fuckin’ tease.” He grabbed your hips and stopped your from moving anymore. You just smiled and put the lid back on the glue before it went everywhere, especially over Harry’s expensive clothing - even the banana socks were £17.

You looked at him through the mirror to find him already looking at you. You blushed quietly as you watched him take in your beauty. It was quite hard to get over just how ethereal he looked tonight and it made you so feral knowing he was all yours and only yours. Looking down at the gems you got an idea.

“Do y’want me to put some gems on y’too?” You asked, pointing to the ones around your eyes and thinking that he’d looked even prettier with some around his.

“Only if i’m matching w’you yeah.” Harry nodded excitedly. You got up from the chair and swizzled yourself around until you were sat back on his lap, only this time straddling him. You were so close to him now that it was getting ridiculously harder to stop yourself from taking him here and now. You leant down, instead, and gave him a lasting kiss on the skin covering his heart. Your lips lingered there for a moment, before you moved back up to see him already staring down. He smiled when he saw the stain of your lipstick printed over where his heart beat. “I proper love you, Y/N.” He smiled and cupped your chin in his fingers to bring your lips to him.

“No!” Lambert shouted, making you two pause. “You two’ll never stop if you start, so don’t start until after the bloody show.” He rolled his eyes and continued with his ironing, making you and Harry chuckle feeling like high-school kids.

“Okay, now stay still.” You spoke as you glued the first gem and held it steady against the corner of his eye. He wanted to keep his eyes open to keep looking at you, because that’s all he ever wanted to do, but you instructed him to close them just to be on the safer side. It went on easy, sticking to the outer corner of his eye, in a soft white colour that matched his trousers. Yours were the same creamy white colour to match the colour of your dress.

“Do I look pretty yet?” Harry asked rhetorically, but you replied anyways.

“Y’look pretty always.” You kissed the top of his nose whilst you glued the other gem. He closed his eyes as you told him to, but he still smiled at your words. You concentrated as you stuck the gem to the corner of the other eye and sat back to make sure they were even. Harry opened his eyes to see you making sure they looked good. “S’perfect.”

“Like you then.” He hummed in appreciation of you.

“Let’s see then.” Lambert asked, making you both turn in the chair to face him and you readjusting yourself so you were sat back against his chest. “Oh yes! Okay this is photo worthy.” Lambert took out his phone and held it up to face you both, making sure you could see the gems.

“I don’t even have a shirt on!” Harry exclaimed, but held you close anyways as you smiled for the photos and his words making you belly laugh. You posed more seriously for a few and then took a few silly ones to. Your favourite one, though, was one where you were laughing so happily and Harry was looking at you and smiling in awe over you.

He set it as his lock screen. You set it as yours. It would stay that way until your new favourite photos became your wedding day photos.

••••

Sign Of The Times

Tonight was the first Love on Tour show you were attending, only having missed opening night in Las Vegas.

Harry knew that you were coming, but you’d told him to source you out within the crowds because you wanted a full fan experience. You’d gotten the all-clear from Harry’s security, allowing your from backstage and straight through into the cherry pit. You had your lanyard and your sign ready, as fans started to pile in. You were originally going to go straight to the barricade, but you thought the fans deserved that more than you so you hung back and stayed the ends of the crowds.

A few fans spotted you and came up to asking for photos, so you did. Posing with your mask on was weird because you still smiled underneath the mask even though it wouldn’t be seen in the photo. Some fans asked whether they could stay and dance with you ask night to which you were so happy for, because dancing alone would’ve been embarrassing even for you.

The intro for golden started and the crowds were deafening, but all you could think about was your boyfriend and his challenge to spot you within the crowds. Golden and Carolina came and went, you dancing like a crazed fan along with all your new friends. Everyone was so happy and some were even crying tears of joy.

There was just love, love, love, everywhere.

Harry came to his first pause and took a quick drink since he was already quite hot and the altitude in Denver was crazy.

“Good evening Denver!” He shouted into the mic, waiting for the screams of his fans to uproar and then settle before speaking on, “The altitude is crazy here. I’ve barely done anything and I can’t breathe!” He spoke, making you slightly anxious for him but you knew he would be okay because he had an oxygen tank on stage. “Now, m’girlfriend is somewhere here tonight and i’ve gotta find Y/N before I lose the challenge.”

The fans around you started screaming that you were here and the message kept on getting passed down the crowds until they reached the front. Harry was walking around your side of the stage until he met the fans at the front saying that you were behind them. Harry held his hand over his eyes to help him find you better and you held up your sign to help him. Your sign had taken you all of 5 minutes to doodle, but the message was clear;

“I want a kiss from the one in suspenders.”

“There y’are.” He laughed when he saw your sign, dropping his mic and leaning over himself to catch his breathe from the belly laugh that he just let out. You smiled when you saw him laugh, the fans around you screaming and thanking you for making him be this way. Harry stood up and looked at you, messing with his earpiece so he could hear the arena better.

“Kiss me!” You shouted and the people around you were also shouting for him to kiss you. Even with masks on Harry could clearly understand the message.

“I wanna kiss you but I can’t!” He spoke through his mic and his voice echoed throughout the arena, making everyone scream and you simply blush. You knew he couldn’t come and just give you a kiss, it would be too dangerous, but he sent you loads of blown kisses instead and you kept them all. You sent your own back and he stuffed them all in his back pocket, before moving on to his next song before he got told off.

“Damn, he really loved you.” One of your new fans friends says next to you and all you could think was; yeah, yeah he does.

••••

My Only Angel*

For four hours he had been gone.

Four hours since he was in this hotel room with you. Four hours since you had first started acting like a brat. Four hours since he’d gotten fed up of our attitude and tied you up and left a vibrator pulsing against your clit. Four hours since your first orgasm, four minutes since your last.

The whole time Harry had been on stage, all he could think about was you being bound tight in his hotel room and dripping wet from the number of orgasms you would’ve had. He knew you’d never be able to hold yourself for four hours, so he didn’t say you couldn’t cum only he forgot to mention that the number of times that you did cum would be the number of times he denied you later on in the evening. Harry had gotten especially hard performing Only Angel, because that was your song that he’d written for you and then fucked you countless times to. Fans noticed, but put it down to the adrenaline of being onstage rather than the thought of his girlfriend being tied up and overstimulated back in his hotel room.

You just came down from the high of another orgasm when Harry walked through the door. You sighed when you saw him, thinking this would finally be it and he’d let you go free now you’ve suffered your punishment. That was wishful thinking, however.

“Oh, I didn’t see you there.” Harry pretended, wanting to tease you as much as possible, as he walked past you and hung his jacket on the back of a chair.

“H-harry.” You sighed, squeezing your eyes when you moved and felt the vibrator hit and new and exciting angle. You moaned quietly and had to suppress the embarrassing cries you wanted to let out.

“Yes?” Harry moved so he was standing at the edge of the bed, undoing the buttons on his shirt one-by-one. He looked so hot with his sleeves rolled and the suspenders already dropped down to his sides.

“I-I please s-st- enough.” You whimpered, pulling on the restraints to try and stop it yourself but you’d already tried that one too many times and nothing has come of it.

Your wrists were slightly red and bruised from all the tugging you’d been doing and Harry noticed that as he peeled away his shirt from his body. He threw the silk shirt somewhere else in the room and walked over to the right side of the bed, sitting down to get a closer look at your wrists. He leant down to give it a gentle rub and a kiss. You sighed in delight at the feeling of his cool lips burn against your flaming skin. Harry sat up and tilted your face to the side so you could face him, slight tears in your eyes. He looked at you for a few moments, taking in the shear beauty of you and your glorious body, before making sure you were alright.

“What’s your colour, baby?” He asked you gently, stroking your cheek and then running his thumb along your bottom lip with a soft pull.

“G-green.” You nodded and he smiled, leaning in to kiss you on your desperate lips. You basked in the taste of him, closing your eyes like you needed to save this moment to memory forever. You loved him like this, when he was dominant with you. He let you be submissive like you wanted to be.

“That’s my good girl.” He leaned back from you and moved onto the bed more, straddling your bare body. The silk of his pants felt erotic against your hot skin and you moaned at the dreamy sensation. He ran his large, ringed, hands up and down your body, feeling every curve and crevice. He massaged your boobs lightly in his hands, up and down your stomach and to your inner thighs behind him. You hummed at the feeling, gasping when Harry finally turned off the vibrator and moved it away from you. You felt lighter from freedom all of a sudden.

“T-hank you.” You breathed out, opening your eyes to meet his electric green ones. Wow, he looked beautiful - still slightly sweaty and hot from his concert.

“Don’t thank me yet, angel.” He grinned as he took down his trousers and pants, pushing them to the floor with his foot.

He didn’t even wait for you to register what was going on before he slipped himself inside of you. You loved the feeling so greatly, but your clit was still so sensitive. You shuddered as he picked up his pace and thrusted into you harder and harder, faster and faster. The sound of his skin slapping against yours, made you arch your back and your toes curl and then feeling if him so deep inside of you was enough to make you cum already, again.

“Feel s-so good.” You looked at him and saw the desire within his eyes. He was so full of lust right now, because the sight of you tied up with him pounding into you is better than simply imagining it. Nothing could feel more euphoric than this, both of you were sure of that.

“Yeah? Feel me all around you? So perfect f’me. M’beautiful angel.” Harry moaned out, cupping one of his hands around your throat and pushing you deeper into the mattress, whilst his other hand went to cup your breasts and give them the devotion they deserved.

Everything felt everywhere.

His rocks became sloppier as he reached his high, yours approaching much sooner than you thought it would. You were surprised you actually had anything left in you. His cock hit a spot inside of you that made you scream out and he felt you collapse around him all at once, causing his own release to quickly follow. He continued to fuck you through your release and bent himself over to press his lips to yours. He felt and tasted amazing, you couldn’t get enough. It would never be enough.

“Love you so much.” You spoke the best you could and Harry released his hand from your throat, leaning down to kiss it softly. He reached over to your hands to untie them afterwards, giving them both a few kisses over your wrists when he saw the harsh marks. Your arms were so tired that they just fell to your sides, but Harry kept on touching you softly; stroking your messy hair away from your face and caressing your cheek softly as if he hadn’t just fucked you raw. He kept his face close to you as he whispered the words that would stay imprinted on your heart forever.

“I love you, Y/N.”

[caiuscassiuss]

sasaeng | l. taeyong (m)

DESCRIPTION: Someone’s obsessed, but it’s not who you think… In which an idol is completely, utterly, disgustingly obsessed with you.

Genre: stalker/ sasaeng + idol au angst | “romance” | psychological thriller WC: 15k Warnings: graphic smut (humping, masturbation, fingering, cum shot/creampie, preg kink), unhealthy obsession, drug addiction, graphic violence (depicted beating, poisoning), slight coercion

(⚠️Warning⚠️: This ain’t your regular idol au. There is drug addiction, body issues, unhealthy obsession, and whole lot of dark stuff, and that, if it triggers you in any way, DON’T READ THE BOOK. Also, the author does not condone ANY unhealthy behavior in this book in any way, shape or form. I AM NOT romanticizing stalking and obsession; I wanted to write this to explore a unique dynamic and twist to the Idol AU. This behavior is unhealthy and not normal, and please, seek help if this were to ever happen. Apologies if I have written any behavior unrealistically. ⚠️)

A gentle humming fills the bathroom as the shower is turned on. A female enters the shower, naked, and precedes to cleanse her body of the troubles and worries of the day.

Yet, the eye at the keyhole isn’t noticed. In fact, it will never be… if he has his way.

Shocked gasps come over the studio as, for the first time in history, two idol groups tied for 1st place on a Music Show. Every vote, every score was match for match. While celebratory confetti cannons and music blared pathetically in the background, the audience, the staff, the crew came to a standstill while the idols stood, frozen, on stage.

What were they supposed to do? There was only one trophy after all. Were they supposed to cheer? Boo? Scream?

The in-ear on Ong Seongwoo blared to life as the producer came to his senses.

“Quick! Congratulate both groups, I’ll just— fuck— how did we not see this coming—”

Seongwoo pasted a smile to his face and reanimated his lively and cheerful self. “Well, that’s was unexpected, but, congratulations to both NCT U and FEM for winning 1st place on this week’s broadcast of Music Core!”

Gradual clapping and cheers came from the crowd, which rose even louder as a crew member rushed onto stage carrying 2 trophies. The idols on stage slowly began to move, whispering and gossiping amongst themselves at this unexpected development.

The groups in question themselves were smiling but shooting confused and worried glances at each other. Was this supposed to happen? 

The crew member hurriedly passed one trophy into the slender fingers of Lee Taeyong, the leader of NCT U, and the other into the arms of Sunmi, the leader of FEM. They both regained posture and, while avoiding looking at each other, bowed. The other groups left in a flurry of confetti and streamers, while NCT and FEM stayed on stage.

Seongwoo furrowed his brows as he listened intently into his in-ear. He nodded, turned, then smiled broadly at the audience, not a single piece of his hair out of place of his signature comma hair style.

“We will be playing the winners’ songs in no certain order, thank you everyone!”

3 taps of a drumstick signaled the vocal-heavy and flowery track of FEM’s 2nd EP, “Halo”. NCT U politely took a step back as FEM flounced onto the middle, dazzling in the sparkling lights.

As lead vocalist Sunmi began to start her first line, her voice began to crack and tears were bubbling at the edge of her periphery. She choked out a tearful “sorry” and buried her face into the slim shoulders of your fellow member, Bolin, the main dancer. Both clung together like glue, clasping each other for comfort as the monumental accomplishment swept over them like a tidal wave.

Our 1st win, you thought, smiling slightly and wiping the tears off the edge of your vision. Our 1st win since our debut a year ago.

You were tapped on the shoulder and turned to see FEM’s main rapper, Bella, smirking and shoving the mic at you. You quickly realized that Sunmi was belting out the pre-chorus, and you got ready to sing the difficult chorus.

Lee Taeyong stood to the side, full of mixed emotions. Was it anger? Jealousy? Indignancy? His light blond hair hung around the the bony structure of his face, highlighting his slight gauntness. He stared at FEM, not knowing what to feel until he saw her.

It was some damned drug trip, wasn’t it? Because there was no way the spotlight rested solely on her, as sobs came out of her pretty pink lips while she laughed in joy. Her silky dress flowed around her like it was upheld by a heavenly wind, in tune with the concept her company presented her as.

A goddess.

A goddess of heaven and earth.

Taeyong could only stare like he was a starved man, drinking in the sight like seeing an oasis in the middle of a dry, dry desert. His tinted lips hung open as his gaze remained solely on the vision she presented.

The longer he saw, the more he saw her. A goddess in group of harpies, yet, so insecure and hurt. Was this what it felt like when Pygmalion laid eyes on Galatea? The way Hades saw Persephone?

His heart stuttered in his chest and he felt like he couldn’t breath.

A goddess for him and himself.

1 Year Ago

“I’ll lead you, I’m the boss! I move you, I’m the player!” The heavy bass and domineering synths echoed throughout the gymnasium, thousands of green light sticks moving in unison to the catchy beat. It was quite a sight to see 60,000 plus green sticks fill the gigantic Seoul Olympic Stadium in the night in expansive 360 degree seating.

A chorus of male, synth voices harmonized together for the outro, the group of seven in a triangle formation broadcasted on gigantic screens. The crowd let out thunderous roar, shouting the fan-chants in order.

“Taeyong! Doyoung!”

The 7 men in tailored army suits, silver chains glinting as they swung around from the sheer force the men were putting into their movements. The managing crew of the concert watched the men through their many screens, communicating through headsets.

“On the count of three, release the stage door, alright?”

“Jaehyun! WinWin!”

The flashing lights of the monitor played over the director’s passive face.

“One.”

“Jungwoo! Lucas! Markeu!”

“Two.”

The crew member reached out the arm to turn his monitor closer. His sleeve brushed against the control board, brushing against a certain switch.

“NCT!”

The lead figure, glaringly obvious with his blood red hair in the middle of the formation, suddenly disappeared from screen. From the tops of the stands, the audience could see the large gaping hole slightly off to the left of the stage.

Murmurs and gasps filled the stadium as the 6 remaining figures broke formation to swarm around the gaping hole. Mark, WinWin, and Doyoung  knelt down near the hole while Jaehyun and Jungwoo looked down at the stage sidelines, visibly panicking on the billboard screens. Lucas frowned as he pulled his in-ear closer, his full lips pursed while listening to the crew’s directions.

2 staff members in “NEO CULTURE TECH: LUCID DREAM” t-shirts climbed up to the stage from the bottom ground, guiding the anxious members off the stage.

Cries and shouts arose from the worried crowd. All lights shut off, and the clamors gradually grew louder and louder until the overhead speaker blared to life.

“Everyone, we are sorry for the inconvenience.”

Under the jungle of metal bars and concrete, the red-haired man groaned in pain. His leg was twisted awkwardly, having caught on a metal bar his high fall down. Through his tears, he looked a few feet up to see Mark’s and WinWin’s worried faces peering down at him.

“Due to the early releasing of the stage platforms, Lee Taeyong fell through the hole and we are currently awaiting his status.”

A swarm of team members maneuvered through the concrete structures, crouching around his figure. The remaining NCT members, bar the BOSS members from the stage, ran to his position, and peeked from behind the crew.

“Taeyong-hyung!” Chenle’s high voice shouted, his face the pallor of white as anxiety ran through all members present. Johnny and Jeno clutched onto him tightly, their mouths parted in shock and fear for the pillar of NCT.

A young woman looked up at the rest of the crew, her eyes wide.

“Quick, get an ambulance! He’s broken his leg and I can see blood!”

“Lee Taeyong, leader of top boy group NCT, injured at Seoul Concert!”

“World Group NCT, leader Lee Taeyong breaks his leg at concert!”

“NCT leader Lee Taeyong hospitalized after serious accident at Seoul concert!”

“NCT Taeyong rushed to ER for a broken leg after stage accident at concert!”

“Global Boy Group NCT: leader Lee Taeyong taken off roster for first leg of NCT world tour due to an accident at kick-off concert!”

“NCT TOP VISUAL TAEYONG UNABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FIRST LEG OF NCT’S 20- CITY WORLD TOUR AFTER ACCIDENT AT SEOUL CONCERT!”

You opened your eyes, hearing the air conditioning and the warm lights of your dorm room. You could hear the hum of the television screen from the living room and the smell of bulgogi from the kitchen.

You yawned, stretching your arms and padded off to the kitchen, wrapping a furry robe around yourself. You saw through your bleary vision your group’s leader and proclaimed “omma” Sunmi stirring something on the oven, her curvy figure in a tank top and leggings. Sulhee and Boram were recumbent on the couch, their hair up in towels as they chatted casually.

“Good morning, everyone,” you smiled tiredly. It had been a late night practicing.

“Y/N.” Sunmi smiled at you.

“Unni!” Bella and Lin cheered, rising from their places on the couch.

You grinned at their boundless energy. Bella and Bolin were the same age, younger than you and Sunmi. You called them your “happy little flowers” and their room “the flower garden”, which they always laughed at.

“Hi, my lovely juniors. How are you~?” you giggled, taking a seat at the breakfast table.

“We have a break day today! Isn’t that great?” Bella wriggled into the seat adjacent from you while smiling wildly.

“We’re totally free Yeday!” Bolin cheered in her accented Korean, a bit of her native Chinese slipping through.

“Today, not “yeday”, Bolin. Good job though, you’re improving very well,” Sunmi’s calm voice entered your conversation. “Also, we’re not totally free. We just get to spend the day in the dorm.”

“Why do you have to ruin my thunder?” Bella whined, pouting her lips and her infamous “aegyo” face that many a show host melted for.

“That’s reality, sweetie,” you smiled at Bella.

The four of you chatted over the table, drinking tea and coffee as the noon sun began to peak through the floor-to-ceiling windows of your dorm. You all began to gradually migrate to the couch area, your group’s favorite place to hang-out and chat when resting.

“Wah, look at them!”

At Bella’s shout, you craned your head to look at the television monitor and saw the rerun of Music Bank flashing on screen. This part, however, displayed the famous NCT U members dancing to their latest hit song.

At the lead of the dance was a handsome man in light blond hair.

Lee Taeyong.

This was his first time performing on stage in a year, and he looked like he came back better than ever. He looked so fierce, his sharp features dominating everyone’s attention including yours. His moves were so sharp and clean that you couldn’t help but be mesmerized.

You vaguely remembered the news when he first broke his leg at the concert a year ago. Back then, you felt a huge amount of pity but also a huge amount of annoyance, as his injury caused a media frenzy that overshadowed your debut. NCT had been on top of the world then. The SM group broke records in Japan, China, and Korea and had been reaching into the European and South American markets successfully due to a flood of show appearances and concerts. While you never thought the whole world-domination thing would work, NCT seemed like they were well on their way to make it happen. 

They still were on top of the world. NCT was now a household name all around the globe, but they had lost their shining star for a good while.

“NCT Taeyong? Yeah, he may be handsome and all, I just… have a bad feeling about him. Not an auspicious guy,” Sunmi murmured, looking suspiciously at the screen.

Bolin snorted. “You sound like my grandma who lives in the province. “Oh, you have such a lucky nose Bolin-ah!”” she mimicked her grandmother, hunching over for the effect.

Bella and you burst into laughter, almost knocking over your drinks in the process.

Still, you couldn’t get his face out of your mind. Watching, staring, boring…

…into your soul.

Taeyong stumbled into the bathroom at 3 AM, shaking greatly and noisily opened the bathroom cabinet. He slammed the orange bottle onto the sink top and the sound of rattling pills filled the bathroom.

OXYCONTIN

Pain Killer Medication

Prescribed for LEE TAEYONG

1 PILL PER DAY

Well, it’s his third today.

Taeyong knocked back the pill with a glass of water, sitting on the ground with his head in hands until the shaking went away. Grimacing, he slowly got up on weak legs, supporting himself on the sink as he stared into his reflection.

The unnatural sharpness. The gaunt hollows of his cheeks. The deep dark circles. The blood-shot eyes.

The face of handsome, living death stared back at him in the mirror. He couldn’t even remember how he looked like a year ago, when he was fresh-faced and healthy.

Ever since the accident happened.

Since that day, everything was ruined. His fans, NCTzens, his favorite people in the world and the people keeping him going— he couldn’t even see them because of the damned injury. He couldn’t perform, couldn’t sing, couldn’t dance— all he could do was sit in his parent’s house, watching the videos of his members enjoying life while he hoped and prayed this injury wouldn’t put him out of commission for life.

Even when he could perform with them on the last leg of the tour, he was on a chair. Helpless. Unable to perform. Invalid.

The pain medication the doctor prescribed helped. It shut away his pain, physical and mental, and let him feel alive again. He felt like he was performing, singing, and fucking just in one pill. Slowly, his dosage decreased and he felt helpless, resorting to lying about his pain to the doctor to get those fucking pills.

And it turned him into this. A reflection of what he had been in the past. Fuck, how had it gotten this far? He hadn’t even looked this gaunt and pale during Boss and Baby Don’t Stop. He couldn’t even face his members without them looking at him like he was to be pitied. Like an injured animal, they had to take care of him instead of him taking care of them.

He padded quietly down the hall, trying not to wake any of the tired, sleeping members from yesterday’s music show. He creaked open the door to his and Johnny’s room, sighing quietly in relief as he realized Johnny was fast asleep and snoring. The only sounds heard was the puffs of the air humidifier in the room and the regular sounds of urban life.

Settling onto his bed, reaching for his handphone. The artificial light lit up the room before he hurriedly turned it down until it only cast a slight glow on his face.

Taeyong scrolled through the hundreds of pictures he had saved of you, whether it be from performances to press releases and more. It was like he didn’t feel the burning and incessant call of the pills in a tiny orange bottle whenever he focused on solely you, lost in your smile and in your eyes. He smiled softly at your simple pre-debut photos, and smirked when he saw the HD fan photos of you from your latest concert. God, you looked like an ethereal dream from his high. A goddess descending from the heavens. His Helen to his Paris.

“You need to lose weight, seriously. At this rate, you’ll be obese in a few months!”

You gaze turned downwards at the scolding voice of your manager, whom had been staring back at your reflection in the waiting room mirror.

“Yes, Mrs. Kim,” you sighed.

“I saw you stand next to Twice’s Tzuyu at the Hallyu Wave Concert and you looked like a short, fat, rat next to her! Do you know how embarrassing that is? To the company? To the members? Aish, really, you’re so plump I can barely look at you!”

You bit your lip and tried not to let tears leak out your eyes. You knew that if she were able to see your tears, she would yell at you for ruining the makeup on your face. God, why did she have to be so mean to you? 

This was not even the tip of the iceberg. Much more degrading insults have been spit out her mouth when she was first assigned your manager. She has ripped into every single fibre of your being, degrading your looks, your singing, your dancing. “Are you even worth being the main vocal? The trash collectors sing better than you!” to “Fuck, you’re so dumb. Dumber than those retarded kids.” She was… horrible, to describe in one word.

Mrs. Kim was an idol from the nineties, and was picked as your rookie group’s manager solely on her experience in the entertainment industry. Even staring at her while she was making some calls, you could see the faint shadows of beauty to her aging face.

You slowly slipped out of the room, trying to get away from red-faced and ranting Mrs. Kim. You finally did, and when she saw you escape, Mrs. Kim yelled after you even louder but was unable to chase after since you were already in the hallway. She didn’t make want to make a scene, afterall.

Shivering in the cold of the hallway, you rubbed your arms up and down and cursed your groups’ stylist. Damn her for putting you in a dress with only spaghetti-straps on your bare shoulders. Even though it was summer, South Korea had an obsession with keeping cool and often overran the poor air conditioning unit.

You tottered around in your block heels until you rounded a corner and practically crashed into a warm chest. Toned and muscled arms wrapped around you to keep you from falling down

“Oh, I’m so sorry! Are you alright—”

You tilted your face up to the man’s impressive height, and instantly took a step back.

Shownu from Monsta X.

His sculpted face smiled down at you, a smirking curve to his plump lips.

“Yeah, I am. After running into you, how could I not?” he laughed, the rumble of his chest vibrating against your hand.

Well, at least your were no longer cold now. In fact, you were burning with embarrassment.

Shownu was an idol that you knew everyone in the industry wanted. In bed.

You’ve met love-struck girls on these shows, giggling after him as they passed by in the hallway. It was because of his handsome and manly looking face, a fresh departure from the flower boy visuals every one else had. God, his body was an attraction on its own— a broad, chiseled chest, narrow waist, and muscled legs that went on for longer. It’s been a few years since he debuted, but now, Shonwu was the kind of sex symbol even 2PM had trouble rivaling.

You stepped back even further and gave him a low bow.

“I’m so sorry! Please forgive me, sunbaenim,” you repeated, face burning in embarrassment.

“Nah, sweetie, you don’t have to do that. It hurts to see such a pretty girl bow so low,” he soothed, his face smooth even though there was a tint of mortification.

Probably because he didn’t want to be seen with a rookie girl like you. Ugly, talentless–

“It’s really my fault, I just was jogging without looking where I was going. And uh, sorry but I didn’t catch your name?”

“Oh, um, Y/N. Thank you. Excuse me—” you avoided his piercing eyes and tried to step past him, but, to no avail, he placed his bulky body in your path.

“Hey, do you wanna take a walk with me?” He said casually, like he wasn’t practically leaning over you like a shadow. So suddenly? you thought.

“Um, I really better get going— “ you stuttered, trying to get out of the situation. Shownu was nice and all but you didn’t fancy going alone with one of the biggest sex symbols of the industry.

“Please, I insist.”

Well, that’s how you found yourself wandering around backstage with Monsta X’s Shownu. You could barely stop staring at him in his half-open black shirt, tight, ripped jeans, and pointed shoes.

“So… uh… I heard the shouting,” Shownu mumbled and turned away, scratching his head.

Your brows furrowed in confusion until they relaxed in realization. Shit, if someone found out about this…

“I also heard the, em… insults.”

You cringed and turned away, rubbing your arms in comfort.

“Uh, it’s nothing. I just did something wrong and she just got a little heated with her scolding,” you lied.

Shownu stops in the middle of the hallway, hands on his hips.

“Does she usually do this?” he asked, his voice raising in anger.

You waved your hands in front of you. “N-No, she just was… in a bad mood today,” you winced; even your voice sounded weak in your ears.

Shownu seemed to catch on it too, his hackles rising. His breathing seemed to get heavier as his broad shoulders went up and down harshly.

“Y/N, this isn’t good. You can’t excuse her behavior— look, I know I just met you and it may seem weird that I’m getting kinda angry over this, but it’s disgusting! Especially to someone like you? It’s unforgivable.” He shook his head, his knuckles under fingerless gloves tightening.

“You’re very kind—solicitous, too— but I am perfectly fine,” you said firmly, resolve clear in your face. You couldn’t stir up any trouble whatsoever. You just won your first show award and the hype around your group has increased, but the public wouldn’t hesitate to crucify you for any transgressions, real or not.

He studied your face carefully, as if he were searching for any sign of cracking or weakness.

Finding nothing, Shownu sighed heavily.

“Well, if it ever gets out of hand, I’m here, Y/N,” he relented grimly. He placed a large hand on your shoulder in comfort and you smiled reluctantly, thankful someone has your back.

In the shadows, a blond-haired man watched the bulky man lay his hand upon the small girl’s shoulder, his clenched fists shaking in anger.

Taeyong darted across the street in the night, dressed in charcoal black to blend in with the shadows. He lifted his black hood over his baseball cap, and tugged his mask tighter over his face. He could not be seen at any cost.

After weaving through the rambling streets of Seoul, he stopped in front of a non-descript apartment complex. He checked his phone and verified this was the right address, before walking to the back of the building.

He had a mission to accomplish.

Taeyong carefully stepped through the trees and clambered up the high stone wall dividing the street from the building’s backyard. He landed with a soft thud and he cringed, hoping the creaking of the wood wouldn’t give him away to the people residing inside this particular unit.

Taeyong saw the soft glow of lights from the floor-to-ceiling windows of FEM’s dormitory and cheered, thanking god that someone was home. He checked the forum for FEM sasaengs, for god’s sake. The calendar said that Sunmi, Bella, and Bolin were out recording for a radio show while you stayed in the dorm to recover your voice, as you had lost it by overusing it a few days ago.

He had planned for this moment days in advance. He had to needle your address from a staff member from your company, and had to ensure that his schedule was clear too.

The red-haired man crept nearer to the glass, peaking hesitantly around the corner. However, when he did, he saw the most beautiful sight in his life.

You were humming as you sat at your vanity, rubbing several creams and lotions on your face. You were still beautiful bare-faced, in Taeyong’s eyes, even more beautiful than made up in makeup and shadows. His eyes hungrily drank in your bared skin as you were just wearing a thin tank-top and underwear.

Finished doing your night-care routine, you got up from the vanity you and Sunmi shared. You grabbed the lotion sitting on your cabinet and proceeded to hoist one leg up on the bed.

Taeyong nearly creamed himself at the sight of your beautiful legs bared to his vision, your core only covered by a frilly underwear piece. You proceeded to pump some lotion onto your hand and rub it down your legs.

The blond-haired spectator fumbled for his phone in his pocket and pressed record, tilting his camera at the perfect angle to record your half-naked figure.

Your hands got closer and closer to the crevice of your thighs and Taeyong rubbed his hardening erection through his jeans. He bit his lip as the tips of your fingers brushed the edges of your panties, and he nearly dropped his phone when he saw the tips of your nipples jutting through your thin t-shirt.

Taeyong followed the line of your body as you stretched and proceeded to dim the lights. Your half-naked figure flopped onto bed then curled up in the sheets. The boy idol ended the recording and walked carefully closer to your side of the window. He grunted softly at his erection nearly bursting out of his jeans, making it uncomfortable to walk.

He snapped a few pictures of you sleeping, your bared backside clad only in frilly underwear. God, he imagined grasping that full ass as you rode him, you covering your mouth so your moans wouldn’t escape and eyes closed in utter rapture.

Was it wrong to dream such lewd things about someone who just turned twenty?

You were jogging around the Han River extremely early in the morning. Your manager had woken you up from your sleep and forced you to go running, yelling insults at you as you ran out the house.

Biting your lip, you tried not to cry when you remembered the way Mrs. Kim had called you a fat, dumb pig over and over this morning. The members couldn’t even hear her insulting you because it was so early in the morning and no one was awake.

You were on your third mile and already breathing hard. There was an already painful stitch in your side that had developed around the two and a half mile mark and sweat dripped uncomfortably down your back.

You gritted your teeth and kept on running, determined to show Mrs. Kim you weren’t a pig. Nor were you dumb or untalented.

Besides being a devil of a woman, your manager had unfortunately woken you up from one of the most pleasant dreams of your life.

It was filled with vibrant colors and happiness, pleasure and bright lights. The only concrete things you could remember were dark, dark eyes and pink, pretty lips pulled up into a smirk.

You had been feeling antsy these past few days ever since you felt like you were being watched at night. You grew more paranoid, looking out the window frequently and checking your back. Curiously, you also grew restless, as in… unfulfilled. Something in you felt restless while your underwear was always soaked. What was happening? Did adults usually experience this?

So caught up in your thoughts you ran into someone standing by a pier. You gasped a little as you fell flat onto your butt.

You rubbed your head, which was smarting from the impact into someone’s broad shoulders.

“Miss? Are you okay?”

You opened your eyes to see those black eyes from your dreams, hidden behind a white baseball cap. Your eyes were drawn to those pretty pink lips from your dreams, which were bared from his pulled down mask.

“L-Lee Taeyong- sunbaenim?!” you stuttered nervously, curling into yourself. God, you probably looked like a glazed donut with how sweaty and unkept you were.

His eyes widened in surprise. “Y/N-ssi?”

“What are y-you doing here?” you asked, still in shock at his presence. He was the face that brought you all those bright lights and vibrant colors in your dream.

He chuckled slightly, the dark sound rumbling in his chest. He offered a hand, smiling slightly at you.

“Why don’t I help you off the ground first? It seems rather uncomfortable down there.”

Ah, so this was the gentleman people told you that was Taeyong.

You took his proffered hand and he helped lift yourself up. You saw his toned arms quite well, as he was wearing one of his classic sleeveless tank-tops. His veins and muscles bulged slightly with the effort and you decided to focus on that rather than the handsome man’s face.

The pair of you stared at each other in silence, drinking in each other’s features.

Taeyong watched as horror crept over your face until you bowed deeply.

“I’m so sorry! I forgot to greet you, sunbaenim—”

Taeyong grasped your shoulder until he could see your sparkling eyes.

“It’s alright, it’s alright. Just call me Taeyong-ssi, is that okay with you?”

You nodded, your flushed face and gleam of sweat reminding him of something else—

“So, what are you doing out here so early in the morning?” you asked, averting your eyes from his gaze.

“Oh, uh, just walking. I love the morning, y’know?”

Gradually the two of you struck up a conversation while walking next to the Han river. He really was kind and easy-going, which surprised you greatly. You thought he was a cold man, but he got rid of that notion as he made you laugh.

During your walk, Taeyong suddenly hissed in pain and held his leg.

“Taeyong-ssi? Are you alright?” you asked in panic, holding arm unwittingly.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine,” Taeyong grunted out.

“Are you sure?” you questioned, looking at Taeyong holding his leg gingerly.

“Yeah, it just the leg. I don’t know if you know, but I had a stage… accident a year ago. Broke my leg, put me out of commission for our group’s tour. It’s just probably one of the pain echoes my doctor told me would occasionally flare up since I was so active after the injury.”

“Oh my god, that’s horrible! I’m so sorry,” you said, genuinely feeling bad for the handsome idol. You imagined him performing when one of those pain flashes hit, and he had to grit through the pain and perform.

Taeyong smiled at you until he rose up, standing closely beside you as you kept walking.

“Well, enough about me. Was there something specific that brought you out here on such an early morning?”

Your bright smiled dimmed, and Taeyong noticed it immediately.

“Just wanted to exercise, that’s all,” you murmured in a soft voice.

He’s watched you enough in videos to know you were lying, and that made him worried. Taeyong lifted up your chin with his pointer finger until you were forced to look at him directly.

“Hey, hey, is something wrong? You can tell me, you know,” he whispered lowly, looking at you with so much care and compassion in his eyes you almost melted in his hand.

You then remembered the words of your mentors when his thumb started to stroke you lips. “Be careful of those predator idols, alright? There’s many male idols that like to prey on young, rookie idols like you.”

You stepped slightly backward, eyes wide. “Are you one of those predator idols my teacher told me about? Because please, don’t touch me.”

His eyes widened slightly until he burst into laughter. You watched in confusion as he cracked up, holding his waist with how hard he was laughing.

“No, I’m not. I promise. I can tell you some idols from my company that are like that, but I promise you, I’m not.”

You pouted suspiciously at him until he smiled disarmingly at you, and you relented.

“Alright.”

A brief silence ensued until Taeyong spoke up. “But seriously Y/N, what’s wrong? You seem… really troubled.”

An inner war raged inside you for a few minutes until you turned to him.

“I’m exercising because I’m fat,” you told him, hugging yourself in comfort.

“Wait, what?” Taeyong exclaimed.

“Yeah. I just… well someone told me I needed to lose some weight so,” you waved your hands helplessly, “here I am.”

Taeyong never felt so furious in his life. Who would dare insult this goddess? Y/N was perfection, she was better than anyone he’s ever known.

“What the hell? Y/N, I can confidently tell you that you are one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met and I’m from SM, for god’s sake. You are gorgeous, okay? Don’t let anyone ruin that for you,” Taeyong exclaimed, struggling to keep his boiling hot temper in check.

You sighed. “It doesn’t even matter if I’m pretty. I’m kind of dumb too, and I can barely sing.”

Taeyong was one word away from snapping and murdering whoever planted these thoughts in your head. What kind of bullshit was this? Y/N was the kind of person who deserved to be always smiling and laughing, not wallowing in self doubt. His fingers clenched in the pocket of his windbreaker.

“Look, whoever told you this bullshit is lying out of their ass, okay? You are not dumb, and you can sing. I’ve only known you for a little while but I know you are intelligent, even just talking to you for a bit. Plus, you’re the main vocal for a reason. You can outsing most of these female rookies these days. Seriously, fuck the person who told you this crap,” Taeyong seethed.

You saw how angry he looked and warmth filled your being. Was he really this mad on behalf for you?

You touched his arm, and he settled down a bit. You looked at the deep, dark eyes you thought you feared and smiled widely. Taeyong thought you looked beautiful, smiling a real smile unlike the ones you plastered onto your face during those variety shows.

“Thank you... oppa.”

Taeyong never felt so aroused and in awe time at the same in his life.

Fuck. You had messed up big time.

Your voice had cracked, in the middle of your fucking high note on stage during the live recording. Holy crap, you were in for a world of trouble when you got back to the dressing room.

“Shit, shit, shit,” you mumbled, striding across the hallways.

“Y/N?”

Shownu, in his manly glory, stood in front of you with his face a mask of utter concern.

“S-Sunbaenim.”

“It’s just oppa to you, alright?” he smiled.

Oppa. Even saying that in your mind felt wrong.

“Is it not a bit unprofessional? We hardly know each other,” you asked cautiously, trying not to cross any boundaries. Sometimes, you hated this culture of having to be so respectful to your elders to the point of self-degradation.

His smile fell. “O-Oh, that’s fine. If that’s more comfortable for you.”

You kind of felt guilty at the forlorn expression on his face, but even so, it just felt wrong.

“Well, anyway, you did great on stage,” Shownu offered.

You snorted in disbelief before covering your mouth, horrified at your lack of grace and respect.

“I… was not satisfactory at all. I have to work harder.”

“What’s wrong? I saw you dancing. You and your group did amazing.”

“Sunbaenim, my voice cracked. During my solo part. In the climax.”

He was speechless for a moment, unable to respond to that. Shownu quickly recovered, a disarming smile back in place on his chiseled face.

“I, well, that’s unfortunate. However, you’re just a rookie– you have a lot of time to improve!”

You bit your tongue to stop yourself from arguing him. He debuted once, he knows what it’s like for rookie idols. Even now, the standard is so high for rookies to be perfect in looks, dancing, and singing. It was unreasonable, but the business was harsh; that’s what it was.

“Thank you, sunbaenim.” You bowed to him politely.

He bowed in return and almost turned to leave until it looked like he remembered something.

“Wait, is your manager still doing… you know?”

You bit your lip, desperately trying to find a way out of this.

“Ah! Look at the time. The stylist told me she needs to, um, retouch something! Yeah, so I better get going. Bye!”

You quickly fled before you could see the intrigued expression on the handsome man’s face. Running reluctantly to your group’s dressing room, you hesitantly opened the door and entered.

“Yah, what the hell was that?!”

There she was again, in her full resentful glory. Mrs. Kim.

You sighed, rubbing your temples as you took off your heels. Reaching up to loosen the velvet pussy-bow tie that was suffocating you, you slumped back into a chair while the other members were… what were they doing? Practicing?

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Kim,” you offered weakly, hoping to end this scolding soon because you felt like you were about to fall asleep any minute.

“Sorry? Sorry?! That’s all you can say for yourself for that, that travesty you dishonored the company with on stage?!” Mrs. Kim yelled, slamming the door and getting up in your face. You could see the stress lines in her forehead and the remains of her old beauty, her youthful beauty turned into this old hag.

“I- It was a mistake,” you stuttered, folding your hands in your lap and turning your gaze downwards.

“Your voice fucking cracked on stage— what the fuck? I thought you were our main vocalist for a reason! We should just replace you with a dying pig and no one would notice!”

Mrs. Kim went on to pace angrily throughout the small dressing room, releasing a barrage of insults while throwing things around. She got red-faced and puffy, violent, ranting how you were an utter disgrace and you were a slut who couldn’t even sing.

“ — hope you realize the gravity of your actions today! Why, if I were you—”

“But you’re not,” you whispered, feeling a strange energy in you.

Mrs. Kim paused in her furious pacing, and turned to your folding chair.

“What did you say to me, you pig?!” She hissed, getting all up in your face again.

“Are you deaf? I said, “I said “But you’re not”, Mrs. Kim,” you sullenly glare up at her.

“I’m going to kill you—”

You suddenly push back your chair, the poor folding chair sliding back harshly until it banged into a makeup desk.

“Wake up, Mrs. Kim. You will never be me, nor can you ever be me,” you gritted out, suddenly towering over her until she had to step back.

“You don’t know shit, you’re a failed idol. You had one hit-- a dance hall song!-- and that was it, until your fame and beauty faded out and then you were forgotten in the eyes of the public.”

You crossed your arms as she seemed conflicted, a mixture of rage and anger and wounded pride glimmering hatefully in her beady black eyes.

“How can you even criticize me when you didn’t even sing? Dance well? You couldn’t do anything as a MGirls member, not even perform.”

“Then, when all of it was gone, you asked yourself many times, “why am I working at the gas station? I was an idol”, until you started blaming the world.”

You felt invincible. You saw Taeyong smiling and getting angry on your behalf and his lips and color and vibrancy— it was like something physical inside you snapped and released all your anger on your manager.

“It’s their fault I’m barely making money, it’s their fault I can’t perform well, it’s their fault that I’m not loved or payed attention anymore— until you finally met someone that you could vent your anger out onto: me.”

“But wake the fuck up Mrs. Kim. You can not and never will be what I am. Don’t be jealous that I’m living the life you always wanted,” you spat in her face.

Uncharacteristically, she went silent for a moment. The perpetually deep lines on her face softened and made her look much nicer, much motherly. Mrs. Kim was truly unreadable and you couldn’t tell what she was thinking at all.

The edges of your lips lifted.

Suddenly, pain bloomed in your cheek as your head was slapped to the side. Her slap hurt so badly that the site of impact felt numb and you lifted your hands, rubbing your probably red cheek.

You didn’t have to time to recover as she reared back her fist with an expression of utter rage, her lips pulled up in a ferocious sneer as her beady eyes looked like they wanted to pierce you.

The blow hurt stung the crown of your head and you cried out, but Mrs. Kim quickly wrenched your long hair and pulled. Your mouth opened to scream, but her other fist gripped your jaw so tightly it felt like she wanted to crush it with her manicured hands.

“You bitch,” your irate manager snarled, as she spit in your face.

Her foot delivered a punishing blow to your exposed midriff, and the air was taken out of you as you fell back onto the ground. You tried to curl into a fetal position as she pulled her leg back again and again to hurt you, punish you as her embarrassment and rage against the world culminated in a tiny dressing room backstage of a music broadcast.

The world was spinning as she forced your face to look up at her, while you were lying, wounded, on the ground. In your blurry vision, even you could see the psychotic and deranged smile on her face as she knelt beside you.

“Thank god we’re done recording,” she said, and then the world went black.

Taeyong was roaming around the halls of backstage, unable to stay in the dressing room with the members awkward and nervous atmosphere. He wasn’t a fucking stranger, for fuck’s sake but they acted like he was a new member in the group. Taeyong gritted his teeth and his jaw went taut as he remembered when they thought he wasn’t looking, they sent him pitying glances and sighs of sadness.

Taeyong inconspicuously grabbed some pills from his bag and burst out the door, unable to handle the stifling environment. He fully intended to take the two white tablets in his hand in some kind of isolated place, but first, had to remember where all the good places were.

He remembered the first time roaming these halls and meeting his sunbaes, incredibly in awe of their confident yet polite demeanors. Now he was the sundae, as groups younger than him and new rookies nearly tripped over themselves to bow and greet him. They looked at him in awe, “Korea’s Visual Treasure” as nicknamed by Vogue, while not looking discreetly at his formerly broken leg to see if he was limping or something like that.

And as always, his thoughts drifted back to Y/N. His smile turned utterly lovesick and infatuated when he thought of seeing you when you were a rookie, in your demure pink tennis skirt and fucking stockings. The ones that ended at mid-thigh and was held up by garters, the ones that every senior boy group jacked off to every night.

He fingered the thin slip of lace in his front pocket, rubbing it between his fingers in tandem with his heeled boots clicking on the ground.

What were they?

Why, they were your panties, of course.

What else would it be? Whose else would it be?

Taeyong lovesick grin was luckily not seen by anyone as they curled up in a delirious edge. They were hard to attain, as was everything related to you was. He had gone through several parties to find your dorm’s housecleaner, a young girl that was easily bribed into taking a pair of panties and some of your tank tops from your drawers. His love for you knew no bounds, nothing as silly as the law and the right to privacy would stop him.

But then, he remembered that guy.

Shownu.

That son of a bitch touching Y/N, looking so concerned when he was basically on top of her. Taeyong saw the intentions in his eyes, the way he undressed you with his mind and the way they roamed over your figure.

He was going to kill him, one day, he swore. Maybe chop off an important part or something so Shownu could never lay a damned finger on your holiness.

His phone buzzed. As he looked at his phone, he realized it was nearing prep time and grimaced. He looked for a door leading downstairs, vaguely recognizing the hallway as the fifth floor. Taeyong opened the door to what he thought was the stairwell, and instead realized it was a storage closet.

The blond-haired man was about to shut the door until he saw the hall lights striking upon something shimmery and he stepped forward to take a better look.

It seemed to be from some kind of fake clothing gem, attacked to the middle of a pussy bow. His eyes followed the shape of the pussy bow to the top, followed the new line of something vaguely human and soft and when he opened the door a tiny bit more to see better, his heart leapt into his throat.

It was you.

Taeyong saw you, the girl of his dreams and nightmares, spread across the dirty tiles of the storage closet like a doll whose strings had been cut. Even in the dark and with red and purple bruises blooming like flowers onto your skin you were still enticing.

His panic gave way to unwanted lust, his addiction to this girl coming back in full force when she was right in front of him like she was delivered there. He bit his lip as genuine care and concern battled the shameless wantonness that arose when he saw the tantalizing peaks of your breasts through the white shirt. Your skirt had splayed haphazardly across your legs, revealing inch by inch the delicious skin leading to your core until his vision was impeded by black safety shorts. Taeyong’s hungry eyes made out the shape of your mound through the spandex and dropped to his knees, so overcome by care and lust that his weak body could barely contain the sensations.

His vision swam until it focused back on you, where the dark lights illuminated your body like a halo. He crawled on his hands and knees, the package between his thighs physically throbbing in need, while he came closer to your prone body.

He raised a tentative hand to touch your glowing skin until his right mind screamed at him to stop, that this was immoral and dishonorable but the pill he took 15 minutes ago egged him on to go on. The hand that had paused in the air resumed its descent onto your body, landing softly onto your knee.

Taeyong held his breath as he softly stroked the skin of your knee, and when you didn’t show any signs of waking up he got braver. His whole palm rested on your played out leg, tracing over the bruises with tenderness. His hand seemed to wander down to his trousers on its own, palming his cock in his cupped hand roughly until he was dry-humping his own hand. He closed his shadowed eyes shamefully, blocking out the shear embarrassment of the situation.

Taeyong heard a small moan of pain then jerked his hands away from his half-stained trousers when he saw your petal lips open slightly.

The first thing you saw when you opened your eyes was darkness and the silhouette of a person stood against the cracked light of a doorway,

Then you registered the burning pain all over body, mainly on your stomach and back. A pained scream left your lips as you curled deeper into yourself, trying to escape the bone-deep ache of the injuries.

“Shhh, shhh,” the silhouette whispered as the presence settled beside you, a man’s almost painful heat pressing into your skin like a brand.

He started stroking you back and you unconsciously leaned into his heat, wanting his all-consuming warmth to burn away the aches and pains that you body was composed of until you snapped back into reality.

You jerked away suddenly from the man and his touches, backing away frantically until your back painfully banged into a metal shelving unit.

Your mouth opened to scream but it was blocked by a hand, his hand, and it clamped over your mouth so that it muffled your panicked noises.

“Wait, shit, hold on—“

The dingy light of the supply closet flicked on and the cold light threw everything into relief. Your thrashing ceased as you saw those haunting eyes staring right at you, so uncomfortably close you didn’t know how to react.

Taeyong-sunbaenim kneeled in front of you, the gaunt hollows of his face deepened even further by the light of the one light bulb hanging above you.

As he saw you were not protesting anymore, he carefully removed his hand and leaned back, sitting on the floor in front of you.

An awkward silence enveloped both of you until you caught sight of your bruised arms and legs and you yelped, frantically trying to cover the evidence of your weakness from one of the most handsome and captivating individuals you’ve ever met.

The most handsome and captivating individual.

Ever.

“Hey, hey, no, it’s alright you don’t need to hide it from me,” Taeyong urged, extending his hands as if to help.

Please don’t, he begged silently. Don’t hide yourself from me. Don’t deny me your perfection.

You curled further into you self and buried your face into folded knees, hardly looking at him. You struggled not to burst out in tears, whether it be from the furious beating you received or the embarrassment you did not know, but they still bubbled up.

More silence preceded until he broke it.

“What happened?” he whispered tenaciously.

“…me,” you whispered back.

You heard a small huff of air when a pair of arms wrapped around your trembling body.

“It was that person, huh?”

You bit your lip and nodded into his broad and strong shoulders, feeling tired and drained all the sudden. It was like his touch had sucked away all your anxiousness and worries, just leaving you and him and nothing else.

“Y/N?”

“Oppa,” you mumbled. You didn’t hear the sharp intake of breath as you continued. “Oppa, she beat me up.”

“Who’s she, baby girl?” he urged, but you still didn’t hear the dangerous edge to his deep voice,

“M-my manager,” you said almost silently.

Somehow, he must have heard you or felt your lips move against his shoulder because he tensed up and his grip on you tightened.

“You’re fucking manager did this? She beat you up? Called you fat? Dumb?”

Even though you didn’t answer as a wave of brutal pain passed over you, he understood.

“I’m going to rip the throat out of that motherfucking whore—“ he hissed as he motioned to get up until your small hands tightened on his shoulders.

“...Please, don’t leave me. Please,” you cried, clinging tightly to him.

Taeyong looked down at your face, knew that you were delusional with pain and probably wanted anyone to hold you, but he couldn’t resist your red eyes and trembling lips…

His shoulders untended and he carefully sat back on the ground, pulling you into his lap. You straddled his lap while you sobbed into his silk stage shirt in total pain.

Totally forgetting his prep and the pills he was supposed to take in his pocket,  all of his intense focus was on you. After this small taste of your gift, he knew he would never be able to live without it again.

He just couldn’t.

You looked out the window of the private clinic, deep in the neighborhoods of Seoul. IV’s and various cords were hooked up to your arms as you shifted against the cotton material of your hospital dress.

A sigh escaped your lips when you saw the piles of bandages wrapped around your legs, reminding you of an embalmed body from Egypt or South America.

Wonderful thoughts.

The door creaked open as the nurse click-clacked in, a polite smile on her face.

“I’ll be rewrapping the bandages again, is that alright?”

“Y-yes,” you croaked out, immediately reaching out for the glass of water beside you.

Your eyes began to get entranced by the repetitive actions of the nurse as she unwrapped and wrapped, snipped and snapped.

When you turned to look around the room, you could see the nurse out of your periphery looking piteously at your bruises. That summed up most of the reaction of the clinic when you limped in with Taeyong. They quickly and quietly admitted you in, and when finally asking the origin of the injuries, you had lied. You had told them you fell in the gym while Taeyong thrummed in anger beside you and the doctor scribbled in the false information. They even knew for sure that you were beaten up when they examined your wounds, but they pretended not to know and put you to bed.

“There, that’s all better,” she smiled softly.

Just as she was about to walk out the door, she seemed to remember something.

“Oh, also, someone left you a get-well gift. I’ll get it.”

Soon your hands arms were full of a fluffy pink teddy bear, it’s beaded eyes and stitched-on smile beaming dopily up at you. A sky-blue ribbon was wrapped around its neck, and you shifted the bear like it was a baby to read the note attached to it.

“Get better soon, my lovely junior. -Oppa :)”

Your lips parted slightly in shock as you stared at the beautiful present, not believing the larger-than-life Global Idol Lee Taeyong would send you a get better gift. Or let you cry on his shoulder. Or accompany you to the hospital. Wow.

The door to your room opened once again, but it was not the nurse that walked through, but the main doctor.

“Y/N-ssi, it’s nice to see you looking better.”

He sat down in a chair beside your bed and pulled out an important looking binder, emblazoned with words that disappeared too fast for you to read as he opened it.

“Y/N-ssi, I want to talk to you about your injuries.”

You automatically grimaced and your hands clasped your arms, hugging yourself.

“We all know you were physically hit in some kind of fashion.” he continued, maintaining eye contact with you.

“We also wanted to know if you wanted to file a police report.”

“No!” you automatically rejected. First, it was because of the embarrassment, but then it was the fact that you were an idol and you weren’t supposed to get into these kind of situations. Plus, who would believe you anyway?

“Well, alright, if that’s what you think is best for you—”

Suddenly, the door to the room burst open and you spot Sunmi panting.

“Sunmi?” you asked, perplexed. The doctor in front of you could only stare in utter confusion.

“Y/N,” she wheezed. “It’s manager Mrs. Kim.”

“She’s in the ER— injured.”

“Sunbaenim?” you asked through the phone, voice muffled from crying.

“Y/N? Is everything alright? Also, it’s oppa,” Taeyong urgently replied. As usual, his deep timbre sent shivers down your spine even through a phone line.

“C-can you come here? I’m so sorry, I know that if you can’t, it’s alright, it’s just—” you rambled in embarrassment, ashamed of having to ask for help.

“Y-yeah, it’s alright, I’ll be there soon, okay? Stay put for oppa.”

The line goes dead and you stare out the window of your dorm room blankly. No one was in the dorm right now, all visiting Mrs. Kim in the hospital while the company ordered you on bedrest.

You weren’t exactly rioting.

After dropping the huge bombshell on you, Sunmi tried to get you out of the room but the doctor had refused, stating you had to rest at least a week to go back outside. Sunmi sullenly relented while you hadn’t protested at all from the side.

Bits and pieces of information filtered back to you in your hospital bed. Mrs. Kim was currently in the hospital in a medically-induced coma after she was found 11 stories down from her apartment roof, splayed out on the road. She was barely breathing when the EMT reached her.

The doctors had stated they were unsure if there was foul play involved, since Mrs.Kim had shown an increasingly frayed psyche in the past few months. However, there was evidence she was pushed off the roof since her injuries showed signs of fighting.

You didn’t know what to think.

At this time, you heard the doorbell ring and you jumped up from the bed, almost tripping as you tried to get to the front door. The cold air conditioner breeze brushed your thighs and you were suddenly reminded you were half naked, only clad in a gigantic t-shirt and panties.

A blush rose up on your cheeks as you fumbled to find some shorts. Can you imagine what would’ve happened if you faced the mighty Lee Taeyong clad only in an oversized shirt and tighty-whities?

After pulling on a pair of shorts, you pulled open the door to find the slender figure of Lee Taeyong dominating the entryway. He was sporting just a regular white t-shirt and black skinny jeans, although not without shades and a medical mask. Taeyong looked like every manhwa fantasy school girls had, the picture perfect image of a bad boy on the regular.

You hurriedly pulled him in, looking around the hall to see if there were any nosy neighbors but finding none, you closed the wooden door.

Suddenly, he was too close to you. Your head was close to his chest and you smelled his expensive cologne and something that was just him, something that broke through your willpower and insisted you just stand there and inhale all of him. A small “eep!” escaped your mouth at the unfamiliar distance between you and Taeyong.

“C-come in! Do you want anything to eat? Drink?” you stuttered, guiding him to the living room as he took off his expensive-looking sneakers.

“Nah, I’m alright,” he said, and plopped himself on a couch.

An awkward silence pervaded the area as you looked down in embarrassment and his eyes wandered all over the place. Oh god, he probably spotted the huge pile of dirty dishes in the sink. And the copious amount of junk food you and Bella had scattered on the counter.

“Well, uh, I’m sorry, but—”

“Hey, no, you can tell me everything, okay?” he rebutted, the perfect picture of concern.

You fidgeted again, inwardly hating yourself for being so weak and shy in the presence of Taeyong. He probably thought you were so weak rookie girl who couldn’t deal with shit.

“Well, I don’t know how to tell you anything if you can’t start. Trust me,” he beamed, leaning in closer to you.

So you started. You told him all about what happened (all though he had a glint in his eye when you told him your manager was in a coma) and what you were feeling, the guilt of being ecstatic that the person who helped make your career was now effectively a vegetable.

“Fuck, I don’t know what’s going to happen. The company doesn’t have any staff that could help with this mess, and we’re almost bankrupt for god’s sake, and adding to the fact that we have a new album repackage coming up? I literally have no idea what’s going to happen.”

You rub your temples and bury your face in your hands. Taeyong is pensive for a while until you can feel his weight shifting on the couch, scooting closer to you.

You feel his tentative hand grasp your shoulder and a cool hand grasp your chin.

“Hey, look at me,” he whispers soothingly. His hand moves down from your shoulder to your upper arm, rubbing soothing circles into your arm. “I honestly am no help to you. But, realistically, after looking at your debut, you’re on an upward spiral.”

You didn’t feel his fingers trembling on your skin as you were so enraptured by his eyes, deep dark depths that bored into like a drill.

“– you’ll get those brand deals, the concert invitations, just wait for it, ‘cause I know I did.”

The edges of his lips lifted in a small smirk as his hand trailed from your upper arm to your curled hands, grasping them softly and then with more pressure. Long, slim fingers folded over your own like a vice.

“I’m here, y’know?”

Your heartbeat rapidly as you closed the door to Taeyong, your whole body quaking in nervousness? Fear? Excitement? You had no idea anymore when it came to this man.

His fingers felt like they were still blazing fire over your skin, still leaving goosebumps in its wake. It was like those colors and feelings in that dream but in real life, splayed out in front of you.

You shakily padded back to your room, the cold air-conditioning brushing on your skin in a lacklustre reminder of Taeyong’s touches. You staggered onto your bed, collapsing into it and melting into the sheets.

Faux fur brushed against the side of your face, causing you to sneeze. You came face to face with the rather large teddy bear Taeyong sent you a few days ago, it’s black, beaded eyes staring right into your own as your curled around its stuffed body.

Funny, they looked like Taeyong’s, but had some kind of depth, like a camera lense or something…

You remembered his hands and his lips and his eyes as your hand unwittingly wandered down to your shorts, slipping beneath the waistband and fingering the lace of your panties. A small moan left your lips as your inner thigh nudged your teddy bear.

Everything felt hot as you slipped down your shorts and rolled over onto your belly, lying atop Taeyong’s gift. Your panty-clad hips undulated onto the bear as you hid your heated face into your pillow. It was so embarrassing to do something like this, god, this was so wanton. Who the hell humped their teddy bear?

The teddy bear’s fur tickled your thighs as you ground down more upon it, jolting energy into your whole body and making every hair stand on end. It was like the soft caress of a lover, the brushes of Taeyong’s hand that made you shiver in pleasure and at that the unusual feeling.

Your t-shirt rode up and up until it reached right under your breasts, and the mound of material annoyed you so much you took it off and threw it off to Sunmi’s general side of the room. Your bare breasts were sensitive to the fabrics underneath you, your nipples scraping your sheets over and over until they were erect.

“Oh, fuck,” you whispered, feeling the wet stain on your panties with your fingers.

Still, your hips ground more and more into the bear until your panties were so soaked through they were basically useless and you slipped them down your legs. You were completely naked now and clutching onto your bedsheets for dear life as you thighs clamped down upon the toy.

A delirious cry left your lips as your clit felt the tiny hairs of the fur brush once, twice upon your nether lips. You could only move faster, gritting your teeth at the unexplainable feelings that exploded inside of you. You felt like you were possessed, a slave, to your desire as your fingers slipped themselves inside your sopping wet hole.

You imagined they were Taeyong’s fingers sliding in and out of you while you were curled on his lap. Your face would be buried into his shoulder, involuntary tears slipping out as you ground against his slender appendages. You would feel his broad chest rumble with laughter, clutching you tighter as he thrusted harder and harder into your core.

His thumb would slowly sneak it’s way up to the bundle of nerves hidden under a hood of skin, and when he would suddenly press his thumb on it—

“Shit!”

Colors and flashes of light exploded in your tightly-closed eyes, your teeth biting into your lips with force. Your bare body seized in pleasure, contorting in all sorts of ways, unable to handle the pleasure. A flood of liquid left your pussy and it coated your thighs, the fur of the teddy bear clenched in between your legs. Tears leaked out of your eyes in sheer pleasure, and you pitifully ground your hips into the bear to prolong your orgasm.

You could only hear the sound of heavy breathing in your room and you rolled onto your back, staring at the stark-white ceiling above you. A glint from the periphery of your eye caused your head to turn.

Your mouth dropped open at the puddle of glistening liquid coating the teddy bear Taeyong had bought you, staining the fur a dark pink. God, what the hell had you done?

Embarrassment quickly took over you as you cleaned yourself up, putting the bear and your soaked panties in the washing machine. Everything cleaned up, you fell back into bed and turned off the lamp.

As you lied in bed, ready to sleep, one thought occurred to you.

How did Taeyong know your address?

A few miles away, in an state-of-the-art dance studio, a blond-haired man in a bathroom could only stare in shock at the image of Y/N’s breasts bouncing as she ground back on forth on something. When he got the daily notification of his private camera in the feed named “Baby Girl”, he rushed

However, he didn’t expect this.

This masterpiece of Y/N, her pretty pink lips parted and presumably giving way for moans. Her eyes were shut in pleasure as both of her hands clasped over her mouth, and Taeyong could see the angle of the camera shifting downward as she humped more and more.

He could see the fur of the bear and her core rolling over and over the belly, yet he couldn’t see her true treasure. Flashes of popped up occasionally as she rose up like a tidal wave but only to sink back down into the stuffing of the bear.

Taeyong took a deep breath and flushed down the pills in his back pocket into the toilet, knowing how much of an idiot move this was. You couldn’t go cold-turkey, he knew; you had to go through therapy and rehab and all that kind of crap. But, Taeyong didn’t have time. Idols were discreet and expected to deal with messes alone, so he could deal with the withdrawal period to focus his full attention on this.

Y/N bouncing up and down on his phone screen, in pleasure.

Just for him.

Only for him.

Shownu yawned as he walked to his apartment’s mail cabinets. Dressed in only sweatpants and a sweatshirt, he hoped no one from the press would see him.

It was relaxing to be alone. So he bought an apartment away from the members, an apartment building filled with the elderly so fans shouldn’t be here. It was his own haven of isolation, his breath of fresh air from the punishing lights of the stage.

He shook his head in disbelief at his silly philosophical thoughts, and pulled out his key.

Inside the box was a fat bunch of mail, him guessing it was probably 75 percent junk mail. As he walked up the stairs, he sorted the various flyers and letters and his guess was right.

Seriously, he didn’t need another ad for plastic surgery.

However, when soon got up to his apartment door, a small letter underneath all that pile of junk remained in his hand.

A simple “셔누” (Shownu) graced the front, but no return address listed. There were no postage stamps or anything.

Suddenly, he felt a bad feeling about this. Shownu was not usually the superstitious kind of guy, but when something as minimal and small as this shows up, it’s never something good.

Was it a sasaeng, an obsessed girl trying to contact him? Trying to get his attention?

God, he hated sasaengs. Did they have no shame? No basic respect for privacy? For god’s sake, he had to break the lease on the apartment he was about to get 3 months ago when a fan found out he was moving, and now he was here.

They were so obsessed with this ideal of him, an idyllic version of someone who he probably wasn’t at all. The girls that followed him on flights, called his number in the wee hours in the morning, the one time someone actually broke into his hotel room in California.

They weren’t in love, they were fucking psychotic. Infatuated with someone who wasn’t him.

Shownu shut the door to his apartment and after throwing all the junk mail into the trashcan, he stretched out on his favorite leather sectional.

The simple white letter with simple black letters stared back at him. Should he at least get this screened or something first?

To hell with it, he was curious.

The first thing that fell out was a newspaper clipping. On the 3rd page of the Korea herald, was a small section announcing the hospitalization of Kim Sohye, a middle-aged woman whom was a popular idol in the nineties. The article went on to detail how she was splayed across the road in blood, having either been pushed or fallen off the roof of her apartment building. Now, she was in a medically-induced coma.

What did this have to do with him?

He was quite annoyed, thinking someone was probably fucking with him, until he saw the last part of the article.

Kim Sohye is the manager of FEM, a rookie girl group who has just gotten their first win. No word has been released from their company on what will happen to the group’s activities.

While he was shocked, Shownu lad a large part of him that yelled “good riddance!” to the woman who had verbally abusing Y/N.

Good for her then, he’d have to find some way to check up on her. Maybe backstage at Music Core?

Another white paper fell out of the envelope, the paper feeling quite slippery to the touch.

Shownu,

I took care of the manager when you couldn’t. I actually did something instead of watching from the sidelines. Anyways, good luck trying to reach Y/N. She isn’t interested in you, you know? My goddess is simply too good for your whoring ways.

With much loathing,

A Fellow Idol

(P.S. By the way, I don’t think you’ll be able to reach her anyway. You should’ve stuck to your gut and got this piece of mail screened. This letter is coated in a poison that goes airborne when the envelope is opened. You won’t be touching Y/N anytime soon. Rot in hell, you son of a bitch.)

Shownu, horrified, belatedly realized the slipperiness of the paper was due to the poison. He was so confused, so filled with fear and that all ended when everything went black.

Laughter filled the apartment as sunlight streamed through the window.

“D-Did you see that? He- ha!”

“He just— I’m dying!”

You and Taeyong were curled up on the couch, laughing your asses off at the viral facebook post of cute shiba dogs being clumsy. You were stilled wrapped up in your laughter, however, the man’s warmth next to you still made you self-conscious. Taeyong might be a comfortable friend instead of an intimidating senior, but he was still an intimidating man. Pretty-boy looks he was known for, but whenever you were near him, there was a sort of self-assuredness and confidence that cornered you and had you speechless.

Well, not so much nowadays. Taeyong and you were genuinely good friends after the whole debacle. He talked to you, listened to you, gave you advice: even drove you to the hospital to visit your injured manager while standing as emotional support outside the room.

Although, Taeyong was sort of… strange? Perhaps it was just you, since you had never had a close guy friend or any romantic relationship of the sort, but something felt off. The handsome man never really wanted to leave you, not in the lovey-dovey kind of way but in the kind of intrusive fashion that made you late for things. Talking about other men in the presence of him had him incensed and sullen, often blackening his mood and ruining the day for both of you. He also had a weird thing about calling him oppa, always insisting you use the term instead of “sunbaenim” or”-ssi”.

You stroked your teddy bear in thought, hugging it tightly and blushing, remembering the things you had done with the teddy bear. Hugging it tight and close in embarrassment, a hard object pressed into your chest. Hoping Taeyong (who was enraptured by the video on screen) was not looking, you gently felt up the teddy bear.

In your fingers was something hard and square underneath all the fluff and stuffing of the bear’s head. You imperceptibly frowned. Was it a box of some sort? Maybe it was a device that helped it speak?

You watched Taeyong through your eyelashes, his sharp features glinting with the reflected light from the screen. God, he was so handsome.

Momentarily forgetting the box, you felt a deep ache in your heart for Taeyong. He was too kind, too gentle and caring for you not to fall deeply for. Stupid, inane, ridiculous— this infatuation was all sorts of stupid for so many reasons.

You were barely 20, he was already 25.

You just debuted, a rookie; he. an established senior.

You an idol from a small company; he, from a behemoth.

You, a girl who would get attacked for whatever she did; he, a beneficiary of a double standard.

But the heart wants what it wants.

You felt tears inadvertently well up in your eyes as you finally feel the hopelessness of the situation. Turning away so Taeyong wouldn’t notice the glistening tear roll down your cheek, you quickly compose yourself and turn back.

“Oppa? I’m going to get something, okay?”

He turned and you were once again faced with the full force of his attention. It was like a bag of sand on your shoulder, except you weren’t an air balloon and they weren’t getting cut off. No, they were piled and piled onto you like you were supposed to drown.

“Yeah, yeah. I get the cute babies and dogs all to myself now,” he joked, leaning back into the couch.

You took the hand of your teddy all the way to your bedroom, wiping your eyes along the way. You imagined you looked somewhat like a distressed toddler, padding back to your room.

Holding down the bear, you raised the pair of scissors over the gift.

Snip. Snip. Snip.

White stuffing exploded out of the cut, going this way and that way as you stuck your hand in. After a few seconds of blind searching, you pulled out the box you had felt against your chest earlier.

There, resting on your palm, was a camera with a blinking red light.

Taeyong lounged on the couch, feeling content but a little restless.

A feeling that usually pervaded his whole body when he was away from you.

When he could not touch you, see you, feel you, Taeyong was antsy. He couldn’t sit still, his eyes zoomed around like balls on a roulette table, couldn’t focus. It was like withdrawal, but from you.

His members noticed. They noticed he was maybe a tiny bit healthier, less gaunt, but forever distracted. Yuta remarked sullenly that he was always on his phone, never making time for the rest of the members in the dorm.

But how could he? How could he focus when dancing when his baby girl was just one swipe away?

Taeyong’s leg bounced up and down as he waited for Y/N to return from her room.

“Sunbaenim.”

Taeyong’s dark brows furrowed as heard your voice. You haven’t called him “sunbaenim” in private in weeks.

He turned around and what he saw nearly made his heart stop.

Taeyong’s face went through several phases. He turned bone-white in shock, eyes wide in panic, and stuttering in desperation.

“What is this?” you asked, your tone deceptively light.

“Y/N—”

“Why did I find a camera recording inside the stuffed bear you gave me?”

For once, Taeyong was speechless. He didn’t have a smooth condolence or excuse to give you. His eyes looked pained when his hands reached out towards you.

“Y/N, baby, let me explain.”

“Don’t call me baby! You better have some damn good explanation for this, I- after all this time? You’ve been spying on me?” you voice had gotten very angry but then had immediately turned anguished.

“Baby girl, please, I had to keep eyes on you somehow! I couldn’t just let you go, can’t you understand?”

“Understand what?”

“I’m fucking in love with you! I need you! I can’t breathe, can’t sleep, can’t eat without you!”

You reared back in shock.

“Taeyong, this isn’t love,” you spoke slowly, backing away from him. “T-this is obsession. You need help”

“This is love, Y/N. I have given up everything for you, I’ve done everything for you.”

He stalked towards you slowly, trying to not scare you off like a frantic doe.

“Why do you think your manager suddenly fell of a building? That bitch certainly didn’t fall off by herself. I fucking pushed her fat ass, I hid near the roof entrance and threw her off the skyline. It’s a pity she isn’t dead, but you know what? She’s in a coma and in pain, she deserves it after hurting you.”

“Oh my god—”

“There’s more! Remember our dear, handsome, Shownu?”

An expression of horror befell your face and seized your heart.

“No—”

“Your dearest Shownu is in the ER after being poisoned. It isn’t on the news, but I sent him that letter. It was a letter coated in poison. Poison that goes airborne after being exposed to the air after 24 hours in being in liquid form. He couldn’t man up for you, so I did away with him!” he shouted, sounding crazed and delirious and not like your Taeyong at all.

“Taeyong, you’re scaring me!”

He sucked in a gasp of pain, distress radiating from his whole body. His eyes were like fractured glass, broken, and had a touch of desperation shining in those mesmerizing depths.“Oh no, baby—”

You stumbled away from his body.

He relented and sat back down on the couch reluctantly. When he sighed, it felt like he was on the cusp of doing something but he just put his head in his hands.

After a moment of tense fear, he spoke up. “I gave up so much for you. I gave up the pills for you.”

“Pills?”

“After my injury last year, I was addicted to narcotics. They just got rid of all the pain in my body and in my mind. You have to understand, baby girl, I was distraught. I couldn’t participate in the world tour with all my members, couldn’t see my fans, couldn’t even fucking perform of my broken leg. I didn’t even know if I would be able to perform afterwards.”

You let out a small gasp.

“But for you, after seeing you on stage on our win looking like salvation, I gave it all up—”

“ —and focused all on me,” you whispered.

He nodded, his eyes scanning over you and his body tense in anticipation, like he expected you to bolt.

Your head was spinning. All these revelations being revealed. Taeyong, the sweet, caring, oppa of yours that had helped you through pain was the a criminal, a menace to society that had nearly killed two people. He was insane, delusional, a sasaeng of the worst kind— the kind that thought he was in love. You needed space, or else him and his eyes and his passion would consume you and never let go.

“I- I Taeyong—”

“Oppa,” he muttered.

“-this,” you waved a frantic hand between the space of you two “isn’t healthy. I need to think—”

You hadn’t even blinked before Taeyong slammed you into a wall, pressing his lips onto you like a brand. His hands grasped your waist tightly to him like he was trying to meld your body with his, trying to crawl into a cavity and never come out.

“Baby girl,” he said in between the kisses. “Don’t leave, me, please.”

“No, we need to talk this out—”

“No talking, Y/N. Sometimes we need our bodies to express some things that can’t be spoken for us. I have been waiting to touch you for real for months.”

His slender fingers didn’t even fumble when they slid underneath your t-shirt. His thumbs massaged the skin of your sensitive sides. His fingers left goosebumps in their wake while they slowly traveled up and up until his hands were right beneath your bra.

Meanwhile, his other hand had played with the edge of the back your shorts. Slipping in and out, unable to choose whether to play with elastic of your shorts or your panties.

Please, just go in! You frantically thought and then immediately recoiled in disgust. This criminal, this murderer, was touching you and you submitted to him like a bitch in the heat? You raised your knee to hit to where the sun didn’t shine.

Almost predicting your actions, he smirked into your kiss and slipped in whole hand into your panties. Your knee dropped as you clenched your teeth, the wall supporting the whole of your weight. He was now cupping your butt in his large, slender hands and he pulled you in even more towards his body.

“Oh, baby girl, you’re mine, you know that? Since the day I saw you…”

His hand abruptly pushed your bra cup and was holding your breast in hand. A reluctant moan came from your lips as you tensed from the sensations.

“…to the day I saw you getting off on the teddy bear I gave.”

You gasped, embarrassed and ashamed then tried to push him off, but Taeyong took advantage of your parted lips and slipped his tongue. You were still a deep red, now knowing he knew of that time you humped his teddy bear picturing him, imagining his fingers you.

He chuckled deeply, letting it hang in the air. “What a naughty girl, huh? No one would never expect that kind of wantonness from you.”

“But, me?” He whispered, right at your ear. The puffs of air coming from his lips rushed over your skin and you shivered. You were so over-sensitized, feeling his hands on your butt on your chest on your neck— fuck, he was everywhere. You needed him stop before you couldn’t think why this was wrong and- “I see it. You’re all for me to devour.”

Taeyong started stripping off your shorts, and a soft hiss was heard as they were dropped to the floor around your feet. His talented hands started unclasping the clasp of your bra strap and you felt the decompression of the band around your chest.

“You’re like alcohol, you know? To me,” he casually said, as if you were having a conversation instead of groping each other.

He rubbed his fingers near the crevice of your thighs. “You begin the night wanting to nurse a glass, to savor it, taste it.”

“But in the end, you just end up drinking the whole damn thing and get the most wonderful high.”

Taeyong, without warning, pinched your clit. A shout left your lips and he quickly quieted you down, pressing his lips against yours. Your hands clenched his broad shoulders like a vice and you shamefully looked downwards, unable to look this man in the eyes. What were you doing with this- this sinner?

Rubbing two fingers against the wetness coating your nether lips, he slipped them in and curled.

“Taeyong!” you gasped.

He played your pussy like a well-practiced instrument, undulating with an unheard rhythm known to his ears only and you could only anticipate. A bit pressure this way, he learned, made you gasp, but a curl in this direction made you keen loudly and hump against your hand. You couldn’t believe your mind was kept captive by your helpless body, and you wished so badly you could tell him stop but--

He lightly stroked your clit and you jumped, shaking in his arms until he held you still. Over and over again he pressed but never at the prefect pressure or the perfect spot.

Abruptly, he pulled his fingers out of you. He nearly creamed himself when he saw you pouting your perfect lips up at him, pressing yourself against him like a wanton whore.

“Do you really want this, baby girl? Tell me,” he said, wrenching at your shirt to get it off.

“Yes!” you hissed, far beyond rational thought at this point.

“Well, my baby girl has to show it for oppa, okay?”

He scooped your bare legs up and sat on the couch, you straddling his lap.

“You’re going to cum while grinding yourself against my dick,” he smiled wickedly as he roughly guided your hips atop his bulge.

“W-what?” you asked confusion.

He grabbed your hand and placed it atop the bulge in his trousers. The bulge twitched and thrummed under your touch while a vein popped out from Taeyong’s forehead.

Taeyong leaned up to your ear. “You get to hump yourself against a real dick this time. Not some pathetic teddy bear.”

You looked reluctantly at him, butbegan to undulate your panty-clad pussy against his clothed dick.

“Faster, baby. You can do better than that.”

More and more you went over his dick, stimulating your clit in the most wonderful of ways. Actually having a warm presence under you increased your pleasure ten fold and adding in the fact it was Taeyong? One hundred fold. You felt a wet spot forming on his trousers and already soaking your ruined panties.

“I want to see you come undone for me. Need me. Want me.”

You clenched your eyes shut as you stuffed a hand in your mouth to stop yourself from screaming. You tried to angle your clit into touching the hump of his dick underneath his trousers, but it just rubbed against your pussy lips.

Taeyong thrust up for the first time while you, in mid grind, harshly pushed against his dick.

It hit the spot.

Even with your hand covering your mouth, your scream could be heard throughout the apartment. You came apart on Taeyong’s lap, not even being penetrated, and you shook uselessly against his chest.

He laughed that annoying chuckle again, cool and calm as a cucumber. He stroked your back as you came down from your high, holding you against him desperately.

“Good job baby girl, I’m gonna do my part now.”

Flipping you over on your back, he pulled at your panties you lifted yourself up, allowing him to take the soaked material from your core. Your pussy was exposed to the cold air and, seeing his eyes resting on your vagina, you clenched your legs together.

“Tsk, tsk, my baby girl shouldn’t hide herself away from me,” he spoke serenely while painfully wrenching your legs apart, veins popping out for his forearms from the effort.

He finally took your bra off your chest, and your nipples stiffened in the cold air.

Taeyong’s eyes glazed over and he groaned, nearly falling to his knees from the pure perfection of the sight of you naked.

Taeyong took off his shirt then unbuttoned his trousers and he exposed his cock to your hazy vision. He stroked his dick, spreading the precum along the veiny sides.

Lowering himself, he buried his head in your neck and his cock pressed against the entrance to your core. You grasped onto his broad shoulders, feeling his defined collarbones beneath your feelings, and tightened your grip.

“You’re the first thing I think of in the morning, anytime, and I’ll make you think of no one but me.”

With that, he thrusted harshly in. Mutual moans of appreciation were elicited from you two. He was a perfect fit inside of you, providing the puzzle piece to you incomplete puzzle. It felt like your nerves were going haywire after being surrounded by him.

“I knew you would be a perfect fit. You’re mine,” He stated it like a fact of nature.

He rolled his hips against yours and you couldn’t stay still. Your hand searched for something to latch onto in an ocean of pleasure, and Taeyong’s hand was the beacon of light to hold on to.

Your pussy clenched him at different times, often catching Taeyong off-guard and having to rein himself in from cumming inside you too quick. After your last pulse which nearly brought him crashing headfirst into oblivion, he removed himself from you.

You whined, your legs trying to bring him back in. However, Taeyong just flipped you over and dragged you to the edge of your couch, throwing you over the arm. Your butt stuck up high in the air while you buried your face into a pillow, screaming in anticipation. He quickly slipped himself back in and you screamed.

This position let you feel him better, and let him go deeper. He hit spots he hadn’t before while you were on your back. He was panting loudly, and you could bet sweat was running down the sides of his chiseled face.

All your pining and his obsession was coming to a culmination. He thrusted harder and harder into you until you could feel your cheeks turn red. You could feel his desperation in his hands, that clutched you like he was never going to let go and his thrusts, rutting into you like a demon.

“My goddess, my goddess,” he repeated like a mantra.

“Taeyong!” you yelped. Inside you was an even more vibrant explosion than your dreams could have ever fathomed, consuming your vision and you body and everywhere. You thrashed in this overwhelming pleasure, being consumed and devoured by a passion.

“Yes, baby girl, cum for me— oh, fuck!”

His hips stuttered as his cum coated your walls white, thrusting his semen into you. The feeling was so pleasurable you felt like you nearly had a second orgasm. You felt his cum coat the lips of your vagina and slowly run down your thighs.

He stopped, and hunched over you, breathing harshly. Taeyong put a shirt on you as he fell back into the couch, pulling you to sit on his lap.

“I- I love you!” you blurted out suddenly. You groaned in embarrassment as you covered your eyes.

“Baby girl, you don’t know how glad I am to hear that. I’ve loved you from the first time I saw you. I can’t even explain what I feel for you, that’s why I’ve done crazy things for you. Feelings like this come once in a lifetime and you can’t let them go, no matter the price,” he whispered, stroking your belly with infinitive care, knowing what must be forming in your belly right now.

The sound of a click resounded throughout the apartment and you looked up to see the three horrified faces of Bolin, Bella, and Sunmi through the doorway.

Sleep, Y/N. We’re going somewhere far, far away from here and I promise…

… you’ll love me…

…YOU’LL NEED ME…

holy shit, i have had to repost this because it’s not showing up in the tags im so sorry if you’ve seen this like 12837293472 times

[every1studio]

SERIES: “stages of love: words left unsaid” [ateez: wooyoung]

genre: a dash of angst + small fluff + some smut + kind of long 

ficstyle: bulletpoints + series  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [END]

prompt: inspired by “1,2″ by Lee Hi [listen to Hanbin demo version for max. effects] + “We Don’t Talk Together” by Heize ft Giriboy  + “Hold Me Tight” by BTS 

note: [this fic as some smut, so if you are uncomfortable with smut; DO NOT READ //  also has mentions of alcohol and self-harm ): ]

your heart was caught in your throat when you got that text from Mingi

the one saying that he was still touring in Japan and wasn’t going to meet up with Yunho at the airport

so why did Yunho text you that

why would he lie to you?

all of your trust for him slowly started to crumble 

right then and there, you get a call from Yunho 

your shaking hands fumbled as you swiped to answer the call 

“h-hey?” you didn’t want to suspect him of anything without any evidence

“hey are you free? I... I wanna see you..” you could see his puppy-like smile through the tone of his voice

but this could all be a facade; maybe you didn’t know everything about him like you thought you did

“yeah! sure! did...” you prayed that this conversation wouldn’t be the break of your relationship 

“did you pick up Mingi from the airport?”

you hear him nervously chuckle, “his flight got cancelled so I just went to dance studio to get ready for this week’s classes..”

you wish he was telling the truth

what was so bad that he had to lie to you?

you just recently reunited with your best friend from your childhood 

not only was he your best friend.. but he was your crush 

you couldn’t talk to him in person about this

with the safety of being in your own bed, you HAD to know the truth 

you had dealt through too many problems with your love life

you had enough 

“I texted Mingi”

there was no reply on the other side of the line 

“Y/N...can I please talk to you in person..”

you felt your tightening the grip on your phone

“whatever you need to say, you can say it right now.. if you feel like there’s nothing you NEED to say... then I don’t want to talk to you.. at all”

the line was still on but the only thing you heard was his devastation 

“that’s it then...goodbye Yunho” 

you hung up the phone and blocked him right away

you didn’t want to feel so pathetic but you did

you clenched your fists so tight you could feel your fingernails digging pain into your hands 

but nothing hurt more than having the concept of love failing you 

over and over and over again 

you got a text from San

-hey! there’s a party tonight at a friend’s place, wanna come with?

that was all you needed to get all of this off of your mind

even though you were more of the reserved type and would consider yourself to be more of an introvert than an extrovert, you wanted to go to that party 

and have fun without worrying about anything or anyone 

you wanted to feel like expensive version of yourself 

you always covered your body but tonight was the night you were going to show off your curves

you wanted to stand out so you found the brightest and tightest dress you owned; which was a bright, true red bodycon dress with piped linings that extenuated your boobs and your chest 

it was shorter than what you usually wore but having it be held up by two non functional strings that were meant to be straps that constantly fell off of your shoulders

you matched this dress with some nude, red-bottom heels that your mom got you for Christmas 

you let your hair out of your usual messy ponytail and lightly curled it

watching makeup tutorials for fun made you inspired to get more into this new character of yours; your followed an easy smokey eyeshadow look that wouldn’t be overwhelming for some mascara 

paired it with a transferproof darker red lip and packed on some highlighter so you could glow to the gods

and pray that with a look like this, you can finally find a guy who appreciates you 

San sends you a text saying that he’s at the door as you were spraying on some luxurious perfume 

he could hear you trotting to the door in what sounded like high heels 

his brows were raised as his eyes were about to pop out of his sockets

you were absolutely stunning and breathtaking and all of the words in the dictionary could not describe how beautiful you looked 

San almost forgot the promise he made to himself when you loop your arm around his

“ready?”

he smiles and nods as he walks you to his car 

San was trying hard to keep his eyes on the road when you were right there next to him 

“so... is Mingi in town?”

you clenched your teeth so that you try and control your tears from welling up

“no... I.. don’t wanna talk about Mingi... or Yunho..”

it broke his heart to see you so sad but he nods and changes the subject 

you were so surprised to see that there was a parking lot for house near a college campus 

you didn’t know that it was a GRAND party

“how do you know someone like this?” you were in awe as the cool air hit you as you got out of the car

“you could say he is just a classmate who has become a pretty good friend of mine..”

you started to feel self-conscious of yourself; maybe you wouldn’t fit in

right when the door open was when you saw the closest thing you’ve seen of a Greek God 

“oh.. San.. is this your plus one?” the boy’s voice was just as charming as his face  

San put his arm around your shoulder, “this is Y/N, my friend.. Y/N, this is Wooyoung.. who’s also my friend..”

Wooyoung reached out for a hug, “a friend of San is a friend of mine”

you could get intoxicated by his scent

how could a guy be so infuriatingly handsome in every way?

a group of girls were passing by when Wooyoung politely stops them, “excuse me ladies, could you help my friend here get settled in with some drinks?” 

they giggled and nodded as they took your hand and led you into the house 

you look back at San and Wooyoung as they nodded at you indicating that is was okay 

San turns back to Wooyoung

“so what’s up?” 

Wooyoung massaged the back of his neck in a shy manner

“Y/N.. you said she was just a friend right?”

San’s stomach began to churn, “yup.. just a friend..”

San could see the glimmer of hope in Wooyoung’s eye

“it’s okay if I... get to know her?” he moves his head in the direction you walked in 

“maybe you should just... yeah... just get to know her I guess...” 

you were surrounded by the bunch of girls that escorted you to the table with the drinks 

“how do you know such a handsome guy?”

“are you close with Wooyoung?”

“what’s the other guy’s name?”

“you’re so pretty! no wonder the guys are into you! who are you interested in?”

you were so confused by the choices of questions that were asked, you had no idea how to answer them 

but before you could say anything, you felt a gentle hand on your back 

“sorry ladies, I’m gonna have to steal Y/N from you for a moment..”

they nodded as they giggled about finding San 

you looked up and saw Wooyoung

he was such a gentleman; you found yourself blushing 

he refills your drink then leads you out to the area where the music was blaring 

small talk led to a heart to heart talk 

“so... are you seeing anyone?” you were surprised that someone like Wooyoung would be interested in someone like you 

“well... it’s kind of complicating but-”

“Y/N?”

that familiar voice made chills rush down your spine 

you turned as saw Yunho

with Aurora clinging onto his arm 

as if this girl couldn’t stop ruining your life, she had to take your best friend, your childhood friend, your first love

you wanted to hide and runaway; you subconsciously gripped the shirt 

Wooyoung reading your body language, he slithered his arm around your waist and pulled you closer

“what business do you have with Y/N?”

Yunho sobered up right when he saw you 

he wanted to push Aurora off of his arm but she was clinging in a little too tightly for comfort 

“I wanted to check up on her-”

“are you her boyfriend?” Wooyoung cuts him off

but you answer instead of Yunho, “no, he isn’t.. I wouldn’t want a boyfriend who would lie to me...”

you pulled Wooyoung into the dance circle

Aurora wanted to follow suit and tried to drag Yunho

Yunho doesn’t budge, “what are you doing?”

“who does she think she is? now she’s with some rich guy? come on we have to show her that we’re better than her..”

Yunho still doesn’t budge when Aurora tries to tug a little harder

“what is it to you anyways? just leave her alone..”

“because all the guys that I want to be with always talk about her, okay? I’m sick of it!” Aurora screams only for a couple of people around her to hear her through the blasting music 

when Aurora went for Hongjoong, all he kept talking about was how amazing you were at composing and singing and playing the guitar

when she went back to Seonghwa to sabotage you, he ended up not going back with her because he was the one missing you and not her 

when she dated Jongho, he would say that he would be better being single than ever dating someone as toxic as her, then saw him smiling at your little gestures a couple days after 

she was sick of hearing about you and seeing you 

she wanted to be the one with the attention; you were in her way 

so when Yunho confronted her about ruining your love life, she blackmailed him saying that if he didn’t date her, she would continue to destroy your life in ways that couldn’t even be explained

Yunho only wanted your happiness and was scared for you, so he agreed 

he hated every moment of it; she made sure that he would lie to you via texting or calling

taking up all of his free time so that you couldn’t even meet up with him 

she even told him that if he told her, she would injure herself because of him

although he didn’t like her, he didn’t want her to inflict self-harm 

he knew she needed some sort of mental help so he decided to be her “boyfriend” to help her out 

in exchange, he didn’t have the chance of telling how he felt about you and how much he cared for you 

seeing you with another guy shattered his heart in pieces but he knew that he probably shattered yours into fine dust 

and all of this was his fault

Yunho let Aurora drag him like a ragdoll 

when you saw Yunho and Aurora in your sight, you turned yourself to them as you started to dance on Wooyoung

Wooyoung gently sweeps your hair off of your shoulders as he leans in to ask, “are you okay? is there anything I can do? do you want me to kick them out?”

you could feel the tears accumulating as you interlocked your hands around his neck

“please make me forget about him..”

without another word, Wooyoung pulls you in closer to his body and cups his other hand on your face as he leans in to kiss you 

it was a needy yet gentle kiss; you couldn’t get enough of it 

you felt a little pride swell up inside of you knowing that Yunho and Aurora were watching the two of you 

Aurora wanted to copy you and Wooyoung but Yunho just couldn’t take his eyes off of you

he was so angry at himself; he could’ve been the one kissing you and holding you tight 

“shall we take this elsewhere?” Wooyoung lets you catch your breath

when your eyes meet his, it’s like the world stopped for a minute

you could tell that he was genuinely worried about you and that you were okay with everything that he asked of 

you nodded and he led you to another part of the house where no one was allowed

how classy was it to be escorted to his room while getting frisky in the elevator 

his thick thigh kept some friction for you inbetween your legs 

your hands were tugging his hair to his shirt 

his hands were all over your body yet you were comfortable with it 

if anything you wanted more

it was like..

“it’s like my hands are made for your body”

he said exactly what you were thinking

right when you heard the ding of the elevator, Wooyoung swept you up like a princess as he was huffing through his smile 

“I’m gonna make sure that you’ll only be thinking about me tonight, princess”

maybe it was the alcohol but you felt a certain type of warm tingling sensation fill you up to the brim 

despite of the lust in his eyes, he was really gentle with you 

he placed you comfortably on the bed as he peppered you in kisses from your forehead down to your pooling heat as he hikes your dress up to get access to where you needed attention 

before he continues he looks to meet eyes with you, “I want to know that you’re okay with this..”

you nod but he wasn’t satisfied with just that; he cowers over you so that you could look at him, face to face

“I want to hear you say if you are.. I want you to be comfortable with-”

you cut him off with a passionate kiss

you had sex before but it was only a one-night stand kind of deal

but this time, you felt like it was going to be different 

“I’m okay.. I’ll let you know if it isn’t...”

you could feel him smile through the kiss

“you’re absolutely beautiful... I want you to feel like the most beautiful girl in the world because you are”

he goes back down to take off your panties with his teeth

if you didn’t feel yourself growing wet since you were dancing with him

you definitely did now

Wooyoung leaned in to take in all of your essence; you whined at the lack of pleasure 

“Wooyoung.. please..”

“so eager for me..”

with that he dove himself right into your heat; his nose continuously hitting your clit 

you didn’t know that he was going to go that hard but you loved every moment of it 

he was working you up so good that you didn’t know what to do between pushing his head away or pushing closer to you

you felt yourself quickly spiraling into an abyss of pleasure 

“Woo-Wooyoung.. I-I..”

he quickens the pace of his tongue as he adds in his finger

for every time that you clench around his tongue and finger, he adds another finger

by the time he got to three fingers, you were seeing the Milky Way 

your body convulsively shook under Wooyoung

he was just in awe watching you come down from your high

you were sprawled out for him; your straps hanging off of your shoulders, hair placed as if you were an art piece from the Renaissance and just panting as you squeezed tears of pleasure from your eyes

Wooyoung leans down to kiss them with the scent of you still covering his mouth, “how’s my baby doing?”

you didn’t know why; you just met this guy and yet you have completely fallen head over heels for him 

the way he called you baby made you feel like he was just about everything you wanted and more  

“I want more”

that was all Wooyoung needed to unravel

he unbuttoned his black satin shirt showcasing his toned-body 

although he left his shirt on, he completely took off everything from the lower part of his body

you drooled at the sight of his proudly standing member; you couldn’t keep your eyes off of it

Wooyoung chuckles as he lifts your chin up to look at him, “eyes up here, princess..”

you too wanted to take off your clothes but Wooyoung stops you

“leave them on.. you look so good I want to remember me fucking you in this dress so that every time I see this dress I can remember how we met..”

Wooyoung reaches over to grab a condom but you gently grab his wrist

“it’s okay, I’m on birth control... I want to feel all of you...”

he lines himself up to your entrance as he leans into your neck, “you really know how to drive a man crazy...”

there was a mix feeling of pain and pleasure as you could feel him stretching you out

your hands ran through his hair as he continued to work on his deep, purple love bites on your neck 

you didn’t notice how spacious his room was until you heard the echos of the lewd sounds of Wooyoung slamming himself into you 

you couldn’t stop saying his name 

it was as if it was the only word you knew 

“nngh..Y/N.. baby please... don’t clench like that or I’ll cum in seconds...” Wooyoung grunted 

surprised by how much strength he had while still being able to fuck you, he picked you up to flip you around

you were propped up on your elbow as he placed his hands on your raised hips 

he never stopped pumping his dick in and out of you

as soon as you were adjusted into your new position, you started to clench around him again; you couldn’t help it

Wooyoung exhales through his smiles as he could feel himself reaching his peak

“baby, please tell me that you’re getting close because I am-” 

but you reached it before you could even reply to him

your body shook even harder than the first time he made you orgasm; making you squeeze around him harder than you have before 

he came a couple seconds after

you could feel how his thick cum fill you up inside to the point that you could feel it overflowing out of you 

Wooyoung lightly swept the hair away from your neck to kiss it before slowly taking himself out of you

you were and looked completely spent 

he gets up to get you something to clean you up

you took this time to look around his room 

although it was a spacious room, it wasn’t heavily decorated; if anything it was kind of empty, kind of lonely 

he returns with his pants back on, holding a wet towel and some water

“you’re really something you know that?” he’s always smiling but you feel like there’s something more to his smile 

you chuckle trying to hide your blush, “are you like this with all of the girls?”

he gets up from cleaning you up and fixes your dress and hair

“I actually don’t do this as often as you think..” Wooyoung brushes his sweat-covered hair back so that it’s not sticking to his forehead

“even though you host all of these glamorous parties?” you were feeling pretty exhausted but you wanted to talk to him and get to know him

you didn’t want this to be another one-night stand for the books

Wooyoung wraps his arm around you and has your head in the crook of his neck and shoulder 

“hey now, I’m not your typical college fuckboy, you know..” 

you both laughed softly over the muffled sound of the party downstairs 

“so I’m guessing the guy with Aurora was the guy you were seeing but it was complicated?”

you nodded, “everyone knows Aurora huh...”

Wooyoung sees you sulking, so he pulls you back onto the bed so that your head falls onto his chest, “she’s just a homewrecker... she’s not worth your time, sweetie.. trust me”

“I don’t know.. he was my best friend, childhood friend and first love all in one.. and she’s ruin my life more than just one time a year...”

you wanted to change the topic, “what about you? what’s going on in your life?”

it was like you knew that Wooyoung’s smile was just a mask under his worries, “well.. my dad wants me to take over his plane company.. but I don’t want to. I want to pursue being a pilot. I can’t be a pilot and run a company at the same time. he wants me to run the company, even though my brother is the one who wants to run it...so you can say me and you have it pretty tough huh”

“are you kidding? you’re dealing with grown up stuff and I’m still caught up on the idea of love!”

you didn’t notice that Wooyoung was just looking at you the whole time as you raised your voice

“I think that love is some pretty hardcore group stuff too...” 

you nodded and you both just sat there in the dimmed room with the music still playing in the background 

“you wanna go back down to the party? to show off your battle scars?” Wooyoung broke the silence, “or do you want to runaway, to start over?”

your eyes widened as you looked up at him, “runaway?”

“we could start over? I know we just met.. but I’m willing to take that chance and give you everything to be happy”

you were feeling kind of skeptical, “you wish happiness upon a stranger at first sight?”

“I wish happiness for a girl who deserves more than what the world has to offer”

you got up from his bed to get a better look at him, “I need a couple days...”

Wooyoung follows your action and grabs your hands, “take all the time you need.. it was just an option... maybe we could just get to know each other before we take a big step..”

Wooyoung escorts you back downstairs with his black denim jacket thrown over your shoulders 

you were wobbly from how hard he went on you; he couldn’t help chuckle at his handiwork

you’d jokingly give him a side glare every time he did

you met San on the other side of the elevator 

the first thing he saw was how you clung onto Wooyoung 

how the hickies he gave you popped under Wooyoung’s denim jacket 

to be frankly speaking, San was already heartbroken when he knew he didn’t have a chance with you 

but he was even more broken to see that you would never see him the way you saw a potential lover 

but nevertheless, he smiles, “looks like the two of you were busy. ready to go home?”

you kissed Wooyoung on the cheek before looping your arm through San’s, “I’ll text you when I get home?” 

“I’d rather you call,” Wooyoung said with a seductive smile 

San gives Wooyoung a handshake before taking you back to the car

you and San walked passed all the guys that have affected your love life since you started college

Hongjoong, Seonghwa, Yeosang, Yunho, Jongho

every time you saw one of them, you clung closer and tighter to San

San stares at all of them; knowing who they were and how they broke your heart 

and what he could’ve done to be the one by your side making you happy 

earlier when Wooyoung took you upstairs, San pulled Yunho over to talk to him when Aurora went to the bathroom

“are you trying to break Y/N’s heart? you already broke it once and you’re gonna do it again?”

Yunho shoves San, “don’t talk about Y/N like you know her-”

“I know that she loved you.. I know that she was head over heels for you.. I know that Aurora was the bitch that made you lose hope in love.. so seeing her with you? you’re basically ripping her heart out of her chest..” 

San shoves Yunho back and walks away 

Yunho couldn’t take it anymore 

he had to find you

he had to tell you the truth 

so when he finally found you exiting the elevator, clearly having moved on with Wooyoung, he lost hope

maybe he should just keep the truth to himself

you already seem like you’re happier in the last hour with Wooyoung than you have with Yunho for all your life 

but Hongjoong had words he wanted to say to you too

so did Seonghwa

and Yeosang

and San

and Mingi 

and Jongho 

but they would’ve all kept it to themselves.. because you were glowing now

you had shelled out of your cocoon and had transformed into a beautiful, unattainable butterfly 

these were the boys that left their words unsaid; for the happiness of the girl that they love 

PLEASE LEMME KNOW IF YOU WANT A SEPARATE ENDING FOR EACH MEMBER OR ONE FINAL ENDING WITH ONE SPECIAL MEMBER???

[ masterlist + guidelines ]

[romancingromanoff]

What Happens At Disney.... Part 2/3

youHe: 

Just a bunch of Disneyworld fluff! Also more one-on-one time with Nat in this one; you get a makeover and her and Ariel compete for best redhead.  

Part 1 here//Part 3 here

Tony coughed, “So now what?” The rest of the crew is standing around awkwardly in what Cap calls their “civilian clothes.” He’s sporting a plain white tee and a blue baseball cap (of course, because America) while Tony has opted for a more business casual look with a fancy short sleeved collared shirt and a tie. That’s about as casual as he gets but you just hope that he can try and relax and have fun today. There’s nothing that Thor could wear that wouldn’t make him look like a super granola California surfer guy. His man bun is attracting a lot of female attention, but then again, you suppose that that happens most of the time anyway. Bruce, of course, manages to look awkward in whatever clothing he’s wearing. He has a lot of purple shirts but he’s decided to go with the one you got him for Christmas with a small pocket over his left breast that you told him was where he was supposed to put his matching pen you also had made. You think it’s sweet that he’s wearing it today. Clint is also wearing some shorts and a tee along with some actual worn in sneakers; he probably blends in the most with the crowd.

Then there’s Nat- your girlfriend. She could pull off anything of course but today she’s just wearing some shorts, a black tank, and some combat boots. She’s quite the opposite of yourself in terms of the color palette she prefers but you secretly love that her neutral-toned basic pieces allow her red hair to shine and frame your favorite part about her- her face and those green eyes. Her hands are casually in her front pockets and she would almost seem relaxed if not for the fact that she was perpetually scanning the area around her and moving her eyes around to check for potential threats wherever she goes. You sigh and grab one of her hands into your own and pull her towards one of the stores and motion for everyone else to follow behind you.

“Well, me and Nat are going to the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique so can you boys wait for us nearby? Thor, I think they sell giant turkey legs at that stand over there,” you see his face perk up at the mention of huge slabs of meat and he’s gone before you can blink.

“Aw, c’mon Thor! You can’t just push the kids out of the way like that!” Bruce groans and goes after him followed by Clint, Steve (who has entered reluctant babysitter mode) and Tony because apparently he just coincidentally wants to “go in that vague direction.”

“Okay, but I am not allowing them to touch my hair,” Natasha warns and you just give her a peck on her cheek before dragging her into the store. It’s like what you imagine Princess Jasmine’s salon is actually like as there are golden chandeliers, giant mirrors, and long silky curtains and drapes of all different colors decorating the giant space. Two of the stylists greet you with great big smiles and start giving you information on all of the different packages they offer.

“Of course not,” you smile. “Remember, this is my makeover, buddy. And I don’t want you stealing away my thunder anyway when you’re already a billion times prettier than me.”

“Get in the chair, you dork,” she snorts as you take a seat in the styling chair and the ladies begin their work. You decide to go with some simple makeup (just a little bit of blush, neutral eyeshadow, winged eyeliner, some lipgloss in the shade that Aurora wears, and light mascara with only a tiny bit of sparkly highlighter) and a giant Elsa-braid.  

“Oooh, help me pick out the perfect ears!” you squeal dragging Nat over to a wall of an assortment of glittery Minnie Mouse ears next. A pair of sparkly white ones with a red bow catches you eye which Nat notices and she reaches up to grab them for you.

“If I have any input, I’d like to see wearing these in the bedroom,” she says in that sultry voice as your face blushes and she slips them onto you.

“Shush, Nat, this is a public place with little kids,” you swat at her but can’t help but catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and you tilt your head modeling them off for her as she smiles watching. “But I do look really good in these,” you admit. “I didn’t know you were into that kind of stuff,” you say to her in a lowered voice and pray that the store is busy enough that no one can hear your private conversation over all of the noise. She just gives you a grin which tells you she’s up to no good and pulls out her phone to show you a pair of very expensive, but stunning cat ears from a website you personally would have been afraid to visit off of private browsing mode.

“I don’t know, maybe playing cat and mouse could be kinda fun,” she says suggestively and you give her a quick kiss on her lips.

“Hey, don’t make me mess up my lipstick,” you warn with a laugh.

“Not until we get home, I promise.”

You meet with the boys just in time to stop Thor from consuming half of all of the turkey legs this poor vendor has and Tony suggests that you all go on a ride.

“How about the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train?” you suggest. “You know, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?”

“I understood that reference,” Steve’s got this huge smile on his face when you mention what was one of the only Disney animated films that came out pre-WWII. 

“Well, apparently the ride is just as old as you Capsicle,” Tony mocks him and pulls up his phone which he has on a website that shows all of the times you have to wait in line for a ride. “Because the train broke down while the dwarfs must have been hi-hoing to work.”

You can’t help but get a bit sad and your sulk a little bit before Nat gently rubs your arm and shoots Tony an angry glare. “Buuuuuuuut,” he begins obviously intimidated by Romanoff. “Luckily, I am an engineering genius so I’ll see what I can do to fix it.”

Perhaps the only perk of having a super egotistical genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist for a friend is that they never take “no” for an answer and can talk their way into pretty much anything when you need a favor from them. The seven of you eventually found your way to the control room which was underground in the infamous tunnels that only workers were allowed to see. 

“I don’t know, Tony, I get kind of claustrophobic and being underground probably isn’t good for my stress,” Bruce worries as Tony is nagging him to help him with the tools. 

“Hey, it’s the happiest place on earth, so get the hell in here,” he says and you hear Bruce groan. You, Clint, Nat, and Steve just decide to awkwardly wait outside while they’re arguing over mechanics and Tony is criticizing the Mouse for “not having adept technicians” when you decide you’d rather go explore around the corner and at least look for a bathroom. You excuse yourself and head into the labyrinth that is Disney’s Underground Maze and can’t help but stare at all of the half-human half-animal creatures you run into. There’s Chip & Dale without their costume heads on so it just looks like two normal guys’ heads floating on top of the bodies of some obese chipmunks, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland is standing in a corner cursing out his girlfriend over the phone, and someone else with Tigger’s head and a woman’s body almost bumps into you. That’s when you stumble upon what looks like another dressing room and you peak in to find that it’s full of all of the Princess character-actors putting on their makeup and wigs.

“Oh my God, you’re Y/N!” a super perky voice catches you by surprise and you almost trip over yourself before the owner of that voice manages to catch you. She’s wearing the most magnificent mint green ball gown which is sleeveless. You know it’s a wig, but she’s got the most voluptuous red curls that frame her kind face so nicely that you can’t help but stutter as she smiles at you. After all, you’ve always had a thing for redheads and though she’s a little too bubbly for your taste, you have to admit that she’s very beautiful.  “Wow, it is so cool to meet you!” Princess Ariel exclaims before she starts complimenting you on all of the work you do. “I’m such a huge fan of yours!”

“Thank you very much, it’s nice to run into someone that thinks so,” you say. “And I’m such a big fan of your’s, I mean, of Ariel’s since I guess you are her.. or.. are you? Um, what should I call you?” you feel so embarrassed tripping over your own words confused about what the rules are for breaking out of character but she just laughs it off. You had no idea that the employees here could be so nice.

“I’m off the clock right now so you can call me Stella,” she winks and you try to play it off like you totally know what’s going on. “How long are you going to be here in Orlando?”

“A couple of days. I really want to visit all of the different parks.”

“Well,” she reaches into the dressing room and grabs what looks like a sticky note and a Mickey Mouse pen. “Let me know if you’d like someone to show you around, you know, after hours. I can give you the secret tour; get us a dinner reservation somewhere nice,” she winks at you again and then you finally catch on to what she means after she hands you the note which you see has a phone number on it. 

“Oh, uh-”

“Thanks, but my girlfriend knows I won’t kiss her if she’s been eating seafood,” you whip around to see Natasha standing there looking like she’s death itself about ready to take this poor girl away to hell. 

“I, uh, I gotta go,” Stella hurries into the dressing room closing the door after her and you’re left with an angry assassin with her arms crossed just waiting for an explanation.

“Natasha, I swear, I had no idea she was flirting with me.”

“I know. That’s exactly how she took advantage of you,” she almost darts into the room but you block the door before she can go kill anybody.

“Hey, she was not taking advantage of me,” you retort. 

“I saw how you were mesmerized by her hair and that stupid starfish clip.”

“It’s a wig, Natasha. You know I like my women to be naturally redheaded... even if they get a little green sometimes,” you playfully push her understandingly taking her two hands into yours and pulling her closer. “I only have eyes for you,” you whisper and she rolls her eyes trying to resist the puppy  eyes you’re giving her.

“Okay, but if she flirts with you again then I’m ripping that wig right off.”

Natasha won’t let go of your hand as you find your way back to Tony and Bruce who have finally finished repairing the ride. Coming back up above ground, the sun’s glare kind of blinds all of you and you notice Clint looks especially bothered.

“Hey, save that perfect hawk-vision of yours,” you pull out a pair of sunglasses from your bag and offer them to him.

“Thanks,” he says slipping them on over his squinting eyes before Thor, Tony, and Nat erupt in laughter. Clint just stands there confused for a second as his eyes readjust just before he realizes that the sunglasses you’ve given him are from the Pixie Hollow collection and are bright pink with tons of sequins all over the winged-shaped frames.

“You know what? My eyesight needs protection more than my masculinity, which I am completely comfortable with, so you guys can just go blind. Have fun staring at the sun,” he proclaims trying to block out the sounds of Tony struggling to breath from laughing too much and Thor’s giant belly laughs.

“Hey! I will expose you!” he threatens. “Security! Security?! Yeah, this guy has a giant weapon on him! Yup, the hammer guy? That's him. He’s right here.”

Thor turns around so fast with his hammer up to Clint’s chin. “You be silent right this instant, Barton, or else I shall smash you fairy princess glasses with my hammer right here and now.”

“No! Those are mine!” you scream as Natasha just keeps recording everything happening on her phone. 

To be continued...

[closetofanxiety]

Mania Madness: In Queens With Queens Quest

Wrestlemania was in New York this year (well, New Jersey, but you know what they mean), and since I live about two and a half hours away, I felt like I would be failing in my duties as a wrestling fan if I didn’t attend some of the related events. Make no mistake: I did not want to go to Wrestlemania itself, as the idea of sitting in a football stadium and squinting at a faraway shape that might be Buddy Murphy in the springtime chill is not high on my bucket list. But there were lots of other things to do, and I did very few of them! I did go to see the Stardom show in Queens and to WrestleCon in Manhattan, though, and herewith are my observations, jotted down for posterity and, hopefully, your amusement and/or edification:

FRIDAY

I think this is only the second time Stardom has run a show in the U.S., and it’s definitely the first time they’ve done it amidst the surge of popularity they’ve experienced in the GIF era. Although going to visit Hakujinjoe in Tokyo is a goal towards which I am even now socking away money, there’s no guarantee that I’ll ever actually get to see Stardom in Japan, and so this was the must-see event of the weekend for me.

This anticipation was accompanied by two apprehensions: First, my nature reluctance to drive in New York City, even in the outer boroughs. I live in the woods, and your city ways frighten and confuse me. Second, based on many of the US joshi fans I have encountered online, I worried this crowd would basically be a giant convention for creepers, perverts, rageaholic gatekeepers, scam artists peddling $300 autographed gravure DVDs, and people who seem to have only a dim understanding that the characters portrayed in the ring are not, in fact, identical with the women portraying them. Listen: I am not exactly Cary Grant when it comes to wit and charm, and just being an American who watches Japanese women’s wrestling puts me among a tiny percentage of hardcore nerds, so I hope this doesn’t come off as haughty. But there are good nerds, and then there are the nerds we encounter online way too often.

The first apprehension turned out to be baseless, as I got to Queens with plenty of time to spare and, like most joshi fans, headed over to the Rufus King Homestead on Jamaica Avenue for a tour of the mansion once owned by the fiery antislavery advocate and signatory to the Constitution. OK, so I was the only joshi fan who toured the Rufus King Homestead (in fact, I was the only person, period; Rufus does not get much love), but I still learned a lot. Rufus King used to loan money at exorbitant rates to local farmers who owned slaves, and when they couldn’t pay him back, he’d accept the enslaved people as collateral, only to immediatly free them. Rufus King, Loan Shark For Justice!

It turns out the second apprehension was also baseles, because the crowd turned out to be full of awesome people. Really friendly, outgoing, and super enthusiastic nerds, the best kind of nerd, really. The dominant attitude was not, “Oh you like Stardom? Name five of their faction drafts” but “I can’t believe we all get to see this awesome show together.” It was also, by a country mile, the most diverse indie wrestling crowd I’ve been part of, and about 35-40 percent of the people in attendance were women, which really made the whole experience better. I’m not saying everyone was awesome, but it was definitely a fun group of people to be part of for an afternoon. I am ashamed that I assumed it would be full of unbearable dweebs.

So, that out of the way, here’s the highlights of the show, in the time-honored spaghetti Western sytem of categorization:

THE GOOD

Momo Watanabe vs. Utami Hayashishita: Easily the match of the day, and one of the best matches I’ve seen all year. The Queen’s Quest teammates were batling for Momo’s Wonder of Stardom title, which she won from the departing Io Shirai last year. I don’t just like Momo, I identify with her image as the studious but introverted nerd kid who thinks hard work and playing by the rules is enough to guarantee success, only to be constantly frustrated as flashier peers take shortcuts to the top. The tension between these two has been building since Utami’s debut last year and subsequent mega-push as The Big Rookie and Utami All-the-Belts. Momo, who put in years of quiet, dedicated work as Io’s understudy, is in danger of being usurped as Queen’s Quest leader by the newcomer before her tenure has really even gotten under way. This is a great basis for a wrestling match, and these two, aware they were in front of their biggest audience outside of Japan not just in person but watching on Fite, rose to the occasion. I’m terrible at describing wrestling matches, but this was a nailbiter full of near-falls and what-will-it-take kickouts that felt earned rather than slathered on. It helped that the crowd was rabid, with Utami having a slight edge, WHICH ONLY SERVED TO MAKE ME CHEER LOUDER FOR MOMO. I honestly had no idea who was going to win: normally you’d know the champ would retain in an away match like this, but having their second most important belt change hands would also have been a great way to make a splash in their New York debut. In the end, though, Momo retained with her Peach Sunrise finisher and I LOST IT.

Stars vs. Oedo Tai: The villainous but lovable Oedo Tai were over like crazy with this crowd, and people went bananas when they came out to do their pre-match war dance. They could have basically just done that and most people would have been, but they had a fun elimination match with the Stars faction. A lot of zany action in this and a genuine surprise elimination of Kagetsu midway through. The only missing piece of the puzzle was Sumire Natsu, who didn’t come over with the company, possibly because she’s a freelancer. She made appearances at Tokyo BDSM clubs instead during Mania weekend, which is the most Sumire Natsu thing ever.

Yurie Kozakai doing the ring introductions: Stardom was really smart about the idea that they were giving fans in New York “a real Stardom show,” and having the promotion’s normal ring announcer introduce the wrestlers was a perfect touch.

Hana Kimura: The newest Stardom signing looked like a superstar and basked in the crowd’s adulation during a three-way tag match that also involved Konami and Bea Priestley (making her US debut?) and Britt Baker and Brittany Blake, who should have called themselves the Britt-ish. No? I’m - I’m [putting my finger to my ear, like I’m listening] I’m being told “No, they should not have called themselves that.” Anyway, the match was fun but insubstantial, but Hana’s charisma is off the charts.

THE BAD

IPW:UK ran a show at the venue (the NYC Arena, which is an arena only in the sense that a mid-sized nightclub is an arena) right before Stardom, using House of Glory’s ring (the compromises and arrangements of Mania Weekend!), and the bottom rope broke. The effort to fix the broken rope was mostly unsuccessful, and also delayed the opening of doors at the venue by nearly an hour, meaning 600 hearty nerds were standing in line in 39 degree weather, with sleet pelting us. The paperback I had brought to pass the time in line was USELESS. On the lemons-lemonade side of things, though, this did mean we were all in line when Stardom’s bus rolled up, and all the wrestlers disembarked to head inside. Big cheers from the crowd, which obviously delighted the wrestlers. “It’s gonna be awesome!” Hana yelled at us. It was! Once we got out of the sleet

The broken rope delay also meant they had to cut the already abbreviated (five matches) show short, and it showed. The first three matches were all obviously truncated, with the High Speed title match between Hazuki and Dust suffering the most for it. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, and I was impressed by Dust, who’s new to me, but it felt like they were just starting to get going when it ended. IPW:UK, YOU ARE NOW MY ENEMY. OR MAYBE HOUSE OF GLORY, I DON’T KNOW. SOMEONE. 

THE UGLY

Maybe half the appeal of this thing was the promised meet and greet afterward, but the meet and greet was more chaotic and less organized than Kelley Square at rush hour (sorry, this is a Worcester reference, Worcester people will know this). Nobody seemed to know where to stand, lots of fans didn’t realize they had to buy little tickets before meeting the wrestlers, and as someone whose job sometimes involves putting up signs in medical buildings, the lack of even rudimentary paper signage was APPALLING. This did not stop me from getting nerdy fan pics with Hana Kimura, Kagetsu, Momo Watanabe, Mayu Iwatani, and Konami. Hazuki left her table before I could get to her, and this failure will haunt the remainder of my days upon this earth. Possibly. The wrestlers all had pieces of paper with common American names written on them, so they’d know how to address the autographed pictures, which was sweet. Hana has great conversational English. There was no line when I went up to Konami, which is preposterous. Konami rules, fellow nerds. The whole thing was nice, and the language barrier prevented any of that thing where guys try to unburden their psyches onto female wrestlers in a bid to make some kind of emotional connection. JUST SMILE FOR THE CAMERA AND MOVE ALONG, PAL.

Also, apparently the Fite stream was choppy as hell and cut out completely right at the end of the Momo-Utami match, and only came back after it was over. Glad I went in person!

In part two, we’ll cover the gregarious Jesse Ventura, the surprising lack of merch slingers at WrestleCon, and the puzzling fame of that fan who had a cardboard sign saying “FACE FUCK ME FINN” at a Takeover a few years ago.

[breakyrlegs]

The 80 Best Albums of 2018

80. Beware the Book of Eli- Ski Mask the Slump God

For someone who has spent so much time living in the shadow of everyone’s (least) favorite Soundcloud rap quasi-martyr, Ski Mask the Slump God is one of the more audacious technical virtuosos out there. There’s no time to lose on Beware, so every second is a product of Ski anxiously shredding through ways to get your attention. There is no flow he’s afraid to try, no sound he won’t make.

79. 7- Beach House 

Beach House have monopolized a space in the indie-rock sphere for about a decade now. Their dominance is no fluke, but after a few hard-hitters, I was worried that they might make the same album over and over again. However, just a week after the almost too obvious Depression Cherry, they dropped Thank Your Lucky Stars, a more lucid affair. It marked a new chapter. 7 sees them continue to be done with making dream pop for sweet, peaceful dreams...they’re now making music for all dreams, especially the ones that linger into the morning, the ones you have to ask around about to make sure they weren’t real. Corny? Maybe, but it’s nice to see a stubborn band add even more dimension to their seasoned sound.

78. El Hombre- El Alfa

What does it mean to be “el hombre”? There’s no straight answer but if I had to take a crack at it, I’d say it‘s when you spearhead an entire genre so hard that when you venture out of said genre, people complain about it, even though the song features Cardi B. It also could be when you make yourself sound like the most obnoxious cartoon mouse imaginable, yet still manage to spit out a slapper. He may be the king of dembow, but El Alfa can’t be pigeonholed. Whether his voice is a sputtering tour-de-force or a comically nasal squelch, this album is a celebration of the ridiculous. In the end, the best songs are peak dembow, where a cloying sample of El Alfa’s voice works itself into a tornado and thumps for what could be forever.

77. 777- KEY! & Kenny Beats

Kenny was a prodigal son who left hip hop with dollar signs in his eyes and his tongue sticking out, tempted by the call of #REAL #TRAP #SHIT. Key! was an artist who had existed on the periphery of the scene, paying his dues while earning the most visibility when tacked onto the end of a Father song. They are the type of match that would slip under the radar until you realize that not only do they bring out the best in each other, but they also tap into something quite glamorous. The beats bump, the melodies stick, the energy is so high, and Key! treats this like his magnum opus. He’s expressive, dynamic, and Kenny lets him do it without any gimmicks. 

76. Soma 0,5 Mg- Taconafide

Maybe I’m a little biased, but I can’t understate how much this means to me. A Polish rap album that doesn’t draw on trends that fell out of favor eight years ago? One that is building its own lane and not just tangentially existing on the sidelines of the American scene? One that has not only one moderately funny song but a whole pack of well-thought out, extremely catchy bangers? No way. It’s too good to be true. Taco and Quebonafide carry themselves like they know that this is the album of a generation, that millions of Polish kids living their lives peering across the pond finally have something that is distinctly their own, and, more importantly, distinctly Polish. Dawaj dawaj! 

75. Shadow On Everything- BAMBARA

It’s hard to talk dirt on an album that has all its instrumentation down to a tee. Sure, you can’t get by on technical efficiency alone, but when bellowing drums translate into something so menacing and a flurry of guitars create such a haunting ambient presence, you take no detours when you’re propelled into the darkness. These songs are packed with enough action to tell stories but really, they just set scenes. That’s for the better. BAMBARA circumvent all the pitfalls of making post-punk in 2018 by putting passion into everything, ramping up the chaos as much as they can.

74. Doomsday Clarion- Airport

The world of fragile, noisy Soundcloud electronic collages is a pretty funny one, but rarely does the humor feel as sharp as it does on Doomsday Clarion. Miranda Pharis compiles sounds that never cease to keep me amused, intrigued, and, most importantly, spooked. They also find a way to tie them together so that it feels like non-stop commentary. Halfway through this thing, when we are exposed to a tangent about how one of the songs excels at putting an unnamed Youtube commenter’s rabbit to sleep, at first it’s like “LOL random”, but then it starts to feel like a snarky dissection of underground culture performativity...and it makes me wanna keep reaching as hard as I did there. It’s the type of record that wants to make you sound like a fool, yet Pharis doesn’t scoff as much as they embrace and pay homage. These turbulent compositions are all the more essential for it.

73. Nasty- Rico Nasty

There’s a few things you learn on Rico Nasty’s thunderous entrance. Apart from her sixth sense for broke boys and fake bitches, the observation that hits the hardest is that she’s pretty...well...nasty. She’s also not even close to being interested in apologizing for her fame, and anyone who thinks she should because she’s done it by making extremely aggressive (and borderline mean) bangers is full of shit. If Nasty proves anything, it’s that nobody is going quite as hard as this, and even though that would be enough merit to rest on, she’s not going to stop there. The more tender and spacious tracks here are shockingly the ones that bite the hardest. For an album that builds so much tension from brash exclamations, that’s quite a flex.

72. Negro Swan- Blood Orange

For Dev Hynes, the transition from indie’s best networker to its most multifaceted social commentator has been a successful one. However, I feel like that label minimizes him, because his albums are not trying to tell you anything, instead acting as abstractly pointed containers for ideas and chunks of culture that mold together into something triumphant. His albums have always been celebrations that cut deep into the complexity of blackness, queerness, and history. Negro Swan is his most on-the-nose and also his most unapologetically happy. However, it’s not the concise statements that make the album but the gorgeous, subdued melodies that take charge before you can even touch them. It might lack the explosiveness of Freetown Sound, but there’s hardly a moment on this record that isn’t radiant or holds back on any of its charm.

71. In Another Life- Sandro Perri

It doesn’t take long until the title track on this album finds the groove that it will spend the next 24-minutes delicately unraveling. It is a dainty, sweeping groove based on a simple keyboard arpeggio that invites every other sound in the vicinity to flourish with it, like it’s hosting an open picnic. It paces around, disintegrating and advancing with time, but by the end, it’s exactly where it started. That’s the beauty of Perri’s work; to say he can milk an idea is an understatement. He can milk an idea to the point where you can’t even tell an idea’s being milked, silently highlighting the beauty that emerges with prolonged exposure. 

70. Aura- Ozuna

It should come as no surprise that the most stacked summer album came courtesy of reggaeton’s most profitable powerhouse. It’s not even the extent to which these tracks go, but the sheer force with which Ozuna can continuously spin out them out, over and over again, like it’s absolutely nothing to him. For over an hour, it sounds like he’s doing no more than acting on his impulses, tapping into non-stop melodies and rhythms with confidence that it will all stick. Of course all these songs exist in the same vein, but there’s no comparing the twinkling romance of ‘Ibiza’ with the glitzy flexing on ‘Única’ or even the thumping pulse of ‘Sigueme los Pasos’, where he gloriously joins forces with reggaeton’s other king. There are 20 bangers on here, and the album only kinda drags. It can’t be this easy.

69. Famous Cryp- Blueface

It’s actually hilarious watching people get worked up about Blueface. “He can’t even rap on beat! How hard can it be to rap on beat?” Lmao, if you think rapping on beat is a prerequisite to making hip-hop, you’re as bad as the people trying to keep the impressionists out of art galleries just because they weren’t making hyper-realistic Jesus art. Yeah, I said it. Blueface is rap game Renoir. For real, it’s so much easier to rely on conventional technical ability than to tap into something that actually expands on a style of rap that should’ve been out of ideas a long time ago. Most importantly, if Blueface is such a hack, then how come he makes it sound so fucking good? How does he manage to rap like he’s racing the beat to the end of each bar, with his voice cracking every chance it gets, and still churn out songs with so much momentum? Why the fuck would he rap on beat? So he can sound like every wholesale G Perico/YG out there? Smh.

68. ASTROWORLD- Travis Scott

It would almost be irresponsible to leave the most quintessentially 2018 album of 2018 off this list. If you didn’t hear ASTROWORLD within a week of it dropping, you might as well have been watching telemarketing that whole week while 60,000 feet under the ground with no phone service. For all its lyrical gaffes, lack of personality, and unreasonably quiet NAV features, this album is pretty sick. We always knew Travis Scott was something of a curational master, with a taste for crafting rap albums that aren’t about him as much as they are apexes of the mainstream scene. However, when he came off as hollow before, ASTROWORLD has such an abundance of quality that you can’t even deny it. His ambition is easy to poke fun at until you find yourself returning to these songs again and again, marveling at each extravagant beat change or “STRAIGHT UP!” like it was your first time hearing it.

67. SR3MM- Rae Sremmurd

Just a note, I’m not referring to two solo albums that came with this (sorry Swaecation) because for all their charm, those were a bit harder to vouch for. Instead, I’m talking about the nine-track banger platter that got overshadowed by all the noise surrounding the “triple album.” Somehow, SR3MM was stealthily the well-rounded, adventurous album the boys had been promising us this whole time. Perhaps it’s because it is filler-free or because both of them (Swae Lee especially) have become absolute masters of their craft, having made so many seductive, irresistible tracks that at this point they could do it in their sleep. Or maybe it’s because there are so many imitators and it’s nice to have a burst of authenticity. There is hardly a moment on this album that isn’t an integral part of a refined rap song. They have so much more fun together. Sure, Swae is eclipsing, but I really hope they don’t break up.

66. Loma- Loma

When Cross Record established themselves as sublime folk masters on Wabi-Sabi, I didn’t think they needed the not-so-trendy and very, very normal input of Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg. I guess I was wrong. Turns out where they were once comfortable soaking in the hushed splendor, they are now compelled to be a bit more ambitious, to venture into louder places with more confidence. Thankfully, the newfound grandiosity does not come at the expense of any beauty; the vocal acrobatics sink into the spectral sheets of instrumentation just as smoothly as they did before.

65. Pastoral- Gazelle Twin

Gazelle Twin is a hard sell. There’s really no reason this uber-spooky electronic project where a woman in a mask chants and roars over industrial beats should be good. The look is cool and all, but this shit can be really off-putting if you’re not willing to have a little fun. Thankfully, the vibe is backed up by the production, which seems custom built to fill these songs with the bloodcurdling energy they project. If she’s not pounding her shrillness into you, she’s catching a sample at its most disorienting and looping it into further oblivion. It’s overwhelming yet so effective.

64. QUARTERTHING- Joey Purp

Now, I'm no purist who lives their life cowering under "DEATH TO MUMBLE RAP" bullshit, but if the status quo of hip-hop today can be critiqued for one thing, it's monotony. In a time where Drake can drop a 25-song album with, like, only ten songs where he actually sounds interested in what he's saying, it's refreshing to hear Joey Purp attack each verse like it's his last, with each hook falling into its groove like he was told at gunpoint to think of something catchy. If Joey Purp makes a song about something, he's going to approach the topic with purpose, almost likes he's aiming to make the definitive song about that thing. Here, he uses this essentiality to flex his versatility. QUARTERTHING is a record of confident experiments, songs that wander into unknown territory with purpose, capturing lightning in a bottle most of the time.

63. Le Kov- Gwenno

Gwenno is the type of vocalist who gets swept up by her songs rather than situating herself at the eye of storm. Her voice is a soft whisper most of the time, but the reverb on the drums accentuates each snare with a room filling quality while every dash of organ lingers and sustains. It’s baroque, it’s timeless, and, most importantly, it’s in Cornish, which I definitely thought was an extinct language. She could rest on that monopoly and still be fine, but she indulges instead. It’s an ideal combination of originality and refinement of an age-old style.

62. Drip Harder- Lil Baby & Gunna

When they’re not together, Lil Baby and Gunna aren’t that good. All of their solo albums at this point have been coated in filler, and when there’s a standout track, they usually both show up. That’s why it’s not surprising that the Young Thug proteges find their niche on Drip Harder, but it’s still shocking just how sharp, cohesive, and vital this sounds. The duo are moulding expressive, abstract melody-driven hip-hop in a way that hasn’t been as notable and of-the-time since Thugger and Rich Homie Quan did it in 2014. That pairing was more unlikely and exciting, but this one is more natural. Every moan, confession, and groove on here is impossible to resist, and the beats are some of the most intoxicating of the year. RHQ and Thugger crashed hard as a duo after they peaked, but I hope these two either stick together or use this as a launchpad for artistic growth. There’s so much room for it to grow, but for now, it’s more than enough to watch them carry each other’s weight.

61. Another Life- Amnesia Scanner

The hyper-saturated industrial dance music of Amnesia Scanner has now turned into hyper-saturated industrial pop music. As bizarre as that is to say about songs that are almost all led by grating synthetic vocals on the brink of becoming a deafening screech, there’s something conventionally attractive about the way these hooks form. Whether it comes in the form of a stuttering refrain or a massive #drop designed to elevate any scrapyard rave into the impending cyber-apocalypse, the pleasures here are simple.

60. Magus- Thou

It’s getting harder and harder for fans across the metal spectrum to agree on a canon. So much metal is being churned out at such a high rate, it’s becoming more of a task to pick out the gold from the clutter. Thou make a name for themselves with unmistakable grandiosity. Their sound isn’t the most challenging; the snarls have a soothing, ASMR-esque texture to them and the riffs are clean-cut, progressing with grace. For a band this prolific, it’s notable when they come out with something this refined. You can hear the effort in every idea, the precision in every new path they take. Magus might be the best entry point for metal’s most consistent stalwarts, a band who are much more interested in perfecting their distinct ambiance than embarking on well-meaning but slightly muddled genre-fusion.

59. abysskiss- Adrianne Lenker

As if Big Thief weren’t intimate enough. Adrianne Lenker takes her band’s prime descriptor (either “intimate” or “delicate,” depends on the day) and sees just how far she can push it before it gets uncomfortable. The staring contest that ensues on abysskiss is what you’d expect from one of the most hushed, intricate vocalists breathing into your ear with no more than a guitar backing her up. She definitely has the talent to get away with a mood piece, but no, abysskiss is home to some of the most devastating songs in her arsenal. At her best Lenker is lulling you into woozy trance, with songs that pack the visceral explosion of secrets. Such a sparse record has no right to be this intoxicating.

58. FM!- Vince Staples

You wouldn’t trust an elegant craftsman like Vince Staples to actually make an album that’s “no concepts, no elaborate schemes, just music.” He’s rap’s smuggest pundit, as well as the brains behind some of its most captivating music. So even though FM! is brief and blunt at its core, it still can’t resist being super clever. For starts, although Vince’s albums are often personal, they are seldom embedded with this much unshakable geography and West Coast inside humor. FM! is designed to sound like it’s playing on FM (get it) radio, and every time he cashes in on the gimmick with a new Tyga or Earl Sweatshirt snippet, his grin becomes more radiant. FM! thrives as a reminder that Vince can hop on any slender beat and ride it with ease, his listenability being the spectacle with the observations fattening it up.

57. Cellar Belly- Wished Bone

Those who know me might be shocked that a lo-fi twee album of any kind made it on this list, but Wished Bone are onto something. Sure, I’m a sucker for those staticy, soothing vocals and the delicate clicks and hisses that adorn them. If you’re going to celebrate the whimsical, you better make a full send. However, the beauty of Cellar Belly is not just the alluring sound but the amount Wished Bone are willing to do with it. There’s a sex jam called ‘Pollinate Me’ where they literally go “I am a flower, you are a bee.” Elsewhere, when ‘Seed’ abruptly turns into an itchy swing jam, I’m floored. Shouts out to delicate phantasmagoria; this is haunting in the cutest way.

56. mouth mouse maus- emamouse x yeongrak

This album is a colossal headache. Of course, anything that picks from the most lo-fi strains of nightcore and 8-bit is likely to make you feel a bit queasy, but mouth mouse maus is actually mesmerizing with the extent to which it sounds like a malfunctioning carousel in clown hell. Sure, this album is difficult to listen to and if you’re tuning in casually it’ll probably sound like erratic sludge. Yet there’s something heinous about just how fun it is. It’s not just fun in the random, unpredictable way but more so because it has you on the edge of your seat. This album tests you but you’re going to want to keep going, just to catch a glimpse at whatever tomfuckery comes next.

55. Elysia Crampton- Elysia Crampton

Although she likes to keep it short, nobody has epitomized the vanguard of electronic music in the past few years as confidently as Elysia Crampton. It’s like her sound is caught in this furious web where everything collides, with snippets of trap tripping over sturdy breakbeats that are embellished with a whiff of punk. It’s like an information overload themed fever dream that creates a world so dense it hurts your brain to think about. But it sounds so good with no frills. It’s a language so tempting to imitate, but even her peers can’t come close to this breathtaking chaos. This time, the grooves are as adventurous and subtle as they have ever been. It’s just as easy to be drawn in and just as hard to look away.

54. Freedom- Amen Dunes

Freedom is one of those rare sonic wonders that seems removed from any modern trends yet pushes the envelope far too much to be shrugged off as revivalism. Sure, Amen Dunes have influences and many of them come from a clearly defined school of rugged, classic Americana. However, Freedom is too musically nuanced and personal to function as any sort of nostalgia trip. It’s the album where a mastermind songwriter fully finds his voice after nearly a decade. Damon McMahon has made great albums before, but none of them have the urgency of Freedom. In that sense, it feels like it came out of nowhere, even though that couldn’t be further from the truth. The loudness with which he projects, this unmistakable need to be heard is what’s new; Freedom is an album that screams self-acceptance, magnifying the affirmative catharsis that comes after years of internalized trauma. You can’t deny the power of that, but even if you do, you have more than enough splendid melodies to gawk at.

53. Chris- Christine and the Queens

I get too close to putting Chris in a box. Impulse has me wanting to write about how this a masterclass in “queer pop,” because it’s so easy to oversimplify queer artists and bunch them together under the same umbrella. Although identity is at the core of her art, Chris is not an embrace of an identity as much as it is a rejection of the need to clearly articulate your identity or to have an identity that pertains to a set of rules. Chris finds eroticism in confusion, and in that sense, it is a stellar non-statement, with each sentiment drilled into your heart via Chris’s enveloping voice and the record’s colorful, addictive production. Vulnerability is rarely this convincing.

52. Now Only- Mount Eerie

On the surface, Now Only feels like six leftovers from the most gut-wrenching musical diary entry about death ever made. That would be fine, but this is so much more. Now Only exhibits a new lens with which Phil Elverum views his devastation. He knows he will never accept it, but allowing himself to grieve helps him approach a semblance of peace. The confessional approach is just as tear-jerking as it was before, but instead of lingering in Genevieve’s ghost, we are hearing someone who has found deeper meaning in this therapy. Musically, Now Only is more vast and ambitious, but the sentiment is just as awe-inspiring. It takes a lot of genuine pain to pull off songwriting like this, and after the mass catharsis that touring A Crow Looked at Me must have been, it’s fascinating to witness the depth and growth of some of the most intense emotions one can ever feel.

51. Only Love- The Armed

Maximalism and enigma is a tricky cocktail to pull off, but if there’s a place for it, it’s definitely in the hyper-saturated world of metalcore. There’s only a few ways in which these types of outbursts can go down, but when you’re doing as much as The Armed, it ends up being pretty spicy. This album is a non-stop catharsis where everyone is putting all the effort they possibly can into whatever noise they’re making. It seems spontaneous and turbulent, but there’s no way something this constantly earth-shattering isn’t carefully orchestrated. I would call this all-over-the-place, but all the action is streamlined and compressed so that, for all its shrieking and pounding, Only Love ends up being a pretty nice listen. That’s only from a sonic perspective though, because as an emotional experience, this is gut-wrenching, borderline hard to sit through. If you give it the attention it demands, Only Love’s childlike expression defies trends and subverts expectations.

50. Rich As In Spirit- Rich Homie Quan

What do you do when you fall off? It happens to pretty much everyone eventually. I don’t judge those who decide to cash in or rely on publicity stunts to get back into the public eye or even those who just stop trying. But Rich Homie Quan made one promise to us, didn’t he? He goes in on every song. He’s still goin in. He will never stop going in. Rich Homie Quan has been eclipsed by most of his former peers, but on Rich As In Spirit, he does exactly what he needed to do; stop worrying and hone his craft. You can hear the effort and emotion on just about every song. Rich Homie knows he’s gifted and doesn’t need to prove it. He’s always had a vastly underappreciated melodic grip and a penchant for churning out the most energy-fueled, heartfelt bangers. Rich As In Spirit magnifies that. Putting in effort doesn’t mean overdoing it. It’s refreshing to hear someone sound so much less jaded than his contemporaries, quietly outshining them in the process.

49. X 100PRE- Bad Bunny

Bad Bunny’s bellowing baritone used to be a couple things, but now it’s everything. As one of the most potent voices in pop music, his debut album was liable to slap, but X 100PRE concisely shows off the versatility that his singles hinted at. To say he stays in his comfort zone would be irrelevant because his comfort zone is so wide. He came up off the Latin trap wave, but now his prowess shines strongest on his ballads; the inspired optimism of ‘Estamos Bien’ or the sensual nocturne on ‘Otra Noche en Miami’. When he links with Diplo on ‘200 MPH’, it is just as mammoth as you’d expect, not because of Diplo but because the refrain is so fucking sticky. Even the songs where he does the most are far from tacky; the seamless switch on ‘Solo de Mi’ and the hilarious entrance of El Alfa on ‘La Romana’ show his curational eye. It’s one thing to have great ideas but it’s another to execute them so tastefully. Bad Bunny is Puerto Rico’s improvement of Travis Scott; his albums have the same sights and sounds, but twice the personality.

48. A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This- American Pleasure Club

You never know what you’re going to get from a Sam Ray project. One of the great gifts to have comes with the passing of time is the bleeding of Ricky Eat Acid’s mesmerizing ambient music into Ray’s lo-fi emo outlet Teen Suicide, which has now rightfully rebranded as American Pleasure Club. The cynicism has shed off with the name; A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This is still despondent and stressed out (I mean what do you expect with that title), but it’s a lot more genuine and the thrills it holds are a lot more heartfelt. It’s hard to think of a way to channel your emotions that Ray won’t try. This album mostly consists of illustrious sad ballads made from ingredients so delicate that it seems like the foundation could collapse at any time. That’s not to imply that it is unsturdy but rather that these sounds are strong enough to break free from the glue holding them together. Elegance has become Ray’s forte, but he makes sure every goosebump is earned.

47. KTSE- Teyana Taylor

The last and least anticipated of Kanye’s Wyoming albums ended up being the easiest one to love. Teyana Taylor had been sitting on a bed of potential for years before this dropped, but her most visible moments came in the form of uncredited features, reality TV, and Kanye music videos. Kanye’s gold mine of minimalist, sample-based production feels most at ease when it’s elevating R&B, and Teyana has the ideal disposition to lead the charge. She’s confident, unashamed, and empowered. These songs articulate pleasure in a way that is proudly hyper-sexual, but even though its lyrics read like erotic literature sometimes, the result is tasteful. Taylor composes herself on this album like a star waiting to burst, her raspy yelp stealing the show every chance it gets. But this album will forever be associated with Kanye, and in fairness, that’s fine. He saved the most sultry, glimmering beats in his arsenal for this, and it pays off on an album that unravels with masterful pace.

46. Kwaidan- Meitei

I haven’t heard anything else like this and I promise I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t mean it. Kwaidan is an anomaly, an album that orchestrates the most befuddling atmosphere without getting lost in its abstraction. Rhythms emerge from dust and the spoken-word croak (you’ll know it when you hear it) rides them with the grip of an MC. The juxtaposition of ancient and futuristic emerged when Meitei moved to Kyoto, a city where he knew nobody, and wandered around until the mood overwhelmed him. The bite of Kwaidan is rooted in this immersion; there’s no way you can make music this precise, creative, and original without fully buying into your surroundings. Many artist have tried (and failed) to capture the oh so fetishizable “Lost Japanese” aesthetic. Kwaidan epitomizes exactly what they were chasing. It’s hard thing to do right, but holy shit, it is rewarding.

45. Nothing 2 Loose- DJ Healer

There are three types of tracks on here. First, there are the more standard ambient ones, where lonely synths tread through densely layered pops and crackles. Then there are the ones which are led by a melting vocal sample (often a vocoder) channeling something disorienting and alien. However, the big guns come out when the record takes an absurd sample, whether it be a melodramatic melody or some ridiculous rambling about how “this is God’s creation...isn’t it beautiful,” and loops it over some equally theatrical breakbeats. This shit can be so funny, and it’s hard to tell if the hyper-spiritual aesthetic is tongue-in-cheek or completely earnest. Either way, it drills itself into the record enough to justify whatever it is trying to be, regardless of whether it’s a punchline or naked sincerity. This is one of the more haunting, incisive ambient techno albums in recent memory, built on ideas that are not only clever but extremely immersive.

44. Grid of Points- Grouper

Nobody has spent this decade cultivating a more distinct, mesmerizing aesthetic than Liz Harris. Grouper has become one of the most reliable operations in modern music. You know that you’re going to get little more than reverb-soaked piano and breathy vocals, but you also know that the wave of emotions will be overwhelming. Harris records these songs in a room alone, and I don’t think it could be done any other way. It’s astonishing how she is able to consistently do so much with so little, and I know that’s a cliché but fuck it. The warmth and comfort that radiates from these songs is priceless. Grid of Points is not as haunting as past Grouper, but it’s more ethereal and, as a result, more conventionally pretty. This type of allure is a undeniable fit. It shows a new angle of a simple formula that will suck you in with every last breath and smother you with its seclusion.

43. Daytona- Pusha T

Who is the 2018 Clipse? Rae Sremmurd? (lol I like this analogy already) Let’s ride with it. Daytona is like if Swae Lee, 12 years down the line, actually found a more compelling way to sing about going to the Bahamas and dunking a girl in a pool. Obviously, in this case, the Bahamas and pools are replaced by selling coke, but you know what I’m saying. Basically, Pusha T has every right to have peaked already, but instead his coke aficionado character has only grown stronger with age. Like, I can’t believe it took him this long to come up with the line “fuck it, brick for brick, let’s have a blow off.” However, it’s not really Pusha T’s words that form this album’s backbone; as the entry point to Kanye’s prolific (and pretty great) Wyoming Sessions, the real catch is how Pusha T is able to merge with these stuttering, soulful backdrops to turn coke-rap into razor sharp poetry. Pusha’s dedication to developing one thing over the course of his career has made his imagery as potent as ever; but the brevity and minimalism here will not waste a single moment. In a year where he temporarily took down pop rap’s radio Jesus, his true legacy builder was far more modest but much more premeditated. 

42. Golden Hour- Kacey Musgraves

You ever think about, like, how there’s northern lights in our skies, plants that grow and open our minds. It’s kinda crazy that in Tennessee the sun’s going down and in Beijing they’re heading out to work. This is a real thing. Kacey Musgraves writes lyrics like she is a child realizing  everything for the first time and marvelling, jaw agape, at how it makes her feel. All cynicism aside, it’s refreshing to hear someone so enthralled with it. Golden Hour is a collection of earnest meditations on the most simple phenomena, shit we take for granted. And while it’s easy to poke fun at the parts of this album that sound like earnest marijuana-fueled banter, it’s a lot harder to escape when the music is so beautiful and the sentiment is so genuine. There are moments on here where Musgraves underlines things like temporality of our most cherished relationships or how euphoria is always dissolved by the shock that it’s all going to end. This is some of the purest lyricism that exists, an album that frees itself from the alienating shackles of its country aesthetic to become one of 2018’s hardest things to argue with. 

41. Slide- George Clanton

If you openly exploit the “vaporwave” tag for Soundcloud plays while lightly disowning the genre, you must be quite a cunning fucker. You better make sure that the music you’re making is not only post-vaporwave but a capitalization on the aesthetic that resonates with millions but earns the scorn of the critical masses. Slide is just that. It feels grand and important, like it’s the apex of the more cyber-persuaded strain of electro-pop lurking around the memescape. George Clanton is a meme god, an artist whose ambition justifies the more eye-roll inducing, needlessly fetishistic aspects of the subculture. The motifs in this album are not just extremely well thought out but all the more effective when they emerge in the form of blustering, explosive melodies. It’s very hard for them to fall into the background not just because they are beautiful but because you can tell he’s having fun. Slide ensures that there’s a wholesome time hiding behind every cloud of reverb.

40. Momentary Glance- Lisa/Liza

During a phase of grief, any creation is worthy of praise. The lore of Momentary Glance is clear-cut; overwhelmed by tragedy, Liza Victoria persevered through a biting winter to record these six songs. The despondent trance she falls into as she strums and chants is hypnotic, not just because of the prolonged intimacy but because the compositions are presented with all their raw imperfections, embellishments that suck you in instead of taking you out. Victoria’s vocals on this album act as a well of hope in the face of despair. There’s no right way to cope and no glory in suffering, so praising this album’s open wounds seems counterproductive. But when an aspect of your livelihood is snatched from you forever and you can’t bear how much you miss someone, an album that gets it like this is a warm blanket in a freezer, a beacon of empathy in the face of debilitating turmoil.

39. KIDS SEE GHOSTS- KIDS SEE GHOSTS

I’m not sure who needed this most. Was it Kanye, eager to balance out his ugly, legacy-ruining 2018 by making people finally talk about his music again? Or was it Kid Cudi, the tortured autotune godfather whose albums over the past decade had ranged from forgettable to holy shit i don’t even wanna think about it? Either way, KIDS SEE GHOSTS was the apex of the Wyoming sessions. It’s as if all the urgency spun into one concise project, where every segment showcases two genuine masterminds trying to bring out the best in one another. Kid Cudi especially treats this like the album he was destined to make, exhibiting warbles so seductive that you forget they were ever grating. He lends this album its emotional cruciality, with skyrocketing hooks that ache so hard and a tone so spot on it’s like he was saving it all for this.

Kanye takes this as an opportunity to showcase his curational genius. For a seven song album, many of these tracks feel like interludes not because they shrug off responsibility but because they take a form so unconventional that it’s almost distracting. Even the boldest ideas on here leave a great taste in your mouth, but in the end the dearest pleasure is Kanye’s rapping. Every time he opens his mouth he does so with vitality, something we haven’t seen to this degree since Yeezus. 

38. 2012-2017- Against All Logic

Nicolas Jaar is a sonic virtuoso. While he’s proven many times that he can twist and fiddle through his most complex compositions, simplicity bears the most genuine rewards. As you may have guessed from the title, this is a compilation of sorts. It suggests that Jaar has been taking a crack at more conventional house music on the side for most of this decade, and needed an outlet to release it without disrupting the much darker, denser expectations of the Nicolas Jaar brand. It’s no surprise that he pulls it off. It’s hard to think of another producer who has a more nuanced grip on how grooves work and how to find glory in texture. That being said, I did not expect something this casual and accessible to reveal itself as Jaar’s forte. Jaar really is one for the intersection of soul and house. These songs all follow a similar formula where an old-school sample gets worked into a modest yet riveting pulse. However, what he taps into suggests that some of these sounds are much more compelling with the context flipped around. For the scribblings of a mastermind, this is unreasonably presentable.

37. Stadium- Eli Keszler

The moment on Stadium that has me sold iss not one of the ingenious blends of shuffling percussion and jittering plucks that come to define its sound. It’s at the end of a song called ‘We Live in a Pathetic Temporal Urgency’ (lol), where the thuds dissipate and we are left with a natural sound recording of what sounds like pop music playing on the speakers of the mall. It’s like it is beaming from a different planet, simultaneously grounding the album and inverting it into a much stranger endeavor. Keszler has orchestrated a platter of ear candy, sound porn disguised as psycho-jazz. Sure, the odd time-signatures and abundance of texture might grab the headlines, but the real kicker here is the lull that actively rests behind the music. I wish all glitzy technical showcases doubled as ambient mood pieces. 

36. The Recurrence of Infections- bod [包家巷]

There’s an ennui that not enough people make art about. Nicholas Zhu (aka bod) would call it “the quiet hours of laborious coping that fall into the areas between work and sleep,” but I’d probably call it “chill time”. The Recurrence of Infections is a lot of high-strung aesthetically driven gobbledygook, but it’s fucking awesome. I actually buy into it pretty hard. Forget the fact that it’s a masterclass in sound design and think about what “laborious coping” would sound like. You probably can’t think of much, but that’s because you can’t realize your vision as well as Zhu can. Pianos that turn into crashes that turn into distorted growling that turn into robotic warbling...these are not the type of things you remember, but can easily relax with, if you tune out the real pressure. It’s a joy to watch this album unravel. It’s the type of thing you’ll want to tell people about without being able to explain why. But that’s ok. Come hang sometime.

35. The Invisible Comes To Us- Anna & Elizabeth

Anna & Elizabeth make musical period pieces. It doesn’t take long until you realize that this isn’t just a folk throwback; these are actually old folk songs, shit that was popping off in, like, the 40s. While the whole “old songs for new audiences” thing is wholesome, the magic is in where they go with it. The Invisible Comes To Us is exhilaratingly strange to listen to. Adorned by a seemingly ancient aesthetic, you’d think a modernization could get away with slapping some synths and beats on there and calling it a day. However, Anna & Elizabeth are interested in how this music would sound if its spirit was still alive today, if people still had good reason to write lyrics like “tell me jovial sailors, tell me true/does my sweet William sail among your crew?” but had the technology to throw some electronic embellishments on there. Every song sees a comically traditional tune come to a screeching synthetic halt, and even though that combination should wear thin, the execution is passionate enough to be chilling.

34. Whack World- Tierra Whack

The strongest gimmicks are usually the most frustrating. Whack World is a harsh epitome of this; it’s a project that suffocates itself with originality, but would it really ruin the illusion if some of these songs were a couple minutes longer? It doesn’t matter, because this album and the visual spectacle that came with it was enough to fit right into our zeitgeist and run laps around anything less casually ambitious. Of course, part of the appeal was seeing Tierra Whack trimming a poodle, prancing around a cemetary with muppets, and snipping the strings of balloons while snarling in a Southern accent. However, an album’s stellar presentation doesn’t always translate into such addicting songs. Whack World is fifteen great ideas taken at face value so that they never lose momentum. These tracks seem designed to get stuck on repeat, always finding a groove and savagely leaving cravings unfulfilled.

33. Twin Fantasy- Car Seat Headrest

It’s weird to throw this on here because these songs have existed for such a long time. However, newer resources sparked an overhaul we didn’t even know we needed, and boy, did it work out. Twin Fantasy is one of those records that is so painfully personal you feel almost uncomfortable. Immersing yourself in its tales of infatuation and self-awareness to the point where you’re basically watching Will Toledo gut himself and everyone around him shouldn’t be this fun. It doesn’t gain a new audience by straying away from the lo-fi, but rather by accentuating the musical and conceptual turbulence. The best songs on here are eager shapeshifters, growing bigger and bigger until they pop, or in the some cases, they reach the ten minute mark and start gyrating. Eventually, he’ll start doing things like convincing himself that he can’t be evil, not because he’s good, but because “evil” is a phony construct. It’s a drastic leap from fondly recalling Skype calls to declaring that he is incapable of being both human and inhuman. Or is it? Car Seat Headrest has mastered the smug grin that does bad job of holding back the tears, hitting you with enough unhinged emotion to justify its performativity.

32. Sorpresa Familia- Mourn

Mourn have had a lot of burdens to shake in the wake of Sorpresa Familia, and it almost feels like they could only have made this album with something to prove. It makes sense as the product of a fight for financial justice, as it also sees Mourn viciously slithering away from the buzzwords people use to define them and the marquee names writers like me automatically liken them to. However, they don't do this by changing their sound, but by upping the ferocity in their energy, the complexity of their arrangements, and the stickiness of their melodies.

The commitment to quality makes it easy to forget the label drama that birthed this record. However, Sorpresa Familia would not exist in this form without the rage and hunger for justice that marked its creative process. "At 19 years old we're signing our divorce," they growl at one point. Anyone who has gone through it knows divorce often becomes a blissful catharsis for the victim. Sorpresa Familia doesn't merely mark this catharsis; it proves that Mourn needed to loosen the shackles to make the most fully-formed record of their career.

31. Lush- Snail Mail

It’s odd to hear someone younger than me (I’m 20) rock a style that shouldn’t have too many ideas left in the tank. That being said, it’s especially wild when they do so with such grace, sounding like a seasoned vet in their prime. Lush isn’t brimming with new sounds, but somehow it manages to be the most refreshing indie rock record in recent memory. Maybe it’s because the songwriting is simple at heart but captures something so universal and captivating. Lush dissects the ambiguities of young love, both the frustrating rush of being swept away and the strength it takes to realize that the exasperation may not be worth it. It resonates with me, and I can’t imagine these sentiments falling short on anyone, at least when they are delivered by Lindsay Jordan’s absolute powerhouse vocals. The more emotional bits come in like a sustained avalanche, knowing exactly what to emphasize and what not to overdo.

30. Devotion- Tirzah

We’ll talk about Tirzah in a second, but let’s take a minute to gawk at Mica Levi. It takes a seldom-seen skill set to create some the most weirdly accessible pop records of the early decade and then go on to get an Oscar nod for a movie about Jackie Kennedy. Yet now, having produced Devotion, she’s ready to give her tasteful, haunting minimalism the charismatic voice it has always deserved. Mica Levi was never the best frontwoman, so enter Tirzah, with a sultry, conversational voice that can mutter and howl in the same breath. This is a partnership that has been bubbling since early childhood, and you can tell just how well these two understand each other’s creative boundaries. Mica will take a sparse loop and spread it wide enough for Tirzah to spit out vulnerable bars like nobody’s watching, like she’s catching herself in a scary moment of candor and embracing it.

29. Sweetener- Ariana Grande

Ariana Grande’s music had always one-upped her public person. She had been in marquee relationships before, but none as inescapable as this. It’s weird to look back on Sweetener, which was dropped during peak Grandsonmania, as this happy, beam of light sticking out after she witnessed a bonafide tragedy unfurl at her now-infamous Manchester concert. It was the sound of an icon in full control of her narrative, choosing to show resilience and overdose on bliss. Instead of being distracted by her newfound spot at the top of the A-list, she was inspired by the spotlight. That being said, context doesn’t make Sweetener. Ariana Grande has always had a penchant for the most irresistible, immaculate pop masterstrokes, and Sweetner is home to so many of them. Her vocal capacity has become practically superhuman at this point. Whether she is howling on ‘breathin’ or unleashing a phantasmagoric coo on ‘R.E.M.’ it’s hard to imagine a delivery that would suit these songs better. She has perfected the ballad, but she has also perfected the bop, and Sweetener shows that she can effortlessly blend the two.

Of course, tragedy struck again in the death of her ex-boyfriend/best friend Mac Miller. She broke up with Pete and unpacked everything with her biggest song yet. However, Sweetener will always stand out as one of the most crucial and enjoyable bubblegum pop records of our time, one that, for all its lore, continues Ariana’s tradition of putting the music first.

28. New Bodies- Tangents

I’m never one to judge an album primarily by its capacity to make me go “whoa!”, but if I was, New Bodies would probably top this list. Simply put, this is a technical masterstroke. The type of music Tangents make is pretty hard to classify; its sprawling instrumental flexing suggests jazz but the ingredients are electronic. It’s impressive enough to pull off something so unorthodox but to do so in a way that manages to summon emotion while simultaneously dropping jaws...that’s a whole new level. New Bodies rejects the need to find a groove, fidgeting and sputtering to a point where it can either unravel or chase a massive crescendo. More often than not, it chooses both. This album flaunts its pace, but the real calling card is the texture, which is product of rattling percussion that manages to stay so varied and complex while providing a sturdy backbone. It shouldn’t be possible to scatter strings, cymbals, beats, and samples so haphazardly onto each track and come out with seven genuine odysseys. 

27. Galapagos- Wednesday Campanella

Wednesday Campanella aren’t quite subverting stylistic norms. Galapagos is chock full of drops, albeit interesting ones, and the songs rely on tried-and-tested formulas to drill the melodies in. However, skipping experimentation lets Wednesday Campanella to get straight to the point: unadulterated sonic bliss. Also, please don’t get me wrong. Wednesday Campanella don’t really sound like anyone else, even in the far-reaching, dense world of J-Pop. It’s hard to find any band that is so adamant on cramming this many glistening sounds into their music yet so capable of dodging busyness or being busy in the right way. Yet, for a group that does so much, it’s wild that they manage to have each element crafted with precision, whether it be a glittery synth sound shooting out of a vibe that would have never have called for it, or the vocals, which are always so high up in the mix that each breath is magnified. Sure, it’s not the most uncanny, but Wednesday Campanella stay surprising you with their audacious choices.

26. Room 25- Noname

Room 25 is birthed out of an entirely new set of circumstances. While Telefone was a Chicago album through-and-through, Room 25's namesake comes from the geographic ambiguity of two years spent living on the road. She sums it up nicely on "With You" where she raps "shared my life on Telefone, room 25 and 306, and 809 became my home.” Being thrown into the cutthroat touring process for two whole years is a unique and inherently transformative experience, and Room 25 captures this transformation in all its push-pull nuance, without sacrificing Noname's sharp eye for her surroundings. In this sense, Room 25 is excitingly personal. In the past, Noname the character has taken a passenger seat to Noname the narrator. Now she opens things up and focuses on her journey, and there's a lot of growth to be exhibited. It's an album with purpose, a moving snapshot of a coming-of-age worthy of all this great music.

Yet, for all the personality and reflection that comes out on Room 25, Noname's eloquent observations make for some of the stickiest moments on this album. When she ponders the hypocrisy of eating Chick-Fil-A "in the shadows" on ‘Blaxploitation’, she doesn't do so with a stern finger-wag but an onomatopoeic overcoming of sensation -- "mmm, yummy, tasty" -- kickstarting a flow that unwinds with her confronting the "thinkpiece" nature of her music head-on. However, these songs aren't thinkpieces. These are acute contemplations from someone with a lot to chew on. Room 25 sees a brilliant writer finding her outlet, taking in the world around her, and spinning it into her own extraordinary web.

25. Safe in the Hands of Love- Yves Tumor

Yves Tumor never seemed interested in stepping out of his mystery bag approach to making albums, mixing 8-minute long exercises in ambient noise with simple, concise soul jams. However, nothing he ever tries is derivative. Safe in the Hands of Love has too much distorted screaming to be labelled his crossover lunge, but now he seems ready to take his sonic ingenuity and apply it to something less abstract. Maybe that’s what happens when you get picked up by Warp, or maybe that’s just what Yves Tumor was planning this whole time. Either way, it doesn’t sound like any compromises are being made. Even the more anthemic songs like ‘Noid’ or ‘Lifetime’ reek of despair and restlessness, and the orchestral overtones that give the tracks their oomph aren’t exactly inviting either. More electronic tracks like ‘All the Love We Have Now’ and ‘Economy of Freedom’ are nods to past successes, but for all their electrifying grooviness, they embrace the same menacing grandiosity. The notion that nothing is off the table is all these songs abide to. Either way, these are some of his best.  

24. OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES- Sophie

Sophie never seemed that interested in feeding into the consumerism celebration/critique/caricature her PC Music contemporaries so loudly owned. For every robotic bubblegum pop hook she crafted there was an avalanche of emotion bubbling underneath. OIL takes that emotion and puts it front and center, revealing the dynamic human behind the once elusive machine. Sophie is no longer milking the hyper-synth + squeaky balloon + pots & pans combo into oblivion, but when it shows up here, it’s stronger than ever. ‘Ponyboy’ and ‘Faceshopping’ make previous career highs feel staticy, and there is now a lot more space and fluidity in Sophie’s barrage of beats. While these tracks will pounce on you, the real glory emerges in the most fully-formed moments of Sophie’s career. ‘It’s Okay to Cry’ will wind you with its earnest sensitivity, ‘Is It Cold in the Water?’ is built off a synthline that is borderline heavenly, and ‘Immaterial’ illustrates her identity with elegance that can only be described as career-defining. Music can be a lot of things, but at its very best it is an outlet to channel your truest self. OIL epitomizes this phenomenon, amping up the excitement as Sophie continues to explore.

23. The Smoke- Lolina

When you first hear the tuneless, off-kilter wobble of The Smoke, it becomes clear pretty fast that this album isn’t that interested in sounding “good.” Inga Copeland sounds detached from the music, her voice approaching a mumbling groan while the plodding keyboards and beats don’t sound especially happy to be there. It’s about nothing, it feels nothing, and it doesn’t want you to feel anything either. But, *surprise*surprise*, it’s fascinating. Unlike her close collaborator Dean Blunt, Copeland doesn’t rely on confusion to make the gag work but uses it to carve out a world for her tracks to awkwardly flourish. The first two songs are basically weed out tracks, testing even those most committed to adventure. Once you’re sucked in, the real drama goes down. The husting, solemn ‘The River’ has such a firm grasp on its momentum it practically feels like a set up. The next two songs are particularly stunning, stepping outside of the pervasive flatness to embrace something far more delicate. It’s hard to find an album that rejects aesthetics so much but transcends being just kinda interesting. In that respect, The Smoke is a rare success.

22. Veteran- JPEGMAFIA

Peggy comes close to wearing out his welcome a few times on Veteran. Instead, he just exasperates you, like a jester who bites and claws before he scampers away. It’s hard to even know where to begin with his music, but the elevator pitch is in the instrumentals. They frequently tease you with stomach-churning samples that seem borderline impossible to turn into a beat until they hit their stride and become obvious. On ‘Real Nega’, it’s a guttural sample of Ol’ Dirty Bastard croaking and on ‘Baby I’m Bleeding’ it’s a echoey computer crash of a stutter that paces around for a whole minute before turning into the banger it is. 

JPEGMAFIA ensures that listening to him is like tripping down an Internet rabbit hole, issuing somewhat agreeable hot takes about how Morrissey/Tom Araya/Varg deserve to die, how Pitchfork supports abusers (until it wasn’t cool), and...well...how he wants a bitch with long hair like Myke C-Town. He toes the line between sheer abrasion and accessibility, and the songs that do this best (‘Thug Tears’, ‘Macaulay Culkin’) seem destined for crossover success, because when he’s not hollering, he can sing about as well as anyone in Brockhampton. However, the most exciting thing is the notion that Peggy is a rapper who reflects music meme culture as much as he is a product of it, erasing the wall between the lurkers on 4chan and the artists they stan. #Edgy? Definitely, but I dare you to turn it off.

21. Joonya Spirit- Jaala

The most notable quotable I have read from Jaala is that the 4/4 time signature can go “fuck a dead donkey.” You’d think such a blatant contrarian might try a bit too hard to hit you with compositional gymnastics, and while there’s definitely some of that on Joonya Spirit, there’s a lot more passion. It’s rare to see something this proggy get caught up in such visceral vulnerability, with songs that confront anguish as the snide beast it is. One song has Cosmia Pay drained, wound up after being pet “like a dog.” Another takes the bare facts of a break-up and transforms them into a swaying hook. But between these outbursts, Jaala try to find the most convoluted way from A to B, constructing a self-imposed obstacle course. The journey bears gifts, to say the very least. While this can be a hard album to track, it’s elevated by an understanding of how to make the most out of its detours, with the complexity becoming a tool rather than a distraction. 

20. Cocoon Crush- Objekt

Electronic music is progressing so that the machine engages in a tug-of-war with the human. Some artists even use their platform to pitch a manifesto where there’s no reason humans should make better music than artificial intelligence. It’s a valid point, but it undervalues a virtuosic understanding of sound as a sensory experience, as if an algorithm can spew out music that is meticulously crafted to make you feel. Texture isn’t all it takes, but when Objekt’s music spreads itself out like the satisfying percussive ASMR it is, I nut. It’s not like his music is milking its benevolence, but it brims with life. The callbacks, the vividness, the rattling fiber...it’s designed to evoke. As an album that fully appreciates the artistic potential of technology, Cocoon Crush rejects techno’s anatomy and builds its own habitat.

19. The Wolf of Grape Street/God Level- 03 Greedo

It’s much easier to think of 03 Greedo’s output as this flurry of spontaneity, surfacing in eagerly explored ideas and a landslide of hard work and charm. Nobody has earned his spot on this list more than 03, an eager poet who packs all the turmoil he’s ever experienced into each nasally, autotuned whine. He’s also shockingly talented. Amidst the nearly 50 songs on these two projects, which are admittedly super bloated, there are really only a few duds, all of which suffer on the basis of being undercooked, not misguided. What makes up for it even more is the notion that the excess is probably the point. Greedo makes bangers that range from the devastated (‘Prayer From My Lost’) to the needy (‘Bacc to Jail’) to the combative (‘Basehead’) to the absolutely savage (‘Run For Your Life’).

It’s all infectious enough to shock you with its productivity, and that’s probably for good reason. Shortly before God Level was released, Greedo was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in jail. It was technically on gun and drug charges, but it felt like he fell victim of a system that always put him last. Seeing him pour his heart out so urgently can only tug at the heartstrings.

18. Double Negative- Low

Not gonna lie, I would have never put my money on Low to craft an album that sounds so ahead of its time. Maybe I was ignorant...when you spend your whole career being the face of your own niche, especially one as fragile and poignant as slowcore, you can only waltz towards perfection. Double Negative may be just that. It’s ambitious, creating most of its backbones from waves of static. But how the fuck do you sound so relevant after years of sounding so worn down? Where did this need to deeply innovate and challenge come from? Whatever they did, Double Negative discovers a whole new language within its glitches.

Low have completely overhauled their sound, but only emphasized their essence. The vocals cast themselves like heavenly beams of light onto these suffocating drones, the type of clash that is built to overwhelm. Double Negative takes strokes of such vehement abrasion and tweaks them until they sound exquisite. It’s hard to find an album so unique yet so logical, obscurely branching off from an exhausted genre towards a practically euphoric display of textural understanding.

17. Compro- Skee Mask

It’s not easy to penetrate the traditional IDM canon these days, especially now that Aphex Twin is still active, but fuck me if Compro doesn’t try. This doesn’t position itself as one for the purists; instead it’s a confident progression of an age-old form, an album that knows what ingredients make this experimental techno shit work, but has no interest in indulging. A Skee Mask song will set itself up with a gravity-shaking rhythm that bulges with enough texture so that when a groove comes to nest, it is punctured and complex, even if its beauty comes in conventional forms. The twinkle of the melody on ‘Rev8617’ or the icy, distant synth on ‘Soundboy Ext.’ are cast over ripples and breakbeats. It doesn’t feel like he’s creating a juxtaposition as much as he is balancing these sounds out, as if their splendor is highlighted with containment.

16. Cold Devil- Drakeo the Ruler

It shouldn’t surprise you that someone who has been taken to task by law enforcement based on the perceived authenticity of his lyrics prides himself on his intensity. It’s hard to keep up a shtick for this long, rambling about apparently miscellaneous characters like Mr. Mosley and Pippi Longstocking, while never forgetting to underline how you have your dick out like a “pedophile” or how you’ve been strangling snakes and you bathe with the apes. All the while, you end pretty much each track with a minute-long tirade where you take in your surroundings. It’s a lot, but for an album of seemingly low-stakes shit-talking, Cold Devil packs a ton of depth.

Crafted during an 11-month jail stint, Cold Devil projects the charisma, isolation, and precision that can only arise from such introspective circumstances. Yet, while tapped into ultra-realism, the most captivating part of sees Drakeo’s imagination running wild. It’s like he used the time to construct his own emotional lexicon, and while it’s the type of bogged-up conceptualism that you can’t really articulate, he’ll be fucked if he doesn’t try. What comes out is a whirlwind of ideas, each flourishing, albeit concisely, through a swamp of imagery and excellent rapping. Anyone who views this as a confession must be kidding themselves; it’s a vivacious expression that even the most observant couldn’t untangle.

15. You Won’t Get What You Want- Daughters

Anger, despair, dejection...these are all emotions that might sound contrived, especially in a context where they’re almost taken as given (*cough*cough*noise rock*cough). Fortunately, nothing feels fake about Daughters. Spreading their wings after eight years of silence, You Won’t Get What You Want sounds like the pinnacle of a decade of anguish rolled up into a ball and fattened up to sound as big as possible. You’ll notice a few things right off the bat: the drums sounds massive, the vocals are almost always approaching a scream, and every instrument seems to have the color tuned out of it. Daughters play like they are making themselves dizzy, launching into climaxes with brute force. Yet for all its density, it’s a wonder how music this outwardly menacing can transcend the bluntness of its elements to become somewhat inviting. That being said, there is nothing wholesome about the darkness that dominates this record, but Daughters make sure to tweak their pain into the most suffocating beast they can so that it’s almost conventionally beautiful. It’s hard to find a record that executes its niche so perfectly, an ambience that can only be approached after years of marinating in your ache. 

14. Some Rap Songs- Earl Sweatshirt

It makes perfect sense to make music that sounds like what your friends’ make, but when the long-awaited Earl Sweatshirt album came out sounding like a logical follow-up to MIKE’s recently released Renaissance Man more than the sequel to I Don’t Like Shit I Don’t Go Outside, it was a little confusing. However much Earl may drown in his modesty and aggressively try to understate the potency of his music, his brand of cooped-up gloom comes with a midas touch. It’s hard to say whether Earl was hard at work for these past three years, or whether he spun out these 15 vignettes in a stroke of manic genius, but it doesn’t really matter either way. They’re here and it’s captivating as fuck.

Earl the operation is an outlet for Thebe the person, who is still easing himself into stability after an adolescence where he became something of a martyr to millions of kids (#FREE EARL). Of course, this is punctuated by the death of his estranged poet father, a disconnect that Earl has always struggled to grapple with. However, Some Rap Songs is wary of romanticising anything for the sake of a narrative. Instead, it jumps from dusty beat to dusty beat, a flurry of understatements that rarely stay around for longer than two minutes. Earl has always been eager to find his niche after a couple of regrettable teenage choices that risked contaminating his artistry. Even if the inspiration he takes is obvious, his energy can’t be channelled by anyone else.

13. The Whole Thing Is Just There- Young Jesus

For a band who could easily be described as a “philosophy bro jam band,” Young Jesus make it pretty easy for you to like them. This is a controlled exercise in pensive, intellectual emo, an album hellbent on making sure each groove throbs like it’s had its young recently ripped from its arms. The riffs don’t emerge as hooks but rather weave themselves through tunnels, fueling each crescendo. At the apex of it all is a shuddering plea for attention. Young Jesus channel the same catharsis as the emo revivalist except they don’t take the easy way out; their forte is their creativity and their pulse is their sensitivity.

All six songs here manage to fit in both moments of anthemic infection and utter disarray (the glorious kind). The segments that accentuate this album are defined by their space and tenderness, taking poignant philosophical observations and highlighting their consequence with emotional outbursts. It takes a style bent on nostalgia and pushes into an entirely new place, a feat that very few artists can pull off, especially with such volume and precision.

12. Have fun- Smerz

Smerz are like if an artist with talent, charisma, and pop smarts was approaching a fork in the road where they could pursue Top 40 glory or use their resources to lead the vanguard and make challenging, deconstructive electronic music. Guess which one they choose? The melodies that soar over the gritty, distorted beats could have been lifted from the bridge of a #1 R&B hit. Instead, they are spread over a tattered landscape, like a safari where you’re not gawking at animals but taking in an exhibit of quirky synth sounds and samples of speech that sound like they are lifted from a 3 AM drunk voicemail.

Have fun bounces between ethereal dizziness and stark percussive minimalism, but when the two combine, it’s a goosebump-inducing juxtaposition. Floating above the instrumentals-- which honestly could have been released on their own and still have made the lower-end of this list-- is either a deadpan cheerleader chant or a fluttering vocal harmony. Whatever Smerz do, they can’t stop creating music that the words “haunting” and “hypnotic” must’ve been invented to describe. They construct such an exclusive bubble where experimental techno and pop intersect, a fusion that needed to happen, that other artists have tried to do and came-out contrived. It pulsates with mystery, which is funny because most of these songs are about getting fucked up or, as Smerz would put it themselves, “basic bitch problems.” Their ominous gaze turns this charm into a manifesto. And why shouldn’t it? Music this serious yet unpretentious is a rare delight.

11. Honey- Robyn

Everything Robyn does, she does with conviction. She’ll look back on the empty spaces her lover has left behind without fearing her resentment. She’ll invite you to a beach party with casual assurance (“come thru, it’ll be cool”), but boldly winks to suggest that it might be the most transcendental night ever. She’ll demand forgiveness without begging for it, embracing submissiveness while knowing the absurdity of her demands. Is forgiveness even real? Is nostalgia hollow? Is it OK to be heartbroken? These are the types of issues Robyn deals with on Honey, an album that packs eight years of growth into 40 minutes, as if Robyn has been contemplating the scope of her influence and brainstorming the next best step.

Of course, Honey isn’t that calculated. It’s a record of audacious sensitivity, dissecting the simplest phenomena and matching them up with the perfect backdrops. The sex song (‘Between The Lines’) skips with a seductive sway, like a lab-constructed aphrodisiac. The club song (‘Beach 2k10’) is an anomaly, but walks with the confidence of a nightlife staple. However, the best tracks are the most fully-formed, tracks like ‘Honey’ and ‘Human Being’ feel like quintessential Robyn on steroids. It’s astonishing how good she is at this, and even when the record treads new water with suave, captivating disco cuts, Robyn owns whatever space she’s in.

10. Vibras- J Balvin

J Balvin is not the most emotive, distinctive, eccentric reggaeton artist, nor does he have the best voice or the most dominating presence. But he might be the most ambitious, and the most adept at making effortless smash hits, a thing he does on Vibras pretty much every time he tries. In a world where the top tier of Urbano Latino can get billions of views on YouTube and compete internationally with the biggest American superstars, J Balvin is the artist most excited to lead the movement, the most well-versed in its potential.

As the title suggests, Vibras is a record of concrete vibes. J Balvin is aware that a lot of his listeners will not go through the trouble of translating his lyrics, so he makes sure that even people who didn’t take Spanish in high school will grasp what he’s trying to do. All you need to know about ‘Mi Gente’ is found in the now-iconic stuttering vocal sample that starts the song, and the crux of ‘Cuando Tú Quieras’ is a similar sample being flipped into something sultry and seductive, functioning at just as high a level. Vibras seems masterfully curated, even if lots of the songs are anomalies. However, these anomalies don’t just stand out but elevate the power of the straighter, simpler reggaeton songs. ‘En Mí’ is a lovelorn ballad, ‘Brillo’ finds an unlikely pairing with ROSALÍA, who is at the peak of her melodic prowess, and ‘Machika’ ends the album with an almost overly lit EDM crossover. Everything works and it’s wonderful.

9. Bark Your Head Off, Dog- Hop Along

When Frances Quinlan unleashes her raspy, crackling yelp, you know important shit is about to go down. Hop Along have always specialized in a very particular type of drama. They have a penchant for telling stories with a candor that makes it feel like you’re eavesdropping, like you’ve stumbled upon a goldmine of gossip that you shouldn’t be hearing but are far too morbidly curious to plug your ears. The juiciness can come in the form of bureaucratic academia scandals, sexual overtones in the Bible, or the ever-so-relatable struggle of watching Watership Down expecting a kid’s movie, but observing a bloody festival of rabbit slaughter instead. The twists and turns are spot-on and frequently hilarious. If Bark Your Head Off, Dog’s ideas were expanded into prose, it would be a top-tier collection of short stories.

Amidst all the motifs surface nine expertly crafted rock songs that worm around with the utmost purpose, with each chorus/bridge/coda packing enough zest to fuel the whole track. Quinlan’s grip on these melodies is first-rate, as if she’s being swept up by something bigger yet going to painstaking lengths to ensure every tonal phase is spot-on. Bark Your Head Off, Dog is consistent to the point of near-perfection. It doesn’t take long for it to sink in that every song is a highlight, a beacon of emotion that capitalizes on every glimmer of melodic brilliance. Yet somehow, it’s impossible to predict where these songs will go. Often, strings or screams will emerge from out of nowhere, other times are doused in pure, saccharine pop music. Hop Along have mastered spontaneity to the point where nothing feels tacked on. There are so many dimensions to their sounds/stories that you’ll unpack something new with each listen.

8. Nothing Is Still- Leon Vynehall

Leon Vynehall is a practical musician. His last album was, literally, “designed to dance”; a myriad of songs at a streamlined, club-ready BPM that progressed with the pace of a night out. His fascination with multi-dimensionality in house music is abundantly clear. He’s always going to find a new way to be inventive, always ready with a brand new purpose.

Nothing Is Still tests house music’s limits with biography, each song representing a “chapter” or “footnote” in the life of Vynehall’s grandparents, particularly their emigration from England to New York City in the 1960s. Of course, this music is instrumental, so the introspection is all atmospheric, a hard thing to pull off. Thankfully, Vynehall comes up with some sky-scraping, impassioned music, channelling something very vivid. The ambient pieces on this album are textured and passionate. They must be immediate illustrations of the flood of emotion Vynehall experienced in the wake of his grandfather’s death, when he was fully gripped by the narrative, and decided to go down the rabbit hole. It’s oddly tangible, and even without the backstory, the distant grooves on this album could overwhelm you. It’s a bold feat to try and soundtrack something you didn’t directly experience, but the emotional depth packed in this electronic period piece can only be the result of extensive research and nights of curious catharsis. Taking your craft seriously is one thing; creating a record that brims with such sensitivity and personal importance without saying a single word is something else.

7. Harutosyura- Harunemuri

Whatever is being fused on Harutosyura, whether it be pop-punk and rap or hardcore and electronica, yields intense results. It’s not your standard foray into J-pop; Harunemuri are sure to make compact bubbles that writhe and spin before they burst, leaving behind a barrage of glitzy choruses and whines that sound like they’re at the end of an exhausting a potentially lethal chase. It’s chaos, but it’s also rich and entirely unique. Some songs will wear out a stunning riff before collapsing in a fit of aggression; others prefer to reach a screeching halt out of nowhere, only to come back stronger than ever to provide a new angle on their beauty. They will confuse you with the effortless strides they hit, especially because they sound like they are trying to cram every emotion they’ve ever experienced into one note. It’s too dramatic not to be entertaining and too action-packed not to constantly revisit. Even the most animated could only dream of channelling the flux of Harutosyura.

6. A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships- The 1975

It’s been steady growth for The 1975. In their early days, they were a subtly good indie-rock boy band who mostly sang songs designed to get teenage girls a bit too excited. I probably hated them without having heard any of their stuff. Then, they became this overly ambitious 80s glam-rock monster, packing many standard pop bops on their sophomore album, but filling the space between them with tracks that sounded like shoegaze/post-rock/gospel parody (to be clear, I thought it was brilliant). Now, they are one of the most outspoken, monumental bands of our generation, still silly, but absolutely drowning in good ideas. Without hyperbole, I think they are the most exciting thing to happen to the band format in a long time.

Their main thing is that they do the most. Even when the pleasures are simple, Matt Healy is yelling a bit too close to your ear, throwing out commentary that masquerades as ill-fitting until you realize it’s actually super clever and eloquent. The main draw, however, is how every time they turn the page, they land on a song that immediately traps you. Additionally, all these ideas are fresh and essential. The centerpoint is ‘Love It If We Made It’, a tabloid-esque collage of cultural commentary that woos you with its timeliness as Healy throws his entire voice towards a scream of “modernity has failed us!” The rest of the singles range from the best 80s-movie pool party throwback of the year, a rainbow of soothing horns and romantic ennui, a finger-wagging burst of 29-year old wisdom, and a smugly confused radio song. Deeper in the album lie cautionary tales on Internet death told by a robot, Bon Iver-ian swaths of autotuned warbling transformed into high-tier experimental techno, a nocturnal barroom jazz track...I could go on like this for paragraphs lol. The point is, everything they try works and everything that works sticks with you. For an album where a bunch of millenials spend an hour obsessing over the “digital age,” A Brief Inquiry has too much charm.

5. Knock Knock- DJ Koze

If I have to hear someone call DJ Koze some variation of “house music’s biggest prankster” again, I swear to god (haha). I know he can be pretty goofy, and there are many moments on Knock Knock that project this goofiness. Some of the vocal samples (“I need a little light here!”, “I know the future better than you know the past”) are kitsch for sure, but there is no understating this man’s profound talent. He will find a sample, find another sample, and mix the two into something hypnotic. I don’t know if he stumbles upon these grooves or if they are vastly premeditated through some process where he hears an old record, his ears perk up and, poof, a full-fledged house banger surfaces in his mind. He’s always been willing to push the envelope, but on Knock Knock he fully embraces his versatility and distinctiveness. Even the most random sounds he throws into the blender make absolute sense in the sugary, hyper-charged context they’re presented.

Not all of this will sink in quickly, but there are some clear hard-hitters. ‘Pick Up’ floods into the mix like a warm embrace from a long-lost friend, creating a vibe that could and should continue forever. Yet all it does is chop up two 70s soul songs and loop them into oblivion, carrying such a heavy emotional load while staying relatively stagnant. The fat, throbbing bassline on ‘Bonfire’ makes Justin Vernon sound dreamier than he ever has before. ‘Illumination’ is a steady build to an ultimately glorious release, a masterclass in the sly emergence of its drop. It’s all so glistening and nostalgic. There’s sniffs of rap, folk, R&B, techno but none of the paths diverge from the cohesive sonic wonderland. Some prank lol.

4. Aviary- Julia Holter

When do you decide to make your magnum opus? How do you figure out that, after your most accessible album and a whole decade of building your own distinctive take on baroque, your next project would be 90 minutes of the densest, most sonically ambitious music you’ve ever released? Aviary is the type of album you wouldn’t want to put out until you are totally ready. Thankfully, Holter has every reason to be confident in her abilities. She knows when to sustain a wall of noise and when to interject with a mutter or an instrumental collapse. She knows how to pile reverb-drenched choirs onto light orchestration and how to let her voice soar while maintaining the necessary space. To pull off a sprawling, abstract project like this, you need to be some kind of genius. I don’t use that word lightly.

Aviary is meditative. Crammed with songs that linger for as long as they do without hitting a conventional stride, the dynamism is contagious. You genuinely have no idea where each song will go and there is such an abundance of feeling that it’s practically impossible to take it all in. It’s a world that you can untangle, plowing deeper and deeper into it and getting lost in the spectacle. At one moment it’s stressful, and in the next, it’s meditative. The declarations are profound. It’s a rejection of cynicism, and a full-fledged embrace of the simplest, most overpowering emotions, taking pride in the capacity to be swept away. Have you ever fallen in love? Sometimes love can be bitter and toxic, but other times, it is something worthy of a welcome parade, something that will make you loudly weep while you’re clutching onto it. That’s the scope of Aviary, a record that has no qualms about melting into gibberish, as long as it is fully evocative.

3. Be the Cowboy- Mitski

Mitski writes songs with such a penetrating, inhospitable gaze that she practically begs you to feel uncomfortable, even if she radiates warmth and empathy. She’ll come thru with a track about how much she loves her non-existent husband, how for all of eternity it will just be the two of them together, how they are doing better...it goes on until you’re pressed to think it’s a joke, but if it is, then why are you on the verge of tears? Then you sit, ponder, and start considering what it means to “be the cowboy.” Is cowboy swagger one that swoops in on a literal horse, becomes an all-or-nothing imposition of hyper-dominance, and carries itself like it’s the only thing that matters? Or is the one that takes you to a diner after years of silence, Blue Diner to be precise, and suffocates you with a lull while quietly reminding you that it will always keep a part of you? Vulnerability is Mitski’s forte. Whether it’s cloaked in sarcasm, painfully earnest, or deeply internalized, hers is a narrative so potent that you can’t help but unload all your emotional burdens alongside it.

Be the Cowboy is the moment when you’ve revealed so much about yourself to someone that for a second, it’s actually terrifying how quickly and easily they could undermine your whole existence. It’s naked but unconcerned, taking pride in its ability to crumble. Somehow, there’s nothing forced about the painstaking introspection; Mitski is fully committed to baring her soul without simplifying it or suffocating in self-righteousness. It’s equal parts defensive and dejected. You can only be reminded about the impossibility of idealization so much before you start to get confused. But when it’s as outrageous and tortured as this, it stops being a statement and becomes a full-fledged celebration. It painful to to watch, but it hurts even more to turn away.

2. El Mal Querer- Rosalía

Sometimes an album comes along feeling like such a pinnacle of a movement while deifying any categorization. It’s like Rosalía as a concept has been around forever, taking in influence from so many times and places and feelings...but nothing has ever really sounded like this. “Flamenco-pop” is a feeble label for something that so frequently whirls into a trance, belting out unhinged cries of fervor and then, on the next song, lifting a melody from Justin Timberlake. It’s like everything is being re-contextualized on here, and the result is a record that exists in its own time and space, refusing to branch out in favor of planting its own garden.

Rosalía lives for melodrama, which could be cloying if she didn’t justify it so well. It’s like her voice is always on the cusp of breaking out into a 30-second howl, which holds even when she coos a top nothing but a faint drum or a car engine noise. It takes a deep appreciation of your culture and history to be able to sound so universal without simply pining for an older vibe. Rosalía is constantly finding a way to go beyond that, subtly slipping autotune into a crevice that traditionalists would leave uncontaminated, developing sticky hooks without basing the whole song around them. When your core is a developed movement like flamenco but your crowd is the Spanish mainstream, you need more than a pinch of experimentation. El Mal Querer goes beyond that, not leaving any strand of its influences unexplored. Rosalía examines the age-old beauty of the form from every angle she can, shaking it up and seeing how it explodes.

1. Die Lit- Playboi Carti

What does it take to be the album of the year? Well...clearly not lyrical substance, or curt editing, or biting social commentary. The prerequisites for quality are getting harder and harder to pin down. All I know is that Die Lit feels like the album that all the over-saturated glut was building up to/the culmination of the ideas set forth by boundary pushers like Future or Young Thug/the logical conclusion to the intersection between lean-soaked hedonism and fine art. Don’t quote me, but we might not do any better than this. At the end of the bloated tunnel, there’s Playboi Carti squawking into oblivion, deconstructing the style that birthed him over beats that could’ve been produced by, like, Oneohtrix Point Never or Ricky Eat Acid or something.

Playboi Carti is a trailblazer. The most common critique of him is that “all he does is ad-libs, he honestly can’t even rap, and what’s good with all that autotune?” Back to my point about this being the logical conclusion of trap; removing the filler between the ad-libs is a fucking genius idea, an assured embrace of what you do best. I mean, imagine if Migos just went “uhh!” and “mama!” and didn’t have Quavo’s uninspired autotune weighing them down...it happens sometimes, and it’s beautiful. Carti’s ad-libs can be as simple as “what?” or “bih!”, and they are usually presented like a highly calculated flick of emotion, like the mechanics for a precise accentuism. Plenty of guests show up on Die Lit, and none of them have any trouble carving a space in Carti’s world. This makes sense when it’s Thugger or Travis Scott, but it is especially potent when it’s Nicki Minaj and Bryson Tiller, people who rarely delve into this type of experimentation on their own. Carti is so infectious that everyone is eager to step in his space and explore how they can dismantle their own form.

All of it is a daring experiment, especially in the moments where Carti tests the limits of his style, seeing how long he can hold the silence before getting swept into a verse, measuring how layered his voice can get before it crumbles and melts. Give Carti credit where credit is due, but Die Lit would be nothing without its producers, especially Pierre Bourne, who constructs a hazy, awe-inspiring fever dream whenever he hops behind the boards. Not only does this steer hip-hop into the direction it needed to go; it takes notes from the masters of ambient techno, blending snippets of overwhelming synths or vocals into beats that any lesser rapper would have no idea how to ride. When you’re on the forefront of the most widely consumed genre, it’s a lot of responsibility. Die Lit is one of the most forward-thinking statements in the hip-hop yet. At this point, Carti and his team are incapable of producing a song that doesn’t test boundaries or warp seasoned assumptions about what works.

[mythomagically-delicious]

The Night Waves, the Stars Talk, the Years Alone Know

“How did you do it?” Ford asked. Something about his tone made it clear to Stan it wasn’t an idle question. It wasn’t an offhand remark like the hundreds he’s gotten over the years. It wasn’t the rhetorical awe Soos or the kids sometimes gave him. It wasn’t even the admiration and frustration from one genius to another (hey—criminal genius is still genius, right?) It was asked in a low, clear voice.

No accusation, no awe, no admiration. Just a simple question, one brother to another. With an undercurrent of sadness that resonated deep within Stanley’s bones.

He knew exactly what Ford was referring to the moment he asked. He considered playing dumb, but he knew Ford no longer fell for that—not with him.

“Stanley?” Ford asked again, slight worry creeping into his tone. Stan sighed and turned to face his brother. The cool night air swayed their hair with the breeze, but nothing else was moving. It was a still night, cloudless, perfect for watching the stars. And telling a dead man’s story, apparently, Stan thought.

“Inside,” was all Stan said, turning to duck into the cabin and make himself a cup of hot chocolate before plunging into the story. (What could Stan say? Mabel had ruined him for coffee, it had to be hot chocolate now).

Ford followed silently into the galley and fixed his own cup of hot drink before they sat across the table from each other. Stan against the wall, Ford facing him. Stan sat a moment longer, rearranging his thoughts before beginning.

“From the moment after, or from the funeral on?” he asked, wanting to be absolutely sure what Ford thought he wanted to know.

“All of it,” Ford replied simply, leaning forward slightly, twelve fingers wrapped around his mug. Stan sighed but began.

“It took me three weeks to run out of food. Half of it was thrown up during those three weeks, from mold or being sick over what I’d done to you, or both. I went to town and was inspired to create the Murder Hut.”

Stan didn’t describe how there was only enough food for ten days, and the other eleven he starved himself to make it last longer. How he could barely stand when he went to town that first time. How he passed out from exhaustion after the first tour and didn’t wake up for two days, and when he ate he gorged himself on meat from a can and slices of bread until he made himself sick again.

Stan put a hand to his stomach and winced at remembering the pain of that first month. “It was…brutal,” was all he said about it. Ford looked like he wanted to argue for details, but was wise enough (for once) not to.

“I became Stanford Pines. It was easy with the townsfolk to recreate you, not enough of them had ever seen or met you enough to ask the wrong questions.”

Except Boyish Dan, and he had enough on his plate, and he wasn’t the questioning type anyway. Stan paused, thinking over how easy it was to become Stanford Pines to the people of Gravity Falls. (Too easy).

“But there was a problem. I knew that as long as Stanley was still alive, he was a danger to Stanford. I had to fake my own death to truly become Stanford Pines,” Stan continued. He had needed to fully become his brother—a man with a past with no strings attached, no mistakes to run from except for a mistake of a brother.

Stan got a bitter look on his face at that thought, and Ford seemed to be on the verge of interrupting to ask about it, but the moment passed and Stan’s features evened out as he continued talking.

“When I’d been quickly setting up the house to do a tour, I’d stumbled onto what your freaky copier did.”

Stan had a small smile on his face at that. He’d accidentally copied his arm and watched it crawl around in horror until he threw up on it, and watched it melt away into the carpet. All he’d had to clean up was printer ink and bile.

“I rigged it up to be able to scan all of me at once, then copied myself. It was a perfect match.”

Stan stopped, his throat choking on the emotion it needed to let out. The first time he’d seen his clone his legs had given out. And Stan 2 had understood completely why. Stan 2 helped him up, brought him over to a chair, and sat him down.

‘Look, bud, we both know why I’m here,’ his clone had said. ‘Let’s not go getting attached to the disposable twin, huh?’

Stanley had shook himself and nodded, standing up brusquely and saying a quick thanks. Together they’d rented a car and rigged it so Stan 2 would go down in a fiery crash, car flying off the road and into a lake, where the body would have been eaten up by the time the cops found it. But making sure to leave sufficient ID behind, like the car in Stanley’s name, and his first ID card with his real name.

It had been hard to kill himself off. But Stan didn’t waste any tears over it. He let the clone stick around long enough to bandage up his shoulder, and comb through the house for any usable papers on the portal. Stanley killed himself five weeks after the accident. Stan 2 wished him luck, and to copy again if he needed help.

“Stan 2 and I rented a car from Portland and rigged it to crash and burn in the woods near Gravity Falls. Registered in my name, I effectively killed off Stanley Pines. Just to be sure the news would spread down South to some old enemies of mine, I bribed a few reporters with my first wad of cash from the tours into making that wreck big news a few states around, so if anyone came looking, all they’d find was a dead body.”

Ford nodded, the sadness still in his eyes, but highlighted by an expectancy. This was the part he’d been waiting for, after all. What came next.

Stan took a drink of his cooled hot chocolate and cast his mind back.

“Ma called you about two months after I’d pushed you in. It had been two weeks since I’d faked my own death. She was crying. She’d heard the news of Stanley’s death, when she’d been looking for where I’d last been heard of. She said Stanley had wrecked not far from your house, did I know anything about it? Had I seen you? Had Lee finally reached out to me like he’s been trying to?” Stan paused and spat over the table into the trash.

“I’d decided on my reaction should any family come knocking the day Stanley died. I told the truth.”

Ford looked confused, about to verbalize his question when Stan cut in again.

“I told the truth. When Ma asked me about her ‘little Lee’s’ death I told her Yes, I’d heard. He’d come to see me at my request the week before it happened. We talked, we argued, he was just as much of a screw up as before. I tried giving him a chance and he blew it again. I kicked him out and I don’t care what happened to him. He deserved what he got. He ruined my life. Why should he get to live his?”

Ford’s jaw dropped in horror. Besides that he was frozen, unable to move even if he wanted.

“Ma yelled at me through her sobbing for being a self-righteous fool just like Pa. For being so convinced of my own rightness and setbacks that I never stopped to consider what I’d put poor Stanley through all those years. Then she yelled back every piece of news she’d managed to pry from Stanley and surrounding newspapers during those ten years. I listened to all of it, laughing at how she didn’t even know the half of it.

I told her ‘I knew enough. Stanley deserved what he got, and I’m not sorry he’s dead.’ Just before I hung up she told me I would, someday. But until I regretted your death, Ma said we weren’t family anymore.”

Stan had killed two birds with one stone. (Not three, Ford’s not dead, he can’t be dead, I have to get him back). His family wouldn’t be calling any time soon, and he wouldn’t have to fake being Ford to them. No chance to be caught out and taken away from the Shack, that way. No more family to disappoint.

Ford broke his frozen spell and stood up pacing, equal parts outraged and horrified. “You said all that? To Ma? Were you insane?! Why?”

Stan got a sick, humorless grin on his face as he answered, grumbling out his words. “Because I meant every word. I was a screw up and I deserved it. Stanley deserved it. He ruined everything, Ford!” Stan stood up and yelled that, shocking Ford out of his pacing into stillness once more. Stan continued his tirade.

“Stanley was a good for nothing criminal. He didn’t even graduate high school! He went from one shitty job to another, barely scraping by, just trying to survive and eat maybe three days out of seven. Every night going to sleep in his car, freezing, wishing he knew how to make it up to Stanford! Wishing he could go home! Wishing he’d never been fucking born! Stanley was a screw up who deserved everything he had coming. He didn’t deserve a home, he didn’t deserve a family, and he definitely did not deserve life!” Stan pounded the table and it rattled the two long forgotten mugs. Breathing heavily, he slowly eased back into a sitting position. He waited for Ford to do the same.

(It took about ten minutes, but eventually Ford was able to make eye contact with Stan again and sit down. The entire time Ford curled and uncurled his fingers into fists, flexing them out, and curling again. He was just trying to work through all of the information Stan had given him without exploding. There was still more to the story, after all.)

“I didn’t talk to Ma again until 1988. Pa died, stroke. Shermie called and I felt like I had to go, to make sure he was really dead.”

“I showed up in New Jersey, a band-aid over half my face, gloves on. Pretended to have a little accident so no one would ask too many questions about me looking different…if they even remembered.” Stan gave a little sigh at that but continued on. At the time he’d been conflicted enough about his family not recognizing the differences, it was better not to dwell on it again after all these years had passed.

“I met Shermie at the door. He’s nine years older than us, Ford. But he may as well have been ninety years older for all that I knew him. He and Reb had Sam by then, of course. Sam was 16.” So much time, Stan thought. He’d missed so much time with his family, his nephew already a young man. Not even recognizing Shermie when his brother had greeted him at the door to what used to be Pine’s Pawns. Then it was mostly boxed up with a “Space for Rent” sign in the corner of the shop window. He didn’t tell Ford how he’d felt tears gathering at the back of his eyes just by seeing them again.

“Shermie made a beeline for me and asked if I regretted it yet. He inherited Pa’s straight-talking, let me tell you. No ‘hi, hello, how are ya Stanford?’” Stan looked up at the cabin’s ceiling and felt his throat choking him again.

“I meant every word, Ford. But I also hated every word. I hugged Shermie and cried, not even blaming it on the dust, saying I missed my brothers so, so much.”

Stan tried to laugh but it got caught in his throat with the rest of the emotion he was suppressing.

“Shermie didn’t know what to do. He hugged me back—he may have had Pa’s style of speaking, but he was warmer than that bastard ever was—and Reb patted my shoulder. They both tried calming me down, but I—uh, I was working myself into a state, to be honest. I hadn’t cried about losing you and the rest of the family in the same month, again, since it had happened. When Ma realized I was there she appeared, looking old and tired, but not especially sad.”

Ma had approached him, looking her son over as she came forward, drawing whatever conclusions she did, standing close enough to reach out and touch, but refusing to until she asked her question, chin jutting up in that familiar way Stan saw as a front for having herself together. Stan used a similar tactic when he was on the streets. It takes a con to know one.

“She asked if I regretted it yet. I latched onto her and repeated myself over and over again, “He’s gone, he’s gone, Lee’s gone, Ma, he’s gone!” until I ran out of breath. Sam ran and grabbed a box of tissues, discreetly throwing them onto the table next to us. That kid has the biggest heart, Ford, I tell ya. Those kids got it all from him.” Stan smiled at thinking about Samuel as he’d come to know him later, and how Mabel and Dipper were just the same way. Then sobered as he recalled the next part of the story.

“Ma hugged me back and shushed me like a child. She said, ‘It’s going to be alright, Stanford, it’s going to be okay,’ and I cried harder. Nothing was okay, my brother, my twin, my only friend was gone, he’s gone and I might as well have killed him myself. And I couldn’t even tell them to grieve for you instead.”

Stan’s breath hitched unevenly throughout his telling. Ford leaned forward and settled a hand on his arm, trying to steady Stan back. After a minute or so he removed his hand, and Stan continued on.

“There was a lot of grieving that day. None of it for Pa. That was also the day I asked them to call me Stan instead of Stanford or Ford. Ma, bless her soul, agreed right away. Shermie took some time convincing. He still calls me Stanford. I got to know Sam that day pretty well. Reb brought up stories of you watching him as a child, babysitting senior year after Stanley left. Reb said a lot of things I hadn’t known.” At that Stan gave Ford a pointed look that made Ford scratch the back of his neck awkwardly.

Ford didn’t look ready to talk about why he’d suddenly spent every second not at school with a two year old, but Stan picked up enough to guess. The brothers let the moment slide past them together, ready to ignore what they had already resolved between them, no time to let apologies taint the story-telling air Stan brought to the small cabin.

Stan mentally searched for where he had left off. “I stayed in better touch with everybody after that. Nothing more than maybe a couple calls a year, but still. There were a few rough patches with even that. Don’t ask.” Stan’s tone brooked no argument on the matter, before he continued.

“What I said in the basement was true. I spent my days split between learning all your math and science junk, and selling tourists on the fake supernatural. I spent my nights toiling away in the portal room. And every spare second between that I was out in the forest and town, searching for your dumb journals.”

Stan felt a chill shudder through him. Those were the longest nights of his life. He hadn’t known it would be a labor of over 30 years when he started. He had no hope of learning all the math so quickly, but he didn’t think it would take forever, either. As the months wore on, he had felt more and more like a failure. Like he was letting Ford down.

At the mark of the first year since Ford had been pushed in, he’d let the hopelessness take him over. Then he got up the next day and worked twice as hard, renewing his efforts. Desperation colored the first five years, possibly the worst years. He had to acquire so many permits to run a legitimate shop. He had so many bills to pay. He had so much to learn about math and science. He struggled over every single sentence in every single text book in Ford’s house.

Frustration colored the first ten years, in the shack. He wasn’t sure at what point he began referring to it as his house, and not Ford’s, but it made him feel like even more of an imposter, trying to take over more of his brother’s life than he needed to. As often as he could, he made journeys out to search for the journals. Every time he came back empty-handed, splattered in dirt and drenched in sweat, the hopelessness dragged him a bit further down. He’d place his five-fingered hand over the six-fingered hand of Journal 1 and talk out his frustrations to Ford, as if his brother were there, not lost.

He clung to the thinnest lines binding him to the portal, though. He grew to know bits and pieces more over time about what he was dealing with. Deciphering the codes in all of his brother’s work, finding strange gadgets and trying not to mess everything up too bad. He could read Caesar and Atbash in his sleep. The alpha-numeric codes? Easy as pie. But it brought him no closer to his brother. He kept up with his studying, trying to understand the bare bones of the machine so he could get it working again. It wasn’t until somewhere in his second decade of work that he managed to map out the entire machine. And even that took a solid year to do. So much of it was guess work, with no way to check his assumptions.

On the each anniversary of the portal, he drank himself into a stupor. He knew it was stupid, that it wouldn’t help Ford a lick if he got himself trashed. But the guilt clawed at him the worst leading up to that day. He couldn’t stand it. He—

“Stanley,” Ford said gently, bringing his hands up to cover where Stan was gripping his cold mug. Stan realized he hadn’t spoken in a while, getting lost in his thoughts once again.

“Heh, right. Sorry, Sixer. Where was I?” Stan laughed awkwardly, wanting to move away, but also needing the comfort of Ford, physically in front of him, grounding him to the moment. Ford was back, his brother was back. The pain of those thirty years lifted a little more off his shoulders when he remembered that.

“You were saying something about the Mystery Shack, science, and my dumb journals?” Ford said with a small smile, hoping for his brother to pull out of his low mood.

Stan gave a small chuckle back, more genuine this time, and answered. “Right, right. Thanks, Ford.”

“Anytime.” Ford withdrew his hands and leaned back to his seat, giving Stan room to speak again.

“I guess this goes back to your first question. How’d I do it? Heh, well. Hope is a real son of a bitch, you know?” Stan asked, rhetorically. Ford nodded slowly anyway, and Stan continued on. “I mean, it’s a cruel thing to hold onto. Hope I can do something right. Hope I can fix my mistakes. Hope I can get you back. It’s a hard thing to hang a hat on, you know? So I didn’t hope. I just worked. Every day. Didn’t let myself dive into what-ifs too often. Drank myself to sleep every year on the anniversary. Tried to remember everything about you I could, tried to keep everything in perspective as yours, so I wouldn’t forget to be careful. I lived and I worked and I didn’t hope for anything, much.”

Stan took a slow breath, exhaling heavily, giving his brother an appraising look. “It’s no secret that despite the comfy years I spent in this dimension, you aged better. I nearly worked myself to death. And the years I spent out on my own, before that…”Stan looked away from Ford, training his eyes on the wall behind his brother but not really seeing. “Well, those years didn’t help either.”

Stan felt hands around his and squeezing once more. He allowed his eyes to focus back on his brother’s concerned (and somewhat guilty looking) features.

“Aw, hey Poindexter, don’t get that look. It wasn’t your fault. I’m getting sidetracked. Did I miss anything in your question?”

Ford’s face turned contemplative instead of guilty (to Stan’s relief – he hated causing his brother more pain on his account. The memory lapses and injuries on the high seas were bad enough. Bringing up the years they were forcefully separated by their own idiocy was still sore, and Stan hated dredging those up as much as Ford did).

Ford nodded slowly before he spoke, eyes refocusing to meet Stan’s own. He withdrew his hands and folded them before him on the table. “I appreciate your honesty, Stan. I know you didn’t tell me everything. But I think I understand what you didn’t say.” Stan saw a flash in Ford’s eyes, and he felt he knew exactly what Ford meant. They’d both had hard lives. He was sure Stanford could extrapolate a lot more about his years in Gravity Falls than Stan could about time in the portal.

“But you didn’t tell me the best part,” Ford continued on. This made Stan cock his head in confusion, an eyebrow raising and leaning back in his seat by the wall.

“What would that be, Sixer?”

Ford grinned. “You didn’t tell me about the best part of your years. Meeting Soos, for example.”

Stan shook his head. “Nah, those aren’t stories that go together, Poindexter. ‘How I did it’ was nowhere close to how he came into my life. Talking about Soos or Wendy belongs to a night of good memories.”

Ford drummed a quick one-two-three-four-five-six on the table before replying with, “Alright, another time then.”

For a moment the table was silent. Stan felt there was something else Ford was itching to say, working together the sentences in his mind before speaking out loud. Trying to make sure he didn’t say the wrong thing, like so many fights have been started in the past. Stan started to tense up just imagining what Ford would say.

“Do you think…that is to say, do you still believe what you said about yourself?”

Ford didn’t need to clarify. Stan had yelled loud enough to bring the boat down. Maybe all those years ago he’d been trying to sound like Ford, like Filbrick, how they would react to his death. But Stan kept those words next to him for forty years. They wormed into everything he did. They defined how he saw himself, how he decided to present himself to others. A liar, a worthless nobody, an imposter, riding on his brother’s coattails. Living in his brother’s house, the “better twin” still alive while Stanley burned away into nothing.

Stan believed all of that for so long…

Sometimes he still did.

Soos could act like he hung the sun in the sky, but that was only a crack in a shell with so many layers, even Stan couldn’t remember what was at his core. Meeting and caring for Dipper and Mabel broke down more walls in himself. Demolished him. He’d never cared for anything like he did for them, except for Stanford and look where that got my brother, Stan had thought at the time.

Those thoughts didn’t go away overnight. Well, Stan supposes they did, for a bit there. With the memory gun business. It was some of the first sensations to come back, after the initial flood of memories returning, sitting in his chair, surrounded by family. After the kids had gone up to bed, and Soos had gone home and Ford had disappeared for a moment, Stan had sat and thought over everything they had told him about his life. And as much love as he felt, there was a niggling doubt in the back of his mind that grew larger, saying he didn’t deserve that love. He hadn’t earned it yet. He wasn’t worth the time they were spending on him.

Stan had ignored those thoughts, sure they were just typical-person doubts and insecurities, heightened by his amnesiac state. But as more memories flowed in, he remembered why he wasn’t worth as much as his family told him. He’d wanted to draw away, afraid he’d ruin everything if he stayed the focus. But the kids hadn’t let him. Ford hadn’t let him. They came back to him every day, finding different ways to help and show love.

The thoughts didn’t go away completely. They got muffled and blurred out by his family.

But sometimes it wasn’t enough. Stan knew he still held all of those things close to him, the fear that Ford will change his mind, that he will leave him behind again. But he didn’t believe them like he used to. While Stan struggled to answer Ford, he felt his hands clenching and unclenching into fists, nails dragging alone the wooden table.

He looked up to his brother’s face and watched as sadness and pain at the distance they’d forced between them for years swallowed his features. He ordered his thoughts and found his voice enough to answer the question.

“Sometimes. It comes and goes.” His voice was rougher than he would’ve liked. A side-effect of not allowing himself to cry all night as he thought over his life. Even then, the thoughts started swallowing him, telling him don’t be weak, real men don’t cry, be more like your brother and Stan put his head into his hands to avoid looking at Ford for one second longer.

“Stanley,” Ford’s voice was small, but Stan couldn’t look at him. He shook his head where it was hiding between his fingers and didn’t look up, even as he heard his brother’s chair scrape back and his boots land softly and the wood of the bench creak as his brother sat beside him.

“Heh, sorry Sixer, it’s uh, the night’s really getting to me, I guess. Sorry to get weepy on ya.” Stan said, trying to make a joke, failing miserably as he sniffles through his apology, hating how weak he feels against it. Stan felt Ford put an arm around his shoulders, drawing him into a side hug. A six fingered hand rubbing soothing circles on his arm even as Stan still refused to look up.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Stan.”

They lapsed into silence once more as Stan calmed down, huddled against Ford who stayed steady beside him, occasionally saying shh and rubbing his arm. Stan was embarrassed, but Ford quietly reassured him there was nothing to be sorry for. Finally Stan looked up from his hands, eyes ringed red and dirty tear tracks on his face. He looked to Ford and saw how gentle his brother looked, like all he wanted to do was help Stan. It made Stan feel a bit more like he wasn’t worth the bother, but he shoved that thought down as his brother spoke once more.

“Stan, may I ask you to share one more thing, tonight?”

Stan thought about everything he’d said up to this point. He guessed topping it off wouldn’t hurt, not when Ford’s seen him at his most pathetic as it is.

“Sure, Sixer. Ask away. I ain’t got much else to lose, tonight.”

Ford leaned away so he could look Stan in the eyes, the arm that had been wrapped around Stan’s shoulders now just holding onto the nearest one.

“Stan, next time any of those thoughts come to you…will you let me know? I don’t,” Ford cleared his throat, and Stan recognized the red tinge around his brother’s eyes as the same emotion that’s been trying to escape his own throat all night, “I don’t want you to suffer through those alone. I know…” Stan saw Ford’s focus shift off from his eyes to the wall just behind him. “I know how devastating those thoughts are, Stanley. I don’t want you to go through that alone, not anymore. Will you do it?”

Stan felt Ford’s eyes return and make eye contact once again, a squeeze from the hand gripping his shoulder to reaffirm his request. Stan flattened his lips and lowered his gaze, thinking. Ford’s initial question came back to him, and a new answer took shape in his mind.

How did I do it? I did it alone. That’s what Stan thought. The answer he hadn’t realized was threading its way through all the bits and pieces of stories he’d told that night. Bitterly, bitingly alone. That’s how he’s always dealt with what life handed him. He’d always been alone. He could barely remember the days he had somebody to talk to, the overwhelming isolation of the last forty years far overshadowing his childhood and the last couple of months.

Ford offered him a reprieve from that loneliness, to have someone to fall back on when the days came and the words ate at him, tearing him down. All those thoughts that have been clawing at him for decades. His brother offered to take that on with him, to make sure he didn’t do it alone, this time around. But that’s how I’ve always done it, Stan thought to himself. That’s how he had to deal with being kicked out at seventeen. That’s how he had to deal with pushing his brother into another dimension. That’s how he had to deal with working on the portal for thirty years. That’s how he had to deal with every single hardship in his life, and those thoughts were no different.

Stan felt the weight of those forty years, alone, weigh on him. He bowed his head again, turning to the side and staring at the wood grains in the table. How do I even begin to learn how not to do this alone? He wondered. How do I—

“Stanley?”

Stan looked up and met Ford’s eyes once more. He’d shut down into his own mind again. He was overthinking, just like he always teased Ford for doing. But this time the problem wasn’t a strange anomaly or a math formula. It was his own messed up head. For a second Stan was tempted to push off the hand on his shoulder and walk away.

He’d come this far on his own, did he really need the help now?

But Stan knew he couldn’t do that. He probably couldn’t survive that. Not again.

“Hey, Ford?” Stan asked, as if Ford wasn’t waiting for his reply, as if his brother hasn’t been hanging on his every facial expression since he’d interrupted his night of staring at the stars.

“Yes, Stan?”

“I’m having those thoughts.”

Stan saw Ford’s lips tremble for a second before he felt himself drawn into a hug, head tucked below his brother’s chin, his glasses awkwardly smooshed against his face. He felt the plastic digging into his cheek but he didn’t care. Ford was grounding him back to the present, asking how he could help, telling him he is worth so much, he is loved so much, he has never been a burden. How he doesn’t have to do it alone anymore. As if Ford had somehow read his mind and knew exactly what Stan hadn’t said.

Stan had thought he’d spend the evening telling a dead man’s tale. It turns out it was a lonely man’s story instead. And he thanked every lucky star that now he didn’t have to be alone. That he had his brother back, that even if the past can’t be erased, it can be dealt with and moved on from. The questions of how did you do it becoming less important than the questions of how can I help?

They talked until the stars disappeared and faced the new day together.

[tiefighters]

ILM Shares ‘Star Wars Stories’ at Gnomon

ILM’S Paul Giacoppo, Charmaine Chan, and Jay Machado discuss their career paths, making Rogue One, and much more. 

From the opening shot until those final moments before the Tantive IV takes off into hyperspace, Rogue One’s visual storytelling takes center-stage in a big way. The credits run long for a reason, and that’s because hundreds of people at Industrial Light & Magic worked tirelessly to bring every major visual to life in a way that felt both “classic” and new at the same time. Last month at Gnomon University in Los Angeles, three of those visionaries brought their work to an audience of eager visual effects students in a special presentation called Star Wars Stories: An Evening with ILM. ILM’s Paul Giacoppo, Charmaine Chan, and Jay Machado brought decades’ worth of experience to their discussion.

Machado was on the modeling team for The Force Awakens’ Millennium Falcon, and created the award-winning Imperial Star Destroyer that we see rise from the shadows in Rogue One. Charmaine Chan spoke of her history at ILM, illustrating how careers grow and change on the company’s campus. Giacoppo is behind some extremely recognizable work that reaches back decades over the history of Lucasfilm and ILM; the crowd was hooked when he showed off his visually memorable “Hulk Smash” shot from Marvel’s Avengers.

But while their extensive careers could take up an entire editorial on their own, the focus of the evening was visual storytelling, and how ILM created Rogue One. Giacoppo outlined the overall objective of what the team wanted fans to see and understand: “The idea behind our work on Rogue One was that it had to have the visual feel of the classic 1977 Star Wars, but have a new vision as well.”

When it came to seeking out inspiration, the team had to look further than the usual standards. They began with concepts by Ralph McQuarrie, Joe Johnson, and several others that defined the look of Star Wars. These angular, expansive, and recognizable styles still reflect throughout Rogue One, but the team looked at what they could do differently as well, because the story in itself was different from the norm. “[McQuarrie and Johnson’s concepts] were part of what the visual language of Rogue One was,” said Giacoppo. “But it was a different kind of movie. It was a true war movie, about people with a mission to complete. So it’s not exactly a ‘hero’s journey,’ and we had to change what we were doing in order to tell this different kind of story.”

Giacoppo dove into set design, then, showing off digital recreations of classic sets that were created by John Knoll, ILM’s chief creative officer and a staple of Star Wars creativity. Knoll, attempting to explain how characters would move through various scenes, created digital set tours practically overnight in order to explain his vision.

Giacoppo then dove into characters that were created digitally for the film, focusing first and foremost on K-2SO, who he says has been part of the Rogue One story since its original pitch. K-2SO varied greatly from past on-screen droid companions, who were so often cute, or at least a little more friendly-looking. “He’s intimidating, he’s really stealthy, and he’s huge… and he was always an Imperial enforcer droid.

“There was a lot of time spent with the texture artists to get those same materials and weathering we’re used to in Star Wars,” Giacoppo explained, noting the details that showed Kaytoo’s age and length of use.

The team took designing Kaytoo very seriously, spending hours on specific details about how he would emote. The team looked at more eyes than one can count on two hands, then went through tests of how they would move — if at all — and how Kaytoo looked when expressing himself. “There was a big push to have a part of him blink, and to have a part of him move his mouth,” said Giacoppo, noting that such a thing is a rarity among Star Wars droids, who often reflect a much more industrial feel in design than most AI-driven beings within the genre. “But it just didn’t feel like Star Wars. See, he’s all blinking and jittering around… there’s too much going on.” With animation supervisor Hal Hickel’s guidance, the team ultimately went with “this sort of more impassive mask”, said Giacoppo, allowing fans to read and “project” emotions onto Kaytoo as they got to know him.

As a special bonus, Giacoppo showed a tiny clip of K-2SO playing with toys that paired with some very familiar audio from Alan Tudyk’s Wash in Firefly (“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!).

ILM’s Jay Machado, a hard-surface modeler and texture artist, was a welcome and familiar face that evening. As a Gnomon alum himself, Machado’s post-grad years have been more than exciting. For Rogue One, following his Millenium Falcon re-creation, Machado was tasked with creating iconic ship-looks once again. To set the tone for the talk, Machado showed off that iconic opening shot from A New Hope, where the belly of the Star Destroyer sails over the camera in pursuit of Princess Leia’s Tantive IV. “We wanted it to feel like the exact same era,” said Machado. So, his team at ILM went to the root of all builds to recreate and design ships in Rogue One. “For the ships, we went up to the archives, we took lots of photos, we scanned things, stuff like that — all to get the ships to be just right,” Machado told the crowd. “There’s a few people still working at ILM that we were able to talk to, like [long-time ILM VFX artist and supervisor] Dennis Muren, who [shot] much of this originally, and that really helped when it came to making it accurate.

“What I was surprised by is that the original Star Destroyer is only three feet long…a lot of the panel lines are drawn in with pencil. And we wanted to match that so that in a way, you could watch Rogue One and seamlessly start A New Hope.”

As far as new ships went, Machado noted that the tasks were just as difficult, but worth every grueling second. “Working with Doug Chiang and the art department, we had to design [the new ships] in a way that felt familiar so that they would blend in seamlessly with the ships we know and love.” Machado highlighted the U-wing, Krennic’s ship, and the new TIE strikers, stating that they were kind of meant to “compliment” the U-wing, with forward-sweeping panels and a unique, planet-specific use.

What may have been most exciting was the creation of new ships to the canon, like the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels, which featured on screen twice in Rogue One. “It fell to me to actually [build the Ghost] and it was kind of a secret project,” said Machado. “Well, at first it was a secret. Nobody else was supposed to know about it. I was supposed to do this quickly, and I had to design it in between my daily work so that people within the office wouldn’t start getting suspicious,” he joked. There are panels and pieces that might look familiar, too — parts of the Ghost might look similar to the Falcon, and that’s no mistake.

One other major ship from Rebels that ended up in Rogue One came all the way from the Knights of the Old Republic games, originally. Hammerhead cruisers, which Princess Leia worked with Kanan Jarrus and Ezra Bridger to steal for the Rebellion in Star Wars Rebels, played an integral part in Rogue One, and Machado was among those responsible for their finished designs on the big screen.

Charmaine Chan’s presentation focused more on the process of growing her career before and after ILM. As an up-and-coming artist who veered off the trail that her parents originally wanted (worry not — they were ultimately supportive either way), Chan hit the ground running by creating work early and producing it every day. Since joining ILM, Chan has worked on more movies than one can count — a once-over of her IMDB page shows credits for Transformers, Captain America: Civil War, Jurassic World, and more. But her beginnings were in Web development.

According to Chan, she learned HTML, CSS+, and more “so that I could build Spice Girls websites” as a little girl. As that hobby grew, Chan broke into graphic design, then Flash animation. (As someone who started her career building Star Wars and N*SYNC fansites, this writer can relate.) “That’s what really started all of this, because I started watching movies closer and learning what it took to compose a full shot. There’s lightning, texture, and all sorts of details to consider, which I found really interesting…it really helped me move into this form of art.” Chan took those skills to the next level, learning visual effects, making motion graphics (“You know, like, DVD menus!” she joked) and eventually applying for a digital research position at ILM. “That gave me a really great overview of what the VFX process is,” said Chan. “I got to touch the shots at the beginning and the end.” From there, she kept working her way into a position at ILM that has grown and spanned over a decade, leading to her work as a compositor today.

The night was a wonderfully informative look at how the story of Rogue One was brought to to the big screen with stunning, modern, yet familiar visuals. One of the biggest surprises for this writer was learning about the sheer scale of people working on each Star Wars film. Hundreds of names scroll down through the credits after every film, but there’s just something unique and different about putting faces to those names and realizing just how many people it takes to make our favorite galaxy far, far away come to life.

[lostinyourears]

Fire Pro Roster Recap #1 : Super Fire Pro Wrestling Queen’s Special

I thought I’d try to capitalize some on the GLOW hype train that’s been happening since that show’s release. Sadly, as far as I know there was never a GLOW video game. So I went with the next best thing, a joshi* video game!

*- Joshi is a japanese female wrestler. Joshi just being japanese for girl/woman. So a Joshi wrestler is a girl wrestles, but most people just say Joshi.

Fire Pro is a revered wrestling game series that has plenty of entries, it’s 29th main line entry will be coming out on Steam and PS4 sometime in 2017. The game I’m highlighting today was the 12th entry in the series and the 3rd game officially licensed by AJW(All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling) who’s logo can be seen in the middle of the ring for all the matches. It was released in 1995 for the Super Famicom in Japan.

Roster :

Aja Kong : A dominate woman’s performer who worked in AJW in the late 80′s through the late 90′s. Once the 2000′s rolled around she would shift over to Oz Academy which is a popular company ran by Mayumi Ozaki. Notable worked in WWF briefly where she was the sole survivor for her team and eliminated everyone on the opposing team. She was going to be built as a contender for the women’s title at the following Royal Rumble, before the title holder Alundra Blayze was fired. 

Bison Kimura : Less notable, Bison Kimura worked with AJW from 1990 to 1997. She didn’t work as much as many women on this roster, having less than 100 matches under her belt according to cagematch.net. For comparison Aja Kong has more than 100 matches in some years of her career.

Bolshoi Kid : Is notably a long term talent for JWP(Japanese Women Pro-Wrestling Project). She started there in 1993 and would venture away for a few years from 2000-2005. She has worked mostly there in the last decade and has had matches in the promotion even in 2017.

Candy Okutsu : Wrestled from 1993 to 2000. Most notably early in her career she was a worker for JWP, which is a common thread for this list of wrestlers. The bigger stars of JWP’s early days were Mayumi Ozaki and Cutie Suzuki. 

Combat Toyoda : Combat Toyoda is as legit a fighter as you’ll likely find even in Joshi circles(which are known for their workrate). Combat didn’t work in JWP or AJW much, instead cutting her teeth in the FMW(Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling). Which was a promotion know for it’s hardcore matches, they even had crossovers with ECW in the 90′s. Combat Toyoda retired in 1996 except for 2 one off matches after that. She has since changed careers and works as a restaurateur.

Chapari Asari : I couldn’t find much about her. She had a brief career(I’d assume) and was one of Aja Kong’s 2 ever opponents on WWF Raw where Aja broke her nose. 

Edit: Chapari Asari was a groundbreaking high flyer. Her biggest contribution being inventing the Sky Twister Press(corkscrew moonsault). Her main years of activity were 1993 through 2000. And she was a part timer from 2001 through 2004. Her main companies were All Japan Women's and Hyper Visual Fighting Arsion. She also did a few tours of Mexico for CMLL in the mid 90's. She held the WWWA Super Light Heavyweight Title twice, and the Sky High Of ARSION Champion once.   (Credit to reddit /u/Xalazi for contributing this information)

Cutie Suzuki : One of the breakout stars for JWP she worked more matches for them in 1994 than anyone else. She also barely worked in AJW a whopping 6 matches in her career. She was fairly popular and even got a game of her own in 1990. She would retire from wrestling in 1998. I’m not certain what she has been up to in the 2 decades since, though she did wrestle once in 2013 for Oz Academy.

Devil Masami : #2 for 1994 matches in JWP Devil Masami was a big talent for them. She had a career that spanned 3 decades from 1978-2008. She was mostly a JWP talent until the 2000′s rolled around when she like many other talents moved over to Oz Academy where she wrestled mostly until she retired. She also held the very short lived WCW Women’s championship... despite never wrestling in a WCW ring. 

Dynamite Kansai : Another talent of this game who’s more well known as a JWP talent. Holding the JWP Openweight title for over 1,000 days over 2 reigns. Like many people on this list 2000′s came around and she moved over to Oz Academy where she still wrestler regularly today.

Eagle Sawai :  Worked mostly for Ladies Legends Pro Wrestling-X(LLPW-X), which is still open today. However, he most active years were 93-94 and 97-98 and retired in 2007.

Etsuko Mita : Was an AJW mainstay for most of the 90′s, but took a lighter schedule in the 2000′s. While she did work for Oz Academy not as much as many on this list did... more 1 off matches here and there. She ended her career in 2009 working in both NEO Ladies and Ice Ribbon the last few years of her career. 

Harley Saito : Another person who worked mostly for LLPW-X. Working their until her retirement in 2012. After wrestling she went into food management, but sadly is one of the few people who have passed on this list. She died in 2016 just a few weeks shy of her 49th birthday. The cause of death being  esophageal cancer which she had learned about a year prior and had been getting treatment for. 

Hikari Fukuoka : Another great talent who is known more for her work in JWP than AJW. Hikari worked through all of the 90′s before retiring in 1999, though she’s had 2 comeback matches in 2017. One of her most famous matches being a 1993 AJW vs JWP match vs Manami Toyota.

Jaguar Yokota : A pioneer of modern women’s wrestling, Jaguar had her debut at the age of 15 in 1977 and would hold her first title before she was even 20. She has retired twice, but is now an active wrestler again. Her first very young retirement at age 24 saw her stay with AJW as a trainer where he students would include : Manami Toyota, Toshiyo Yamada, Megumi Kudo, Kyoko Inoue, and Takako Inoue. Without Jaguar the joshi boom in the 90′s likely would have never happened and neither would this game. Since 2012 she regularly wrestlers for World Women Pro Wrestling Diana. 

Kyoko Inoue : A student of the last entry Kyoko debutted in 1988 and for most of the 90′s would work in AJW. She would be in many 5* matches in the 90′s and come the late 90′s she would found her own promotion : NEO Ladies, which would prosper for about a decade before going defunct in 2010, Kyoko didn’t let that discourage her as she founded another company shortly after where she still wrestles called World Women Pro Wrestling Diana. (Is also noted as being the first female to hold a male title in Japan, but I don’t know how true/reliable that info is)

Lioness Asuka : Often forgot about Lioness is a talent that had success in the 80′s and carried over into the 90′s being a talent for AJW most of that time. In the 80′s she had mainstream success with her tag partner Chigusa Nagayo together known as, The Crush Gals. She retired in 2005, but had a single comeback match in 2013 in World Woman Pro-Wrestling Diana.

Manami Toyota : by any measure the biggest star for AJW both at the time of this game, but also in general. Toyota was a rockstar and considered one of the best wrestlers bar none, not just among the females. She works a lighter schedule these days mostly for Oz Academy, though because of her larger than life reputation she has worked at many promotions since 2010 rolled around though she announced she will be retiring in 2017 on November 4th. 

Mayumi Ozaki : Another Joshi Megastar Ozaki never worked as big of a schedule as Manami Toyota at her peak. Manami wrestled over 140 matches in her peak years compared to Ozaki’s biggest year of 69 matches. Mayumi Ozaki though of course created Oz Academy one of the premier Joshi promotions that’s been running since 1998. It helped fill the vacuum that AJW left when it shut down in 2005. 

Mayumi Ozaski has ventured into writing over the years and has 3 different books : ‘ Ringside detective Maya Kitsurugi, a female professional wrestler(mystery)’ in 2014,  Rogue - life as a baddie in 2003 and  A heel - hard and strong in 1990. She also had a manga she wrote in 1992 as a follow up to her first book called ‘Text for Heels’.

Megumi Kudo : FMW makes it’s way back onto this list via the innovator of the Kudo Driver. She was known for having hardcore matches in FMW who made her the top star there. She wrestled from 1990 to 1997 always under the FMW banner. FMW also had a rough schedule with Kudo wrestling 120+ most years of her career. The only promotion that had more matches a year was AJW. Megumi has not been in the ring since her retirement 20 years ago and likely won’t come back... but many other long retired joshi’s have returned for a one off. So never say never. 

Mima Shimoda : One of the few talents here who was a big star exclusively for AJW at the time of this game's release. Shimoda worked almost as much as Toyota but wasn’t as recognized or praised. In the early 2000′s she was basically retired before making a resurgence in CMLL, where she would work for the next 5 or 6 years, before making her way to previously mentioned Joshi promotion Diana where she still works to this day. 

Noriyo Tateno : Much like the above Lioness, Noriyo is someone who had success in the 80′s that’s forgotten in the huge boom that Joshi had in the mid 90′s. In fact, Noriyo was rivals with Lioness and also a big tag team star. With her partner Itsuki Yamazaki, known together as ‘The Jumping Bomb Angels’. They were the only survivors in the first ever female Survivor Series match and briefly held the WWF Women’s Tag team titles in 1988.From 1992 til her retirement in 2010 she primarily worked for Ladies Legend Pro-Wrestling, before that she was an AJW talent. 

Plum Mariko : Was a promising young star in JWP, who’s career was tragically cut short after unchecked head injuries lead to a brain abscess. She died in 1997 and both AJW and Oz Academy have held memorial shows in her honor. She was also posthumously inducted into the  All Japan Women's Hall of Fame in 1998. 

Rumi Kazama : I can’t actually find much on Rumi, she had a pretty meager career and retired in 2003 with some appearances here and there since. She mostly worked in LLPW-X and Wrestle Association-R(WAR) who had a working relationship with one another doing crossover shows and the like. 

Shinobu Kandori : LLPW-X wrestler who had a MOTYC hardcore match in 1997 vs Kudo who is mentioned above. She worked a few dates for AJW, but was a LLPW-X wrestler and became it’s president in 2002 and has since had scattered appearances, but never more than a half dozen in a year.

Suzuka Minami : A staple of the AJW Joshi boom in 93 and 94, she wrestled mostly for AJW(Though had a few matches in CMLL in ‘92). She basically walked away from the business in 1995 when AJW hit a road bump and hasn’t been back since. 

Takako Inoue : Another AJW star that would work there through the 90′s, then switch to Oz Academy like so many others in the 2000′s. She still wrestles sporadically for various Joshi Promotions. 

Toshiyo Yamada : Another AJW star Toshiyo’s biggest claim to fame is probably being tag team partner and champion with Manami Toyota who was the huge star of the promotion during it’s hottest time. Toshiyo also was in a great hair vs hair match vs Toyota that played into their tag team success. Being both partners and rivals. 

Yasha Kurenai : Had a brief career in the 90′s working mostly for LLPW-X, has been retired since 1999 with a guest appearance otherwise has stayed retired. 

Yumiko Hotta : like many Puroresu workers Yumiko focused on MMA and blended that into her wrestling. She was loyal to AJW until 2002 after which she was a freelancer for many joshi companies most recently in 2017 she has worked with Actwres girl'Z and is still active though she has never worked as heavy of a schedule as she did with AJW in the mid 90′s.

Kaoru Ito : worked heavily in the AJW Joshi boom, took it very light in the 2000′s until 2011 when she joined DIANA and became a regular there since.

The rest I’ll put up, but couldn’t put faces to the names : Mari Yoshida, Saki Hasegawa, KADRU, Cooga, and Bomber Hiru. If you know who these people are please feel free to fill me in and I’ll give them the same treatment as the rest of the roster. 

Gameplay Review : It’s fun! If you like fire pro wrestling, which I do. This isn’t the best one, that at this point is Fire Pro Returns. The reason to play this game is being all the Joshi talent. Fire Pro Returns have some joshi talent, but it’s not the focus like it is here.   

There are 5 modes : Challenge for the Red Belt(Story/Career), One night match(Exhibition), Battle Royal(Normal, Endless and Teams), Elimination match(premade teams), and Tournament match.

Also, has an Edit Wrestler and Options Menu.

If you’ve only played Fire Pro Returns or have never played the series, I think most will be surprised how good a wrestling game can be on the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo. This is one of 8 Fire Pro games that landed on that system and I’d say they are all pretty great. This plays much like the rest and works pretty well, even if falling out of the ring can feel excessive at times.

If you can find your hands on a copy, I’d recommend checking it out. Really though I’ve enjoyed all the fire pro games and can’t wait for the next installment. Until then, maybe I’ll keep playing some of the classics in this long running series. 

[evenstevensranked]

#39: Season 1, Episode 16 - “Luscious Lou”

After a massive content drought... We are back! This week, Louis joins the wrestling team!! It’s surprisingly going pretty well for him — until he finds out that his major competitor from a neighboring school is a girl. Oh, boy. Typical junior high sexism ensues. Meanwhile, Ren tries to get back at Louis for a prank he pulled on her. 

This one starts off with Ren getting caught in a net trap made by Louis. She’s cursing his name when Steve comes to her rescue. He tells her she can’t be so quick to assume that Louis made the trap.. but is shut down immediately when Ren hands him a piece of paper that says…

I always liked this. Louis is so freaking condescendingly sarcastic sometimes.

Anyway, this highlights just how much free time Louis has on his hands. So Steve encourages him to “use it for good instead of evil” and join an after school activity. Louis tells Twitty and Tawny about the situation and they start brainstorming sports Louis could do... But, pretty much come to the conclusion that he sucks at everything. My favorite line here is “What about cross country?” / “Nah, he gets cramped up and winded just from tying his shoes.” - S A M E. This whole convo is actually really lighthearted and funny on Tawny and Twitty’s end, but Louis is caught in the middle and a lil upset. "There's helping, and then there's hurting guys” he says.

They run into Coach Tugnut and Louis asks him if he can join a sports team. Tugnut lifts him up and tries to gauge his weight and just like that, Louis makes the wrestling team. I’m pretty sure that’s not how joining the wrestling team works irl. 

“How much do you weigh, Stevens? 104, 105?”

“........uh, th-that’s a personal question, Coach.” (I’m dying) 

Tugnut randomly lifts up Twitty as well and says “Haven’t seen you in a while, thought I’d lift you up.” It’s such a bizarre and out of left field moment. I feel like it was written in last minute for the heck of it. It’s great, though. Certain offbeat moments like this that work are what help make the show unique and quirky, imo. The fact that there’s no laugh track makes it even better. It’s dry and awkward and reminds me of a bit you’d see on Portlandia or something.  

I bet Tugnut previously impacted Lenny The Lifter’s life in some way. 

Later that day back at home, Ren and Steve are in their back yard which does not look like their back yard at all for whatever reason. Ren is rigging a lawn chair to break for whenever Louis may or may not sit in it. Not exactly the best idea. Steve happens to be looking through an old box of photos here, one of which is of Louis as a lil nakey baby wearing a cowboy hat. 

Steve: “There’s ol’ Lou! Never the shy one!” Ren: “...And he still watches TV that way. It's very disturbing." 

Just picturing fully grown Season 1 Louis lying on the ground in a cowboy hat with his name on it, butt naked in front of the television like it's no biggie, has me dying right now. I just can't. Donnie ends up sitting in the rigged chair and falling, all while eating a cupcake. He says “I need to lay off the deserts” as if his non-existent obesity broke the chair -- which is pretty funny.

Something I love about certain comedy shows is when a scene will abruptly start with the tail end of an unrelated, absurd line. I don’t really know how else to explain it, but that’s what we get next. It cuts to gym class and we hear Tugnut casually say “...but before we get to those finger tip push-ups with a partner on your back -- let me introduce the newest member of our team, Louis Stevens." Which is just hilarious to me. It’s so easy to miss, but the imagery is so great. Take a minute to imagine flimsy middle schoolers trying to do that. Just another reason why Tugnut is an unfit and frankly abusive educator, lol.

Here is where we see that Louis initially thinks the wrestling team is going to be like freaking WWE Monday Night Raw and says "Although, I've never gotten hit in the back of the head with a folding chair... I'll try to make it look as real as possible." It. Is. Fantastic. Tugnut is quick to let him know it ain’t pro wrestling. Then we get a montage (which must span at least a few days/weeks) of Louis’ progress from ridiculous, uncoordinated weakling -- to pretty decent wrestler! I love this so much! Partially because there’s this one bit: 

^ LOUIS IS LITERALLY MEEEEE!!!! No exaggeration. I once auditioned for the touring production of Green Day’s “American Idiot” and holy crap the choreo they taught and expected us to know within a few minutes murdered me. I was seriously THAT person. When everyone was up, I was down. When everyone was down, I was up. So unbelievably embarrassing. Needless to say, I didn’t receive another callback after that, lol. I feel like this might be another reason why Louis is my fave. No, yeah. It’s definitely a reason.

He gets better and better over time, and seeing Louis with determination for something that's not lazy and takes hard, physical work -- is honestly so attractive. I know Shia was, like... 14 here but... Oh, well. He was my first TV crush okay?! And watching this show takes me back in time. I MISS LOUIS STEVENS! If Shia ever reprised his role as an adult, I’d ascend into heaven right then and there. 

Of course, this newfound ability to wrestle decently goes to Louis' head once again. He’s bragging to the other kids "I'm a quiet snake. I just sneak up. I go *hiss*! Nagurski, he can't mess with me. Look at these pipes!!!" I feel like all of this is ad-libbed. He’s sort of stuttering and pausing, trying to think of what to say next. I love Shia LaBeouf. But then suddenly a girl rolls up on her bike. "Are you guys on the wrestling team?" she asks. Louis obviously thinks she's coming onto them. "Yes. Louis Stevens, Olympic hopeful" is how he introduces himself to her and I am dead. "Mimi Nagurski, destroyer of dreams” is her response. THIS IS PERFECT. Louis was brought straight down a peg right there. Yep. He finds out Nagurski is... a girlski. (Forget that I ever made that rhyme immediately.)

It’s like he’s questioning the meaning of life.

“Imagine losing to a girl?!” the other teammates say and laugh. Oh, man. The sexism is cringy. But, I know that it's a thing. Especially among teen boys in 2001... Dang. 

He goes to Twitty to talk about the issue and Twitty’s oh so comforting words are "You know what a win/win situation is, right? Well, this is just like that -- except it’s a lose/lose." Thanks, Twitty. Even so, Louis genuinely says he's not gonna quit the team or back down from the match. He's been working really hard and actually likes the sport. He's also happy about making his dad proud, as Steve used to be a wrestler himself back in the day. Aww. 

As far as Ren’s plot goes... She spends the whole week/episode trying to get back at Louis for trapping her. She fails and ends up accidentally getting Donnie instead. Since Donnie is very underappreciated, I really like his moments here. 

Even though Louis doesn’t want to quit the team, he still doesn’t want to have to fight a girl either. Once he realizes that the team is divided by weight, he gets the brilliant idea (sarcasm) to eat as much food as he can in 20 hours in an attempt to gain 9 pounds and bump up to the next weight class. I am positive that's not how the digestive system and weight gaining process works but, ok. Wow, Louis. Wow. This kid risked going into a diabetic coma just so he wouldn’t have to fight a girl. 

And, yes. This is when he has that iconic nightmare that all the fat went to his butt: 

He ends up having what I assume is terrible diarrhea and gas, if the explosion noises coming from the bathroom are any indication. Disney coming through with those mature, high brow jokes there! (more sarcasm) Poop is funny!!1!! XD

At the next weigh-in, Louis is still trying to find a way out of the match until the last minute by hiding two frying pans under his jacket. 

“Stevens, you have two frying pans around your neck.” // “I do???” - Why is this so funny?

Obviously, Louis’ weight gain idea failed and he’s still 105, in Mimi’s weight class. But, as an even worse last minute attempt of getting out of the match, he sneakily puts his foot on the scale when Mimi’s being weighed -- which puts her over 123 pounds, lol. “Oh... I thought I saw a bug.” SLICK, LOUIS. Real slick. 

Now, we’ve made it to the match! Louis is mysteriously absent when announced by the ref. Until, you hear animal growls and metal music start playing. That’s when Luscious Lou makes his grand entrance. (See cover image.) “I’m Luscious Lou and I love you, sir! There’s love in my heart. No hate, no hate. Just love. That’s all. That’s all I can give.” Was that an unintentional Backstreet Boys quote? I also feel like this is all an ad-lib. It’s really great. Shia’s delivery is always on-point regardless.

In hindsight, it’d be much funnier if this bit wasn’t rooted in Louis’ internalized sexism. Oh, no. Is my inner Tumblr SJW jumping out??? Ah. I really do feel that way, tbh. If he wasn’t trying to get himself disqualified and genuinely acted like this because he’s just a hilarious person like that, I’d find it much funnier today. Instead, it comes across as cringy and sad. Like, I’m so embarrassed for everyone involved in this fictional universe while watching it. In a way, I think that’s the point though. Steve and Ren are confused and disappointed in the stands. Louis is making a fool of himself. The school’s reputation is on the line. Mimi is insulted. It’s... yeah. 

I’m not sure “Luscious” is the best word to describe Lou. 

Thankfully, Louis decides to do the right thing and fight Mimi fair and square. “Hey, Nagurski! Let’s dance.” AYYYYYY! It’s slightly epic. During the fight Steve yells “Take him down!! Oh.. take HER down! Guy, girl, it doesn’t matter. Take THAT PERSON down!!!” - This is so life in 2017. It’s true though. Louis wins the match and Mimi’s respect. So, that’s cool. 

This episodes’ final minute bit is also pretty good. Ren finally pulls a solid prank on Louis by making him think she printed that naked baby photo of him on the cover of the school newspaper, lol. 

All in all, this is a good episode! We’re into the #30s now, so every episode is pretty much stellar to some degree from now on. Shia really shines in this episode and we get to see some different sides to Louis as well, which is always nice. 

Thanks for reading!! Please share your thoughts below! :) 

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[fyhyunah]

HyunA Delights Fans at NYC Concert: Recap

24-year-old HyunA has been in the Korean pop industry for over a decade, juggling the various roles she's filled since 2007: a member of the now-defunct Wonder Girls and 4minute, one-half of the duo Trouble Maker, and a successful soloist. As a member of 4minute, HyunA was best known for her memorable, arguably polarizing vocal tone, her magnetic stage presence, and her sexy image.

After fellow 4minute members Sohyun, Gayoon, Jiyoon, and Jihyun decided not to renew their Cube Entertainment contracts in June of 2016 after seven years together, HyunA found herself in a complicated position that was made no easier by media and netizens.

HyunA's North American The Queen's Back Tour, then, is symbolic of the signer's establishment as a full-time international soloist, and the perfect opportunity to connect with and thank some of the fans who have stood by her. The star, despite having her international it-girl moment after hundreds of millions around the world watched her do the horsey dance and charm Psy in “Gangnam Style,” has only performed in America once before as a soloist -- back in 2014, HyunA performed a four-song set to a crowd of K-pop fans at SXSW's K-Pop Night Out.

Nearly three years later, she's returned to North America, armed with five EPs of material to present to a much larger audience comprised of her loyal fanbase, affectionately named A-ings by the singer herself. With all the possibilities presented by her discography and her talents -- HyunA flips between rapping and singing, from low-toned and husky to cheeky and cute -- what could concertgoers expect?

At the New York City stop of her tour, produced by KPOPME, eager fans piled into Midtown's Town Hall on Friday (March 3). The crowd was ready to scream their hearts out for the next two hours, shouting prematurely as the lights dimmed and fog engulfed the stage, only for the MC to step onto the stage and sheepishly apologize for getting their hopes up.

As HyunA took the stage, following a dance cover from contest-winners Serendipity Dance Troupe, the crowd resumed their screaming, lighting up the venue with a sea of cherry red light sticks. HyunA wisely opened the show with her 2015 single “Roll Deep,” a synth-heavy track where HyunA marvels at her own fame, success, and beauty with lyrics like “My scale is different, you can’t touch this.” The track was upbeat enough to set the tone for the evening, which skipped the few downtempo tracks in her discography and played to her strengths: her dancing skills and her smoldering charisma.

After a small translator-assisted chat, HyunA jumped into her 2012 single “Ice Cream,” where she alternates between talking about love in a coy voice and rapping about “diamond rings, so bling bling,” and the A Talk b-side “French Kiss,” a perfect mash-up of Missy Elliott's “Lose Control” and Britney circa 2001. Afterwards, the MC introduced a segment that would help fans learn more about HyunA. HyunA answered safe, fan-submitted questions, like “Where in New York would you shoot a music video?” (answer: in Times Square, surrounded by her fans.) After the fan-service-heavy Q&A segment, HyunA performed “A Talk” and the sweet, tropical house-flavored “U&Me,” the first track from her latest EP A'wesome.

HyunA stepped off the stage as a lengthy clip detailing her solo career, from the “Crazy in Love”-inspired music video for “Bubble Pop!” to behind-the-scenes clips from the music video for “How's This?," played to the crowd's occasional cheers. HyunA's energy noticeably picked up post-intermission, after she returned to the stage in a cropped Thrasher hoodie and matching hot shorts that belied the below-freezing temperatures outside. As the crowd collectively lost it over her new outfit, HyunA dived into the nursery-rhyme-meets-hip-hop of “Red;” the change from stilettos to sneakers definitely helping her execute the big movements of the choreography.

The MC then introduced a number of games designed to get fans to directly interact with HyunA on stage: a match game, where select audience members answered questions alongside the star, a lottery where fans could win goodies kissed by her, and a dance-off, where fans broke more than a sweat to impress HyunA. At this point, the concert felt more like a fan-meet, but those fans were more than ecstatic to have the opportunity to hug and take selfies with HyunA.

HyunA returned to the music and stuck to it for the rest of the show, performing her 2010 debut single “Change,” A'wesome B-side “Freaky,” and the sparse trap-meets-electronic track “How's This?,” before disappearing off stage. After minutes of darkness and chants of “One more song!," HyunA returned to the stage to perform the effervescent “Bubble Pop!,” her most notable hit.

The show was, musically, a paint-by-numbers affair. HyunA herself was barely audible over the overwhelming backing track. No remixes or alternations to any of her tracks were present; when presented with the opportunity to rap in place of Highlight's Junhyung on “Change” or BTOB's Ilhoon on “Roll Deep,” HyunA danced through their bars and let the backing tracks take care of it.

As a concert, HyunA's NYC show was a series of curious choices -- from her set list, which clocked in at 32 minutes long and excluded notable tracks like “Ice Ice” and “Do It!,” to the venue itself. The Town Hall, a fully seated venue better known for its rich jazz history and the major part it played in the suffragette movement of the 1920's, is a far cry from the New York City clubs and arenas where other K-pop artists have played.

As an experience, however, fans got more than they bargained for with the intimate experience. Fans had the chance to dance to “Red” alongside HyunA, take selfies with the unusually approachable star, and have every single shout heard. Every “I love you!” was met with a typical but no less adorable response from the singer. From start to finish, this show was as much about the fans as it was about HyunA and what it lacked in over-the-top stage production and theatrics, it made up in heart. Judging by the audience's seeming elation and constant energy, it was a good move.

cr:billboard

[girlsagainst-archive]

Black Honey Interview

Two of our lovely reps Alice and Gerogia met up with Black Honey before their Manchester gig on their UK tour in October 2016. We talked feminism, their current and future plans and changes they want to see within the music industry:

What have you been up to over the summer? Any particular highlights?

All: Truck Festival!

Izzy: Japan. Japan was massive.

Tommy: I feel like we’ve been doing festivals for months and months and months, it’s been really fun. We’ve been to Japan for the first time.

Izzy: We did Vienna last week and that was wicked. We’ve had so many highlights so you can’t really pick one cause everything feels like a highlight, every shows there’s just like more and more kids coming and screaming along.

Does it feel good to be back touring the UK or do you prefer it overseas?

Chris: I like both.

Izzy: Yeah! It’s a good mixture. We’re at a time now where we’ve done so many festivals that we’re really excited to be doing our October tour.

Chris: I think it’s always really nice to play your own shows because you’re playing to your own fans and they’re way more intense, which is always good fun.

What do you guys have in store for 2017?

Izzy: We hope to get our heads down in an album in 2017. We haven’t got an official booked-in date or anything yet. We’ve got a lot more touring to do.

In terms of feminism, who do you look up to within the music industry?

Izzy: In terms of women in music, I really like St. Vincent. I think she’s a really good example of a woman that’s doing really interesting things at the moment.

Tommy: Courtney Barnett!

Izzy: Yeah, she’s really got something to say! ‘Give me all your money and I’ll make some origami honey’, so good! Patti Smith- classic, all-time hero; PJ Harvey, I’ve seen her twice this summer, I can’t get my head round her still, she blows my mind.

Is there anyone who you gets it right politically or morally within the music industry?

Tommy: It’s a tough one when bands get political. When it works for them it’s amazing but I find that it can be forced. What the Fat White’s do is pretty cool. We’ve played with so many different people over the summer and you know when you remember seeing loads of good stuff but it all sort of blurs into one?

Do you feel like as a band, fronted by a female, that you’ve ever experienced misogyny? Do you ever feel like you’ve been at a disadvantage or do you think its worked as a selling point for you?

Izzy: I don’t think it’s a disadvantage or a selling point. It’s sad that it’s seen as a selling point and we definitely don’t condone that as a thing. To us I’m the same as these guys. They don’t see me differently, I don’t see me differently. But I think I definitely feel I’ve seen misogyny but it’s not been anything that I can’t really handle yet. Everyone seems to have been quite respectable at the moment anyway. Obviously there’s been some funny ones; I’ve been kicked out of gigs before for not having my pass on because they thought I was a groupie.

We saw something you guys tweeted the other day and there were a lot of creepy men prying. A pair of underwear with a badge on it and they were like, ‘I’d love to see you in these’.

Izzy: Oh my god, yeah yeah!

Tommy: That was probably one of the worst things we’ve ever had actually.

Izzy: Then the next guy was like, ‘I’ll buy them after she wears them’ and we were like dude… We just got all our friends to tweet them and be like ‘Creepy!’

Chris: I think the Internet makes it harder in a way because people just write so much stupid shit. They can hide behind the Internet.

How do you think young girls and women in general can be encouraged to become involved to join indie-rock bands when the genre is and has been largely dominated by males?

Izzy: I don’t know, it’s a weird one cause I just feel like I got into music just cause I liked it. If people come and see us and they pick up guitars and want to write songs, whether they’re a boy or a girl, that is amazing. And our mosh pits, we’re really strict with it being a love only scenario so if it’s a circle pit you can run at someone but then go and hug them, like you can’t push each other, that’s not a thing. We’re sort of stressing on the non-violence and I think that makes it more welcoming for girls but we get loads of girls on the front row!

Chris: Mainly girls, isn’t it?

Tommy: I think, although it’s a bit of a cliché now, you’ve seen the festival posters where they cross out all the acts that don’t have women in. So I guess that’s a thing now.

Who do you think is to blame for that? Do you think it’s the festival bookers themselves or just the industry?

Chris: That’s the thing, it’s a weird circle isn’t it. Because you think it’s the festival bookers fault but then if there’s not enough women in music then it’s gonna be difficult.

Izzy: If there’s positive sexism, ‘Oh we’re just hiring that band because they’ve got girls in to even it out’, it’s like what? I know that when I was a kid, I definitely was very intimidated by the prospect of playing music with boys. And when I was really young I never thought I could be in a band with them because I thought they’d be like ‘Ha ha ha! Why do you wanna do it?’ I was brought up in a world where my mum was a massive tomboy, she was a sailor, and so I can imagine for young girls who are looking in and trying to get in to it, it must be pretty terrifying. For me it took some balls to be like ‘Hey do you wanna be in a band?’ when I was like 10 or 12. It should be less intimidating and we hope to sort of break that.

What other issues do you think there are in music? Not just related to feminism but any changes that you’d like to see.

Izzy: I think small bands should get payed more.

Tommy: Yeah there’s a weird like pay-gap, it sounds a bit weird, within music. But you get these superstar artists like Calvin Harris or whoever, who get paid millions and millions and it just gets ridiculous. Which is fair enough, nothing against him. Then you get bands who are like mid-level, like that band ‘Augustines’, they broke up because they couldn’t afford to do it anymore. And they were a pretty big band.

Izzy: Yeah like so many bands that would have done so well can’t because they don’t have the money and record labels don’t invest the time and energy into smaller bands that need the development because money is a big thing. We definitely have seen it, we all work jobs at the same time as doing this.

So the pay is based on genre?

Tommy: I mean obviously our experience is just within this kind of style but I think it’s probably something similar in every genre.

Izzy: I guess like dance music’s trendy at the moment so that’s in the Radio 1 Charts and that’s where people are buying records I guess.

Chris: Record labels are more into investing into dance music because they know it will sell.

Tommy: At the same time we could sit here for ages moaning about not getting paid enough and stuff but it’s just the way you do it.

Izzy: It’s a balancing act isn’t it. We’re quite lucky because we’re quite business-minded so we can just about keep ourselves afloat.

So when you started the band was it with the mind set that this is what you wanted to do or was it just as a hobby?

Izzy: Yeah we were quite determined from the start, whether the music matched our determination is another question but yeah we’ve always been quite driven.

Onto the subject of sexual assault at gigs, did you know about it before our campaign?

Izzy: No! Literally I had no idea what it was. An interviewer asked us about it and I was like I had no idea that it was even a thing that girls got sexually assaulted at gigs because I was quite like daring when I was a kid, I was quite fearless and I would just throw myself into any mosh pit. But I always found that if I got knocked over or whatever, I’d get picked up. Or if someone for whatever reason tried it on with me, they’d fucking know about it, like everyone around me would fucking know about it.

Tommy: I never really noticed it specifically but if you think about it happens everywhere else so…

Izzy: And, just like a word out there, if we ever ever see anything like that or anyone at our gigs ever sees anything like that just tell us and we’ll get them taken out the gig. It really deeply upsets us that this is a thing. I can’t imagine what it must be like for these girls. Cause we can do more than bouncers. We’ll just yeah, fucking knock them out.

What would you say to the victims of sexual assault at gigs?

Izzy: I’d say don’t be afraid and don’t be scared to report it. It should be reported.

Tommy: Don’t be afraid to talk about it.

Izzy: Yeah, talk about it and tell us and vocalize it because I know that a lot of people get so scared about it and they don’t want to confront the issue. Because it’s so complex and intricate that these girls go through these things, like they don’t want to be in court and have to look at that person again or whatever. It needs to be spoken about definitely and if we ever see anything like that…

Chris: Yeah, as a band we fully 100% support what you’re doing.

And what would you say to the perpetrators?

Izzy: Just fucking grow up! Get out of here! Fuck off, get out of our gig!

[devils-gatemedia]

Two years ago, Kris Barras played Exeter to an audience totalling twenty people. Tonight, he is headlining a long since sold out show to 500 Devonians at Exeter’s Phoenix theatre. Having recently fronted super-group Supersonic Blues Machine, and with a string of awards and compliments following him, I was excited to see the first night of his headlining tour.

Opening the show were local alt rockers Babysnakes. Reformed in May with new drummer Jordan Savage after a 6 year hiatus, they warmed the already crammed in crowd with a funky and very catchy sound that mixes rock and country vibes to great effect. They originally broke onto the scene in 2011 with an eponymous album which charted at No.4 in the UK download chart in its first week; quite something for an unsigned band, before disappearing not long after. You have to wonder what they could have achieved if they had built immediately on that start?

To get an idea of their sound, take a peek on their YouTube channel at songs such as the complex and atmospheric “The Reluctant Traveller”, the delightfully funky “In Too Deep”, head-bobber “Aces” and the set closer “A Is For Arrogance”. Refreshingly clever music that went down very well with the Exeter crowd.

After a short break the lights went down and “Thunderstruck” blasted out of the speakers, followed by “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” ushering Kris Barras and his band onto the stage. Striking an imposing figure, the tattooed ex MMA fighter ripped straight into “Heart On Your Sleeve”. The combination of his rough, husky, but melodic voice and effortless guitar playing immediately oozing class as he makes himself at home behind his bike chain mike stand.

“Kick Me Down” is a massive sounding slower song, before the keys of Josiah Manning open up the honky tonk for “Stitch Me Up”. “Blood On Your Hands”, has a mature and very catchy chorus, interspersed with some of the best guitar of the set yet. As Barras’ guitar really started to wail, a new song gets an outing, “What A Way To Go”, hinting at the band maturing rather than revolutionising what they do so well for the next album.

So far things had been quite restrained, but on “Fortunate Son” the band took the gloves off and battered hell out of each other with a series of bass (Elliott Blackler) and keyboard (the aforementioned Manning) solos that raised the roof and led Barras into a solo that flirted around “Freebird” without actually imitating it. “Propane” and “Hail Mary” kept the pace going before the band changed style again and ripped into the country picking “Small Town Blues”, which had me foot tapping and grinning. At one point in the song, Barras steamed into a solo, matched note for note by Blackler. The sheer speed the two of them played together was utterly mesmerising. Up until this point drummer Will Beavis, apart from some very up front cowbell on “What A Way To Go”, had been keeping the band tight without really demonstrating anything particularly flashy or complex, but the sheer depth of talent possessed by the men Barras has surrounded himself with was rammed home by a drum solo that mixed technical skill with some really intriguingly complex playing.

“Nothing To Hide”, “I Don’t Want The Blues” and “She’s More Than Enough” (along with a barnstorming “Whole Lotta Rosie”) kept the pace and musical dexterity up before what was, for me, the highlight of the whole evening. “Watching Over Me” started slowly, giving no hint of what was to come. Then we got to the solo, and the sheer class and talent Barras has been gifted was laid bare. One of my favourite guitarists ever was the late, great Gary Moore, and here he was matched in every way. Wringing emotional wails from his guitar between insanely fast and melodic runs, the solo built and built to such a degree that when he finally slowed the band down and brought the song to an end, I realised I had forgotten to breathe. That isn’t a metaphor. I was so lost in the waves of pure brilliance being wrung out of a piece of wood with strings that I actually forgot to breathe, and stood there at the side of the stage open mouthed. Simply magical.

“Lovers Or Losers” closed the set, with Barras once again humbly thanking those who had come out to see him, and taking his own selfie with the crowd before the band returned for an encore of “Rock N Roll Runnin’ Through My Veins” with its dirty slide guitar and massive choruses. I always tell people that my grandfather was my hero. He was an ex army boxing champion and sang in a male voice choir. Those contrasting facets made him a fascinating man to know. Kris Barras, with his tattoos, fighting career, and raw, ridiculously skilful guitar playing and soulful voice felt like the equivalent for the modern era. Exeter was the first night of the UK tour. If there are any tickets left near where you live, I strongly suggest you get your hands on them.

All tour dates available here.

Review and photos – Rob Wilkins

  Live Review: The Kris Barras Band – Phoenix, Exeter Two years ago, Kris Barras played Exeter to an audience totalling twenty people. Tonight, he is headlining a long since sold out show to 500 Devonians at Exeter's Phoenix theatre.

[worldcupnews2018]

Six greats take their place in SA Sport Hall of Fame

SIX new athletes have joined the cream of the state’s sporting crop, after being inducted into the South Australian Sport Hall of Fame on the SA Sport Awards on the Adelaide Oval’s Magarey Room on Friday evening.

NAT VON BERTOUCH

THERE are few South Australian netball names held in larger esteem than former Australian Diamonds captain Nat von Bertouch.

She was not essentially the most gifted participant. But all through her profession, von Bertouch was significantly admired for her unimaginable tenacity, never-give-in angle and skill to hold a group to victory on her shoulders.

Reliability and team-first mentality had been emblems, whereas humility was a continuing all through her illustrious profession.

Von Bertouch’s captaincy type was to guide by instance and she or he did that with exceptional consistency. Team-mates had the utmost respect for the champion midcourter.

The identify Natalie von Bertouch is a snug match for the state’s Sport Hall of Fame.

Maybe the aggressive dedication of von Bertouch was born as she bided her time on the Thunderbirds bench ready for a gap in the line-up. There was no simple journey onto netball’s greatest phases.

Once her alternative was introduced, nonetheless, her sport exploded and she or he stamped herself as one of the membership’s greats in her 13 years with the Adelaide membership.

After making her debut for the Diamonds in 2004, von Bertouch had a key function in the conquer arch rival New Zealand in the World Cup closing in Auckland in 2007. The similar 12 months she was honoured because the Diamonds participant of the 12 months.

The following 12 months she was elevated to vice-captain of the nationwide group. In 2011, von Bertouch was promoted to captain in the absence of injured Sharelle McMahon and led the Diamonds to a profitable World Cup title defence in Singapore.

Von Bertouch’s influence on Australian netball was no extra obtrusive than in 2010.

As co-captain of the Thunderbirds, she sparked the aspect to premiership glory in the trans Tasman league, repeated her 2009 win as Australian participant of the 12 months in the competitors and claimed the Liz Ellis Diamond.

She known as a halt to her profession in 2013, simply days after main the Thunderbirds to their second crown. And appropriately she was named the Players’ Player in addition to fan favorite.

– Warren Partland

PHIL ROGERS

WORLD champion and two-time Olympic medallist Phil Rogers has turn out to be simply the second swimmer to be inducted into the KPMG SA Sport Hall of Fame.

The 46-year-old who received world championship gold in 1993 and bronze medals on the 1992 and 1996 Olympics has joined Paralympic star Matthew Cowdrey as swimmers to have been recognised with the honour.

Rogers was a breaststroke specialist who competed in the Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney Olympics. He claimed his first bronze medal in 1992 in the 100m breaststroke and completed sixth in the 200m breaststroke closing.

Four years later in Atlanta he added one other bronze medal in the boys’s 4x100m medley relay whereas ending fifth in each the 100m and 200m breaststroke finals.

Rogers continued swimming to the Sydney Olympics the place he missed the ultimate in the 100m breaststroke.

Along the way in which he received two Commonwealth Games gold medals each in Victoria, Canada in 1994 and have become an extended course world hampion in 1998 in Perth in the 4x100m medley relay.

The Adelaide swimmer dominated in brief course occasions, successful 4 gold and one silver in world championships from 1993 to 1999.

“This one (hall of fame) is massive, it came completely out of the blue, I had no idea that I was in the running,” Rogers stated.

“To get a phone call one day was a complete shock but a nice one.”

Rogers now works as a station officer with the Metropolitan Fire Service and nonetheless swims as soon as per week with a water polo squad and this 12 months competed in the Police and Fire World Games in Los Angeles the place not surprisingly he received 4 gold medals.

– Reece Homfray

CHRIS DITTMAR

THERE is a single statistic which greatest displays the true worth of former squash champion Chris Dittmar’s profession.

In 1993, the left-hander rose to the head of the game when ranked No. 1 in the sport. It was an unimaginable achievement given Dittmar performed throughout the golden period of the game, and when Pakistani superstars Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan had been in their prime.

If not for these two legends of the sport, Dittmar’s resume would have been extra spectacular. Fives instances he was runner-up in the World Open and twice the overwhelmed finalist on the British Open.

In all seven finals, he misplaced to at least one of the Khans and Dittmar is taken into account the most effective participant by no means to have received both of squash’s two most prestigious crowns.

Dittmar discovered his craft on the courts at Alberton, becoming a member of one other left-handed nice from the membership, Vicki Cardwell, onto the world tour.

It was apparent he was destined for a prolific profession when he claimed the British Open junior title in addition to being runner-up in two world junior championships.

His semi-final conquer Jahangir in the 1989 world open in Kuala Lumpur when he received 15-13 in the fifth set is among the many traditional squash contests of all time. The following day he had a two-set lead over Jansher in the ultimate, solely to tire and lose in 5.

Dittmar’s prolonged record of wins contains three victories in the Australian, Canadian, European and New Zealand Opens and two South African Opens.

He was ranked No. 2 or three in the world for prolonged intervals.

– Warren Partland

KATRINA WEBB

KATRINA Webb was a teenage netball prodigy on the Australian Institute of Sport when she found she had cerebral palsy.

Instead of shedding coronary heart, the SA-born expertise redirected her efforts in the direction of athletics, successful seven Paralympic medals and provoking a technology of sportspeople with disabilities.

Webb collected three golds from three Games throughout her glittering profession on the monitor.

But her emergence as a Paralympic star happened by likelihood in 1995 when AIS workers identified a weak spot on the proper aspect of her physique as a gentle case of cerebral palsy.

Chris Nunn, then Australia’s head coach of athletes with a incapacity, took Webb beneath his wing and set her on the trail to success.

The following 12 months she received the T36-37 100m and T34-37 200m on the Atlanta Paralympics, in addition to claiming silver in the F34-37 lengthy bounce.

The certified physiotherapist backed up the trouble with two silvers (T38 100m and 400m) and a bronze (T38 200m) at Sydney 2000, the place she was a torchbearer in the opening ceremony.

Webb, who additionally received a world title and broke a world document in javelin in 1998, accomplished her Paralympic profession with a T38 400m gold medal in Athens.

But her achievements stretched properly past the sporting enviornment.

The mother-of-two gained a popularity as an interesting and motivating public speaker.

Webb, now 40, was one of 4 athletes to current on the United Nations International Year of Sport and Physical Education closing ceremony in New York in 2006.

She has labored intently with the Australian Paralympic Committee and Novita Children’s Services, and has been an envoy for Minda and the Premier’s Be Active Challenge.

– Rob Greenwood

BRETT AITKEN

BRETT Aitken was on the centre of one of Australia’s best Olympic triumphs in 2000 when he teamed with Scott McGrory to win the inaugural madison gold medal.

Not solely did their victory give Australian biking its first Olympic gold medal since Los Angeles in 1984 but it surely capped a exceptional story of resilience and inspiration.

Earlier in the 12 months Aitken thought-about giving the game away after his daughter was identified with a neurological dysfunction however he was satisfied to journey on to the Games. But his and McGrory’s plans hit one other unimaginable hurdle when 10 weeks earlier than the Olympics, McGrory misplaced his toddler son. Through their adversity they created a bond which finally led to Olympic glory in the two-man madison occasion in Sydney.

“I had a few highlights in my career including the world record and world championship in the team pursuit (in 1993) but it was as if everything was leading to that one moment in Sydney in 2000,” Aitken stated.

The Sydney Games was Aitken’s third Olympics after he debuted in Barcelona in 1992 and was half of Australia’s males’s group pursuit which received silver in the ultimate. He returned to the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 the place this time the boys’s group pursuit completed third and received a bronze medal. Aitken additionally rode the group pursuit in Sydney the place they completed fifth.

Aitken, who’s now a head biking coach with the South Australian Sports Institute, additionally had important success at world championship and Commonwealth stage all through his profession, successful two gold, one silver and one bronze medal in the 4km group pursuit.

Last evening he was inducted into the SA Sport Hall of Fame.

“It’s a huge honour to be in the hall of fame, these things pop up and surprise you,” he stated.

“But I’m happy it’s been delayed a bit because my girls are now old enough (13) to appreciate it so they’re excited about the night and I’m excited about sharing it with them.”

– Reece Homfray

CLARRIE GRIMMETT

IN 248 firstclass matches Clarrie Grimmett took baggage of 5 wickets or extra in a single innings 127 instances. Don Bradman hit 117 centuries in 234 matches.

If you equate a 5 wicket haul with a century, Grimmett’s bowling document is healthier than Bradman’s batting document.

Born in New Zealand, Grimmett’s burning ambition was to play Test cricket. In 1914 Grimmett set sail for Sydney; then Melbourne, lastly Adelaide, the “haven for unwanted bowlers…”

Vic Richardson wished Grimmett in his group. An speedy success for SA Grimmett made his Test debut in the ultimate Ashes contest of the 1924-25 summer season on the SCG taking 11/82.

Some debut.

From 1924-1941 Grimmett wheeled down 28,467 balls for South Australia and he nonetheless heads the all-time wicket tally in the Sheffield Shield with 513 at 25.29. In 37 Tests he took 216 wickets at 24.21 and in first-class cricket he bagged 1424 wickets at 22.58 with a profession greatest single innings effort of 10/37 in opposition to Yorkshire in 1930.

He at all times wore a scarlet woollen vest beneath his cricket shirt and whereas he was usually known as Grum and the outdated fox, his best-known nickname was Scarlet.

Grimmett dismissed Bradman 10 instances in his profession, together with the Grimmett-Richardson Testimonial match at Adelaide Oval in November 1937.

Late on the Friday Vic Richardson stated: “Scarlet we need a wicket badly, but we also want Bradman to stay for the bumper crowd tomorrow.” Bradman had inferred that Grimmett had “lost” his means to show his leg-break.

Just earlier than stumps, Grimmett spun a leg break prodigiously to defeat the grasp.

– Ashley Mallett

HONOUR ROLL

LEGENDS

Sir Donald Bradman (cricket)

Bart Cummings (horse racing)

Barrie Robran (Aust. Rules Football)

HALL OF FAME

Simon Fairweather (archery)

Lisa Ondieki (athletics)

Ron Sharpe (baseball)

Phil Smyth (basketball)

Clem Hill (cricket)

Mike Turtur (biking)

Gillian Rolton (equestrian)

Malcolm Blight (aust. guidelines soccer)

John Kosmina (soccer)

Juliet Haslam (hockey)

Vern Schuppan (motorsport)

Victor Richardson (multi sport)

Michelle den Dekker (netball)

Kate Allen – nee Slatter (rowing)

Vicki Hoffmann – nee Cardwell (squash)

Mark Woodforde (tennis)

Dean Lukin (weightlifting)

Dianne Burge (athletics)

Ian Chappell (cricket)

Fos Williams (aust. guidelines soccer)

Jane Carter (golf)

Robert Haigh (hockey)

Adrian Quist (tennis)

Kerri Pottharst (volleyball)

Brian Sando (medical)

Rachael Sporn (basketball)

Alexander Tonkin (soccer)

Neil Fuller (paralympics)

Russell Ebert (aust. guidelines soccer)

Charlie Walsh (biking)

Kathryn Harby-Williams (netball)

Sir James Hardy (yachting)

Kenneth McGregor (tennis)

Jack Oatey (aust. guidelines soccer)

Jenny Williams (lacrosse)

Colin Hayes (horse racing)

George Giffen (cricket)

Christine Burton (netball)

Lynette Fullston (netball)

Kerry O’Brien (athletics)

Karen Rolton (cricket)

Sandra Pisani (hockey)

Norm Claxton (baseball)

Lorraine Eiler (basketball)

Robert Newbery (diving)

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Six greats take their place in SA Sport Hall of Fame

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Six greats take their place in SA Sport Hall of Fame

#Ashes #ChampionsLeague

SIX new athletes have joined the cream of the state’s sporting crop, after being inducted into the South Australian Sport Hall of Fame at the SA Sport Awards at the Adelaide Oval’s Magarey Room on Friday night.

NAT VON BERTOUCH

THERE are few South Australian netball names held in higher esteem than former Australian Diamonds captain Nat von Bertouch.

She was not the most gifted player. But throughout her career, von Bertouch was greatly admired for her incredible tenacity, never-give-in attitude and ability to carry a team to victory on her shoulders.

Reliability and team-first mentality were trademarks, while humility was a constant throughout her illustrious career.

Von Bertouch’s captaincy style was to lead by example and she did that with remarkable consistency. Team-mates had the utmost respect for the champion midcourter.

The name Natalie von Bertouch is a comfortable fit for the state’s Sport Hall of Fame.

Maybe the competitive determination of von Bertouch was born as she bided her time on the Thunderbirds bench waiting for an opening in the line-up. There was no easy ride onto netball’s biggest stages.

Once her opportunity was presented, however, her game exploded and she stamped herself as one of the club’s greats in her 13 years with the Adelaide club.

After making her debut for the Diamonds in 2004, von Bertouch had a key role in the triumph over arch rival New Zealand in the World Cup final in Auckland in 2007. The same year she was honoured as the Diamonds player of the year.

The following year she was elevated to vice-captain of the national team. In 2011, von Bertouch was promoted to captain in the absence of injured Sharelle McMahon and led the Diamonds to a successful World Cup title defence in Singapore.

Von Bertouch’s impact on Australian netball was no more glaring than in 2010.

As co-captain of the Thunderbirds, she sparked the side to premiership glory in the trans Tasman league, repeated her 2009 win as Australian player of the year in the competition and claimed the Liz Ellis Diamond.

She called a halt to her career in 2013, just days after leading the Thunderbirds to their second crown. And appropriately she was named the Players’ Player as well as fan favourite.

– Warren Partland

PHIL ROGERS

WORLD champion and two-time Olympic medallist Phil Rogers has become just the second swimmer to be inducted into the KPMG SA Sport Hall of Fame.

The 46-year-old who won world championship gold in 1993 and bronze medals at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics has joined Paralympic star Matthew Cowdrey as swimmers to have been recognised with the honour.

Rogers was a breaststroke specialist who competed in the Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney Olympics. He claimed his first bronze medal in 1992 in the 100m breaststroke and finished sixth in the 200m breaststroke final.

Four years later in Atlanta he added another bronze medal in the men’s 4x100m medley relay while finishing fifth in both the 100m and 200m breaststroke finals.

Rogers continued swimming to the Sydney Olympics where he missed the final in the 100m breaststroke.

Along the way he won two Commonwealth Games gold medals both in Victoria, Canada in 1994 and became a long course world hampion in 1998 in Perth in the 4x100m medley relay.

The Adelaide swimmer dominated in short course events, winning four gold and one silver in world championships from 1993 to 1999.

“This one (hall of fame) is massive, it came completely out of the blue, I had no idea that I was in the running,” Rogers said.

“To get a phone call one day was a complete shock but a nice one.”

Rogers now works as a station officer with the Metropolitan Fire Service and still swims once a week with a water polo squad and this year competed in the Police and Fire World Games in Los Angeles where not surprisingly he won four gold medals.

– Reece Homfray

CHRIS DITTMAR

THERE is a single statistic which best reflects the true value of former squash champion Chris Dittmar’s career.

In 1993, the left-hander rose to the pinnacle of the sport when ranked No. 1 in the game. It was an incredible achievement given Dittmar played during the golden era of the sport, and when Pakistani superstars Jahangir Khan and Jansher Khan were in their prime.

If not for those two legends of the game, Dittmar’s resume would have been more impressive. Fives times he was runner-up in the World Open and twice the beaten finalist at the British Open.

In all seven finals, he lost to one of the Khans and Dittmar is considered the best player never to have won either of squash’s two most prestigious crowns.

Dittmar learned his craft on the courts at Alberton, joining another left-handed great from the club, Vicki Cardwell, onto the world tour.

It was obvious he was destined for a prolific career when he claimed the British Open junior title as well as being runner-up in two world junior championships.

His semi-final triumph over Jahangir in the 1989 world open in Kuala Lumpur when he won 15-13 in the fifth set is among the classic squash contests of all time. The following day he had a two-set lead over Jansher in the final, only to tire and lose in five.

Dittmar’s lengthy list of wins includes three victories in the Australian, Canadian, European and New Zealand Opens and two South African Opens.

He was ranked No. 2 or 3 in the world for lengthy periods.

– Warren Partland

KATRINA WEBB

KATRINA Webb was a teenage netball prodigy at the Australian Institute of Sport when she discovered she had cerebral palsy.

Instead of losing heart, the SA-born talent redirected her efforts towards athletics, winning seven Paralympic medals and inspiring a generation of sportspeople with disabilities.

Webb collected three golds from three Games during her glittering career on the track.

But her emergence as a Paralympic star came about by chance in 1995 when AIS staff diagnosed a weakness on the right side of her body as a mild case of cerebral palsy.

Chris Nunn, then Australia’s head coach of athletes with a disability, took Webb under his wing and set her on the path to success.

The following year she won the T36-37 100m and T34-37 200m at the Atlanta Paralympics, as well as claiming silver in the F34-37 long jump.

The qualified physiotherapist backed up the effort with two silvers (T38 100m and 400m) and a bronze (T38 200m) at Sydney 2000, where she was a torchbearer in the opening ceremony.

Webb, who also won a world title and broke a world record in javelin in 1998, completed her Paralympic career with a T38 400m gold medal in Athens.

But her achievements stretched well beyond the sporting arena.

The mother-of-two gained a reputation as an engaging and motivating public speaker.

Webb, now 40, was one of four athletes to present at the United Nations International Year of Sport and Physical Education closing ceremony in New York in 2006.

She has worked closely with the Australian Paralympic Committee and Novita Children’s Services, and has been an ambassador for Minda and the Premier’s Be Active Challenge.

– Rob Greenwood

BRETT AITKEN

BRETT Aitken was at the centre of one of Australia’s greatest Olympic triumphs in 2000 when he teamed with Scott McGrory to win the inaugural madison gold medal.

Not only did their victory give Australian cycling its first Olympic gold medal since Los Angeles in 1984 but it capped a remarkable story of resilience and inspiration.

Earlier in the year Aitken considered giving the sport away after his daughter was diagnosed with a neurological disorder but he was convinced to ride on to the Games. But his and McGrory’s plans hit another unimaginable hurdle when 10 weeks before the Olympics, McGrory lost his infant son. Through their adversity they created a bond which ultimately led to Olympic glory in the two-man madison event in Sydney.

“I had a few highlights in my career including the world record and world championship in the team pursuit (in 1993) but it was as if everything was leading to that one moment in Sydney in 2000,” Aitken said.

The Sydney Games was Aitken’s third Olympics after he debuted in Barcelona in 1992 and was part of Australia’s men’s team pursuit which won silver in the final. He returned to the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996 where this time the men’s team pursuit finished third and won a bronze medal. Aitken also rode the team pursuit in Sydney where they finished fifth.

Aitken, who is now a head cycling coach with the South Australian Sports Institute, also had significant success at world championship and Commonwealth level throughout his career, winning two gold, one silver and one bronze medal in the 4km team pursuit.

Last night he was inducted into the SA Sport Hall of Fame.

“It’s a huge honour to be in the hall of fame, these things pop up and surprise you,” he said.

“But I’m happy it’s been delayed a bit because my girls are now old enough (13) to appreciate it so they’re excited about the night and I’m excited about sharing it with them.”

– Reece Homfray

CLARRIE GRIMMETT

IN 248 first class matches Clarrie Grimmett took bags of five wickets or more in a single innings 127 times. Don Bradman hit 117 centuries in 234 matches.

If you equate a five wicket haul with a century, Grimmett’s bowling record is better than Bradman’s batting record.

Born in New Zealand, Grimmett’s burning ambition was to play Test cricket. In 1914 Grimmett set sail for Sydney; then Melbourne, finally Adelaide, the “haven for unwanted bowlers…”

Vic Richardson wanted Grimmett in his team. An immediate success for SA Grimmett made his Test debut in the final Ashes contest of the 1924-25 summer at the SCG taking 11/82.

Some debut.

From 1924-1941 Grimmett wheeled down 28,467 balls for South Australia and he still heads the all-time wicket tally in the Sheffield Shield with 513 at 25.29. In 37 Tests he took 216 wickets at 24.21 and in first-class cricket he bagged 1424 wickets at 22.58 with a career best single innings effort of 10/37 against Yorkshire in 1930.

He always wore a scarlet woollen vest under his cricket shirt and while he was often called Grum and the old fox, his best-known nickname was Scarlet.

Grimmett dismissed Bradman 10 times in his career, including the Grimmett-Richardson Testimonial match at Adelaide Oval in November 1937.

Late on the Friday Vic Richardson said: “Scarlet we need a wicket badly, but we also want Bradman to stay for the bumper crowd tomorrow.” Bradman had inferred that Grimmett had “lost” his ability to turn his leg-break.

Just before stumps, Grimmett spun a leg break prodigiously to defeat the master.

– Ashley Mallett

HONOUR ROLL

LEGENDS

Sir Donald Bradman (cricket)

Bart Cummings (horse racing)

Barrie Robran (Aust. Rules Football)

HALL OF FAME

Simon Fairweather (archery)

Lisa Ondieki (athletics)

Ron Sharpe (baseball)

Phil Smyth (basketball)

Clem Hill (cricket)

Mike Turtur (cycling)

Gillian Rolton (equestrian)

Malcolm Blight (aust. rules football)

John Kosmina (soccer)

Juliet Haslam (hockey)

Vern Schuppan (motorsport)

Victor Richardson (multi sport)

Michelle den Dekker (netball)

Kate Allen – nee Slatter (rowing)

Vicki Hoffmann – nee Cardwell (squash)

Mark Woodforde (tennis)

Dean Lukin (weightlifting)

Dianne Burge (athletics)

Ian Chappell (cricket)

Fos Williams (aust. rules football)

Jane Carter (golf)

Robert Haigh (hockey)

Adrian Quist (tennis)

Kerri Pottharst (volleyball)

Brian Sando (medical)

Rachael Sporn (basketball)

Alexander Tonkin (soccer)

Neil Fuller (paralympics)

Russell Ebert (aust. rules football)

Charlie Walsh (cycling)

Kathryn Harby-Williams (netball)

Sir James Hardy (yachting)

Kenneth McGregor (tennis)

Jack Oatey (aust. rules football)

Jenny Williams (lacrosse)

Colin Hayes (horse racing)

George Giffen (cricket)

Christine Burton (netball)

Lynette Fullston (netball)

Kerry O’Brien (athletics)

Karen Rolton (cricket)

Sandra Pisani (hockey)

Norm Claxton (baseball)

Lorraine Eiler (basketball)

Robert Newbery (diving)