#but god just awful fucking past few days some of the worst since 2017 which was the worst year of my life

[simsfromupthere]

also random personal side post none cares abt but im officially off ritalin and started concerta this friday just now; cause i started struggling hardcore with ritalin perhaps things u could say were somewhat similar to slight ad**ct*** and tol***ce (i know w ritalin the concept of tolar**** is arbitrary but it felt like that hardcore) and i coudlnt focus on anything cause i kept thinking about this ritalin situation, started getting back rlly bad thoughts and just felt burned out pretty much, i couldnt even focus, enjoy or muster up excitement to do silly past time things like ts4 honestly; so my psychiatrist decided it would be best to make the switch to concerta cause its long acting (12hrs) opposed to the ritalin i was taking (4hrs 2pills per day or so) and yknow im doing pretty well with concerta (i only started it this friday. but still hh) and lately so far so ok not per say good cause of other stuff thats unrelated to adhd and stuff but i feel pretty good cause i feel i got a better creative drive back both on art which i needed and wanted so bad so im actually over the moon and even with my random lil hobbies like ts4 like actually being able to draw stuff without a billion bad thoughts where i would just give up idk how to explain it lol, i also havent rlly felt bad crashes as of yet like i constantly did with ritalin i pretty much felt crashed after every dose i took and it made me feel depressed and shit; i also think bc concerta is long acting meaning its only one capsule i dont stress or hyperfixate too much on hours like i did because with the ritalin i was on i took it 2 times 4 hours after the first (and eventually maybe why i started taking extra cause i wanted to “feel more”) and i dont feel so miserable looking at the box of my daily meds cause its a lot less pills, idk ritalin is a great med and worked for me for a long time but i ruined it for myself and this switch was genuinely for the best of my mental health and so far concerta is responding well, u can tell it hit me rn cause im rambling so much on this post but yea hhh i didnt rlly post much not just bc i spent a lot of time without my pc but mostly cause i tend to isolate from everyone (family, friends, even online) when i feel extremely anxious, depressed and bad thought-y, but im doing ok as of rn dw lmfao

[happymetalgirl]

2019

Despite all the hubbub about year-end wrap-ups, and decade-end wrap-ups this year, it feels to me like as soon as the year is over and the next one starts people immediately stop caring about all the top tens and bottom tens.

I got really busy over this past December and, along with missing out on reviewing several albums I wanted to review, I totally missed writing the extensive year-end lists I had planned. Last year I had listed over 50 of my favorite albums and nearly 100 of my favorite songs, and I wanted to do lists this year that would follow 2018′s lists respectably. Unfortunately, time got the better of me, and it still has the better of me, but I feel like I still should at least offer some kind of closure on last year.

It’s not going to be nearly 150 entries, but I do want to very briefly give an abbreviated list of my favorite songs, my favorite metal albums, my favorite non-metal albums, my least favorite albums of 2019. I’ll be keeping the lists pretty short, but I’ll go numerically still, starting with the bad news first.

The Bottom 10 Albums of 2019:

Maybe it’s my being calloused to what’s awful, or just doing a better job of avoiding it, but I feel like I wasn’t as angry at my bottom ten this year (2019) as I was at the two that preceded it, and perhaps it’s because I feel like I got pretty much what I was expecting with most of what I heard here; not as many of these were tremendous letdowns like Bullet for My Valentine with Gravity or just horrendous beyond comprehension like Black Vale Brides’ Vale. But just because I expected the shit didn’t mean it necessarily went down any easier when I had to ingest it this year.

Like the two years before 2019 when I did worst-of lists, a lot of the worst of the genre came from obviously contrived mainstream playlist/radio bait projects from bands to which it comes as no surprise. This year didn’t include as much shitty political commentary (being that I could probably fill this list with NSBM if I actively sought that shit out) or nostalgic cash grabs as the past two years, but the staleness of the long-tired formulas by which these radio-aspiring bands adhere to in their pursuits of mainstream crossover (or maintenance) only grows more frustrating the older they get. And the amount of surrender by so many bands to Imagine Dragons’ way of dominating the rock charts has been similarly frustrating. Often cited as the new Nickelback, we now kind of look back on Nickelback with a little bit of rose-tinted hindsight with the realization that it was mostly their omnipresence that irritated us all, and the case is the same for Imagine Dragons, but I don’t remember quite as many bands trying to copy the very unoriginal Nickelback and replicate “Photograph” or “Rockstar”. But I have heard so many acts churn out knock-offs of “Radioactive”, and “Believer”, and “Whatever It Takes” in obvious attempts to get themselves into that band’s royal court on the rock charts. There was of course plenty of unimaginative atmospheric blackgaze and post-metal to be found, but even the worst of that was just ineffective and boring at worst and not so much torture upon the eardrums like the albums to follow are.

10. Bad Wolves - N.A.T.I.O.N.

We didn’t get a Five Finger Death Punch album this year, so Bad Wolves came to the rescue to fill that void in 2019, despite also releasing an album in 2018. Though I’ve seen already that FFDP are slated for a release in 2020, so, great... While I would say that N.A.T.I.O.N.’s few high points made it a slightly better project overall than the band’s debut, those highlights were not nearly enough to outweigh the bafflingly poorly arranged variety pack of trashy alt rock ballads and formulaic alt metal from ten years ago that made up the majority of this album. As erratic as its flow was, everything on this album was so predictable once you got a ten-second taste of any given song, a few too many of which reeked heavily of Nickelback (and I know I just got done saying not that many bands really copied them, but that’s how obsolete and dated this album sounds at times). It’s obvious trying to market to FFDP’s demographic and co-occupy that giant, lucrative SiriusXM niche with them, and I’m just not thrilled to have basically a clone of FFDP walking around, taking up space in the metal ecosystem to keep an eye on.

9. Municipal Waste - The Last Rager

It might seem mean to put an EP down here, but my god this was terrible. If it had gone on longer it would undoubtedly quickly make its way to the top (well, bottom) of this list. I feel like my negative review of Slime and Punishment and this EP could at face value be miscontrued as me just being a sourpuss and a way too self-serious critic or just having it out for Municipal Waste, but I love thrash, I love totally not serious music, and I wish there was more high-profile fresh thrash being released these days. I wish one of the few notable thrash releases I heard in 2019 wasn’t bottom-ten quality. But that is just where Municipal Waste are right now, lazy, run-of-the-mill party thrash that is so deficient in that real vibrant party energy that this style of music needs to work. Yeah, I get that it’s not supposed to be taken seriously, but it’s so clearly recycled that it’s not even fun, the one thing it’s supposed to be. It’s like the shit near the end of the human centipede.

8. King 810 - Suicide King

I really wasn’t expecting much from this album, and that’s pretty much what I got, with the added bonus of a weirdly amateurishly experimental flair to King 810′s usual street-cred chest-puffing brand of retro rap/nu metal. I imagine fans of the band enjoyed the added theatrics and the usual chug-backed struggle bars, but I found the whole thing to be just kind of ham-fisted and kooky. It wasn’t one of the more infuriating releases I heard all year, but I sure as hell won’t be eagerly returning to it.

7. Attila - Villain

This was another musically recycled album from a band that usually makes their appeal through fun, nasty bangers. While the music on the album was, sure, as derivative as Attila’s deathcore usually is, the primary issue with Villain was the soured attitude of the band’s usually charismatic frontman. Fronz went from being the life of the party (who, while oozing with fratboy energy that you really wouldn’t want to be around anywhere else except a crowded rager, you could at least count on to be cool and keep the party going) to that loud, overzealous asshole trying to turn up when it’s totally not the time and then getting pissy when met with resistance, making it about him and making everyone around him uncomfortable and totally. Fronz sounds like a drunk asshole challenging you everyone to chug faster than him at best and like a pushy frat bro at worst, embodying the title of the album way to much in a manner where it’s justified that he be viewed that way, if not generous given the term’s romanticized connotations. Silver lining: I listened to “It Is What It Is” during a workout the other day, and that track is a qualified banger.

6. Saint Vitus - Saint Vitus

I think this is the only doom metal album to reach a bottom ten spot for me at any point this decade, and I’m not surprised that it’s Saint Vitus doing it. The band’s self-titled record was so derivative and wholly unoriginal, it was like listening to a cheap Sabbath cosplay. It was so long ago that I listened to it in full that I honestly don’t remember anything specific about the album, but I sure remember how I felt while listening to it every time.

5. Steel Panther - Heavy Metal Rules

Probably the biggest letdown on this list, I actually really enjoyed the band’s 2017 effort, Lower the Bar; I felt like they had got a better handle on their comedic parody of 80′s glam metal than any of the three albums before it, despite it not getting as much attention as their debut, for instance. This one, however, captured the cringe and cheese of the 80′s just fine, but with the jokes falling flat or way too repetitive, it just sounded like a less subtly raunchy version of an actual hair metal album. It’s another album that’s just supposed to be fun, but wasn’t nearly the experience it set out to be, the difference being that this one’s failure seems to have come more from a bout of writer’s block than anything else, which is understandable, five albums in, to a project that specifically makes fun of one dead subgenre of metal.

4. Arch Enemy - Covered in Blood

This has to be one of the shittiest covers albums I’ve ever heard, with Arch Enemy earning record points for monotony on this one. The whole thing sounds like the band just tossed a hefty album’s worth into an Arch Enemy processor that just stripped away all the songs’ character and replaced it with low-effort growls and robotic melodeath guitar playing. At its best, the band offers up passable by-the-books rehashes of songs up their melodeath alley; at its worst they butcher songs they have no business putting so little effort into covering. And it’s fucking 70 minutes long! So they get points for the agonizing length too, as well as incompetence points (I’ve yet to hear a death-growled cover of an Iron Maiden song go well), and, yeah, laziness points too. So many of these were recorded already years ago as bonus tracks to past albums, yet the band couldn’t spare the effort to make the new recordings like a little bit exciting.

3. Papa Roach - Who Do You Trust?

I’m not even mad about this one; I knew it was gonna suck, my curiosity just got the best of me and I was treated to some of the most laughably amateurish lyricism and poorly dated rap rock and alt metal instrumentation I’ve heard since the Prophets of Rage album two years ago. Jacoby Shaddix is doing features these days with hit or miss results, but what the hell is Papa Roach going to be this coming decade? More of this? I just don’t know whose socks this is supposed to knock off. Who’s getting hyped for more Papa Roach in the 2020′s? Probably me, just to see how poorly this band continues to try to keep up with the already sluggish pace of radio rock trends as the signature style they feel obligated to keep a tether to ages poorly.

2. Skillet - Victorious

Now this one I was kind of mad about, and I was expecting it to be pretty bad too. Skillet sold their soul to the whim of pop rock radio early last decade and haven’t been interesting to listen to for a long time now, to the point where it’s so obvious that raspy frontman John Cooper started his own side outlet for his more passionate urges while he lets the winds of pop rock and Christian rock playlist curation steer his main project for little more than a paycheck. The band’s reputable touring work ethic is such a stark contrast to their transparent artistic laziness and spinelessness. Again, despite the formulaic broad-reaching rock radio fodder, embarrassingly cheesy ballads, the token heavy tune at the end for the long-time fans, and even the obviously contrived Imagine Dragons mimicry being totally predicted, it was still so frustrating how blatantly soulless and capital-motivated this thing was to hear.

1. Mark Morton - Anesthetic

I didn’t really have any expectations for this album, but my god was it the year’s quietest disaster of a collaboration project. I didn’t hear anyone else talking about this thing after it came out nearly as much as I did leading up to it, and thank god. The album is supposedly a solo project from the Lamb of God axeman, a distilled showcase of his creative voice, but the whole thing feels like it was in the hands of label execs the whole time and he was just the guy who recorded guitar tracks to all these songs. For some reason, a lot of these “star-studded”, compilation-album-feeling projects in the metal world don’t seem to come out so well, maybe because no one involved is bringing their A-game to a feature in a compilation album, and that is exactly what Anesthetic suffers from, and it suffers fucking hard, not just from the utter lack of cohesion and poor flow from track to track, but from the phoned-in performances of the guests on the variety of generic, underwritten, surface-level songs. Like, again, this is a project under Mark Morton’s name, one that’s supposed to be guided primarily by his artistic vision; you’re telling me, Spinefarm Records, that the Lamb of God guitarist’s vision of a solo album is various flavors of neutered rock/metal radio bait? And he was satisfied with everyone’s contributions to this thing? The whole thing feels like he was just along for the ride and the project was never even in his hands, like Spinefarm had the idea/opportunity to do a various artists comp. album but thought putting under Morton’s name would be more marketable or something. Maybe that hypothesis is totally off, but regardless, this album is a colossal failure on the performance and writing fronts, the worst thing I voluntarily heard in 2019.

My 20 Favorite Songs of 2019:

Okay! With the trash taken to the curb, I feel like it might be time to address before getting into my favorite songs that they might not resemble my favorite albums quite as much as previous years, one, because this is very abbreviated, and, two, because some songs really lend themselves to enjoyment outside the context of their album more than other songs. One band here lands three entries and probably would have landed a whole lot more on a slightly longer list simply because of how great of music their album this year was for me to work out to. But I tried to diversify this list a bit so that it wasn’t just my favorite additions to my workout playlist. The top albums, I promise, are a far better representation of the year in metal for me. But anyway...

20. Periphery - “Blood Eagle”

Periphery have pretty much crystallized their brand of djent now and spent much of this year’s album doing a little adventurousness with it, but the first single, “Blood Eagle”, was one of the more traditional, crushing, explosion tracks from the album, harnessing hardcore groove, punishing accents, tasty guitar tones, and emphatic vocals of both the coarse and soaring variety. The song isn’t anything new for Periphery, but it’s a tremendous example of how potent they are at their heaviest and how easy it is for them to disprove their detractors who lampoon them for Spencer’s clean singing.

19. Panopticon - “The Crescendo of Dusk”

Despite being a one-off piece kind of off the beaten path for Panopticon for a two-track EP recorded during the previous double-albums’ sessions, this song is a fantastic example of bold, cathartic blackgaze whose soulful choral climax is built up to and pays off phenomenally, and that’s not the side of atmospheric black metal Panopticon usually wanders too. It’s a gorgeous piece that is worth it for every moment of its 12-minute runtime.

18. Car Bomb - “Scattered Sprites”

Switching quickly to a much shorter and more jolting song, it was hard to pick a prime highlight on Car Bomb’s new album, but ultimately I found myself loving the tasty, effects-laden, Meshuggah-esque 8-string mathcore groove of “Scattered Sprites” and the rest of the song’s fascinating tonal jumps from Deftones-ish atmosphere to crushing distorted madness. It certainly represents very well the constantly transforming beast that the band’s fourth album was.

17. Spirit Adrift - “Angel & Abyss”

On yet another album full of songs that would have packed a longer list, Spirit Adrift’s standout moment on Divided by Darkness was, for me, the melodically soulful trad-doom power ballad of sorts, “Angel & Abyss”. The melodic guitar leads being the obvious driver of the song’s feels, the clean and rhythm backing and the seething vocal delivery are perhaps the underappreciated foundation for the extra emotive NWOBHM-influenced guitar leads to shine through.

16. Inter Arma - “The Atavist's Meridian”

Definitely the standout track from Sulphur English, “The Atavist’s Meridian” is a menacing mammoth of a song, twelve-and-a-half minutes of brooding, towering sludge and haunting echoed throat-gurgling growls. Even when the wall of sound gets less jagged, the lour does not let up as the band maintain their fearsome, ominous presence in the song’s more atmospheric middle section and burst back so satisfyingly to round it out. There are bands out there that stick to this form of sludgy, death-y doom metal much more exclusively and religiously than Inter Arma who wouldn’t be able to top this.

15. Opeth - “Charlatan” My favorite cut from Opeth’s most ambitious album this decade, the band actually sound energized and adventurous on this song rather than just playing 70’s prog dress-up. The Meshuggah-esque bass groove on here is of course right up my alley, but the whole song is full of actual progressive dynamic that keeps you fixated on it and it’s intriguing emotive journey.

14. Sermon - “The Preacher”

Being the second-to-last song on the album, “The Preacher” kind of goes hand-in-hand with “The Rise of the Desiderata” as part of the album’s climactic ending, and it’s as meticulous and calculated as every track on the album with its small, this song being a standout for its particular dynamic between is louder and softer sections, making it such a thriller of a track that serves its role as part of the album’s climax beautifully.

13. Misery Index - “New Salem”

I’ve loved Rituals of Power all year and there have been several standout tracks for me, but “New Salem”, with its gruff refrain and relentless powerviolence aggression, has been my favorite from the album this year, one of them top workout playlist tracks for me this past year. It’s a pretty straightforward, fast, brutal track, but god is it effective.

12. Korn - “You’ll Never Find Me”

From the irksome guitar wails from Munky and the thick and tasty seven-string accents from Head, to Jonathan Davis’ volatile vocal delivery, “You’ll Never Find Me”, is one of the (several) prime examples of Korn’s committed return to their old-school sound on this album that really fucking stuck the landing and impressed. That build-up to that fucking intense headbanging crash at the bridge is exactly what made me such a fan of Korn’s early work in the first place, and this song is one of, again, several that shows why more than twenty years down the road while all their imitators have come and gone, Korn have been the dedicated champions of nu metal.

11. Cattle Decapitation - “Time’s Cruel Curtain”

It was honestly hard picking a favorite from Death Atlas, but I felt like this song captured the album’s lyrics’ overall dread and gloom in the musical sense pretty well through the dissonant clean guitars and Travis Ryan’s melodic snarling, which is particularly gut-wrenching on the chorus. And it’s as fierce, fast, and disgustingly brutal as we’ve come to expect of Cattle Decapitation now.

10. Motionless in White - “Thoughts & Prayers”

One of the many vibrant, tasty alternative metalcore bangers from the band’s fifth LP that dominated my workout playlist this year, “Thoughts and Prayers” is undoubtedly the most blasphemously in-your-face, Slipknot-influenced cut that highlights the highs of metalcore heaviness the band have no trouble reaching. The defiant attitude of the melodic chorus’ refusing of prayers for help, and really the whole song’s self-sufficient denial of religion over some of the band’s most potent metalcore to date, got me past a lot of physical thresholds this year.

9. Babymetal - “Arkadia”

Babymetal on their first two albums for me have been a project trying to iron out their vision of J-pop metal fusion in real time with the first and second albums’ primordial experiments producing the odd hit among many more misses, but this year’s Metal Galaxy was far more consistent, less stylistically clumsy, and packed full of hits. And if this list was longer, there wold be several bops and bangers from that record here. And while circumstance had just one song in my top 20 this year, what a tremendous entry it is. The album’s closing track, “Arkadia” starts out like a basic-ass Dragonforce cut, but the triumphant melodies quickly lead into higher and higher echelons of catharsis with the guitar vocalist Su-metal delivering the most powerfully soaring performance of the band’s career. It’s like a Dragonforce song that blows most (if not all) Dragonforce songs out of the water through its sheer unashamed passion. And while I know there are many in that camp who stiff-arm Babymetal and would wretch and rage-quit upon simply hearing Su-metal’s voice come in, I imagine they would have a hard time denying this song’s power if tricked into listening to a guy’s vocal cover over the instrumental.

8. Rammstein - “Puppe”

While Cattle Decapitation’s “With All Disrespect” is certainly a gut-punchingly grim outlook on humanity’s self-destruction, this standout cut from the German industrial metal juggernauts’ self-titled album is undoubtedly the most chilling cut on this list, and quite possibly Rammstein’s entire catalog. Till Lindemann’s poetic narration of the song’s dark story is expertly timed and laid out, but his gripping, manic, wholly unsettling vocal performance, coupled with the rest of the band’s brilliantly scored instrumental tracking, is what paralyzes you in terrified awe of the song.

7. Motionless in White - “Disguise”

Another alt-metal banger that dominated my workouts this year, the opening title track to the band’s fifth album isn’t really doing anything all that revolutionary or stylistically original, yet it’s somehow distinctly Motionless in White and it succeeds and makes it here simply because its execution of such a straightforward, yet often fucked-up style is so on-point.

6. Sermon - “The Rise of the Desiderata”

The grand finish to one of the subtlest, yet most magnificent progressive metal albums of the decade (spoiler I guess), “The Rise of the Desiderata”, even outside the context of the album building up to it, is a tremendous work of patient, well-measured progressive metal that exemplifies so magnificently what that band did with such a small musical arsenal on Birth of the Marvelous. The slow, brooding build-up to the absolutely orgasmic finish is hardly a mere waiting game, with not a dull second of the song, and the thematic climax of “rise! rise!” chants the song finishes on is, for me, the kind of representative of rewarding and immersive journey prog metal is all about!

5. Motionless in White - “Holding on to Smoke”

This one was the sleeper hit (in my eyes) for the band this year; in the album’s marginally weaker second half after the slew of bangers that occupied the first, “Holding on to Smoke” is the perseverant anthem among anthems that almost single-handedly lifts that second half. But outside the context of the album, “Holding on to Smoke” is not excessively heavy like “Thoughts & Prayers”, not even as catchy as the bouncy “<c/ode>”, and not even as sick in the breakdown department as “Disguise”, but it more than makes up for it in sheer performative passion and the compositional consistency that characterizes the whole album and strings the determination teeming throughout the song together into a hugely triumphant banger of a track.

4. Periphery - “Satellites”

Periphery really outdid themselves on the grand, ethereally cathartic closing track to their fourth (and best) self-titled album. Unlike the directly aggressive “Blood Eagle”, “Satellites” is a much longer, more multi-staged, moodier piece that gradually builds up from bright, somber reverb-driven ambiance into several tremendously heartfelt and instrumentally full-bodied crescendos, with the band timing their bursts of heavy energy perfectly. Spencer wildly outdoes himself in particular with his gloriously high-flying vocal performance during the song’s cathartic climax. It’s such a great ending to a great album, and such a great picture of Periphery’s constant perfecting of their sound.

3. As I Lay Dying - “My Own Grave”

It was released in 2018, but I included it here instead of that year’s list because I had the hunch at the time that it would be part of an As I Lay Dying album, and it was. But the first song the band released after their unlikely reunion was always going to be a contentious one given the situation with Tim Lambesis, and being that the song was released at a time when Tim would have still have almost two years in prison to go if he had done his full original sentence of six years, the importance of the band’s first release since that whole terrible situation transpired is hard to overstate. Everyone else in the band had to justify linking back up with a convicted felon and reentering the fold of music again, and “My Own Grave” is exactly the statement they needed to make. During his trial and after his early release, Tim had kept pretty quiet, but from the one somber video exposition he gave before entering prison, it was pretty clear he knew and finally accepted how badly he fucked up, and that awareness of his own terrible failure, succumbing to evil, and his understanding that he still has a lot to do to make things right is what makes this song so vitally confessional and the determination expressed so powerful. And this all comes through not just in the lyrics, but in the passionate performances from everyone on the song as well. It’s an emphatic triumph in classic metalcore fashion through (higher, more real-life stakes than usual for the genre) the worst of one’s own faults.

2. Demon Hunter - “Peace”

This one is kind of the enigma of this list, a more subtle, hard rock track than the rest of the heavy, boisterous bangers here, but what an excellent song it is from the mellower of the sister albums the band released in 2019. Ryan Clark’s smooth, baritone subtlety serves as a veneer of calmness in the face of collapse as he sings a tearful welcoming of the peace from the pain of a sin-ridden world that finally comes with death. There’s almost a suicidal angle to the song, but it might be more representative of one’s readiness to be taken into a divinely peaceful afterlife after a lifetime of struggle, which is pretty insightful from Ryan Clark and captures that feeling in a tangible way even for people with (ideally) many years ahead of them like me, I must say. Either way, it’s a much more sober pondering on one’s own mortality and the temporariness of everything around us than its upbeat rock tempo initially lets on, the kind of meditation that gives people hope and faith in a heavenly afterlife.

1. Rammstein - “Deutschland”

Simultaneously subtle and directly expressive, Rammstein’s lead single from their self-titled 2019 album may not have been as musically outrageous as its grand, ambitious video was, but the song itself sure stands on its own just fine as a tense, conflicted song of pleading heartbreak to a nation and its history, and who better in metal to write a threnody for a Germany caught in the middle of the rest of Europe’s refugee crisis and its own version of many nations’ recent fights against a resurgence of right-wing extremism than Till Lindemann. The tone of the song is so mournful and heartbroken, as though it’s a song about leaving a lover you still want to love, yet stern and firm in its principle.

5 Outside Albums of 2019:

I’ve made a point the past two years to highlight the music I enjoyed outside the metal sphere, usually keeping it to a few mini-reviews of five “outside” albums, and this year it was certainly hard to narrow down the immense amount of quality hip hop, indie rock, experimental rock, especially jazz (Jesus, there was so much good jazz this year), and even some respectable pop music I heard this year. The paragraphs are going to be shorter this time around, but I still wanted to show my appreciation for these albums.

Purple Mountains - Purple Mountains

Formed by David Berman, the former frontman of Silver Jews (who helped pioneer the flavor of indie rock/alt country in the 90′s and early 2000′s that got me more into indie music) ten years after the termination of Silver Jews, his short-lived return from retirement from music through Purple Mountains’ sole eponymous album only became more tragic after Berman committed suicide less than a month after the record’s release. The subject matter was as confessional and depressive as anything from Silver Jews, my favorite song from the record immediately after its release, “Nights That Won’t Happen” (a song very clearly indicating Berman grappling with the guilt of his suicidal mindset), being an even more bleak song in the posthumous context. Upon learning that Berman had come back to music, formed this project, and made this record full of emotionally retching expositions of his mental state in an effort to pay down a crippling mass of debt (which I’m sure had a significant impact on his decision to end his own life), it makes the album all the more devastating and my feeling toward it much more complicated. Much like David Bowie’s Blackstar, Purple Mountains takes on a different light in the aftermath of its creator’s death so soon after its release, the songs on Purple Mountains pretty much as prophetic as those on Blackstar, though Berman’s foreseeing of having to take his death into his own hands as opposed to Bowie’s waiting for the inevitability of the progression of his cancer gives this album a much less celebratory, commemorative feeling than that of Blackstar, though listening back through it now with 20/20 hindsight really puts the similar element of inevitability into perspective too, and it makes it hard to really enjoy this album in a sense similar to how I enjoy most of my metal and most other music. Knowing that this album was secondarily a last ditch effort by Berman to lessen the burden of the tremendous anxiety caused by his poor financial state, and primarily a means of talking himself through his decision to end his life in the likely event that the album and its touring cycle didn’t make that burden bearable enough, it’s very hard to listen to and be thankful for this album that kind of indirectly killed its creator. The existential dread of crippling debt is no light weight, however, and the art Berman made and was proud of should not bear the brunt of the blame for what the procedures of a heartless and oppressive economic system at least catalyzed, if not caused. Purple Mountains is a hard album to listen to, but its tragic surroundings aside, it is a welcome return of one of indie music’s most brilliant and influential voices, even if just for a moment.

Denzel Curry - ZUU

On a much different note, Denzel Curry made a quick return to the studio after creatively upping his game yet again on his 2018 album, TA13OO. And while not as ambitiously conceptual or dense as TA13OO, ZUU was yet another banger-packed display of pure rapping prowess. It’s been stated that good form is just that, temporary, and a mere snapshot of an artist’s trajectory, and that it takes time and consistency to prove class. Well Curry is undoubtedly in very good form right now, and has been for the past five or six years and has been making the most of it, only getting better and better across his main projects and his consistently fire guest appearances. And sure it’s arguable that he’s just making the most of his hot streak by putting out as much as possible while he’s one fire, but it’s at the point where if this was a flash in the pan it would have been over by now, and Curry’s still going. The dude put out a megamix of spare verses already this year, and it’s killer! The man at this point, in my eyes, is class, and definitely one of hip hop’s most exceptional forces now that he’s finally getting his long-deserved acclaim. As far as ZUU goes, yeah it’s quick and more about tight bars and emphatic delivery than any grand concept, but to reduce assessment of this to as if it mere turn-up music would be improper, as Curry uses this album to jump at the opportunity given to him by the traction of TA13OO to elevate his hometown and pay tribute to his friends and family who have been with him throughout his journey, and shed light on the roughness of the reality of life for the people he cares about in Carol City, Florida. And he pays tribute to those who got him here with such passion and splendor that it’s tangible and invigorating even from far outside.

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

I saw a fair amount of people (mostly outside her fanbase) complaining about Angel Olsen’s handling of her more instrumentally dense fourth LP, which I don’t get at all. Olsen had tread the ground of minimal indie folk thoroughly on her early work and she proved she could handle a bigger instrumental pallet on 2016′s My Woman, of which All Mirrors is a well-executed expansion on that bolsters Olsen’s emphatic sonic presence without suffocating her out of her own songs, which I never had any worries about with the raw vocal power she’s showcased convincingly before. And Olsen remains at her open, heartfelt best in terms of lyricism and songwriting on the album, no drop-off in emotional potency or sonic beauty, so I’m a little confused with some of the griping over this album. I love it and highly recommend it.

Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah - Ancestral Recall

It was hard to pick a from the several great jazz records this past year (so much great afro-percussion-driven stuff coming from the UK lately that has been scratching my itch like crazy), The Comet Is Coming had an LP and a similarly impressive follow-up EP both in 2019 that made thrilling use of electronics amid the energetic jazz madness and Matana Roberts had put out an intriguing spoken-word concept album tied together with some of the most eccentric avant-garde jazz instrumentation I heard all year. But I ultimately went with the dynamic and delicious Ancestral Recall from Christian Scott, whose impressively holistic weaving together of traditional jazz elements with hip hop and modern jazz atmosphere, despite not being as quite up my violent jazz alley as other records this year, I could not deny the magnificence and accomplishments of. The electronics are kept to a minimum and used only to highlight the work of the piano, horns, and percussion typically associated with the genre, but none of it feels at all unnatural or clashing, rather a cooperative interplay between old and new that elevates both and shows what they can achieve in harmony. And yes, there are plenty of boisterous trumpet performances from the main man to quench that thirst. But it’s an album about respect for the foundational work of the genres incorporated and expanding on it rather than demolishing and rebuilding it.

clipping. - There Existed an Addiction to Blood

My favorite non-metal album of the year, clipping. really took the campy genre of horrorcore to far more cinematic and tangible realms through their signature noisy/industrial approach. And There Existed and Addiction to Blood is a project where after hearing it, it left me with a sense of “well, duh”. Of course clipping. would absolutely nail an actually immersive and not totally laughable horrorcore album. The members’ experiences in cinema serve as a tremendous asset to this album as William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes produce an industrially enhanced horror score to soundtrack Daveed Diggs’ gripping rapped storytelling, which takes so many of the genres tropes and breathes fresh air into them to make them far more vital and consequential in this day and age. And the songs (many of which are serious bangers) are immersive, cinematic, and intense in a way that I could see a lot of metalheads enjoying. I could seriously go on about the chilling bursts of distortion on the twisted club turn-up track, “Club Down”, or the cold swagger of Diggs’ delivery on the industrially tense “All in Your Head”, or the suspense of the more instrumentally traditional house-hideout cut “Nothing Is Safe”, but I would be going on for paragraphs, and I said one. If there’s one album for people reading this section to check out, it’s this one.

My 30 Favorite Metal Albums of 2019:

Yeah, 30 is keeping it really short here; I feel like I could have included a couple dozen other very praiseworthy metal albums here, but this post is massive enough and I don’t have time for that. As far as patterns or trends go, metal’s respective subgenres largely continued to mind their own business as the divergent evolution that the genre has been undergoing since the passing of its peak of mainstream limelight has progressed. The metallic hardcore revival is still going strong with a lot of bands outside that scene taking notice and influence from these vibrant younger bands (Code Orange being the obvious prominent example) and their ancestors. I heard a lot more hardcore-influenced breakdowns and noisy industrial-ish guitar work this year than usual, and even though it graced that shitty aforementioned Bad Wolves album, the metallic hardcore song was a highlight and most of the hardcore influence I’ve heard outside that scene has been implemented well. The year also saw a lot of big, storied names in metal releasing high-profile projects and really coming through and exceeding most realistic expectations (with one quite notable exception), so a good portion of this top 30 is going to contain your basic bitch, Loudwire-type picks, but, you know, those acts delivered and earned their way here in my eyes. This whole thing has gotten pretty out of hand, and what was planned as a quick year’s recap is now a gargantuan mega-post, so I’m going to TRY to make these quick.

30. Full of Hell - Weeping Choir

It’s hard to complain about a pretty continuous sequel to one of the most addictive deathgrind albums in years (Trumpeting Ecstasy); I’m sure not griping about it. Weeping Choir may not have as high of peaks as its predecessor, but it’s a similarly compact, dizzying, and forward-thinking release that definitely earned similar respect.

29. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Infest the Rats’ Nest

Thank god King Gizz released this, otherwise there wouldn’t be a bonafide thrash album in this top 30. Despite not really being a “thrash band” or even a “metal band”, King Gizzard’s adventurousness and versatility makes their adaptability to this style come as no real surprise. In fact the naturalness with which the band play shows that they have clearly always had a true reverence for the genre and have wanted to make this album for a long time. The album is as fuzzy as King Gizz usually is, taking on a very old-school vibe in tribute to the genre’s progenitors without being mere nostalgia. I doubt they’ll do it, but I can dream of more of this from the Gizz.

28. Knocked Loose - A Different Shade of Blue

Knocked Loose have quickly established themselves as one of the strongest forces in metallic hardcore these days, with each album improving significantly off the last, and A Different Shade of Blue being the latest in a string of stronger and stronger releases from them, embodying pure hardcore aggression with precision accuracy and efficiency.

27. Lord Mantis - Universal Death Church

Looking back through this band’s catalog (I hadn’t heard of them before this album), they’ve always taken a very sinister and esoteric approach to experimental black metal that makes them and Profound Lore a match made in heaven as a prime representation of the boundary-pushing ethos the label does well to curate, and Universal Death Church is a fine example of the band’s signature incredible capacity to make black metal nastier and more nightmarish than it already is.

26. Infant Annihilator - The Battle of Yaldabaoth

The Battle of Yaldabaoth is such a ridiculous album and such a treat for it, the unreal, gratuitous techdeath wankery so obscene, it’s impossible to take too seriously and not love for its absurdity. It’s a fun album and one that fast-forwards much of the increasingly fast and techy death metal straight to its next musical checkpoint.

25. Venom Prison - Samsara

A far more holistic death metal album than Infant Annihilator’s, Samsara is just teeming with performative power and calculated technicality. I had said at first that it wasn’t really much of a step up from Animus, but as I’ve listened to it more throughout the year, the band’s subtle maturation really began to show and the album grew on me more and more, so it’s definitely one of the year’s best death metal records.

24. Misery Index - Rituals of Power

Even more emphatic than Samsara was Misery Index’s reaching the pinnacle of their form of powerviolence on their best album to date, Rituals of Power, which suffers no loss of intensity in its incorporation of infectious (though still hardly melodic) hooks, and it puts them at the top of their league.

23. Demon Hunter - War

I had originally cited the more measured, hard-rock-driven partner album, Peace, as the better of the two records Demon Hunter had released this year, but over time, so many of the tracks on the intentionally heavier War that I thought might wane on me stayed strong and some of its other tracks grew on me. The album and its counterpart were such a refreshing pair of releases for the band that I hope revitalizes them going forward.

22. Opeth - In Cauda Venenum

And we’ve got the most basic pick of the list so far here, post-Watershed Opeth. That term has annoyed, frustrated, and infuriated so many within the band’s fanbase who have, at this point, given up (either out of acceptance or intolerance) on hopes of the band’s death metal sound ever returning to the progressive music they make, and I myself have found the band’s lack of ambition beyond simply eschewing growls and metallic elements on the band’s past three albums to be a bit underwhelming with the clear 70′s-prog LARPing finding them punching pretty below their weight. Wow, that was an annoyingly long sentence too. But Opeth finally came through with an album that did more than just imitate the likes of their prog idols like King Crimson, Styx, Yes, and Pink Floyd. In Cauda Venenum is a theatrically big album that puts the band in the kind of creative context in which they’ve proven to succeed in and established themselves in their career in it as the death metal pillar of the prog palace, and the band came through with a rewarding progressive rock album without needing to bring their death metal elements out of retirement.

21. Deadspace - Dirge

Dirge was not the album I expected from Deadspace, but it shifted them from their more somber atmospheric style of black metal into something so much more suffocatingly dark and sinister that they went on to produce another full-length album and an EP in the style of before the year’s end, and I have been loving the Australian band’s more menacing side since the transformation. The band’s first album in this newly terrifying style for them is a masterpiece of vile, demonic black metal that still features what has made Deadspace a worthwhile figure to follow in the worldwide atmospheric black metal scene, and I imagine there is plenty more to come from the tenacious Australian group and have been so proudly supportive of, which I am eagerly looking forward to.

20. Uboa - The Origin of My Depression

This is the first not-completely-bonafide-metal-album entry on this list, but it is a worthwhile and impressive one that I think a lot of fans of the kinds of experimental and black metal that incorporate dark ambiance, industrial elements, and harsh noise could get into. But it is an album as intensely depressive as its title suggests, a meditation on the turmoils associated with its creator’s gender dysphoria and the efforts to cope with and mitigate it that comes through in all shades of pain, from melancholic-ambiance-backed stone-faced recitations of doubt about self-worth to seething, agonized screams of torment for release from the hell of the creator’s condition over abrasive industrial noise. It is not by any means easy listening, and its lyrics demand a lot of emotional energy. Be advised. But also it’s really painfully cathartic and expresses an important and often quieted perspective for those not affected by gender dysphoria to hear.

19. Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race

I do like this album a lot, I really do, but it has to be the most overrated album on this whole list. So many people wetted their britches over this damn album and jumped to call it a perfect masterpiece of death metal. It’s a very very good death metal album, but it’s not beyond improvement. And, again, it’s good and I don’t want to be tempering the jubilee over this thing in this list where I’m supposed to be highlighting my appreciation for it, but it makes me wonder if this is how people who aren’t that into Meshuggah see the band’s adoring fans (like me). But Hidden History of the Human Race, mind-blown ancient aliens sci-fi concept aside, is a great continuation of the semi-psychedelic modern twist on early death metal that started on Starspawn, and the band’s progressive compositional abilities certainly do deserve a lot of praise, and I do hope that they continue building on this.

18. Inter Arma - Sulphur English

Another band making continual improvements on their sonic foundation, Inter Arma have never let their labels of death or sludge or doom or post-metal box them in or make them feel forced to pick one and stick with it, and Sulphur English is a fantastic example of how wide the band’s capabilities span, with elements of all the aforementioned subgenres mashed together in so many different configurations together and on their own, and it makes for such an overpowering record whose wall of sound really takes a lot of spins to withstand the continuous impact of.

17. Fit for an Autopsy - The Sea of Tragic Beasts

Okay, I’m gonna have to really start being shorter now, because now we’re getting into the top of the list, the cream of the crop of the cream of the crop. And I’ll be here until 2021 if I don’t slow down. Anyway, Fit for an Autopsy reinforced their melodic supplementation to their brand of deathcore on The Sea of Tragic Beasts, and clearly put the work into making sure it meshed well with their style. And the work paid off. While a lot of deathcore these days is kind of departing from that original “core” core that the genre’s early contributors established for more straight-up death metal and other progressive or techy styles (basically just retaining the affinity for breakdowns), albums like this are a fine example of how beneficial this evolution is for the genre.

16. Rammstein - Rammstein

It’s hard to be brief with an album ten years in the making, featuring the best song of the year, but I’ll try. Rammstein’s long-awaited follow-up to Liebe ist für alle da does very much pick up where the band left off in 2009, feeling like a natural successor rather than some contrived nostalgia trip to Sehnsucht or Mutter to appease fans for their patience. And for as much as I unpacked every song in detail in my review, the album as a whole is hard to sum up beyond simply a solid offering of Rammstein tracks, several of which have grown on me since my write-up, like the ballads “Diamant” and “Was ich Liebe”, and especially the whimsical “Ausländer”. Lindemann’s lyricism remains a strong point for the band, and the tight compositions another positive on the album. I just hope it’s not so long until the next one.

15. Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind

Like I had said in my review, every new Slipknot album is one of the biggest events of the year for metal, if not the biggest, and aside from Tool’s underwhelming return to the studio with Fear Inoculum, We Are Not Your Kind was definitely the year’s biggest release. As has become kind of the norm for them now, Slipknot’s sixth album was steeped in its own turmoil, this time being the confusingly ugly departure of Chris Fehn. Nevertheless, the rest of the band pulled through with a solid album that did quite well to highlight the band’s various strengths and a good balance of classic Slipknot aggression with forward-thinking experimentation with their sound. Yet another big name delivering the goods this year.

14. Korn - The Nothing

And speaking of success from storied bands, Slipknot’s supposed nu metal rivals also really came through this year with one of their best albums in a long long time, and this is coming from someone who has been a fan of Korn’s later era, their untitled album, See You on the Other Side, etc., but the band’s increasingly more committed return to their old-school sound this decade, after the flop of The Path of Totality, has culminated magnificently on The Nothing, which essentially sounds like a modern-produced Untouchables or Issues. The songwriting is consistently well-measured and Jonathan Davis’ chilling performances in the wake of the loss of his wife especially give the album such a real sense of turmoil that heightens the intensity of everything around them. As therapeutic as music is in times of great pain and loss, and as great as this album is, I hope Jonathan’s grief wasn’t exploited or exacerbated for this art, and I hope he is doing okay.

13. Baroness - Gold & Grey

This album got a lot of flack for its indeed frustrating production, with a lot of critics not being able to get past the blown-out, fuzzy, lo-fi crackle that blurred a lot of the songs’ finer details away. And I agree that the band certainly could have put their sonic strengths in a better light with clearer production and probably should going forward. Nevertheless, underneath the hazy veneer of grainy mixing, Gold & Grey boasts great songwriting in the styles of Purple and Yellow & Green, as well as treading newly segue-heavy ground for them. And after a few listens getting used to (or getting over) the album’s production, the sharp-as-ever songwriting and booming-as-ever vocal performances from John Dyer Baizley really come through and are worth appreciating.

12. Pensées Nocturnes - Grand Guignol Orchestra

Arguably the weirdest album to come out of 2019, yet so much more than a novelty project, Grand Guignol Orchestra takes the creepiness of the often-mishandled dark carnival aesthetic and applies it to the band’s twisted brand of avant-garde black metal to make something truly weird and unsettling, yet fixating. The psychotic clown-like screams and wails across the album reinforce this aesthetic to the point of perhaps creating a new subgenre of metal: carnival metal perhaps.

11. Waste of Space Orchestra - Syntheosis

The work of two whole bands (Oranssi Pazuzu and Dark Buddha Rising) joining forces in their entirety, Syntheosis is a surprisingly cohesive and immersive project, as synth-driven as its name suggests and cinematic in its massive sound. It’s a weirdly atmospheric form of experimental, psychedelic black metal that is both serene and crushing; the artists involved clearly had this ambitious project in mind and they worked meticulously to make sure their vision was realized.

10. Spirit Adrift - Divided by Darkness

Again, really trying to keep it short here, but what an album from Spirit Adrift. Divided by Darkness is the album that sounds most like and reminds me most of the most recent perfect album I heard (2018′s Desolation by Khemmis), and the emotional potency bubbling up to the brim of this album’s doomy melodies and soaring vocals is similarly enriching, while not as ridiculously perfect as Khemmis’ latest release, Divided by Darkness takes Spirit Adrift to new heights and makes them one of modern doom-influenced melodic metal’s most promising figures.

9. Nile - Vile Nilotic Rites

The departure of longtime guitarist/vocalist Dallas Toler-Wade was arguably a blessing in disguise for Nile, with their ninth album, Vile Nilotic Rites, being a roaring comeback from the relative lull of their previous two albums, much of which is due to the reinvigorating performances of new guitarist/vocalist Brian Kingsland, whose more traditionally roaring growls breathe new life into and provide a fitting new angle to the band’s Egyptian-themed brand of extremely fast, technical old-school death metal. It’s great to have them back in such emboldened form.

8. Lingua Ignota - Caligula

This is the album that just got me. Very much in a similar, yet more neoclassically-inspired vein of industrial darkwave as Uboa’s album, Kristen Hayter herself has said that Caligula is also not a metal album, and she’s right, but holy shit does it hit harder than a lot of metal tries so hard to hit. I had been trying for months to write a review for this album, but it never came, partly because the subject matter from which the album is pulled is tender and not easy at all. But it’s incredibly important to talk about, and I want to give Caligula some of the written attention it deserves from me. Sure if I just put the album on for unassuming listeners, they probably wouldn’t immediately pick up on the manically shrieked and operatically wailed languishing and biblically proportioned defiance being curses of the project’s creator toward her sexual abuser, but the resilience she puts forth into these proclamations of insubmissive survival is certainly tangible even without knowledge of the heartbreaking history that birthed it. And while it makes tremendous compositional strides from All Bitches Die and Let the Evil of His Lips Cover Him, Caligula, like the two albums before it, is such an enigmatic album that feels wrong to consume in the conventional sense or without anything other than pure undivided attention and empathy for what Hayter is so courageously pouring out of her mind and body for the music. It feels wrong to just put music on as a background for room-cleaning or even working out that comprises real, unbridled emotion about its creator’s rape. Yet I know that everything about Caligula and Lingua Ignota has been about surviving that and overcoming that suffering, so it certainly deserves to be listened to and respected; I would posit, though, that if you’re going to enjoy the sounds borne from Kristen Hayter’s subjection to sexual abuse, its candid portrayal of its aftermath should at least serve as further deterrent from committing such abuse to another person, if not convicting you to stop doing so if you are or actively seeking to prevent it where you know you can.

7. Periphery - Periphery IV: HAIL STAN

Periphery have been a band who I have gradually come to realize I quite respect and rate very highly. Their Juggernaut double-album in 2015 was the major catalyst in this and has become one of my favorite albums in djent (if not my favorite if you don’t count Meshuggah’s music as djent). And while I wasnt as into their 2016 album, Periphery III: Select Difficulty, I have definitely seen this band’s continuous improvement and strong upward trend that their fourth self-titled record has continued. The band went for more than just thick, tasty djent on this album, though the thick tasty djent that is here (like “Chvrch Bvrner” and the aforementioned “Blood Eagle”) is some of their thickest and tastiest. But the band expanded their sound to more ethereal corners that produced impressively cathartic results (such as the aforementioned “Satellites”, and the swaggering “Crush”, and the bright “Garden in the Bones”). Major respect to this band that keeps getting better and making it harder on their stubborn detractors.

6. As I Lay Dying - Shaped by Fire

To say this album was controversial would be an understatement, and to point out that it was important that As I Lay Dying  come through in several big ways would be as well. Yet for every bit of vocal disapproval and expression of how irredeemable Tim Lambesis was there seemed equal rejoicing about the metalcore legends’ return. It was important, though, that the band come through with and album the showed their understanding of the heaviness of the context and didn’t come across as trying to bypass it or sweep things under the rug, and they did a tremendous job of rising to the occasion. The band continued where they left off before their disbandment as the strongest force in metalcore, sounding even more impassioned and vital upon their return, clearly enriched by the real-life consequentiality of their music. And while it certainly looks even more impressive given the withering state of NWOAHM metalcore in 2019, let that not detract from the incredible power of the genre’s juggernauts’ return to and improvement upon their best form of themselves before their disbandment.

5. Motionless in White - Disguise

When this album came out I honestly didn’t have a lot of hope invested in it. I had hoped that the band would expand on the best tracks from their previous album, Graveyard Shift, the alternative metal bangers, and focus on what worked well for those songs, and to my surprise that’s actually what the band did on Disguise. I had initially said that the high points on Disguise were not as high as the peaks on Graveyard Shift but after listening to Disguise so much this year, it’s shown itself to me to be such a ln impressive improvement on the direction that Motionless in White we’re heading in, and to put it any lower on this list for the sheer fact that it’s not a particularly critic-friendly album would be dishonest. But after getting more into their catalogue I think that this band are one of the best in their field, and sure, they’re very much an amalgamation of their influences, but goddamn do they channel those influences so effectively into so many flavors of delicious, nu metal, gothy, metalcore bangers. And it’s totally accessible too, I wish more of the bands who are trying to achieve more mainstream success would take the approach Motionless in White are taking, because this shit is actually really fucking enjoyable and full of soul.

4. Numenorean - Adore

Making strides from their debut full-length, Numenorean’s sophomore album is a great example of atmospheric blackgaze at its best without resorting to cheap Deafheaven imitation. Numenorean have found their own way to harness the power of blackgaze into emotionally vibrant compositions that come through triumphantly. I just hope the band can keep this up and expand on what they did here.

3. Car Bomb - Mordial

I had this as the number one album for a hot minute, and even teased about it maybe being a perfect release in my eyes as well, and even though it’s neither of those things, Car Bomb’s deeper foray into melodic and slightly atmospheric territory with their Meshuggah-esque brand of technical mathcore produced some seriously impressive results that I can’t wait to hear more of in the coming years.

2. Sermon - Birth of the Marvelous

I already said so much about this debut album, and it was so close to clinching that top spot, but Sermon deserve to be basking in so much more acclaim than I have seen for them, as this album is a nearly perfect prog metal example of how to do a lot with relatively little. I had expressed my disappointment in Soen’s and Tool’s albums this year, but I think this album really fits nicely into that cleaner section of progressive metal and knocks it out of the park. I know I’m repeating myself a lot from my review, but every little detail and accent is expertly calculated to make as positive of an impact as possible on the album, every note is arranged with both microscopic precision and with the grander scheme in mind, and I cannot get over how mind-blowingly well done this album is with so few bells and whistles or shortcuts. This is THE new band to keep an eye on.

1. Cattle Decapitation - Death Atlas

I don’t know if I like giving the top spot to such a grim, hopeless album, but fuck have Cattle Decapitation earned it, and I can’t blame them for their pessimism either. After aptly applying the disgustingness of goregrind to commentary on human mistreatment of animals and the ugly underbelly of the food industry, Cattle Decapitation turned their sound and their scope to even grander proportions, expanding the boundaries of deathgrind and the possibilities of dirty vocal technique to criticize humankind’s fucking up of the entire planet and foretelling the catastrophe that science has long foreseen. Despite their already bleak outlook on Monolith of Inhumanity and The Anthropocene Extinction, Cattle Decapitation somehow sound even more hopeless in Death Atlas, and Travis Ryan’s greater expansion of his melodic vocal application helps facilitate this, and the band takes their ever-furious rapid grinding battery through so many channels to enhance its epic scope. I should probably try my best not the just regurgitate my very long review of this album, but the band are essentially reading humanity its eulogy in advance and beckoning the end of our species in no romantic fashion, beckoning the universe to ruthlessly purge the species they refer to as a shit stain and move on like we never even happened. This is obviously an exaggeration of their frustration at the inaction and denial of many of the consequences our actions are inviting into our future, but it’s so fitting for the grave circumstances at hand. If there’s any band whose lyrics and sound represent humankind’s self-inflicted ecological apocalypse, it’s Cattle Decapitation, and of there’s any album that paints an adequately dismal picture in fittingly horrifying bluntness of where the world is headed that needs to be understood, it’s Death Atlas. The best and most important album of the year.

And that’s it. 2019, great as always for a genre that refuses to go quietly into the night. A lot of people have been doing decade-summarizing lists, but seeing how long this was, I don’t think I’ll be doing that. Maybe I’ll just post a quick tribute to a few of my favorite albums of the decade that I didn’t get to write about before. But for now, 2019 is over, here’s to 2020, it’s going to be a big year, and I have a few things about that I need to say about that, so that’ll be coming soon too.

[writesaboutbangtan17]

the right bite | 01

vampire!minghao x reader fluff, angst, and (eventual) smut

16,180 words

a/n: sooo...here’s the vampire minghao fic...it is...very explicitly halloween-themed lol...but i changed the whole concept at the last minute n it’s taken me awhile to write...so here it is in early november instead of on halloween as promised. i’m sorry. it was hard for me to get into halloween this year :( so this is my love letter and “i’ll try harder next time” to my favorite holiday. part 2 has the smut! it’s almost done n will be out in a couple of days. enjoy!!!

~ in which you fall for some guy at some party without meaning to and soon discover he’s not exactly what he says he is...

Tues., October 31st, 2017 @ Kennedy South Residence Hall, 6:24 P.M.

 In the grand scheme of things, you knew that you’d been through a lot worse than this, and if history was any indicator, there was worse yet to come. But right here, right now, rolling around on your friend’s closet floor on the verge of tears—you decided this was the worst moment of your life.

 Momo wasn’t of much help, of course, with all of her attention hyper-focused on her phone instead of anything you were up to. If you had only one chance to guess exactly what she was doing or be mauled to death by a bear, you'd bet your entire life that she was sexting Mina...and your suspicions were confirmed when you popped your head up out of the laundry pile you'd buried yourself beneath and caught sight of the "racy" picture that your friend was drooling over. A pout, a loose sweater, some sort of bedroom eyes. Gross.

 "It's just her shoulder," you whined, "you've spent the better half of the last two years elbow deep in her front bottom and you're gonna bust a fucking nut over that?" Any other time Momo's glare would have split you in half, but after this long, exhausting month you'd had, you were impenetrable. It was a shame, really. You'd have preferred to melt under her gaze than live just one agonizing second longer.

 And you couldn't believe you were feeling this low in October of all months. Sure, you'd had a few bad Marches and a shitty September or two, but you loved Halloween. You loved pumpkin spice everything and leaves falling and screaming at all the scares you knew were coming in movies you'd seen eighty times and running out of haunted houses—you lived for all that shit.

 Leave it to some stupid boy to ruin your favorite time of the year.

 They were always ruining everything. That's why you had, up until now, happily remained the one forever-single friend in the group.

 "How dare you call my girlfriend's vagina a 'front bottom'?" was all she said, and she didn't even have the decency to admit it was ridiculous to get all hot and bothered over a selfie with some off-the-shoulder sweater action, let alone get off her ass and give you a hand trying to throw yet another costume together. You regretted helping her pack all of the boxes stacked up in the living room if this was how she was going to repay you.

 Off her shoe rack, you grabbed a pair of knock-off Louboutin pumps and all you could think up in your wilted, dusty little brain was to dress up as a hooker. One of your friends had to have some sort of little metallic tube dress and faux fur jacket you could borrow, too. He’ll have to take me home tonight if I show up at the party with no underwear on, right?

 "I can call my best friend's vagina whatever I want," you insisted, "do you think I could squeeze into these?" Finally, finally, Momo locked her phone and tossed it onto a pillow before coming over to kneel at your side. At last, she gave you a look filled with all the pity and shame that you deserved, and reached out to ruffle your hair in some sort of attempt at comfort.

 In the softest, most tender voice she could manage, she reminded you, "No, Bigfoot, I'm like two shoe sizes smaller than you are." And with the moment effectively ruined and your mood suddenly five times worse, you dropped the shoes and threw the closest (softest) thing within reach right at her head. You didn’t even see what it was until she was trying to pull it off, only becoming more and more wrapped up in it. It was an ratty old black blanket with red lining—and there you had it, the lightbulb gone off over your head.

 "Give me that!" You screeched, making frenzied grabs at the fabric. You pulled one way and Momo pulled another and if the gagging noises happening in there were any indication, you were pretty sure you were strangling her to death. She totally would have chokeslammed you when she was free of her fleece cocoon but you had that manic look in your eyes that meant trouble and she knew that one of you needed to remain calm. For once, it was her.

 "I'll get the scissors and the fabric glue," she sighed before she disappeared out of the room and left you spreading the blanket out on the floor.

Thurs., October 5th, 2017 @ The Yard, 9:13 P.M.

 "I can't see anything," Nayoung whined as she ran into yet another tree. The fourth, to be exact, since you’d all gotten out of her car. You'd seen her heading right for it, but out of tough love had just allowed the collision to happen before your very eyes.

 "That's what you get for wanting to dress up as the three blind mice," you lectured her for the five thousandth time that night, "that shit's ableist." From her side, in a matching black dress and mouse ears and sunglasses, Minkyung flicked you off as she helped Nayoung pick leaves out of her perfectly styled red hair. The third blind mouse, Kyungwon, ran up from behind to smack you on the head with her walking stick.

 "Fuck you! We look cute!" She cried indignantly when you ripped the walking stick out of her hand and threw it into the crowd. A painful yelp cut through the sound of "The Monster Mash" warbling out of speakers set up around the courtyard, and you relished in the fact that if that poor unintended victim of your frustration came looking for somebody to rip a new asshole for hitting him, his rage would be directed at one of these insufferable three.

 They did look cute, but it didn't stop the concept from being any less…offensive. You, on the other hand, had gone the safe route and dressed up as Rosie the Riveter for the third Halloween season in a row. Even if you gained a few pounds over the holidays and through summer and the beginning of a new school year, all you needed to recreate the outfit was the same red bandana, a denim shirt from the thrift store, your trusty high waist jeans, and boots. It wasn't the cutest costume, or the sexiest, but it portrayed exactly what you wanted it to: you were an independent, strong woman who wasn't looking for a guy to ply her with booze and sneak her back to their dorm tonight.

 Momo promised it would only attract girls, and all the women-loving-women you knew were taken for now—so you were safe. Being the forever-single friend in the group was a tough job to keep up, that was for sure, but someone had to do it. If you had to not waste money on a new costume and not have your boobs hanging out when the fall chill was coming in, then so be it. You would take one for the team.

 "Where are the boys? Can you see them?" Minkyung tugged on your sleeve to ask you, and you reluctantly scanned the gyrating crowd of bodies for Seokmin and Mingyu—she and Kyungwon's boyfriends of the semester. You had only met them a few times before, when your friends dragged you out to the movies, refusing to let you spend a night in instead of being the thirteenth or fifteenth or seventeenth fucking wheel on their massive group dates. Catching sight of Seokmin and his smile by the drinks only reminded you of being introduced to him before the movie, and then having to sit through it trying to focus on the plot and the characters and the god awful dialogue instead of every one of your friends making out the whole time.

 "They're over there," you pointed them out flippantly, and you were about to turn and head off in the opposite direction to find the rest of your friends when Minkyung latched onto your sleeve again and asked in a tiny voice,

 "Can you take us over to them? I really can't see." You were too soft for she and Kyungwon, you knew it and they knew it and they were always using it to their advantage. Tough love wouldn’t work with them the way it worked with Nayoung, either, so you didn’t do what you should have: stolen her sunglasses and run off with them, not giving her an excuse to make you walk all eight yards or so over to their annoying boyfriends.

 You didn’t know it yet, but it was over by their annoying boyfriends that your life was about to change forever—so it was pretty lucky that you’d somehow inherited two children over the course of the past year. You wouldn’t be thanking them any time soon, though. They were still juvenile, petulant little babies who had a whole lot of growing up to do.

 Arm-and-arm with Minkyung, who grabbed Kyungwon to drag along behind the two of you, you made your way through the crowd. You passed Eunwoo and Hansol yucking it up, Yebin grinding with her not-a-fling-but-not-yet-girlfriend, Jihyo and Nayeon showing off their angel and devil costumes to Seungcheol and Jeonghan (Nayeon was the devil, of course.) Somewhere in the crowd, you were sure Momo and Mina were in the middle of a heated dance battle with another couple from their exclusive lesbian squad. They'd dressed up as the tap dancing girls emoji, which had been your idea, not that they'd give you the credit for it.

 "Oh Y/N! I'm so happy to see you!" Minkyung sent you pleading eyes not to murder Seokmin right then and there as his screaming sent spittle flying all over your face. You didn’t, just for her. He threw his arms around your body to engulf you in a bear hug that only two people who had known each other for years, knew each other intimately and personally should share—he was a weird kid. Nice, super nice, but…too nice. Weird. Mingyu, on the other hand, went right by you to get to Kyungwon, which was much more normal and you didn’t mind at all. You’d only met them, what, twice? Three times?

 You tried to shuck Seokmin's arms from around you in as friendly a way as possible, and Minkyung came to your rescue by squeezing in between the two of you and pushing her boyfriend away. Air rushed back into your lungs, free from being crushed by the lively boy, and next on your agenda was getting your hands some liquor—right there behind Kyungwon and Mingyu in a sudden liplock was the table endlessly full of glass bottles and juice to mask the alcohol with and red plastic cups.

 There was a lot more vodka in your drink than the blue punch allowed you to taste, which was exactly what you were going for, and you were already feeling much more light and loose after you downed your first full cup. Had any of your friends been paying attention they might have stopped you from immediately pouring yourself another, but they were too busy with their significant others to pay you any mind—as always.

 So you were a little bitter, how could you not be? You were a strong, independent woman, yes, but...kissing was kind of nice, at least from what you could remember of it. Admittedly, your romantic history was sparse. You'd gotten used to being single, it was just that seeing your friends in happy relationships made you wish you had someone's hand to hold and someone to show off a cute couple's costume with sometimes. Even bad single bitches were allowed to feel lonely every once in awhile.

 "Hello there, are you alright?" And it was in that moment that the clouds parted, and God himself, should he truly exist, shone the light of the sun down on you—well that's what it felt like. It was the middle of the night. But when this new voice chimed in your ear and the sight of this handsome new face came into view, perhaps the stars twinkled a little brighter, excited just for you. This concerned stranger with golden skin that looked warm to the touch, large brown eyes, this darling round nose, and perfectly kissable petal pink lips had come at just the right moment.

 "Oh, I-I'm fine?" Too bad your stupid mouth couldn't keep up with your brain and your heart that were screaming at you not to fuck this up! This was the Prince Charming you'd been waiting for, obviously. He was relieved to hear your answer, running a hand through his dyed bleach blonde hair and letting his pout relax into a grin.

 "Good. It seemed that your mind had wandered off somewhere," he said. Belatedly, you noticed the pointed pearly white fangs he was wearing and the fake blood smeared across his chin, splattered onto the collar of the crisp white button-up he had on beneath a vest made of crushed red velvet. There was a pair of black slacks and shoes to compete the outfit, but what pulled it all together was the cape that he had draped over his shoulders, black lined with a rich, rosy red. You didn't miss the bat brooch pulling his collar together or the cross dangling from the ear, either.

 It was a little embarrassing for you that a cliché, basic Dracula costume could seem so impressive just because it was on a man this beautiful. You weren't used to being reduced to nothing by college boys anymore.

 "It...it did but...I'm back now," you explained, piecing the words together slowly, "I'm Y/N." The good-looking stranger's smile shifted again into something darker, the tips of his fangs peeking out from beneath his upper lip, as he took the hand you held out to him. When he lifted it to place a delicate kiss upon your knuckles, you didn't cringe the way you knew you would have had he been any other guy at this party.

 "My name is Minghao," he offered. You repeated the name in your head a few times, then finally allowed yourself to taste it on your tongue,

 "Hello, Minghao," and it tasted good. That was a name you could get used to saying, could get used to moaning underneath him in bed. The dirty thought gave your cheeks a pink tint that Minghao noticed straight away. He lowered your hand but instead of letting you go, moved to link your fingers with his.

 "Would you like to dance with me?" There was no answer but yes, please, right now, f o r e v e r. He led you away from your friends, deeper into the crowd until you'd reached the exact middle of the yard, and "Disturbia" by Rihanna might as well have been a brilliant waltz with the way Minghao began to twirl and dip you down to the grass. Lucky for you that you were wearing your heavy boots instead of one of the pairs of break-your-neck heels that any of your friends had on with the way you tripped over and over again, but Minghao always scooped you back onto your feet and kept going.

 It was strange, that was for sure. You should have felt embarrassed, and the two of you got your fair share of stiff stares and unkind chuckles thrown your way, but if Minghao didn't mind them than neither did you. It was just like a dream. He never took his eyes off of yours, and he never let go of your hand.

 Well, not until, per standard stereotypical Halloween playlist rules, "Disturbia" faded out into "Thriller". Minghao immediately disengaged from you, grabbed you by your shoulders, and yelled over the opening sound effects, "Oh, shit, I've been waiting for this to come on all night! Stay right here, I've gotta find Chan!" Then he was sprinting through the crowd looking for this so-called Chan and leaving you behind.

 Who...was that person? His name was Minghao, he was dressed as a vampire, and one second he was acting like a Victorian prince straight out of a an old English romance novel but the next he'd reverted right back to the average frat boy you knew he had to be. Still, you waited. At least his sudden shift in behavior was just to excitement and wonder instead of to that of some sleazy fuckboi trying to to get in your pants.

 "It's close to miiidnight and something evil's lurking from the dark…" Michael Jackson was singing as Minghao returned with this short, bright-eyed boy, definitely a freshman, and the pair of them immediately stepped into choreography that there was no way they hadn't prepared beforehand. You honestly didn't know what to do or what to say, just stood with wide disbelieving eyes as they perfectly mirrored each other's moves, a tick of the head here and a two step there and thrusts all over the place.

 And yet the most mystifying part was when Mingyu and Seokmin came jogging over and started dancing, followed by Hansol and Jeonghan and a few other guys from their frat. As shameless as ever, Nayeon threw herself into the mix, picking up on the moves quickly, and Minkyung and Kyungwon stood beside their boyfriends showing them what to do. It was like watching a scene from a cheesy 80's movie play out in real life—too bad you didn't fit into any of the cheesy 80's movie stereotypes.

 The least surprising part was when Momo and Mina ran by you to join the fun, but as soon as they turned and saw you attempting to be nothing more than a peaceful spectator to this performance, Momo grabbed your hand to pull you in. "You know I can't dance," you hissed as Mina grabbed your arms to move into the right position, "God, this is why I hate you guys so much!"

 "You're doing great," you heard Minghao say, and behind Momo there he was, but he was faced away from you pulling off the perfect moonwalk for the crowd. Holy shit, you hoped this was all just a weird dream, because if that wasn't the case you were going insane and imagining the voice of some guy you'd just fucking met in your head.

 You let Mina and Momo puppet you through the whole routine, until the ending narration was echoing through the yard and they let you go. Before you could escape into one of the nearby houses to hide in the bathroom until you woke up, you felt the telltale tug of Minkyung grabbing your sleeve.

 "Minnie, I really can't talk right now," you were saying as you turned around, "I've gotta get out of here, I think I've finally gone off the deep end and made up everything that's happened over the past twenty minutes in my—" She wasn't standing there alone. Seokmin was at her side, of course, so was Kyungwon, and Mingyu was coming up behind her with his arm thrown around Minghao's shoulders, the two laughing like old friends.

 "Y/N! What did you think?" Minghao asked as they approached you, and he was so eager to hear your praise that you couldn't just duck out to make the getaway you so desperately wanted to.

 "It was amazing," you said, and you meant it, even though your heart had been filled with dread and confusion and panic for much of it. And that's when he slammed the final nail down into your metaphorical coffin—the son of a bitch giggled. It was a twinkling sound, one that skipped into your ear and danced around while it embedded itself into your brain, swam through your bloodstream so that it could take a dip in your heart. He giggled and you were gone—gone for him.

 "I know it was kind of silly," he said quietly, so that only you could hear, "but dancing is one my simpler pleasures." The shift back to the language and speaking rhythm of this classic gentleman you'd first met gave you whiplash. At a loss for words, you could only present a soft smile and nod, and let him take your hand back into his. From the corner of your eye, you saw Minkyung's jaw literally drop at the sight—now that you thought about it, she'd never really seen you flirting with or getting any attention from a guy, and especially hadn't seen you turn into complete and utter mush for one.

 Just as she was lurching forward to grab you and demand answers, Minghao whispered, "Would you like to find some place quiet to talk?" into your ear, and he was whisking you away. One of the houses further from all of the action had a porch swing swaying lightly in the breeze that he led you to, and when you were finally alone you had so many questions that you wanted to ask him: Why did he talk like that? How did he know Mingyu? Did he make that Thriller choreography himself? Where did he learn how to waltz? Who was Chan? Why did he dress up as a vampire?

 (He pulled it off, of course, but to settle for a default vampire was kind of lame. Minghao didn't seem lame.)

 You didn't ask any of those questions, though. The two of you settled down onto the swing and he smiled down at you leaned against him and all you could say was, "You're an...interesting guy, Minghao."

 "That's one way of putting it," he laughed, and then his laugh tapered off into a warm, pleasant silence. The swing rocked you back and forth and you might have fallen asleep if Minghao's presence alone didn't make you feel like you were at the end of a live wire, packed with all this energy that only wanted to direct itself into one action—kissing the hell out of him.

 You considered for just a second that maybe he could read your mind when he bent down to bring his face closer to yours, but you quickly abandoned that thought so you could concentrate on only what was so physically him. He had one arm curled around your shoulder to pull you into his chest, and his other hand found its place resting on your thigh. Both of your own hands gripped tight onto the lush fabric of his vest, knuckles turned white with anticipation.

 He was so close, and you let your eyes close just as his lips were about to touch yours...but at the last second, you felt a finger on your chin turning your head to the side, and his nose brushing along your collar. You'd never felt so much before like your heart was going to beat out of your chest as the tip of his nose traced a line along your collarbone from your chest to your shoulder, than back up your shoulder and your neck to your jugular.

 With his nose and lips against your throat, Minghao inhaled as deeply as if he'd just come up after a trip to the bottom of the ocean for that first sweet breath of fresh air.

 You didn't see it happen, didn't feel the swing move or feel his hands slipping from his hold on you—you must have been just that lost in your thoughts and the overwhelming bliss of the moment. One moment Minghao and you were nearly melded into one being beside each other, and the next he was on the opposite end of the porch, breathing as heavily as a marathon runner at the finish line.

 It took a few blinks and steady breaths of your own to disconnect from what had just almost happened and come back to reality, but when you did and saw him gasping and clawing at the air for something to grip onto, you felt a physical ache in your chest. Why did he look so scared?

 "Minghao, are you okay? What happened, what's wrong?" You were back on your feet hurrying over to him, but instead of letting you back him into the corner, Minghao hopped over the banister and landed gracefully back on the grass behind him.

 "Did I...did I do something wrong?" You asked, because that's what it fucking seemed like if he couldn't so much as bear to be within two feet of you all of a sudden. He was backing up slowly, wiping his palms against his pockets, stammering and grasping for any words to explain himself to you. You would have run off of the porch to chase after him, but you had a strange feeling that the moment you turned your back, he'd disappear.

 "No, of course not," he stressed, "you didn't do a single thing wrong. I just...I just, um...I remembered something really important and I have to leave. Now. Right now." You wanted to say that you couldn't believe it, but the pesky part of your brain that knew just how repulsive you could be to the opposite sex was singing I told you so! I told you so! You'd been trying to quiet it to control your nerves this whole time, but...well, it really had told you so.

 "Please, don't look so sad," Minghao said before you even realized you were frowning and glowing red with embarrassment and there were potentially tears building at the corner of your eye, "it was really so special to meet you here tonight, Y/N. I mean it." And with that, he was gone, bolting around the house and into the dark instead of back towards the party.

 The mocking chant in your head died down at once. There was something about Minghao, about the way he spoke. At least to you, it was clear when what he was saying was the truth or a lie. 'I remembered something really important and I have to leave right now,' was an obvious excuse for...something. But 'It was special to meet you tonight, I mean it'? You'd never heard anybody sound so honest before.

 You untied your bandana from around your head to dab away your useless tears, and felt a steely resolve settle into your chest as you walked back to your friends and remembered: Kyungwon had mentioned another party that she was meeting Mingyu at tomorrow night. Maybe Minghao would be there, and you definitely would be, too.

Fri., October 6th, 2017 @ Green Heights Residential Complex, 3:46 P.M.

 "I can't believe you're going to that party," Minkyung whined from where she was curled up on her couch, "that party that he's going to be at." You ignored her while you spooned the comfort ramen you'd rushed over to make for her into a few bowls for the two of you and Kyungwon, who was sitting on the counter speaking in hushed tones over the phone with Mingyu. The two of them couldn't go a single afternoon without drama.

 "First of all, you broke up with him, so how is he the bad guy?" You asked as you set her helping down in front of her on the coffee table. She slid down onto the floor and immediately started slurping noodles into your mouth, not bothering to thank you or answer your very reasonable question. Which was fine, that was just how you knew that she knew you were right.

 "Secondly, ex-boyfriend of yours or not, Seokmin is a decent dude. I'm not going to put him on some blacklist to avoid like the plague just because you decided you think he's gay or something," you continued. Minkyung huffed into her bowl, making the broth splatter over the rim and onto the table. Trained as you were, you reached over to wipe it up with your own napkin.

 "You should have seen him with that Soonyoung guy!" You had seen him with 'that Soonyoung guy', whom he introduced to both of you as one of his best friends. They had gotten into an argument with each other about which one of them looked more handsome in their costumes, which you hadn't even realized were a pair before you saw them together—Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy. Seokmin thought the clam shell bra accentuated Soonyoung's figure—you knew because he'd said so approximately thirty times.

 Soonyoung, for his part, gushed over how the blue latex of Seokmin's gloves really brought out the color of his brown eyes. They truly belonged together.

 "Maybe they're just good friends?" You said, "Or maybe he's bisexual? Or pan? I don't know, Minkyung, but you made an assumption and I'm not gonna judge the guy based on your crazy ideas." You were leaning more towards him having an attraction to men than not. There was something about the way he'd slapped Soonyoung's ass at one point that seemed explicitly non-platonic.

 "Last and most importantly," you concluded around a mouthful of chicken, "is that it's not his party and I'm not going for him."

 "Then why are you going? You don't even like parties, you just go there to babysit us," Kyungwon made a good point as she came back into the room with her phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder and her bowl of ramen cradled safely in her arms. She dropped down onto the couch where Minkyung had been, throwing her legs into your lap, and waited expectantly for your answer.

 You weren't going to give her one, of course, especially not with Mingyu on the phone since he and Minghao were apparently so chummy. All you could do was shrug and stuff your mouth full to avoid having to explain yourself.

 "It's because of that guy! The one who started the Thriller dance!" Minkyung was hopping around on her toes at the realization, self-pity and irritation forgotten as she remembered seeing you disappear with Minghao. Somehow it had slipped her mind until just now, since she hadn't mentioned it at all once you returned to the party after he left. Actually, that had been around the time that Soonyoung made an appearance and ruined her night.

 "What guy? Is she talking about Minghao?" You heard, just barely, from the speaker of Kyungwon's phone. The name sparked a light in her eyes that struck fear in your poor old heart. With reflexes you didn't even know you had, you managed to safely put your bowl down before flinging yourself on top of your friend, grabbing her phone, punching the red button that you knew would end her call, and throwing it behind you somewhere, anywhere away from her.

 "Oh, my god," she didn't even care that you'd done all of that, and that was how you knew you were really in for it, "you're into Xu Minghao."

 "Wait, the Chinese exchange guy? The astronomy major? That's who you were with last night?" It was unfair the way all those tidbits of information slapped you in the face and rendered you unable to make a hasty retreat while they all three were filed away in your brain. So far you knew all of this about Minghao: His last name was Xu, he was an astronomy major, he was from China, he could dance, and he talked funny. It didn't seem like enough to make your heart race the way it did any time you thought of that giggle or the feeling of his nose running along your collarbone.

 "She was with him!? When!? What were they doing!?" The conversation went on around you, Minkyung explaining Minghao seeking your approval of his dance, the way you ran off together, and...the way you came back alone not too long later, and Minghao wasn't spotted again for the rest of the night.

 "What was that all about?" She asked, settling down at the edge of the table in front of you and going into concerned guardian mode. It was rare that she did, and it always made you super uncomfortable to see her eyebrows knitted together that way and the worried frown against her cheeks.

 "He ran off," you relented, "we were about to kiss and then, he just...I don't know. He got spooked and left." Minkyung sighed, taking your hand in hers and hooking an arm around your neck to bring you into a hug. Her cooing and awwing like you were a child was kind of annoying, but you appreciated that she cared about something that happened to you for once instead of all her own made up problems.

 In contrast, Kyungwon laughed.

 "So you're going to the party to show him what he missed out on," she decided, and you would have told her how dead-wrong she was, but your face was smooshed against Minkyung's chest and you couldn't get a word out, "I have just the costume for you to wear. He'll regret bailing on you like that."

Fri., October 6th, 2017 @ Delta Omega Delta House, 8:59 P.M.

 As expected, you felt fucking ridiculous. Ridiculous, exposed, embarrassed, angry at Kyungwon (as always), angry at Minghao for starting all of this, angry at the world for letting Britney Spears' "...Baby One More Time" happen in the first place. You'd walked into this building less than five minutes ago and already two guys had tugged on your pigtails, one of them had grabbed your ass beneath your tiny black skirt, and the wolf whistles were getting out of hand. Tonight you hated your life.

 At least the guy who grabbed your ass had been shoved up against the wall and threatened by Mingyu. If you had to walk around a frat party like this, you were glad to have a big guy there to back you up, even though you were pretty sure he'd never actually hurt anybody. Maybe he'd punch someone for you if he had to, but he'd definitely cry about it afterwards.

 "You look hot," Kyungwon said, "stop frowning like that." It was physically impossible for you to smile at a time like this, when it felt like everyone's eyes were on you judging the way you pudged out of the cropped white button-up knotted together just beneath your chest and the way you stumbled in the patent black pumps you'd been forced into. It kind of felt like you'd be telling your therapist about this night years from now, recalling the way all of your anxieties and fears had culminated in those one awful moment.

 "Y/N?" And then, like a sun ray in the dark, Minghao was in front of you to make everything okay. You were frozen a few feet away from him, but Kyungwon assisted you with a violent shove from behind until you were tumbling into his arms. He scanned your face with hard eyes, taking immediate notice of your shallow breaths and the way your own eyes were glossed over. Twice in as many nights now that you'd almost cried in front of him—how humiliating.

 Once he'd finished his assessment, he immediately righted you and brought you into the kitchen, out of the spotlight. There were still plenty of people there to gawk at you, but significantly less of them. Minghao grabbed a water bottle out of the fridge, then ushered you into the corner of the counter so that he could stand in front of you and shield you from your audience.

 "Breathe, love," he instructed you, "deep, steady breaths. Don't be frightened." He was petting your hair back out of your face, cupping your cheeks in his hands after he handed you the bottle of water. You held it to your chest, and it was freezing to the touch but at least you could focus on that instead of the black closing in around your eyes. With the guidance of Minghao's gentle touches and his firm voice, you were anchored back to reality and found your way out of the fog of panic.

 "Take a drink," he suggested, and you gulped down half the bottle. The whirring in your ears died down to become the bass of whatever song was playing in the background, the dull roar of party-goers’ conversations happening all around you. You realized no one was looking at you anymore, and it occurred to you that most of the stares had probably been because you were having an anxiety attack in the middle of a frat party—you felt so stupid.

 Minghao was having none of that—"You're not stupid," he said, "you were just scared, but it's over now. I've got you." Had you said that out loud? You must have. You relaxed with his words. Another thing to add to the list of things that you knew about Xu Minghao: he was the calm in the storm.

 As reassured as you felt, a sudden wave of embarrassment washed over you as it sunk in: you'd just almost had an anxiety attack. In the middle of a frat party. In front of Minghao. And he had to ease you out of it...so much for looking sexy and making him regret leaving you alone last night.

 The suffocating feeling that you were going to die was gone, only to be replaced by mortification. It was like when Minkyung comforted you, but so much worse—it only happened because you were so weak and pitiful. But at least the shame wasn't debilitating, and you were able to squeeze out of the tiny space Minghao had put you in and get away from him.

 "Uh," you started, with no idea what you wanted to say, making it up as you went, "thanks. For that. I should...I should go." There was a part of you that hoped Minghao felt like you had felt when he abandoned you last night, and then there was the larger part of you that figured he was relieved he wouldn't have to handle a girl on the verge of a mental breakdown for the rest of the night and could just enjoy the party. The look on his face as you walked away didn't give away which of those inclinations were true.

 "I'll walk you to the door," was all he said, and he did just that. Mingyu perked up when he saw the two of you come out of the kitchen together, pointing you out to Kyungwon, but she recognized the look on your face and felt her heart sink. The couple was coming up behind you as Minghao opened the door to let you out, and Mingyu was complaining about having to leave already before Kyungwon elbowed him in the gut to shut him up.

 "Get home, then," Minghao sighed against your forehead when he leaned down to press a gentle kiss there, "sleep well." You didn't say thank you, you didn't say goodbye, you just turned on your heel and rushed down the steps towards Mingyu's car so that Minghao wouldn't see you start to cry.

 Why were you crying now? You couldn't decide if it was because you'd blown it with Minghao or because you embarrassed yourself in front of everyone at the party or because your feet fucking hurt in these shoes. Maybe it was because it'd been a long time since someone was that sweet to you, but he didn't even ask you to stay. He seemed pretty eager to get you out the door.

 Mingyu didn't say anything when you were dropped off outside of your apartment building, letting Kyungwon do all the talking. She wouldn’t stop apologizing for putting you in that situation and making you uncomfortable, and that only made you feel worse. You were just about to wave her off so they could get back to the party, climb up into your apartment and stew in your self-pity, when she added, "But he's totally into you, you know that, right? Oh my God, that look on his face when he first saw you."

 You hated her. You hated her so, so much for making you hopeful. You hated her for reminding you that there was another party the next night. You hated her for telling you she had an idea for a different costume—something cute, not alienating and crippling like this one. You hated her for making you promise that you'd be there for her to pick you up at 6 so that you could get ready with her tomorrow. You hated her.

Sat., October 7th, 2017 @ Club Nebula, 10:07 P.M.

 "I don't think he's here," you said, again, for the thousandth time. Minkyung glared at you over her shoulder, then turned around fully to fix the cat ears tucked into your hair when she noticed they were askew.

 "I know he's here, Y/N," Kyungwon said from ahead of you both, "Mingyu came here with him." It was a wonder you could hear her over the mix-up of "Despacito" and "Ghostbusters" blaring through the packed little club, but when you did you could only wonder why she didn't text and ask where he was, then. The three of you had been wandering around looking for them for the past half hour. Admittedly, you'd stopped to get drinks and dance a few times, if the music moved you.

 You were back to your normal self—you couldn't for the life of you understand what the fuck had happened last night. Realistically, you knew there was no reason for you to overreact like that. Your brain was just doing it's own thing, as usual.

 In your little black babydoll dress, cat ears, lace choker with the bell, and whiskers and pretty pink nose painted onto your face, you felt much more relaxed. Although your hope that he was even there was dwindling, you hoped you could fix whatever it was you had with Minghao. You'd promise that you didn't normally freak out like you had, because you didn't. You were always the one who had to be cool under pressure. And in this fantasy, he'd accept that as fact. He wouldn't bail and the two of you would bone tonight.

 A girl could dream.

 "Oh, there's Mingyu!" There he was indeed—it was a wonder you hadn't been able to find him this whole time with the way his head on top of his freakishly tall body stuck out above the crowd. You made your over to him at a booth in the corner, where he was stationed with some of your other friends. There was Hansol and Eunwoo wrapped up in each other, and Nayeon thrown across Jeonghan's lap, but no Minghao in sight.

 There was, however, a very pale Seokmin whose wide-eyed gaze was stuck on Minkyung. She hadn't noticed him yet, as she poked Mingyu in the chest and demanded to know where his Chinese friend was.

 "I dunno, I told him you guys were here and he went to dance," Mingyu shrugged, but sent a sympathetic look over her shoulder at you. You looked away, redirecting your gaze back to the mass of bodies you'd just powered your way through. "The Monster Mash" was playing—now that you thought about it, it had been playing when you got to the party last night, too. A third time around, you didn't enjoy it any more than before.

 "I'll go find him," you told Kyungwon, putting your brave face on, and reentering the swarm of sweaty, smelly ghosts and Pennywises and slutty nurses and Donald Trumps. You encountered plenty of cats along the way, too, but no "...Baby One More Time" era Britney Spears costumes. There weren't any Rosie the Riveters, either.

 "Here, k-kitty kitty," you heard at the same time as you felt someone tug on the tail that Kyungwon had stuck onto your skirt. You would have slapped him, or at the very least smacked his hand away—but when you saw the guy, you just felt bad for him. He wasn't bad looking at all, but he was wearing a bright yellow sweater, dark denim overalls, and a yellow beanie with blue goggles glued onto it. The poor son of a bitch was dressed as a minion.

 "Wanna dance?" He was also very, very drunk, stumbling on his feet, nearly ending up on the floor a few times in just the thirty seconds you'd been watching him. You grabbed the beer out of his hand and chucked it into a nearby trash can, then got an arm around his shoulders to take him over to sit.

 "What's your name, dude?" You asked once you'd gotten him out of the crowd, and through a boxy smile he told you, "I-I'm...hic...Kim Tae-Taehyung." Taehyung flopped down into the chair you found for him, then made grabby hands at you as you backed away from him.

 "Nooo, stay with me," he begged, but your sights were already back on the club's horizon, scanning for that familiar head of bleach blonde hair.

 "Stay right here until one of your friends finds you, alright? No more beer," you told him, "promise no more beer and I'll give you my number." He slurred out the promise faster than any normal drunk person should have been able to speak, and you rewarded him with a fake number scribbled down onto the palm of his hand. He was cute, but he was a mess. Not to mention you had already accidentally fallen head-over-heels for some other guy you barely knew. There was no time or space or energy in you for Kim Taehyung.

 It was only two steps back into the masses before you saw it. She was sitting at the bar with her pretty caramel-colored hair curled out of her face, her pom-poms forgotten on the counter top beside her drink, her tiny cheer skirt spread across legs split for Minghao to nestle himself in between. You could tell it was him thanks to the black cape hanging off his shoulders and the velvet vest and the telltale blonde hair—not because you could see his face.

 No, his face was buried in the crook of her neck doing God know's what to get her making that expression, eyes screwed shut and jaw hanging slack and all. You looked away before you could decide whether he was kissing or licking or biting, before you could see exactly where his hands were. Bile bubbled up in your throat, tasting like the buttery nipple you'd thrown back with the girls when you first got here.

 The girls. Kyungwon. You would end her. You desperately wished she had never brought you here, had never given you false hope. You wished that you could go back in time and stay curled up in your bed feeling sorry for yourself instead of getting all dolled up again and making the drive downtown.

 "I'll take you up on that dance, actually," you blurted out as you stalked back over to Taehyung, because fuck Minghao. Okay, so he wasn't your boyfriend. He wasn't even your friend, really. But what gave him the right to go fooling around with other girls when he didn't even know you were there and had no accountability towards you? What a piece of shit.

 So you danced with Taehyung, who miraculously managed to stay on his feet the whole time, and tried very hard to ignore the fact that he was dressed up as a minion. At some point, you "accidentally" knocked the yellow goggled beanie off of his head, which made it a little bit easier. And he was a good dancer, even if he couldn't keep his mouth shut for a full sixty seconds.

 "I was...was ssseven-years-old when my h-hamster escaped and...and got eaten by a ssstray c-cat," he informed you as he ground his dick against your ass, "that was the day I...hic...I truly learned about life 'nd death." You nodded if only so that he wouldn't ask ten times in a row if you were actually listening to him, as you'd learned he would do without any acknowledgement.

 "That's great, Taehyung," you monotoned at him, turning to wrap your arms around his neck and grind against his front. He could barely talk, but the guy could body roll like a pro. Over his shoulder, you saw that Minghao and his mystery girl were long gone. It had been over a dozen songs since you and Taehyung started dancing, after all. Apparently that girl was worth taking home, you snarked instead of letting yourself feel self-conscious about it.

 Of course, it wasn't just that simple to not feel self-conscious about it. What did she have that you didn't? Well, perfect hair, for one. And probably decent mental health, for another. Only a girl with decent mental health could have hair that well-styled and maintained.

 "Hey," you leaned forward to say close to Taehyung so that he could actually hear you, interrupting his story about the day his sister got his first period and he learned about womanhood or something, "can we kiss now?" You figured it would distract you, and drunk or not, with a face as pretty as his, you figured Taehyung had to be a good kisser.

 He didn't need to be asked twice, he barely even needed a moment to register the question before he attached his lips to yours. They were soft, that was for sure, if a little chapped. And his kiss was kind of...slimy. Then again, it had been awhile since you properly kissed somebody, so maybe you'd forgotten exactly what a kiss was supposed to feel like (you didn't think so, but you were willing to give Taehyung the benefit of the doubt).

 But it just felt wrong. Kissing anybody but Minghao felt like a betrayal to your own heart, which was screaming at you to leave this club and find that asshole wherever he was and hand over the lips that were rightfully his.

 Your brain rebelled at the thought—your lips weren't Minghao's. Your heart wasn't Minghao's, your soul wasn't Minghao's. He was some guy that you'd literally met barely 48 hours ago and there was absolutely no reason you should feel so hopelessly attached to him.

 So you kissed Taehyung harder and tried to forget about everything else. Maybe if you cocked your head just so, teased a little tongue, ran your fingers through his hair, this would feel halfway nice? Maybe you could let him consume you and make the world melt away the way that Minghao had when he was barely even touching you?

 "You taste like...salmon," Taehyung informed you the moment you had to break away for air, and yeah, this just wasn't gonna work. One grumbled curse under your breath and Uber request later, the two of you were spread out in the back of a Prius desperately trying not to throw up on this poor guy's floor. He kept nervously glancing at you in his rear view mirror, ready to pull over and drag you out of his car at less than a moment's notice.

 "You're a nice guy, Taehyung," you told him as he leaned against your shoulder, every once in a while letting his eyelashes flutter in an attempt to stay awake, "and you're really hot. Sorry I'm just not into you like that."

 "H-Hey, there's...there's a back road up there onnn...the left. It'll make the...hic...the drive like five minutes shorter," Taehyung said to the driver. You were substantially less drunk than he was, and figured you should get him home safe and sound before you, "and as for...as for you. Th-That's...okay. 'm not sssuper into g-girls...hic...a-anyways."

 You didn't feel guilty leaving him dumped out on his driveway after that. To be fair, you didn't take off until you'd pounded on the door enough to wake up his roommate to let him know Taehyung was there, and you left him your real number. He really was a good guy. You figured he'd make a pretty good friend after you tore him a new asshole for fucking around with girls heads like that.

 Not that you were any better using him to try and distract yourself from Minghao but...he didn't ever have to know about that.

[1:03 A.M.] Unknown: heu

[1:03 A.M.] Unknown: heu?

[1:03 A.M.] Unknown: heu heu heu. Y/N

[1:04 A.M.] You: stop texting me taehyung

[1:04 A.M.] Dumbass: jsut wanted too say thhnaks

[1:06 A.M.] Dumbass: heu................................................who ws that gyu u kTOE starring st........................teh one at the b ar......wsa he ur ex r sehtm,thin...............is taht wyh you sa id u wr;ent into em

 Shutting your phone off was almost cathartic. With the go-ahead from your driver, you rolled your windows down and smelled the garbage piled up underneath the highway and even this shitty moment was better than any moment back at the club or any moment you might have spent explaining who Minghao was to Taehyung.

 You decided you would forget the last few days ever happened. The dumb lace choker, well that was Kyungwon's, so you dropped it into your purse after you unlatched it from around your neck. When you did that, you saw the wet naps littered at the bottom of your bag, and used those to wipe off the ridiculous whiskers and nose painted across your face. The annoying ears and tail, well those you'd bought at the dollar store today for two bucks and change. With absolutely no concern for the world around you, you flung them both out the window (you'd feel bad about that later).

 Clearly, the last three nights had been some sort of glitch in your timeline. All you had to do to right the world's axis was return to your normal routine tomorrow morning and convince your friends to let all of this Minghao nonsense go—easy enough. Back to being the bad ass single bitch it was, then.

Thurs., October 12th, 2017 @ the corner of South and Porter, 8:26 P.M.

 "Get out of my car," Taehyung repeated himself for the eighth time (you were counting). Said car was off, and you were tucked comfortably into the passenger's seat. Taehyung had already gotten out and was leaned in where you'd left the window wide open on your side, thinking of all the ways that he could kill you right now...there were probably a dozen ways he could end it with nothing but the keys in his hands and some patience.

 You'd deserve it. When he asked you to meet up for coffee a couple of days after your failed make out at the club, he probably hadn't expected for the sad single girl to latch onto him like you had. What could you say—you were going through a strange time in your life. You'd never felt quite this way before, so torn up over a guy for no particular reason.

 And Taehyung, bless him, was kind enough to go on with whatever you needed at any given moment. Sunday morning you'd told him that you wanted to put everything Minghao-related of the weekend far behind you and move on, and after forcing a thorough explanation out of you, he was on board. When you sent an early morning text on Monday recanting all of your previous statements about forgetting Minghao, he was fine with that, too.

 He'd never known someone who could change their mind as many times and as quickly as you did, though, and keeping up with whether or not he had to be pro or anti-Minghao at any given moment was proving to be difficult. Just a half hour ago when he picked you up to bring you to this party, you'd been deadset on finding Minghao and hashing things out with him, but now you'd anchored yourself to his passengers seat and currently stood at never wanting to see Minghao's beautiful stupid face every again.

 At least that's what he thought you were trying to convey to him with your wild hand gestures and angry groans behind lips sealed tight. If he'd known you were planning on dressing up as a mime (so that you'd have an excuse not to talk to Minghao if and when you changed your mind about wanting to hash things out!), he never would have agreed to come along with you.

 He had no other choice than to put the muscles that Jungkook—one of his roommates, you'd learned—had cultivated in his arms and legs to good use dragging you out of the car by force. Because he was Taehyung, he was especially careful not to scratch you against the metal or bump your head on the door as he did so. This friend you'd known for less than a week was so much nicer to you than the ones you'd known for years.

 Momo and Mina were jealous of him already, mostly because they lived in your fucking head and just knew there was something Taehyung knew about you that they didn't. That's why they'd suggested you bring him along. Unbeknownst to either of you, he was soon to get the third degree from the most aggressive of lesbian power couples.

 But for now things were relatively pleasant. Taehyung liked skinship, apparently, and was happy to platonically hold your hand as the two of you approached the house—Jackson Wang's place, you were pretty sure. You didn't know him that well, he was a friend of a friend of a friend of Momo's, but you did know that he was a nice guy who everybody liked and who liked everybody right back, so you weren't worried about showing up uninvited to his party.

 Evidently Taehyung was also really good at forgiving and forgetting, since the car hostage incident from less than two whole minutes ago was already far from his mind. "Jackson's a Chinese exchange student, too, so Minghao will definitely be here," he told you, "ready for that?"

 You sent him a thumbs-up just as the door swung open and the man, the myth, the legend Jackson Wang himself, welcomed you inside. For being someone so well-liked, the obnoxious stripper cop costume he had on really caught you off-guard, but at least he had the pecs and the abs to back it up.

 "Make yourself at home, guys," he said without even getting your names, already half-swallowed whole by the horde of dancers in his living room again, "please don't fuck in my bed, though."

 Jackson was already gone, but just for you, Taehyung wiggled his eyebrows and purred, "I can't make any promises."

 Of all four things to do—get a drink, start dancing, head outside to smoke, or get in line for the beer pong tournament going on in the basement—Taehyung chose beer pong. "The Monster Mash" started in the living room just as you closed the door to the basement behind you and you thanked God for the dodged bullet. Once this Hell month was over, you'd do everything in your power to make sure you never heard that song again.

 There were way too many people shoved into the room and too few of them that you knew, so you stayed glued to Taehyung's side as he waited. When he asked if you were going to be his partner, you shook your head frantically—there was absolutely no way that was happening. And when he asked why, you demonstrated 'why' for him by grabbing a beer cap off the floor and trying to throw it into the trash can that was barely three feet away. It was unnatural the way it flew right out of your hand and backwards, hitting whoever was standing behind you in the face.

 You turned around with every intention of apologizing, truly, but as luck would have it your latest victim was none other than Minghao, rubbing the tip of his nose gently over the saddest pout on his lips. Mingyu was bent down next to him, picking up the bottle cap and looking up with venomous rage.

 "Why would you throw this at---oh! Y/N! What's up what are you doing here? Who's this?" Rather than let you answer any of his questions, Mingyu held out a hand to introduce himself to Taehyung. You hadn't known Taehyung very long, but you'd already learned enough about him to know that he was somebody who instantly became everybody's best friend. Mingyu liked him immediately, you could tell by the bro-hug.

 "Wait, do you live with Jungkook?" Taehyung's eyes lit up at the mention of his roommate, one who he had spent hours gassing up to you already in the less than a week you'd been friends, and he replied, "Yeah! He's one of my best friends!" Up to that point you'd kept yourself focused on Mingyu and Taehyung, pointedly ignoring Minghao who didn't bother saying anything to you, either, but it was kind of hard to keep ignoring him when Mingyu brought him directly into the conversation.

 "Minghao! Taehyung lives with Jungkook! You just hung out with him yesterday, didn't you? Playing games at that internet cafe," Mingyu nudged his friend to speak up, and the word slithered out of Minghao's mouth much more quietly and with much less enthusiasm than Mingyu had,

 "Yes." That was all he said, too. The other boys waited a beat longer for him to expand upon that, but Minghao stared back at them blankly until they continued their conversation without him. For what it was worth, Taehyung squeezed your hand that he was still holding as acknowledgement after hearing Minghao's name. You squeezed back to confirm—yes, this quiet, weird, handsome guy dressed up as a vampire was the Minghao.

 "Hey lovebirds, you're up," someone announced as they tapped your shoulder, and Taehyung finally let go of you and wrapped up with Mingyu so that he could turn to the group amassed to watch and ask who would be his partner. Some guy with blue hair stumbled forward, "I'm only doing this because I can't find anymore beer in the kitchen," and the round began.

 The new guy's name was Yoongi. He didn't offer that up on his own, no, Taehyung had to squeeze it out of him, and after that he didn't say much. The two guys on the opposite end of the table, who'd won their past four games, were apparently named Yugyeom and 'BamBam.' They easily got their first ball in, and Yoongi was happy to drink the first half cup of beer. When it was their turn and Taehyung stepped up to take the shot, Yoongi grabbed his wrist before he could.

 "I was a basketball player in high school," he said coolly, "watch how it's done." It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad—Yoongi bent his knees to crouch down eye-level with the cups, lifted his hand to toss it towards the middle of the table, obviously going for a bounce shot...but the ball just fell once and rolled away. There were few times you'd ever seen a man look so devastated in your life.

 "It's okay, Yoongs! We'll get it next time!" Taehyung encouraged him.

 "Call me 'Yoongs' again and I'll rip your balls off," Yoongi warned.

 "So Y/N," Mingyu popped up beside you as the game went on, "how do you know Taehyung?" You narrowed your eyes at him, thinking for a moment on his motives. He was Kyungwon's boyfriend and he knew that you had a weird thing going on with Minghao, but Minghao was one of his friends. Whose side was he on? And then you were mentally backtracking because there weren't sides, of course. No one had done anything wrong, you, least of all.

 Relief flushed over you as you remembered—your costume. You were a mime. You didn't have to say anything. With an exaggerated sweep of your arm, you directed Mingyu's attention to your outfit. He might have recognized the black-and-white striped top as his girlfriend's, and the suspenders holding up your black jeans were Momo's. Mina had offered up the black beret on your head and done your makeup, too.

 "Okay, so you're not gonna talk," Mingyu deduced, "have you known him a long time?" You shook your head. "Weeks or months?" You shook your head. "Days?" Nod. Behind Mingyu, you heard Minghao scoff and tried to temper the simmering ire in your belly at the audacity.

 "Wait—is he the minion you went home with?" You wiggled your eyebrows at him in a poor imitation of the way Taehyung had earlier. When he did it, it was funny, obviously a joke. When you did it, it just seemed creepy.

 "Excuse me? And when was this?" Minghao elbowed himself in front of Mingyu to ask, and Mingyu was shoving Minghao back to the side demanding to know, "Did you sleep with him? Is he even straight?" As it was, whether or not you slept with Taehyung and whenever it might have happened was none of their business. You shrugged and pulled your fingers across the seam of your lips to indicate zipping them closed.

 "I won't play this game, Y/N," Minghao scolded you like your father would have, "what evening did you go home with this 'Taehyung' and—" Before he could complete his intrusive question, two groans rang out in harmony across the pong table and Taehyung was screaming at the top of his lungs, jumping up and down in place. Even Yoongi was smirking some, watching Yugyeom pluck a ball out from one of their cups and chugging the lukewarm beer.

 Which was kind of gross. You were doubly glad you hadn’t played if these neanderthals were going to play the rules so literally.

 "Y/N! Did you see that!" Taehyung cried, whirling around to face you, and when you held out a hand for a high five, he scooped you into a hug, instead. You could feel the heat of Minghao's stare on your back.

 "Don't look now," Taehyung whispered into your ear, "but I think lover boy is about to combust. Wanna give him a show?" The next fifteen minutes went exactly according to your unspoken plan: once Taehyung made the first strike, he and Yoongi crushed the other team. Every time Taehyung landed a shot, after you'd properly overdone your applause, he would demand another hug or a kiss on the cheek, and every time you got close enough to him, he would explain how much angrier Minghao looked.

 When Yugyeom and Bambam had one cup left, Taehyung beckoned you closer before he made his final shot. "I want a kiss for good luck," he pouted, but when you went to give him another kiss on the cheek, he leaned away.

 "Nope, that's not what I meant," he giggled. Any one of the other girls in this room would have jumped at the chance to lay one on Kim Taehyung right now—you could see some of them tense, watching closely, at the ready in case you denied his request. They would get that opportunity, you thought, because you'd have to tell him no. The only other option was to kiss him and feel your own heart and brain fighting against you the whole time.

 Not to mention, you could physically feel Minghao's warring emotions behind you as if they were your own. It was a dubious mix of wrath, shame, hurt. Whether he had any sort of romantic interest in you or not, it was upsetting to watch you show off with Taehyung in front of him. He wasn't stupid. He knew that you were doing this to get back at him, he just didn't know exactly what for.

 You opened your mouth to speak your first word of the night, a firm "No," but then Taehyung was pressing the tiny plastic ball in his fingers against your lips. "I meant for the ball, dumbie," he laughed, making a quick save. At ease, you gave the ball a peck and stepped back to give Taehyung room.

 The room was silent as he came to the edge of the table, closed one eye and bit his lip in deep concentration—but you only heard the cheers from halfway up the stairs as you were dragged out of there. You were presented with the sight of a half-naked Jackson leading a conga line when Minghao threw the basement door open, and it was going right by, closing you in between the door and Minghao's back.

 You tapped his shoulder once, twice, three times, over and over and over again waiting for him to turn and explain himself to you, but he was just as silent as you'd been all night. You knew...you knew that you should have felt the anger, the indignation. And you could sense it coming from Minghao, but as you pressed your head against his shoulder blade and breathed in his scent—earthy, but scorched like firewood—any thoughts of revenge and resentment were silenced. Your heart was calm.

 Finally the conga line passed, and more slowly, you followed Minghao out into the backyard where it was quiet. A few party-goers were passing around a blunt by a bonfire further out, but you and Minghao just settled down onto the steps. You watched him closely, watched the way he flexed his fingers against each other and worried his brow, searching for the right words to express whatever it was he wanted to tell you. When he couldn't come up with anything, he let out the breath he'd been holding all night, shrugged, and leaned back against the wall. Defeated.

 "You don't have to be jealous," you spoke for the first time, and Minghao looked over at you with large disbelieving eyes, "Taehyung's mostly gay." Another moment of silence passed as you watched Minghao process this information. He open and closed his mouth a few times, as if he was answering his own questions in his head before he could ask them of you.

 "We didn't sleep together, either," you filled in the blanks, and finally watched the tension flush out of his body with the way his shoulders dropped and his forehead smoothed. There it was again—that giggle that made your heart thump harder against your ribcage. Seven days since you'd heard that giggle were seven days too long.

 "I wasn't jealous," Minghao lied after he cleared his throat and fixed his expression back into something blank and unreadable, "there's nothing to be jealous of. You aren't my beloved, nor am I yours." But you are. I wish I was. You couldn’t bring yourself to say as much.

 Still. Here Minghao was at your side, talking to you, not running away or encouraging distance between the two of you. He was smiling and he didn't move when you leaned your head against his shoulder.

 Tonight, this was enough.

Fri., October 13th, 2017 @ A Big Rock in the Middle of Woods, 11 P.M.

 You liked to drink, of course. Liquor was just so good at taking the edge off or helping ease the stress of a bad day. That being said, you didn't make a habit out of getting drunk, not anymore at least. A few times blacking out and waking up in a puddle of your own puke on the floor had turned you off to that long before you turned 21.

 What made tonight any different you weren't sure, but that party back there had been so boring. Momo and Mina tried to convince you not to go, and you knew that none of your friends would be there, but you'd still held out hope that Minghao would make an appearance. You'd even felt particularly good about your costume—a dark red top that you'd yellow-duck-taped the Wonder Woman logo onto the chest of, a gold belt around your navy skirt to match the gold headband holding your hair back. You'd gone so far as to dig some silver star stickers from the bottom of a desk drawer to slap all over your skirt. You knew that you looked cute, and you wanted Minghao to know it, too.

 He hadn't shown up. So you drowned out your rising anxieties about being at this party alone and the chance that maybe last night was your last night, maybe he had pulled off his greatest disappearance, maybe you'd never see him again—with some rum and cokes. And there was a lot more rum than coke in your cup at all times, and no one to stop you from drinking it.

 You had no idea when or how you'd wandered into these woods, either. A very fuzzy memory of walking outside and seeing them across the street from the sorority house hung around at the edge of your thoughts but never cleared up well enough for you to remember why you'd gone into them. What you could remember very clearly, though, was putting your phone behind a fish tank inside because you didn't have any pockets and you wanted to dance...but never picking it back up.

 Now all you could do was sit on this big rock until you sobered up or the sun rose and hope you didn't die. You weren't sure if it was lucky or very unfortunate that you were too inebriated to be properly scared, too. Sure, the fear was there, but subdued behind the sick beat you could hear in your head that made you just want to fucking dance. Then again, that beat might have been the pulsing of a killer headache building slowly.

 The only thing that really bothered you was that you were cold. It was dark and predators could be lurking in any direction, but you just wanted a jacket. You wanted a jacket so bad that you were worried you might start crying again. You really didn't want to cry. You'd cried too much in the past week.

 "You have such a way of getting yourself into trouble, silly girl," and even though your drunk brain was just imagining it, his voice warmed you from the inside out. Like a true crazy person, you replied out loud to Imaginary Minghao, "I like you...lot. You...'re...so nice. Ssso...warm."

 "I like you a lot, too, darling," you imagined he'd say, "now hop up and let me lead the way out of here." There was no explaining how you found your way back to the road after that, or the car that was conveniently waiting to drive you home when you did, or how your phone was waiting on your bedside table in the morning even though you were absolutely certain you'd never set foot back in the sorority house. It woke you up playing "The Monster Mash."

 You chalked it up to a lot of good fortune, and thought that maybe you'd had your phone on you all along. But the warmth settled into your chest all day—that couldn't be explained. Maybe Minghao wasn't as far away as you thought.

Sat., October 14th, 2017 @ Abandoned K-Mart Parking Lot, 9:53 P.M.

 "There's nothing for us to run into out here," Nayoung sighed in relief as she climbed out of the back of Seungcheol's truck, slipping her trusty sunglasses on to once again complete the Three Blind Mice outfit. Kyungwon and Minkyung came out after her, but neither was giving up hold on the walking stick they were fighting over.

 "There are parking blocks, actually," you pointed out, "bright yellow. Hard to trip over unless you're some asshole wearing sunglasses in the dark." Kyungwon got the upper hand just in time to raise the walking stick to hit you again, but Minkyung grabbed her arm to stop her. You heard a small "Remember what happened last time," and felt proud of the fear you instilled in their little hearts. That was how they'd ended up having to fight over just one of them, anyways.

 "And you're not an asshole for carrying around an umbrella when it hasn't rained in like a month?"

 "It's part of the costume," you held up your finger to shut her up before she could argue that the sunglasses and walking stick were just a part of her costume, as well, "and it's not ableist. Everybody uses umbrellas, bitch." Your umbrella was in service of being Mary Poppins—you'd had everything you needed for it in your own closet this time, too. A derby hat that you pinned big fake flowers too, the same white button-up that had once been part of the tragic Britney Spears costume, a red bow tie, a pleated black skirt, tights, and black kitten heels. It was a wholesome costume, and that was all you could ask for after some of the others you'd experienced so far this month.

 "He did the mash! He did the mooonster mash..." you heard playing in the distance. You were ready for Halloween to be over at this point.

 It wasn't in the best interest of your sanity, but the six of you—Jihyo and Mingyu included—made your way across the parking lot to the crowd of people closer to the abandoned store building. There were lights put up there, and on the roof, someone was setting up a few cameras, one in the middle and two at either corner. Momo and Mina were the ones fretting over the stereo, and didn't even notice you come up behind them until you snapped the bottom of their black leotards against their thighs.

 "Y/N! You actually came!" Mina gushed, throwing her arms around you in a hurried hug while Momo stayed focused on the music. "I can't really talk right now. Minghao's around somewhere, though," and she winked. There was a tick of frustration in your head but you snuffed it out for now instead of pulling your phone out to text a bunch of angry face emojis and red sirens and exclamation points at Taehyung. It wasn't entirely his fault that he'd succumbed to their charms and given in during their interrogation—the two of them were very hard to say no to.

 That was part of how you'd wound up here, at the site of their impromptu flash mob-esque dance party (inspired by Minghao’s little “Thriller” stunt at the party at The Yard.) They'd been begging you for days to take part in it, and after inevitably breaking you down, Momo had delighted in teaching you the dance they put together. It brought her a special sort of joy to see just how bad you were at the thing she did best.

 The other reason you were here, of course, was because you knew that Minghao would show up. How could he pass on the chance to take part in some more mass synchronized choreography? Mina pointed somewhere behind you before getting back to work, and sure enough, in that direction you could see Minghao with his friends. As if on cue, he looked up and locked eyes with you.

 It was a certain magnetism that brought you all the way across the parking lot, through the crowd, and straight to him. "Y/N, love," he cooed as soon as you were in earshot, "I'm so happy that you came." There was a burst of panic as you realized that you were surrounded by all of his friends and were about to be subject to their scrutiny, but as was becoming routine, Minghao took your hand in his and you felt immediately calmed.

 "My friends are going to love you," Minghao said as he pulled you closer to them, "don't be nervous. Even if they don't, I'll make them." It was a promise to you and a secret threat towards them all at once, and you had no idea what he meant by that but you'd take it. One of his friends you recognized—the kid who started the Thriller dance with him. Minghao reminded you that his name was Chan before he came up behind him and kicked him right in the ass to get his attention.

 "Hey, kid," he barked, "this is Y/N. Be nice." The first thing you noticed about Chan was that he was kind of short, and you remembered your immediate thought back at that first party that he must have been a freshman. The light in his eyes, the grasp he had on his will to live, reinforced that theory. It was impossible to look that alive after one full college semester.

 "Y/N! Wow, I feel like I already know you. 'Hao hyung has talked about you so much and it's only been a couple of weeks. You are pretty," Chan immediately overshared, and then you got to watch him turn the cutest shade of pink and slap his hand over his mouth. Minghao, on the cooler side tonight, just rolled his eyes at him.

 "Thanks, kid. You're pretty cute yourself," you told him. Chan only turned pinker. From behind him another guy jogged up, this one you didn't know, but he was almost as inhumanly beautiful as Minghao. He beamed down at you as he introduced himself,

 "Y/N, I'm Jun. I'm Minghao's best friend." The accent gave him away, so much like Minghao's. He must have been one of his Chinese exchange friends. If he really was Minghao's best friend, you wanted to impress him, so you dug around deep into the dustiest recesses of your brain so that you could say,

 "Nǐ hǎo, hěn gāoxìng rènshì nǐ."

 Jun laughed. You weren't sure if your feelings should be hurt or you should feel victorious for getting some sort of positive reaction out of him. It had been years since you had taken a semester of Chinese Language, so of course your accent was a little rusty, but you didn't think you sounded that bad.

 "No, don't look so sad!" Jun said, reaching forward to push the corners of your lips back up into a neutral state. If it was any other stranger there was no way they were getting their hands on you, but again—he was Minghao's best friend. You needed him to like you.

 And Minghao, this wonderful lovely perfect boy you'd found, he pushed Jun's hands away for you. "No touching," he deadpanned. The way Minghao said it, it wasn't a joke. It was a rule. Jun raised them up in surrender, taking a full two steps back to put some room between you and himself.

 "Soonyoungie's helping some of the kids over there," Jun cocked his head to the left, at a few of the boys in their group clumped up together to the side. Minghao gave him a short nod, a terse look that you couldn't exactly read—just something to get across that they were going to have a very serious talk later and Jun was probably going to come out of it grievously maimed.

 "I'm sorry about him," Minghao said quietly as you walked towards his other friend, "He's normally alright. Has no couth, though. Too forward." For the first time since you'd met (not that it'd been long since then), Minghao looked...embarrassed. His lips were pursed, pulled tight at the edges, and the tips of his ears were red. God, he was so cute.

 "It's okay. He's not that bad," and you meant it. You hadn't gotten enough out of him to make an appropriate judgement call, but he couldn't possibly be any more annoying than your own friends. You already dreaded the day that you had to properly introduce him to them. Momo and Mina would tear him apart. Minkyung and Kyungwon would probably call him "dad."

 "Well there's only one more of them you have to meet," Minghao told you, "but he's...a lively one. Unique. Always starting little slapstick comedy bits and scaring people off before they realize he's just joking." That all sounded...new. Certainly not like any of your friends. But not...bad. Manageable, at the least.

 "Minghao, thank God you're here! Joshua, he just. He just can't dance and I don't know what to do," came a voice from within the clump of boys, one that you distantly recognized from somewhere. You realized too late from where. The sight of him, those squished eyes and that bright pink hair and Seokmin glued to his side—you'd only met him once, but you'd have recognized Soonyoung anywhere. Minkyung had only made you look at every single picture she could find of him on social media when she stalked him the day after she broke things off with his extra special friend.

 "I can do the backpack kid dance," the guy who must have been Joshua said, but who gave a shit, you were in the middle of a crisis here. One of Minghao's closest friends was Public Enemy Number One as far as Minkyung was concerned—if she you speaking to him from wherever she was lurking right now, she'd skin you alive.

 Minghao was gently pushing you forward to him, giving you an encouraging smile, and you didn't know what to say to him. "That's—he's—Soonyoung is—but Seokmin, and Minkyung—I'm going to die," you sputtered. It just wasn't fair. Making a good first impression to Minghao's friends was an important piece of this puzzle, of cracking his code, of your scheme to make him love you, and it was going about as badly as it could at this point.

 "Yes. Soonyoung is, but Seokmin and Minkyung, you're going to die," Soonyoung joked, and you knew it was good-natured but you really felt like your life was in danger. Seokmin, the big dumb idiot, was just staring at you wide-eyed and frozen and probably close to pissing his pants. Time stood still.

 "'Hao, can your girlfriend dance?" Soonyoung asked all of the sudden, looking past you at him, but he didn't give him the chance to answer before he grabbed you and pulled you over to Joshua, positioning you between him and some other kid. You'd seen the other guy hanging out with Hansol and Eunwoo before...Seungkwan! Right, his name was Seungkwan. He was another nice but weird kid, so overdramatic, always trying to entertain.

 "Never mind, I know you can't," Soonyoung said, "I saw you at The Yard. It's okay, Young Padawan. Let the master teach you." Minghao had already saved you so often in such little time, but back where you'd left him he was just smirking and shrugged, leaving you all on your own.

 "Okay, everybody! From the top! 5, 6, 7, 8!" Momo had made you repeat the dance dozens of times until she was sure it was embedded into your brain, but in the moment, nothing came to you. There were too many things to do with your hands, T's and L's and antennas and crying motions and knocks. As for anything you were supposed to do with your feet—God help you.

 Joshua actually seemed to be doing well. You were tempted to reach a leg over and trip him when he did some sort of...spin...kick...thing, but kept that desire bottled in. It wouldn't be very becoming of you to sabotage an innocent bystander to your failings just because he could do what you couldn't. You managed to do one or two moves here and there, but for the most part stood still while the others literally danced circles around you.

 "That was...wow," Soonyoung said when they'd all finished, and pointedly wasn't looking in your eyes, "On second thought, Joshua, you're not that bad! Minghao, your girlfriend, she...help her." If looks could kill Soonyoung would have been six feet under already. You'd never seen a glare quite as cutting and fierce as Minghao's, and were suddenly sure that the glares he'd given you the other night with Taehyung were Glare Lites™.

 Stumbling away from the others, you managed to mumble, "I'm not his girlfriend," before Minghao scooted you away to save you anymore shame. He looked pretty shameful, himself, kicking his feet into the ground in a rare display of bashfulness and uncertainty.

 "I apologize for their behavior," Minghao sighed, playing with your fingers but unable to look you in the eye, "they're not usually like this. Soonyoung is typically much more agreeable and light-hearted. I forget how he can be when he goes into Coach Kwon mode."

 "Is he gay?" You really hadn't meant to say that out loud™especially not as obnoxiously as you did. You hoped Minghao knew you weren't asking because of any outdated gay stereotypes or anything, either. Just to be sure, you rambled on, "Just wondering. My friend Minkyung, she was dating Seokmin for a couple of months? But she broke up with him when she saw the way he acted with Soonyoung at The Yard and like. Have you seen them? They seem pretty into each other. I dunno, they touch each other's butts a lot. Dunno if there's some sort of 'no homo' nonsense going on there but, uh. Uh."

 Minghao blinked at you a few times, waiting to be sure you were done. For good measure, you added, "Sorry. I probably sound crazy, it's all Minkyung. I'm sorry. I'll shut up now." When he was sure you had nothing left to say, Minghao reached up to brush some of your hair behind your ear as he laughed. It wasn't a laugh like Jun's, stuck somewhere between mean and endeared and ultimately a mystery to you. No, Minghao sounded...smitten.

 Score.

 "He does like boys," Minghao said, "and girls, too. Sexuality has become much more fluid over the years, you know. I personally find that most people like at least a little bit of both. Like your friend. Zae-ung, or whatever his name was." He was fussing over you now, adjusting the bowl hat on your head and fixing your bow tie, finding any excuse to keep his hands on you.

 You leaned closer to him. "Chan...he was alright," you decided.

 "I like him. You don't come across humans as bright as he is very often," Minghao agreed, and if you weren't so taken with him in this moment, with his soft gaze and tentative touches, you would have found his choice of words somewhat strange.

 Minghao's hands, wide palms and long fingers, were wrapped around your waist now. The music that had been playing quietly from the stereo this whole time suddenly came to life through speakers littered all across the parking lot, some girl group song that you didn't recognize, and if you listened hard enough you could hear Momo screaming at everybody to start dancing.

 Orders from Momo were orders that could not be disobeyed. Much like the first night you'd met, Minghao guided you in some sort of simple ballroom dance, and just like before you were taken to another place. The party-goers around you faded away, there were no more flood lights blaring down upon you, the annoying song drifted into nothing. It was just you and Minghao and his hands on your hips and that earthy, burnt smell that was home to you now.

 "I'll talk you through the choreo," Minghao promised quietly, leading you to the side of the crowd, and you noticed everyone subtly getting into position. With the way Minghao was smiling at you, you didn't even have the chance to be scared of what was to come. As long as Minghao kept looking at that, you felt safe. Nothing could go wrong.

 Of course, he chose that exact moment to let you go and wander away. You grabbed after him, but the abrupt sound of a record scratch stopped you in your tracks, and then the opening synth chords of none other than "Thriller" again. Were there any other Halloween songs besides Thriller and The Monster Mash? You'd have to look into that when you had the chance.

 "Kneel down, love," and there in your head was Minghao's voice again. You really must have been going crazy, imagining him saying he'd talk you through the choreo and then hearing his voice telling you the moves instead of Momo's, the way you'd learned it. By some twist of fate, you managed through the Thriller section of the dance with simple cues from 'Minghao' to “zombie walk” or to do “the thriller claws, you know the ones.”

 When the song switched you ducked down to hide behind the nearest person and started crawling out of the camera's frame. There were lines of duct tape to indicate where the edge of said frame was, and you could only breathe again once you were safely past. You prayed that you'd managed to stay out of view on the journey over here—Momo would have no qualms about literally murdering you if you ruined she and Mina's video like that.

 They were at the front breaking and doing whatever sort of flips and spins they did—you had no idea, you knew absolutely nothing about dancing. The two of them were dance majors, met in the studio, fell in love with each other through the way they moved. To them, dancing was as second nature as walking. They just couldn't understand how it was so much harder for you.

 But your attention wasn't on them, no, your eyes were drawn only to Minghao. He hadn't even broken a sweat. At one point the music dropped out, and most of the dancers fell to the ground. A hollow, tinny beat kept on to which just a few of the dancers kept going—including Minghao. You could hear his voice in your head saying what each move was as he did them:

 "This is a kick step," "A side spin," "The windmill."

 There was absolutely no way you could have known what the names of those dance moves were, even if Momo had ever mentioned them. You never would have remembered or been able to connect the name to the move. A shiver trailed up your spine, goosebumps rising all over your arms. The clouds parted overhead. It was a full moon, and for the first time it occurred to you that there was something...off. About Minghao.

 The light of the moon reflected off of him so brightly and you used that as an excuse to look away from him, but only when the music was fading out and the official choreography had ended. The way he moved was hypnotizing and you couldn't bear to turn your back on him before he'd finished. A normal song came back on, some Top 40's hit, and everyone transitioned seamlessly back into their twerks and sways and grinds.

 You saw the red lights on all of the cameras go off, and finally felt free to move again. Minghao had spotted you on the sidelines and was practically floating across the ground with this wide, effortless smile—but you looked back at him with the most blank face you could manage, blocking out the warmth coming in at the edge of your subconscious, and he halted halfway to you. It felt like he was miles away.

 You wanted nothing more than to cross that distance and let him sweep you into another waltz and not care about any of the things he did, the things he said, that just seemed...out of place. Unfortunately, you couldn't un-realize what you had. You raised your hand in a weak wave to him, one that he didn't return, before rushing off into the maze of cars to get away. He didn't follow.

 Curled up in bed that night, there was a lot to think about. The only thing you knew for sure was that no matter what, you weren't scared of Minghao. Whatever he was, whatever he could do, you knew he'd never hurt you.

 But there had been light conversation while you'd danced with him, most of it forgettable as it were, and one thing was sticking out now that you were as far away from Minghao as you could be and clear of his influence: he'd given you a good once over, asked who exactly you were supposed to be. "Mary Poppins, duh," you told him, and watched his eyes alight with recognition.

 "Oh, I always liked that movie. Remember seeing it in theaters, it was really something." What did that mean? It hadn't seemed like anything important or strange to you in the moment. In the moment, it was just another statement that endeared him to you even more.

 But Xu Minghao was twenty, supposedly, and one Google search later, you knew that Mary Poppins had come out in 1964. It was playing in theaters thirty-four years before Minghao should have been born.

 There was no way Xu Minghao could have seen Mary Poppins in theaters if he was born in 1997. There was no way you should have known the names of those breakdance moves. There was no way your phone could have ended up in your room after your trip into the woods the other night, and there was no way you should have been able to find your way out of them. There was no way a virtual stranger could simply talk you out of a panic attack. There was no way he could have gotten from that spot beside you on the porch swing at The Yard to the banister without you noticing him get up.

 There was no way Minghao was human.

[velmaemyers88]

The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team doesn’t just tolerate religion, it embraces it – ThinkProgress

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team has been getting a lot of attention and well-deserved adulation over the past 10 days, ever since they won their second consecutive Women’s World Cup in dominant fashion over the Netherlands in Lyon, France. But as night must follow day, any praise for loud, outspoken women must be counterbalanced with bad-faith, ill-informed criticism.

You’ve probably heard the complaints by now: They’ve partied too hard; they sign autographs dismissively; they say the word “fuck” an awful lot. But this week, another narrative emerged: they’re anti-Christian.

This latest attack surfaced when a conservative activist on Twitter, Ekeocha Obianuju, shared the story of Jaelene Hinkle, a defender in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) who refused to play with the U.S. national team in 2017 when she found out she would have to wear a jersey honoring LGBTQ Pride month.

“Apparently, the US women’s Football team is not a very welcoming place for Christians,” Ekeocha wrote in a tweet that went viral.

This quickly led to conservative outlets publishing articles like this one in the Washington Examiner with the headline “While Megan Rapinoe is celebrated, a Christian player got pushed off the USWNT for not being woke enough.” But it didn’t take long for one prominent member of the team, backup goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris, to speak out against this notion.

“Hinkle, our team is about inclusion. Your religion was never the problem. The problem is your intolerance and you are homophobic. You don’t belong in a sport that aims to unite and bring people together,” Harris wrote on Twitter. “You would never fit into our pack or what this team stands for.”

Later, Harris added, “This is actually an insult to the Christians on our team.”

Don’t you dare say our team is ‘not a welcoming place for Christians’. You weren’t around long enough to know what this team stood for. This is actually an insult to the Christians on our team. Same on you.

— Ashlyn Harris (@Ashlyn_Harris) July 15, 2019

Harris’s tweets followed those of Kyle Krieger, the brother of Harris’s fiancée and USWNT teammate, Ali Krieger.

“As someone close to the team, I know this is false. The players have an inclusive bible study, they pray before and after the WC games, and they are open to whatever faith you follow. Not all Christians are bigots. Hinkle, on the other hand, hides her bigotry behind her faith,” Krieger tweeted.

Now, it is worth noting that it was Ekeocha, not Hinkle, who explicitly stated the USWNT was not a welcoming place for Christians. However, Hinkle has openly portrayed herself as a martyr for stepping away from the team in 2017 because apparently God spoke to her and told her that she would be defying her religion if she wore a jersey that supported the LGBTQ community.

“I just felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear this jersey,” Hinkle told CBN at the time. “And so I gave myself three days to just seek and pray and determine what He was asking me to do in this position.”

As both Harris and Krieger noted in their tweets, it is false bordering on comical to paint the USWNT as being anti-Christian. Many players on the USWNT are extremely vocal about their Christian faith. There is a group — including Moe Brian, Crystal Dunn, Allie Long, Mallory Pugh, Jessica McDonald, Emily Sonnet, Tobin Heath, Julie Ertz, Alyssa Naeher, Alex Morgan, and Kelley O’Hara — who kneel in a prayer circle in the middle of the field after every game. After they won the World Cup, Brian posted a long note on Instagram that began by thanking God, and Heath and Ertz both shared messages that said, “glory to God.”

Christianity is a very visible part of the USWNT. So too, however, is support of the LGBTQ community. Multiple members of the team are open about being in same-sex relationships — including head coach Jill Ellis, co-captain Megan Rapinoe, Harris, Krieger, Tierna Davidson, Adriana Franch, and Kelley O’Hara. And a large portion of the fan base in women’s soccer is LGBTQ as well. When Hinkle refused to even put on a jersey with rainbow-colored numbers on it, it was a clear rejection of the very humanity of the queer community. That isn’t faith. That’s hate.

Hinkle has long been open on social media about her homophobia — she was against the legalization of same-sex marriage — and ever since she refused to play for the national team in her first call-up in 2017, there has been speculation by many in the conservative community that the only reason she isn’t on the team is because of her anti-LGBTQ views.

There’s no real way to know if that’s the case, though. Even Harris would not be privy to the full extent of that decision-making process.

Hinkle has only been called up to a national team camp once since 2017, and she was only there for a few days before being cut. Ellis has repeatedly said the decision to exclude Hinkle was based on her lack of versatility — she only plays left back — and experience level. It’s about soccer, she says, not beliefs.

“If you look across the back line, all of those players can play at least two positions,” Ellis said, as reported by Yahoo Sports.

“One of the things our staff and I do is, we go through worst-case scenarios over and over and over again,” Ellis continued. “So looking at depth and versatility is a big part. And it becomes harder, I think, for a player that plays one position … a player that’s locked to one position — I do think that’s part of the decision-making.”

But team chemistry plays a part in these selections, too. As it should. The World Cup is a grueling affair. Relationships are tested. The media scrutiny is at all-time high. Trust is paramount. Hinkle was a bubble player already, meaning her inclusion on the roster was far from a sure thing. Harris’s tweets this week made it clear that there is tension between Hinkle and some members of the team, which is understandable given that she openly wants to deny the right for her teammates and coach to marry the person that they love.

This doesn’t mean that everyone on the team feels animosity towards Hinkle. Hinkle plays with a few members of the USWNT on the North Carolina Courage, the team that won the NWSL championship last season. Clearly she can co-exist, and even thrive, as a part of a diverse locker room.

McDonald, a teammate of Hinkle’s on the Courage and a member of the USWNT, came to Hinkle’s defense last year after the CBN interview was released. In a recent social media post, McDonald referred to Hinkle as her “best friend.” But while McDonald is also very open about her Christianity, she is supportive of LGBTQ equality and seems to be close with all of her teammates. This week, as the controversy around Hinkle was erupting, McDonald posted a photo on Instagram of her son holding the World Cup trophy and getting kissed by Rapinoe.

That, more than anything, proves what Harris and Krieger were saying this week: The USWNT is a welcoming group. The only caveat is, the love and respect has to be mutual.

Credit: Source link

The post The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team doesn’t just tolerate religion, it embraces it – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-u-s-womens-soccer-team-doesnt-just-tolerate-religion-it-embraces-it-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-u-s-womens-soccer-team-doesnt-just-tolerate-religion-it-embraces-it-thinkprogress from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186365986602

[reneeacaseyfl]

The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team doesn’t just tolerate religion, it embraces it – ThinkProgress

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team has been getting a lot of attention and well-deserved adulation over the past 10 days, ever since they won their second consecutive Women’s World Cup in dominant fashion over the Netherlands in Lyon, France. But as night must follow day, any praise for loud, outspoken women must be counterbalanced with bad-faith, ill-informed criticism.

You’ve probably heard the complaints by now: They’ve partied too hard; they sign autographs dismissively; they say the word “fuck” an awful lot. But this week, another narrative emerged: they’re anti-Christian.

This latest attack surfaced when a conservative activist on Twitter, Ekeocha Obianuju, shared the story of Jaelene Hinkle, a defender in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) who refused to play with the U.S. national team in 2017 when she found out she would have to wear a jersey honoring LGBTQ Pride month.

“Apparently, the US women’s Football team is not a very welcoming place for Christians,” Ekeocha wrote in a tweet that went viral.

This quickly led to conservative outlets publishing articles like this one in the Washington Examiner with the headline “While Megan Rapinoe is celebrated, a Christian player got pushed off the USWNT for not being woke enough.” But it didn’t take long for one prominent member of the team, backup goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris, to speak out against this notion.

“Hinkle, our team is about inclusion. Your religion was never the problem. The problem is your intolerance and you are homophobic. You don’t belong in a sport that aims to unite and bring people together,” Harris wrote on Twitter. “You would never fit into our pack or what this team stands for.”

Later, Harris added, “This is actually an insult to the Christians on our team.”

Don’t you dare say our team is ‘not a welcoming place for Christians’. You weren’t around long enough to know what this team stood for. This is actually an insult to the Christians on our team. Same on you.

— Ashlyn Harris (@Ashlyn_Harris) July 15, 2019

Harris’s tweets followed those of Kyle Krieger, the brother of Harris’s fiancée and USWNT teammate, Ali Krieger.

“As someone close to the team, I know this is false. The players have an inclusive bible study, they pray before and after the WC games, and they are open to whatever faith you follow. Not all Christians are bigots. Hinkle, on the other hand, hides her bigotry behind her faith,” Krieger tweeted.

Now, it is worth noting that it was Ekeocha, not Hinkle, who explicitly stated the USWNT was not a welcoming place for Christians. However, Hinkle has openly portrayed herself as a martyr for stepping away from the team in 2017 because apparently God spoke to her and told her that she would be defying her religion if she wore a jersey that supported the LGBTQ community.

“I just felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear this jersey,” Hinkle told CBN at the time. “And so I gave myself three days to just seek and pray and determine what He was asking me to do in this position.”

As both Harris and Krieger noted in their tweets, it is false bordering on comical to paint the USWNT as being anti-Christian. Many players on the USWNT are extremely vocal about their Christian faith. There is a group — including Moe Brian, Crystal Dunn, Allie Long, Mallory Pugh, Jessica McDonald, Emily Sonnet, Tobin Heath, Julie Ertz, Alyssa Naeher, Alex Morgan, and Kelley O’Hara — who kneel in a prayer circle in the middle of the field after every game. After they won the World Cup, Brian posted a long note on Instagram that began by thanking God, and Heath and Ertz both shared messages that said, “glory to God.”

Christianity is a very visible part of the USWNT. So too, however, is support of the LGBTQ community. Multiple members of the team are open about being in same-sex relationships — including head coach Jill Ellis, co-captain Megan Rapinoe, Harris, Krieger, Tierna Davidson, Adriana Franch, and Kelley O’Hara. And a large portion of the fan base in women’s soccer is LGBTQ as well. When Hinkle refused to even put on a jersey with rainbow-colored numbers on it, it was a clear rejection of the very humanity of the queer community. That isn’t faith. That’s hate.

Hinkle has long been open on social media about her homophobia — she was against the legalization of same-sex marriage — and ever since she refused to play for the national team in her first call-up in 2017, there has been speculation by many in the conservative community that the only reason she isn’t on the team is because of her anti-LGBTQ views.

There’s no real way to know if that’s the case, though. Even Harris would not be privy to the full extent of that decision-making process.

Hinkle has only been called up to a national team camp once since 2017, and she was only there for a few days before being cut. Ellis has repeatedly said the decision to exclude Hinkle was based on her lack of versatility — she only plays left back — and experience level. It’s about soccer, she says, not beliefs.

“If you look across the back line, all of those players can play at least two positions,” Ellis said, as reported by Yahoo Sports.

“One of the things our staff and I do is, we go through worst-case scenarios over and over and over again,” Ellis continued. “So looking at depth and versatility is a big part. And it becomes harder, I think, for a player that plays one position … a player that’s locked to one position — I do think that’s part of the decision-making.”

But team chemistry plays a part in these selections, too. As it should. The World Cup is a grueling affair. Relationships are tested. The media scrutiny is at all-time high. Trust is paramount. Hinkle was a bubble player already, meaning her inclusion on the roster was far from a sure thing. Harris’s tweets this week made it clear that there is tension between Hinkle and some members of the team, which is understandable given that she openly wants to deny the right for her teammates and coach to marry the person that they love.

This doesn’t mean that everyone on the team feels animosity towards Hinkle. Hinkle plays with a few members of the USWNT on the North Carolina Courage, the team that won the NWSL championship last season. Clearly she can co-exist, and even thrive, as a part of a diverse locker room.

McDonald, a teammate of Hinkle’s on the Courage and a member of the USWNT, came to Hinkle’s defense last year after the CBN interview was released. In a recent social media post, McDonald referred to Hinkle as her “best friend.” But while McDonald is also very open about her Christianity, she is supportive of LGBTQ equality and seems to be close with all of her teammates. This week, as the controversy around Hinkle was erupting, McDonald posted a photo on Instagram of her son holding the World Cup trophy and getting kissed by Rapinoe.

That, more than anything, proves what Harris and Krieger were saying this week: The USWNT is a welcoming group. The only caveat is, the love and respect has to be mutual.

Credit: Source link

The post The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team doesn’t just tolerate religion, it embraces it – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-u-s-womens-soccer-team-doesnt-just-tolerate-religion-it-embraces-it-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-u-s-womens-soccer-team-doesnt-just-tolerate-religion-it-embraces-it-thinkprogress from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186365986602

[weeklyreviewer]

The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team doesn’t just tolerate religion, it embraces it – ThinkProgress

The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team has been getting a lot of attention and well-deserved adulation over the past 10 days, ever since they won their second consecutive Women’s World Cup in dominant fashion over the Netherlands in Lyon, France. But as night must follow day, any praise for loud, outspoken women must be counterbalanced with bad-faith, ill-informed criticism.

You’ve probably heard the complaints by now: They’ve partied too hard; they sign autographs dismissively; they say the word “fuck” an awful lot. But this week, another narrative emerged: they’re anti-Christian.

This latest attack surfaced when a conservative activist on Twitter, Ekeocha Obianuju, shared the story of Jaelene Hinkle, a defender in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) who refused to play with the U.S. national team in 2017 when she found out she would have to wear a jersey honoring LGBTQ Pride month.

“Apparently, the US women’s Football team is not a very welcoming place for Christians,” Ekeocha wrote in a tweet that went viral.

This quickly led to conservative outlets publishing articles like this one in the Washington Examiner with the headline “While Megan Rapinoe is celebrated, a Christian player got pushed off the USWNT for not being woke enough.” But it didn’t take long for one prominent member of the team, backup goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris, to speak out against this notion.

“Hinkle, our team is about inclusion. Your religion was never the problem. The problem is your intolerance and you are homophobic. You don’t belong in a sport that aims to unite and bring people together,” Harris wrote on Twitter. “You would never fit into our pack or what this team stands for.”

Later, Harris added, “This is actually an insult to the Christians on our team.”

Don’t you dare say our team is ‘not a welcoming place for Christians’. You weren’t around long enough to know what this team stood for. This is actually an insult to the Christians on our team. Same on you.

— Ashlyn Harris (@Ashlyn_Harris) July 15, 2019

Harris’s tweets followed those of Kyle Krieger, the brother of Harris’s fiancée and USWNT teammate, Ali Krieger.

“As someone close to the team, I know this is false. The players have an inclusive bible study, they pray before and after the WC games, and they are open to whatever faith you follow. Not all Christians are bigots. Hinkle, on the other hand, hides her bigotry behind her faith,” Krieger tweeted.

Now, it is worth noting that it was Ekeocha, not Hinkle, who explicitly stated the USWNT was not a welcoming place for Christians. However, Hinkle has openly portrayed herself as a martyr for stepping away from the team in 2017 because apparently God spoke to her and told her that she would be defying her religion if she wore a jersey that supported the LGBTQ community.

“I just felt so convicted in my spirit that it wasn’t my job to wear this jersey,” Hinkle told CBN at the time. “And so I gave myself three days to just seek and pray and determine what He was asking me to do in this position.”

As both Harris and Krieger noted in their tweets, it is false bordering on comical to paint the USWNT as being anti-Christian. Many players on the USWNT are extremely vocal about their Christian faith. There is a group — including Moe Brian, Crystal Dunn, Allie Long, Mallory Pugh, Jessica McDonald, Emily Sonnet, Tobin Heath, Julie Ertz, Alyssa Naeher, Alex Morgan, and Kelley O’Hara — who kneel in a prayer circle in the middle of the field after every game. After they won the World Cup, Brian posted a long note on Instagram that began by thanking God, and Heath and Ertz both shared messages that said, “glory to God.”

Christianity is a very visible part of the USWNT. So too, however, is support of the LGBTQ community. Multiple members of the team are open about being in same-sex relationships — including head coach Jill Ellis, co-captain Megan Rapinoe, Harris, Krieger, Tierna Davidson, Adriana Franch, and Kelley O’Hara. And a large portion of the fan base in women’s soccer is LGBTQ as well. When Hinkle refused to even put on a jersey with rainbow-colored numbers on it, it was a clear rejection of the very humanity of the queer community. That isn’t faith. That’s hate.

Hinkle has long been open on social media about her homophobia — she was against the legalization of same-sex marriage — and ever since she refused to play for the national team in her first call-up in 2017, there has been speculation by many in the conservative community that the only reason she isn’t on the team is because of her anti-LGBTQ views.

There’s no real way to know if that’s the case, though. Even Harris would not be privy to the full extent of that decision-making process.

Hinkle has only been called up to a national team camp once since 2017, and she was only there for a few days before being cut. Ellis has repeatedly said the decision to exclude Hinkle was based on her lack of versatility — she only plays left back — and experience level. It’s about soccer, she says, not beliefs.

“If you look across the back line, all of those players can play at least two positions,” Ellis said, as reported by Yahoo Sports.

“One of the things our staff and I do is, we go through worst-case scenarios over and over and over again,” Ellis continued. “So looking at depth and versatility is a big part. And it becomes harder, I think, for a player that plays one position … a player that’s locked to one position — I do think that’s part of the decision-making.”

But team chemistry plays a part in these selections, too. As it should. The World Cup is a grueling affair. Relationships are tested. The media scrutiny is at all-time high. Trust is paramount. Hinkle was a bubble player already, meaning her inclusion on the roster was far from a sure thing. Harris’s tweets this week made it clear that there is tension between Hinkle and some members of the team, which is understandable given that she openly wants to deny the right for her teammates and coach to marry the person that they love.

This doesn’t mean that everyone on the team feels animosity towards Hinkle. Hinkle plays with a few members of the USWNT on the North Carolina Courage, the team that won the NWSL championship last season. Clearly she can co-exist, and even thrive, as a part of a diverse locker room.

McDonald, a teammate of Hinkle’s on the Courage and a member of the USWNT, came to Hinkle’s defense last year after the CBN interview was released. In a recent social media post, McDonald referred to Hinkle as her “best friend.” But while McDonald is also very open about her Christianity, she is supportive of LGBTQ equality and seems to be close with all of her teammates. This week, as the controversy around Hinkle was erupting, McDonald posted a photo on Instagram of her son holding the World Cup trophy and getting kissed by Rapinoe.

That, more than anything, proves what Harris and Krieger were saying this week: The USWNT is a welcoming group. The only caveat is, the love and respect has to be mutual.

Credit: Source link

The post The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team doesn’t just tolerate religion, it embraces it – ThinkProgress appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-u-s-womens-soccer-team-doesnt-just-tolerate-religion-it-embraces-it-thinkprogress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-u-s-womens-soccer-team-doesnt-just-tolerate-religion-it-embraces-it-thinkprogress

[survivorjordanpines]

Episode 2: It's All a Learning Experience Folks. - Andreas

[2017-11-17, 11:17:07 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): oh god puzzles [2017-11-17, 11:17:09 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): im triggered [2017-11-17, 11:19:11 PM] Rafael Hernandez: I'm going to Kermit [2017-11-17, 11:19:19 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): i am honestly awful at puzzles so if everyone else is around and can do them, i don’t mind sitting out Jaiden volunteers to sit out. Me, an intellectual, knows what I need to do now. [2017-11-17, 11:34:11 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): if someone on the tribe doesn’t submit [2017-11-17, 11:34:18 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): they don’t qualify for the worst time gets immunity if we lose [2017-11-17, 11:34:19 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): yes? [2017-11-17, 11:34:23 PM] Jordan Pines: correct [2017-11-17, 11:34:26 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): k cool [2017-11-17, 11:34:29 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): that immunity is mine [2017-11-17, 11:34:32 PM] Jordan Pines: you need to submit a completed puzzle to be eligible [2017-11-17, 11:34:35 PM] Jordan Pines: so you throwing the challenge? [2017-11-17, 11:34:42 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): i don’t know, am i? [2017-11-17, 11:34:45 PM] Jordan Pines: hahaha [2017-11-17, 11:34:47 PM] Jordan Pines: classic charlotte [2017-11-17, 11:34:51 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): ;) [2017-11-17, 11:35:04 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): i didn’t make sure my entire tribe knew i was bad at puzzles [2017-11-17, 11:35:05 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): on purpose [2017-11-17, 11:35:08 PM] charlotte (themyscira host): that wasn’t me I mean, I AM bad at puzzles, this is true, but am I going to be a little extra bad just in case we lose? Absolutely. I would love to be safe going into the next round.. I don't care about going to the Jordan Pond. Let's be honest, I wasn't going to have the best puzzle time anyway lmao HOW CUTE.  

I wonder if nick convinced maybe Allison to flip but not Amanda as he claimed they both would flip one lied one thought he had the votes. Plus drew's voting confession i think the last one was, was on point why i never took him up on that offer. It's week 1 i can't risk my spot for you this time sorry every game is different but my alliance is Madison.

alright alright alright hot damn this game is fifty times better than i expected! soooooo, it's time for a quick rundown: https://image.prntscr.com/image/fkjkBD9RQJikMqASaB5frw.png a 30 person season? not loving that concept. redemption island? not loving that one either. my tribe? i can get down with that for now. i'm feeling very blessed to be on a tribe with icons such as ryan, jessica, and matt summers - well, not anymore, but still. he will always be in our hearts. i've also had some real cute chats with ruthie, andreas, and cole, so i'm love them so far. and that's like 2/3 of the tribe, huh? the other ones - pippa, emma, casey - are all lovely and nice but we haven't really had much to say to one another so far. okay, actually i take that back for casey; we had a good talk the other day about jobs and stuff. only for 30 minutes, but still. i'm a fan of her. so things are lookin pretty good in that regard. my strategy so far? honestly, just sitting back and seeing where this game takes me. it's a foreign concept to me for sure - in all my other games, i always thought of the beginning few days as the most important part, and i'd probably be checking in with everyone every five hours and trying to make 7 core alliances right now. but frankly i just do not have the time or energy for that shit right now. i'm not young anymore. and i gotta say i don't hate it. especially because it seems like that's sort of the case for all of us here; we old-timers have real jobs and real responsibilities and we can't be bothered to be online 25/7, and that's OKAY! promote positive media relationships tm! anyways i have zero alliances right now and that's just fine with me, i'm sure this isn't the case for everyone and there could even be a massive conspiracy going on in this tribe that i have no awareness of but y'know what, nobody is perfect and this is just gonna be how it is for me right now. alright enough of me talking about how ancient i am. who's ready for a TWISTOS TWIST? i sure am cos apparently (through some randomized magic that i still do not completely comprehend) ya boi has a RUBY IDOL! damn!! now i will say that i definitely had not even heard of this thing before now and i don't know exactly how one is supposed to use it but an idol is an idol and this one looks sneaky sneaky so i'm into it! i am certainly not telling anyone about this no ma'am because what's the fun in that? :~~())) and that's really all i've got for you today folks, i ate five pounds of potatoes today and i need a nap so stay tuned for whatever adventures fall upon my head next episode! xoxo stay gold ponyboys

I actually despise this puzzle. However, I feel like I will be safeguarded if we do go to tribal by my alliance. Hopefully, however, we do not have to and continue dominating the game.

Nick was voted out and Idk who that was. Its very clear the icons are vote out matt summers just so he can kill everyone in redemption but like it was so obvious. The twist is interesting bc I could just throw this damn puzzle challenge and be safe for a round but at the same time I love this tribe and I dont want us to lose

Oop, got some new information Apparently, L.A. And Charlotte are friends in real life. I don’t plan on using this yet, but if I’m ever in trouble, I can use it throw them under the bus. Let’s look at the evidence .... -both from New Brunswick -Hosting a season together -LA knew the name of Charlotte’s moms cat

I've decided I want to throw immunity tonight. To put it this way, I want to give myself the opportunity to go to this mythical isle of Pines in order to potentially find an idol. Although Redemption Island is here and there's really no point in idoling someone out to send them to Redemption Island, I want to do something crazy and messy at least once this season so ya. I've been letting the puzzle time go on by as I sit here and wait for the challenge to be *just* about due, and then I'll submit something really terrible. Hopefully we lose and hopefully I'm the worst out of my tribe, then I can go searching and have myself a grand ol' time! I don't know when I'll get this opportunity later so may as well take the chance while I have it. As far as gameplay goes so far, I've tried to be as under the radar as possible. I didn't say much during the first couple challenges because I want people to just forget that I'm even here. I got into an alliance put together by Kage and I'm going to just continue to skim their messages and wait for someone to approach me. I don't normally play super passively like this, but I just need to remain in a good spot with that alliance so I can get through the premerge (for once). 

Jaiden honestly we get it like you dont feel safe but chill a bit you couldve thrown it less obviously. BUT WE STILL WON HAHAHAHAHA I think its interesting that Nick won Redemption and I cant wait to see who the fuck goes next

Ok so I think I forgot to do this last episode oops. I think I am in a good position on my tribe. Right now I have an "Old School" alliance of me Jess Casey and Cole. I do like this group a lot but I know Casey does not care about real life friendships in games, which is fine I would not be upset if she turned on me, it just means in the game I am not going to trust her that much. But I also have Emma and Ari who I trust and like a lot. Then there is Andreas, the last game we played together was a disaster since we were so actively against each other. Ruthie is a cutie but I don't really know her all that well. And Pippa is just..well my daughter who I apparently don't work with ever. Right now my goal is to get Pippa out. It seems like the easier vote, but I would like Andreas/Ruthie out earlier than later in this game. I know they both have lots of friends that are not me or my friends which makes them threats in my opinion. Cole is great by the way and I love him.

I'm really glad it seems like we already have a name of someone to vote out. I'm going out tonight and I'm just semi stressed that things are going to change and it'll be me though, AHH. 

I don't know if I confessed about this so fuck it. I am glad that Kage is going to the isle of pines. I would like to consider him my number 1 ally in this game so far. The "Icons Only" alliance seems to be strong enough to survive one or two votes, but it will definitely get messy as our numbers dwindle. Thankfully, that has not happened yet since we won immunity. I know Jaiden got the worst score to go to the isle of pines but like he didn't need to lose that hard. We won but if we lost because of Jaiden's antics I would have been pissed. I am keeping an eye on him just in case things go awry. In my eyes, he is at the bottom of the totem pole including Gage. However, I like Gage more and I want to keep him close so that we can go against Charlotte and LA if the time comes.

At tribal council last round, Matt went 10-0, which was expected. He hadn't been online, and no one wanted an inactive. Then he also didn't submit for Redemption Island, so he became the first boot of our season. I think Matt going was an easy vote and allowed those of us on our tribe an opportunity to mingle and socialize more. Meanwhile, during the past tribal, Pippa's name was also thrown out because she hasn't really been online at all, and was barely active. I hoped that with the second chance she was given that she would socialize more as she is someone I would like to see deep in this game - but it looks like might not happen. For the immunity challenge, we had to do a god AWFUL puzzle which made me not like looking at Jordan Pines' face. I know - terrible!!!! So, I got the second best time on my tribe, and 4th(?) best overall which I was kind of surprised about. I expected some really good times and tried to have a mediocre time but I came out on top. So, despite Ryan and I being 2 of the best times, we still lost. Then Pines introduced the Isles of Pines, and Cole, who had the worst time, got sent there and was immune from the vote. I think had he not been safe his name may have been suggested. Thinking back, aligning with him might not have been my best bet as I don't see him as someone people want to take further. Especially if he's shit at challenges . But he shall tell me what was there, which is good. So following this, Emma messaged me stating she is worried, as she did not do the challenge that she may be in danger. I assured her she would be fine, and went talking to Ryan and Jessica trying to get Pippa's name back on the chopping block. They both seemed to agree that it made the most sense, and now, with 7 hours left until votes are due Pippa has yet to make an appearance. Unless something sketchy happens, she should be on redemption soon. Emma and I were celebrating that we are probably safe again and then she suggested we make a Her/Me/Ryan/Aru/Jessica/Ruthie alliance which I think would be good. We're the stongest 6 on our tribe if we wanna move forward and I haven't had a solid alliance in recent seasons which I think fucked me over. So we each took 2 names and decided to chat with them. I had Ari and Jess. Ari agreed right away that we should do that alliance and Jess hasn't been online to chat with about it. The tribe is very quiet and I think it's because we all have lives to lead. Plus we just went to tribal with 10 and now there's gonna be 8 of us and it's a huge jump. One last thing, the puzzle thing showed who's better then puzzles at me. And while I did get a time of 18 mins my first time, that was still better then a majority of people. You know when else there was a challenge ? The secret power thing. And if Kage and Drew and Ryan were faster then me, then its safe to assume one of them has it. BUT, Ryan was talking during the time that post went up the first night so he doesn't have it. It's either Kage or Drew then. We shall see what it is. But I know that i'm not gonna go around advertising theirs a hidden power. Did that in Great Lakes and it caused a lot more trouble then it should have. It's all a learning experience folks.

Yay! We won immunity again! Even better I won reward! At camp, I’m working on my personal relationships, specifically with Regan, David, Gage, and Rafael. I hope that by befriending them that they will be more sympathetic in my time of need. Tisk tisk tisk Jaiden, he tried put his own personal desires ahead of the tribe. He tried to get the worst time so if we lost, he’d go the Isles Of The Pines. Jokes on him, I got it. Oh well, at least this just builds my case for whenever I want to get out Jaiden. At Isles Of The Pines I got stuck with Chrissa and Cole. Gross. The only dirt I got from them was from Chrissa saying Liam is probably going home tonight. So not much. I searched and to my luck, found a clue to the idol.... “Along the Southern Path you be, You find a nice and climbable tree. It holds 4 holes for which you see, in one of them is where powers be.“ The clue is still there so someone else could find it. I’m going to go back to my tribe and tell my alliance (Me, Rafael, Jaiden, LA, Charlotte, Gage) that I searched there and found nothing. Let’s just hope they don’t double check that. I’m feeling really good right now as we’re on winning streak, and I’ll hopefully get the idol soon. I have cases on why we should get rid of Regan, Jaiden, and Karen if I ever need them. So right now I’m pretty much the King of the game, to that I say, Long Live The King

Whew I'm really nervous about tonight! Not because I think I'm up for the chopping block, but because I have No Fucking Clue if I'll be there for tribal. Thanks a lot for cooking my pressure, CHARLOTTE (jk love ya) The vote, afaik, is for Allison, and tbh I'm kinda fine with that? Like, I've never personally been a huge fan of her, and she does start to get annoying to be around after a lil while. So if she goes, I'm cool with it tbh.

So we lost again. Sucks. Did the puzzle once and did better then half my tribe. Fucking Cole got 100 mins. Probs in putpose can’t work with that long term we could have fucking won. Anyway pippa is quiet and needs to go

My names Pippa and i hate playing games with RTP bc he sucks butt Jess: Ryan said he’d never vote out Emma Ryan: it’s because you came in late that no one wants to vote with you Me: die Ryan, you little turd

Pippa came to me about an hour before tribal and wanted to vote Emma out. She said to me that she had the number in a ari, Jessica and ryan however none of them really want to send Emma home - including myself. It sucks we're lying to her, but she should've started playing more earlier. Tribal is in literally 3 minutes and she's probably still scheming 

Tag yourself im emma and her crew 

[chmcdo]

The 15 Best Horror Movies of 2017

The best horror movies of 2017 writhe in grief and mourning: Evil is mundane, they say—sure—but what does that actually mean about moving on with one’s life? In two of these films, the grief-stricken struggle to communicate with those they’ve lost, realizing the process of doing so is difficult, an incredibly tedious series of motions (much like one’s everyday life) in which we’re never really sure they’re succeeding, or just feeding their own serious neuroses, plunging them deeper into depression. One film is a musical reveling in the harshness of young love, in the terrifying lengths to which someone, women especially, are expected to go to be loved. One is the highest grossing horror film of all time, and another is a genre-transcending treatise on America’s treacherous post-Obama racial landscape, both changing the industry for low-budget genre films immeasurably. Even M. Night Shyamalan’s pulpy thriller ends on a surprisingly bleak note. In 2017, we’re just trying to find some way out of all of our most pessimistic impulses. We’re just trying to not wake up every day and assume the worst.

In other words, it was a fertile year for horror, America’s most vital form of filmmaking, especially for non-white, non-male voices laying waste to the genre’s most tired tropes. A number of titles almost made our list, worth mentioning: The Blackcoat’s Daughter, a film awe-struck with despair for humanity and a mind-bogglingly great performance from Kiernan Shipka; The Girl with All the Gifts; We Are the Flesh; Alien: Covenant, proving that the older Ridley Scott gets the grosser he’s willing to be; Happy Death Day; one of many good Stephen King adaptations this year (see below), Gerald’s Game; and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which isn’t a horror movie but kind of works like one, and anyway it’s fine because you’ll see it on other lists elsewhere.

Here are the 15 best horror movies of 2017:

15. A Cure for Wellness Director: Gore Verbinski It’s a bit of a tragedy that Gore Verbinski’s delightfully bizarre, absurdly violent and grotesque A Cure For Wellness went largely unnoticed. Hollywood’s versatile trickster, Verbinski and screenwriter Justin Haythe go for broke cramming various sub-genres and mood-drenched tropes into an overstuffed, batshit-crazy horror epic, a loving nod to old Universal monster movies, among many, with the mad scientist conducting experiments that “defy god and nature” in a picturesque old castle perched atop a village that somehow skipped the 20th Century, Bojan Bazelli’s gorgeous cinematography taking full advantage of the Euro-gothic aesthetic. It’s a no-fucks-given gonzo experiment, laced with the riskiness of Giallo and the surrealist imagery of a Lynchian nightmare, disparate tones wrapped dreamily around an angry, blunt satire about the self-destructive, soul-sucking nature of greed and ambition. —Oktay Ege Kozak

14. XX Directors: Roxanne Benjamin, Annie Clark, Karyn Kusama, Jovanka Vuckovic, Sofia Carrillo It’s important that the scariest segment in XX, Magnet Releasing’s women-helmed horror anthology film, is also its most elementary: Young people trek out into the wilderness for fun and recreation, young people incur the wrath of hostile forces, young people get dead, easy as you please. You’ve seen this movie before, whether in the form of a slasher, a creature feature, or an animal attack flick. You’re seeing it again in XX in part because the formula works, and in part because the segment in question, titled “Don’t Fall,” must be elementary to facilitate its sibling chapters, which tend to be anything but. XX stands apart from other horror films because it invites its audience to feel a range of emotions aside from just fright. You might, for example, feel heartache during Jovanka Vuckovic’s “The Box,” or the uncertainty of dread in Karyn Kusama’s “Her Only Living Son,” or nauseous puzzlement with Sofia Carrillo’s macabre, stop-motion wraparound piece, meant to function as a palate cleanser between courses (an effectively unnerving work, thanks to its impressive technical achievements). Most of all, you might have to bite your tongue to keep from laughing uncontrollably during the film’s best short, “The Birthday Party,” written and directed by Annie Clark, better known by some as St. Vincent, in her filmmaking debut. XX is a horror movie spoken with the voices of women, a necessary notice that women are revolutionizing the genre as much as men. —Andy Crump

13. Split Director: M. Night Shyamalan Split is the film adaptation of M. Night Shyamalan’s misunderstanding of 30-year-old, since-discredited psychology textbooks on Dissociative Identity Disorder, but if we deign to treat it with scientific scrutiny, we’ll be here all night. Suffice it to say, don’t go looking at anything in this film as psychologically valid in any way. But do go see Split, because it’s probably M. Night Shyamalan’s best film since Signs. Or maybe since Unbreakable, for that matter. And if there’s one way that Splitreinvigorates Shyamalan’s stock most, it’s as a visual artist and writer-director of tension and thrilling action. The film looks spectacular, full of Hitchcockian homages that remind one of Vertigo and Psycho, to name only a few. It’s a far scarier, more suspenseful film in its high moments than Shyamalan’s last film, The Visit, ever attempted to be, and it may even be funnier as well, although these moments of levity are sown sparingly for maximum impact. Mike Gioulakis deserves major props for cinematography, but the other thing that will stick in my mind is the unexpectedly great sound design, full of rumbling, groaning metallic tones. After so many films that relied on the kind of overwrought twist ending that made The Sixth Sense so buzzy in 1999, it seems like Shyamalan has finally gotten over the hump to make the kinds of stories he makes best: atmospheric, suspenseful potboilers. Here’s hoping that this newfound streak of humility is here to stay. —Jim Vorel

12. Thelma Director: Joachim Trier Thelma (Eili Harboe) is a meek and quiet young woman moving away from her strict Christian parents (Henrik Rafaelsen, Ellen Dorit Petersen) for the first time in her life. To study Biology at a Norwegian university. She’s devoted to her faith and doesn’t indulge in alcohol, drugs or other earthly desires. But all of that changes when she sits next to Anja (Kaya Wilkins), a warm-hearted and empathetic schoolmate, during a study session. The two don’t even know each other yet, but Thelma’s close proximity to a girl she feels an intense attraction toward is enough to trigger a violent seizure, which may or may not be the result of her intense rejection of her feelings, spurned by her religious upbringing. With subtle yet passionate performances by its two leads, the film would have worked fine as a straight drama about Thelma’s journey towards (hopefully) acknowledging her nature. What makes Thelma so special is in the way Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt wrap this already palpable drama around a fairly downplayed supernatural horror premise with surgical precision. —Oktay Ege Kozak

11. It Director: Andy Muschietti 2017 was the year of blockbuster horror, if ever such a thing has been quantifiable before. Get Out, Annabelle: Creation and even would-be direct-to-video gems such as 47 Meters Down turned sizable profits, but they were just priming the box office pump for It, which shattered nearly every horror movie record imaginable. Perhaps it was the uninspiring summer blockbuster season to thank for an audience starved for something, but just as much credit must go to director Andy Muschietti and, especially, to Pennywise star Bill Skarsgård for taking Stephen King’s famously cumbersome, overstuffed novel and transforming it into something stylish, scary and undeniably entertaining. The collection of perfectly cast kids in the Loser’s Club all have the look of young actors and actresses we’ll be seeing in film for decades to come, but it’s Skarsgård’s hypnotic face, lazy eyes and incessant drool that makes It so difficult to look away from (or forget, for that matter). The inevitable Part 2 will have its hands full in giving a similarly crackling translation to the less popular adult portion of King’s story, but the camaraderie Muschietti gets in his cast and the visual flair of this first It should give us ample reasons to be optimistic. Regardless, it’s impossible to dismiss the pop cultural impact that It will continue to have for a new generation discovering its well-loved characters. —Jim Vorel

10. The Lure Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska In Filmmaker Magazine, director Agnieszka Smoczynska called The Lure a “coming-of-age story” born of her past as the child of a nightclub owner: “I grew up breathing this atmosphere.” What she means to say, I’m guessing, is that The Lure is an even more restlessly plotted Boyhood if the Texan movie rebooted The Little Mermaid as a murderous synth-rock opera. (OK, maybe it’s nothing like Boyhood.) Smoczynska’s film resurrects prototypical fairy tale romance and fantasy without any of the false notes associated with Hollywood’s “gritty” reboot culture. Poland, the 1980s and the development of its leading young women provide a multi-genre milieu in which the film’s cannibalistic mermaids can sing their sultry, often violently funny siren songs to their dark hearts’re content. While Ariel the mermaid Disney princess finds empathy with young girls who watch her struggle with feelings of longing and entrapment, The Lure’s flesh-hungry, viscous, scaly fish-people are a gross, haptic and ultimately effective metaphor for the maturation of this same audience. In the water, the pair are innocent to the ways of humans (adults), but on land develop slimes and odors unfamiliar to themselves and odd (yet strangely attractive) to their new companions. Reckoning with bodily change, especially when shoved into the sex industry like many immigrants to Poland during the collapse of that country’s communist regime in the late ’80s, the film combines the politics of the time with the sexual politics of a girl becoming a woman (of having her body politicized). And though The Luremay bite off more human neck than it can chew, especially during its music-less plot wanderings, it’s just so wonderfully consistent in its oddball vision you won’t be able to help but be drawn in by its mesmerizing thrall. —Jacob Oller

9. The Transfiguration Director: Michael O’Shea Michael O’Shea’s The Transfiguration refreshingly refuses to disguise its influences and reference points, instead putting them all out there in the forefront for its audience’s edification, name-dropping a mouthful of noteworthy vampire films and sticking their very titles right smack dab in the midst of its mise en scène. They can’t be missed: Nosferatu is a big one, and so’s The Lost Boys, but none informs O’Shea’s film as much as Let the Right One In, the unique 2009 Swedish genre masterpiece. Like Tomas Alfredson’s bloodsucking coming-of-age tale, The Transfiguration casts a young’n, Milo (Eric Ruffin), as its protagonist, contrasting the horrible particulars of a vampire’s feeding habits against the surface innocence of his appearance. Unlike Let the Right One In, The Transfiguration may not be a vampire movie at all, but a movie about a lonesome kid with an unhealthy fixation on gothic legends. You may choose to view Milo as O’Shea’s modernized update of the iconic monster or a child brimming with inner evil; the film keeps its ends open, its truths veiled and only makes its sociopolitical allegories plain in its final, haunting images.

8. Creep 2 Director: Patrick Brice Creep was not a movie begging for a sequel. About one of cinema’s more unique serial killers—a man who seemingly needs to form close personal bonds with his quarry before dispatching them as testaments to his “art”—the 2014 original was self-sufficient enough. But Creep 2 is that rare follow-up wherein the goal seems to be not “let’s do it again,” but “let’s go deeper”—and by deeper, we mean much deeper, as this film plumbs the psyche of the central psychopath (who now goes by) Aaron (Mark Duplass) in ways both wholly unexpected and shockingly sincere, as we witness (and somehow sympathize with) a killer who has lost his passion for murder, and thus his zest for life. In truth, the film almost forgoes the idea of being a “horror movie,” remaining one only because we know of the atrocities Aaron has committed in the past, meanwhile becoming much more of an interpersonal drama about two people exploring the boundaries of trust and vulnerability. Desiree Akhavan is stunning as Sara, the film’s only other principal lead, creating a character who is able to connect in a humanistic way with Aaron unlike anything a fan of the first film might think possible. Two performers bare it all, both literally and figuratively: Creep 2 is one of the most surprising, emotionally resonant horror films in recent memory. —Jim Vorel

7. Prevenge Director: Alice Lowe Maybe getting close enough to gut a person when you’re seven months pregnant is a cinch—no one likely expects an expecting mother to cut their throat—but all the positive encouragement Ruth’s (Alice Lowe) unborn daughter gives her helps, too. The kid spends the film spurring her mother to slaughter seemingly innocent people from in utero, an invisible voice of incipient malevolence sporting a high-pitched giggle that’ll make your skin crawl. “Pregnant lady goes on a slashing spree at the behest of her gestating child” sounds like a perfectly daffy twist on one of the horror genre’s most enduring contemporary niches on paper. In practice it’s not quite so daffy, more somber than it is silly, but the bleak tone suits what writer, director, and star Lowe wants to achieve with her filmmaking debut. Another storyteller might have designed Prevenge as a more comically-slanted effort, but Lowe has sculpted it to smash taboos and social norms. Because Prevengehates human beings with a disturbing passion—even human beings who aren’t selfish, awful, creepy or worse—in it, child-rearing is a form of real-life body horror that’s as smartly crafted and grimly funny as it is terrifying. —Andy Crump / Full Review

6. mother! Director:   Darren Aronofsky   Try as you might to rationalize Darren Aronofsky’s mother!, mother! does not accept rationalization. There’s little reasonable ways to construct a single cohesive interpretation of what the movie tries to tell us. There is no evidence of Aronosfky’s intention beyond what we’ve intuited from watching his films since the ’90s. The most ironclad comment you can make about mother! is that it’s basically a matryoshka doll layered with batshit insanity. Unpack the first, and you’re met immediately by the next tier of crazy, and then the next, and so on, until you’ve unpacked the whole thing and seen it for what it is: A spiritual rumination on the divine ego, a plea for environmental stewardship, an indictment of entitled invasiveness, an apocalyptic vision of America in 2017, a demonstration of man’s tendency to leech everything from the women they love until they’re nothing but a carbonized husk, a very triggering reenactment of the worst house party you’ve ever thrown. mother! is a kitchen sink movie in the most literal sense: There’s an actual kitchen sink here, Aronofsky’s idea of a joke, perhaps, or just a necessarily transparent warning. mother! is about everything. Maybe the end result is that it’s also about nothing. But it’s really about whatever you can yank out of it, it’s elasticity the most terrifying thing about it. —Andy Crump

5. Personal Shopper Director: Olivier Assayas The pieces don’t all fit in Personal Shopper, but that’s much of the fun of writer-director Olivier Assayas’s enigmatic tale of Maureen (Kristen Stewart, a wonderfully unfathomable presence), who may be in contact with her dead twin brother. Or maybe she’s being stalked by an unseen assailant. Or maybe it’s both. To attempt to explain the direction Personal Shopper takes is merely to regurgitate plot points that don’t sound like they belong in the same film. But Assayas is working on a deeper, more metaphorical level, abandoning strict narrative cause-and-effect logic to give us fragments of Maureen’s life refracted through conflicting experiences. Nothing happens in this film as a direct result of what came before, which explains why a sudden appearance of suggestive, potentially dangerous text messages could be interpreted as a literal threat, or as some strange cosmic manifestation of other, subtler anxieties. Personal Shopperencourages a sense of play, moving from moody ghost story to tense thriller to (out of the blue) erotic character study. But that genre-hopping (not to mention the movie’s willfully inscrutable design) is Assayas’s way of bringing a lighthearted approach to serious questions about grieving and disillusionment. The juxtaposition isn’t jarring or glib—if anything, Personal Shopper is all the more entrancing because it won’t sit still, never letting us be comfortable in its shifting narrative. —Tim Grierson

4. A Dark Song Director: Liam Gavin In Liam Gavin’s black magic genre oddity, Sophia (Catherine Walker), a grief-stricken mother, and the schlubby, no-nonsense occultist (Steve Oram) she hires devote themselves to a long, meticulous, painstaking ritual in order to (they hope) communicate with her dead son. Gavin lays out the ritual specifically and physically—over the course of months of isolation, Sophia undergoes tests of endurance and humiliation, never quite sure if she’s participating in an elaborate hoax or if she can take her spiritual guide seriously when he promises her he’s succeeded in the past. Paced to near perfection, A Dark Song is ostensibly a horror film but operates as a dread-laden procedural, mounting tension while translating the process of bereavement as patient, excruciating manual labor. In the end, something definitely happens, but its implications are so steeped in the blurry lines between Christianity and the occult that I still wonder what kind of alternate realms of existence Gavin is getting at. But A Dark Song thrives in that uncertainty, feeding off of monotony. Sophia may hear phantasmagorical noise coming from beneath the floorboards, but then substantial spans of time pass without anything else happening, and we begin to question, as she does, whether it was something she did wrong (maybe, when tasked with not moving from inside a small chalk circle for days at a time, she screwed up that portion of the ritual by allowing her urine to dribble outside of the boundary) or whether her grief has blinded her to an expensive con. Regardless, that “not knowing” is the scary stuff of everyday life, and by portraying Sophia’s profound emotional journey as a humdrum trial of physical mettle, Gavin reveals just how much pointless, even terrifying work it can be anymore to not only live the most ordinary of days, but to make it to the next. —Dom Sinacola

3. Raw Director: Julia Ducournou If you’re the proud owner of a twisted sense of humor, you might sell your friends on Julia Ducournau’s Raw as a coming-of-age movie in a bid to trick them into seeing it. Yes, the film’s protagonist, naive incoming college student Justine (Garance Marillier), comes of age over the course of its running time: She parties, she breaks out of her shell and she learns about who she really is on the verge of adulthood. But most kids who discover themselves in the movies don’t realize that they’ve spent their lives unwittingly suppressing an innate, nigh-insatiable need to consume raw meat. Allow Ducournau her cheekiness: More than a wink and nod to the picture’s visceral particulars, her film’s title is an open concession to the harrowing quality of Justine’s grim blossoming. Nasty as the film gets, and it does indeed get nasty, the harshest sensations Ducournau articulates here tend to be the ones we can’t detect by merely looking. Fear of feminine sexuality, family legacies, popularity politics and the uncertainty of self govern Raw’s horrors as much as exposed and bloody flesh. It’s a gorefest that offers no apologies and plenty more to chew on than its effects. —Andy Crump

2. It Comes at Night Director: Trey Edward Shults It Comes at Night is ostensibly a horror movie, moreso than Shults’s debut, Krisha, but even Krisha was more of a horror movie than most measured family dramas typically are. Perhaps knowing this, Shults calls It Comes at Night an atypical horror movie, but—it’s already obvious after only two of these—Shults makes horror movies to the extent that everything in them is laced with dread, and every situation suffocated with inevitability. For his sophomore film, adorned with a much larger budget than Krisha and cast with some real indie star power compared to his previous cast (of family members doing him a solid), Shults imagines a near future as could be expected from a somber flick like this. A “sickness” has ravaged the world and survival is all that matters for those still left. In order to keep their shit together enough to keep living, the small group of people in Shults’s film have to accept the same things the audience does: That important characters will die, tragedy will happen and the horror of life is about the pointlessness of resisting the tide of either. So it makes sense that It Comes at Night is such an open wound of a watch, pained with regret and loss and the mundane ache of simply existing: It’s trauma as tone poem, bittersweet down to its bones, a triumph of empathetic, soul-shaking movie-making. —Dom Sinacola

1. Get Out Director:   Jordan Peele   Peele’s a natural behind the camera, but Get Out benefits most from its deceptively trim premise, a simplicity which belies rich thematic depth. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) go to spend a weekend with her folks in their lavish upstate New York mansion, where they’re throwing the annual Armitage bash with all their friends in attendance. Chris immediately feels out of place; events escalate from there, taking the narrative in a ghastly direction that ultimately ties back to the unsettling sensation of being the “other” in a room full of people who aren’t like you—and never let you forget it. Put indelicately, Get Out is about being black and surrounded by whites who squeeze your biceps without asking, who fetishize you to your face, who analyze your blackness as if it’s a fashion trend. At best Chris’s ordeal is bizarre and dizzying, the kind of thing he might bitterly chuckle about in retrospect. At worst it’s a setup for such macabre developments as are found in the domain of horror. That’s the finest of lines Peele and Get Out walk without stumbling. —Andy Crump

[theadventuresofamadhatter]

From BHX to QTN. Delayed flights, smelly feet, no sleep and winning a dance competition all in 38 hours...

It all began on 3rd March 2017. The run up to this day, being my first day of my world travelling experience, I have consumed more than enough beer, prosecco, wine and jagerbombs to stock the nearest bar. I didn’t realise actually how many people I had out of sight that I was surrounded by in my life until it was time to say bye. Four alcohol fuelled goodbye sessions later and I wake up still unpacked, not so much as a pair of socks. Not sure whether it just hadn’t sunk in that i’m not just popping overseas for a short vacation to return to normal life, it was in fact leaving home indefinitely, even better starting off as far as New Zealand. I quit my job that I was progressing well in and enjoyed, especially the team I worked with but it wasn’t enough. There was an itch I need to scratch, and now i’m doing it. A cheeky pic of one of the alcohol infused nights with my favourite boys and my mom…

Of course, knowing that everything was all going to plan, I had managed to finish packing in plenty of time, confident that everything had been sorted and i was organised for the 28 hour, 3 flight journey that I was about to endure, I knew something was bound to go wrong. Passport check. Flight itinerary check. Baggage check. Money check. What else could I need? Just to clear up some things I decided to check my emails to the find that my second flight which flew from Dubai to Sydney had been delayed and that I would now be stopping over for 13 hours instead of 2 hour changeover also arriving in Sydney AFTER my connecting flight leaves… why that flight wasn’t rescheduled too is beyond me o.0

Anyway £89 later, and Emirates have put me back on my original flights after I questioned this many times before confirming and the fact I had to pay to change my flight back to it’s original schedule is BEYOND ME. However £89 was a price I was prepared to pay to return back to my overly chilled state of mind.

Finally arriving at the airport with Mom and Dad, Check-in took literally 2 minutes, if that - so I was able to spend the next hour with my parents for some food and chill time before going through security. I’ve done it a fair few times previously so I knew I wasn’t rushed for time. Once it was time to say goodbye I noticed my Dad a little teary eyed and my Mom not really sure how to say bye as she has already had to do it so many times with both me and my sister but at least at these times she knew when she would next see us again.

Past security - all fine. Quick smoke break and then off to my gate to board my flight. It’s still not sinking in. I don’t feel anything other than, do I have my passport and, I hope they have a charger point.

I have never flown via Emirates before so I was surprised to see how huge it was inside, so huge the plane needed two entrances to get passengers on board. I found myself next to a middle aged couple who kept offering me sweets, they probably were being kind as I was alone and look about 5 years old - especially sporting some joggers and a flat peak cap HA. The first meal arrived and as someone who hates cheese, I was greeted with what could only be described as my worst nightmare and it was a good job I had a share bag of Doritos on me.

Cheese everything. Oh I suppose they chucked in a few prawns but even that had feta mixed in it :/

So roughly 7 hours later I land in the beautiful Dubai. So many people have explained how huge this airport is to me and now i’m left feeling a little disappointed. Leading up to my connecting flight out of Dubai I spent 2 hours standing at a Qantas desk as just as I was previously notified, my flight was delayed by 13 hours. Now i’m standing there trying to explain the little debacle and the cost of £89 I had before I even left Birmingham, UK and now i’m being told I’m being flown out to Brisbane, Australia instead of Sydney to follow a flight to Auckland, New Zealand and then another out to finally arrive in Queenstown. My only concern at this point was whether I will be landing the same day as scheduled or not as Sarah and Carly would be waiting for me to arrive in the next 20 hours. 

Completely stressed out and exhausted from the previous week partying and lack of sleep since the morning of my first flight I decide to hunt out the smoking area. This is what I found…

A bloody indoor smoking area with absolutely no ventilation whatsoever. It was a complete hot box, I was already sweating my tits off from running around looking for said smoking area and I am greeted with a huge cloudy stench of a room that can only be related to someones Grandma’s living room. I smoke an electronic cigarette so to me this isn’t pleasant at all when me vaping gives off nothing but a mentholly hint of blackcurrant.

The journey goes on. I board my second flight heading to Brisbane, Australia where I have been seated on an isle seat in the middle of the plane next to 3 other 20 something women. Immediate thoughts were, great i’m gonna make some new friends and have a bit of a laugh - maybe catch a nap at some point as it was a 13 hour journey ahead. No… instead the plane in general was SILENT, nobody was misbehaving, nobody was getting drunk and absolutely nobody interacted with anyone. Now I mean i’ve only ever been on holidays with friends as an adult and I can’t remember any of my flights due to too much alcohol so this was a bizzare experience for me. Anyway, I take the opportunity to enjoy the quiet and try to get some sleep. Putting my head down on the pillow provided by Emirates I close my eyes until suddenly my nose starts twitching and is greeted by an awful cheesy smell. I’m thinking oh here we go again, cheese for breakfast. What is it with Emirates and their obsession with cheese?? No I was wrong, in fact it was the girl next to me - her pongin’ feet had escaped the trainers she had probably been suffocating them in for the god knows how many hours, to be honest it smelt like days….

Put your fucking feet back in bab. Although I was a little grumpy at my journey gaining an extra flight - I wasn’t pissed off enough to tell this girl to sort her wiffy feet out. 13 hours later and the aroma became somewhat bearable. I was living in mature cheddar feet odour.

Brisbane was boiling hot - it was so humid, my hair was straight when I left the plane… 5 minutes in the airport and I looked like Monica off Friends when she went on holiday and had to get it braided to tame it. More waiting around and a FaceTime to my best friend Matt later and I was struggling to put a sentence together even to order a bottle of water before I boarded my next flight. I was officially TIRED. Not only that but I couldn’t get my head around the fact I had left Dubai at 10am yet I arrived in Australia 7am the same day. Baffles me.

Arriving in Auckland, it was SUPER busy. People everywhere, not like the previous airports I had been to which seemed to be deserted. I collect my carry-on, pass through security and get my NZ visitor visa approved and electronically attached to my passport. Moving on from international to domestic departures I get lost! This airport is HUGE. Even following the signs is a struggle. I finally find that they have a green line painted on the floor which you follow to domestic departures - they do provide a bus but it was taking far too bloody long and I was on the verge of falling asleep. Anyway - taking a nice stroll in this beautiful weather after leaving a rainy England only 24 hours before was enjoyable. 

Checked in my bags in plenty of time so i’m looking for the nearest smoking area. All those hours on flights and in airports not being able to smoke was killing me. Nicotine was needed. It wasn’t until this weekend that my addiction was tested. I was thinking to myself…does nobody in this country smoke? Smoking area was around a mile away in walking distance and I didn’t want to miss my flight.

Zonked out soon as I boarded the plane. Sarah had just messaged me to let me know that she would be joining her friend at the airport to pick me up as her friend had somebody arriving in Queenstown too. Perfect. I was so excited to see her after only having spent 2 days with her in 3 years previously it was great knowing we had a whole month ahead together on a beautiful island… never thought this day would come. After dropping off to sleep several times during the flight I awake to an announcement from the pilot that we are now approaching Queenstown and we would be touching ground soon. 10 seconds later, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

What a beautiful island. Never seen so many mountains with my own eyes and so much greenland. Like actually. Even the water being so blue, BLEW my mind. I thought I was still dreaming to be honest, I mean I hadn’t slept in 2 days.

Arrival was easy, no security to go through - the airport was pretty small and I was greeted straight away by Sarah and her friend. I was so excited but I just couldn’t bring my body to show any expression as I was that exhausted I couldn’t even speak. My first request was that we go for a smoke while we await Stef’s friend arriving from Sydney. Immediately. 

What happened next is the best part of the entire weekend. Back to Sarah and Carly’s where I’d be staying for my duration in New Zealand - first thing I do is jump in the shower, I fucking stink mate. 2 days without showering and running around in 3 different countries is insanity. Anyway, getting out the shower I am greeted with Vodka and Tonics ready to go on a night out??? Yep, that’s right - no sleep and we’re going for drinks to welcome me on my first night here. It was only 8pm so I agreed it was a good idea to ride it out and go to sleep in the night time after some bevvies with the girls. 

They took me to a bar called Loco’s. The music was great, it reminded me of the Nightingale back in the day when it was good - so yeah for anybody that knows of The Nightingale in Birmingham, UK - that means CHEESE. The only kind of cheese that I enjoy. Within 20-30 minutes of being in this bar I am pulled up on to the stage with 3 other people and have been entered for a competition. At first they announce the competition is ‘who can get naked the quickest’. As I was about to immediately walk off the stage - the guy shouts “Just kiddin’” then announces that it is is a dance competition. Now i’ve necked a few Jagerbombs and Desperados already at this point, mixed with a lovely bout of sleep deprivation so - i’m pretty fucking drunk. Bring it on. 2 lads were before me and decided that stripping was dancing? Who knows where they got idea but it was pretty horrific and the crowd didn’t seem to enjoy it. Next up was me. Now I can’t fucking dance - I know I can’t. But if there is one thing I can do, that’s entertain a crowd of drunken people. Slut drops happened, backwards rolls happened, chest pumping and a bit of cheeky shuffling. The more everyone was screaming, the more it encouraged me to be a knob - and I loved it. Next up was a taller girl who decided she would go for the more serious approach and do a more “seductive” kind of dance. While she had a bit of a reception it didn’t really compare - saying that we were both through to a final round which was a dance off. Of course - I took it upon myself, to take her out of serious mode and have some bloody fun. I danced with her, on her around her, and then chucked in a backwards roll… I won before I even knew. Now i’m hyped that was fun - now I can go back to my friends and carry on drinking, completely forgetting about the prize. Until, the guy approaches me and informs me that I have just won a scuba diving course at the Great Barrier Reef in Cairns, Australia. I couldn’t believe it. For any of you that don’t know - google it. It’s just incredible and i’m really pleased.

So that folks was my first weekend/night in Queenstown, New Zealand and yes it was super eventful :)