#freaks me out just how much they were the real life manifestations of their characters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

positivelybeastly · 3 months

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Hey there! The post you made about the core of a well written Hank McCoy inspired me to ask if you'd be willing to do a similar deep dive into Hanks various relationships over the years. Not in a shippy way in so much as a pros and cons of the relationships ( all relationships have them , even good ones) and how they reflect on and influence Hanks character over time.

Hello hello! I would indeed be willing to do a deep dive, and, at the same time, find out if Tumblr text posts have a word limit! I also realised maybe 20 characters in that you meant actual. Relationships, as in romantic, and I've done just. Basically. All of his relationships. Including platonic ones. Oops. Oh well, hope you enjoy!

These won't be quite as exhaustive as if you asked me about a particular relationship, since I always work best with plenty of image resources and I already know I'm going to hit my image limit early, but I hope I can give at least my general thoughts on how Hank has influenced and changed, and been and influenced by, the following characters.

Edna and Norton McCoy

X-Men Unlimited vol. 1 #10, 1996.

You have to start all the way back at the beginning, and Hank's relationship with his parents is crucial to understanding why he is the way he is. Hank is the by product of a radiation accident that nearly killed his father, which led to the odd nature of his mutation - namely, that it manifested at birth in the form of abnormally large hands and feet.

This was, in many ways, the best case scenario that Edna and Norton could have hoped for, that their child not miscarry, be stillborn, or be born with a disability that would massively impact his quality of living - this was a very real possibility for them. So Hank being the way he was, actually stronger, more agile, and more dextrous than a normal child, and not to mention a genius intellect even at a young age (not related to his mutation, but it certainly didn't hurt) created a bit of a miracle baby effect.

They were unremittingly supportive and loving - they supported his choice in academics, they supported his football career, they supported his choice of girlfriends, they pushed him to be the best that he could be but never put undue pressure on him. He grew up feeling like he could do anything he wanted to, if he simply chose to.

The worst I can say about this relationship is that you could view it as fostering his ego - perhaps if they had tamped down on his ambitions a bit, maybe he never would have turned himself blue and furry in a fit of 'I know better than everyone else,' but I think that's a lot to put on his parents, honestly. He made that decision, and he has no-one to blame but himself for making it. Blaming his parents for that is like blaming your parents for daring to make you believe you can grow up to be somebody - like, what's the alternative, making you believe that you'll never be anybody? Horrible way to parent.

There's a bump in Marvel Team-Up #124 (1982) where Edna freaks out about her child growing up to be a superhero and more physically obvious mutant, but it's resolved when Hank proves himself to be a man of caliber and altruism, putting himself in harm's way to save a child - proving himself to be the boy that Edna raised, and she returns the favour, putting her life at risk to save him from Professor Power.

He may not be the CPA or 'normal' genius she may have wanted, but he's still brilliant, and she realises that quickly. I also think it's notable that Norton, his father, doesn't go through a similar patch, which is attributable to the fact that he sees Hank's mutation as his 'fault', as you can see in the panels above - he can't exactly blame Hank for being who he is, he's explicitly responsible for it. It would be the height of ridiculous for him to come down on Hank for who he is, when who he is is a direct result of Norton's act of heroism.

In many ways, Hank can do no wrong in his parents' eyes - but in many ways, Hank never does do wrong by his parents. He makes their lives comfortable and improves on it in a lot of ways with his intellect, and he keeps them safe as best he can. They're a little disappointed they aren't grandparents when we last hear from them in 2018, in the X-Men Christmas Special, but they're still defensive of him and love him, even though he's changed for a third time.

Charles Xavier

X-Force vol. 6 #20, 2021.

You knew this one was coming. You'll note that this is one of the few times that I'm going to use something from Benjamin Percy's X-Force in this deep dive, mostly because it's one of the few times that Percy comes close to examining who Hank is and why he is the way that he is. It's one of the few times in X-Force that anyone asks, why is Hank doing what he's doing? Why is he committing these actions?

Because, in many ways, he's still chasing Charles Xavier's approval.

Charles does Hank maybe the biggest disservice of any of his original X-Men, save maybe Scott - while he plucks Scott out of an abusive home and then moulds him into a soldier for his dream, pretty much completely failing to give him any coping mechanisms for what that's going to do to Scott's relationships with other people and his ability to maintain a normal life, Charles plucks Hank out of a loving home, and cuts him off from it. He telepathically wipes Hank's parents' mind of his existence for a while, to 'protect' him, but really, he's isolating Hank, and installing himself as a father figure.

Whether he realises he's doing this or not is immaterial, because it's canon, as established in Marvel Presents #85-92 (1991) and reaffirmed in X-Men Origins: Beast (2008). And though Hank doesn't appreciate it, on some level hates Charles for it forever, he falls for it, because he is a fundamentally altruistic person who knows he has a responsibility to use his intellect and his mutation to make life better for other people - this is the canon reason he joins the X-Men, and it's important to remember that, because he has no need of training to foster his gifts like Jean or Bobby, and he has a home, unlike Scott. In many ways, he's actually most like Warren, but we'll get to that.

There are moments where Hank separates from Xavier, most notably in Uncanny X-Men #8 (1964) and Amazing Adventures #11 (1971), and it's significant that the latter split leads to, arguably, the best years of his life, where he's freest to be who he wants to be and enjoy his life. He joins the Avengers and the Defenders, he becomes a sex symbol, he feels comfortable in his own skin, he explicitly feels no pressure to use his intellectual gifts, and instead is, arguably, most himself.

It's especially interesting when you consider that even with all that in mind, he still matures and grows up and realises, independently of Xavier, that he still has a responsibility to help - but rather than being inorganically forced to take on that role by a man he doesn't know, he realises it in New Defenders #142 (1985) when a mutant activist calls him out on his immaturity and his lack of forward momentum.

Hank self-reflects, and self-actualises, and forms a grassroots mutant political activist group called M.O.N.S.T.E.R (Mutants Only Need Sensitivity, Tolerance, and Equal Rights), which is something that Charles would NEVER do. Its emphasis on elevating mutants everywhere, rather than focusing on providing examples of mutant heroism like the X-Men, is unique, and I really do wish we'd gotten to see more of a grass roots approach to mutant politics. But.

Then, Hank gets pulled into X-Factor, and all of that goes away. Then, he gets pulled into the X-Men, and his life becomes smaller. And smaller, and smaller, and smaller. And his life becomes worse, and worse, and worse. Eventually, he hits the point where Charles is handing him an Infinity Stone, and consigning him to joining the Illuminati in his stead, and Hank doesn't want to be there, but he feels obligated to, because this was Charles' last wish, his literal will and testament, and he can't say no to that. But he should've. Because it tortures him, and it all ends up being for nothing anyway. Thanks, Chuck.

That being said, I think one of the most telling depictions of Hank and the Professor's relationship actually comes from Astonishing X-Men vol. 3 #12, where Scott is dressing down the Professor for enslaving Danger. Something I really appreciate about that scene is that it highlights how different Hank and Scott are in their relationship with Xavier.

Perhaps because Scott grew up with an abusive parental figure in Jack Winters and Hank grew up with very loving parents, Scott was able to recognise Charles' toxic behaviour and break away from Xavier - it might also have had something to do with the fact that at least one of Charles' biggest fuck ups had to do with Scott's brother Gabriel? Hard to say. But Hank, who Charles very carefully isolated from his parents by mindwiping them for years of Hank's whole existence, never really managed to break free of him, and it shows here really acutely.

Hell, it arguably never went away, even into the Krakoan era - a more interesting version of X-Force would have really dived into the kind of fucked up dynamic they have, where Chuck keeps covering for Beast's moral transgressions for seemingly no reason, because in some respects, he's responsible for them. He gave him the power, he gave him no oversight, but even more pressingly, he wasn't there for him emotionally. He pulled him into this life and didn't prepare him for the toll it would take, how much it would ruin Beast by the time he gets to Krakoa. Beast needed someone to help him there, and no-one did, which is part of why he went on the skids, I think.

But anyway, Whedon does a lot of moments where Hank is present for scenes but doesn't speak, which is important for a character who's well known for not shutting the fuck up. This, the initial cure conversation, the whole conversation about Piotr - Hank clams up. He doesn't feel like he can talk about it. He's off in his own head, his thoughts are his own, he doesn't feel the need to share them.

And here, it's especially important, because this is a big moral violation that Charles has committed in their name. I know it may be hard to remember, but back in the day, Hank had a moral opinion that was worth something, so the fact that he doesn't say anything here speaks volumes about just how much he feels capable of calling out the Professor, i.e. not at all. He craves Xavier's validation, his approval, he feels a kinship with Chuck. So he doesn't criticise him like he should.

It's especially interesting given that this would continue through the Utopia era. Every time Scott distanced himself from Xavier, Hank was there to comfort Charles, and I feel like that's just something he feels like he has to do. He feels like the devoted brother to Scott's more radical, more willing to criticise brother, and if Bendis had any interest in Beast as a character, he would've played on that in All-New X-Men - the fact that Scott killed their toxic father figure, and Beast feels both free of an influence he didn't know was choking him, but outraged that Scott would break their 'family' like that.

I find Beast compelling because of his flaws, and this is an interesting moment when you take all of that into account. I don't even know if that was the intention of this scene, or if Whedon just wanted to give Scott the speech, but it's interesting, nonetheless, and it really shines a light on how Hank and Charles see each other. I'm very interested to see Hank's take on where Charles has ended up in From the Ashes, because it has the potential to really change that dynamic.

Scott Summers

Astonishing X-Men vol. 3 #34, 2010.

Hank McCoy is Scott Summers' best friend.

I said it because it's true, and it's true reading all the way back to the Silver Age, honestly. Even as Bobby's screaming his head off about Scott being a stuck up asshole, Hank's quietly reminding Bobby that Scott can't be anyone other than who he is, "he can't help his psychological make-up," and I think that gets at a really important part of their relationship. Just as Scott's mind is attractive to telepaths because it's so neatly ordered and makes perfect sense to them, Scott's personality is appealing to Hank because he makes sense to him. Scott is orderly, anxious, dedicated, intelligent, hides his true feelings, and wants to belong, even as he stands apart. Hank is most, if not all, of these things, and so, they get each other. Bobby fucks around, Warren schmoozes and gets cocky, Jean is a GIRL AND THEREFORE SCARY, but Hank and Scott just get each other.

Which makes it all the more tragic when they fall apart, because Hank sees it all and it makes sense to him, even as it breaks his heart. What a lot of people misunderstand about Hank's arc during Utopia is that they read his moral grandstanding as self-righteousness or hypocrisy or a big ol' stick he wants to use to hit people with, and it's honestly not that. I really don't think it is.

I think he sees Scott sacrificing the parts of himself that make him a good man so that he can make a better general, and it terrifies him. He sees him become callous, manipulative, cold-blooded, willing to risk everything on a course of action because he believes he's right. Hank thinks he's fighting for the soul of the X-Men, for his own soul, for Scott's soul, even as everyone else is fighting for mutantkind.

Hank went through his own journey in Endangered Species, and he knows that there's nothing he can do, so why fight it? Why not just stop, and live out his days being the best man he can be, a member of the first and last generation of mutants, and let it go? Because no-one saw what he saw.

No-one saw the end of mutantkind inscribed on the vellum of reality like he did, saw what he would become if he did what Scott did and did anything and everything to stop the death of the mutant race - no-one else knows how close he came to jumping into the abyss and becoming Dark Beast. And no-one, honestly, cares. Hank doesn't tell anyone, because he never does, but it absolutely informs his views going forward. It can't not.

But no-one is interested enough in Hank McCoy's feelings to really ask why he's so insistent, or what happened when he was gone. He's a private individual, and he never told anyone. He felt profoundly ashamed of what he did while he was gone, which didn't exactly help. So his moral insistence just comes across as hatred, and it's not. He loves Scott Summers like a brother. That's why he fought so hard to keep him the way he was, not the way he became.

I also find it interesting that, in some ways, Hank is responsible for Scott becoming a happier, more well-adjusted individual, if in the most fucked up and irresponsible and manipulative way possible. Even in the midst of their relationship being at its lowest point, Hank was inadvertently responsible for time displaced Scott joining the Champions and getting to spend time with his father, giving him precious memories of a life not lived for Xavier that he didn't have before, and it's arguable that that's part of what mellowed Scott, coming out of the Death of X/revolution era.

It's not a good thing that Hank did that, obviously, he did it because - well, because he was having a brain aneurysm called Brian Michael Bendis, but whatever, it wouldn't have happened without Hank's intervention. I don't know if it's fair to give Hank credit for this, because those are Scott's choices and Scott's relationships, but the sequence of events is such. Idk. I try to see the best in Hank's actions and make them make sense to how I see the character.

A better version of X-Force would have made Scott central to Hank's descent into darkness, because it's frankly too obvious a connection to make, but whatever, we missed that boat. I just know that, just like how Hank didn't want for Scott to hollow himself out like he did, Scott wouldn't have wanted Hank to hollow himself out like he did, either, and I'm glad to see that reflected in MacKay's X-Men #1. I hope that friendship is rebuilt, because it deserves to be.

Jean Grey

New X-Men #124, 2002.

Hank McCoy is Jean Grey's brother.

Okay, so maybe not biologically, but they are basically brother and sister. It's why the stabs at making a relationship between them have never really worked for me, and I just enjoy the friendship moments between them too much to think of them together romantically. They're both intensely empathetic, deep feeling, loving characters, and in some ways, despite Jean being a literal telepath, Hank actually gets people better than Jean does sometimes (see X-Men Annual '95) because where she can be blinded by anger and passion and justice, Hank sees people for who they are and what they want very easily.

Almost any time that Hank is feeling blue (heehee) in 90s X-Men or New X-Men, it's Jean that pulls him out of it, because she's spent the most time learning what his habits are, when he's not really feeling as all right as he promises, and I honestly don't think it's a massive coincidence that the period that adult Jean spends dead (2005-2017) is a period that Hank spends alternately depressed, irrational, or alone. Maybe that's a form of dependency? Possibly. I just think they're best friends and that they make each other better when they're around one another.

Hank believes in Jean. He walks through the snow, thinking the rest of the X-Men are dead, believing that if he can at least get Jean out, then maybe he hasn't failed. He gets yanked onto the Shi'ar flagship, hears about what Dark Phoenix did, and instantly tries to throw the book at Empress Lilandra because he believes in Jean, and he believes in justice and law and due process. He watches her manifest the Phoenix and piece Emma together with her telekinesis, yanking her consciousness into her body once more, and even though he's afraid, he sticks with her. He trusts her with his mind, giving her his anatomy knowledge so she can work informed, even as the flames of her Phoenix form lick at his arm and burn him.

Hank believes in Jean Grey.

Bobby Drake

X-Men: First Class #4, 2007.

Bobby Drake is Hank McCoy's first best friend.

There were definitely great friends beforehand (Jennifer Nyles comes to mind), but in terms of making Hank feel normal, in terms of becoming friends to have fun and just hang out and because you simply like each other's vibes and feel comfortable each other? Yeah, Bobby is absolutely Hank's first best friend.

It's probably best exemplified in New Defenders, especially #122, where Bobby just. Needs Hank. He needs his best friend. Hank always has a knack for chasing away Bobby's blues, and you see it again and again throughout that run, where Hank is just who Bobby goes to first whenever he's feeling bad (as well as in 90s X-Men), because Hank always seems to know what to say.

I also don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there must've been a lot of good feeling going on for notable stick in the mud 60s Hank and retroactively gay Bobby to go out on double dates with Vera and Zelda. Hank bought an entire cabin so that they'd have a place to go to. Can you think of anyone else that Hank's done that for? I rest my case. (Is it all a little gay? Maybe. But it's not gay if the socks stay on.)

Where this relationship falls apart is when Bobby stops growing before Hank does, and what Hank needs outpaces what Bobby can provide, as seen in Uncanny X-Men #518. It's not necessarily Bobby's fault, he's just - not a very emotionally capable person, a lot of the time, his primary character flaw is an inability to grow up, and so Hank throws something heavy at him, and his best, most immediate impulse is to just say, well, deal with it how you've always dealt with it.

And that's just not good enough. And in many ways, I think Hank just stops trusting Bobby at that point, to the extreme where Bobby calls out for every other member of the original X-Men but him at the 2023 Hellfire Gala as he dies, and I wasn't surprised one bit. They stop appearing in comics together, Hank doesn't feature in his modern solo series' at all, and their interactions are fine, but nowhere near what they were.

Warren Worthington

Uncanny X-Men #297, 1992.

Warren is the original X-Man that Hank is most like.

Which, you might think is strange, given that Warren is a rich kid with wings and Hank is a farmboy quarterback with big feet, but it's true, by virtue of three facts - one, they're the two most obvious, physically mutated members of the O5.

Two, they came to heroism on their own. Warren's turn as the Avenging Angel, and Hank's fighting against the Conquistador in his origin, both predate their time as X-Men, and this is massively important in their development because it demonstrates that altruism and self-sacrifice are intrinsic in their characters. They believe in doing good things to help people, or stopping bad people from doing bad things, because it's the right thing to do. Whereas Scott and Jean and Bobby emerged from tragedy and ruin, Hank and Warren came from a place of stability and a desire to do good.

Three, they both undergo a terrifying physical metamorphosis that causes massive changes in their personalities, Warren becoming Archangel and Hank becoming a much more literal Beast. This point of commonality is a rock for them both, and as you can see, it helps them through. They realise that for all their struggles with the other aspects of their new selves, they're still, in the ways that count, the same people - they're still the friends they always were.

It's also very significant to me that Warren is the X-Man that Hank first 'comes out' to as the Beast, in Amazing Adventures #15 (1971), and I don't think it's a real coincidence that even as Charles tries to assert that Hank's protest that he's his own man, not an X-Man, and Jean shies away in shock from the vehemence with which Hank rejects their telepathic call, Warren calls bullshit and just goes.

He asserts himself. He's independent, and he breaks from the X-Men, much like Hank and Bobby did, Hank going to the Avengers and Bobby and Warren to the Champions, then all three of them to the Defenders - even as Scott and Jean stay with the X-Men, a decision that will lead to a whole line of catastrophe that ends with Jean dead, and Scott resigned to a life left unfulfilled because his one true love is dead.

Meanwhile, Hank, Bobby and Warren are clustered in a borrowed quinjet in their best togs, going to a wedding. Warren asks why he and Bobby are going along, given they hardly know the couple. Hank replies Warren that he's family, and he wants them there, and that's that, and there's a quiet, warm little smile on his face, because he is. They are.

I also find it very interesting that Hank and Warren undergo a very similar trajectory, tracking from Utopia to the Dark Angel Saga for Warren, and All-New X-Men to Krakoa for Hank - they cloister themselves off from others, they lose sight of who they originally were, they roll around in the blood of innocents, and in the end, they both end up dying and losing their memories, born anew.

Like I said. Warren is the original X-Man that Hank is most like.

Jennifer Nyles

X-Men Unlimited vol. 2 #10, 2005.

Jen is an underrated figure in Hank's history, and that's mostly because she has very limited appearances, none of which quite make sense with one another. Her first appearance in Marvel Presents #85-92 posits that she was, in many ways, Hank's first love, the person he missed most of all those who were made to forget him, and that the absence of him in her mind compelled her to study the mind so that she might try and unlock what she knew was missing. In the end, he stays away from her, because she nearly dies and he feels he endangers her. He probably does.

Then, we have a retroactive appearance in Origins: Beast, and the above story in Unlimited. Origins: Beast doubles down on her importance, stating that she's the person who encourages Hank to come out of his shell even before he's an X-Man, to use his gifts and be the brilliant person she knows he is, and while Unlimited agrees with that importance, she knows who Hank is at a time when she shouldn't. How to square it away? Ehh. I kinda don't. I like the three stories and how they impact and change and demonstrate Hank's qualities too much to try and change them. Instead, I just enjoy them.

In another life, Hank and Jen absolutely got married and they had a brilliant history together. She's almost as smart as he is, just as fiery (she punches out a bully antagonising Hank), and she has a strong moral, empathetic core. Hank, honestly, has a type. But even more than a romantic figure, I like her as an inspirational figure for Hank, someone that pushes him in the right direction and leads him to the right answers without giving them to him. She accepts him at a time when he needed it most, and helps him rebuild his life.

Tony Stark

Amazing Adventures #14, 1972.

For a pair of geniuses that snark at each other almost non-stop whenever they're around, and who feel almost constantly at loggerheads in classic Avengers, Tony is very important to Hank's development, sometimes by virtue of his faults.

First off, he's the superhero who turns up to investigate Hank's transformation at Brand, and his apparent death there at Hank's hands (a Mastermind illusion) and his mercy and understanding of the torment that Hank is undergoing are massively formative in Hank coming to terms with his new bestial form. He teaches Hank's two lessons - one, that he needs to control himself in a way he didn't need to before, and two, that he can still rely on people to see the human in him if he acts it.

Secondly - it's his inadvertent dismissal of Hank during the Avengers' examination of Wonder Man that sparks off Hank getting annoyed about his genius being ignored, pushes him out of the Mansion in a snit . . . and that's when he discovers that he's not just adjusting to being a beast anymore. No, he's fucking hot now. Even when he's being a dick (without really meaning to), Tony helps Hank grow, helping him realise that he doesn't need to be the high performing intellectual he was on the X-Men, the Avengers have that covered, but also, that he can afford to be someone else as well.

They continue to be friends for years and years, with their friendship built up over the course of plenty of classic Avengers issues, leading to a complete bypassing of a big ol' hero vs. hero fight in X-Factor Annual #1 (1986) because Hank's just like, oh hey, Iron Man, it's me, and Tony's just like, oh hey Beast, what the fuck's all this about? And it just. Fixes the problem.

I also don't think that it's a coincidence that Hank and Tony are the two most visibly affected when the Illuminati mindwipe Steve during the Incursions arc, with Hank unable to even really look at Steve when it happens, and Hank is constantly pulling on that morality chain even as they tie each other into knots, trying to justify the destruction of worlds. For as much as they give each other shit, Hank and Tony can rely on each other to give it to 'em straight, and that's important when their heads can get as big as these guys.

Wanda Maximoff

Uncanny Avengers vol. 3 #30, 2017.

Hank should hate Wanda more than he does.

The event that Wanda caused, the Decimation, was, in a lot of people's opinions, the beginning of the end for Henry McCoy. It stripped him of his morality and his pretensions and his ability to do anything. It was the height of cruelty, and Wanda did it without arguably meaning to. Not casually, but in a moment of instability. Leaving a gaping wound in evolution that Hank tried to fix.

He threw away a lot, trying to fix it. He wrecked a lot of relationships, came away feeling dirty, consorted with demons. Became acutely aware of every one of his limitations. And yet. He never really blamed her. Because how could he?

After all, he knew Wanda before the mess. When she was a brilliant friend and teammate on the Avengers. When she was shining, glimmering proof that people could change and become better, if only they tried and were given the chance. When she was at her best. And he never stopped believing she could be that again. It certainly didn't help that they had a certain wonder man in common, but honestly, they're just great friends.

Hank supported her in Children's Crusade, even in the face of the X-Men going kill crazy, and he never held a grudge. Even when he finds her, at the end of his rope, in Endangered Species, when he's at his most fraught and defeated, he just. Wants to fix things. It would be so easy to be hateful and resentful, but he just doesn't have it in him. After all, he knows what it's like to ruin your life in an instant because of a bad decision, and to want to claw it back however you can.

Carol Danvers

Ms. Marvel vol. 2 #18, 2007.

Honestly, for someone who you often see getting blasted on the X-Men Reddit for the Superhuman Registration Act/where were you when our babies were burning panels, Carol has a lot of really strong relationships within the X-Men, but I think her bond with Hank is especially strong - which is saying something, considering their first meeting was a fight! But, honestly, they just like and respect each other. They don't tolerate injustice, they believe in being heroes for everyone, not just the few, and they support each other.

Even in the midst of Civil War II, arguably the single worst that Carol has ever been written (not counting Avengers #200, take your pick of a character assassination), there's a moment where Tony is begging Carol to rethink her Minority Report bullshit, and she says, fine, I'll consider your evidence - but only if Hank checks it. And he says he has, and it's not wrong. And she knows that that means something.

The best friends will tell you when you're wrong. And you'll listen to them.

Heather Douglas

The New Defenders #139, 1984.

Hank and Heather have an almost constantly combative relationship from the instant Moondragon joins the Defenders, with Hank never afraid to let her know that he doesn't like her and that he doesn't want her on 'his' team. In his estimation she's high, and mighty, and conceited, and possessed of more power than wisdom.

And. Guess what?

Hank's fucking wrong. Heather is trying. Yes, she backslides, she has her moments of true ego and duplicity, but it takes Hank far too long to come to realise that she's trying as hard as she is - and frankly, she's right to smack him down and humiliate him from time to time, because he can be conceited. He acts as though the Defenders are his team, and he harbours pretensions of leadership that no-one takes seriously, because Hank is not a leader, you don't even have to dislike him to know that - and it takes him a while to realise that.

Their combative relationship keeps the other in check. They grow as a result of being around one another, even if they never quite settled things between them. Hank's maturation into a grown adult, into a man able to be more than just a superhero, is in no small part thanks to Moondragon's barbs and pushes and slaps at his ego, and he should be grateful that he got the chance to make good on that chance to mature, because Heather didn't, in the end.

Alison Blaire

Marvel Heartbreakers #1, 2010.

I'm gonna be real, the Beauty and the Beast miniseries by Ann Nocenti is not great. It has moments of fun, some pathos, but for the most part, it's incredibly soapy, incredibly hackneyed, goes nowhere, has a lot of weird anti-set up, and Hank is strangely incredibly violent and cruel in it at times. For someone claiming Hank was his usual charming self, Nocenti sure wrote him as a borderline psycho.

But. The Heartbreakers epilogue for that relationship redeems it, honestly, and it gains added poignancy when a future version of Alison is killed in Battle of the Atom, in one of the few instances of that series actually managing a moment of pathos. There's no magic trick to why Hank and Alison work, they just sort of find each other hot and fun and they're there for each other in a weird, fucked up time in Alison's life, so maybe it was inevitable that it faded to nothing.

I just like to think there's always a lingering softness, a lingering what if, for the both of them. A potential of something, if not an actual something.

Vera Cantor

The New Defenders #149, 1985.

Oh, Vera . . . you deserved better.

Gonna be brutally honest, Hank treated Vera kinda like shit. I don't think he meant to, it was never a relationship he was invested in, and he said as much, he was interested in the stability it represented, but I'm genuinely sorry for Vera that she got caught up in the crossfire of it. She was dismissed and treated like a pick-up, drop-off girlfriend when she was looking for a good man - and Hank is a good man, but at this point? Not what she was looking for. Not what she needed.

I'm glad we see her again in X-Factor and she's doing well for herself. I'm fairly convinced that she's a lesbian because Hank may have ruined men for her (in the not good way), but hey, a pro-mutant activist? That's pretty worthy - and considering how Hank treated her, pretty big minded. I like to think this taught Hank to be more considerate of people's feelings and grow out of his womaniser stage.

Julio Richter

X-Factor vol. 1 #18, 1987.

For a character often defined by his teaching abilities, Hank actually wasn't a particularly great teacher or carer for children when he first started - I always think there's a good deal of significance in the fact that X-Factor #1 has him searching out a position in academia, being rejected out of prejudice, but then finding his way to a teaching position through way of X-Factor, though I doubt that was planned.

Regardless of whether or not it was planned, I do think his relationship with Julio Richter, or Rictor, is massively important to Hank's development, because everything that Hank gets wrong with Tabitha Smith, he gets right with Julio. He encourages him, gives him his clothes, never talks down to him, nurtures his potential, pushes him to learn and think for himself - and it's rewarded.

Julio imprints on Hank strongly, and you can see that he favours Hank amongst all the other X-Factor members for a reason. This relationship largely went away in future, sadly, but I always like to think that it remains in some fashion, even if only in small ways.

Trish Tilby

X-Factor vol. 1 #36, 1988.

Yeah, you knew this was coming.

Honestly . . . I can see what Hank saw in her as a human being. She's a woman of fierce convictions. She believes in truth, and honesty, and justice. She is pro-mutant, after a fashion. And I have to give her credit, she does have her moments of heroism, like in this issue, when she risks her life to help Hank save a bridge of people as Inferno kicks into high gear. There are moments of good between them.

But fuck me she's an awful human being.

Leaking the fact that the Legacy Virus has jumped to humans directly leads to a mutant hate crime that ends in a death. She barges in to a sick, dying man's hospital room in the search of a scoop. And I'm not even gonna get into what happened when Hank turned feline.

She's just a trainwreck of breaches of journalistic ethics, and I hate her to bits. If she taught Hank anything, it was that the people you admire and love can disappoint you, and it says a lot that it's a one-two punch of her, and Cassandra fucking Nova that shatters Hank's self-esteem into a million pieces. What rarified company. The very fact that she tries to get back together with Hank after this, like, what even the fuck, man.

Jubilation Lee

Uncanny X-Men #308, 1993.

These two make me smile.

I think Jubilee awakens something very simple and immature in Hank, but something healthy at the same time - she encourages him, and everyone else at the Mansion, up to and including Professor X, to have fun. At a time when they were losing people left and right, it would have been easy to lose heart, but Jubilee kept Hank and the rest of the team bolstered, kept them focused. That's no small thing, honestly. Maybe she doesn't have quite as strong a relationship with Hank as she does Logan - that's a hard bond to match - but it's hard not to look at these two and see a true blue friendship.

I also adore that it came back in full force in X-Men vol. 4 (2013), where Hank often acted as mission and home support for the all-female team of X-Men that featured in that book. Taking care of baby Shogo, helping Omega Sentinel with her physical rehab - Hank was an invaluable asset in that run, and his scenes with Jubilee were always a treat.

Dark Beast

X-Men: Endangered Species, 2007.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

Dark Beast is such a well constructed character because he is not just Henry McCoy if Henry McCoy were evil. Dark Beast is, what if Henry McCoy were raised in an evil world that believes in evil things and the only thing to do is be evil, lest it kill you? There's such a curious drive to betterment, to becoming stronger, smarter, more, to him, that speaks to the same in Hank, but it's all just so twisted up. It's driven by fear where it's driven by hope in Hank.

Because he is afraid. And he is human, much as he might hate the label.

He's a warning. He's a check and balance. He's a cruel joke. He's a monster. He's the other side of Hank's fears. Hank fears devolution, becoming more of an animal, giving in to the Beast, but Dark Beast represents evolution, becoming less animal and more - other. Something that considers itself above human, animal, mutant. Intelligence without conscience, drive without wisdom.

He's not what all Hank McCoys inevitably become. That's stupid, and basic, and anyone who believes that is stupid and basic. That's genetic essentialism, and it's shit media literacy. It's also the basis for X-Force (2019) and I reject that hypothesis entirely.

Henry's much more interesting than evil Hank - not just because he's funnier, and better at his job, and a more efficient villain, but because try as he might, there's still something essentially human inside of him. Something stopped him from killing Hank's - his - parents.

An essential, viral, inescapable fact.

There's something good in him, just as there's something bad in Hank. And it will bedevil them both forever, because they can't get rid of it.

Cecilia Reyes

Astonishing X-Men vol. 3, 2012.

Honestly, maybe the most grown up and equal relationship that Hank ever had, and I don't really feel like he even really had the chance to have it. Cecilia is everything Trish wishes she could be, and much more besides. Uncompromising in her morals, fiercely dedicated to healing, defensive of her boundaries, strong, independent, intelligent, funny - and kind.

She held a torch for him, for a long time. There's a lot of pictures of him in her apartment, both from the 90s and his feline form. She felt for him in a way maybe he didn't realise. Maybe he's the one who got away. Maybe she is. Either way, these two just. Work. There's a world out there where they became something more, and that's a happier world for Hank, honestly. But, hey ho.

Emma Frost

New X-Men #123, 2002.

Sometimes friendships don't make sense. Other times they do.

The friendship between Hank and Emma always made sense to me. The wit, the banter, the emotional intelligence, the willingness to play to roles assigned to them by their image - they were practically destined to be friends. And yet, often forgotten. Every now and then, it crops up, and I cherish it, but for the most part, they're just irrepressibly bitchy all the way through Morrison's run, and that'll always be special to me.

I always try and see good where I can, and I wanted to post an exchange from Secret Empire Omega where Hank tries to bolster Emma in the wake of New Tian's fall, because I like the moment for them, but in the end, it's just too poor of an event and a context for me to share it. All my props to Nadia Shammas in the X-Force Annual, the one issue of X-Force I thought actually had a decent handle on a villainous Beast - by sheer virtue of actually remembering that people would care. Emma would care.

Abigail Brand

Siege vol. 2 #2, 2015.

Abigail Brand did not make Hank McCoy into a war criminal.

To say so is to betray a basic lack of understanding of this entire relationship, but then, what else is new? A lot of people seemingly don't get who Hank is and why he works. Out of universe, but also in, oddly enough.

Kate Pryde and Kurt Wagner both speculate about what made Hank into what he became in X-Force, and they think it's Abigail, because that's an easy explanation, but it's not the truth. Not remotely. It betrays that they didn't know Hank as well as they thought they did, and Hank died not being known by a lot of people.

Which . . . sucks. But it is what it is.

Abigail knew him. She knew him as a kind man. Kinder than her. Kinder than anyone. She wanted that kindness. Craved it. Needed it. Managed to jam it into her work life, by hook and by crook. But I don't think Hank minded. At that point in his life, he needed what she offered, and though I don't think either of them ever thought they'd catch real feelings, they both absolutely did.

He kept her honest, she gave him options. He gave her moral dimension, she gave him self-esteem. They complemented each other perfectly, and I'm sorry that they never got a fair chance, really.

Sure, it was all essentially motivated by a desire to get good dick, but sometimes, that's all it needs to be.

Kurt Wagner

Uncanny X-Men: The Heroic Age, 2010.

Ahhh, Kurt . . . honestly, I don't think Hank and Kurt were ever shown to be quite as close on panel as you'd think they would be, in part because there's a One Blue Limit on X-Men teams for a while (seriously, check the X-Men team line-ups, and you'll realise that Hank and Kurt are pretty much never on the same team until 2015, with Amazing X-Men, a team Hank promptly leaves at issue #5).

But I like to think they're good friends, even if Kurt does fall for Hank's facade of being okay, just like a lot of other people. I like to think that Kurt represents a kind of ideal to Hank - he's what Hank, in many ways, wishes he could be. A better man. A happier man. A more hopeful man. A man who believes in a higher power, still. I certainly don't think it's a coincidence that it cuts Hank deep, when Kurt dies at Bastion's hands.

Steve Rogers

Secret Avengers vol. 1 #21, 2012.

Hank and Steve have an odd relationship. In a way, he does a lot for Hank, bolstering him during his time in the Avengers, treating him as a valued teammate - even if, as is typical of 70s writing styles, they can both come across as cunts to one another occasionally - and one of my favourite moments for Hank is in Avengers Annual #11, where Steve calls Hank out as a man who won't kill. Doesn't have it in him.

Which makes this moment, a sequel to what Steve pushes Hank to do in Secret Avengers #16, hurt so much. Steve had to know what it would cost Hank, to shortcut his way into an Oppenheimer arc, but he hoped the math would comfort Hank. I don't think it did.

I don't know if it was intentional, but it haunts me that both Scott and Steve use Hank (Scott during Secret Invasion, and Steve in SA #16) to commit acts of mass murder, and try to console him with the numbers of people saved through atrocity. Hank tried to escape all of that, fleeing from Utopia, and maybe he was naive to think a band of Secret Avengers would be a place to hide from doing bad things, but it doesn't change the essential fact. Scott and Steve used Hank to achieve their goals, and he had to just deal with it.

"Are you seriously asking a mutant what he'll do to avoid extinction?" Mindwiping Steve in New Avengers vol. 3 hurt, I'm sure, but it's a fine old thing, trying to morally grandstand to a man you explicitly used to make a nuclear bomb. A lot of mixed up history in that room.

Broo

Wolverine & the X-Men vol. 1 #7, 2012.

If only Hank's adopted sons were given as much attention and care as Wolverine's adopted daughters. Ah well. There was a lot of work being done over this run, to make it clear that Hank, Abigail and Broo were forming a family unit, including Abigail being there as Broo's parental figure during his graduation and a possible future showing Broo as head of S.W.O.R.D, but all of it eventually came to naught, which saddens me. Broo deserved better. So did Hank.

Time Displaced Beast

X-Men: Blue #35, 2018.

There was a kernel of an idea here.

It was inevitable that Hank was going to end up hating himself. He's a character largely defined by self-hatred, in most of his forms. The thread that never got pulled was the fact that, honestly?

Older Hank should hate younger Hank just as much.

Younger Hank is much closer to the man who turns them blue, who's ego tripping at Brand, than older Hank is. That's what leads him down this entire path, of magic and demon summoning and servitude, that's broken only by the intervention of other X-Men.

But, whatever. The era of lost potential, tbh.

. . . . . . . .

Oh, hey. You're still here?

Yeah, I guess there is someone missing, huh?

Simon Williams

Uncanny Avengers vol. 3 #28, 2017.

Avengers Annual #6, 1976.

X-Force vol. 6 #49, 2024.

Avengers vol. 3 #14, 1999.

Wonder Man vol. 2 #5, 1991.

Avengers Annual vol. 2 #1, 2012.

They complete one another.

They simply are their best selves around one another.

Even when sick, and twisted, and cruel, and beyond redemption, Hank couldn't bear for the possibility of harm to an invulnerable, immortal, ionic man. He would rather dash all of his plans, make it all for nothing, kill himself, than risk hurting Simon.

At the start of this whole ass breakdown, you said, all relationships have pros and cons. And I think that's true. Mostly. But when Hank and Simon are together, nothing can tear them apart, nothing can bring them down, nothing can stop them, nothing can keep them from doing the right thing.

I can't think of a negative to them being together.

They love each other.

Thanks for bearing with me. :)

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m1ckeyb3rry · 2 months

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No because I thought his LN was on crack or something especially when he had like his osha awakening moment like they fully wrote out all the details of him posing with the galaxy in the background surrounded by all the planets and the literal LETTERS floating above his head like???? Yeah I mean if I were an Aryu stan I would’ve taken more time to read but I also couldn’t get past the fact that he was so appalled by his lack of musical talent that he fr was sick in bed for three days BRO it was so goofy it kinda makes me wonder what he would’ve been like if he hadn’t been bullied though :(

I- THERES NO WAY??? THE GRIND IS TOO INTENSE OMG???? Glad you’re alive now though oh god allergies really suck

And no seriously like people think that writing is the only thing you’ll have going on like sorry bro your fav writes have lives?? Also considering the length of your fics generally you’d think they’d realize that it’s kinda insane for you to update so quickly??? And I’m ngl I was really impressed that you were churning out so many pieces in such a short period of time especially since they were all at the very least 6k or something like….

IM SO EXCITED ugh baby Karasu truly is too cute the epinagi panels make me wanna just squish his cheeks!!! But I have full faith in you your different fic verses always keep it unique even if some things might be similar (like fwtkac and freaky Friday) like I remember you saying they had some similar aspects too but they didn’t feel repetitive in the slightest so!!

Vibe checking is so real like I’m not about to make people think that I’m like THOSE anime enjoyers yk….its okay we’ve got you o7 bllk chatter sessions ftw>>>

Freak loser Rin confirmed guys….yeah I did feel a bit bad for Sae LMAO but erm yeah what an interesting kid Rin was…..The fact that they don’t have eyes sent me I saw someone post somewhere saying that Rin and Sae must be adopted because they have long lashes but their parents don’t even have eyes LMFAOOOO

PLEASE KANESHIRO GET KARASU AND YUKIMIYA IN THERE!!! Honestly I’m lowk conflicted about post nel arc on one hand I’m really excited because I wanna see everyone together again but on the other hand I’m like…how much more of bllk do we still have…..I need my content!! Dw we add the slice of life filler episode into the manifestation circle…it will happen! Wait I’m also kinda curious about how the nel offers work? I’ve seen people all over talking about how after this they’ll like split and go to their respective countries from which they selected in nel to go join clubs and whatnot and I’m like uhhh that doesn’t sound like getting the gang back together!!!!

BAROUU>> I hope more people stop with the red flag Barou trend now because this man is such green flag material….okay and um maybe we actually just have prophetic abilities I was being so unserious when I said that LMAOOOO soooo trust slice of life episode tabieitaken comeback soon!!!

-Karasu anon

HELP the way they described the letters and everything omg i was cackling…it felt like they were trying to give a serious backstory to a very unserious character which gave it a general cracky vibe 😭 and the lack of musical talent causing him to throw up was unreal like what even

HAHAHA the grind is always with me fr 😈🙏🏻 this was a while ago like circa 2021 so it’s been a bit 😫 unfortunately i do have a peanut allergy it’s like my debuff 😢

THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYINGGG bro i had written over a 100k words for that fic in like a month that’s legitimately longer than most published novels 😭 i feel like when i’m inspired i’m a very prolific writer (eg i’ve written probably close to 150k words for bllk since may??) but the downside is if i’m not into smth you’re not getting anything out of me for it

OKAY YAY i’m glad it doesn’t come off across as too similar…i do think part of it stems from me just being the one writing it so i notice even the smallest similarities even though they wouldn’t really bother a reader necessarily?? at least i hope they wouldn’t 😓 and yessss squishy cheeks baby karasu that’s exactly the vibe he’s supposed to have he’s such a cutie i want to eat him

fr i need to differentiate myself…like yes i watch anime and write fanfiction and am a LITTLE not normal abt certain characters but i still shower and have friends/hobbies and touch grass 😔

HELP omg idk what the deal w the itoshi parents being so mysterious is…like is it meant to represent how sae was the only family rin cared abt?? because that’s lowkey crazy if that’s the case 😭 freak loser rin we’ve known it from the start 😩 need the world to get on our wavelength

ooh it might be how it is irl where like players play for their respective clubs but then for the world cup they come back and represent their national teams!! so we’ll have an arc or so of them learning how to play pro football, introducing more players so that the stakes for u20 wc are higher (because there’ll be established dynamics with other international players) and then everyone gets back together to play for japan in the wc

YES FREE BAROU FROM THE RED FLAG ALLEGATIONS PRONTO HE IS TRULY THE OPPOSITE!! and FRR we are bllk oracles or smth…seeing karasu yukimiya and kunigami relevance in the future of pxg vs bm 🧿🕯️

#answered asks

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taegularities · 10 months

Note

HEY RiD ! How are you honeybuns 💗✨️ Life has been kicking my ass for a while but there is still hope for me ..Anxiety and panic attacks are the freaking worst ..I have never experienced one before so it was kinda terrifying i was literally watching my own horror movie..but thats not the point ..the point is that YOU AUTHOR RID ARE GUILTY FOR RAISING MY STANDARDS ! Like hello am i supposed to die single 😭 why would you do this huh ! ANSWER ME ....was/is there someone or something that inspired/s you to write your characters this way ..and CMI jk !! OMG His character is phenomenal ..Oh the man he is ..its like when he loves ..he just loves yk ..there is no limit /boundary to his love and affection ..i cant help but imagine that if he and oc were to wed ..he is probably gonna be the crying and throwing up bcz his heart is bursting out of love and he is so freaking drunk over her ..i just know that oc would have to koala hug him so he stops crying lmao 🥹😭 ..These freaking fictional men istg ..And dont even get me started on dates ..i swear half of the time i am just scrolling my fav aus and being delusional while on the other hand the poor guy is trying to talk to me and banging his head on the table 💀 i just hope you are taking care of your health cuz we are the sensitive gang (one thing goes wrong and i know i am already going down the rabbit hole ) ..Also just curious (if you wanna share ) How was your first date experience like? Your first crush ? Cuz there is this guy in my Arts class and i am crushing so hard on him like he is so freaking sweet and charming ..He passed my vibe check on the first day 🙂 i get butterflies (alot ) whenever he looks at me.he is not the first guy yk like i have been on a lot of dates and stuff ..i did find them attractive but it is just so different with him ..like as much as i want to believe gettinf butterflies and heart skipping beats is real ..it has never happened to me and i am just going crazy ..it is scary as well cuz no guy has ever held this much power over me 🕳🚶‍♀️ Sometimes over pinkies would touch accidently and i am already melting in a puddle 🙂😭 What the hell is happening ..it is like Cmi yk..i just know that if he tries hard enough he can break my heart and i would gladly let him( this thought scares the shit outta me ) ..

awh man, living for the chaos in this ask lol it's so all over the place 🤧 i'm okay! winter break shall give me some peace of mind. how are youuuu?… totally.. cmi jk keeps raising my standard, too :') thinking about them hurts me bc i can't wait to experience such a love one day, too </3 and you will, as well!! i know some people are odd and make people lose hope, but i want to believe that there are a bunch out there who are just right for us and know how to make us happy 💕 tbh, i didn't base these characters on anyone i know, but rather… oc is someone i strive to be and jk is the kind of person i would want to love :(

my first date? hmmmm… honestly, a bit awkward? :'D we were at his place and watching something, but i know he was looking at me through the tv's reflection? and then we had more dates and our first kiss kinda went.. very wrong lmao but all that was part of something that bloomed into something beautiful 🌹 you'll be okay, love!! enjoy the feeling your crush evokes!! manifesting so much happiness for you 🥺

(also omg i gotta ask before i go all overthinking mode.. you said arts class? but you're 18+ right? 😭 since i have a minors dni policy!! pls lmk <3)

#thank you so much for reading and rambling <3 #notes for rid 🌹#anon #fic: colour me in

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makeste · 4 years

Text

BnHA Chapter 299: No Chains Left

Previously on BnHA: Horikoshi was all “and then AFO broke out all of the inmates from six other prisons and took a nap. well anyways, here’s the hospital angst.” Kacchan woke up two days later and was all, “WAIT BUT HOW ARE DEKU AND TODOROKI AND ALL OF THE OTHER CHARACTERS EXCEPT IIDA DOING” and then we cut to Shouto’s room where the other U.A. kids were sitting around being Mutually Traumatized and giving each other moral support and such. Everyone was alll, “...”, and then the rest of the Todofam showed up, INCLUDING POSSIBLY REI?! which, omg. The chapter ended with Kacchan STOMPING THROUGH THE HALLS all “WHADDYA MEAN DEKU HASN’T WOKEN UP YET”, dragging along Satou and Mineta behind him, fueled by the power of ALL OF THE FUCKS HE NOW GIVES. He gives so many fucks now you guys. This boy cares so much he can probably deduct it on his taxes.

Today on BnHA: SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO GIVE A LOT OF FUCKS, the story cuts abruptly to Hawks, freshly recovering from his near-death experience, and pondering the threads that have weaved the tapestry of his life and led him to this moment. Basically he grew up in poverty with his Jerk Dad and Jerk Mom until his dad got arrested one day and his mom sent him off to go Find Money Or Something, and so he rescued a busload of people and found himself a new career. Back in the present day, Hawks and Jeanist ride around town in Jeanist’s Jamborghini having awkward encounters with civilians in a country on the brink of social collapse, and visiting Hawks’s mother’s home. Hawks is all “I know from an outsider’s perspective it must look like my life currently sucks, but now that the HPSC is gone, my public image is shot, and my parents are finally out of my life, I’m actually feeling SURPRISINGLY GOOD.” Anyway so he’s gonna go meet up with Endeavor now, and p.s. this chapter was fucking fantastic though, damn.

oh my god?? is this Hawks narration?? something about him growing up watching the heroes on TV and thinking of them as fictional characters

okay I scrolled down a little bit more to see the rest of that “Keigo” panel, and wow

this is basically a shed. poor boy definitely grew up rough. let me tell you guys, I came in here ready for some BakuDeku shenanigans; I was not prepared for Hawks Flashback Angst. I AM HERE FOR IT, but also wow I gotta brace myself now lol

HELLO MISTER HAWKS’S JERK DAD, SIR

BnHA sure does have an array of Jerk Dads, doesn’t it. makes me appreciate characters like Masaru and JirouDad all the more for bucking the trend

anyway. so Horikoshi, you really thought that one itty bitty chapter of hospital catharsis would be enough to calm us all before you went right back to showing us child abuse huh. my god man can we rest

BABY HAWKS

swear to god this kid can’t be more than five or six, and yet he has this completely blank look on his face even with his dad looming over him being all threatening and shit. like he’s shut down his emotions to protect himself. imagine what has to happen to a child for him to have learned this at such a young age. fuck

AND MEANWHILE THIS GUY

don’t mingle with humans?? not “other” humans, just humans?? what is this implying here?? and also holy shit Hawks definitely didn’t inherit his looks from his dad orz

then again he doesn’t really bear much of a resemblance to his strung-out mom here either

omg omg omg. and this child is basically trapped here in this environment with these two people. this explains a SHITLOAD about Hawks’s personality though you guys. his ability to completely separate his real thoughts from the face he presents to the outside world. his pragmatic approach to analyzing and solving problems. his layers of emotional walls. turns out almost none of that came from the HPSC training -- that was all learned hands-on in his own personal do-or-die survival nightmare childhood!! oh, boy

and small wonder then that he latched on to Endeavor so strongly if he really is the one who brought down his dad and inadvertently saved him from this. also, just putting this out there, I know people are always talking about him and Dabi being foils, and I think it’s very interesting how Touya grew up in a household where he saw firsthand the dark side of hero society, and so ended up becoming a villain in order to bring it down. whereas young Keigo had almost the exact opposite experience, growing up experiencing the dark side of villain society and becoming a hero in order to bring about a world where no one else has to experience that. just. both of them are so determined not to become their fathers. some interesting parallels there

so Hawks was sort of an accident after his parents had “thanks for helping me not get caught after I killed that guy” sex, and now this little boy is growing up in squalor and being beaten by his father for things like Sitting In The Wrong Out-Of-The-Way Corner Trying Not To Be A Bother To Anybody. holy fuck. this is so rough to read through you guys

wait so does Jerk Dad have a an eyeball manipulation quirk?? because he doesn’t have the wings like his son, but wth are these things??

this presumably also means that Keigo has never been to school or anything either. he basically doesn’t exist. he thinks heroes are fictional characters, he doesn’t realize that they’re real people. these are people who could help him if he could escape and find them, but he doesn’t know, and they don’t know about him

OH MY GOD HE’S JUST SITTING IN HIS CORNER HUGGLING HIS ENDEAVOR PLUSH OH MY GOD

how could this child possibly have an anti-fandom when he’s done NOTHING WRONG HIS ENTIRE LIFE. huh. just explain that to me. lol I mean I’m not looking to pick a fight with anyone, but also, MAYBE I AM, idk?? this kid has gotten me all riled up lmao

anyways, Protect Keigo 2021, and thank you Horikoshi for these three very terrible pages. I am pleased to inform you that you’ve effectively gotten your point across and you may now commence saving this kid already

YAY

oh no, Keigo’s dumbass jerk dad tried to steal a car and the popo nabbed his ass and now his mom can’t just sit around neglecting her VERY YOUNG SON all day long, oh horrors. sorry lady my tiny violin is on backorder. just imagine that I’m playing a very sarcastic song on it for you

anyway so what are you gonna do now, abandon him? I can hardly imagine he’d be worse off, if anything it might be a near-instant improvement

LMAO HE’S ALL “WAIT WHAT ENDEAVOR’S A REAL FUCKING DUDE?!”

AND THEY SAY THAT A HERO CAN SAVE US~~~~ I’M NOT GONNA STAND HERE AND WAAAAAIT~~~~~ I’LL HOLD ONTO THE WINGS OF THE EAGLES, WATCH AS WE ALL FLY AWAAAAAAY~~~~

lol what a randomly pivotal moment in his young life. TIME TO GO MAKE THESE MEMES INTO DREAMS YOUNG ONE

anyway so his mom freaked out and grabbed him and they wound up at a train station with her TELLING HIM TO GO GET HER SOME MONEY, oh my god. SURE MOM LEMME JUST WALTZ RIGHT ON DOWN TO THE “JOBS FOR FIVE-YEAR-OLDS” STORE AND TELL THEM I NEED SOME CASH. ffff manifesting someone to come help him in 3... 2...

...

SIGH, JUST GO RESCUE THE PEOPLE FROM THE BUS, KEIGO. is this the outfit he was wearing when that happened?? it must be, right?? I can’t imagine them surviving more than a couple days out here unless this starts getting REALLY dark in a way I know that even Horikoshi won’t explore, so yeah. cut to the HPSC now please. never thought we’d be glad to see them. I mean sure, it may be an “out of the frying pan...” case, but good god

THANK YOU!!

and I guess it was his mom’s eyeball quirk then. anyway, whatever, see you again never, hopefully. lol oh man. thaaaat, was upsetting. need to center myself here for a sec. NAMASTE

OH YAY THE PRESENT

so we cut from Baby Hawks Angst straight to Present Day Hawks Angst, huh. not that this exhausted and traumatized lil lad isn’t still a baby to me too, I’ll have you know

BEST JEANIST, ALWAYS WITH THE JOKES

“WHEW, THOUGHT YOU DIED ON ME FOR A SEC THERE KID.” lmao. Caleb will no doubt ruin this by making his word choice all stiffly formal as usual, so I’m just going to treasure this “WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT, I’M FRESH OUT OF FUCKS” version of Jeanist while I can

look at him, driving his Jeanistmobile

again, is it any wonder Kacchan was bitching about Endeavor’s dinky little car when he was used to riding around town in style like this. anyone else staring at this panel trying to figure out how this car is somehow secretly made of jeans

NOOOOO

FUCK YOU DABI LMAO. PUTTING THESE VOICE ACTORS OUT OF A JOB ONE BY ONE

anyway so Jeanist is all “GOOD THING IT’S THE FUTURE AND WE’RE SO GOOD AT MEDICAL SCIENCE” to handwave how Hawks went from one step shy of being a very handsome corpse, to sitting around texting Jeanist in a car all of two days later

OH MY GOD, AND FINALLY AN EXPLANATION FOR THIS

wait a minute. I’m so confused lmfao. soooo, was Hawks all “anyway, here’s Jeanist’s dead body, you can examine it but please don’t look at him too closely and also I’m gonna need that back unharmed.” how tf did you pull that off lmao

(ETA: also isn’t this technically confirmation of the ol’ Noumu Jeanist theory lol. I’m gonna go ahead and say it is.)

NO BUT PLEASE, CONTINUE. I unironically love reading Horikoshi’s overly convoluted “SEE IT’S NOT A PLOT HOLE” explanations

lkldslfk so wait, you’re telling me Hawks convinced Dabi and the League to put Jeanist’s body in storage, and basically just hoped they wouldn’t use him for any experiments until he could put his plan into action and have the HPSC’s people break in and find and revive him?? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG. A FOOLPROOF PLAN IF I’VE EVER HEARD ONE

fff this man really asked Jeanist to risk it all to prop up his little cover story, and Jeanist was all “sure why not” omfg. anyways, thanks for recapping all of this out loud for no particular reason in your car conversation you two

LMAO NOW WHAT

TROUBLE YOU SAY? GOOD THING THE NEW NUMBER ONE HERO IS ON THE JOB THEN

okay no it’s just some random thugs strolling around terrorizing the downtown. fuck ‘em. so Jeanist is making short work of them now

uh oh

won’t come? not can’t, but won’t?? what???

WOW

well I guess that makes the local heroes A BUNCH OF SHITHEADS now doesn’t it?? jesus

and okay, serious question, if the cops are spread too thin and the heroes have literally walked out on the job, what exactly is stopping everyone from deciding to use their quirks to defend themselves, legal or not? nothing, as far as I can tell. society just got a hell of a lot more chaotic

anyway so this is an interesting panel here

man, Dabi really did pull it off, didn’t he. well anyway so here’s that better world all of the villains were wanting, you guys! isn’t it so great?? everyone’s terrified and angry and losing hope and society is inches away from collapsing into total anarchy! but hey, at least we exposed the number one hero as a hypocrite

anyway so what are these guys up to

fucking hell, he’s visiting his mom. I really wasn’t prepared to commit this much emotional energy towards reading this chapter today. BUT VERY WELL, WE PRESS ON

?? wait she’s not there?

is this supposed to explain how Dabi knew who Hawks really was? except that there’s the little matter of how he even know where to find his mother in the first place. feels like we’re still missing something there, but oh well

OH MY GOD

RHA I TAKE BACK EVERY WORD I EVER SPOKE AGAINST YOU. YOU ARE A SCANLATION GROUP FILLED WITH ANGELS LMAO. I WILL TAKE THIS PANEL IN MY HANDS, AND TREASURE IT AND KEEP IT SAFE

ANYWAY, BECAUSE MY TIRED BIRD SON’S LIFE SUCKED SO MUCH ALREADY, IT TURNS OUT HE’S ACTUALLY PLEASED WITH THIS NEW TURN OF EVENTS LOL HOW ABOUT THAT

GOOD FOR YOU BBY. YOU GO OUT THERE AND BE YOUR OWN PERSON

and in all seriousness, I love that identity he chooses -- chooses, because it actually is him making a choice now, possibly for the very first time in his life -- is “guy who helps people”, though. it really is nothing short of miraculous that he held on to that kind of optimism and desire to do good even with everything he’s been through. there were so many times he could have chosen to turn his back on the world in retaliation for the way it treated him. but he didn’t!! and here he is now, finally free, and what he wants to do with the rest of his life now is simply to help others. anyway please excuse me for a moment, I need to go find some sort of basket or a big vase to put all of my fresh new Hawks Feels in, pardonne-moi

YEAH BOIIIIII

“FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS, MISTER JEANIST, WHERE DID YOU FIND YOUSELF THAT SWEETASS CAR.” hey, all I’m saying is if this boy’s wings really aren’t growing back, he’s gonna need to find himself a new means of transportation y’know?

oh my god you guys it’s a flashback to his mom buying him the Endeavor plushie when he was like two because, and I quote, ALL MIGHT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE

oh my god oh my god. my boy out here with a new lease on life finding hope in the darkest of times

wasn’t your throat supposed to be all fucked up lmao. Horikoshi was suddenly all “oh shit the VAs are gonna be pissed at me if I keep this up huh”

“that’s why Bubaigawara was such a great guy” motherfucker IT IS A TERRIBLE DAY FOR RAIN. FORECAST SAID NOTHING ABOUT THIS

:’)

yes ma’am. yes indeed. confirmed, I really will straight up fight some motherfuckers for this child. well not really, but YOU KEEP YOUR DISCOURSE OFF MY LAWN AND OUT OF MY BLOG YOU HEAR. THIS IS A HAWKS-FRIENDLY SPACE. WE RESPECT TAKAMI KEIGO IN THESE STREETS

and he’s saying (or is he thinking?? what a weirdly shaped speech bubble this is) that even if what Dabi said about the Todoroki household is true, “I’m not sure it’s the same now.” which happens to be ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. man this whole chapter really is all about saying “fuck the past” and moving forward and I am living for it

SON!!!!

“the first step is at my beginning” fklkjlk. what an iconic fucking line??

AND HIS WINGS!!!! THEY ACTUALLY ARE GROWING BACK AHHHHHHH. “PUT A RAINCHECK ON THAT CAR, JEANIST-SAN.” THE HAWKSMOBILE CAN WAIT, RIGHT NOW HE HAS TO GO INSERT HIMSELF BACK INTO THE TODODRAMA WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT

you guys. I came here ready for some BAKUDEKU HOSPITAL ANGST, and I got DIDDLY SHIT of that, and none of my other kids were even in this chapter, but!!! ASK ME IF I CARE LMAO omg. because bird son is hanging with his new best friend, and he’s out here Finding Himself and picking up the pieces and putting them back together stronger than ever because RESILIENCE HAS A NAME, AND IT’S SPELLED H-A-W-K-S, and you guys. profound, my love for this child. holy shit. hey google, play Silence by Marshmello

#bnha 299 #takami keigo #hawks (bnha)#best jeanist #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #I found peace in your violence #can't tell me there's no point in trying #I'm at one #and I've been quiet for too long

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limeinaltime · 2 years

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AU idea: Basically, R's a good friend to X. She's still the same sadistic bitch, the only difference is that she's nice to X and only X. Like, she respects her opinion, stops when X tells her to stop, and when X gets angry with her, she does everything she can to make it up to her. Is this unrealistic? Yes. Is this something that would never happen? Absolutely. Do I give a shit? No. Absolutely not. I'm making R and X's friendship healthy AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME!!

JCJ's shitty programming, manipulation and abuse towards robots is the real villain of X/R/hj

Honestly, the reason I drifted away from X/R in the first place was because they just reminded me of pre-season 5 Catradora, but without the lingering chemistry that made Catradora eventually work (Catra was a huge inspiration for R’s character). If R was nice to X and X only, X would still feel uncomfortable with how she treats everyone else, and that would create the divide that leads to them falling out as friends, and R becoming joining the antagonist cast of the two AUs she exists in. She does eventually come around, but so much damage has been done to her and X's relationship that the two need time apart to recover (mostly R, since X has had time to develop and knows they don't work as friends... yet).

Honestly, I do kind of want to do an analysis of R and why she's such a harsh, cold bitch, so I'm just going to use this ask as an excuse to do that. You can throw some of it into your AU if you want, but I feel like I haven't thrown enough of R's character out there for people to make a solid conclusion about who she is as a person. She is a fucked-up person who’s done terrible things to the people around her, but I don’t want to write her as some one-dimensional monster.

R is just as traumatized as the other drones, even if she doesn't show it as much. The company built her to be a "copy" to X in terms of power and strength, but no matter what the company did to upgrade her, she could never reach the standard X set just by existing. She was considered JC Jensen's cool new toy while X was more like the monster they kept in their basement (this wasn't entirely an exaggeration), but thanks to highly advanced artificial intelligence, R knew that she was only "good enough". Second best to that tall, quiet freak the company kept around instead of just tossing into the scrap heap. She is aware of M.O.M and the circumstances behind X's conception, and isn't above using that to make herself feel above her self-proclaimed "rival". X not fighting back is just fuel for the fire. On one hand, that just encourages young R to hit harder, to assert her dominance, but on the other hand, it pisses her off that X doesn't seem to consider R someone worth fighting. That creates the fucked-up cycle that is their relationship.

Aside from X and S, R was friends and honestly kind of popular among the other regular IDs, who though she was really cool due to her being an artificial copy of what could qualify as a robot god. Several of them got roped into the bullying X put up with growing up, and R isolated her further from the others to hold onto that popularity she had. She lost all of them when the Internecion Drones were wiped out, and puts a lot of blame on X for not being able to stop them from dying (she doesn't know that all the IDs went berserk due to overheating and cannibalized each other). Her dislike towards the DDs is mostly due to the fact that despite having the names of R's old classmates, they can never replace the friends she lost, and in R's eyes, can never live up to the standards their namesakes set. If anything, they remind her too much of X, too passive, too weak, too human. This manifests as her rough and cruel treatment of them, in some buried, skewed hope that she can beat that out of them and make them into drone who will survive. The reason R holds onto X so much is because she's the closest thing to her old life that's left. Q is basically a glorified drug dealer and S has always been useless and terrible at being a war/murder machine anyway, so all that's left is the freak she bullied regularly as a kid. Fun.

X's empathy and passive nature (as well as her lack of communication about how she feels) pisses R off since she thinks that's the reason all her old friends died, and that she's only spread it to the runts who have to carry a legacy behind their serial designations that they don't even know about. She sees this mission against the Worker Drones as a means to make up for the agency and power JCJ stole from her and her old friends, and she takes it out on X when X starts to question the true nature of their mission before eventually driving X away. This toxic behavior also spreads to how she treats Q and S, who both end up leaving her. After a lot of violence, killing, fighting and shouting and character growth, X finally reaches a point in her own development where she can healthily express herself. She knows that R has been hurt and traumatized in different ways then what she’s went through, but that gives her no right to take her pain out on others, especially on her students. Trauma shouldn’t be used as an excuse to inflict that upon someone else. It’s a twisted, ugly cycle, and in the end, R is the last chain holding everyone to it.

R isn’t an irredeemable monster, even if the company wanted her to be one, so she’s smart enough to realize that she’s done a lot of damage to the people around her, so she leaves. in HPE, she’s joined by 12 and 10, and while 10 isn’t exactly apologetic about her shitty behavior, 12 is remorseful, and she and R talk and learn to let go of their fear and pride, which opens the door to more introspection and growth. Is R a grouchy bitch, even after the introspection and time away from the people she’s hurt? Yes, but she’s more like a crotchety old grandma who lets kids sit on her porch, and becomes like a slight parallel to X as 12 and 10 have two daughters, 2 and Ashe. R is eventually able to apologize and express remorse for her actions, and while she is met with mixed responses, X forgives her and the two are able to understand each other’s own trauma and suffering under the company’s hand, and while they don’t ever really become friends, they are no longer enemies, and R is able to let herself become the better person the company denied her from becoming.

TL;DR All these robots need therapy and to put a billionaire company six feet under.

#Serial Designation R #Hell. Pain Even. (Murder Drones Edition)#deus ex murder machina #oc #asks

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iheartbookbran · 3 years

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Ok so actually my biggest problem with the whole “Daenerys will burn KL” theory—not even the Mad Queen Dany theory, which is of course very sexist for obvious reasons, but just like, the idea that Dany will ~accidentally~ ignite the wildfire in the city, burning it all to the ground. That, at first, doesn’t sound that bad, but the longer I think about it the more I hate it because tbh it doesn’t do anything for her character? And also… that fate for her is just down right cruel.

Like, the most frequent argument I see on why this would be at all satisfactory for Dany’s arc is basically that it would be a sort of lesson for her about the dangers of unchecked power and the real threat the Dragons can pose on humans and that she shouldn’t use them to fight against other people. And that’s all well and good, excellent message… except that’s not something Dany’s ever really needed to learn? Not anymore that her fellow rulers, which I will touch on more detail later, but in general Dany has seen what the abuse of power can do. Starting with her conflicting feelings regarding Viserys and how she recognizes that even though he was her brother and she loved him, he also abused his power over her as her older brother, her only family and her king; she feels guilt about the atrocities Drogo committed to the lhazarene and tries to help them; she feels so much guilt about not handling things correctly in Astapor that she decides to throw away all her plans to go to Westeros and instead stays in Meereen.

And about not knowing the true danger that her dragons can pose? I mean, this is the same girl that literally agonizes across several of her ADWD chapters because Drogon killed a child, and then takes the extreme measure of caging Rhaegal and Viserion to prevent that from ever happening again. I think she’s at least a little bit aware that the dragons can be dangerous, thank you very much.

Ok so this got long...

Anyways, the only time Dany legit uses Drogon to harm someone and not just as bluff was at the house of the Undying, where she was being attacked, and in Astapor… and like, lmao, that asshole Kraznys mo Nakloz and the rest of his slaver buddies deserved it. Don’t at me. Also, Dany’s hardly the only one with a big magical and deadly beast at her disposal, why didn’t Robb had to go through some horrifying traumatic incident to learn he shouldn’t use Grey Wind in battle to tear his enemies’ throats. Bran will be learning about the dangers of abusing power, but that’s linked to his magic powers and an actual reprehensible thing he’s doing, not the use of his glorified prehistoric dog to kill, which he’s done, just like Robb. By all means let the narrative hold Dany accountable for her mistakes… but her actual mistakes and not shit she has no control over, because she doesn’t have much control over Drogon or the other dragons even though she’s trying to, and that’s very obvious in her last ADWD chapter where she’s delirious and Drogon could kill her at any moment, and she knows that.

The other big argument people make for Dany burning KL (even if it’s by accident!) is that it will teach her about the price of war, that someone as young as her shouldn’t be leading armies and conquering kingdoms, and that fighting for the Iron Throne is not a worthy cause, and I feel like that misses the actual point of her story by a mile. First of all because a) Dany is hardly the only teenage ruler in the story and b) this is a fantasy medieval story, a lot of the characters shouldn’t be doing the things they do, aaaand yet. Also speaking of other teenage rulers with far more power that they should have—Robb and Jon, being the biggest examples.

Granted, Robb and Jon aren’t exactly successful during their time as rulers, they’re literally betrayed and killed by their own men (even if Jon will technically come back for round 2 of bullshit he’s too tired for). But the moral of their stories is not that they lost because theirs was an unworthy cause and they were stupid kids wholly unprepared for their roles. And I actually partially agree! They are just kids, including Dany, and they shouldn’t be responsible for looking after so many others and going to battle, but their cause is still just and worthy, even with all the mistakes they make along the way. Robb didn’t loose because he was wrong in demanding justice for his family or trying to protect the riverlands from the Lannisters and their minions, he lost because Tywin Lannister was a giant coward who couldn’t take him out in a fair fight.

Likewise, it isn’t wrong of Jon to try to incorporate refugees from beyond the Wall into Westeros. He’s not too stupid and honorable to do politics like his father (how I hate when people insult Jon and Ned like that), and while he did some very obvious mistakes that inevitably ended in a coup and in him dying, this is more connected to his inability to let go of his ties with his family (mainly Arya or who he believes to be her), and in isolating himself from his friends and the people he could actually trust.

I’ve always thought that Dany and Jon share a parallel narrative within the story, so while Jon is struggling with that Dany is faced with similar problems. She cages her dragons, that to her represent the only family she has left, and she tries to compromise with the slavers, marry a man she doesn’t love, pretend she’s ok with reopening the fighting pit. While she tries her best to rule wisely in Meereen, it all comes at the cost of betraying herself and her beliefs, so it’s no surprise when it all crashes around her and she’s betrayed and nearly killed. Ironically, it is Drogon who comes to rescue her.

If they are monsters, so am I.—Daenerys II, ADWD.

This is hands down one of my favorite Dany quotes from the whole series, and I hate that it’s been given such a negative connotation in the fandom, when for me it represents Dany’s humanity and compassion at the fullest.

GRRM has a knack for humanizing the ‘monsters’ of his story, for showing the good in the outcasts and the ugly and the scary. He embraces their ‘otherness’ and makes them the heroes of his stories; Arya, Bran, Brienne, Dany, Tyrion, Jon, Theon and many others are all compared to monsters or beasts at one point or another in the books.

Dany sees herself in her dragons, literal monsters in every sense of the word. Later on she faces Drogon inside the pit, and in that moment you could say that she accepts that ‘monstrous’ part of her, and in doing so she’s saved from her fate of dying at the hands of the men who would crucify innocent children and gleefully profit off of the suffering of their fellow human beings while watching them fight each other to the death for their own amusement. Now tell me who’s the real monster in this situation.

But shortly before that happens, Dany is able to see the humanity in Tyrion, an outcast who has been branded as monstrous and unlovable due to his disability all his life, a man who has come to believe in his abusers’ rhetoric about him so strongly that he’s started to act cruel and detached. She saves his life. She sees value in his life when few others would, because she cares.

I’ve always find it funny that the “dragons plant no trees” is—another—example fans use to argue in favor of Dany’s descent into Darkness™ because the actual scene goes like this:

You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros.

"It is such a long way," she complained. "I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl."

No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words.—Daenerys X, ADWD.

Now am I the only one who finds it at least a bit relevant that it’s freaking Jorah Mormont aka Jorah the Enslaver whom Dany’s subconscious, at her literal lowest moment, utilizes to represent this particular thought, which btw I’ve always interpreted as Dany’s own self-loathing manifesting in her, and this is something she’s actually always struggled with—the idea that she’s not enough and she’s failing. Because above all things, even Westeros or the Iron Throne, what Dany wants is peace, she wants to plant trees.

When Dany made her descent, Reznak and Skahaz dropped to their knees. "Your Worship shines so brightly, you will blind every man who dares to look upon you," said Reznak. […] This match will save our city, you will see."

"So we pray. I want to plant my olive trees and see them fruit." Does it matter that Hizdahr's kisses do not please me? Peace will please me. Am I a queen or just a woman?—Daenerys VII, ADWD.

But of course the world doesn’t work like that, and so long as there’s Jorahs and Tywins and Eurons out there, men who would take the freedom of humans and submit them to their will, Dany can’t have the luxury of peace, just like Jon can’t have the luxury of belonging and family so long as there’s people still beyond the Wall who need his protection.

And I think that’s fine. It’s fine that Dany failed, it will help her develop as a character and realize that there’s no room to compromise with slavers, the metaphorical monsters of the story who do far more harm than the other more literal ‘monsters’ of the story. So that when she has to face down Euron Greyjoy—who btw, there’s a high chance he will end up stealing one of Dany’s dragons via Victarion using Dragonbinder… y’know, as in enslaving one of her children and using said dragon to inflict god knows what horrors, yet not many people ever consider this for some reason?—she will know. When she has to face down the Others, the magical ice fairies with no regard for human life, she will know.

That’s why I believe that it would make absolutely no sense for Dany to have to go through such a tragic and traumatic experience like burning a whole city even by pure accident, over something that’s either never been a problem with her character or she’s well into her way of learning anyways, so it would just feel repetitive. As I have pointed out, she’s already reached one of the lowest moments of her arc. Not saying there will be no other blows for her, and probably the destruction of KL will be one of them, and knowing Dany she will feel responsibility over it no matter what, but that doesn’t mean she has to be the culprit, intentional or otherwise.

#yes i wrote this whole thing because i actually love the ‘if they are monsters so am i’ quote and i’m trying to push my agenda on others #jk i spend like half a minute in an anti dany blog and i was like. war #but i don’t regret it so #daenerys targaryen #stormborn #pro daenerys #asoiaf #asoiaf meta #a song of ice and fire #valyrianscrolls #meta #my meta

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beauzos · 2 years

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Something kind of irritates me about how both the writers and fans of Earthbound treat early game Porky. Like, it feels like people can often be unduly harsh on Porky at the start of the game when I don’t think that is really warranted or intended by the actual writing. I think the game itself is at times meanspirited towards Porky unnecessarily, but obviously fans themselves will take it further than that.

I feel like when people demonize early game Porky, it undermines his corruption arc in Earthbound and even beyond to his eventual appearance in Mother 3. He isn’t a bad person at the start of Earthbound, that’s the point. I feel like early game Porky’s portrayal is very deliberately crafted to be where he is flawed in a very normal way for a 13 year old boy to be; he is annoying (and let’s be real-- we all were at that age), cowardly, and sometimes selfish.

But when people portray him as intentionally malicious, a bully, cruel, so on, it feels very contradictory to what’s actually in the text. Like, his worst crime is basically that he’s kind of annoying to both characters and, perhaps, the player. He’s really childish, but overall well-meaning. I think the flavor text in some fights (such as Porky apologizing profusely to the enemy and/or Ness(?)) along with how he is genuinely unwilling to be nasty to Ness in a rarely seen text if you tell him no twice when he asks for help (being “if you don’t help me, I’ll say something that’ll cut you like a knife... alright, I won’t say anything to hurt you”) indicates his well-meaning nature, even when he tries to be unkind.

I tend to think that a lot of Porky’s flaws pretty distinctly stem from his parents being abusive, self-centered freaks, which isn’t anything ground-breaking to point out, but still. I won’t dive too much into the conjecture, but I think his parents make it obvious that there’s a reason Porky may be the way he is. He’s scared of conflict, clearly stemming from the harsh way his father in particular can punish him and Picky, manifesting in both minor and major ways (such as his cowardliness during battles with relatively weak enemies + being afraid of Buzz Buzz’s prophecy and hoping he isn’t part of it) and he has to rely on others to help him get out of messes he’s made.

I just feel like he’s set up as this minorly annoying kid to make it more interesting when he surprisingly, against the odds and his own previously stated fear of being part of the prophecy, joins on the side of Giygas. The obvious subtext there is that Giygas has taken over his brain in the way he has done to many people and animals across the world. There is still the question of how much of this is Giygas’s will and how much of it is just Porky once he gets some sort of agency and power in his life, especially considering that he now has a lot of power over adults, along with being able to, to some extent, control his own father with money (or buy his love, depending on your interpretation) now during the Fourside sequence.

I mention that even writers sometimes attack Porky in this way, and I generally am referring to the official Mother novelizations by Saori Kumi. Her interpretation attacks his character from the very start, portrayed as a stupid, brutish bully that everyone hates because he’s just straight up evil and cruel. Her entire novel undermines a lot of things about Earthbound, but because it’s official I take especial ire towards it. This is not the point of Porky’s early game character. He is there to juxtapose how downright vicious Porky becomes by the time you meet him in the Cave of the Past at end, having become so self-serving and uncaring that he turns on his own boss and inadvertently gets him killed by the Chosen Four.

Porky can’t just be terrible from the start. That is not the point. The fact that he comes from such humble, typical flaws that eventually bloom into someone who is genuinely very evil by the time you encounter him as a child slave-owning, animal abusing, kidnapping immortal bastard is part of what makes Porky one of the best written characters in the series. You can’t just forget that context and write Porky off as inevitably evil like that. He’s one of the only characters with an actual arc like that, and it has a huge payoff. I just hate seeing people mess with that.

#Psy's no punctuation posts #mother tag

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in-tua-deep · 4 years

Text

SO i watched the old guard and loved it and i have a habit of combining things i love and it’s 1am and i can’t get to sleep until i purge this from my brain i think SO consider this

Five jumps in time into the apocalypse and - he dies. Of course he dies. Maybe it’s the time jump itself, managing to rip himself apart because he tried too much too soon. Maybe it’s the apocalypse itself that kills him. Regardless, he dies.

And then he wakes up. And he’s fine. And he continues on.

Except - he has weird dreams. He dreams of - of all these people? He dreams that they’re in the apocalypse as well. It’s weird. He would brush it off but, well, he keeps dreaming of them. Again. And again. And again.

(He likes dreaming of them, honestly. When he doesn’t dream of them he dreams of ash and fire and his siblings dead and decaying and wailing at him for failing them.)

He continues to live in the apocalypse and years pass and - he’s not getting older. He cuts his leg open on some rocks, and it heals way too quickly. All of his injuries are like that, actually.

(He spends a whole week starving to death over and over again once. It isn’t pretty. He doesn’t even know he’s dying.)

Eventually he comes to a conclusion - his time jump fucked him up. He’s in a permanent... stasis? Sort of? He keeps continuously returning to the state he was when he jumped through time, including his body now? Rejecting injuries? Presumably because he wasn’t injured when he jumped?

It makes sense to Five, shhh.

And then he gets picked up by the commission. and then he doesn’t shoot JFK. and then he goes home.

(He keeps dreaming about His People. They aren’t in the apocalypse when he isn’t, which is nice. They’re probably some weird manifestation of his subconscious, considering his brain keeps casting them as people during the time periods he’s visiting)

Now I know what you’re thinking - Five is dreaming about these glorious weirdos in the apocalypse, obviously they would try to find him because they’re dreaming about him as well, right?

See, the thing is this: Andy doesn’t remember the exact date she first had a dream about The Boy.

(The Boy definitely deserved the capital letters, because he’s the weirdest enigma that they never solved.)

But she remembers her and Quynh being horrified because - the next immortal was a child? They freaked out about it and tried to write everything down they could remember to help them hunt the kid down.

And they tried - they did! for a whole three days! except after those three days the dreams just - stopped. cold. nothing new.

This was, of course, super super confusing. And maybe they would have written it off as a shared hallucination if it didn’t keep happening.

There’s no pattern to when they dream of the kid. It just happens. Sometimes a few times in a year. Sometimes there’s decades or centuries between dreams. The first time Nicky and Joe dream of him, Andy has to sit them down and explain that no, don’t worry about it. Yes she knows that it’s a child. No, he’s not a new immortal. They’ll stop dreaming about him in a few days, a week tops, it’s fine. No, she doesn’t know What The Fuck That Is About.

By the time Nile joins the team it’s sort of a weird inside joke. There’s longstanding bets about when the boy will pop up in their dreams again. It’s fine. Okay, so it’s weird, but their lives are already so goddamn weird.

(So imagine the old guard fresh in the apocalypse, no human life on earth. they’re dreaming about the boy again, and the only weird thing now is the consistency of it. maybe they’re in europe or something, but most of the planes have been destroyed in whatever-the-fuck took out the population of the whole ass world. it might have taken years to literally find and dig each other out of the rubble. yeah it’s weird the boy is not a frequent dream thing, but it’s not like it’s urgent.)

Anyway, Five jumps into his family’s courtyard and stumbles out, and eats and peanut butter and jelly sandwich, avoids questions about his age by rambling about quantum versions of himself, and goes to Griddy’s where he ends up getting attacked by commission goons and having to walk home barefoot because he had to ditch his shoes

(The Commission couldn’t put a tracker in his arm. His body kept rejecting them somehow, thanks to his... weird temporal nonsense. The Handler kept promising him that they’d find a way to fix him or whatever, but they never did. Assholes.)

Now, the Old Guard squad go to sleep and, thank you, start dreaming of Five in all his somewhat feral glory.

They bolt awake and - “You guys owes me so much money.” Nicky crows victoriously, because he totally won the pot on the next kid dream year, thank you very much.

And any other time that would be the end of it, because they’re used to these fleeting dreams of the boy.

Except Nile exists now. And of course she’s like, we have to find this kid.

Of course the others try to explain to her - except Nile points out a very important fact: it might have taken weeks or months or years to find other immortals back in the day due to travel times and lack of information and all that. But it’s 2019 baby. They have the internet and very fast plane travel. Did you have that when Booker was a baby immortal? no. it took them like, a day to go hunt Nile down though.

“You say you dream about him for a few days or a week or whatever.” Nile points out to the group’s dawning realization, “Well we have the power to get to him in a few days. So we can find him.”

“If we find him then we can never bet on him again though.” Booker points out, and Nicky who is in the process of gloating about his latest win (Nicky has won three times in a row motherfuckers) looks a bit crestfallen. Andy, on the other hand, just looks determined.

“Get off your asses.” Nile says firmly, spinning her laptop around and showing them the one (1) result for a “Griddy’s Diner” that she found that matches whatever the fuck the dream showed her, “We’re going to America.”

“Again?” Nicky complains, “I thought we swore to not go to America again for at least a century.”

(Until Nile’s family definitely dies, they don’t say.)

So they all begrudgingly go to America, during which time Five manages to get called potentially insane by his favorite sister, not get any sleep, bribe his brother to investigate an eye that doesn’t exist, and mourn losing his one lead to who the fuck started the apocalypse.

I don’t think Five or the og squad were expecting to actually meet.

But they’re hunting Five down and looking around and Five is pondering his next move and then just - across the street, their eyes meet.

“YOU.” The OG squad bellows, because Five has been a goddamn mystery for literally thousands of years.

“Me?” Five says, very confused, like someone who has definitely had trauma induced hallucinations and flashbacks whose dream characters decided to show up on the street outside his house for some reason.

And they go over to Five, and Five is like “wow what a weird hallucination to be having, maybe if i ignore it it’ll go away because that’s a healthy mindset to have (:”

and then one of them touches him and just -

Five lashes out. It’s instinctive. He has a knife and he just - stabs. Automatically. and his dream person winces and steps back and -

(He stabbed his dream person. Hallucinations don’t touch him they’re not supposed to touch him and they can’t be stabbed what - )

And then the dream person heals before his eyes.

“I probably deserved that.” Booker muses, grimacing at the hole in his new shirt thank you very much.

“You’re not real.” Five says a little too loudly and a little too insistently to sound at all convincing as he takes a step backwards.

“I’m not real? You’re not real!” Nicky butts in, slightly offended, “You’re the one that keeps - keeps vanishing!”

“Oh my god why are you all disasters.” Nile mourns putting her face in her palms as though she can block out her new weird family by sheer force of will.

“Hey, remember when you died?” Andy offers with a shrug which just makes Nile groan louder. “What’s that about? I’m not even shooting him this time.”

“You can’t shoot him, he’s a baby.” Joe gasps, gesturing towards Five’s thirteen-year-old self.

“I’m not a baby!” Five snaps, bristling on autopilot because the rest of his brain function is stuck on a repeat of “what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck”

“Baby boy. Baby.” Nicky backs his husband up, leaning against Joe and smirking.

“Am not!” Five growls, “And give me my knife back!”

“Finder’s keepers.” Booker says nonchalantly, spinning said knife in his fingers, “If you didn’t want me to have it then you shouldn’t have stabbed me with it.”

“It’s my brother’s knife, you can’t have it.” Five argues.

“Booker.” Andy says firmly, making Booker shrink a little like a scolded child, “Give the kid the knife back. How would you feel if I took your gun?”

“You wouldn’t take my gun.” Booker mutters, handing an increasingly confused Five the knife back, “I would simply shoot you.”

“Ooh,” Nicky snickers, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“Don’t encourage them.” Joe says, nudging at Nicky. Which would be fine if he hadn’t added in a slightly lower tone that they could all still hear, “Fifty on Andy.”

“That’s a sucker’s bet, my love.” Nicky laughs, pressing a kiss to Joe’s cheek.

There’s a beat of silence.

“No offense, but what the fuck is going on.” Five states rather than asks, clutching his slightly stolen knife (Diego didn’t even notice when he’s snagged it which honestly means he didn’t deserve to keep the weapon) tight to his chest. “Are you guys... with the Commission?”

“What the fuck is the Commission?” Joe does not whisper to Booker, who is supposed to be the research guy but he just shrugs because he’s useless.

Anyway that’s how the whole Old Guard squad winds up in Reginald Hargreeves creepy ass mansion trying to explain to an increasingly erratic immortal child that, yeah, he’s a little bit immortal. No it doesn’t have anything to do with his powers (powers?? powers??????? what the fuck i mean yes their lives are already so goddamn weird but there is a line and Booker draws it at teleportation what the fuck).

What’s this about an apocalypse?

(When they asked Five for his age, they were not expecting a curt ‘fifty-eight, probably’. Yes they are now aware there is funky time travel involved - which honestly explains so much about the frequently vanishing immortal - but still.

He looks baby but also he is baby. He’s younger than Booker!! Not even a century! They have two whole babies on the immortal squad !!)

“The world is going to end on April 1st.” Five explains, looking deeply uncomfortable. And afraid.

(And young. So very terribly young. He’s been thirteen-years-old for a long time. If these people are right - he’s going to remain thirteen until his immortality, what, wears off? Which could be literally thousands of years in the future?

He has family god damnit. He doesn’t want to outlive them. He just - he just wanted to see them again. To save them.)

And honestly why not. Five has already demonstrated teleportation. Time travel does explain his random popping into their lives via dreams. Why not? And let’s be real, they have way much more to lose by not believing him than believing him.

“Alright let’s stop an apocalypse.” Andy says, clapping her hands together.

“You’re going to help?” Five asks in a small voice, because he had sort of resigned himself to going at it alone.

“Give me the number for the eye.” Nile says kindly, “We have someone we could contact about that sort of thing, or at the very least who can keep an eye out for when it is manufactured and let us know.”

(RIP Copley when he realizes he has to deal with anything involving the Umbrella Academy. I am sure they were a very deep thorn in the governments side for a long time tbh)

“Who The Fuck Are All These People In Our Living Room.” Luther asks, Very Loudly, with Allison close behind.

And yeah. No one really knows how the fuck to answer that, let’s be real. What are they supposed to say? Hey, sorry for crashing, we’re here to lowkey kidnap your newly re-found brother because surprise! he’s immortal! Because that would go over so well.

Anyway, so the Old Guard squad are just there like,, trying to teach Five about his newfound immortality (at least he’s got good at the whole “fuck cameras” thing during his stint in the commission, though admittedly there were plenty of mission from pre-camera times. ah, the age before technology.) and also adopt him? because being immortal means family and family means no one gets left behind (or forgotten, hello Quynh)

(okay yeah they tried to put Booker in time out that one time but after a few years they were just sad and everyone was texting him anyway so now it’s just something they bring up at every opportunity. Joe wants the first turn in the bathroom? Booker, you betrayed him. He was a lab rat, Booker. And on and on until Booker throws up his hands and gives in. Yes, fine, you can have the bathroom first.)

And the Umbrella Academy usually would leave Five to his own devices but... look. Five might have vanished for seventeen years or whatever but he’s still their brother and they can be surprisingly territorial.

At least some people are getting along like a house on fire.

(“You were a crusader?” Klaus asks with wide eyes, “How does that even work?”

“What, being gay?” Nicky asks, tilting his head, “It’s fine. I have a permit.”

“A permit.”

“Mmhmm. From the Pope and everything.”

“I kind of want to be you when I grow up.”)

I can’t tell if things would go more smoothly or if the fuck ups would be even more epic in proportion. On the bright side, the apocalypse probably wouldn’t happen because Andy and Nile immediately clock Leonard-Harold’s serial killer vibes.

(Leonard realizes they’re onto him and tries to kill them which is a big mistake lmao, bye bye Leonard)

It probably ends up in an all out war against the Commission honestly, and the OG squad and the Umbrella Academy teaming up to destroy it.

(“How is this even going to work?” Allison asks at one point, gesturing at Five and the old guard.

“Shared custody?” Joe suggests brightly before doubling over because Five has pointy elbows and is not afraid to use them.)

Andy and Five probably go feral together at one point and it sure is something to behold.

“Now that is a kid who understand what a signal is.” Booker admires after a particularly large explosion happens. Nile just nods along because yeah.

(“How come you guys get to call Five a kid without being stabbed?” Klaus complains.

“He isn’t even a century old. I’m 250 and I was the youngest until Nile popped up.” Booker shrugs.

“We’re in our 950s.” Nicky says, “If little Cinque does not want to be called a kid he should have been born earlier.”

“How old is hot axe woman?” Klaus asks, absolutely enraptured.

They OG squad all exchange a look and just collectively shrug, “Old as balls.”

“Besides,” Booker says dismissively, “What’s he going to do about it? Kill us?”

and that ends that conversation)

(They also don’t discuss how young Five is. How young he was when he died. How that’s going to effect him all his life. How he’s going to be old in years, but he’s always going to be thirteen in the same way that Nile is stuck in her 20s. Sometimes it seems like the immortals are getting younger and younger in age and... it sucks.)

anyway just. Old Guard and Umbrella Academy shenanigans as they stop the apocalypse and try to look after the semi-feral teenager they have been saddled with and figure out what comes next

#far tua long #long post #tog/tua crossover #and then klaus died and wakes up and andy throws her hand up #'THREE? IN LIKE ONE DECADE?' she demands #STOP BEING IMMORTAL #quynh arrives and she and five probably get along like a house on fire tbh #five: yeah being horrifically alone and somewhat frequently dying kind of sucked now that i think about it #quynh: hmm. my child now.#granted quynh's experience was like. horrifically worse? in it's own way?#five's was nothing to sneeze at but daMN QUYNH #who knows maybe the umbrella academy are who finds quynh #they have money #why not go on a captain america esque search for a random immortal in the ocean #they found steve rogers eventually they might as well find quynh amiright #five wants to stay with him family but also like #his family aren't exactly road tripping together and singing songs around the fireplace #they have their own lives #nicky holding up five: bastard #nile: NO #joe: bastard baby. brat boy.#nile: NOO #the old guard are a disaster family and you can pry that from my cold dead hands #anyway it's 1am so have this #andy: hey copley we have a new immortal for you to erase the tracks of #booker wants to be relieved he is DEFINITELY no longer that baby of the family with TWO whole babier immortals #but let's be real he still totally is #joe: FIVE never betrayed us #booker: five would literally sell you to satan for one cornchip #booker: please stop bringing that up at every opportunity

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twdmusicboxmystery · 2 years

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Leah and Duality Pairings - Part 1

***Okay, Everyone. I’ve been super busy this week and haven’t had time to write anything up that I didn’t prepare beforehand. I’m seeing that people are super worried about the fact that Leah was shot in the same place as Beth. They fear that means Beth is dead as well. As I said, I haven’t had a chance to address this. This short answer is, no, that’s not what that means. I’ll talk about why in a couple of days. For now, while this doesn’t address the physical, this discussion will probably help you understand, symbolically and thematically, what they were trying to accomplish with Leah. If you’re worried, I think this will probably make you feel better.

I apologize as well. I didn’t realize that edit would freak everyone out so much. I’ll post part 2 tomorrow (more insights from my fellow theorists on this same subject) and then I’ll talk about the head wound more after that.***

I said before that I’d talk more about why they might have done things the way they did with Leah and what it might mean. This is just a discussion between me and my peeps where we make some observations and bat some ideas around.

@galadrieljones:

This makes me feel like we just saw some sort of anti-Coda. It makes me wonder why. Like with a lot of things related to Leah, I don’t understand why they’re replaying Beth and Daryl and Coda from this inverted mirror image POV. Like, is it merely meant to call Coda to mind or is it something more complicated, sort of like the yin and yang thing, balancing the scales of good and evil? They could do this in any way they like. Why they choose to focus it around Beth and Daryl is still unclear.

I was just thinking about the cabin and the sort of "mysterious cabin in the woods" trope in fiction, and how these cabins are often associated with portals and metaphysical phenomenon. In "Here's Negan," Negan goes to the cabin and sees his old self, a literal mirror image that talks back to him and forces him to reckon with his past.

Here, we have Daryl reckoning with a mirror image of Beth, and therefore his past, but in his case the mirror image is actually not just a hallucination like we originally thought, or like Negan saw. She's real. That's the part that still confuses me, but I'll leave it at that for now.

The cabin clearly seems to be a vessel to the past, or a mirror held up to the past, in some ways, but the reflection is twisted. Maggie also seems to be looking into a mirror in the end of 11.16, in the cabin, as there's a clear thematic symmetry meant to be established between her and Leah--like there are two ways that character could go: Leah lost her son and has become a feral psychopath. Maggie's son is alive, and while she's been dealing with some things, essentially, she's still on the side of good.

This is an ongoing theme in TWD, ie Dwight/Daryl, Glenn/Nicholas, Rick/Negan. There's also AU Michonne in "What We Become." It's just now being manifested in this cabin. But like I said, this would all make more consistent sense if Leah had been just a hallucination. But she's real?

So, it's like the "alternate universe" theory, which previously has only existed in hallucinations and thematic character pairings has come to life. I don't get it. Because the logic of the show can't really sustain a true Beth doppelganger without an explanation. This is where it must be true that Leah's appearance is a product of Daryl's perception.

Here's how I'm looking at it, and it's going to be confusing because I'm still working this out in my head:

Leah is clearly a device made to engineer an inverted 4b to "Coda." There's a lot of evidence for that here. Looking back a bit, in season 11, we see Daryl come out of his shell and retake his identity, not unlike he does in 4b, and he starts to feel and show emotions again, after a decade-long battle with depression that seemed to culminate in a literal psychotic break after Rick's death.

It's a dramatic, protracted retelling of "Still," in which Daryl is shut down and maddeningly silent, and Beth must bring him out of his shell by provoking his anger. Only then can he break down and admit his guilt, cry, and move forward. In both iterations, Daryl's "awakening" coincides with his relationship with a woman. In both iterations, she has a blond ponytail and certain similar features and traits. Bu in the new version, the replay, she's not an angel come to save his soul. She’s a demon. She's like a succubus, sucking his soul out and trying to bring him down with her.

Leah becomes a composite of all the sad things that have happened since Beth's death and also the evil and violence he himself has committed. They are all being conflated with Beth as causes of his misery.

These things all mix up and imprint on Leah, which is ofc conveniently the name of a Biblical figure, literally an imposter, a stand in for Jacob's beloved in Genesis. When Daryl kills her, he's finally "putting it away," to quote Beth, so that he can move on with his life.

In this sense, the only real way to grapple with Leah’s changing appearance is to pin it on Daryl’s perception. This has basically already been said, but it's possible that we don't know and never really saw the real Leah. We've only seen the way Daryl's psyche imprints on her at various stages of his development in season 10c and 11. Or maybe the Find Me Leah is the real Leah after all, ie: red hair. There is no evidence that could refute this so far, ie: nobody ever comments on Leah’s hair in-show. So either it’s something only WE see or something that only Daryl sees (and therefore us by extension of him being the main protagonist and the character upon with Leah’s existence hinges).

I hope this makes any sense at all. From the TD perspective, which has a lot of interest in the Hero’s Journey, one could argue that Daryl needed to get rid of this parasite living inside of him in order to transcend, achieve apotheosis, and become a man worthy of his Ultimate Boon, which we know is love. In terms of character development, Daryl is now fully formed and heroic and even breaking free from the surface-level comforts of the Commonwealth. This would pave the way toward Beth’s return, if only because Daryl has finally earned his reward.

You could even argue that by killing "Beth" in the inverted-"Coda," Daryl is replaying his internalized guilt over her death. He couldn't find her in time to save her, and he has blamed himself this entire time for her death, a very deep guilt that was clearly probed by Rick's death as well. As far as he's concerned, he might as well have killed her himself. However, in killing Leah, Daryl doesn't have to feel guilt. Because Leah was trying to kill Maggie, Beth's sister, and the only vestige of Beth's legacy that remains. So, in some sense, he is saving Beth by killing Leah, inverting his trauma over not having been able to save Beth ten years ago.

@wdway:

@Galadriel I really love all of what you wrote above. What you are saying also helps emphasize that in FM we are seeing Daryl taking bit and pieces of several women in his past. Lori, Andrea, Michonne and Carol. I feel there is a lot of dark Carol in Leah but then by far Daryl and Carol has had the longest relationship and I do feel he has connected a lot of his abandonment issues with Carol.

It was after Carol came to tell him she would not be visiting him as must because she needed to spend more time with Ezekiel and Henry, it was after that conversation that Daryl went back to the cabin and left the note. The conflict that Daryl and Carol were having in the present time over her need of revenge played a big part on how he viewed his and Leah's past. I'm thinking of how his last memory of Leah had been of her leaving him while wearing the color green. Two of the most important women in his life leaving him Beth Greene and Carol leaving to live her own life. I believe that e16 will be as many other episodes are in revealing new things each time we watch it.

@galadrieljones:

Yes, you're very good at reading how Daryl's present tense interactions with Carol color his past tense interactions with Leah, and then extrapolating on how that applies to the other women from Daryl's life, like Beth, Lori, and Michonne.

I really hope we're close by now in terms of our interpretation of Leah as being like partial hallucination or more just like a muddled perception of a woman. She's real, but she's also this person on which Daryl is projecting years of abandonment issues, hurt, and guilt.

Another hint that Daryl is talking to some sort of projection or idea he has in his head, and not Leah specifically. Possibly Leah felt this ambivalence, too, and that's part of why she left him. In the montage of flashbacks that seem to encompass their relationship, we do see a shot of Daryl leaving Leah, presumably to go continue his search for Rick. Ofc we know he's searching for more than just Rick.

@twdmusicboxmystery has that interesting post, too, drawing parallels between Leah and Daryl in their feral states.

@wdway:

Something else I cannot believe we have not talked about is the use of Dutch angles in the cabin scene.

@galadrieljones:

The Dutch angles, yes. So interesting, as they truly do echo Coda. I think they’re traditionally meant to communicate disorientation and psychological confusion. We are in Maggie’s POV in this scene, as we wake up with her. We were in Rick’s POV in Coda. Coda was admittedly much stranger in its cinematography. It screwed with POV and angled shots in much bigger ways that left it feeling very confusing and disorienting to the point where we can’t even believe what we’re seeing to be a true depiction of reality.

This scene with Leah feels perhaps dreamier than normal, but nowhere near as unclear and bizarre as Coda. It seems like what happens in that cabin is irrefutable. The Dutch angles just ramp up the psychological tension with the face-off and remind us that this cabin is anomalous. We are in some sort of liminal space here. Maybe the Dutch angles are a part of communicating that discomfort, as well as the deranged situation at hand.

@wdway:

My question is do you guys think tptb wanted to mislead the viewers?

@galadrieljones:

I'm trying to think what the reasoning would be for trying to mislead the audience. Unless, sort of like you said, they want the truth to be reserved for only those who are looking very close. I will admit I thought she had been shot in the back of the head at first. I should go back and rewatch the scene. I'm not sure why I thought so. Perhaps it's something to do with the camera angles, and also the fact that Leah falls forward onto Maggie. That sort of fools you into thinking she was shot in the back of the head and the impact shoved her forward. But that's not really how gunshots work, at least not based on the extremely high amount of people and walkers we've seen shot in the head in this show.

Thinking back to Beth, one really weird thing I always thought about was how certain they are to show us the exit wound. You'd think that would be a bad thing; however, gunshot wounds are much more survivable when they exit. A bullet stuck in a person's skull is going to make the odds of survival go way down.

Also, I know I read something about like, how brain matter and bone and all that, it really puts a damper on the bullet. So I wondered if perhaps the fact that it exited the back of her head meant it did not go through her brain at all? Or just grazed her brain. It's a very morbid discussion, but it just seems like it could be important. Idk.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

Hey ladies!

I didn't realize Daryl was in front of Leah when he shot her, either. Once you said that, I could tell from the pictures that you are right. And I went back yesterday and re-watched the episode so I could see it for myself in action.

I don't have a whole lot more to say than what's already been said here. Very clearly, this is a replay of Grady and it's very significant that she was shot in the same place Beth was, that she fell in the same position Beth did. Not that any of you need it, but I think we could make yet another argument for Beth’s survival in the fact that we actually see Leah’s face and entire body after she dies. If Leah is the anti-Beth, and they showed us that, and she's clearly dead, the fact that they didn't show us that with Beth shows that she survived.

I do think it's significant that Daryl is the one that shot her, and also that he shot Hornsby and left a scar like Beth’s on his cheek. I think in many ways, both Hornsby and Leah represent the anti-Beth. With Hornsby, it's more elusive, but I think we’ll end up finding anti-parallels to him and Beth. Which would be terribly shocking, given that he's a villain.

But I wanted to especially address what you are saying, Galadriel, about why they're doing this duality thing with Beth and Leah and how it's confusing because Leah is real, rather than hallucination.

What I'm going to say doesn't at all disagree with what you've already said. And I'm not sure it will be very groundbreaking. Reading your words just put me in mind of other times that they've done this.

Over the last year or so, I've been harping a lot on the duality theory. I suppose I never really thought about how they use it; how it actually shows up in the show. Because of course we see hallucinations that are mirror images of them. As you mentioned, we saw Negan seeing himself in his old villainous ways. We saw the AU Michonne. Another one is Carol seeing Alpha. We liked to compare Alpha to Beth, but in the show, she was much more of a mirror image to Carol. And Carol saw the hallucination of her after she was already dead.

But the thing is, we've actually seen a lot of these duality pairings that are alive and real in the show. You mentioned a few such as Rick/Negan and Glenn/Nicholas. But there are even more that you may not be aware of because they're very subtle. Even I didn't pick up on them until I rewatched like 16 times (exaggeration). But thinking about these other instances helped bring it together for me. What they actually do with the duality pairings, I mean.

So, the showrunners and even Chris Hardwick like to talk about how there are a lot of instances where if the good people in the show had been in different situations, things would've been very different. They definitely showed this in a very literal way with the AU Michonne. If she'd run into the saviors rather than Rick's group, her life might've been very different. I think them showing this is very much a part of the duality theory.

They like to explore the dark side, the dark or shadow side of the character. It's kind of a, "but for the grace of God go I" kind of theme. And I'm not a huge fan of that angle. I'd rather them say they might have chosen differently because the characters always have a choice and they do emphasize that in the show as well. But I think what they do with these duality pairings is they try to show that if their choices had been different, the character might have ended up like these evil or weaker characters.

So, for example, if Glenn had been more cowardly or hadn't made as many good decisions, or met strong people like Rick and Daryl, he might have turned into Nicholas. And I think what they always do in the show is put these pairings together and show us the contrast between the characters and then eventually, the weak or evil character is killed off. Often at the hands of our heroic character. Now, Glenn didn't actually kill Nicholas, but we did see him die in a scene with Glenn, and his death nearly got Glenn killed.

I agree that Rick and Negan were duality pair, and by sparring Negan at the end of AOW, Rick proved once and for all that he was not Negan. He was the light side rather than the dark. If it hadn't been for them wanting to do a redemption arc for Negan, I'm sure he would have died.

But let me tell you about the examples that I was talking about earlier. A couple of years ago when I went back and watched rewatched S4, I picked up on some duality pairings. They’re very subtle I’d never noticed before that.

Another duality pairing that they did with Rick was clearly the Governor. Both were strong leaders who wanted to be in charge. Both lead large groups of people. Both could be somewhat dictatorial at times. And both wanted the prison. It took a long time, but in the end, the Gov was killed, and Rick survived. In that case, Rick didn't kill him either. He came close, and definitely wounded him, but someone else finished him off.

But watching 4x06-4x08, I realized we saw another major duality pairing with Daryl. It was Mitch. I don't know if you remember him, but he was the guy who operated the tank and became the Governor's right-hand man. He had a brother whose name was pete. These two, if you watch closely, are mirror opposites of Daryl and Merle. Even to the point where the one who represents Daryl (Mitch) is more antagonistic brother, and the one who represents Merle (Pete) is the sweeter brother.

One of the major ways you can tell Mitch is a mirror for Daryl is the fact that he didn’t have sleeves. And back in S4, Daryl never had sleeves. I always have to chuckle at that. The writers are having all kinds of fun. But the real way you can tell is that Daryl is the one that kills him. The two of them come face-to-face after Daryl blows up the tank and Daryl shoots him in the heart.

This is what I mean about what they always do with the duality pairings. It's like Daryl is killing the weaker or more evil version of himself so that he can grow and move on and become a more transcendent character.

I would submit that anytime one half of a duality pairing dies, it’s a major crossroads or pivot point for the character. And lookee here: as soon as he killed Mitch, he left with Beth and Bethyl started to happen. Like, literally as he’s killing his evil half, Beth is running up behind him. Super cool.

But as you said, they don't always have to be hallucinations. Some of the characters they do with this with are real. And this is all thematic, rather than literal in the show.

Overall, this is what I think they are doing with Leah. I hoped that she and Beth would meet, and clearly that's not going to be the case. But the thing is, even though she definitely is an antiparallel to Beth, I don't think that her role in the story is for Beth, if that makes sense. It's really more about Daryl and Maggie.

So, think what you said above is all true. In many ways because of Daryl's guilt of what happened at Grady, he had to kill the anti-Beth and finally laid to past rest. This is the only way he could move on. (You have to let it go, or it kills you; it’s like he’s finally doing what Beth told him to do, and I think he had to reach this point before he was ready, emotionally, for her to return.)

Leah, in many ways, was also a mirror to Daryl. You mentioned above the post I did where I was comparing Daryl and Leah being feral and out in the woods. We've all talked about this, and you touched on it above as well. We all know that one of Daryl's weaknesses is that he turns inward too much when things become emotionally difficult. He has a propensity towards self-destruction and self-isolation.

Leah was a literal representation of him staying alone in the woods. When he was with her, he was away from his family. So, him walking away from that relationship was also walking away from solitude and walking back toward his family. This is why it was so important that he always choose to search for Rick above staying with her. Because she represented a feral, non-civilized, nonsocial sort of life. Even though on the surface is not terribly healthy for him to be looking for a dead body for years and years, it represented that he had not given up on his family. That he hadn't given up on himself as being part of the world and part of a community.

When she gave him the ultimatum, she was symbolically demanding that he give into his animalistic or feral side, rather than going back to civilization and his family. He refused. And that is the only reason that he was able to move forward. If he’d stayed with her, he would have become more feral, more evil, or just died alone in the woods.

We can also see this in what AK and Norman have both said about him seeing Leah again in 11x04. It's one of those things where, when he was with her, he was so in the thick of his own depression, in his own cloudy mindset, that he wasn't really seeing the forest for the trees. Kind of like someone who’s in an abusive relationship and really can’t see how unhealthy it is, because they’re too close to it.

But when he saw Leah again, years had passed, and he was part of the community and TF again, so his mind had cleared. He immediately saw things with massive clarity and knew that she was not who she had portrayed herself to be. On a more symbolic level, at that point he was able to see, in hindsight, what an unhealthy place he had been in before and that her feral, nomadic lifestyle was definitely not what he wanted for himself.

I'm sure I could ramble for hours about this. It would be interesting to analyze every single duality pairing based on it. (For the record, Michele who sat across from Maggie in 6x13 in a parallel scene to her and Leah, was a duality pairing for her. Michele talked about how she’d gotten pregnant by a man she didn’t really love or even particularly like, but lost the baby. By contrast, Glenn and Maggie had a very loving and healthy relationship, and she obviously didn’t lose her baby. Paula was also a duality pairing for Carol. Both died by the end of the episode.)

But the point is, Leah did represent Daryl needing to put certain things from the past, having to do with Beth, behind him. It also represented him once and for all, not wanting to be the feral loner anymore, and killing that side of him. He’s chosen his family and will fight for them and that's exactly what he needs to be in order to finally get Beth back and sustain a really healthy relationship with her.

And even from a romantic standpoint, he had to symbolically kill the non-healthy relationship so that he could then go on to the healthy one.

Meanwhile, after the episode right before Leah dies, Emily appears on TTD. 👀

I wholeheartedly believe that all the clues we got in this episode—the clock, the music, the child's invention, flipping the coin and someone calling tales (coda)—shows that were heading into the coda where Beth will be revealed.

Daryl said there's a rumor that Charleston might be willing to trade for weapons. If that's true, and TF is trying to get their communities back, I'm thinking they might go to Charleston to try and find allies and weapons. And maybe that is how Beth will finally be revealed. Here's hoping!

For your question yesterday, @wdway, about if they’re trying to trick the audience, I’d say yes. It’s just too weird, and obvious that they didn’t make it super obvious, to say no. I don’t have any great insights on why, other than to mirror it with Grady. I asked myself why they’d done that at Grady, because it’s probably the same or exactly opposite. At Grady, it was to show, as Galadriel said, psychological turmoil and that something bad would happen. And also to trick the audience about Beth’s death. While psychological turmoil could apply here, at least prior to Leah’s death, they really don’t try to trick us. They show us very obviously that she’s dead and Daryl killed her. So, all I can think of is just to parallel it even further with Coda, or else perhaps so it’s not too obvious a Beth parallel and people aren’t putting it together.

But honestly, the only ones it would be obvious to anyway are TD. So… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@wdway:

Talking about Lance having some overtones of Beth. In reading above I realized that Lance may represents Dawn. My mind is spinning with so many ways that it could be true. When you mentioned the wound that Daryl gave him it made me think of Dawn giving Beth the wound above her right eye. I could spent a lot of time comparing Hornsby and Dawn. Wait, wasn't Dawn's last name something very similar to Lance? I want to say Lassiter but I don't think that's quite right but something along that line.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

It’s Dawn Lerner, btw, which does sound somewhat similar to Lance. I think @wdway might be onto something here. We’ll have to examine this tie more closely.

I’ll stop there. I think you get the gist of the discussion. Even though it’s a ways away, I can’t wait to see what 11c brings us!

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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theeverlastingshade · 4 years

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Favorite Albums of the 10s

25. Shaking the Habitual- The Knife

The Knife made a name for themselves with their third and most celebrated LP, Silent Shout, but it’s their fourth LP, StH, that pushed their idiosyncratic blend of electroacoustic synth-pop to the furthest, most far-flung places that they’ve gone yet. The record deals with a diverse range of topics from the surveillance state, to fracking, pollution, gender discrimination, and unchecked greed with colorful, ketamine-fused candy cotton synth work and ritualistic percussion. There are long passages of ambience like the menacing build of “A Cherry on Top” dispersed between roaring apocalyptic dance numbers like the astonishing industrial eruption “Full of Fire” and the electro-acoustic freak out “Without You My Life Would Be Boring”. With the exception of the mid-album ambient epic “Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized” every song on StH justifies its length with consistently engrossing arrangements that sustain their momentum without compromising an ounce of their potency. Everything about the record lives up to its title, from its thematic ambitions, to the breadth of the sonics, pacing, and performances themselves. StH if the full manifestation of the darkness that was lurking beneath the surface of their music from as early as their breakout single “Heartbeats”, but thankfully the music never collapses under the weight of their thematic concerns. Their resilience remains inspiring all these years later, and if Karin and Olof never reunite for a fifth LP we couldn’t have asked for a better send off.

Essentials: “Full of Fire”, “A Tooth for an Eye”, “A Cherry on Top”

24. XXX- Danny Brown

Hip-hop grew to remarkable heights throughout the 10s, and yet there were few rappers that displayed the level of growth and consistency from record to record throughout this past decade quite like Danny Brown. The Detroit native spent the aughts hustling the mixtape circuit, finally catching a spark with 2010’s The Hybrid, his strong debut LP. But a year later Brown returned with his sophomore LP and magnum opus XXX, a twisted rap odyssey that ignited the blogs, and signaled that a new era of hip hop was beginning to emerge. XXX found Brown rapping over an assortment of wonky boom-bap instrumentals courtesy of Bruiser Brigade producer Skywalker that fused classic hip-hop, trap, baroque pop, and techno into shapes far more disorienting than the beats that the vast majority of his contemporaries were rapping over. While it was evident beforehand, XXX really cemented the notion that Brown could rap over anything. The beats here are generally extremely impressive, and there are plenty of singular stylistic touches like the slurring violin stabs of “Lie 4”, the menacing synth lurch of “Monopoly”, or the distorted brass loops of closer “30”, that really stand out, but the appeal is first and foremost Brown’s rapping. His voice alone is one of the most versatile and unpredictable instruments in hip-hop, but aside from his masterful vocal alteration, always perfectly synched to the tone of any given moment on any given song of his, he’s a naturally gifted writer, as thoughtful as he is straight up hilarious. Whether bragging about his destructive lifestyle (“Die Like a Rockstar”), describing how much he loves cunnilingus “I Will”, mourning the desolation around him “Party All the Time”, or reveling in his come-up “30”, Brown is a thoroughly engaging presence throughout the entire album. On XXX profanity and profundity march gleefully hand in hand with one another, casting Brown as one of the last decade’s most singular voices.

Essentials: “Die Like a Rockstar”, “Monopoly”, “30”

23. House of Sugar- Alex G

On Alex G’s latest LP, House of Sugar, his concoction of warm guitar pop and warped electronic production reached a new peak. The songs on HoS detail the misdeeds of various characters succumbing to their greed, and the vignettes that he paints are growing increasingly well-realized thanks to a continuously sharpening songwriting voice and a plethora of tasteful pitch-shifted vocals that help imbue his characters with color and personality. HoS opener “Walk Away” provides a reasonably sonic barometer for what’s to come before dropping us into a series of the most immediate pop songs that he’s ever penned. “Hope” and “Southern Sky” are nimble acoustic guitar pop songs that are almost disarming in their immediacy, and framed around references to the real life death of a friend of his due to opioids and a dream he had, respectively. By the time we reach acoustic guitar and sitar-drone of “Taking” the pitch-shifted vocals are at the forefront of the music and HoS shifts gears into its abstract middle section which owes a lot to the new-age beat deconstruction of avant-garde electronic producers, specifically Oneohtrix Point Never. On the instrumental “Sugar”, a sublime concoction of pitch-warped whispers, dissonant strings arpeggios, and creeping acoustic guitar plucks, HoS reaches the depths of its depravity. The next song, “In My Arms”, leads us to the suite of sublime acoustic reveries that close HoS, arguably peaking with the gorgeous acoustic love ballad “Cow”. The dramatic sonic left-turn that HoS takes midway through may leave some new listeners a little cold, but for most Alex G fans nothing about the eclecticism of HoS should come as a surprise. Nor should the overwhelming quality of the songs here. From Alex G’s debut, Race, in 2010 up through HoS, he released a remarkable catalog of some of the most eclectic, and vital indie rock of the century, and I have no reason to believe he won’t top HoS at some point.

Essentials: “Gretel”, “Sugar”, “Walk Away”

22. Sea When Absent- A Sunny Day in Glasgow

A Sunny Day in Glasgow may be one of the 21st century’s most underrated bands, but not even Pitchfork could resist the coveted BNM tag when it came time to review their fourth and strongest LP, Sea When Absent. Building off of their first three idiosyncratic LPs that superbly fused electronic pop with shoegaze and dream pop, A Sunny Day in Glasgow moved into decidedly more psychedelic territory with their fourth LP while still retaining the sharp melodic sensibility of those first three. Much of the shift is easy to credit to vocalist Jen Goma who joined the group on their third LP, Autumn Again, and here her soaring vocals deliver rich melodies that are more fleshed out and focused than anything on their past releases. SWA sidesteps the kaleidoscopic sprawl of their 22 song sophomore LP, Ashes Grammar, and instead delivers 11 tight, stargazing pop songs. Whereas on the prior records it more often than not felt like the band were throwing ideas at the wall to see what stuck (with primarily successful results) on SWA the band commit more thoroughly to their ideas, writing songs that are well within their wheelhouse but have never been so well-realized. “Byebye, Big Ocean (The End)” and “Boys Turn Into Girls (Initiation Rites)” erupt with a wall of dazzling distorted guitars that slowly build into engrossing melodic payoffs while “Never Nothing (It’s Alright (It’s Ok))” and “The Body, It Bends” are sublime, soft spoken breathers that put a premium on texture and melody, and are among A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s most impressive songs yet. Even seemingly inconsequential moments like the “Double Dutch” interlude positively radiant with melodic warmth and joyous energy. Their strain of sun-kissed, jubilant dream pop tonally stands in stark contrast to much of the pop that’s dominated the airwaves this past decade, but their temperament doesn’t sound naïve so much as defiant. They have yet to follow up SWA with another LP, and I can’t blame them if they feel like they’ve said everything that they have to say with SWA.

Essentials: “The Body, It Bends”, “Never Nothing (It’s Alright (It’s Ok))”, “Boys Turn Into Girls (Initiation Rites)”

21. Strange Mercy- St. Vincent

Annie Clark has spent the past decade releasing music under her St. Vincent moniker, collaborating with the likes of David Byrne, producing for Sleater-Kinney, and appearing on the sketch comedy Portlandia. Although she began her solo career in earnest with her strong 2008 debut, Marry Me, in 2011 Clark released Strange Mercy, her third, and strongest record to date. Produced by John Congleton, SM is a compelling fusion of art rock/and chamber pop that often lands with a jarring, visceral impact, but is still imbued with a sense of grace that heightens the sentiments of her bewitching songwriting. Her first two records showcased her singular voice and tastefully, ornate baroque arrangements, but on SM Clark begins to let loose and lean into her virtuosic guitar playing. Songs like “Cruel” and “Northern Light” are propelled by her nimble riffs caked in distortion while strings rise and fall in a satisfying sweep all around her triumphant vocals. “Surgeon” brings the pace down to a crawl and gets a tone of mileage out of sensuous synth arrangements as Clark sings softly of depression and carnal desire “Stay in just to get along/Turn off the TV, wade in bed/A blue and a red/A little something to get along” before the song erupts into a furious storm of guitar distortion. The balance between fury and serenity animate the record from start to finish, and Clark seamlessly toggles these impulses from start to finish. On the title track, over a lumbering tom/kick drum rhythm, the incessant ping of a synth, and bluesy guitar licks Clark brilliantly sums up the record’s theme with a scene of police brutality “If I ever meet that dirty policeman that roughed you up/No, I, I don’t know what” that depicts the contraction inherent in the way justice is carried out by police in the west, and the way those contradictions bleed through to our understanding of morality on the whole. SM is a record full of these sorts of messy contradictions, and the music constantly reflected that perpetual sense of disarray with songs as colorful and chaotic as they were controlled.

Essentials: “Northern Lights”, “Surgeon”, “Strange Mercy”

20. A Moon Shaped Pool- Radiohead

Radiohead’s eighth LP, 2011’s solid but unremarkable King of Limbs seemed to cement the notion that while Radiohead may not have another game changer left in them, they were probably weren’t ever going to make a bad record. And with all of their various solo pursuits it seemed plausible that we may never get another Radiohead record, as underwhelming as capping off a career as thrilling as theirs with KoL would have been. Thankfully things didn’t pan out that way, and in 2016 Radiohead released their ninth LP, A Moon Shaped Pool; the platonic ideal of a master stroke from a legacy act. The album is partially composed of older songs re-worked into new forms, such as the tense string onslaught of opener “Burn the Witch” while a few of the newer songs like the gorgeous, ambient “Daydreaming” are string-laden compositions that are as eerie as they are radiant. For a band that’s been prophesizing the increasingly dismal state of the world that we now find ourselves in for the past several decades, they sound increasingly comfortable with their position in the world, and there’s no question that they’re in full command of their craft here. The production is sublime throughout the entire record, with a sense of encroaching doom bubbling just beneath the surface juxtaposed against rich baroque instrumentation. AMSP is the Radiohead album most informed by Johnny Greenwood’s work scoring films like There Will Be Blood and Phantom Thread, and as a result there’s a remarkable sense of immersion at work even for a Radiohead album.

So while there are some recognizable forms from records past, such as the brass-lead krautrock strut of “Ful Stop”, or the twitchy IDM drum work of “Identikit”, the spectral production heightens the potency of everything here. The compositions on AMSP are the most elegant, and nuanced of Radiohead’s to date, and Yorke’s voice continues to age superbly. Yorke’s lyrics touch on familiar topics, more relevant now than ever, such as climate change on “The Numbers” “The numbers don’t decide/The system is a lie/A river running dry/The wings of butterflies” the dangers of unchecked authority on “Burn the Witch” “Abandon all reason/Avoid all contact/Do not react/Shoot the messengers/This is a low-flying panic attack” and the broader, horrific realities of the world that we live in on “Ful Stop” “Why should I be good if you’re not?/This is a foul tasting medicine/A foul tasting medicine/To be trapped in your ful-stop”. What’s more unexpected are songs like the graceful string-led “Glass Eyes” and the devastating ambient closer “True Love Waits”, two songs that are poignant tributes to Yorke’s ex-wife, Rachel Owen, who passed away from cancer in late 2016. AMSP isn’t just a spectacular late-career gem that would make a superb swan song; it’s also the most human record that Radiohead have made yet.

Essentials: “True Love Waits”, “Daydreaming”, “Ful Stop”

19. Eye Contact- Gang Gang Dance

Few bands set the tone for the kind of cross-culture hybridization that would become the sonic norm for music throughout this decade quite like Gang Gang Dance. Throughout the early aughts they cut their teeth in the Brooklyn noise scene alongside bands like Animal Collective, Black Dice, and Exceptor blending noise, experimental rock, and worldbeat into blistering, unconventional shapes. As the years progressed Gang Gang Dance gradually began to open up their sound, folding elements of hip-hop, dance music, and psychedelic pop into a colorful concoction of rhythmically robust, delightfully manic pop music that was just as forward-thinking as it was infectious. The shift really began on their criminally underrated 2005 LP, God’s Money, but began notably on their terrific 2008 LP, Saint Dymphna. On the follow-up to SD, their remarkable fifth LP, Eye Contact, the sound of Gang Gang Dance crystallized into something more immediate and far-ranging than anything that they had done prior (or since so far). On EC, everything that the band had attempted throughout the course of their career (tribal rhythms, eastern melodies, shards of refracted noise) was gloriously combined into a hyper-saturated tapestry of progressive future pop. EC is the peak of Gang Gang Dance’s prior decade of sonic exploration, and nearly a decade later there’s still nothing that sounds anything like it.

Beginning with the astonishing slow-burn intro of “Glass Jar” that finds the band patiently building up what begins as a pent up ambient composition toward something more volatile that eventually rips open midway through, spilling into a calamitous, euphoric release into the song’s second half, EC is bursting with joyous energy and possibility. The melodies are some of the sharpest, and most direct that vocalist Lizzi Bougatsos has ever penned, providing a warm immediacy that cuts through even the most outre arrangements here, and they continually expand into shapes as the songs continue to progress. “Adult Goth” and “MindKilla” are bolstered considerably by Lizzi’s dynamic vocal performances, and the off-kilter, spellbinding synth arrangements of the band’s keyboardist Brian DeGraw, while “Romance Layers” provides an ideal mid-album psychedelic breather.. And on the album’s closer, “Thru and Thru”, the band deliver a send-off that succinctly sums up a prior decade’s worth of experimentation into a nearly six-minute song overflowing with eastern melodies, mesmerizing chants, and infectious tribal rhythms that congeal into a sound that couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anyone else. Although they’ve only graced us with the somewhat underwhelming 2018 record Kazuashita since, when Gang Gang Dance are firing on all cylinders, as they are on all of EC, there’s simply nothing like it.

Essentials: “Glass Jar”, “Adult Goth”, “Thru and Thru”

18. Shields- Grizzly Bear

Although the zeitgeist was already beginning to dramatically shift by the time that Grizzly Bear released their fourth LP, Shields, guaranteeing that it wouldn’t have the same immediate impact that they enjoyed with its predecessor, their 2009 breakout LP, Veckatimest, they still ended up releasing their magnum opus. Compared to Veckatimest’s approachable folk-pop leanings there are moments on Shields that sound downright prog, but the band never let these intricate baroque pop/psychedelic folk arrangements get away from themselves or compromise the remarkable melodic instincts that were undeniable on their terrific sophomore LP, Yellow House. The ten songs throughout Shields are perfectly paced, and there isn’t a single moment that overstays its welcome, but they each develop just as much as they need to. The band’s primary songwriters, Edward Droste and Daniel Rossen, were each peaking as singular songwriters in their own respective rights on Shields, and they both deliver a handful of the band’s strongest songs to date. Droste’s songs tend to creep in ethereal waltzes with delicate baroque instrumentation (“gun-shy”, “A Simple Answer”) unfolding patiently while sustaining a remarkable sense of tension while Rossen’s are jaunty folk rippers that unfurl in unpredictable, and thrilling cacophonies that still retain the grace that the ornate instrumentation demands (“Yet Again”, “Speak in Rounds”) but unfurl in far more complex structures than those on Veckatimest.

Grizzly Bear’s progression from Droste’s cozy lo-fi folk bedroom project to a knotty baroque folk juggernaut was one of the most quietly satisfying of any band from the past decade, and on Shields they hit a gorgeous peak. While Droste and Rossen had peaked as songwriters here, their contributions never overshadowed those of Chris Taylor or Chris Bear, and the chemistry on Shields is sharper than most bands ever come close to achieving. It’s easy to get lost admiring the sheer craft of their meticulous arrangements, crisp production, provoking but elusive songwriting, and the sharp interplay between Droste and Rossen each on their own individual merit, but on Shields everything that previously stood out about their artistry is amplified, and congealed in a way that’s approachable yet inimitable. On Shields Grizzly Bear umped the ante from Veckatimest on both fronts, and proved that they could grow more immediate and melodic while still dazzling with rich compositional complexity. Grizzly Bear followed it up with Painted Ruins in 2017, that while a perfectly good record in its own right is nowhere as cohesive, and most unfortunately, patient. And to be honest, I haven’t heard a baroque folk record released since Shields that’s as consistently engrossing, or one performed with such remarkable execution. Shields isn’t their most immediate, but it best distills their singular essence, and its generosity knows no bounds.

Essentials: “gun-shy”, “Yet Again”, “The Hunt”

17. The Money Store- Death Grips

Anyone from future generations looking to hear a band that’s most emblematic of the 10s as a full decade probably couldn’t do better than Death Grips. The trio consisting of vocalist MC Ride, keyboardist/producer Flatlander, and drummer Zach Hill released their abrasive Ex-military tape in 2011, and right out of the gates the trio had a fully-formed sound that plucked unapologetically from west coast hip-hop, industrial, hardcore, and noise. Although far from the first band to draw equally upon genres like these, Death Grips stood out immediately thanks in no small part to MC Ride, who has since proved to be one of the last decade’s most compelling frontmen. His lyrics are cryptic, and intelligent yet visceral, with a deceptively wry edge. Although there’s quite a bit of variety to his delivery, it’s always propelled forth with an overwhelming intensity that can take some time to become accustomed to. Ex-military was received rapturously by critics and bloggers, but as exciting as group like them may have seemed at the time it would have been hard to predict any kind of real longevity for them. And their unrelentingly antagonistic streak (leaking No Love Deep Web, putting a picture of Zach Hill’s dick on the cover of said album, skipping performances or just playing recorded music instead of performing, trolling fans, faking a breakup) would have decimated the momentum of almost any other band, but Death Grips feed on this sort of chaos like a troupe of anarchist vampires. Their arc from Ex-military to 2018’s Year of the Snitch is one of the most rewarding streaks of any act throughout the 10s, and while most of these records are great, there isn’t one that better distills their essence than their 2012 debut LP, The Money Store.

While Ex-military presented them as an admittedly idiosyncratic, yet undeniable product of their environment, TMS blew their sound wide open proving that they had range far beyond sounds of their native state. Right from the bass arpeggios that jolt opener “Get Got” to life, it’s clear the fidelity has improved considerably, but they haven’t compromised an ounce of their fury. This still scans as music custom-tailored for little other than violently thrashing your limbs, and little else from the past decade as been anywhere near as effective at distilling that aesthetic so neatly across the run of a single record. But on TMS Death Grips were still writing actual songs, with memorable hooks, sticky melodies, and conventional structures that served to heighten the potency of their tantrums. Songs like “I’ve Seen Footage” and “Hacker” are shocking for how immediate and unthreatening the band sound despite MC Ride’s sour bark, while songs like “The Fever (Aye Aye)” and “The Cage” showcase early peaks for Flatlander’s immaculate, and underrated synth work. MC Ride is at his best here, whether talking shit and espousing authenticity (“Hustle Bones”), calling out doubters (“Bitch Please”), or just railing against general conformity, he delivers 13 career defining performances in neat succession. Death Grips have continued to relentlessly experiment on all their subsequent records, and while some have come close to matching the excellence of TMS, they’ve all fallen short. Thankfully, the immense exhilaration and urgency of TMS sound more potent with each successive year that we inhibit this desolate hellscape.

Essentials: “I’ve Seen Footage”, “The Fever (Aye Aye)”, “Hacker”

16. Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)- Car Seat Headrest

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that a re-recording of a devastatingly personal LP that Will Toledo recorded at 19, with better production, stronger arrangements, and cleaner vocals, would end up being his best record to date. What was surprising was that he decided to return to the record of his that’s most important to him, and give it the sort of justice that it deserves after having developed into a far more adept talent in the years following its release. And although I’m sure some of those songs (if not all of them) were painful to revisit, the discipline and audacity paid off enormously. Twin Fantasy centers entirely around falling in love with another man at 19, and the arc of their relationship from mourning the distance between them on the opening song “My Boy (Twin Fantasy)” to the newfound acceptance of their relationship’s dissolution on closer “Twin Fantasy (Those Boys)”, detailing the highs and lows with unabashed sincerity. While the original still holds up fairly well, there’s no question that the re-arranging, cleaner vocals, and stronger fidelity overall just heightened the potency of what was already there without diminishing any aspect of the original record. Will’s cleverness, sense of humor, and dynamism as a bandleader elevate TF beyond a melancholic teen drama into a searing document of formative growth, demonstrating craft, ingenuity, and wisdom far beyond his years. More so than any other record released throughout the last decade, TF exemplifies just how potent indie rock still is.

This new version of TF is more of a “re-imagining” of the original record than anything else, and as such the thematic scope as it initially existed, along with the exact same track listing, is held perfectly intact. The record’s two epics, those being “Beach Life-In-Death” and “Famous Prophets (Stars)” are both even longer, and benefit more so than anything else here from their new arrangements. The fidelity has been cleaned up notably, but TF is still far from overproduced, and without any fuzz obscuring a lot of the detail you can hear just how crisp, and superbly layered these arrangements are. The new-wave outlier “Nervous Young Human” practically radiates with a newfound sheen, and is handedly the most radio-ready song the band have ever written, but it still folds seamlessly into the record’s mid-section between the anthemic, distortion-fueled peaks of “Sober to Death” and the record’s mid-album power-pop stunner, “Bodys”. Toledo’s drawing from a great deal here of different sub-genres here, and he manages to land on a remarkably uniform sound that belies the myriad of intricacies at work that prevent these compositions from being crushed underneath the weight of their own ambition. The album’s greatest achievement is how deftly Will manages to tell a story about the most profound event of his life coupled with music that’s as multi-faceted as the human experience being conveyed. TF may be proudly out of step with the current cultural zeitgeist from a sonic perspective, but the sentiments conveyed throughout are sublime missives from a distinctly millennial outlook. As far as concept albums about a single relationship are concerned, Toledo has set the bar this century with TF.

Essentials: “Famous Prophets (Stars)”, “Beach Life-In-Death”, “Bodys”

15. Modern Vampires of the City- Vampire Weekend

Vampire Weekend have come a long way from the indie afro-pop roots of their debut to their pastoral, jam band informed fourth LP, Father of the Bride, but on their third LP, Modern Vampires of the City the band refined their sound to a sublime strain of chamber music and art pop filled with Ezra Koenig’s strongest writing to date. Whereas their first two records were entirely produced by the band’s multi-instrumentalist and not-so-secret weapon Rostam Batmanliij, on MVotC Ariel Reitscheid, a producer known for working with acts like Charli XCX, Haim, Solange, etc joined the proceedings, and there’s a lighter feel to a lot of the arrangements, but everything has more dimension overall, and the low-end really pops on a lot of these in a way that it hadn’t really before. There are plenty of welcome production choices throughout, like the sprinkling of auto-tune on “Step”, or the blistering saxophone solo on “Worship You” that do a great deal to expand the parameters of the band’s sound without ever finding them really going out of their depth. Compared to their prior records there’s a fairly vast tonal gap on MVotC, with a heightened sense of existential dread and fixations on mortality, nostalgia, and faith. It’s weighty stuff without question, and the exceptional pacing goes a long towards helping evenly pack in the melancholic, languid compositions like “Everlasting Arms” and “Don’t Lie” with infectious up-tempo numbers like “Diane Young”, “Unbelievers”, and “Finger Back” that, while far from the best of what’s here are still as immediate as anything they’ve ever released and benefit from the same immaculate arrangement, production, and writing as everything else here even if they don’t break as much new ground. But the best of what’s here are without question among the best pop songs released so this far century.

Both opener “Obvious Bycycle” and “Step” are devastating looks at nostalgia that frame Ezra’s thoughtful character sketches in rich compositions that in the case of the former consist of soft wisps of grand piano, percussion that sounds like a stamp being punched, and surprisingly visceral bass, while in the case of the latter the band opt for gorgeous harpsichord arrangements, and a swaggering bassline. But “Hannah Hunt”, which is for the record the best VW song to date, is on another level entirely. It opens like the sun after the storm with field recording of a crowd of people clearing away for delicate grand piano and the gentle rumble of bass. Ezra sings of a relationship slowly starting to break apart as a couple travels the country together “A gardener told me some plants move/But I could not believe it/’Til me and Hannah Hunt/Saw crawling vines and weeping willows”. The song slowly builds into a rousing baroque pop crescendo over roaring keys as Ezra delivers one of his most devastating lines to date “If I can’t trust you then damn it Hannah/There’s no future, there’s no answer/Though we live on the US dollar/You and me we got our own sense of time”. Rostam left VW in 2016, and although their first record without him, the aforementioned 2019 comeback LP, FotB, his absence was sorely felt. On “Hudson” it almost sounds like Rostam is singing to Ezra, under that lens especially, it’s functions as a poignant, but fitting cap to VW’s first era. As great as FotB, Rostam’s 2017 debut Half-Light, and I Had a Dream That You Were Mine, his 2016 collaboration with Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen, I hope that MVotC isn’t the last time the two of them work on a full LP together.

Essentials: “Hannah Hunt”, “Step”, “Ya Hey”

14. Channel Orange- Frank Ocean

Few albums released throughout the last decade have brought about the sort of sweeping sea change that Frank Ocean’s sublime debut LP, Channel Orange, did. Ocean’s kaleidoscopic, self-released 2011 mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra established his artistry as something far beyond that of the go-to hook ghostwriter identity he cut his teeth establishing for himself. A year and a half later, amidst signing to Def Jam, collaborating extensively with Tyler, the Creator, Kanye West, and Jay-Z, and writing a now legendary tumblr post stating that his first love was for another man a few days before releasing his immensely anticipated debut LP, Frank Ocean released that album, and decided to call it Channel Orange. Like Ocean’s music itself, the narrative surrounding his ascension feels both timeless (moving to LA after Hurricane Katrina struck his hometown of New Orleans, ghostwriting and joining Tyler, the Creator’s hip-hop collective Odd Future before releasing his own music, which drew primarily from soul, classic r&b, and funk more than anything that was on the radio at the time) and modern (sampling extensively on N,U, having a few key co-signs that seemed to unlock all the right connections, leveraging the power of the internet along with the rest of Odd Future to build and sustain a fanbase) but none of it would matter if the music didn’t live up to the hype. But all of this is particularly interesting to consider when talking about CO, especially considering that it’s the best debut LP of the 10s, and an absolute master class in songwriting.

CO is a remarkably fully-formed debut LP that finds Ocean in complete control of his craft on all fronts. The instrumentation is a lush palette of analog keys, bass, and strings, and with the exception of a few fairly stripped down ballads, shows a keen command for maximalism that never sounds overwrought. Even a song like the colossal, mid-album change-up “Pyramids”, is saved from complete indulgence after the beat seamlessly shifts into a woozy down-tempo trap instrumental with plenty of space for Ocean’s falsetto to linger in. Ocean would shift gears dramatically with the 2016 visual album, Endless, and his second studio LP, Blonde, trading in the rich, dense analog soul and r&b for a minimal psychedelic soul sound. While the production on Blonde and Endless is more impressive than that of CO, neither record was quite able to match the lush immediacy that seemed to come to Ocean so naturally here. Ocean produced the record alongside the musicians Jonathon Ikpeazu, Malay, and Om’Mas Keith who all provided additional keys, drum programming, and/or guitars. Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler, the Creator, and Andre 3000 are the only guests that provide verses, and while each completely delivers, CO is Ocean’s record through and through. Regardless of whether Ocean is singing about the emptiness of privilege (“Super Rich Kids”), or depicting a tale of someone’s life falling apart due to crack addiction (“Crack Rock”) or delivering the closest thing he’ll likely ever come to a straight forward love song (“Thinkin’ Bout You”) his eye for detail, wit, intelligence, and empathy render the characters as rich, and multi-faceted regardless of what angle he’s coming at them from. The warmth and immediacy of the instrumentation and Ocean’s voice draws you in, but it’s the sheer strength of his songwriting that elevates CO from simply being another immensely promising debut to the classic that it is.

Essentials: “Crack Rock”, “Bad Religion”, “End / Golden Girl” ft. Tyler, the Creator

13. Sunbather- Deafheaven

Deafheaven were far from the first band to blend black metal, shoegaze, and post-rock, but on their stellar 2013 record Sunbather they distilled elements of these genres into a punishing, and breathtaking sound that’s unmistakably theirs. Their solid 2010 debut Roads to Judha showed tremendous promise, but their songwriting wasn’t on par with their ambitions yet. But on Sunbather, Deafheaven lived up to that early promise. Sunbather is primarily a blistering fusion of black metal drumming and shrieks engulfed in walls of shoegaze guitar that often give way to instrumental outros that shine with the radiance of Sigur Ros or Explosions in the Sky. George Clarke delivers the lyrics in an indecipherable shriek that either amplifies the intensity of the surrounding arrangements, or is used as a sublime juxtaposition to their fleeting moments of transcendent beauty. Sunbather is seven songs long, and superbly paced so that the band’s lengthier compositions are evenly split between songs that include a dreamy minimalist guitar/piano composition (“Irresistible”), a menacing baroque-noise march that congeals midway through into a jangly guitar conclusion (“Please Remember”), and an eerie collage of vocal samples and droning strings (“Windows”). This odd assortment of songs may seem random, but they do a nice job of breaking up the surrounding onslaught, and demonstrating the band’s range, while still adhering to the record’s searing aesthetic. It’s remarkably accessible music as far as metal is concerned, and if you can make it past the tone of Clarke’s voice there’s a lot to love about this album.

For all of Sunbather’s seemingly impenetrable harshness, there’s a great deal of beauty glistening just beneath the surface. On Sunbather, Deafheaven managed to strike a near perfect balance between beauty and chaos that, while greater heights were achieved later on, they never quite improved upon. The longer numbers here transition into moments of transcendent, cathartic beauty, and back into frenetic fury so subtly, and masterfully, that the juxtapositions quickly begin to seem less like extreme exercises in contrasting dynamics and tones so much as the fluid spectrum of Deafheaven’s multi-faceted artistry. And while the lyrics throughout Sunbather match the brutality of the corresponding arrangements, they also match their life-affirming, triumphant sense of urgency. Whether Clarke is reflecting on habitual patterns and habits that he just can’t shake “Lost in the patterns of youth/And the ghost of your aches comes back to haunt you/And the forging of change makes no difference” on “Vertigo” or ruing the alcoholism that he inherited from his father “In the hallways lit up brightly but couldn’t find myself/I laid drunk on the concrete on the day of your birth in celebration of all you were worth” on closer “The Pecan Tree”, his lyrics throughout Sunbather imbue his tortured yelps with a devastating poignancy rendered all the more morose by the band’s unflinching, formidable poise. It’s not hard to hear why Sunbather was the best reviewed album of 2013, and a game changer for black metal. Few records, metal or otherwise, have managed to convey such overwhelming emotional intensity through such ambitious composition. Its crushing beauty hasn’t lost an ounce of its potency in the years since.

Essentials: “Dream House”, “The Pecan Tree”, “Sunbather”

12. To Pimp a Butterfly- Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar caught the attention of the zeitgeist with his generation defining sophomore LP, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, but that record’s follow-up, To Pimp a Butterfly, cemented his status as one of the definitive musical auteurs of his generation. Whereas the former record was a gripping street epic that seamlessly tucked a coming of age story into the larger fabric of a blockbuster west coast hip-hop record, the latter record blew open the history of black music and wove together a tapestry of disparate styles that congealed to express a more multi-faceted look at the black experience. The beats are composed of live instrumentation courtesy of Terrance Martin, Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, and a plethora of the west coast jazz elite, and they span the likes of jazz, r&b, soul, and funk alongside instrumental hip-hop without showing the seams. The music runs the gamut from uplifting anthems (“Alright”) to bouts of unbridled fury (“The Blacker the Berry”), and everywhere in-between, but thanks to Kendrick’s deft pacing and execution nothing sounds out of place, and there’s no mistaking these songs for the work of anyone else through sheer scope alone. Kendrick’s writing and rapping had increased considerably since GKMC, but throughout TPaB he spends less time trying to prove what a capable rapper he is, and far more time using his ability to explore the nuances of systemic racial issues through the lens of a plethora of different characters. TPaB couldn’t have possibly sounded more out of step with the zeitgeist upon its release, but in venturing beyond what hip-hop in the mid 10s sounded like, and exploring perspectives beyond those of himself, he was able to tap into something far more universally human.

Throughout the course of TPaB Kendrick tackles a wide plethora of topics with music that’s matches the breadth and scope of his thematic ambitions. The g-funk strut “King Kunta” is one of the most immediate songs in his career, and he juxtaposes the song’s infectious backdrop against verses that evoke the resilience of Kunta Kinte in the novel Roots as a through line for the jarring shift he experienced throughout his come-up after growing up in poverty. “u?” brilliantly distills the sort of tragic survivor’s guilt that Kendrick experienced in the wake of his success watching so many of his friends continue to succumb to the perils of systemic racism through harsh free-jazz arrangements, while “i” gains power within the context of the record as an uplifting neo-soul anthem of self-love after the preceding storm has subsided. The uplifting anthem “Alright” has become a canonical protest song in the wake of civil unrest as a result of excessive police brutality while the finale, “Mortal Man”, begins with some of his strongest verses to date before transitioning into a fabricated interview with 2Pac. There’s an absurd amount to unpack within the songs on TPaB, but the album never buckles under the weight of its ambition, and delivers performances that are striking at every turn. Kendrick never shies away from depicting the devastating realities throughout the history of the black American experience, but he finds reasons to persist through these tribulations in the power of community, god, and love.

Essentials: “The Blacker the Berry”, “u”, “Wesley’s Theory” ft. George Clinton

11. Lonerism- Tame Impala

On Tame Impala’s debut, Innerspeaker, the band proved adept at piecing together the finest moments from their record collections into strange, idiosyncratic new shapes, but on their sublime sophomore LP, Lonerism, they began to push their sound into the present moment. The flanged guitars, shuffling drum rhythms, and frontman Kevin Parker’s Lennon-esque falsetto are a hallmarks of classic psychedelic rock, but the spellbinding synth textures, evocative samples, and cavernous production showcase a definitively 21st century sensibility. There was no mistaking them for a pure homage act on Lonerism. With the exception of piano on a few tracks courtesy of Jay Watson, and a spoken word interlude courtesy of Melody Prochet, Lonerism was written, recorded, and produced entirely by Kevin Parker, and it helped signal a major shift from bands being the dominant artistic vehicle in indie music to the solo artist taking up that mantle. Lonerism is a perfectly paced album, and aside from a few breathers, and a few epics, it almost plays like a greatest hits set. There were signs of the disco-prog synth act that Tame Imapa developed into on a few of Lonerism’s more immediate moments, but this is still thoroughly steeped in the lineage of psychedelic rock, acid rock, and blues rock. With Lonerism, Parker began to show signs of the poptimist that he was all along, but he hadn’t yet compromised the instrumental ingenuity that he’s capable of for a strong melody, and so here you get the best of both worlds; the band’s sharpest hooks and most adventurous production. Lonerism is where Tame Impala evolved from a promising project with immense potential into one of the defining musical acts of Parker’s generation.

Lonerism is a record that completely lives up to its title as a concept record about isolation. Every song here finds Parker grappling with some aspect of self-imposed isolation set against hazy, psychedelic pop/rock instrumentation. Some songs like, the disarmingly immediate “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” spells out his anguish explicitly, with a love interest that he keeps falling for against his best judgement, while “Endors Toi” finds Parker rejecting the hardships of reality for the bliss that’s only possible when you’re literally dreaming. The lyrics rarely go deep, but on a record like this they’re entirely beside the point. Thankfully Parker’s writing works superbly within the context of the concept without detracting from the instrumentation and production. Parker wrote a few strong hooks on IS, but they were the exception, not the norm. On Lonerism, Parker’s melodic intuition had fully blossomed, and the hooks on songs like “Elephant”, “Why Won’t She Talk to Me”, and “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” were more immediate, and more memorable than anything on the top 40 at the time. The songs on Lonerism are bursting with sonic personality; whether we’re talking about the euphoric streaks of synth that send “Apocalypse Dreams” into the stratosphere, the phaser-smeared guitars and immersive samples that bring “Sun’s Coming Down” to its triumphant finale, or the propulsive drum fllls that propel “Endors Toi”, Lonerism is the most sonically rich record that Parker has ever released. Parker would achieve more audacious and unexpected heights on his superb 2015 follow-up, Currents, but he has yet to top Lonerism’s consistency, and near perfect balance between studio experimentation and pure pop craftsmanship.

Essentials: “Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control”, “Sun’s Coming Up”, “Apocalypse Dreams”

10. Flower Boy- Tyler, the Creator

Flower Boy may not have come as a surprise to those who closely followed Tyler Okonoma’s progression from the lo-fi hardcore hip-hop days of Bastard and early Odd Future through his chaotic, candy-coated third LP, Cherry Bomb, but for the casual listener it may have seemed like an unthinkable evolution. And no one could have predicted its consistency. The signs of Tyler progressing into melodic, psych-leaning neo-soul were on the wall as early as his terrific 2013 record, Wolf, but on FB his melodic sensibilities, compositional chops, and an increasingly empathetic outward writing perspective all coalesced into an idiosyncratic tapestry of vibrant sound and color unlike any hip hop record ever recorded. It’s the first time that Tyler’s chops had fully caught up with his ambition, allowing him to completely deliver on the promise of a truly genre-adverse opus that Cherry Bomb merely hinted at. The lyrics are somber, and reflective, demonstrating Tyler’s newfound sense of maturity that would have been unthinkable throughout the early OF days. The sincerity and vulnerability of the lyrics go a long way towards heightening the potency of his vibrant, melodically rich compositions. FB capitalizes on all the strange contradictions that have always been inherent in his music, while removing the adolescent excess that have bogged down each prior release. The result is a highwater mark for what hip-hop and neo-soul can sound like unbridled with concern for what music should sound like. That attention to detail and unrelenting creative spirit are what helped propel FB into being the classic record that it ended up being.

Eschewing the lo-fi Neptunes meets MF DOOM beats of his past records, Tyler landed on a perfect blend of neo-soul synths, jazz strings/horns, and drums that split the difference between classic boom-bap and mid-10s trap for FB. The music is bright and vibrant, with a wealth of detail tucked within each mix that rewards multiple listens. There are songs that are completely in Tyler’s wheelhouse, like the frantic, mid-album trap cut “I Ain’t Got Time!”, and a few like the show-stopping psychedelic soul ballad, “Garden Shed”, that dramatically expand the parameters of his sound, but they all cohere together superbly into a fully-realized kaleidoscope of sound. Even the songs like “Pothole” and “November” that seem like more run of the mill Tyler cuts showcase a renewed sense of focus and tight production that belie their simple construction. FB is a record that’s focused on unrequited love, and while themes of abandonment, disillusionment with fame, growing pains, and insecurity emerge as on past records, the bulk of the action is focused on Tyler coming to terms with both his bisexuality and the anguish of a missed connection. Rarely does heartbreak sound so unflinchingly, thrillingly alive. True to form, the music is never mopey or saccharine, but it’s always brimming with the intensity of young love. FB is the record that Tyler has always set out to make, and while I’m sure he’ll top it at some point, it currently stands at the definitive realization of his singular vision.

Essentials: “911 / Mr. Lonely” ft. Frank Ocean & Stevey Lacy, “Garden Shed” ft. Estelle, “See You Again” ft. Kali Uchis

9. Until the Quiet Comes- Flying Lotus

After Steve Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, dropped his masterful third LP, Cosmogramma, it seemed like he could take his sound anywhere, but doubling down and improving on the maximalist excess of Cosmogramma would have proved a near impossible task. Thankfully, on his stellar follow-up LP, Until the Quiet Comes, FlyLo swung all the way in the opposite direction, and despite it being the flavor of the decade minimalism rarely ended up sounding better on any other artist. UtQC is a minimalist electronic jazz/instrumental hip hop record with dreamy meditative arrangements that belie their complexity at every turn. The album is a concept record that finds FlyLo exploring the realms of human consciousness coupled with ambitious arrangements and immersive production that complements his thematic ambitions perfectly. FlyLo is still making beats in a traditional sense, but the compositions on this LP are more rich and varied than the entire discography of most producers, and the music he draws from spans the likes of ambient, psychedelia, r&b, post-rock, progressive rock, and meditative astral jazz as much as his usual instrumental hip hop, IDM, and free jazz touchstones. And so while UtQC is more insular, less immediate, and more likely to necessitate multiple listens than any other record of his, it’s the best showcase of FlyLo’s versatility, melodic intuition, and use of texture.

The compositions are short and sweet, and barely last longer than it takes for FlyLo to introduce an idea, tweak it, thwart expectations, and move on. Like on Cosmogramma, UtQC incorporates live instrumentation weaved throughout various compositions (Thundercat’s bass playing was cemented as a staple element of FlyLo’s sound here) as well as vocal features from the likes of Thundercat, Thom Yorke, Laura Darlington, and Niki Randa. The features are all utilized tastefully, and heighten the potency of the existing arrangements without detracting too much. There are songs like “All In” and “Yesterday/Corded” that just feature FlyLo alone constructing remarkable, lived-in soundscapes from his usual toolkit of drum machines, samplers, sequencers, and keys, while others like the title track and “DMT Song” that commit thoroughly to their minimalism, and coast effortlessly around strong melodies or guest vocal performances. Many of these songs retain the visceral low-end and celestial sweep of his best work, but they don’t serve to overwhelm and disorient as much as they sedate and mesmerize. “Getting There” hits the sweet spot, with and infectious, heavy-hitting low-end juxtaposed against Niki Randa’s sweeping falsetto. UtQC may not go for the jugular as FlyLo’s prior two records, but it’s just as captivating in its own quietly confident way.

And a few of the songs on the back half of the record are some of the most gorgeous that FlyLo has ever composed. The loose and dreamy “Only if You Wanna” provides a simple but sublime bridge from the drum and bass rush of “The Nightcrawler” into the droning r&b mirage with Yorke’s vocals wafting eerily through the crevices in the mix. From there the record moves into “Hunger” and “Phantasm”, two songs that skew the closest that FlyLo has ever veered toward straight up ambience, and they slowly unfurl into gorgeous, unpredictable string progressions as Niki Randa and Laura Darlington deliver understated, ethereal vocals, respectively. From there we’re led into “me Yesterday//Corded”, one of the strongest songs that FlyLo has released to date. It begins in the same somber, minor-key tone of the preceding songs before erupting into a cosmic drum and bass coda with a euphoric melody and pitch-shifted vocals. The final song, “Dream to Me” is a whirring synth and woodwind lullaby that brings everything full circle, leading us right back into the intro, “All In”. UtQC breezes by in nearly 47 minutes, but there’s another singular, self-contained universe of detail packed into this record’s spellbinding grooves.

Essentials: “yesterday//Corded”, “Electric Candyman ft. Thom Yorke”, “All In”

8. Carrie & Lowell- Sufjan Stevens

By the time that Sufjan Stevens released Carrie & Lowell he had already released several classic records and had undergone several stylistic change-ups, but nothing in his discography established the precedent for a masterwork quite like C&L. On C&L Sufjan returned to the sparse chamber folk sound of his superb fourth record, Seven Swans, but he replaced the short vignettes and character studies that peppered that record with an engrossing scope that centers around his tumultuous relationship with his late mother who suffered from substance addiction and schizophrenia. The music is hushed, and minimal, consisting of little more than finger plucked guitar, banjo, ukulele, and an assortment of strings underneath Sufjan’s tender delivery. His music has always radiated a sense of overwhelming empathy, and so when plumbing the depths of his psyche for memories of his mother the tone is often devastating and cathartic in equal measure, but never overly morose or self-pitying. With C&L Sufjan succeeded in honoring his mother’s memory as honestly and as faithfully as he could while his songwriting hit a new peak.

C&L sustains an almost overwhelming poignancy throughout its duration, but it’s never a slog. The heaviness of the sentiments never really subsides, but these songs are each filled with strong hooks, sweeping melodies, and a disarming directness that he’s never quite managed on prior records. Songs like the opening cut “Death with Dignity”, “Should Have Known Better”, and “The Only Thing” soar with warm, infectious hooks and nimble guitar arrangements alongside a few electronic and orchestral embellishments, while songs like “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross” and “Fourth of July” bring the tempo to a crawl and bask in Sufjan’s falsetto and minor-key acoustic guitar arrangements. It all comes to a head on the devastating centerpiece “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”, as Sufjan depicts the self-destructive behavior he engaged in right after his mother’s death “There’s blood on that blade/Fuck me, I’m falling apart/My assassin/Like Casper the ghost/There’s no shade in the shadow of the cross” just so that he could feel closer to her.

Essentials: “No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross”, “Death with Dignity”, “The Only Thing”

7. Some Rap Songs- Earl Sweatshirt

Earl Sweatshirt was arguably the greatest living rapper before dropping his magnum opus, Some Rap Songs, but since its release it’s become much harder to dispute. On SRS Earl runs through 15 songs in 22 minutes, delivering sometimes little more than a hook and a verse per song before transitioning into the next one. The songs operate according to their own logic, and forgo traditional song structure for a loop-based compositional approach. Earl produced the bulk of the record himself, and heavily opted for dusty, de-tuned pianos, shuffling, lo-fi percussion, and a plethora of discordant texture. Earl’s precision is remarkable, and what may initially scan as awkward or clumsy flows slowly reveal themselves to be masterfully sidestepping the rhythms entirely. But for all its challenging aspects, SRS is hardly a precious, posturing sort of record. It demands your full attention, but will reward it several times over.

The songs throughout SRS are bleak missives from a remarkable talent unpacking years of trauma. The record tackles many of the same themes of abandonment, drug abuse, and depression as his past records, but he’s cut out any lingering excess in his prose, distilling only what’s absolutely necessary into each bar. The rapping is lean, and virtuosic, but never showy, and the brevity of the songs themselves is indicative of how succinct and substantial the music there is. Songs like “Red Water” have just a single couplet that he repeats a few times as the ebb and flow of the instrumental sustains the onset momentum, while other songs like “The Mint” are closer to convention, but still unfold along unpredictable loops, and verses that zig zag in and out of the mix at irregular intervals. There are songs like “Cold Summers” and “The Bends” that are the closest that Earl comes to rapping accessibly, and there are those like “Playing Possums” and Peanuts" that owe more to tape loops, ambient, and noise music than anything resembling hip hop. SRS and it’s follow-up EP, Feet of Clay, are easily the most challenging, experimental, and divisive records that Earl has released to date, but they’re also singular masterworks that push hip hop into stranger, and more human realms.

Essentials: “Peanut”, “The Mint” ft. Navy Blue, “December 24”

6. New Bermuda- Deafheaven

After releasing their superb second LP, Sunbather, Deafheaven had become one of the most acclaimed metal bands of the century, and had achieved a level of popularity unprecedented for metal bands. Never mistaken by anyone as purists, Deafheaven began their career flirting with through lines between shoegaze, black metal, and post-rock before tastefully combining them on Sunbather. While they easily could have churned out another LP of post-rock/blackgaze of the same stripe, the band went deeper and darker, and re-emerged with their third LP, New Bermuda, the heaviest, and arguably most melodic, record of their career to date. Across five songs that collectively clock in around 46 minutes Deafheaven continue to expand their parameters of their sound, incorporating heavier tremelo guitars, incendiary blast beats, and sweeping post-rock passages that are more adventurous, expansive, and gorgeous, than what any other bands are doing today. NB may lean the furthest towards the brutality of classic black metal, but the band’s 2015 onslaught still amplifies an immense feeling of transcendence alongside the terror.

Opener “Brought to the Water” rustles to life with the ominous sway of church bells before its lead guitar riff kicks into gear, foreshadowing the premium they place on atmosphere with foreboding timbres. Throughout the next several minutes the band continue to build a scorched earth black metal composition bristling with distortion and rapid fire drumming that eventually slyly segues into a sugary breakdown reminiscent of “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer. It’s disarming, and unprecedented, but a perfectly logical evolution of their sound that reaffirms their status as the most versatile band at the vanguard of contemporary black metal. “Luna” and “Come Back” are two of the heaviest songs that Deafheaven have ever released, and get a ton of mileage out of their seismic guitar riffs and pummeling percussion, while “Luna” boasts one of the loveliest melodies they’ve ever penned, gliding alone a star-dusted, stratosphere-bound guitar riff. Closer “Gifts for the Earth” is a succinct culmination of the preceding 38 minutes, capped off with their most cathartic coda to date with jangly guitar and minor key piano softly swirling around Clarke’s feral shrieks. The warmth exuded beneath Clarke’s shrapnel-laced delivery posits Deafheaven as a band executing well-beyond the scope and limitations of metal.

Essentials: “Gifts for the Earth”, “Brought to the Water”, “Luna”

5. Halcyon Digest- Deerhunter

By the time that Deerhunter geared up to record their fifth LP, Halycon Digest, they already had a rich body of work behind them, but very little of their music set the kind of precedent for where they would go on HD. Here, Deerhunter tapered down their most avant-garde impulses in favor of cleaner guitar arrangements and big, bright melodies, unearthing the pop band they’ve always been at their core with poise and aplomb. The walls of guitar noise, ambient interludes, and studio effects that had defined their previous releases became relegated to marginal aspects of their song craft, and they began opening up their songs like never before. Thankfully, they didn’t dilute their sound, they just cleaned it up, and the 11 songs that make up HD are the most immediate, and richly produced (thanks to Ben Allen, who produced this record after nailing Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion a year prior) of Deerhunter’s career to date. Deerhunter’s shift towards accessibility only seemed to accentuate their inherent strangeness, and HD remains one of the most engaging and endlessly replayable indie pop records of the 21st century.

From the droning low-end thump that ignites opener “Earthquake” it’s clear something substantial has shifted. Allen’s biggest contribution was a heightened low-end that caused Josh Fauver’s bass to really pop without distracting too much from the rest of the arrangements. This extra oomph propels songs like “Don’t Cry” and “Coronado” well into infectious, anthemic territory while it helps ground more ambitious cuts like “Helicopter” and “Desire Lanes”. Frontman Bradford Cox had completely grown into his role as a charismatic, provocative frontman with the pipes and poetic disposition to back up the antics, and propel his band towards a stadium sized sound even if they would never end up touring them. Bradford’s vocal melodies on closer “…He Would Have Laughed” and centerpiece “Helicopter” are the strongest that the band ever penned, while he delivers two of his most impressive vocal performances on the lulling “Sailing” and the pensive “Earthquake”. The closer, a tribute to the late Jay Reatard, is perhaps Deerhunter’s finest moment to date, with Bradford spinning surreal couplets “I live on a farm, yeah/I never lived on a farm” around the band’s steady harpsichord pulse until the composition bursts with euphoria, and then slowly begins to fade out before cutting out abruptly. Deerhunter have never made a bad record, but HD was the last time they showed how simultaneously adventurous and immediate pop music can be.

Essentials: “He Would Have Laughed”, “Helicopter”, “Desire Lanes”

4. Black Messiah- D’Angelo & The Vanguard

In the years following D'Angelo’s spectacular second LP, Voodoo, it seemed increasingly likely that he would never release another record. But then in the twilight days of 2014 D'Angelo surprise dropped his 3rd and best LP to date, Black Messiah, with a new band supporting him called The Vanguard (which consisted of Questlove on drums, Pina Palladino on bass, Isaiah Sharkey on guitar, Roy Hargrove on horns, and a handful of other musicians). BM eschews the warm r&b/neo-soul solo singer-songwriter sound of the first two D'Angelo LPs in favor of a fiery cocktail of avant-garde soul, jazz funk, and psychedelic r&b that’s simultaneously more abrasive and experimental than anything he had done prior. D'Angelo still has a remarkably agile falsetto, but it’s been notably weathered by the years away, and it now has a grainier disposition that happens to be a much better fit for the songs throughout the record. The band’s chemistry is just remarkable, and it’s hard to believe that they weren’t all cutting records with each other for decades prior. Unlike most artists that come back with new work after a notable dry spell, D'Angelo has never sounded more human than he does on this latest LP of his. Thankfully, despite the years apart D’Angelo hasn’t lost an ounce of his remarkable talent, and brings a magnetic charisma, sublime range, and a much sharper point of view to songs that reflect the turmoil of the preceding years of unrelenting police violence, yet respond in a multitude of ways. The Vanguard prove to be an ideal backdrop for D’Angelo’s songwriting, and together they achieve a new standard for neo-soul.

Although it had been 14 years, D'Angelo’s return felt right on time in the immediate wake of the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and plenty of others at the hands of the police. While D'Angelo’s music has never shied away from political statements, BM is by far the most explicitly political record of his career. “1000 Deaths” opens to a sample of a Khalid Abdul Muhammed speech about Jesus being black and quickly gives way to a visceral, funk rock rhythm and red-lining guitars with D'Angelo dissecting the difference between courage and cowardice “Because a coward dies a thousand times/But a soldier just dies once”. On the following track, “The Charade”, D'Angelo opts for searing soul that builds into his most anthemic melody to date while he delivers devastating imagery of the cruelty still inflicted on black people all over the world “All we wanted was a chance to talk/‘Stead we only got outlined in chalk” while “'Til It’s Done” contains D'Angelo’s finest melody to date and finds him questioning the nature of our existence and whether we’re really reckoning with the way that capitalists are destroying our planet “Perilous dissidence evening up the score/Do we even know what we’re fighting for?”. He also delivers some of his best love songs to date, including the funky mid-tempo shuffle of “Sugah Daddy”, the tender soul ballad “Betray My Heart”, and the spellbinding centerpiece “Really Love”. These songs fold neatly within the larger fabric of the record as a whole, and complement the politically charged songs without breaking the greater aesthetic. D'Angelo’s conviction is palpable throughout it all, and the newfound wisdom that he accrued in the years since Voodoo enrich the perspective that he brings to the songs in such a generous, humble way. Even if D’Angelo never releases another record we couldn’t have asked for a better swan song from him.

Essentials: “’Til It’s Done”, “The Charade”, “Really Love”

3. MBV- My Bloody Valentine

Like D'Angelo, it didn’t seem likely that My Bloody Valentine would ever follow-up their masterful second LP, but 22 years after the release of Loveless, in the dead of February 2013, MBV, the third My Bloody Valentine, finally emerged. There are 9 songs here, and they can neatly divided into three sections that find the band progressing from an extension of what they were doing in the 90s to styles never associated with them. MBV picks up right where Loveless left off, beginning with expansive suite of shoegaze songs rendered with the kind of sublime texture and tone as we’ve come to expect from the group, and slowly but surely they branch out into psychedelic pop, ambient, and pure noise, realms they’ve teased in the past but have never quite committed to prior. You can hear the band straining against their limitations, and although seeking out perfection is a fools errand, they nearly achieve it.

There’s no mistaking MBV as the work of any other band, but here they’re painting in darker, bolder hues than they’ve used in the past. Beginning with the opening song, “She Found Now”, their sound is much richer, and more forlorn, than it’s ever sounded, with thick plumes of guitar washing over wispy androgynous vocals and faint, skeletal percussion. Even as the tempos increase and the melodies begin to peak out beneath the fuzz, that wistful, melancholic tone remains. “Only Tomorrow” amps up the tempo with a driving rhythm and scorching guitars perpetually firing into the red

while “In Another Way” is a bludgeoning slice of driving noise pop with a strong melody from guitarist Belinda Butcher. “Nothing Is” coasts off the hypnotic repetition of its bludgeoning guitars for 3.5 minutes, and perfectly segues into the glorious noise piece, “Wonder 2”, which closes the record on a note of whirring guitars that approximate the overwhelming euphoria of first wave shoegaze, but takes the listener to much stranger places.

The nine songs throughout MBV strike a perfect balance between updating the shoegaze style that they perfected on loveless while wading into new territory, but it all hangs together beautifully. Kevin Shields and Belinda Butcher still harmonize on the bulk of these songs, and they’re ethereal delivery is still the perfect counterbalance for the aggression of the guitars. The searing slow-burn of “Who Sees You” is the peak of their vocal interplay, while on the midsection pop numbers like “New You” and “In Another Way” Butcher takes the reins and delivers two of the band’s strongest melodies to date over driving percussion and sleigh bells. The relative immediacy of “New You” is new sound for the band, and they completely deliver on its hypnotic pop premise. “Is This and Yes” and “Nothing Is” are the two instrumentals at the polar ends of the band’s sound that perfectly balance out the more dynamic songs, and the aforementioned noise piece “Wonder 2” complements the opening song “She Found Now” perfectly in that it’s an exploration of what My Bloody Valentine might explore more of if they ever release a fourth LP. It’s a miracle that MBV even exists in the first place, so the fact that it’s this good is just icing.

Essentials: “Only Tomorrow”, “New You”, “In Another Way”

2. Blonde- Frank Ocean

After releasing his generation defining 2012 debut Channel Orange, it was hard to say where he was going to take his music next. A cryptic series of videos in mid-August 2016 featuring Frank building a ladder led to few clues, but at the end of this week we received an audio-visual album titled Endless. Before anyone could really acclimate themselves to sleek, genre-agnostic minimalism of Endless, the proper follow-up to CO, titled Blonde, released a day later. Whereas CO was the sound of a singular talent discovering what he can do, Blonde is the sound of that talent capitalizing on those gifts with unparalleled precision. On Blonde Frank opts for a striking minimalist palette of psychedelic pop, avant-garde soul, ambient, and jazz, that are off-kilter and adventurous without sacrificing the warmth of his past work. Like CO, Blonde primarily explores themes of nostalgia, heartbreak, identify, and the nature of human perception, and here his eye for detail and attention to detail remains unmatched by any songwriter of the last decade.

From the opening song “Nikes”, Blonde presents itself as a drastic stylist departure from what Frank was doing prior. The first half is a distorted r&b dreamscape with Frank crooning in a pitch-shifted higher register, and actually has him rapping a few verses, before returning to his normal register. Blonde is filled with strange, yet tasteful stylistic touches like this, from the distorted shrieks at the end of “Ivy”, to the collapsing, pitch-shifted orchestra that gives way to an eerie children’s choir’s on “Pretty Sweet”, the album rarely shifts into anything that scans as conventional. “Pink and White” is the most straight forward moment on the album, but the verses rarely stay grounded, and soon give way to a soaring chorus that slyly tucks Beyonce’s voice into the fold before the instruments dissolve from the mix entirely. “Skyline To” and “Godspeed” flirt with ambience and put a great deal of emphasis on exploring texture and negative space, while “Close to You” is a brief, glitchy cover of Stevie Wonder’s classic that provides a terrific segue from the “Facebook Story” interlude into the record’s devastating centerpiece, White Ferrari. The record covers a remarkable amount of ground sonically, but it coheres in a way that completely belies this scope.

“Nikes” sets the tone for the record on the whole as Frank watches his friends lose themselves to the spoils of his fame and begins to recognize himself as a placeholder for a partner’s lost love. “Self-Control” depicts the story of one of Frank’s relationship’s imploding “I’ll be the boyfriend in your set dreams tonight/Noses on a rail, little virgin wears the white” set to a mesmerizing neo-soul slow-burn that unfurls a gorgeous, understated melody while “Nights” juxtaposes the highs of the come-up “Oooh nani nani/This feel like a Quaalude” with a guitar pop/boom-bap instrumental and the perils of fame with a woozy, cloud-rap adjacent second half “Shut the fuck up I don’t want to hear your conversation/Rollin” marijuana that’s a cheap vacation". The record hits its peak with the spectacular ballad, “White Ferrari”, the strongest song of his career to date. Over warm acoustic guitar provided by Alex G Frank details the permanence of the love that he’ll have for someone that he’s no longer in a relationship with “I care for you still and I will forever/That was my part of the deal, honest/We got so familiar”. The humility and humanity of the moment is heartbreaking, and speaks volumes about the depths of Frank’s artistry. Blonde set a new benchmark for avant-garde pop, and is arguably the most influential album of the past decade.

Essentials: “White Ferrari”, “Nights”, “Self-Control”

1. Cosmogramma- Flying Lotus

After breaking through with his superb sophomore LP, Los Angeles (a singular blend of IDM, trip-hip, and woozy Dilla & Madlib-esque instrumental hip-hop) it would have been easy for Flying Lotus to continue mining the same sounds for successive records that were just slight variations on that singular template. But for FlyLo’s third LP, Cosmogramma, he blew his sound wide open, eschewing the quantized beat grid for a lusher, more sprawling sound that couldn’t be confined to standard rhythms. Cosmogramma is steeped in the lineage of instrumental hip hop and IDM like its predecessor, but it manages to juggle a wider palette of disparate styles such as four on the floor, drum and bass, jungle, free-jazz, and experimental bass while incorporating a wide variety of guest musicians that do a superb job of fleshing out his expansive compositions. Cosmogramma is a record that can barely contain its ambition, and despite having been released over a decade ago it still shines like a beacon illuminating the boundless possibilities of where music can go.

The sublime fusion of the live instrumentation, supplied by Thundercat on bass, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson contributing string arrangements, and Ravi Coltrane providing tenor saxophone, among many others coupled with FlyLo’s mind-warping production is what gives the album it’s compelling thrust. The first half primarily splits the difference between frantic drum and bass/synth-pop heaters and atmospheric cosmic-jazz interludes, and the pacing is just remarkable, with no moment overstaying it’s welcome and plenty of space to give each idea the space it needs to develop. Thom Yorke drops by for a wispy vocal performance on the agile IDM strut “And the World Laughs With You” while Thundercat delivers a formal career introduction on the tender ballad “MmmHmm” before the record shifts into the infectious four on the floor centerpiece, “Do the Astral Plane”. From here the record deploys the astral jazz and eastern influences in a more pronounced fashion on songs like “German Haircut” and “Dance of the Pseudo Nymph” respectively. The celestial ambience of “Table Tennis” featuring Laura Darlington is a welcome breather for the life-affirming synth surge of closer “Galaxy in Janaki”, ending the album on a somber, but ultimately uplifting note with Flylo sampling the ventilators that his mom was hooked up to on her death bed for a euphoric, synth-streaked send-off.

The enduring appeal lies in its function as ambition existing for the sake of ambition. The songs throughout Cosmogramma all vary in texture, tempo, and tone, and they all around great on their own, but it’s the journey from start to finish that Cosmogramma exemplifies as a spiritual experience. Cosmogamma was intended to function as a loose concept album of sorts about lucid-dreaming and out of body experiences influenced by the study of the universe, heaven, and hell, and it’s remarkable to hear just how much of that vision that he’s able to convey without the prevalence of vocals. Although electronic music has changed dramatically in the decade since Cosmogramma was released, the execution of FlyLo’s masterpiece hasn’t been in matched, in electronic music or anywhere where else. Cosmogramma is both the pinnacle of where music has been, and a glimpse at the possibilities of where it could go moving forward.

Essentials: “Galaxy in Janaki”, “Do the Astral Plane”, “MmmHmm” ft. Thundercat

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