#inspired by that one graphic going around where their faces r edited together in the sky while carlos and oscar are just like. Standing.

[finifugue]

Of their five completed years of racing against each other, Lando and Charles have finished with one point between them three times. In 2020, Charles had 98 points and Lando had 97. In 2021, Lando had 160 points and Charles had 159. In 2023, Lando had 205 points and Charles had 206. If, in AD this year, Charles wins and Lando comes 2nd, they will once again end up with a one-point difference.

They both replaced a beloved and long-standing world champion at their respective teams when they joined (kimi raikkonen and fernando alonso). They both prefer the other's teammate over each other.

Their teams are two of the oldest in F1 history, and they're irreperably wrapped up in a history of scandal between each other. They both quickly became their teams' golden child, the one who was going to win the championships, the one who was going to end a decade-long deficit.

Both failed at the hands of Max Verstappen. Don't even get me started on how he fits into all this.

Both have the potential to be entirely shafted by their teams in 2025 because of the new, interesting teammate that everyone believes will win a championship before they'll come close.

They hate each other. They can't get away from each other. They're the same person. Four squared is sixteen.

[ghost-ghost-baby]

Narcissist (alpha!readerxOmega!Bakugo soulmate au)

An: this is heavily inspired by the song narcissist by younger hunger definitely recommend listening to it!

An: BIG TY TO MY BETA FOR EDITING THIS ABSOLUTE MONSTER OF A FIC WE STAN!

Word count: 3.2k (ur welcome)

Summary: Bakugo being a little shit basically- Mina and Denki r sick of him- reader runs out of scent blockers-

Warnings: omegaverse, swearing, Bakugo being a dick, reader just thinks he’s hot, gets a bit spicy but nothing graphic, non traditional dynamics (subby alphas) drug use (weed)

You were in a familiar room, one you’d come to love since you’d started dreaming of it, and you sat on the bed and waited… any moment now.

“Oi, are you here, shithead?” The voice of your omega was dreamier than it was in real life; his harsh words unable to punctuate the tranquility of your dream.

“I always am, Katsuki!” You chirped, grinning as he slowly faded into existence. The black tank top and jeans he wears make him look far too good, and your brain short-circuited for a few seconds.

“I told you not to fucking call me that!” He growled, but you only laughed. Reaching out to grab his hands before he could stop you, you pull him down so you could kiss him. Any anger he had quickly melted away, and Katsuki had pulled one hand away to rest on your shoulder and pushed back. You got the point, you pulled away for air and leaned back on your elbows as you did. Katsuki followed and straddled you without a moment of hesitation. His mouth latched onto your neck and you let out a hum. With one hand gravitating to tangle in his hair, he gave you another push that had you lying flat on your back.

“Hey-”

“Shut the fuck up, don’t ruin this.” Katsuki bit down on your throat and you squeaked, although he licked over the mark seconds later to soothe it, and only pulled away to kiss you when you tried to talk again. You melted, let your hands wander down to his thighs, and had your thumbs rubbing absent-minded circles. Then, Katsuki was unbuttoning the shirt you had on, hands quickly trailing lower to-

“Y/N! Did you hear what Mr. Aizawa said?” Mina’s voice brought you back from the dream you had the night before, and you blinked at her as you blanked.

“No way I'm working with their dumbass!” Katsuki snarled as Kiri forced him into a seat at your table, and you turned your head to Sero with a questioning look. He usually knew what was going on in class.

“We have a group project for a presentation, Mr. Aizawa picked the groups-”

“Oh hell yeah, all my best bro’s working together? Sounds like fun to me!” Denki leaned over to hug you and Mina, and the pieces started to click together. You were working on an art project, with your mate, who hate-

“How could anything be fun with Y/n around, they fucking ruin everything.” Katsuki grumbled to himself, refusing to meet your eyes despite sitting opposite you. Kiri mouthed an apology to you from his seat next to Katsuki. Honestly, you had no idea why he’d decided to act like… such a brat really, but it was just an act, however annoying it was. The two of you were soulmates, he’d come around, eventually.

“Oh hush, Bakugo, Y/n’s a riot and we all know it! You’re the one who goes to sleep at like, 8pm” Denki came to your aid. The electric blonde then pressed a kiss to your cheek that had Katsuki gritting his teeth.

“So, what's the project, guys?” You flipped through your book to a fresh page, resting your chin on your hand as you waited for the others to speak.

“We have to show the versatility of styles and composition under a singular theme!” Kiri was the one that answered you, and the group immediately started throwing around ideas.

“I think we could do horror, a lot of horror artists have different composition styles and still manage to convey the-”

“Tch, that’s the best you could come up with? I’m not surprised, an alpha as shitty as you can’t be capable of any decent ideas.” Katsuki sneered, but you only smiled at him as the group agreed with your idea. Your omega merely grumbled and hunched over in his seat as the group discussed the different artists you could use as examples.

You’d stayed late to double-check something with a professor, and you were still flipping through your notebook as you walked through the unusually empty halls. You weren’t paying attention to where you were going, and before you knew it you ran into someone, the same someone who shoved you against a wall seconds later, but your fear subsided when you realised it was just Katsuki.

“Watch where you’re fucking going, dipshit.” Katsuki wasn’t even sure why he’d pushed you up against the wall, but being this close to you, touching you… it was..nice…

“Tch, god your scent is so weak, you smell like a fucking beta, how’d I get stuck with such a runt, huh? Some sick kind of joke.” Katsuki’s tone didn't match what he was saying. The way he leaned forward to rub his cheek over your scent gland definitely said otherwise, but you stayed quiet, he always found some excuse to scent you, but he’d usually get embarrassed and storm off if you dared to say anything.

“You’re pathetic, you know? Being this submissive for an omega, are you sure you’re not a beta? It’d make more sense.” You bit your lip when Bakugo pressed a kiss to your neck, only hesitating a moment before he started sucking a mark onto your skin. His words bounced right off of you because all you could focus on was how hot he was and how he’d subconsciously put his thigh between your legs and thank fuck you were on scent blockers, or you’d never hear the end of it.

“Really, you aren’t even going to try and defend yourself? You’re even weaker than I thought.” A growl next to your ear made you shiver, and Katsuki pushed away with a snarl when he was satisfied. He cursed at you again and warned you ‘not to tell anyone or he’d kick your ass’ (he wouldn’t) before he walked away, leaving you to walk home with your head completely in the clouds.

“What took you so fucking long, huh idiot?” Katsuki was on you the second you appeared in the dream, pulling you down into a rather ferocious kiss before you could say anything. He bit your lip when you didn’t open your mouth fast enough, swallowing any protests you would have made, and continued to kiss you until you were dizzy. “I’ve been waiting two hours…” He pulled away to kiss under your jaw, and if you didn’t know him so well you’d miss the insecure tone in his voice.

“Sorry, Midoriya wanted-” You stopped when Katsuki growled, biting down so hard you were surprised he didn't draw blood.

“Why the fuck are you saying his name here, huh? Are you tryna piss me off?” He pulled away to sneer at you. You opened your mouth to explain, but the words died in your throat when he unzipped your hoodie, and any coherent thought you had went out the window when he started to kiss your neck.

Everything was ready. The lounge room was set up, complete with snacks, drinks, and stationery for you and your friends to work on the project. They were meant to be here any second, and you couldn’t help but hover near the door to your apartment. You weren’t used to having people over and it still put you on edge having others in your space. But that thought left your head when a knock sounded on your door. You quickly opened it and were almost knocked over by Denki and Mina engulfing you in a hug.

“Thanks so much for hosting bro!”

“Awww you laid out all these snacks and stuff too! An omega’s gonna be really lucky to have you one day Y/n!” They pushed inside. Denki closed the door as Mina oohed and aahed over the setup, their praise had a slight blush rising to your face as you sheepishly rubbed your neck. Sero was next, quickly hugging you before he joined Denki and Mina, then Katsuki and Kirishima last. The blonde pushed past you without saying hello, but Kiri pulled you into a hug so tight you couldn’t breathe for a second, and was complimenting the setup as you took a seat. You tried to sit next to Mina, but Denki let out a whine and the pair was pulling you down between them before you had time to protest. Denki immediately leaned on you once you were settled. Katsuki couldn’t focus on the project, how could he, when his two dipshit friends were all over his mate. And you weren’t even doing anything to stop them! In fact, you were leaning into their hugs and giggling at every stupid joke they made! It had Katsuki fuming. Kirishima was the only one close enough to smell the angry shift in his scent, and he glanced between his friend and you, slowly putting the pieces together. You really had no idea what was happening, but Denki’s head was on your shoulder, and Mina’s arm around your waist as she asked questions about the project, giggling and pressing a kiss to your cheek whenever you got confused, which happened more than you’d like to admit. The blonde gritted his teeth when Mina’s hand went to your thigh, you were his! Nobody else should ever be touching you like that! You should know better! So when you excused yourself to grab something from your room, of course he made up some excuse about needing the bathroom so he could follow you.

The door to your room closed with a click, and you quickly spun around, expecting to see Mina or Denki, anyone except Katsuki to be honest.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He was seeing red at this point. He cornered you and made you stumble back until your waist hit your desk.

“Uh- getting more pens-?” You held out the pack of pens with a confused look on your face that only made Katsuki angrier. How were you so stupid? And so fucking cute when you were- he cut off that thought, he needed to focus on yelling at you. Not the way your brows furrowed and how you nervously bite your lip as you waited for him to say something. Wait- were you blushing? Fuck, maybe he should-

“Katsuki? Are you oka-“

“Shut the fuck up, dipshit.” He snarled. Then, catching you both off guard, he leaned forward and kissed you. Your eyes fluttered closed immediately. He’d only kissed you in your dreams, which was nothing compared to this, and you hesitantly placed your hands on his waist. His hands went to your hair to pull you closer, tugging it until you got the message and parted your lips for him. Katsuki let out a hum of approval as he deepened the kiss, why hadn’t he done this sooner? You couldn’t focus on anything other than how much Katsuki tasted like caramel, he didn’t taste like caramel in the dreams. You couldn’t help but whine when he pulled back. Another insistent tug on your hair had you tilting your head back, and Katsuki didn’t waste any time kissing over your neck. You were so lost in the feeling you almost missed the words he growled against your skin.

“You should know better, you’re mine. Other people shouldn’t be fucking touching you like that.”

“Do you think they’re like…. Finally-” Mina made a hand gesture that had Denki cackling, even Kiri cracked a smile.

“I hope so, it’s getting hard to watch all the back and forth.” Sero sighed, dropped his pen, and stretched.

“Yeah, have you seen how mad Bakubro gets though? It’s pretty fun to push his buttons like this!” Denki grinned as he leaned his head on Mina’s shoulder, and she wrapped her arm around his waist.

“I don’t know… Bakugo’s uh… stubborn, to put it nicely.”

“Your scent is weird… are you wearing a different perfume?” Mina leaned her head on your shoulder, arms wrapped around your waist as you glanced at Katsuki. After whatever the fuck had happened in your room, he’d gone back to acting like he hated you, so, you’d kept letting Denki and Mina do whatever they wanted. He had his eyes fixated on the work, and you turned back to Mina with a smile.

“Oh, sorry about that! I forgot to refill my scent blockers and my doctor’s not available until next week.”

“Don’t be sorry, bro! It’s nice, like really, really nice!” Denki came up behind you, throwing a quick glance at Katsuki before he leaned forward, crooning and rubbing his cheek over your scent gland, Mina doing the same a moment later. The pen Katsuki was holding snapped, his angry scent pumping out in waves as he glared daggers into the book in front of him, all too aware of you laughing.

You were hyper-aware of how strong your scent was, this was the longest you’d gone without scent blockers since you’d presented, and you’d lit a scented candle to try and cover it up. It hadn’t really worked, maybe you should light some incense-

“Y/n! Sorry we’re early!” Mina’s hand on your shoulder broke you from your thoughts, and you shook your head before you smiled. Denki cut you off before you could apologize about your scent.

“Damn Y/n! It smells like you baked cookies- oh my god did you bake-”

“Don’t be stupid, babe, it’s just their scent.” Mina shoved him inside, shaking her head as she followed and closed the door behind her.

“Oh! Of course!” Denki nodded, and he and Mina linked arms with you. They walked you over to the couch and sat you all down with grins on their faces.

“Uh… guys-?” You didn’t trust that look, it never leads to anything good.

“Well, since the project is like, 99.5% done-” Mina started, hand coming up to play with your hair.

“We thought we deserved a reward!” Denki interrupted, reaching into his bag and producing a blunt. You felt your own grin forming.

“Oh my god- is that from-”

“Shinso! You know he sells the best stuff on campus, I decided to splurge for my bros!” Denki looked incredibly pleased with himself, and you couldn’t help but tackle the blonde in a hug.

“Oh my god Denki, you’re the best!”

The three of you were blazed by the time the others got there. Sero happily bounced over to share the blunt, while Katsuki and Kiri just sighed and sat down with you. Katsuki’s eyes instantly zoned in on where you were lying on Mina and Denki on the couch. He was oddly silent as he tried to keep his cool, the nagging thoughts that had always been there slowly got stronger. He’d always had to be strong, people perceived him as weak just because of his dynamic, so he’d rejected the thought of being with an alpha, hoping for a beta or omega. Or you. You never made a big deal out of your dynamic, and always treated him as an equal. Then the dreams started. He loved you, he really did! But his whole reputation would go down the drain if he was claimed by an alpha, especially one with such a weak scent and mild presence. So…. he pretended to hate you in public because the two of you had your dreams, where nobody could judge him! Even if they did pale in comparison to real life. But lately… he couldn’t stop wondering… were you getting tired of waiting? With the way you were acting… the thought made his stomach turn and his canines come out. Especially since you had run out of blockers. Your scent getting stronger and stronger as the days went by. You were his alpha! You shouldn’t be scenting other people! Especially omegas! And you certainly shouldn’t be laying on them while you were ignoring him! You hadn’t even said hello to him! You were too busy getting high with those assholes like you didn't belong to him! You were his, it wasn’t fair!

Mina was the last out of the apartment. She kissed your cheek and winked at you as the door closed. The exhaustion set in as you leaned against the door.

“What the fuck was that?” Katsuki growled and made you startled when you saw him by the table. You only shrugged as you went to pack up the stuff on the couch.

“Denki got us some weed because the project was done-”

“Not that, dickhead! They were all over you!” He marched over to you, trying to ignore how good you smelled up close.

“And? We’re not-” You responded, and Katsuki was shoving you before he realized, ignoring the way you yelped as you fell on the couch. You sprawled on your back and glaring up at him.

“Katsuki! What the fuck!” Katsuki didn’t reply, eyes traveling over your vulnerable form. Flush rose to his face as he realized how provocative the position was, causing warmth to pool in his tummy. If kissing was so much better in reality, what would it be like to be inside you? Feel you clench around him and pull his hair when he hit your sweet spot? Would your thighs shake the same in real life when he just kept going? The omega didn’t even realize his scent had changed, he just licked his lips and stared at you with hooded eyes, fuck he wanted-

“Are you okay? You zoned out.” Fuck, when had you gotten up? You were so close now, your scent overwhelming. He never wanted you to go on blockers again.

“Fuck, Katsuki! Katsuki! Are you in heat?” It finally dawned on you. Katsuki’s scent had taken on a sweeter tone it didn’t usually have, and with the way he kept zoning out, it was obvious. Plus thoughts of him on top of you that wouldn’t leave your brain alone. Your question snapped him out of his daze, and the omega snarled at you, stepping back and stumbling when a jolt of pain went through him.

“Fuck off, like you could trigger-” His voice cut off as another wave of pain went through him, causing you to reached out to steady him without thinking. The omega was going to let out a growl but it quickly changed to a whine as it escaped his mouth. You pulled your hand back like it had burned, although your mate’s temperature was so high it wasn’t out of the question. You took two steps back and froze when a feral snarl ripped through the room, dark red eyes pinning you in your place.

“He-hey Katsuki…” Your voice stopped his growling, and it took every ounce of self-control you had to stay coherent as he advanced, your rut already trying to cloud your judgment. Your eyes darted around the room, maybe you could make it to the bathroom? Then Katsuki could ride out his heat and you could talk about it? yeah. Katsuki was only a foot away from you now, the grin he had on was somehow more unsettling than the snarl, and you shook your head to get some of your resolve back. Okay, three, two, one-

You made it maybe ten centimeters before Katuski caught you, and pushed you back down on the couch. He wasted no time sitting on your lap and tilting your face up to look into his eyes.

“You’re not getting away from me, Alpha. I know you want this. I should have done this months ago.” Sincerity shone through your omega’s lidded eyes, and you felt your small shred of resolve shrink away even more. Your hands flew to his chest to push him away.

“Ka-Katsuki it’s just- just your heat, you don’t mean-“

“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t mean, alpha.” Katsuki was back to growling at you. His hands grabbed your wrists, pinned them down, and used his knees to keep them in place. He went back to cupping your face, red eyes boring into yours as he thought of what to say and a growl leaving him whenever you dared to look away. You were so, so obnoxiously pretty, it made it even harder to focus. Katsuki kept getting distracted by little details, like how your eyes shone and you kept biting your lip.

“You’re so fuckin stupid, ya know that? Of course, I fuckin want you, you’re my alpha- I don’t… I don’t care what other people think anymore, I just want you.” Katsuki’s tone was softer than you expected, and you could only gape at him as a blush quickly rose to your face. You knew he didn’t hate you, but hearing him say that lifted a weight off your shoulders you’d been carrying for who knows how long. The moment passed, all the softness went away as Katsuki leaned down to kiss you, and this time you kissed him back without any reservations.

[rutledge60hviid-blog]

Lenovo Ideapad Y700 Assessment.

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[estuarries]

baby’s first liveshow commentary

hello lads i have decided to attempt doing @nihilist-toothpaste​ inspired video commentary/write up/review thingies!!!! welcome to ramble-y fun time

phil’s liveshow on august 10, 2017

his smile in the first minute makes my heart so happy i love him so much

i love the eye-tongue-eye emoji stop being mean to it

he’s a bit late bc he just finished filming a new ap vid!!! it took him longer than he thought it would to finish filming bc he was rambling. this is a #relatable brain thing

“i just said goodbye and now i’m saying hello again!” wrt filing and then doing a liveshow makes me rly happy bc i wouldn’t have thought abt it that way. i love phil’s brain

new vid clues: paper bag(?) and bubble wrap. amazingphil asmr part ii??

dan’s not joining the liveshow bc he has a headache but phil’s gonna hop into dan’s next one

closed eyes and happy gesticulation whilst telling sleepy-morning “unexpected window cleaning man frightened me” story

phil’s fight/flight/freeze response is freeze

“imagine if i had decided to make breakfast naked! ...if i was that kind of person…” its okay m8 we know u like to make nakey bro brunches w danyul

are the emoji pants the only pair of graphic pj pants he has now ??? why are they being featured so prominently lately ???? phil IS an emoji is the only phnnie conspiracy i can support now

in the ap vid phil did SCIENCE and REACTED TO THINGS (chemistry . reaction . hehe :3)

he’s out of tv shows to watch ….he and dan have watched so many series together over the years ..... i am emotional

phil hasnt watched in a heartbeat EITHER !! BLASPHEMOUS BOYES!!!

re: rick and morty. i strongly agree and it makes me so nervous that rick burps all the time i cannot focus on whats happening in the show bc rick gives me so much anxiety

he misses the cherry blossom tree in thehowlter’s front yard and they are hopefully going to put it in when they have money

“you’re all like dan! not everything has to be symmetrical!” thank u for these affirmations that not everything has to be perfect thank u for being chill. a chill phil. 

“i dont mind a little bit of wonkiness!” “i’m at a bit of a wonk!” “is the entire house wonky?” the only real phil branding is ~WOnKy~

phils hands are so beautiful???? i love them?????? @ 8:50ish

him trying to figure out his best side and saying “one? or two?” as options like at the optometrist when ur getting ur eyes checked. 

someone in the chat: “both!” phil’s cheeky grin/”don’t flatter me!!!” response

someone in the chat: “side three!” i snort laughed along w phil this is truly Good Content. dark!phil RISE

phil doesn’t think he really has a bad side and his easy neutrality wrt his physical appearance is dreamy. i love him and i love that he’s comfy w himself like this

phil had an eye infection and this is the first day he’s been without glasses…�� why does he glasses-bait us like this …..

it’s really hard for him to concentrate with dilated pupils so that’s why he was being a wee bit wonky in the last liveshow

his eye is no longer infected and is “white and ready to see!”. the tone of his voice, his accent, and the phrasingof that reminded me so much of my british grandma who i havent seen in a few years and now i want to call her i miss her

wicked was “as the kids say...Wicked.” I SNORTED AKLHFAEIHKF

also i cannot believe that he and dan used the same silly phrasewhen talking about their opinions of wicked. is it still #copyrightinfringement if its your bf blatantly enterprising ur intellectual property?

phil was feeling a bit meh going into wicked but now he’s converted and a fan

he loved defying gravity :(

phil: every audience is important! me: crying

phil loves coming-of-age/college/highschool aus … Me Too

phil remix: the top fans to the tune of mad world “all around me are familiar faces...lillyphanstuff, joteleena…”

he’s had “mad world” and also that fuckin. ditty song stuck in his head

“...is one thicc bih - NO!” is the best thing ive ever heard

im so sad that phil hasnt experienced the joys of ditty. apparently he doesn’t have it downloaded and doesn’t really know what it is

14:07 is my new ringtone (he sang the ditty tune in “doot doot doot”s)

“bandicussy” IM DEAD

phil thought it was a good family activity to see dunkirk but it made his parents very emotional bc his maternal grandad was in the war

making your entire family cry is apparently the phil way to entertain

neither he nor dan understood the timelines of dunkirk upon first watch

after filming his ap vid he sanitized using vanilla cupcake hand sanitizer

he watches zoe’s bath and bodyworks candle/lotion hauls??????? ME TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

apparently b&bw has some ~priiiicey~ candles. phil is the coupon clipping, consumer reports reading dad

he said that livestreaming games on dapg would be “dope”. i am reminded for the millionth time that he is a 30 year old white man. i am moderately uncomfortable.

jk it was someone in the chat who said it he was just reading the comment

“hi to the ‘phan’s moving boxes’ group chat”

facterino according to the nature man on tv: in england nature has decided that it’s autumn already. this is evidenced by blackberries coming out in august. because fall isstartingso early they’re expected to have a harsh winter but its fine bc he is excited for snow!

some climate change discourse

he’s not a big doctor who fan but his fav doctor is david tennant

he’s excited for the “lady doctor” and i’m uh. not a huge fan of that wording

23:02 pre-sneeze noises and hand motions are Delightful

apparently it’s southern england peeps who pronounce scone with a hard o (scOHne) and northerners pronounce it with a soft o (scAWn). phillu doesn’t know which pronunciation he uses

my mom grew up in cornwall (and moved to america when she was a teen. i’m american btw!) and pronounces it the northern way. we’ve had the scohne vs scawn debate!! lots of #britishfamilythings in this liveshow

philly homework motivation song @ 24:52

his first response to ppl being sad about school starting in a week is to calculate how many seconds are in a week so they can re-frame their time left in a way that feels more plentiful. i love this ???

i also really love how he tries to read premium messages from different people every time. idk that’s just really thoughtful and as a fan i really appreciate it

he knows that black makes him look good …. GOodBYe

today is world lion day!

phil is the one who puts the funny/random holidays on the dnp calendars. of course it was but im still so happily surprised  

doinganap’s sicth/sixth discourse

he’s reading people from the chat’s bdays and telling them what funny holidays are on their birthdays! i love how he finds different ways to get ppl in the chat involved every liveshow. i appreciate him so much !like yeah i know its a marketing thing but let me pretend its solely phil’s care for us

he wants to go back to japan

he can’t read or edit and listen to music at the same time! me neither

someone asked what a good pet would be and phil went on a lil tangent about how it’s important to have enough time to take care of the pet you choose!! dont get an exotic pet or a breed of non-exotict pet that requires a lot of time, money, or energy to care for it if you’re not at a point in your life where u can take care of it to the best of your ability! <3

hedgehogs are one of the most common animals in the uk??? what the heck?

he can’t remember whether or not he’s seen a hedgehog irl so he texts mum lester to ask <3 why is this the sweetest thing in the world . like seeing a hedgehog irl would be an experience that his family facilitated or even if he was moved out when it happened it would have been so exciting that he def would have told kath about it. so any way it happened she would know about it. my heart is Warm.

he’s not a huge summer candle burner but as soon as it’s september he’ll be on the pumpkin spice train

mum lester texted back and apparently his grandparents had a family of hedgehogs in their garage and his granddad built them a little hedgehog house to hibernate in :( wow!

phil might play shelter 2 … with dan. No Thank You. let us have some phil-only time plz 

shelter 2 is more of an autumnal game so he might do it later when he can cozy up with some cocoa and herd the badger babies

he feels a coffee buzz after five (5) chocolate-covered coffee beans. r u sure u even drink coffee phil????

rye bread is worse (in phil’s opinion) than regular bread and is ”claggy”. i busted out laughing and texted my mom IMMEDIATELY bca LOOOONG time ago we were at a family christmas party with my dad’s extended family and all of the Adults were playing scrabble. my mom ended up spelling claggy and everyone else was like THATS A MADE UP WORD WHAT THE FUCK!!!! and my mom was like ???? no its not? my dad’s family is from the eastern us and had never heard the word claggy before and i remember my dad giving my mom shit about it for YEARS afterward because she caused such an uproar. idk if it was a regional thing or if americans just don’t say claggy but REGARDLESS. my mom and i had a good laugh over this description of rye bread and we both love phil

he’s nervous abt what dalien is going to look like and become as he grows up. phil’s general reaction to dalien has been one of caution and nervousness and idk ?? someone more thoughtful analyze that please

his advice for making the most of the last bits of summer: do something you haven’t done before! immediately after bestowing upon us this Wise Advice he giggles and becomes self aware of his parental tone. Our Dad Is Becoming Self Aware

he doesnt swear around his parents?????? my mom says fuck all the time :0

2018 calendar and season two pastel plushies are in the works!

he’s singing another song to list the top fans. suggestions include toxic, the ditty tune, and the tetris theme. he goes with the ditty song and starts laughing in the middle of it so makes a seamless musical transition to toxic

if everything recorded properly with his new vid we should see it in the next few days!

he hopes that we have a lovely weekend and that whatever we end up doing brings us a bit of happiness :( i love him thank u phil

tiny little bonus song after he covers up the camera. schrodingers phil.

all in all i love phil’s liveshows and this has been the highlight of my day. thank u for reading!

[defendinggalahd-blog]

So. I guess I hit 200 today.

“A hero is only as great as the men who stand behind him.”

Wow. 200 followers already. Who would’ve thought? I’ve had this blog maybe a little over a month, and it’s definitely been the most loving and accepting community I’ve ever been apart of. 

You’ll have to forgive the terrible graphic. Edits definitely aren’t my thing. (Also, the fond was called ‘Making a Hero’. I had to.) 

There are so many wonderful people I’ve had the chance to talk to, so this is going to be long as shit and really, really gay. Strap in folks. 

ALSO. I tried to be cool and do this whole thing in smalltext and bigtext but I fucked it up and after spending an hour on fixing the formatting to be readable again I decided to give up and post it as-is. So sorry about this thing being such a disaster. It’s just like me. Edit: Tumblr was dumb and didn’t tag half the people in here probably. Tried to fix that. If you get a double notification, I’m sorry!!

The Big Three™

@captaindrautos (Also infernalian and oldfrxend): It’s like Tumblr knew. You’re the first person to come up when I type the ‘@’ symbol. Anyway. Cera. Sharky. Where do I even begin? You’re the actual best. The first person who really played with Nyx (even though it’s been over a month since I replied to that thread, oops) the one who listened and didn’t judge me too harshly as I built Nyx’s Traitor!AU. The day after we met I almost got hit by a car because I was too excited to talk to you. I’m terrified of cars. 

My Nyx wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Hell, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. Somehow, you’ve evolved into one of my favourite people over this past month or so, and despite it not being long, it’s hard to think that I ever didn’t have such a wonderful person in my life. My darling. Moon of my life. I owe you lots more than one lousy Domino’s pizza. 

@pxlsatiio (Also reaprise, securiis, regaliities, arraaxis, xghiranze, pkhara, and lxzarus) : Jess. My twin. My sunshine. You have been my best friend during this weird, emotional month of ours. To think we were once both so insecure about our characters interacting (You opened up to me once, but I always felt weird saying it in return. So I’m saying it.) 

When we first started talking, I was terrified. You were like... this big-name roleplayer. Everyone who seemed like they stood out in the FFXV community interacted with you and your muses and I was a lone new blog in this sea of sharks. (No offense, Cera.) But after a few awkward times of me embarrassing myself (and I still do, I seem to be king of Saying the Wrong Thing™), I somehow managed to be part of this wonderful group of people and I don’t want to think about having to go through anything without you by my side, and likewise. I’m glad I can be here for you, too, even if I’m absolutely shit with words. 

Also. Please forgive me if I forgot a blog. I’m an old man, and I’m trying my best.

@hardcormarshal​ (Also kingsglaivefuriaroad): Cait. C A I T. Cait. I love you, girl. Even though we talk a bit less, (Which is entirely my fault, and I will fall to my knees and apologise until my dying day,) you’re the one that’s helped me develop Nyx the most. You’re far more critical to my ideas, asking questions and even debating with me in mutual confusion over what the heck was wrong with the FFXV timeline. I’m still not sure if we ever figured it out.  We started rp’ing together because of Big Daddy Junior and Little Kitten Boy (a thread that I owe on too. Gods, I suck,) and it’s evolved to probably the most loving and healthy relationship my Nyx has. (Which is saying something, because I haven’t forgotten that time Nyx freaked and tried and tried to kill Cor.) I can’t wait for their happy ending in Galahd. If I ever reply. We need to start talking more OOC too, my dude. You’re awesome, and I just don’t appreciate you nearly as much as I’d like to. 

The Babes:

@oracleofthegods​: Liz. My Lady. My beautiful, lovely lady. I adore you. I still don’t know how you put up with me curled up on your thigh for half of Anime Oasis but you did with a smile on your face and I owe you the world. We need Luna and Nyx to interact much, much more. You have my Discord now, so abuse it as much as you’d like ;)

@arachnette​: We haven’t talked with our muses because someone has been ass-deep in P5 hell (I forgive you though, because I am too.) But since you’re my rl Prom, 9S, Akira... and probably several others I can’t think of off the top of my head, I would feel wrong if I didn’t mention how much I love you in this too.

@regalchocobo​: You goddamned sweetheart. You know exactly how much I adore you and I blame you for at least half of the Prompto hell I am in. (And boy, am I in deep.) Between Nyx and Loqi, you sure take care of my boys. I hope I take care of you just as well.

@thekingsshield​ We haven’t talked near as much, but every time we do, it makes my day. Nyx sexting is still a great reason to laugh whenever I’m feeling down, and I can’t wait to play in our new Vigilante!AU~ We definitely need to talk more!!

@lioncuboflucis​ A total sweetheart who helps me keep this blog on track. You sure help keep me inspired to update regularly, and our conversations about Nyx and Noctis are too sweet I can’t help but fall even more in love with what’s already my OTP. Außerdem bist du ein Schatz? Und entzückend? Ich gebe mein Bestes.

@narcolepticprince​ & @versesdelinquent​ You two make my day. Our chat is legitimately nothing but dicking around, but I love it. And I’m pretty sure Nyx needs some fun smutty times with the both of you >:3c

@massadamnata​ (also beeeans and heterochromiairiidum)You were the first person to reblog my promo when I made my blog and actually helped me get this thing rolling. I didn’t forget. We really need to interact more because from the amount I’ve stalked you by now I love your damn muses too much to not.

Here’s that giant list of people I’ve interacted with at one point and love, (meaning yes you need to bug me more ooc and ic bc I love you):

@lightwithinthenightsky @littlestreetrxt @glaivegirl @treddlightly @kidsofthekelvinhero @insomniasprince @iustitaex @hyperionknight​ @violentremnant​ @noctiisms​ @irisiae​ @floweringeclipse​ @croweoftheglaive​ @heartxandxhome​ @son-of-regis​ @sumsatis​ @badassbarmaid​ @waywardregalis​ @rexcrystallis​

Here’s the list of people that I haven’t talked to (Or have and don’t remember because again, I’m old,) and WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING:

@luxarcum​ @trashkingizunia​ @leorugiet​ @sxrtis​ @shieldoftheprince​ @littlexsisterxulric​ @oraclechosen​ @pelnaxkhara​ @meldaciomartyr​ @theplagueofstars​ @croweisms​ @outofmychair​ @pridevowed​ @croawe​ @technochocobro​ @kxngsshield​ @enviousking​ @vigilanc​ @adventurouswind​ @chocobowa​ @lunaeoraculum​ @ebonyforthestrategist​ @clipeumregia​

I’m sure I’ve forgotten several blogs and if I left you out, I am SO sorry. It’s also midnight and I have to be up at 6 am tomorrow. I love each and every one of you who follows me and would love to both play with you more, and get to know you OOC. You can find me here:

Discord: Loqito Taquito#5943 (subject to change, ask me if it doesn’t work

Skype: Damonwho221b

Twitter: @ transprincenoct

[2djdanger]

RAMBLINGS OF AN ANIMATION STUDENT ON THE BOSS BABY AND THE INDUSTRY ITSELF AND WHY I LOVE THE BOSS BABY WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL:

Words cannot describe the love I have for The Boss Baby. I saw an advanced screening of it a few weeks back with the director there & it blew my mind it’s like 3D animation meets 2D along with gorgeous art & so many opposites attract motifs like the baby acting like an adult & the graphic bold bright comic book feel type scenes that also meet this almost soft pastel 1950s/1960s vibe going on. AND THE EMOTION IN EVERYONES FACES AGH IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY AS AN ANIMATOR!!! It’s such a fast paced movie & everything happening at once & throughout all this everyone’s showing a variety of different emotions in a few seconds & the writing is amazing like not many animated films these days go back to the roots of traditional animation & just making it for a wide variety of an audience from all walks of life instead of making the same movie over & over again with great animation but a story line that seems rushed & choppy & not thought out but they keep making sequels anyways whether we wanted them or not just because m o n e y. I’m looking at u Disney with almost everything & Illumination with Despicable Me. It’s not to say that I don’t like sequels bc those companies have made some I enjoyed but it makes me disappointed when they could be putting their talents towards something fresh & new & original. This movie was o r i g i n a l in every sense of the word. Go take your kids to see it, yourself, your parents (I took mine & im a fully grown adult as are they & we loved it), your grandparents, your grandparent’s grandparents!!! It’s so great!!! It’s literally what the 3D animation community needed. I’m a traditional/2D animator myself & it seems more of the 2D movies out there recently have been trying to keep it original and don’t even get me started on the amount of work the animators do in not only 2D but 3D as well. But like recently 3D animation seems obsessed with the technology realizing they can make anything look more & more realistic nowadays then say when Pixar created Toy Story & their shorts in the 80s. These big companies keep churning out these movies not putting much thought into it & spending everything to make it look as real as possible. But that’s not the point of animation at all! They’re losing touch with why we animate in the first place!!! As my old storyboarding teacher once told our class on why we animate, we animate because it shouldn’t be possible in the real world. When you make anything animated you should stop & think: why am I making this story animated? Does it really need to be animated? Can I do this in live action? If you can make a story in live action then why are you animating it at all in the first place? It doesn’t need to be animated! Literally animation is just beautiful. You can do anything with it. And more & more especially with the technology in 3D films they’re slipping away from those values & ideas & making things that can be replicated in live action. So to see The Boss Baby really utilize the original concept of animation to tell that beautiful crazy impossible story & to top it off tell it through the bright eyes of an over imaginative child make it all the more better because it gives way to these big brilliant imagination sequences with these bold graphic designs that I’d die for. The editing and the animation in this movie is literally perfection it’s one thing flows into another into another into another & it works ANNND THERES EVEN GOOD COMEDIC TIMING!!! Sometimes movies live action & animated just can’t capture that kind of fast paced back to back tension followed by good comedic timing so to the writing team on The Boss Baby I say bravo to you & to the animators as well because God knows how difficult it is to draw out a normal sequence of actions but to follow the writing & get that vision out there in the open & follow it & draw it out so every detail works that’s just insane. This movie just inspires me so much & it’s relatable. My childhood was like Tim’s where everything was perfect & I was happy until my baby sister came along & we went at it for years. Another thing back to the genius writing in the film is this style where it forces you into Tim’s shoes because when they first introduce Boss Baby & for the first half of the film you’re made to hate him & he acts as the villain of the film until about halfway through Boss Baby really comes out of his 1 dimensional evil villain shell & just sees Tim in distress & reveals why it’s not only bad for Tim the current situation but why it’s bad for him too & then proceeds to give Boss Baby this insane narrative & beautifully tragic multidimensional backstory. Tim as the first main character has already been developed as a multidimensional character with different feelings & emotional expressions because he doesn’t know much about the world except for his imagination since he is a kid but by showing this then completely flipping everything on it’s head & giving Boss Baby real flaws & strengths that balance out Tim’s strengths & weaknesses it makes them seem a lot more like real relatable people & more so like siblings who depend on each other. As an older sister I can say some of my weaknesses end up being my sisters strengths & vice versa. Then by the end of the film,Boss Baby is this character you can't help but love & root for hoping he wins & can get out of the bad situations like when his formula was stolen so he kept going baby again it's like you feel panicked because you don't want Boss Baby to be normal you want him to be his crazy quirky self. Also this whole tragic narrative really hit me like it just stuck with me because I’m a sucker for these kinds of dark/sad stories layered in a brighter happier story & they coexist in harmony like that’s when you know a film’s really working. So SPOILERS AHEAD even though if you got this far there have already been some light spoilers I couldn’t avoid talking about but these get right into the grit of it. So the idea that Boss Baby was never really born fascinates me. In this world in the movie it makes sense. It’s also really sad as Tim points out as we’re finding out more about Boss Baby that he never had a childhood & how Boss Baby even says himself he was “born” or more so created (in both the universe of the movie & if he was self aware ((which he isn’t but for the sake of explaining this just humor the thought if he was)) that he was created as a character to work in this movie world realm plane of existence whatever you want to call it) all grown up as an adult in a baby’s body. Just think about that for a minute. What if you were born an adult & never went through childhood, never had a family, no one ever loved you or played with you or anything, all you knew was co-workers & business stuff. You never had fun or imagined things. That’s a really sad life if you ask me personally. He never had a chance to be creative or find himself all he knew was what the cold adult business school taught him from day 1. Most adults these days forgot what it was like to be a child & have fun & I think that’s what they were trying to get at with this backstory especially when Tim’s on the plane to Vegas with Boss Baby & just trying to teach him in small little ways how to use his imagination & just be a kid & not be so serious & black & white all the time. Also, I feel like that’s the issue sometimes with my own parents. As an animator I see animated movies as just another way of telling a story whereas people like my parents who don’t understand much from my line of work see it as a children’s media with no substance & pretty pictures. I want to break that barrier because the first animated pieces were NOT made for kids they were for other adults. I feel like it shouldn’t matter anyways if the movie’s marketed for kids because it could always be a good movie regardless of that & people like my parents forget what it’s like to have fun & see a good kids movie. They were kids once, we all were. As with many animated films before it, The Boss Baby brings subtle tasteful adult humor to the film as well as some just downright outrageous adult humor like Boss Baby running around butt naked with a censor bar over his nether regions. When you can marry adult & child humor together in a movie & make it work nicely it’s always a sign of a good movie. So tonight’s the opening night of The Boss Baby in cinemas everywhere & because I have so much love for this movie after seeing the advanced screening & listening to the director, producer, & designer from the movie speak about it & their own experiences they put into this film, like I stated before I dragged my parents out of the house on a Friday night when they would normally be in bed sleeping really early & shared the joy & beauty of the animated feature film with them. Normally my dad’s the one who will give almost any film a try & watch it & really like it. My mom however is extremely picky & if it doesn’t please her in the first 10 minutes or less she will zone out & fall asleep taking a nap through over half the movie. Both of my parents were on the edge of their seats tonight paying the utmost attention to the movie. It was a really beautiful moment to see my parents actually giving this animated movie a shot & they both ended up loving it as much I did on my second go seeing it. I’m not gonna lie I saw the trailers for this movie late last year & it caught my interest but I had this nagging thought that it wasn’t going to be a fresh new story it would just be typical & only made to make some money & keep Dreamworks in the game another year. I was happily proven wrong & this movie just takes everything about these money making no story movies & flips it on its head entirely. I even bought the art book for The Boss Baby because the artwork alone is enough to inspire me while working on my own projects. And that my friends is why you need to see The Boss Baby

TL;DR: The Boss Baby is an A+ gorgeously animated film with a breath of fresh air new story told in a way that’s really interesting & new & takes you back to the old days of 2D animation classics despite being a 3D film so disregard Rotten Tomato’s obviously wrong ratings & go see it for yourself because as an animator this movie makes me happy & I want to live in it forever ❤️❤️❤️

[westphotolukedas]

Project Proposal

240120

Project Title

Visual Sound

Subject

This extension of our module challenges us to construct photographic images, which combine staging and creative lighting. In addition, the final piece is anticipated to be a series with a coherent narrative. As an amateur guitarist, I am eager to photograph a sitter responding to musical stimuli instead of verbal or psychosensory direction. Drummer Benjamin Bell from the band Brightlight City has posed for several portraits with me in the past. He has a natural and distinctive camera presence that will be captured in a studio setting.

Aims / Objectives / Concept

My objective as a photographer is to portray the essence of Ben’s likeness with the energy of rock and roll drumming. The visual vocabulary of the film Drive (2011) is the basis of my production design. Its thematic colour palette is stylised, cinematic and transferable to stills photography.

Since completion of my previous project, I have invested in a Mamiya 645 Super - a medium format analogue camera. It is now a permanent part of my imagemaking process. Coloured gels were efficacious in the piece and they will appear again to recreate the neon lighting of the film. Furthermore, I shall explore studio lighting modifiers as a means to sculpt my subject’s features. It is my aim to accentuate Ben’s physicality by highlighting the angles in his face and clothing. He has some modelling experience; therefore, my photographs shall be inclusive of fashion and lifestyle imagery. With music of his choice playing in the background, I will assist him to find poses.

The final piece will be presented as a men’s lifestyle editorial shoot. Straight photography will be the basis of the work alongside an experimental triptych. The two artists outlined below inspired my initial photographic investigation.

Research

Pennie Smith (Born 1949) is a British photographer renowned for her music reportage works in black and white. Her image of The Clash’s Paul Simonon smashing his bass guitar featured on the cover of their London Calling record and it is considered one of the greatest rock and roll photographs of all time.

Born in London, Smith attended Twickenham Art School studying graphic design and fine art. Her early commissions were for Friendz Magazine - a passion project developed with Barney Bubbles and Nick Kent. However, her breakthrough work would feature Led Zeppelin on their 1970s tour. As a staff photographer for the NME, she became a cultural icon for other aspiring music photographers. Her camera lens has graced the presence of artists such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Debbie Harry, U2, The Stone Roses, Manic Street Preachers, Radiohead and The Strokes. She resides in the railway station that she bought and converted as a student and continues to freelance as a photographer.

Standing at less than six feet away from Paul Simonon at the Palladium, New York, Smith could sense that the moment was about to unfold. Simonon was in a particularly troubled mood that evening and the shutter of her 35mm camera instinctively released as hell broke loose. This abstract photograph - raw, grainy and enraged - came to define the punk rock ethics of The Clash. In 1979, Joe Strummer selected it to be the cover of London Calling, itself a masterpiece and influential to a multitude of recording artists such as Nirvana, Bruce Springsteen and the Beastie Boys. Later in Smith’s career, it was recognised by Q Magazine as the greatest rock n’ roll photograph of all time. However, she almost dismissed the shot on the technical grounds - it was out blurry and out of focus.

‘He was in a really bad mood and that wasn’t like him. You can’t really tell it’s Paul but I guess that’s the point. It wasn’t a choice to take the shot. My finger just went off. I said, ‘It’s completely out of focus, it won’t work!’ But Joe wouldn’t have it. He said, ‘That one is the photo.’ So I thought, ‘Ok I’m not going to argue. It’s your bloody album, get on with it!’ I’m pleased I took it, but it’s a bit of a weight around my neck. It keeps coming back to whack me on the back of the head - nicely in some instances, but aggravatingly in others.

The Jam stood like Englishmen - shoulder to shoulder in every photo but The Clash were tactile. They seemed more at ease and made better shapes. They’d hug each other, grab each other’s shoulders, fool around. They were slightly artsy, definitely non-conformers.’ (Walker, 2019)

Tom Andrew is a London-based photographer with a portfolio spanning music, fashion and portraiture. He has a distinctive experimental lighting style bringing together a plethora of imaging technologies. This project is named after his self-proclaimed subject matter - visual sound.

An appreciation of analogue photography started early in Andrew’s career while he worked in darkrooms and as a lighting technician. Film was a rare commodity while he was growing up and his parents encouraged him to be selective of the shots that he would take. This attention to detail is still apparent in his photography today. In order to introduce predictability, his works incorporate choreographed movement and he often references contemporary dance practitioners. This aesthetic has caught the attention of commercial clients that include Nike, Puma, Aquascutum, Warp Records and Sony.

Andrew’s lifestyle editorial shoot for Mixmag featuring producer Mura Masa is the main inspiratory piece for this assignment. The sitter is presented as a balance between lines, colours and textures, with a composition that unites the abstract and figurative. It is a comparative reinterpretation of Smith’s London Calling record cover. Swatches of light illuminate the darkened studio background. Opposing orange and blue forms represent Mura Masa’s eclectic music - clubland pop, soul, punk, folk and hardcore edits. He appears in full length and in conventional portraiture poses; however, the back of his head is included in addition to other poses that occlude his face.

‘I compose images with strong graphic forms while also looking to capture a spontaneous point of elegance, which often involves exploring colour and movement. I will meticulously plan out lighting before taking most pictures. I like my images to quite often capture things that are rarely seen in moving image or real life. My lighting facilitates this through commonly capturing movement and enhanced colours.

In Applied Composition, I wanted to take a collection of photographs where the application of line and colour compliment found compositions on the body - in some cases structuring the images with a fine balance between both these elements - to question the area of skin used or to forget the idea that the body is even present. The objective being to create images with a flow in concept, the project sits between beauty and painted art.’ (Kent-Smith, 2020)

Summary

It will be a challenge to amalgamate the platforms of music, film and photography. My voice is rather formal; therefore, the influence of each may be subtle. Smith’s iconic photograph is the aspiration for every music photographer - genre defining and timeless. The authenticity of the motion blur and soft focus are a potent combination. Although I am not a reportage photographer, I will create a scenario in the studio that allows my sitter to perform without inhibition. Music playing during the shoot will be imperative without any direction from me. Andrew’s technical lighting requires a degree of choreography. Coloured gels will be matched to reflect his palettes and the nature of my sitter’s musical preferences. There is a fluidity to a drummer’s movement that is visually satisfying. I shall attempt some shots that are rehearsed to ensure specific movements are recorded. Drive (2011) as a film has many facets and I shall analyse it in the next blog post.

Bibliography

Kent-Smith, J. (2020). Turning The Wheel - Mura Masa Is Setting Off On A Whole New Direction. Mixmag. Available from www.mixmag.net/feature/mura-masa-cover [Accessed 10/04/2020]

Walker, R. (2019). ‘We Had the Same Brain’ - How Pennie Smith Turned The Clash Into Icons. The Guardian. Available from www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/11/the-clash-london-calling-pennie-smith-photography [Accessed 10/04/2020]

Pennie Smith, London Calling, 1979

Tom Andrew, Mura Masa, 2020

[topmixtrends]

ROBERT SIKORYAK’S REMARKABLE SKILL often goes unappreciated because of its subtlety. His works are acts of cultural appropriation that deftly mine our comic book memories, filtering history and literature through our understanding of comic book history. His art enables our collective, illustrated past to mediate the present. What do we learn, for example, about the culture that produced iconic figures such as Mary Worth and Rex Morgan, M.D., when these two characters reappear as Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Lady Macbeth? If we, as a culture, haven’t yet come to terms with the extent of the sorrows expressed in Charles Schulz’s many decades of pathos-laden Peanuts strips, Sikoryak reassembles the ideological pieces for us, rendering Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in Schulz’s style and retitling it: “Good ol’ Gregor Brown.” Both of these strips, like all of Sikoryak’s work, demonstrate his keen eye and extraordinary finesse.

Sikoryak, born in 1964, generally signs his name “R. Sikoryak.” He has drawn cover art for The New Yorker, LA Weekly, and The Nation. His work has been featured in Wired magazine as well as in the groundbreaking publication Raw, where he worked together with Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly shortly after graduating from the Parsons School of Design in the late 1980s. In 2009 Sikoryak published his 64-page hardcover collection of literary works reimagined as classic comics Masterpiece Comics, and his Terms and Conditions: The Graphic Novel (2017) — an inspired take on the unreasonable language of user license agreements — was reviewed six months ago in LARB. He currently lives in New York and teaches illustration at Parsons.

I interviewed Sikoryak about Masterpiece Comics and about his recently published book, The Unquotable Trump. The Unquotable Trump is a collection of iconic comic book covers from many decades that have been remastered to show first Candidate Trump, and then President Trump, taking over the respective comic book’s worlds. Sikoryak’s Trump goes head-to-head with the comic world’s most iconic characters, including Neal Adams’s Superman, John Romita’s Spider-Man, and even Warren Kremer’s Richie Rich. For the book, Sikoryak relied only on direct quotes — as its cover boasts, it consists of “Trump in his very own ‘best words!’”

¤

BRAD PRAGER: On several pages of The Unquotable Trump, Trump is seen speaking even when there is no speech in the originals. For example, the cover of your book is based on a cover of the 1975 Marvel Treasury Edition featuring the Incredible Hulk. On that cover, the Hulk is silent, but your “Hulk-Trump” is uttering a number of standard Trumpisms (“Tremendous!,” “Huge!”). A similar change is noticeable on your “Nice Nurse” cover as well, which is based on an issue of Night Nurse from 1973. In the original, the Night Nurse character is actually speaking, defending her patient by saying, “To kill him — you have to shoot me first!!” In your version, we only hear from Trump, while the comic’s heroine is speechless.

As I conceived the book, I felt it was important to only go by what Trump said. The book is obviously critical of him, but within that context, yes, he’s the only one who actually gets to speak. I conceived of the book right before the election. I had seen a series of mini-comics published by someone I don’t know, a series called “Tea Party Comix” consisting of old comics in which Obama had been inserted as the villain. I came upon them through Ethan Persoff’s site, where he posts a lot of obscure comics. My approach is quite different from those. I really wanted the whole world depicted in these covers to be infected by Trump. Even the titles of the books that he’s in have been tailored to fit his perspective. Sometimes the titles are more neutral, like “Subjective Comics,” based on Detective Comics, but on other ones, like the Wonder Woman cover in which she’s not Wonder Woman, but “Nasty Woman,” Trump’s language becomes part of the world that the characters inhabit. These characters do have a voice — they have personalities, and they have humanity — but as far as this book is concerned, everything is shaped by Trump’s perspective, and he drowns out everyone else.

The cover that is most striking for me, and which is most suffused with Trump’s perspective, is Pap Comics, featuring “Archy,” which is based on an issue of Pep Comics from 1952. If you look at the original cover, Archie is as happy as can be. His face is covered in lipstick from Veronica’s kisses. In your version, he is truly miserable. Even in the book’s marketing icon, in the upper right, poor “Archy” is suddenly suffering, wondering how all this has happened. The world has been invaded, much to the chagrin of the characters we know and with whom we identify. This is Pop’s soda shop, and Trump, as Pop, is running the show. Elsewhere, of course, you have him appear as Solomon Grundy or the Red Skull.

I was always trying to find a dynamic where, if Trump wasn’t a villain, he was at least a counterpoint to the main character. He takes the place of Tubby in Little Lulu, for example. Tubby is hardly a super villain but sometimes he’s a pretty bratty kid, so there the equation sort of works.

Several of these covers read differently from the others, including two that I would describe as feminist fantasy inversions: the pairing of the Catwoman cover alongside the one George Perez did of Black Widow from a 1983 Marvel Fanfare. Those covers depict worlds in which the women are in the dominant positions. Black Widow is really carrying the day in the your version of the cover, so the book varies its perspective in that regard, even if Trump comes out on top most of the time.

Those two covers just ended up next to each other. The book is for the most part ordered chronologically. There are one or two pages where I had to shift things around. I really didn’t want to start the book with his famous quote about Mexicans, so I put his quote about building the Wall first. The two were said within the same day, so that’s not such a big change. I tried to follow the campaign’s chronology, but that led to some of the covers echoing one another in odd ways. The two you mention evolved out of the debates.

Some of the covers you’ve chosen seemed as though they were pulled directly out of my own memory bank. I remember collecting some of the Neal Adams and George Perez covers at the time of their appearances, although I had stopped collecting comics by the time the issue of 300 you cite came out in 1998. Your work mines different areas of the adult, nostalgic unconscious. Was there a principle of selection? How did you go back through your conscious and your less conscious memories, deciding what to draw?

I’m sure a lot of the choices are directly attributable to what I was collecting and what I grew up with, but I really didn’t want the book to represent only my perspective. That’s true of Terms and Conditions as well. I was trying to run the gamut of styles and to put things in the book that people who didn’t grow up in the 1970s would also remember and relate to. Because of the movie, 300 was a major pop cultural moment. It made such an impression that I thought it was worth mentioning here. I didn’t want to suggest that the concerns raised in this book apply only to, say, white men who collected comics and who are now in their 50s, but rather to suggest that these concerns apply to most everybody. Although it was easy to choose superheroes, I tried to find other ways of integrating Trump.

The cover based on an issue of Adventure Time no. 5 really torments those Adventure Time characters. On the original cover, they’re not crying. In your version, it looks as though you’ve caught them on the most miserable day they’ve ever had.

It would have been harder to do these if I had really adhered to the rules that I had first thought of when I started. But changing their expressions seemed like a minor thing.

Some of the covers resonate more strongly than others. The defeat of Superman resonates in a particular way, and here I’m thinking about the 1971 Justice League cover, the one based on the original by Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. Turning Superman into “Supersad” was an inspired take, but there’s a way in which destroying Superman is part of the fantasy that our political rhetoric plays into. It’s a horrible thing to watch, when Superman goes limp like that. Another Superman cover later that struck me similarly was the one for “World’s Failest,” based on a cover for World’s Finest on which Superman looks distraught and helpless.

That is his original pose. I didn’t have to change that one. Trump speaks a lot about good and evil and about what’s right and what’s traditional, and about what represents “our country.” The terms wouldn’t be out of place in some of the older DC comic books. But then, you see him in opposition to these characters, and I think it’s evident that he’s coming from a different place. His perspective is not the same perspective that Batman or Superman had on those issues. The gamut is pretty wide here, but the more traditional superheroes tend to resonate a lot — they’re bigger than we are.

The mediation in this project works on a number of different levels. Our collective memories are being overrun, but this is exactly what a lot of political rhetoric aspires to. Comparisons with the Red Skull plug into our worst fantasies.

There was an early Fantastic Four villain called the “Hate-Monger,” who first appeared in 1963 and was driving people crazy by instilling hate in everyone, but the cover featuring him wasn’t iconic enough. It didn’t lend itself to a specific quote, but it seemed very on the nose. Some things are built into these characters.

And a lot of what was shocking during the campaign has become normalized.

Occasionally I get feedback from someone who doesn’t know why I’m being so mean about Trump, and there are some people who don’t see him as speaking out against anyone who doesn’t have it coming. But any good villain in a movie or a comic book has a very good reason for doing what they are doing. Even Doctor Doom thinks he’s doing the right thing, so it’s really hard to know how to unpack all of this.

It’s fascinating to me how your work has so many different historical layers, which distinguishes it from a lot of similar projects. I was thinking, for example, about Alan Moore’s Supreme, which I enjoy, but in those he is mediating comics through comics. He takes the history of the traditional superhero — whether it’s Superman or Captain Marvel — and filters it through a contemporary comic book lens. That’s an interesting exercise, but what you’re doing adds an additional dimension. The Unquotable Trump works from the collective memory of our youths, as does Masterpiece Comics, in which you are mediating literature, and really history itself, through comics. That produces a kind of triangulation: the Genesis story in the Bible as seen through the figures of Blondie and Dagwood, for example, and our reception of Blondie and Dagwood entering into it as a third element. I have to ask myself, when I read Blondie, why am I still looking at this fantasy from …

… the 1930s.

Right, it’s Chic Young’s idea about what domesticity is meant to be like. Filtering the Bible through that is a fascinating exercise. As you move through literary history and the comics, how do you pair these things?

The first book I adapted was Dante’s Inferno. I think I was playing more with form than with the characterization when I combined it with Bazooka Joe bubble gum comics. I was taking the loftiest, most seriously reverential epic poem and combining it with the most disposable comic there is. But then the next one I did was “Good ol’ Gregor Brown,” and that was where I thought that there seemed to be an analogy between the personalities of Charlie Brown and Gregor Samsa. When I started putting all of it together, the parallels really came into focus. I put Kafka’s dialogue into the mouth of the Charlie Brown bug, and I saw that there was no space between these characters. I didn’t have to fudge the dialogue to make it fit Charlie Brown, other than to add a “Good Grief!” Kafka was speaking for Schulz, or vice versa, and that was really exciting. Beyond that, I felt like I was paying more and more attention to how the characters related to the stories or even maybe how the genres related.

Making Wuthering Heights into a 1950s horror comic was hardly a stretch, and I don’t know if it was enough of a stretch to get the kind of jolt that I am usually looking for. But the way that novel is generally treated and thought of is much milder than the novel actually is, so I had to think of a really brutal comic to combine the novel with. I think about how things might connect and I make notes. Sometimes nothing comes of them, but sometimes something really seems like the right idea and I pursue it. What’s fun about doing these, and what has become important sometimes, is thinking about how the stories are told. I’m currently working on a sequel to Masterpiece Comics, and one of the new stories appeared in the Graphic Canon of Children’s Literature (2014). It’s a version of Tom Sawyer in the style of one of these Family Circus maps, and it actually tells the whole story as he moves through the neighborhood, to the island, to the courthouse and then to the cave. In that case I was playing with the wholesome kids of Family Circus set against Mark Twain’s more shaded views of youth. I had been asking myself, “How can I take this structure and use it to tell the story?” So, it happens in different ways. People have suggested ideas to me for other strips, and I could see how they would work. If they don’t resonate with me I won’t do them, but it all seems valid to me, and there are many ways to approach it.

It almost gets lost that you’re also offering a literary reading of a text, whether it’s of Marlowe or Brontë or any other author. It shouldn’t go unremarked that you’re a good close reader of literature. When it comes to “Inferno Joe,” I notice that you only picked Inferno. There’s no Purgatorio or Paradiso. There’s only “Inferno Joe.”

That strip was done for Raw Magazine in 1989. I only had one page, and at that point I’d only read Inferno. I thought about going back to finish the trilogy. I like closure and I considered it, but they don’t even make Bazooka Joe comics anymore. They changed the format, which is heartbreaking to me for a couple of reasons. I don’t know if that would resonate, but I considered following Joe through the other realms. It was more a question of space. Inferno is a satisfying read on its own, and many people don’t read the other two.

Raw’s aesthetics may also have helped determine that there would be only Inferno. But in any case the journey to Hell brings out something about the strange world that these figures inhabit: Bazooka Joe himself has an eye patch, which is a difficult fate for a teenager — however that might have happened — and his friend, Mort, has this oddly placed turtleneck, which turns him into Joe’s mouthless guide through Hell.

Looking at “Blond Eve,” your take on the Genesis story — your decision to turn Mr. Dithers into God was inspired. This meddling boss is walking around ruining everything for Blondie and Dagwood’s Adam and Eve. They seemed to have it good, and then their exile becomes the world of Chic Young’s comic. You’ve given us an origin story. This could be the very first Blondie. It tells us how they got into that house in the first place. They were exiled from Heaven, and now nothing remains but our cruel laughter over their fates.

Sometimes when I do these strips I end up killing the characters. Batman only goes to jail in “Dostoyevsky Comics.” But the Blondie one was striking. I was thinking it through, and I thought, “Oh, that’s were they would end up.” It’s not the end, but the beginning.

I noticed that you drew a sendup of The Lockhorns in which Mr. Lockhorn is explaining the stakes of the Vietnam War to Mrs. Lockhorn. His particular kind of sadistic masculinity is what anyone who enjoys The Lockhorns finds funny. He’s saying to her, “If Vietnam falls, all of Asia goes red, you stupid cow.” The Lockhorns first appeared in 1968, and repositioning him in this way, within that historical moment, is right on the money.

That was a drawing I did for The Daily Show. It was a commissioned illustration for them, and I think it was in response to the Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper. It was written by The Daily Show’s staff, some of whom are big comics fans. They were excited that they could get a Lockhorns reference on the show.

You also made me aware of “Apocalypse Pooh.”

I came across that around 1990 when I was working at Raw. It was on VHS, and I’m not sure how it was edited, but it’s well done. It was great working at Raw, and a lot of good stuff just came over the transom. I was lucky to be there, for a number of reasons. It’s amazing to me that I had that opportunity.

Lately I’ve embraced digital comics, in part because I don’t have room for real comics anymore. It’s partially a question of space, and it’s partially about access. I did a Wonder Woman parody a couple of years ago — a retelling of the Marquis de Sade’s Justine as 1940s Wonder Woman covers, which was reprinted in Best American Comics 2015. In order to do this, I tried to look at all the 1940s Wonder Woman covers. Thankfully, those have been scanned, so you can track that stuff down. I don’t know if all of it has been reprinted. I like seeing the original colors, and a lot of the reprints take liberties. It’s really helpful in terms of research to be able to work that way, to work digitally.

Are there artists whose work you wouldn’t remediate? As I read Masterpiece Comics, I asked myself, “Where’s Hergé?” But then, of course, on your website I see that you indeed remediated Tintin in 2001. Would you ever say, “That’s something I wouldn’t tackle”? Where do you draw your lines?

That’s a complicated question. Part of the reason I did the Terms and Conditions book was to address comics I hadn’t gotten to in other ways. When I began the Masterpiece Comics project, I hadn’t thought about international comics, and part of the joke about Masterpiece Comics was that these were American comics steamrolling great works of world literature. I know Tintin pretty well, but I know American comics better. I just don’t know some great European or Asian comics in the same way. Part of it is being comfortable enough and confident enough with the source material to be able to do a good parody of it. The Tintin piece was written and drawn for Wired magazine. They came to me with the assignment to do a strip featuring Tintin going to Mars, and they gave me all the research about what might go wrong. The idea was that I was supposed to catalog it, which is kind of like what Hergé would have done. He would have tried to get the science right. I only had a page, so I didn’t have to work too hard, but I tried to be faithful to Hergé’s approach.

The Terms and Conditions book was a way to touch on cartoonists from different countries as a way of showing that I was paying attention. For Masterpiece Comics, it makes sense conceptually that it’s all American comics. I need some constraints, because otherwise I’d probably go insane. The Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka, by the way, did a version of Crime and Punishment with a little boy who looks sort of like Astro Boy, but it’s a fairly straightforward retelling of Crime and Punishment. Other countries’ approach to comics and literature is different from mine, or at least from what I grew up with, so it might make more sense for me to stick with American sources, because I’m responding to that heritage specifically.

That’s a level of mediation I hadn’t thought about. Masterpiece Comics is primarily European literature seen through a 20th-century American lens. In another interview you mentioned a Russian reader of Crime and Punishment who was irritated by your take on the story.

I was sort of amused by that. I don’t like it when people go away angry, but I am a trickster on some level, so I understand why I upset people. When I started the project I thought I was goofing on bad adaptations in comics and I also thought I was goofing on the high and low culture divide. But neither of those things exist the same way anymore. Many librarians have embraced comics wholeheartedly, and many teachers have said to me, “I show your comic to my high school students.” I wonder whether they really want to show them my Batman version before they actually read Crime and Punishment. It’s likely to color their reading of the novel, even though I do try to take the literary sources sincerely.

I’d be interested in your relationship to the word “adaptation.” There’s nothing more disappointing than when you open a graphic adaptation — a graphic novel based on a novel — and it’s really nothing more than an adaptation. Do you use that word to describe what you’re doing?

I like the word adaptation, but I sometimes call what I do “translation.” I’m being a little facetious with both of those terms. I try to remain faithful to the source text, and I try to remain faithful to the comic source, but the point is that they don’t really belong together. So the humor, or the disjunction, comes from that fact. Sometimes I get frustrated with adaptations that take too many liberties, but if they’re too faithful, they just die. It’s hard to find a balance, and I think I’ve tried to find a way around that by sticking to the plot. It may feature Little Lulu, as in my “Little Pearl,” or someone else that doesn’t belong there, but the plot remains that of the book being adapted. If you want to follow a plot line, my work might be more accurate than some of the Classics Illustrated, which I was also making fun of. Those present themselves as sturdy texts and wholesome for children, but they’re pretty boring.

There’s a lack of fun in those.

They might have been useful for writing a book report, and so many people have said that about them. I don’t think I would have taken the time with them as a kid, even if I had seen more of them. They were out of business by 1971, and I never paid much attention to them. They were really turgid, and they became more earnest as they went along. The earlier versions in the 1940s at least had some manic energy from the artists trying to finish in time for the deadline. By the later ones, they just seemed really stately and, yes, really square.

¤

Brad Prager is professor of Film Studies and German Studies at the University of Missouri. He is the author of After the Fact: The Holocaust in Twenty-First Century Documentary Film and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of New German Critique.

The post Acts of Re-covery: Mining Our Comic Subconscious appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2Cdp8iD

[surrendertodaniel]

Surrender To Daniel’s Top 250 Tracks Of 2017ish (250-201)

Opening Blab

250. Kelly Clarkson - Love So Soft (Cash Cash Remix)

“Love So Soft” was always meant for a “the nice restaurant lounge at the good mall” EDM remix that could tear a dancefloor to shreds. Please don’t do that, though. That sounds expensive. 249. Trinidad Cardona - Jennifer

A sticky sweet singer-songwriter plea for forgiveness that might not win back Jennifer, but has done pretty well for itself. (As it should.)

248. Arcade Fire - Electric Blue

OH! I get the U2 jokes now! I kid. I kid. I really wanted to like the new Arcade Fire album for what it’s worth. I wish them no harm. Everything Now felt explicitly like the album in the 2-page magazine discography review that gets cut down to 10 words due to space limitations and WHO COULD ARGUE? I think “Electric Blue” is fantastic, though. It’s a smidge “Sprawl III (Electric Beyond Blue” and that’s cool by me.

247. Valerie June - Shakedown

“Shakedown” is the sort of tune that inspires me to dance around like I’m goddamn Scrooge McDuck doing a bunch of weird pointing and twirling and shit. (That doesn’t sound like an endorsement but it is. An enthusiastic one! “Shakedown” is probably a folk festival floorfiller parkgrassfiller of some sort, I imagine.)

246. Rozwell Fitzroy - Block Game

The ReBoot Reboot soundtrack is coming along nicely. (Let me imagine this.)

245. Fickle Friends - Hard To Be Myself

Sparkling youth activity centre pop that comes in its own shade of neon!

244. Katy Perry featuring Migos - Bon Appetit

Katy Perry’s Witness came across as a bit of a lame duck record after “Chained to the Rhythm” missed the mark, didn’t it? It didn’t really help that the videos seemed second tier (or like a “favor” from JibJab in the case of “Swish Swish”) and that clunky SNL showing. Even if Witness isn’t my cup of tea (I’m rooting for the next Katy cycle)“Bon Appetit” is a first-rate muff-diving anthem with Migos making a welcome showing.

243. Chip - Snap Snap

Wait! Wait! Wait! Is that? Could it be?

Holy moly! How did I not put it together that Chip is the artist formerly known as Chipmunk? Anyway, Chip would prefer if his partner cool it on all the Instagram posting. The music video presents a convincing argument about this lovely woman’s endless selfiecrafting. I’m onboard for some sort of rebuttal track if that’s in the cards.

242. Borussia - Kinda Love

An infectious dance colossus whose power only grows by the number of bright cocktails taken in during your evening. Or morning. Look, I’m not here to judge. (Outside of this silly music judging exercise.)

241. Lady Gaga - The Cure

It’s been AGES since we had a Lady Gaga Thanksgiving special. I wonder if we’ll get one in like 2018. I hope she hasn’t had a falling out with any of the Muppets.

240. Sonamoo - I (Knew It)

I go a little too hard stomping to this K-Pop kiss-off. Like T-1000 (or whatever) stepping through that skull quarry in Terminator 2 only I’m far more prone to slipping on most surfaces.

239. Taylor Swift - ...Ready For It

2017 Taylor was not elite Taylor. (”Look What You Made Me Do” was a music video masquerading as a proper song, for goodness sakes.) Non-elite Taylor is still capable of incredible feats. “...Ready For It” reaches the sublime as its meticulously built ULTRA STADIUM POP grandiosity consumes us all. Just blinding pop light. It took me a while to get on the “...Ready For It” trolley, but I’m happy to be here.

238. Joyride - Aunty Tracey’s Cookies

If you’re going to get creative with your cookies, do so with the hopes of having a blissed out anthem sung in your treat’s honor.

237. Carly Pearce - Every Little Thing

One of those classic country songs where if you see the listener’s face go a certain way you let them sing their heart out.

236. Eves Karydas - There For You An elegant and enormous part the seas anthem, plus Eves does some excellent slowly sliding down the stairs work in the promo.

235. Vic Mensa featuring Pusha T - OMG

A chain swinging, bubbling cauldron of a cut with Pharrell production teleported in from the ‘00s. By the way, if anyone needs a dopey white guy to say something like “oh my goodness” as the hook, gimme a call. Look for 21 Savage x Dan MacRae’s “Geez Louise” on iTunes in 2018.

234. Tigertown - Warriors (St. Lucia Remix)

A Capri-Sun kissed groovy remix of Tigertown with charm to spare.

233. Lady Leshurr - Juice

Lady Leshurr is the sort of entertainer where she’s do damn likeable that I’ve spent the past 3 hours imagining TV projects the English MC can do on the side.

232. Frank Ocean - Chanel

You know the Frank Ocean drill by now. Press play, immediately feel it in your chest.

231. DYGL - Let It Out

Albert Hammond Jr. endorsed Tokyo rock outfit DYGL have crafted a tightly wrapped indie gem with Britpop and Blogosphere First Wave tendencies.

230. Old Dominion - No Such Thing As A Broken Heart

The video for this is so quarter-assed (glass houses much, Dan?) that I have been increasingly MYSTIFIED with every rewatch. Like, the concept is that Old Dominion are in a video game world that’s stuffed with wacky high score gags and kwazy on-screen graphics. The execution doesn’t pan out, so instead it’s like you’re watching someone try to recreate a Christian edit version of Scott Pilgrim from memory and STARTED COOKING WITH GAS! The song’s fantastic, though. Arena country brimming with warmth and even a touch of Ed Robertson’s Barenaked Ladies output.

229. Super Junior - Black Suit

Unlike “No Such Thing As A Broken Heart,” the video for Super Junior’s “Black Suit” fudging ruuuuules, buds. The promo is the best piece of art involving an elaborate suit heist you’ll come across all 2017 and the entire operation looks awesome to boot. K-Pop’s Last Men Standing® teeter on the brink of jazztronica at times and it’s a treat DANG IT!

228. Barenaked Ladies & The Persuasions - The Old Apartment

Is this cheating? It is, isn’t? Whatever. BNL (a term used exclusively by cool insiders) and The Persuasions were a fantastic match in 2017 and combo performances like this update of “The Old Apartment” feel so damn alive I wish both parties would consider hanging out a lot more.

227. Ayo & Teo - Lit Right Now

As infectious as a yawn but lit (FUCK!) like a firecracker, Ayo & Teo are making Frosh bangers you want to throw paint to. Or maybe I just want to chuck paint. I dunno.

226. LCD Soundsystem - Tonite

Did LCD Soundsystem really need to come back? Probably not, but they’re welcome to stay. (Look at me! I’m doing rulings now, apparently. Ha ha, life.)

225. Pip Blom - Babies Are A Lie

Nothing will top “Babies Are A Lie” in the 2017 song title sweepstakes. Also the hook is an absolute dream.

224. Shay Lia - What’s Your Problem

Pulsating R&B brilliance that sometimes leads me to do ill-advised arm choreo on my balcony. (I’m allergic to rhythm so it’s a tragedy and I apologize to anyone that’s gone down George Street this year.)

223. Lauren Alaina - Doin’ Fine

Play this at just the right volume and you will be powerless to resist the urge to belt out this country anthem while wrapped in curtains, a comforter or both.

222. Jachary - Yellow Vision

An absorbing electronic pop blend (think a spiritual second cousin to Discovery) with a chorus that swings into action like a battering ram.

221. Cende - Bed

A melting ice cream cake of mid-misery assessment wailing power-pop. Or glower-pop if you will. You will not? I completely understand and apologize immediately.

220. Waju featuring Phantom Thrett - If U Wanna

Blissed out hip-hop soul that marinates nicely in the brain. The video’s pretty darn good too.

219. AOBeats & Annabel Jones - Strangers

“You run your heart like a club: One in, one out.” It’s important to note this is a fantastic dance number for anyone that enjoys doing mid-level theatrical glances in lieu of actual dancing. (Read: Me.)

218. CupcakKe - Barcodes

Burn your motivational posters, this horn-aided banger from CupcakKe will slap you in the face with ESSENTIAL life advice about knowing what you’re worth and not budging. Also CupcakKe has some awesome lines on “Barcodes” that made me legitimately guffaw. It’s not easy to pull the guffaw out of the Dan laugh library.

217. Aly & AJ - Take Me

I think I’ve been on about this before, but there was a brief time I confused Aly & AJ with Prussian Blue. Not important. What is important is “Take Me” which is a synth-soaked sledgehammer to the sky that sounds absolutely massive. It’s a big tune is what it is.

216. Tyler, The Creator featuring A$AP Rocky - Who Dat Boy

Ya blew it, Schoolboy Q. 

215. Joe Goddard - Music Is The Answer

Hot Chip boy Joe Goddard turns in an engrossing frosted electronic effort that feels like backstroking through gel in the nicest possible way.

214. Gabrielle - Nye Joggesko

“Nye Joggesko” glides, strolls and spikes like hybrid pop should.

213. Amber Coffman - No Coffee

Pastel (but not Pastels) tinted guitar pop that gets the “breezy” tag even though I wouldn’t quite put it in the “breezy” camp.

212. Diamond Platnumz, Harmonize, Rich Mavoko & Rayvanny – Zilipendwa 

Last I checked, “Zilipendwa” was embroiled in a saxophone copyright scandal. No matter where you stand on the issue, it’s 14 seconds of sublime saxophone worth fighting over.

211. Ugly God - Fuck Ugly God

“You act like a freak, but you ain't never sucked no toes.” Ugly God treats self-immolation like a superpower. Even though the dude is doing a vivisection of his own shame, "Fuck Ugly God” hits like you’re the one being powerbombed through a table. 

210. Royal Canoe featuring Begonia - Fussin’

If this Western Canadian folk festival tent is rockin’, it’s cuz of what Royal Canoe and Begonia are clocking. (Or there’s a live ferret rescue on the grounds. Either way, respect people’s space.)

209. Ah Mer Ah Su - Meg Ryan

“I’m a white woman, I can do whatever I want,” declares Ah Mer Ah Su on the marvellously woozy pop carousel “Meg Ryan” and yes, she does mention City of Angels on the track.

208. Wesley Gonzalez - Piece of Mind

Nervy indie pop that lands somewhere between They Might Be Giants and XTC. But NOT Adam Ant. (WHO IS THAT JOKE FOR? IMPROV KIDS BEATEN WITH THEIR OWN MEAD BINDERS? WHO?)

207. Smino - Anita

The T-Pain remix is gorgeous too. Be sure to tell T-Pain if you happen to hang out with him in the future.

206. Hannah Jane Lewis - Raincheck

THIS TRACK IS BUOYANT AS FUCK, GANG! There’s also a great bit in the video where a cursor has to choose between “Accept (heart sign)” and “Raincheck” which is something I like in a music video. Play your ace, Hannah Jane Lewis.

205. Mollie King - Hair Down

This is tacky-as-you-like pop the way only the Brits can do it (you can practically see visions of loud Panto ads if you close your eyes) and should poured down your gullet like it’s Tetra Pak booze. In retrospect I should have watched E!’s Chasing The Saturdays when I had the chance.

204. Ten Fé - Twist Your Arm

A Guardian review pegged Ten Fé as something like Madchester meets Springsteen, but “Twist Your Arm” is more a glimmering ‘80s AOR creature than anything else. Probably goes down a storm with Q’s readership. (Not a dig.) I can totally picture a lot of spouses doing intense bicycle repairs with this CRANKED in the garage.

203. Charlie Worsham - Cut Your Groove

Full points to Charlie Worsham for having an first tier country name. Say it out loud right now for fun. It’s great, right? Charlie lays out a sweethearted country self-affirmation anthem that feels like warm embrace on “Cut Your Groove” and I’ve done some power twirling to this.

202. iLoveMakonnen featuring Rae Sremmurd - Love

This combo effort would be quintuple platinum if satellite radio were still “a thing.” I am 10000% convinced this would have been gargantuan in that era. Fight me and my ghost on this and I’ll fudge you up, bud. I also believe this would be fantastic on Riverdale.

Vaguely Related: I’m behind on Riverdale and need to catch up on season 2 so my dad and I can talk about it at length this Christmas.

201. Allison Crutchfield - I Don't Ever Wanna Leave California

“Darling, you're too mid-Atlantic,” begins (ex?) Swearin’ talent Allison Crutchfield on this solo cut and that’s an incredible way to start a song.