#out of context this looks so serious but when you see harry dancing it becomes so funny

[disco-archetypes]

AUTHORITY - Who's the one in charge? You are!

YOU - "Lieutenant! I am only going to pull rank on you one time. And that time is NOW!"

[watchyourbluesturngolden]

my annotations for chappy 11 of ysijwa

this is just for drea and leyla to read so if you're not drea or leyla pls keep scrolling :)

ok this is pretty chaotic and like i said earlier i treated this ike a wattpad comment section so... have fun ig :)

SHERLOCK AND WATSON CINEMATIC UNIVERSE SHUT UPPPPP I LOVE YOU SM DREA

NOT MISS SNAP CRACKLE POP

jealous y/n you say???

now i know why you ignored all my tiktok asks lmao

HELPLESS OH MY GOD

truly madly deeply intended :)

damn he's kind of a narcissist yk? like "I have to be serious my entire family depends on it" shut up mr darcy you're not special

devout in his religion hmmmmmm hopefully we see some more religious trauma content bc me too vampy

awww he wants kids but now he cant have them bc hes... dead :(

AWWW his sister taught him to knit :( if he doesn't knit bloodbag a sweater i swear to god

stuffy moron is correct

"IT'S A FUCKING WONDER HE EVER GOT LAID" OIJRIOJWEIOJIEWOJFIOEJOF

"THE ATROCITY THAT IS BEING ACQUAINTED WITH NIALL AND HIS HORRIBLE AFFINITY FOR CHEAP FLANEL" ORJFOIJFEIOWJ YOURE SUCH A POET

he's so dumb she was with him bc he's hot that much should be obvious to him🙄

FOOLISHLY HOPELESSLY UNMEASURABLY IN LOVE HWAT THE FUCK DREA IM SAD

i love that he remembers the spinal cord dislocation and the dead leaves . like yea im dead rn but the leaves in my hair are really what's bothering me the most

what the fuck is a maw

ok i looked it up i get it now

"attachment is for gullible idiots" yup and youre one of them vampy 😌

"the warmest skin his icy fingers had ever had the good fortune to touch" im so soft rn

oh so now she has "a wholesome beauty about her nature" ? i thought she was just cute enough 🤨

HE THINKS HER SMILE COULD RESTART HIS HEART THATS SO CUTE IM OUHOIJFOEWIJFIOEWJ

"the responsibility of keeping her safe, satisfied, and happy" how 🥺 🥺🥺

"as long as he breathes" i thought he didn't breathe lmao BUT I GET THE SENTIMENT

"always when it comes to her" IM SCREAMING RN THIS IS SO SOFT I CANT

ill never forgive him for being so dense either his brain is basically a rock

HE WANTED TO COMMUNICATE THAT HE BELONGED TO HER IM GONNA HAVE A STROKE

couldnt be me i dont want to be percieved

HE ADDED A FUCKING BUTTERFLY AFTER THE DISCO BALLS IM OIWFJIOEWJFIOEJIOEWNOJIWJ(*H(WUIOFJIOEWJFIOWHVIFUEH)U)($UT

HEY a hamilton obsession is not childish😤

'the only person who was allowed to touch him there was y/n' he's like a little kid who's possessive omggggggg

oh this reminds me i rlly hope everything in that chest was new and had never been used on anyone else owijfowiejfioewj

oh please my irish king can control himself let y/n meet the other vamps🙄

"if they knew all along why did it take so long" yk im wondering the same thing dummy

"every day was a battle to earn her love and affection" wtffff how could she hurt him like that he is just a baby

i think he needs therapy tbh

yes he does deserve to be treated with respect and dignity😤

"supporting and tolerating them despite your differences" exactly unless they're a republican

IM SORRY THAT WAS MEAN OIWFJOIWJFEIOw i said what i said tho

they did everything backwards but it's what baby needed🥺

im literally gonna 🔪 bradley how dare he hurt my favorite ribeye like that

PROPER BOYFRIEND-GIRLFRIEND BONDING PLSSSSS im sure he makes sure to say stuff like "as your boyfriend' or 'since youre my girlfriend' all the time now

"everything that has to do with harry has always and will always make her feel safe and secure" ...who's gonna tell her👀

HE BECOMES CLINGY IVE BEEN WAITIN FOR THIS ONE TURN IT UP

awwww my love language is also quality times bestiesssssss

(this is more serious you might want to change the words to nose kisses or something because esk*mo is a slur)

HE wants to be wrapped in HER arms and get forehead kissies like a little baby🥺🥺

i can tell you wrote this chappy bc leyla would never write about ice cream

IF CHRIST CAN GET A DATE MARKER SO CAN HARRY OIFJOEIWJFIOEWJFWI PLSSSSSSSSSS I LOVE HIM

ALWAYS FOR HER WEJFIOJWEIOFJEWIOFJOIEWJFOIEWJF HES SO IN LOOOOOVE

HE DID IT AND IM SO PROUD OF HIM🥺

omg i have a thot imagine if she got a heart murmur or something and obvi he knows bc he can hear it so now he has to find a way to make her get it checked out out without being suspicious 😭

HE ROCKS HER TO CALM HER DOWN WHEN SHES HAVING NIGHTMARES IJFEOWIJFOIWEFJ

“nearly blinds himself for eternity” what a drama queen i love him

maybe learn how to turn your brightness down grandpa

“can women sense emotional distress” why is this so funny oiewfjwieojfioewj

DEHUMANIZING OWEIJOIAJAKLFSDJLKSDJFKLD

not a psychotic episode 😭😭

crippling mommy issues woejfkljdklsjsdf me too king

awwwww he made her a full buffet i would cry

matchy socks im gonna sob

king is a chef 😌

y/n’s head @ harry’s clavicle rn: 💥

“his plush chest” drea its ok you can say titties

“absolutely flawless”? are you sure shes not just cute enough 🤨

he got her oat milk 🥺the sign of true love

hes such a shithead i love him

SPELLING HIS NAM E ON HER TUMMY IM HAVING ANOTHER STROKE

“I DIDNT WANT TO LEAVE YOU ALL ALONE” HES SO WOIFJSJFSDKJKLSDJF

HE DIDNT HAVE TO DO NIALL LIKE THAT 😭😭

RAPUNZEL HAIR OSIDJSKJKLSJF

she traces a tiny heart on him wtfffffffffff im sad

this… is hot

“theres no room on the counter” owifjlksjfslkfjklsj

HE WOULD WALK THROUGH FIRE FOR HER maybe then he’d be a little less cold

im sorry that was wrong of me lisjfskldjfwoiejewiojrei

OH MY GOD OWEIJFKLJSKLFJL SHES SO BOLD “can’t i?” OSIJFKSLJLKJF

oh boy hes gonna kill her

I WONDERED WHEN THE YOURE HOT WHEN YOURE MEAN THING WAS GOING TO COME UP

literally shut the fuck up mr english major

do it bestie kick him in the balls

SPARE BOOBIES MAAM I CNAT BELIEVE YOU aCTUALLY WROTE THAT OWIFEJWIJEKLJFOIEWHOEWIFEHFLKEWJFKLEWJKLJFL

IM WHITE IM ALLERGIC TO SPICE WEJFLKJFKLEJFLKJSKLJKFSJD

“character development at its finest” what a self aware king

y/n stop being mean to him baby just wants to feel close ☹️

“I’m anemic” ok king whatever u say

“ME AND MY CHRONIC ILLNESS IM SENSITIVE” IJFKLSDJFKLJSDKLJ

ahhhhhhh it’s yoga time

“just ask your cervix” jlksdjflksdjflkdsjflk

“if only you knew” ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️

yeah y/n isnt like those other girls 🤪 shes different 🤪

yes bestie objectify him

THERE IT IS MY FAVORITE LINE IN THIS ENTRIE BOOK

PERHAPS MY FAVORITE LINE IN ANY BOOK EVER

“He hasn't been this stiff since rigor mortis”

i think about this on a daily basis i truly do

grey shorts? what a slut

“call the lapd im pressing charges” me after walking up the stairs

OH SO THIS IS WHERE THE GREYS ANATOMY CHARACTERS FROM THE SPOILERS WITHOUT CONTEXT COME IN

him using his shirt as a towel im BARKING

“I wasnt jealous” yea ok 😃

AGAIN HIM DRAWING HIS INITIALS ON HER SKIN THATS SO WOIJFSKLDJFLSJ

yeah harold she just wanted a little kiss 😤

yeah 😃 its bc he ran track 😃

no bc thats so fucking cute that she pretended she had never seen the show before bc he was excited to introduce her to it 🥺

I would do the same tbh i feel like it would be fun to wash dishes with harry idk why

“that skank” oisjksldfjklsjfklsdjflkd

YOUR THICK SKULL COULD DAMAGE THE MARBLE LSKFJKLDSJKFLSDJFKLSJFKLSJKLSJLDKFJLSKDJF I WOULD CRY

he gets her a cup of water 🥺

ok but like wouldn't she want to wash her hair after it got all sweaty at yoga

awwwww she got his toothbrush ready for him why am i so soft rn

memory foam mattresses sound nice but actually they kind of suck bc you sink down and feel trapped in them 😃

HE WATCHED THE TIKTOK SHE SENT HIM IM HAVING A THIRD STROKE

niall is probably on the dumbest side of tiktok idek what side but it’s probably annoying and he thinks it’s hilarious

noooo baby youre not a monster🥺 someone give him a hug rn

well actually you are kind of a monster but its ok we still love u bestie

I too run on caffeine and pizza pockets 😌

TONSIL HOCKEY WHAT THE FUCK OIEJFLSDKJFKLSDJFLSJLKFJSDKLFJ

chatsnap hes such an old man 😭

true lmao if you dont have social media i immediately dont trust you

not the i just washed my hands tiktok 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

HE FEELS STRANGELY PERCIEVED RN KJFLSJFLKSDJ IDK WHY THIS IS SO FUNNY TO ME BUT IM LIKE LEGIT LAUGHING

DO IT BESTIE BITE HIM CHOMP CHOMP

“my eyes are stinging” hes such a baby 😭

“MY SIGH”TS ALL FUZZY” SJFKDSLJFLKDSJFLKDSJFLK

“are you all right” “I dont know :(’ i cant handle this my face hurts from smiling lksjflkjafklj

he has a kitchenaid stand mixer omg thats so sexy

ok but has anyone ever gotten salmonella from raw cookie dough bc i think thats just a myth

fuck u for that one vampy

wow he could never deal with my chronically ill ass

WAIT IS IT WAP

NOPE ITS BETTER LSDFJSDKLFJDS

I agree body is absolutely an instrumental masterpiece

I KNEW HE KNOWS SOME TIKTOK DANCES I KNEW IT

“I know youre kinda into that (getting smacked in the face)” SHUT UPPPPPPP SKJFSKDLJFDS

NOT HIM TWERKING SLKFJSDKLFJDSKLFJDSKL

YES YN GET THAT VIDEO AND BLACKMAIL HIM

“I think i popped something” ok old man 😭

why is the word wench so funny lkfjslkfjdslkfjsdlkfj

dont hand it over i want to see him snap

OH SHIT HE JUST JUMPED THE TABLE LSDFJSDKLFJLKDNMNXCMNJKHOIUIOEUR

oooooooooooo

OH MY GOD AGAIN SHE REALLY IS BOLD SLKDFJDSKLFJLSKDJFLKJFS

not guerrilla warfare 😭😭😭😭

do it bestie give him a concussion he deserves it

“no piece of art could ever compare to her” 🥺🥺

“remember that time you told me making out was childish” “no” i hate him 😭

THERE IT IS AGAIN “sex isnt the only way he can feel close to someone anymore” SHUT THE FUCK UP IM SOBBING

this reminds me of the dehydrated intercourse with demonrry

“don’t care, relationships are about sharing’ hes so sdjfksldjfklsjf

DO IT BESTIE KICK HIS KNEECAPS IN

suing disney for false advertisement 😭

THIS SCENE IS KILLING ME LKJFKLSJFLDSJ “just pucker your lips over it” “You have actual brain damage, dont you?” DREA I LOVE YOU KSDJFLDSKJFLKSDJ

how do those bubbles taste babe

ok drea wtf i was so happy and now this??????

“everything’s wrong” NO SHUT UP SHUT UP ITS HAPPY HOURS

not the boob privileges 😭

WAIT THIS IS FROM THE BSE MV ISNT IT “dance is just so hot rn” “depressing shades are just so hot rn”

NOT HIM GETTING ALL STUTTERY WHEN HE ASKS HER IF SHE WANTS A DRAWER 🥺

NO ONE HAS EVER BEEN THIS GENTLE WITH HIM BEFORE WTFFFFFFFF IM CRYING

“youre so fucking cute, my baby” me when i see literally any picture of him

JELLO HAS a STRONGER BACKBONE THAN THIS KSFJSDKLFJDSKLFJ

“betrayed. objectified. taken advantage of. used. “ i hate him sm 😭😭

OH MY GOD IS SHE GONNA SHAVE HIS FACE THATS SO CUTE IM

SHE ISsSSSSS IM SQUEALING

stop him worrying she’ll think it's weird and wont want to do it 🥺

“bold of you to assume id ever be convicted” PLS DREA LAKFJDKSLFJ

“the more you talk, the more appealing manslaughter sounds” I CHOKED DLSKFJDSKLFJDKSJFDSKLJ

HIM WHISTLING TO GET HER ATTENTION WHY IS THAT SO CUTE

Im sorry but its really funny to me how you wrote the sentence “wrong metal, he thinks ironically” … get it ? like IRONically lkfjdslkfj im sorry i’ll show myself out

“this boy?” what a fucking cutie i want to kick him

I forgot what a bop helpless is thanks for reminding me im gonna go listen to the entire soundtrack again-

theyre so fucking cute i hate them

so yea bascally this is the best thing ive ever read and i love you so much and my face hurts from smiling :)))

[hookahazz]

Chronicles of a Black Girl Vol 3:  Family Reunion |Harry Styles|

Warnings: Fluff, lil angst, cursing

Word Count: 2.8k

A/N:  Don’t kill me LMFAOO ik I said this morning but ya got it tonight. You got the trick from trick or treat. But this one is real cute and ish and I kept the same concept I just made it so that he meets her whole family and not just her parents. Please give me feedback and tell me how you felt. It’s much appreciated. Tell me how you honestly felt. I’m about to post the master list and it’ll show you the title of the next fic and that one and man y’all gone die its adorable. Enjoy pt 3 and thanks for reading all of them I appreciate y’all a fuck load. <3 

ASK BOX

If you don’t know, black people have three main values that are held above others: their hair, some good “put you to sleep after you eat about 2 plates” soul food and family. Family reunions and get-togethers are the highlights of the year. It is the time where they could all be together in one setting and enjoy one another's presence, the time where the adults would play spades and talk grown folk talk, and the time where your distant relatives would pull you into a hug filled with a strong perfume and hit you with that, “Oh hi baby, I haven’t seen you since you were two years old! You remember me?” There’s no greater feeling than being surrounded by those foil trays that were filled to the brim with mouth-watering sweet potatoes, potato salad (not the shit white people make with apples and all that other bullshit! as (Y/N) would put it), and that creamy, golden mac n’ cheese that black people would kill for (if made correctly, (Y/N)’s mom refuses to make anything but baked macaroni). The feeling of satisfaction one gets from being surrounded by uncles and aunties, grandmas and granddads, and listening to them tell stories about stuff that happened decades ago that still makes all of them laugh until they're crying. And the music! Oh yes-- that authentic soul music that was carefully constructed by the legendary artist who had the power to change peoples lives and move somebody's soul (Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, Michael Jackson, The Temptations, Gladys Knight, Ms. Lauryn Hill ((Y/N)'s ultimate favorite) , New Edition ). It was the music that would make those same aunts and uncles get up and dance horribly until their heart's content without the fear of judgment. Black people live for moments like such: to just sit around and be unconditionally black.

At the start of the semester, Harry and (Y/N) had been paired to do a project for their business law course (a class both of them regretted taking). At first (Y/N) was a little wary to be working with Harry, she'd never had any interaction with the boy except for when he asked to borrow a pencil and surprisingly gave it back in the end. After just twenty minutes of working with him, there wasn't a reason to be worried at all. In all her twenty-one years of living, she'd never met someone so goofy in her life (except her two older brothers). Harry was so sweet and funny it was almost hard to stay concentrated at the task at hand. That probably explains why they got a B- on the assignment instead of an A. Since then the two became friends, then best friends, and after months of teasing from Harrys best mate, Niall, they'd become boyfriend and girlfriend. 

They'd been dating for nearly three months and so far Harry's only met (Y/N)'s older brothers, Anthony and Caleb. Their first meeting wasn't in the most typical way. For one, all four of them were drunk off their asses after a night out at a frat party. Caleb and Anthony played multiple rounds of patty-cake with Harry, giggling while (Y/N) lied on her couch laughing at her toes. Her brothers adored Harry in every possible aspect. The three of them have become the best of friends and hang out all of the time which makes (Y/N) so, so happy. She's had a plethora of boyfriends (she’s quite the chocolate catch) and her brothers have hated every single one of them, always making sure (Y/N) knew that they aren't good enough for her. “You saw what he was wearing? His pants are sagging and falling to his fucking knees! His knees, (Y/N)!” Going from them to Harry was a drastic but much-needed change that both Caleb and Anthony appreciated a lot. They wanted nothing but the best for their baby sister and they knew Harry was as good as it was gonna get.

"So do you want to go with me? You don't have to if you're not ready, babe."  

On her way home from work she'd gotten a call from her dear mother regarding the annual family reunion and of course she invited Harry. Went on for nearly ten minutes about how “the two of you have been dating for three months, that boy's gonna have to meet the family sooner or later!” The conversation mainly consisted of momma (Y/L/N) talking and (Y/N) giving her a couple of mhm's and yes ma's here and there. "Course I'll come, lovie. Been dyin' to meet your family!" he beamed, excited as she had predicted. Harry valued family more than anything so meeting hers was a big step in their relationship. "You're not nervous or anything, right? I mean for real, if you are then we really don't even gotta go. They won't even miss us," she assured him. In all honesty, (Y/N) didn't want to rush anything with Harry. She really really liked him and she was fully aware of how rowdy and wild her family can get. 

"No babe, it's gonna be fun! M'excited!" he grinned wrapping his arm around his girlfriend's waist.

↫ ↬

Harry was never a shy or nervous person, it just wasn't him. He'd never really been in a situation where he was incredibly anxious and meeting (Y/N)'s parents were no different. He was absolutely positive that they'd love him and he assured (Y/N) that multiple times when she'd brought up meeting them. He was a people pleaser, someone who wanted to satisfy everyone, someone who naturally appealed to everyone. Harry had never been in a position to which he had to appeal to someone who didn't like him because everyone liked him, even if they didn't want to. 

"When is it again, button?" Harry questioned, playing with (Y/N)'s kinky locks.  She'd just finished washing her hair and Harry absolutely loved watching her condition and style it. "Uh, the day after tomorrow. So Wednesday? Yeah Wednesday," she concluded, slabbing on a generous amount of leave in conditioner. He grinned, doing the same to another section of her hair (he also enjoyed assisting her in styling her hair, the conditioner smelled of coconuts and almonds that nearly made him drool). "You're really excited aren't you?" she questioned. "Course I am. S'a big step in our relationship and I've always wanted to meet your parents. You're mum especially," (Y/N) snorted. Like the majority of black moms (Y/N)'s was crazy crazy. Her childhood consisted of a ton of life lessons that stemmed from a simple joke (Y/N) would make or a movie that wasn't meant to be taken way out of context, her mom constantly telling all her friends (some of which (Y/N) didn't even know) all of her business, and plenty of ass whoopings with the following: a switch, a belt, or any random object momma (Y/L/N) could get her hands on. "Oh yes, you'll love her. She's a peach."

"Oi, why are you laughin'?" he poked her sides.

"No reason baby,' she chuckled, pressing her lips to his cheek.

"I'm positive you're parents will love me. M'gonna be the first boyfriend your family likes. Even Caleb and Anthony said so!" She rolled her eyes, of course they would think so. They adore Harry because he's nothing like the lot of old boys she used to fool around with. "Yeah and you'll also be the first white boy I've brought home so that'll be something." she joked. Harry stiffened, "you're serious? They're not gonna like me then (Y/N)!" He began panicking. Not once did he think he'd need to worry about someone not liking him because of his skin color. Not once did he have to feel worried about being picked apart and judged based on the color of his skin. In fact, he'd never worried about anything regarding his skin tone because it has and would never affect his daily life. 

She turned, stopping the commotion with her hair to focus on her very panicky boyfriend who looked as if he were going to cry at any given moment. She wrapped her arms around him pulling him into a tight hug, rubbing her soft hands up and down his back (a tactic she learned only but weeks ago that would calm him down). "Hey, hey, hey. I was just joking, baby. You don't have to be worried about them not liking you because you're white. They don't care. You could be green and they'd still love you," she smiled, trying to contain a laugh. It was amusing to see how worked up he would get over minute situations like such. (Y/N) thought it was so adorable that he'd even cared so much.  "You're sure? They're not gonna kick me out or somethin' right?" he looked up at her. "I promise they won't," she laughed, she knew her family wasn’t like that. They loved everyone. Even with that, Harry was still convinced that (Y/N)'s family were going to hate him. He simply smiled and nodded and continued to work conditioner into her hair and twist it in hopes to calm him down.

↫ ↬

Now, the both of them were standing in front of (Y/N)'s parent's house waiting nervously for someone to answer the door and Harr, for the first time, really felt as though he was about to shit his pants on their poor porch. He wanted to run and hide behind her mothers beautiful rose bush and stay there until this whole conjuncture was over. He wrapped his long digits around (Y/N)'s and squeezed her hand for reassurance. "Hey, it's gonna be alright. I swear," she whispered just as the door began to open.

"(Y/N), my sweet grandbaby. I almost thought you weren't gonna show up!"

"Grandma!" (Y/N) smiled, engulfing the short woman in a hug. "Missed you so much," she smiled. They had a short conversation before she turned her attention to the six-foot boy behind (Y/N) who had been smiling at their very sweet interaction. "And who's this handsome young man you brought with you, suga?" Harry smiled, his nerves calming somewhat. He introduced himself, going in for a handshake but (Y/N)'s grandma slapped his hand away and pulled him down for a hug professing, you’re family now, act like it boy! "How cute. Oh!-- And muscular too! Chiiiild, wait till ya auntie gets a load of this one. Come on now, the rest of the family's in the backyard. Ya mommas in the kitchen talking shit per usual go help her, baby. I'll take care of Harry." she smiled, wrapping her arm around his. (Y/N) rolled her eyes and giggled at her grandmother's goofy antics and kissed Harry before walking away and assuring him that she'd be in the kitchen if he needed her.

Harry charmed (Y/N)'s grandmother, Kelly (grandma K is what she told him to call her since he was apart of the family now), rather fast. She led him to the back and introduced him to (Y/N)'s uncles, aunts, cousins, and all of her (including great) grandparents. All of them welcomed Harry with open arms. They had so many questions regarding his family and life in the UK, what he did for a living (he was CFO at a major marketing company, they were so proud of his title at such a young age, ya gotta be a stable man while dating our niece! her uncles would say), and his feelings about their (Y/N). An immense amount of aww's was given from the way he talked about her (Y/N's younger cousins, Mikayla and Jordan (ten), thought Harry was so cute and were really just aww'ing at how good he looked). Everyone was easily able to tell how in love Harry was with (Y/N) even though they haven't said it to one another yet (it’s only been three months)

"Harry, I fixed you a plate baby." (Y/N) smiled, interrupting a playful but heated conversation that Harry, her younger cousin Anthony (seventeen), and her father were having about the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. He smiled and grabbed the plate from her and motioned for her to sit in his lap. He pressed a kiss on her cheek and thanked her. Harry finally felt calm, that is until another short woman stepped in front of the two and began staring him down. It didn't take long for Harry to realize that it was (Y/N)'s mother, the resemblance was uncanny.  He nearly choked, becoming nervous yet again. This was the big boss. He thought he was going to be more afraid of (Y/N)'s dad who, though still wary of his little girl dating, (she's twenty- one) loves Harry. He even went as far as to invite Harry to the next super bowl party and he's never done that for any of (Y/N)'s boyfriends!

"(Y/N) who's this?" she questioned.

"Ma, this is Harry, my boyfriend. Harry this is my mom, Christine," Harry stood up to formally greet the woman with a handshake but she, much like her own mother, pulled him down into a bone-crushing hug. For such small women, they both had deadly grips. "Harry, it's so nice to finally meet you! Dunno why (Y/N)'s been hiding you from us, baby." she pinched his cheeks. "You's bout the cutest thing too!  Oh my lord!" she grinned. By now Harry was feeling like an idiot, the biggest fucking idiot. (Y/N)'s family had actually taken a liking to him. He did all that worrying for nothing, all that crying to (Y/N) over the phone at 2 AM because he couldn’t sleep for nothing, and spent all that time googling good reasons as to why you can't go to your girlfriends family reunion for nothing! 

"What are these?" Harry questioned.

"Those are called greens. It's good I promise." (Y/N) stifled a laugh. He’d been asking a lot of questions about the food simply because he’d never heard of some of it. After swallowing his first bite, he couldn't stop. Harry had devoured three plates of food and somehow managed to fit a serving from both her moms homemade banana pudding and her chocolate pie. "Bloody hell, that was so good." he yawned, nuzzling his head into the crook of her neck. "M'sleepy (Y/N)," she giggled, knowing good and well of the after effect of soul food, and kissed the top of his head.

"Damn it, why’d it take you so long to bring him ‘round here (Y/N)!" her aunts asked, playfully slapping her thigh. 

"I just didn't wanna rush anything, hop off! And on top of that, I told him he was the first white boy I'd ever brought home and he flipped shit on me! Thought y'all weren't gonna like him!" The lot of them erupted in a fit of laughter. "Oh child, you ain't gotta worry about that. We all love you to pieces. Such a cute thing you are. Better than those ol' raggedy hoodlums she used to bring 'round here before!" her grandmother interjected, swatting at her thigh as well.

"Grandma K! See now why you gotta go and bring them up. That was in high school!" (Y/N) whined, gaining a loud laugh from her grandmother. She'd never been any good at picking boyfriends. None of her family members ever liked any of them, they truly were a bad influence on her.

The rest of the night concluded in her family telling the most embarrassing stories from her childhood to Harry. (Y/N) didn't think they were funny at all but Harry was proper amused. I'm talking doubled over, gasping for air, tears spilling down his cheeks amused. What made it even funnier was how annoyed she was getting, stomping and whining like a two-year-old. "Ugh, man I swear I hate y'all! You're supposed to be on my side Harry!" she shoved him to the ground.

"Baby, stop!" he nearly choked, trying to catch his breath all while laughing and trying to keep his very cute (but very annoyed) girlfriend from attacking him. "(Y/N) stop! You're gonna mess his face up!" Mikayla and Jordan tugged at her shirt, somehow pulling her off of Harry. Now everyone was laughing at the scene.

"M'very sorry for laughing at how you shit on your mum's hand as a baby, love." Harry smiled, kissing all over her face (a tactic he learned that made her forgive him almost immediately). She shoved him back one last time and laughed. "I hate y'all for real!" Harry grinned, settling back in his rather comfortable fold out chair and pulled (Y/N) back onto his lap.

"M'glad we came. I really did all that worrying for nothing, petal. Your family loves me like I knew they would." he joked.

She rolled her eyes, "don't act like you weren't about to shit yourself earlier, big shot."  "Lower your voice!"  he warned, earning yet another laugh from grandma K.

"No need to get embarrassed suga! I told ya, you's apart of the family now. Now come over here and dance with an old lady," she commanded, gaining a large grin from both Harry and (Y/N).

[billxharry]

In which I write the majority of Mamma Mia! 3

@nilo2207 had sent a wonderful question about unused Abba songs that made me think of Bill and Harry, and mentioned liking to re-imagine them singing previous songs that didn’t belong to their characters, which I also love to do. I love this question, because I have actually given this some thought before (*way* more than I should have, admittedly, as you’ll see) and because I can’t just associate the songs with them, I have to imagine them being relevant to a plot with them singing them, so because of that I have *large* parts of the third movie all planned out in my little mind. Someone hire me immediately. 🤣

I will put a song list here, and if you’d like, under the read more cut, I will painstakingly explain the context I imagine them in.

(Firstly, apologies to Colin and Stellan, the second movie didn’t give them anything to really sing, so in my lovely imaginary movie, I do the exact opposite.😁 They get more songs than they would ever want.)

Songs we haven’t seen (technically, I am aware two appear on the soundtrack of the second movie, but were cut from the film, so if the scenes are released, I suppose those will get moved to songs I would like re-imagined.) 

I Wonder (Departure)- Harry

Head Over Heels- Bill (this song would be reworked pronoun wise and a few lyric adjustments to fit with Bill)

 I Know Him So Well (it’s technically from Chess but it can count, right?) Harry and Rosie

The Day Before You Came- Harry (and a new verse at the end written for Bill) 

 Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)- Bill and Rosie 

The Way That Old Friends Do- Bill, Harry, Sam, Tanya, Rosie and Donna (in spirit, the same vein the second movie used her)

As for the songs I like to imagine Harry and Bill signing that went to other characters, I’ve fit them into my narrative, as a medley of sorts, calling back to the first movie-

Take A Chance On Me- Bill

Honey, Honey- Harry (one of my biggest needs is Harry singing this song about Bill, okay.)

Mamma Mia!- Bill,Harry,Sam,Tanya,Rosie and Donna 

I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do-Bill,Harry,Sam,Tanya,Rosie and Donna

Waterloo- Bill and Harry, Rosie and Tanya 

When All is Said And Done- Bill,Harry,Sam,Tanya,Rosie and Donna

Dancing Queen- The entire cast

Songs that aren’t theirs, that I like to imagine them singing that I didn’t fit it to my narrative- Um, almost every song because everything revolves around Bill and Harry at this point in my mind😆

The original version of I’ve Been Waiting For You (I still really want this one, but the second movie made the reworked version so personal for Donna and Sophie that I can’t actually use it in my never to exist movie. )

The Winner Takes It All if I am feeling particularly angsty

I think that’s the songs, now on to plot. This post is already so long, this read more is going to make it ridiculous. Feel free to skip this. It’s literally fanfiction written in synopsis form? It’s odd. 

Sophie needs help running the hotel. It’s become a stellar success after the re-opening, and new offers have come her and Sky’s way. She is finally at a place of peace with the hotel, knowing Donna would be proud, and is ready to take on new opportunities of her own, but with her having Donnie (I am not sure which way they spell it, Donnie or Donny?)she struggles to travel, take on new endeavors, run the hotel and raise a family. She asks Sam for a little extra help at the hotel, and when Sam mentions it, of course Bill and Harry vow to join him.(Dad hi-jinks with the three of them abound, of course, but I also like to think there’d be some depth to this plot, too.)

Yes, it’s your basic cheesy plot, but its Mamma Mia!, okay. I feel that’s acceptable. In this horrendously thought out summary, I will focus mainly on Bill and Harry’s plots, since this blog is focused on them and that’s what the question was in regaurds too. And let’s be honest, I’ve given them the majority of thought.

To actually get on to answering the questions, re: songs, if you’re still with me...

Harry has yet again gone back to his hum drum business world, but as we have seen in the first movie, and even more so in the second, he’s feeling more and more disconnected from that world, and as he ponders going to the island to help with the hotel, which he originally only planned to do for a week or so, he thinks of Sophie, and Donnie (Donny?) and Sam, and an extra emphasis on Bill (and here we’re clued in that Bill and Harry have indeed been together numerous times through out the years, but they’ve never broken up, because they’ve never officially been together) and after giving everything serious thought, Harry decides he doesn’t plan on coming back to London, to his lifestyle, for a good while this time, he wants to be where his family is. This is his spontaneous adventure. He is of course apprehensive, it’s Harry, but he decides it’s a risk worth taking, and he sings I Wonder (Departure) as he prepares to leave. 

When we see Bill, also preparing to go to the island, we see he is in the opposite mind set of Harry. He’s not looking at this trip as a risk or an adventure, but rather the opposite, a chance to actually be grounded for a time. We discover he and Rosie have broken up yet again, but this time without Bill being at fault. He has no regrets about how their relationship went this time around, and thinks they can still be great friends. However, he sings a re-imagined version of Head Over Heels, subtly voicing his growing weariness of his lifestyle, and how he’s treated Harry. (His man is one I admire, He's so courageous, but he's constantly tired. Each time that he speaks his mind, He pats his head and says that's all very fine, Exert that will of your own, When we're alone, Now we better hurry. And with no trace of hesitation he keeps going.) Bill vows he will stay at the island longer than the week he had planned. 

(Rosie and Tanya will certainly factor into this story too, of course. Sophie and Sky who are in New York, meet Tanya at Rosie’s launch of her new cook book, and after hearing some of the things Sophie had left in charge of the men (deciding how to a crucial suite would be remodeled, being in charge of food for a very prestigious event, the design plan of a new expansion, etc.) Tanya and Rosie decide it’s crucial to join them. Sophie argues in her dads’ favour, “But Harry has great taste.” “Bill is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to food!” “Sam literally designed the hotel in the first place!” But ultimately she realizes that Tanya and Rosie just want to be included, the hotel means a lot to everyone, and Rosie is obviously tired from the book tour, and Tanya occasionally shows the occasional crack in her usual demeanor. Sophie concludes that it would be best if they joined them, knowing they could all use the some of the magical atmosphere the island seems to offer.)

Things, despite getting off to a bumpy and highly amusing start, are actually going pretty well now for the Dads. There’s plenty of moments that showcase that instant friendship the three of them had, as they work through the mishaps, it’s obvious to see, especially in Bill and Harry, the contrasting and yet somehow complimentary way they work together. Harry’s particular ways of solving problems come into play during this time, much to everyone’s confounded amusement. After a particularly good day of being together, Bill decides to confide in Sam, who has somewhat of an idea as to what’s going on, that he wants to give a relationship with Harry a serious go.

As it happens, Harry of course overhears a part of the conversation, but misunderstands, as Harry and Bill so often do, knowing each other so well but somehow being so wrong, he falsely assumes Bill is certainly talking about the newly arrived Rosie. Rosie, who initially did think her and Bill would reunite, also manages to hear parts of the conversation, and concludes Bill is talking about someone else, and Harry and Rosie sing I Know Him So Well about Bill.  

When Bill later tries to talk to Harry, he is uncharacteristically nervous, and is having a hard time saying everything he wants to say. Harry further misinterprets it to be about Rosie, and hurt, he confesses how much Bill means to him by singing The Day Before You Came, which Bill sings his own verse of to explain Harry had changed his life too, but Harry doesn’t hear it, as he’s already walked away. 

Bill, who is now certain this is what he wants, berates himself for being a coward, when he and Harry had obviously wanted the same things. Now more determined and excited than ever to embark on this brand new adventure, he asks to talk to Rosie to clear the air once and for all. She confronts him about being in love with someone else, and when he confesses, she surprises him by asking if it’s Harry. He admits it is, and she admits she’s always thought there was something between them. Bill never opened up to her as easily and quickly as he had Harry, and never looked at her, or any of the girls she had seen Bill with, quite the same way as he had Harry. 

He apologizes to Rosie for never being able to give her the life that she deserved, and she she admits she thinks she forced their relationship on Bill. They sing Dance (While the Music Still Goes On), and after they dance, Rosie chides him, Bill Anderson, of being afraid of anything, let alone Harry Bright of all people. Bill remarks he sees something in Tanya and Rosie that’s perhaps similar to Harry and himself. Rosie agrees that Tanya would be preferable to carbs and they laugh, this time parting amicably, as good friends with a kiss on the cheek.

As well as things have been going at the hotel, things suddenly seem to crash all at once, causing strain on all of the relationships. Bill is upset as Harry is now avoiding him, and as he snaps at Sam over something completely unrelated, somewhere in evolves into an argument with Bill stating Sam wasted most of his lifetime with Donna, something that Sam still struggles with. Tanya, who also knows about Bill and Harry (she told Harry she had seen the sexual chemistry from the beginning, and Harry, feeling she was a close friend, hadn’t felt the need to lie to her) makes a comment to Harry along the lines about there being other lays in the sea for him, and Harry chastises her about there being more to life than sex, especially at their age, something Tanya has secretly been acknowledging herself. Upset, she turns to Rosie and criticizes her for wanting to get back with Bill, not knowing they had broken up for good. The fights come to a head when Harry, once again having awful timing, had witnessed Bill kiss Rosie’s cheek, affirming everything he had thought to be true, at least in his mind, and his frustration at never being a factor in Bill’s life culminates in a huge disagreement between the two, despite Bill trying to tell him otherwise.

  The usual magical feel of the island suddenly feels void, it feels no different than the reality all of them had been coming to Kalokairi to escape. Sophie and family return to find low spirits and everyone, despite their promises, planning to leave. Sophie pleads for them to reconsider, reminding them that they had all come to the island for something, and they needed to remember what it was. She leaves with the parting words that the magic never was the island itself, it was all of them finding each other and forming the family that they had. Her mom had brought all of them together, and she didn’t want to have that change just because Donna was no longer there to hold them together. 

As they sit and look at one another across the room, they know that Sophie is right. Together they sing The Way That Old Friends Do. During the song Bill and Harry entwine their fingers, Rosie lays her head on Tanya’s shoulder, and Sam sings to the spirit of Donna.   

As the song ends, and they all share quiet smiles, Rosie catches Bill’s eye and nods, encouraging him to go on. Bill takes a breath and begins to sing Take A Chance On Me. Despite reluctance at the very beginning from Harry, Bill can see the smile forming and Bill’s confidence grows as he continues to sing, knowing Harry is about to let loose. As as Bill sings, Harry transitions to taking over singing Honey, Honey with gusto, with Rosie and Tanya (and even Sam) joyfully jumping in as his back up girls. The group transitions to Mamma Mia!, the previous feel good feeling back in full force. Bill takes the transition again, changing the tune to I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, with their friends encouraging Harry to say yes to Bill’s proposal. Harry doesn’t need any encouragement at all, he is just trying to get his I do! in but the chorus and Bill keep interrupting him. He eventually grabs Bill and silences him with a very telling kiss, which leads to the transition of Waterloo, as they’ve finally surrendered to their fears and couldn’t be happier. As the joyous notes end, we get a final, touching moment of the beloved group singing the reprise of When All Is Said and Done, the song mimicking where all of the characters now stand. Sam sings to and with the spirit of Donna, who may be gone but the love, and the family, she gave to Sam remains strong, despite their short time of getting to be together and he doesn’t regret any of it. Rosie is no longer in a hurry to force a relationship, and she smiles at Tanya, knowing her best relationship will always be the one with her. Tanya, slightly worn but always dignified, acknowledges she can have her rousing lifestyle but have actual love as well. (And of course she is not too old for sex. She gets a whoop from Rosie, a suggestive eyebrow movement from Bill directed at Harry, and a bright blush and chuckle of acknowledgement from Harry.) Harry, ever the anxious man, is for once calm, and Bill, ever the man on the move, has no desire to run.  

The end comes with the entire cast singing an encore of Dancing Queen, as it’s being danced to at Bill and Harry’s wedding, and a comment about how they are going to need to change the lyric of “only seventeen” to “only seventy” if they plan to continue singing that song is uttered.

[elliesrandomessays-blog]

Clickbait Title: How Todd in the Shadows killed Pop Music.

Non-Clickbait title: How the change in the social preconceptions of Pop music as a genre resulted in Pop Music making itself irrelevant.

For around a year now critics of American Pop Music have been lamenting the near complete overtaking of Pop music as the predominant music of choice by Hiphop. It's an unique time to be a fan of Chart Music. If you go on the Billboard Hot 100, the literal definition of what is popular in the USA at any one time you'll find a list that is primarily Rap music, not Pop. The top 20 at the time of writing currently has 13 rap songs amongst its ranks, and it doesn't peter off as you scroll down through the 70's and 80's. It gets worse if you're slightly sharper on your definition of Pop because pure Pop music only has at best 3 songs in the top 20. Hiphop is seeing a dominance of mainstream culture right now and has managed to almost entirely remove Pop music from the cultural zeitgeist and many critics want to know why. Why is Pop music no longer Pop music.

This could be the legit hot 100 or the Hiphop hot 100 and there’d be no difference.

I will quickly acknowledge the unfortunate duality of the term 'pop music'. It functions both as shorthand for music that is popular, regardless of genre or origin; and as an explicit label for the genre of pop music. Much the same way that indie can both mean independent, and the genre of indie. This is unhelpful bit of lexical crossover that's contributing to the general frustration so I'll spell the leading question out explicitly: why is capital-P Pop music no longer pop(ular) music.

There are many small factors that contribute to this such as the changes in the way music is consumed; Hiphop as a genre has been a lot quicker to adapt its method of distribution to the age of streaming than Pop being the big one that most people point to as the root cause, but I think there's a much more substantial change to the way the general media approaches Pop as a genre that has split it's audience down the middle. Essentially dividing and conquering.

I would put the main issue being with the form of Pop music criticism that began to spring up around 2010. The wave of Poptimism that I'm referring to technically began as far back as 2004 with the rabbit hole of Rockism and the philosophical rejection of the idea that disposable is an inherent negative but it picked up the majority of it's momentum around the time the Club Boom began to reach its third act (think: when Ke$ha became a thing). It's hard to ascertain exactly why it happened but the consequences of this change aren't hard to see, with the most tangibly visible effect being the sudden rise of Todd In The Shadows. While I wouldn't call him directly responsible for this shift - Todd moving from a novelty who applied the standard YouTube-Media-Criticism to Chart Music up to one of the largest influencers of the post-TWGTG style ('post-' being used in the same context as 'post-'modern) was largely driven by the sudden proliferation of Poptimism, and he in general serves as good synecdoche for much of the change in attitude that occurred around the time. So while this shift has nothing literally to do with Todd and his content, he's a good symbol of it, on top of him being a large feature of the surface-level of the change. For ease of reference from this point I'm going to refer to this new attitude as Toddian.

After Toddian-Poptimism rose there was a new critical eye being applied to Chart music and it felt like the charts had entered a golden age - unparalleled since the 80's. Pop music from Adele, Jason DeRulo, Carly Rae Jepsen, fun., Meghan Trainor, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake and many more managed to be in a position where they were both massively commercially successful and given the respect (and occasionally even acclaim) they deserved from critics for being well constructed, enjoyable music that had impact on people. In spite of the assumption that you're old enough to get in to a Club, the Club Boom was seen as a very immature time for music and you could read this Toddian era as being representative of a maturation of Pop Music, and the world responded. Serious, snobby, oldschool music critics weren't afraid anymore to include a Taylor Swift song on their year-end lists when none would've been caught dead doing the same with Flo Rida. And a whole Youtube subgenre of Chart critics grew in the garden Todd had planted. The musical artists of this time were respected for being good Pop Music, not respected for being good in spite of being Pop music: this era spelled the death of the Guilty Pleasure.

So, Question: why did it all stop? The Answer: the devil is in the details of what this new wave of Poptimism was actually doing to Chart Music. If you look at the general trend of what Toddian criticism liked and disliked there's one running theme that even at the time I was skeptical of and has since proven destructive to their own intended goal: Retro.

Remember the time we let a 30 year regression become nearly the most popular song of all time?

The overwhelming trend with Toddian criticism is heaping a majority of the praise on genre-throwbacks and a reporting with a general air of unease newer genres that lack history. Synthpop, R&B, Funk, and Indie-Rock are regular appearances on 'Best songs of X year' lists. House, EDM, and Traprap are regular appearances on the opposite. In retrospect looking at these lists the general impression is not that Toddian criticism exist in order to promote Pop music as a place where legitimate artistic statements can be made and forward movement is being made, but rather to quash any potential movements away from the genres that the vague umbrella of nostalgia is comfortable with. Bar the odd breakthrough from Hiphop, Singer-Songwriter and memeworthy dance songs the charts of this era and especially the hit songs that were regarded as worthwhile can near universally be pinned to a specific retro era they were appealing to. Right across from 60's doo-wop to 90's synth-funk and every possible step inbetween, the critical process turned into "They seem to be going for a [decade]-era [artist] vibe on this new track" with lists ranking them on how much that critic enjoys each of the eras relative to one another.

Even within the context of individual artists careers you can see this. Justin Timberlake in 2014 releases 'Can't Stop the Feeling!', a piece of retro summertime-funk and it becomes one of the most well regarded pieces of popular music of the decade. In 2018 JT releases 'Filthy' a piece of modern Pop music that interpolates elements of modern dance and electronic and he's career is immediately killed. Calvin Harris spends decades regarded as the lowest Chart Music gets. In 2017 he released Funk Wav Bounces and suddenly 'Slide' is a critical darling. The next year he releases the equally quality House song 'One Kiss' and no one cares. Taylor Swift. 80's pop album 1989 is adored. Modern pop Reputation is hailed as an artistic bomb. The Weeknd. Moody PBR&B was rejected. Peppy 'Can't Feel My Face' is a "modern classic". David Guetta, Zedd, Martin Garrix and similar EDM producers are all seemingly ignored when they briefly entered the spotlight with only Avicii and Clean bandit getting acknowledgements because they spliced Electronica with Folk and Classical respectively. Imagine Dragons, one of the few rock bands unironically trying to push forward into modern Pop styles of production and aesthetic when pure Indie were adored yet are now regarded as "worse than Nickleback". Which is a phrase so incredibly toploaded with subtext that I could double the length of this essay just digging into those three words. I could go on longer with these but I'll leave the rest as names for you to think about yourself: Pharrell Williams, Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande, Fall Out Boy, Jason DeRulo, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Charli XCX, Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars.

Over the course of half-a-decade, the Pop music industry went from rewarded greatly, to heavily disincentivized to promote modern Pop music. Some would seep through the cracks such as Tove Lo and Julia Michaels but the lukewarm and actively hostile responses they respectively got were just further perpetuating the problem. Why would any rational record label want to invest time and money into artists trying to sound modern when all the Toddian eye is going to do is reject them in favour of someone who's tearing ideas directly out of Billy Joel's playbook. This lead to the inevitable crowding out of newer acts who were experimenting in modern genres. The last truly modern act to break in to the upper echelons of popular culture were probably The Chainsmokers. With Roses, Don't let Me Down and Closer all being incredibly popular with no retro era to support themselves only. And they also served as the Toddian eye's most brutal target. Literally being regarded as the worst album of the year.

(I'm aware that Todd himself actually liked The Chainsmokers. So this a good time for a reminder this isn't about his opinions specifically).

The obvious immediate rebuttal to this was posed to be within minutes when I posted the initial thesis for this essay on Twitter: if modern-Pop was killed by an overpraise of retro-Pop. Why isn't retro-Pop dominating the charts instead then?

The problem there is one that many fans of retro-Pop don't want to hear, retro-Pop was a fad, and that fad has now died. Or rather, retro-Pop was a rare occurrence of a meta-fad. It had a significantly longer lifespan than the 2004 indie-rock fad that gave us Mr.Brightside and the 2017 Spanish fad that gave us Despacito because rather than being one specific gimmick that popular culture was enamored with, it was composed of dozens of smaller fads that when placed one-after-another produce the illusion of a trend. If you actually look at the nitty-gritty no particular subfad of retro survived more than one or two artists releasing an album each. Doo-Wop was only popular long enough to give us Meghan Trainor and Charlie Puth while Michael Jackson was only popular long enough to give us The Weeknd and Jason Derulo. ect. ect. So the reason that Run Away With Me by Carly Rae Jepsen and Bills by LunchMoney Lewis weren't commercial successes in spite of seemingly being exactly the kind of retro hit that was at-the-time popular was because neither song were released when that specific era's fad was the in thing. Sure they were retro, but we already had Taylor Swift snap up dreamy 80's pop and DNCE had already filled the quota of glistening-pop-Funk so why would they need another?

There was no way that this essay was going to exist without a nod to E• MO•TION at some point.

By early 2017 we had already essentially run out of genres to co-opt without going into music that's so old it's nearly measured in centuries. So that put the music industry into a Catch-22. They can't invest their promotional time and money into retro-Pop anymore because the fad is well and truly dead (you can't make another Uptown Funk because Uptown Funk already exists) and the general public is going to reject it as a late-to-the-party grasp of desperation. But they can't invest into modern-Pop because Toddian critics are going to reject it outright because it doesn't appeal to the core aesthetics that they like and are going to heap tepid reviews on it which will seriously damage any attempts to market the thing, you can't advertise a 3-star review. The retro-Pop well dried up, and now in the final quarter of 2018 everyone regrets cementing up the old well. Eventually all fads die.

Now it's time to bring Justin Beiber in, who I imagine so far has been the biggest ? lying under this whole argument. Beiber was huge around the same time of the final years of the retro-Pop fad and wasn't making anything remotely retro. He was making incredibly forward-pushing, futuristic sounding dance-pop that had yet to really have an era before now. But he's the final piece of this puzzle: the fad that overtook retro. Justin Beiber was riding the next wave: Tropical. Major Lazer started it, Beiber rode it to the top, Sia and Ed Sheeran followed behind him. That fad had the lifespan of a normal fad - around 14 months. Then that naturally morphed into Spanish music. Then that fad died and nothing came in to replace it so Pop music was left with a hole and nothing to fill it. Once again that left the pop music industry with the more general formulation of the Catch-22. Fad has died so can't promote that without looking desperate, can't promote new Pop music because no one wants to swim in a lukewarm pool where the lifeguard secretly wishes you were someone else.

Hiphop itself is pretty much irrelevant to the story. There's nothing special about Rap as a genre apart from the fact it just happened to be the 2nd place racer when 1st place's tires blew-out. That's not to say that Rap wasn't doing some legitimately incredible things and isn't worthy of success. But all I'm saying is Post Malone, Cardi B, and Kendrick Lamar would've been top-40-popular anyway and there was simply no one else in the way to stop them *not* going to number 1.

This has all had the consequence of turning Pop music, in both forms, into niche genres. Now that the general public isn't consuming Pop because it's what the miasma of popular culture tells them to like Pop has to start appealing to people who're actual Popheads, and when your audience becomes niche-sized they're small enough to make the critical decisions themselves. No one wants to listen to retro-Pop stars that the big labels are offering anymore because their audience now is so small that the audience is cutting out the middlemen and just listening to old music (it's no surprise this has all been at the same time as Africa by Toto's sudden rebirth) while on the other end no one wants to listen to the modern-Pop that labels offer anymore because their audience is making active decisions and is instead listening to Alison Wonderland and Virtual Self. Some like myself have even defected as far as Bill Wurtz.

Seriously, if you’re a person who considers yourself ‘in to’ music and only think of Bill Wurtz as that weird guy who made the history videos then you’re missing out.

I'm not even going to pretend that there's a solution to this problem. Even if I had one I'm an insignificant enough cog in the machine that I couldn't enact it. But I can give my perspective on where the future of the Charts lie.

The main thing to keep in mind is that this is all cyclical. Eventually the general consuming public will get sick of Hiphop and whomever is in 2nd place when that happens is going to capitalize on the exact same sort of collapse that got us in the current situation. Arguably this will happen a lot faster since Toddian was a relatively large shift in critical style compared to 2009 but Hiphop has always had a higher degree of scrutiny applied to it for both fair and unfair reasons. And Pop music isn't totally dead either, arguably the nadir has passed and it’s on the way up not down at the current moment. As much as I dislike it, Weezer's cover of Africa shows there's at least a way back in to mainstream consciousness for Pop music if it decides to go down that route. And acts such as LSD, Bazzi and Halsey are still managing to claw their way into high listen counts through sheer force of quality.

So for now, I'd say enjoy the ride. And enjoy the brief time that Toddian Criticism has put us in where the radio not giving you Pop to listen to puts you in a place where you hear Tessa Violet for the first time instead

[thefanficnewbie]

“Ain’t no way I’m a Hufflepuff!” | Poussey x reader (platonic) - OITNB drabble

What is this about? Poussey and you discuss her house at Hogwarts. It turns out to be actually way harder than you thought!

Spoilers? Yep, mild ones for season two!

Warnings? Nah, not really! Well, except for overload of adorableness from Poussey, that pure angel <3

While I am totally in love with Poussey, once there are no actually romantic interactions in this drabble, I’m categorizing it as platonic!

“Nah... C’mon, man, you can’t be serious.” The young woman kicked the blankets off her legs and sat straighter with her back against the wall, an expression of disbelief on her face. “No fucking way I’m a Hufflepuff.”

“Think about it.” You sat down beside her, pointing at the sheet of paper in your hand, now filled with scribbles, lists, and graphics about the four houses of Hogwarts. “It makes total sense.”

“Yo, I know you’re a die-hard Potterhead and shit,” Poussey shot an unimpressed look at the writings “but I’m a big fan too and my house is one of the few things I know for sure in my life.”

“Then maybe it’s time to start rethinking your life, P.” You replied, hiding a smile. 

“Uh, no.” She shook her head slightly. “I’m a Gryffindor, always have been, always will be.” She brought her hand to her chest, the pride almost shining in her eyes. You resisted the urge to laugh. “Besides, Hufflepuff’s boring. Who’d ever wanna be one of ‘em?” That got the smile off your face.

“Who told you that?” You frowned at her, a hint of irritation in your voice. There was a lot of misconception about the houses, and it really annoyed you how so many fans would ‘worship’ Gryffindor and completely ignore the other three - that is, when they weren’t hating on Slytherin.

“Everyone knows that! Gryffindor’s brave, Slytherin’s mean, Ravenclaw’s nerd and Hufflepuff’s... nice. That’s why there ain’t none of ‘em in prison.”

You took a deep breath. ‘It’s not her fault, it’s not her fault, it’s not her fault-’

“Ok. Let’s review all that.” You said through gritted teeth, earning a cautious look from Poussey. “Gryffindor is brave, yes. Slytherin, though, they’re just ambitious, not mean. Ravenclaw is curious and authentic. Hufflepuff is loyal, kind and hard-working!” You summarized with a smile.

It really wasn’t her fault. All the books were, more or less, from Harry’s perspective, who was a proud Gryffindor, and offered little to no insight into what the other houses were all about. Poussey had only become a fan after getting into Litchfield, thus having somewhat limited fandom knowledge.

Well, time to change that!, you thought.

And so you did.

“Damn.” Poussey breathed, still processing all the new information. “My whole world is a lie.” She whispered. You raised an amused eyebrow. “My whole world is a lie.” She repeated, louder this time, her face turning into a panicked expression “Why’d you that? I had all this shit figured out and now I’m back to square one!”

“Sheesh, dude!” You chuckled and nudged her with your shoulder. “‘Ts why I’m here.”

“Thanks, man.” She grinned. “But I’m still no Hufflepuff!”

“Oh, come on!” You exclaimed exasperatedly and seriously considered banging your head against the wall. What in the world would convince this girl? “You’ve got every trait! Loyalty, kindness, modesty, dedication... I mean, you took a beating because you cared so much about your friends when Vee was here, remember?

“Yo, know who else take beatings for their friends and what they believe in? GRYFFINDORS!” She yelled, jumping to her feet in her usual adorable excitement, a smug smile on her lips. “You said it yourself!”

“I-” You tried to argue, but couldn’t come up with a good counter-argument. “Okay, you’ve got a point there-” Poussey’s cheeky grin and little happy dance interrupted your reluctant answer. “But,” you continued, rolling your eyes, “kindness and hard work are totally you.”

She stopped and turned to you with a confused expression.

“Uh, hard work? Where y’all seeing hard work?”

“Dude, that library only works ‘cause of you.” 

“What? Most of you don’t even go in there, there ain’t much to do...” She shrugged, hands thrown into her pockets.

“And there you’ve got the modesty!” You gave her a satisfied smirk and earned an annoyed scoff in return. “Plus, you make us booze. Friendship and dedication, huh?”

“Don’t bring my booze into this.” She sat back down beside you, her tone hilariously serious. “And that’d be considered Ravenclaw-ish behavior, by the way. Creativity and shit, right?”

“In a way, yeah.” You looked at her in mild astonishment. Poussey was getting good at this. And Ravenclaw did make sense in that context. “Geez, you’re quite the book-lover and ya always tryna invent new stuff... I’m getting some Raven-vibes off of that.”

“Sweet! Then I’m a Ravenclaw!” She grinned, leaning back on the wall with her hands behind her head, her legs crossed in a triangle (like men usually do) and eyes gladly closed.

“Not so fast.” You poked her, and she opened a single eye to look at you. “You still have Huff and Gryff traits...”

“Well, fuck it, man,” She shrugged, a nonchalant smile on her mouth, “I’m cool with being a proud Ravenclaw from now on.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yup.”

You watched as Poussey cheerfully closed her eye, taking a deep, relaxed breath. If she felt Ravenclaw suited her, then who were you to judge? Deciding she was most probably correct, you pushed your doubts and arguments to the corner of your mind and sat beside your friend for a few more dozens of seconds, the chatter of the other inmates understandable now that silence reigned Washington's bunk. Until you couldn’t stand it anymore.

“P, there’s something off about this.” You blurted out. 

To your surprise, instead of dismissing your worries, her eyes snapped open as she turned to you in desperation.

“I know, it’s freaking me out, too!” Poussey put her hands on your shoulders, shaking you slightly “I don’t know what I am! I don’t- Oh shit, what if I get to Hogwarts someday and the Sorting Hat can’t figure out where to put me? What if I’m sent back?!”

“No, no, no, they don’t just send wizards back! I’m sure they have some kind of policy or plan for that kind of situation-”

And that was when realization dawned on you.

“Wait.” You held her shoulders, trying to calm her down. “Who else do we know fitted more than one house?” You hinted.

“What? Who?” She raised her eyebrows at you.

“Harry! Harry did, remember?” 

Tension filled moments passed as the gears in her head worked.

“Oh! He was half Gryffindor half Slytherin, right?” Her face lit up.

“Yeah, and he got to choose!”

“True!” Once again, her small body got overridden with too much excitement and she jumped to her feet again, joy beaming in her smile. This time, you couldn’t stop your laughter. “Wait, so I can choose between the three?”

“That’s what I think, yeah.”

“Fuck yeah!” Poussey punched the air in celebration, giggling. Honestly, that girl was just too pure for this world.

Forty-five minutes later, you two still sat side by side, assigning houses to each and every Litchfield inmate. You had become quite good at it after some time, only now you were running out of names. 

“Wait, what about the COs?” Poussey asked.

You looked at her with an amused smile.

“What?” She frowned.

“They’re all Muggles, man!”

That’s all for tonight, folks! Any feedback and/or reblogs will be highly appreciated (honestly, though, just a small comment will make my day!).

Check out my other OITNB imagine about Tricia here.

Quick reminder that requests are open!

Take care :D

[1dreality]

Harry Styles appeared to have lost control over the top end of his vocal range Wednesday at the Greek Theatre, where this 23-year-old heartthrob from the boy band One Direction played the second date of his first tour as a solo act.

Had he gotten sick since launching the tour the night before in San Francisco? Perhaps he’d overdone it at the after-party.

Whatever the case, the slight impairment of Styles’ voice was no big deal: Screaming from the instant his pompadoured silhouette flickered across a pink curtain, the members of the singer’s very young audience provided all the high notes anyone could need.

And besides, music was hardly the thing that mattered in a concert that was all about glimpsing a dreamboat in real life.

Right?

To unpack what happened: The Times sent its resident 1D-ologists — pop music critic Mikael Wood and film writer Amy Kaufman — to the Greek on a joint assignment. Here are some of their many thoughts.

Mikael Wood: At 39, I was definitely one of the oldest people in the house, which meant I almost got a senior-citizen discount at the concession stand. But my advanced age also allowed for some valuable context, and that was having seen One Direction a bunch of times before Harry and the rest of the band split (at least temporarily) last year.

With that in mind, what struck me was how much more musical this show was. Teen-pop stars are routinely underestimated as musicians — and their fans as listeners — and 1D always had fun with those low expectations; its happily chaotic gigs were meant to provoke people who think five guys in a band should do more onstage than just wander around and crack jokes.

Here, though, Harry was really buckling down. He played guitar reasonably well and sang complicated vocal harmonies with his four-piece band (even if he sometimes had to take the low part). And, as on his self-titled debut, the sound was rich with serious dad-rock echoes: David Bowie in “Sign of the Times,” Stealers Wheel in “Carolina,” Thin Lizzy in a reimagined take on 1D’s “Stockholm Syndrome.”

This dude even did Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” during his encore.

I’m a dad, so obviously I didn’t mind hearing this stuff. But I kind of missed the madcap intensity of those old 1D shows, back when Harry and his mates seemed not at all concerned with demonstrating their taste or maturity.

What’d you think, Amy? Was the grown-up Harry we saw skilled but too sedate?

Amy Kaufman: First of all, I agree with you: I felt old. The friend I went to the show with was your age, and I’m 31. In an effort to fit in, I immediately purchased one of those $35 “Harry” baseball caps upon entering the venue. It is now one of my most treasured pieces of concert merchandise.

All the girls around us seemed to be between the ages of 15 and 20, and one young lady a few seats over spent the entirety of the concert in full-blown sobs. It was vaguely distracting, but it also reminded me of how intensely I felt for the boy band heroes of my youth, like Hanson and ’N Sync. Every little thing they said during a concert always felt like it was directed just to me.

On that note, I was surprised that Harry didn’t utter a word to the crowd until after the third song. Then, when he did, he really played up the flirty thing: “I am falling in love with you,” “You are the best friends any person could ask for,” “I’m pretty into you right now.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at some of his obvious ploys for shrieks, but the audience seemed to fall for it.

His voice sounded amazing to me. In my opinion, he and Zayn Malik were always the most skilled vocalists in 1D, and Harry really proved that Wednesday night. But I’ll admit that I found the vibe surprisingly low-energy.

Remember after he performed “Stockholm Syndrome” — just his fourth song — and told the crowd he wished he’d saved it for later because it left him “knackered”? Maybe this was more of his charm offensive, but I was shocked. All he did was jump slightly around the stage; I didn't even see him break a sweat, and there were certainly no legitimate dance routines.

You’re 23 years old, Harry. Should we be worried about your health?

Wood: I was worried for a second when he halted “Kiwi,” which is the hardest-rocking track on “Harry Styles” — kind of a wimpy version of Jet’s wimpy version of AC/DC. Were the crunching guitars and galloping tempo too much him? Nah, he was just stopping the song to inform the crowd he needed more enthusiasm to continue.

“I’m about to tell you I’m having your baby,” he said, a delightful transgression from a guy who not so long ago was a picture of squeaky-clean puppy love.

Speaking of those early days: As eager as Harry seems to present himself as a real rocker, I liked that he didn’t disavow the 1D stuff in order to do it. Lots of people in his position would mock their boy-band pasts, but Harry actually reached back to the band’s first single, “What Makes You Beautiful.”

Granted, he and the band had overhauled it so that it sounded like Neil Diamond. But that was a savvy move, and a gracious one; it made clear that Harry doesn’t take his audience for granted.

Kaufman: He definitely does not. If anything, I thought he was almost too effusive in his thanks to his fans. I mean, he told the crowd at least four times that he wouldn’t be onstage if it weren’t for them. It was sweet, but we get it, babe.

Honestly, the whole affair was pretty syrupy, from the “Treat People With Kindness” tees he was selling to the floral suit he was wearing. I’ve always enjoyed his style; he has a more polished Mick Jagger thing going on, and he certainly pulls off a pussy-bow blouse better than Melania Trump. His hair seems to have grown back nicely since he shaved it for “Dunkirk,” though I do miss his long tresses. As my friend put it while staring fondly at him on the big video screen: “Even, like, his skull is hot.”

But I digress. Because even his looks couldn’t distract from the fact that the poor kid has only 10 songs. It did make for a tidy show, though, and it was nice to wrap up the evening by 10:15.

Eww, I really am old.

Wood: About that limited repertoire: I saw Harry play a one-off show at the Troubadour right after his album came out, and I remember thinking that, for all his fluency in this new language, he really wasn’t giving us a clear idea of who Harry Styles is. OK, so he likes the Rolling Stones. And he loves his fans. But what makes him tick? What’s he afraid of? What makes him laugh? He’s such a fuzzier presence than the old-timers he idolizes, and that hadn’t changed at the Greek.

Did you feel like Harry was expressing anything beyond his interest in ancient records?

Kaufman: Ancient? Calm down, Mikael — it’s not like he’s referencing Buddy Holly or something. But point taken: I’m not sure of his “brand,” so to speak, either. Then again, when you think about other young solo male artists of his kind — Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Ed Sheeran, Charlie Puth — do you really think of a distinctive personality? I guess some of them have become known for especially revealing lyrics or bad boy behavior. Somehow, the most interesting thing we know about Harry’s personal life is that he dated Taylor Swift for a hot minute.

I’m not saying he needs to be making tabloid headlines to define his onstage persona, necessarily. I liked feeling that there was still something pure about him. I mean, the raciest thing he did all night was stick his tongue out at some chicks in the front row.

Wood: Maybe it’s that blankness that allows his fans to project their fantasies onto him.

Kaufman: I had the chance to eavesdrop on some conversations. As you might expect, most of them were totally enamored with Harry’s performance, caught in the gooey afterglow of seeing their dream boyfriend up close and personal.

“I think it’s going to dawn on me at school tomorrow, this whole night,” one teen told her friend. “Like, at soccer practice, Coach will ask what’s wrong with me, and you’ll just have to explain that I’m having a mental breakdown because of Harry.”

[theconservativebrief]

Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is so closely associated with Halloween that it can be easy to overlook the fact that it’s also the most influential music video ever made, for a host of reasons only partly related to its spooky subject matter.

For starters, it’s the most popular, critically acclaimed music video in history, one whose fame helped push the album it was a part of, 1982’s Thriller, to become the highest-selling album in music history, with some estimates claiming over 100 million copies sold worldwide. (For context, The Eagles’ hugely popular 1976 Greatest Hits album, which recently surpassed Thriller for album sales in the US, has only sold 51 million copies worldwide.)

It was legendarily scandalous, with a now-famous disclaimer that it “in no way endorses a belief in the occult” feeding into the era’s titillating frenzy over Satanic Panic. Its multi-layered storyline was destined to tease the squeamish: The narrative played with horror movie tropes, framing a vintage movie about a teenage were-person (Jackson) unexpectedly terrorizing his date (model Ola Ray), within a modern story about a teenage zombie also terrorizing his date — along with a grave-fresh dancing zombie uprising.

“Thriller” expanded the boundaries for music videos, single-handedly transforming what was then a new and oft-maligned genre that killed the radio star into a cultural phenomenon and an art form in its own right. Public demand to watch “Thriller” outside of its TV airings created a video-rental boom. And crucially, its popularity pushed FM radio stations and MTV to give equal time to black entertainers alongside white artists, on what had been until then tacitly segregated outlets.

And all of this was exactly according to plan. In his 1988 memoir Moonwalk, Jackson discussed how he had conceived of each of the three short films that were produced to accompany Thriller — the music videos for “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller” — to be genre-advancing, innovative, and inventive. “I wanted to be a pioneer in this relatively new medium and make the best short music movies we could make,” Jackson wrote. “On the set I explained that we were doing a film and that was how I approached it.”

To that end, Jackson recruited filmmaker John Landis, then famed for Blues Brothers and Animal House, to direct “Thriller.” Landis was fresh off of making American Werewolf in London, the film that established the “horror-comedy” as a galvanizing force within the horror genre. Jackson wanted to hire Landis because the concept of the “Thriller” music video also involved a were-transformation, and because Landis’s darkly comedic touch matched the comical pastiche of serious horror that Jackson was aiming for.

When the production budget ran over double the original proposal — “Thriller” ultimately cost $900,000, then an unprecedented cost for a music video — Jackson found an ingenious way to make up the difference: He hired a second film crew to document the production as it was happening, and convinced MTV and Showtime to pay to license The Making of Thriller, which ultimately premiered after the music video and (as Jackson reported in Moonwalk) sold a million copies all by itself. It was the first time a documentary film had ever been made about a music video, and it further legitimized the work Jackson was doing.

And then, of course, there was the impact of the video, released exclusively on MTV on December 2, 1983. Jackson reported in Moonwalk that the video and its title song, released as a single in February 1984, drove 14 million additional sales of Thriller in the first six months after their release.

Ultimately, the monumental success of the album Thriller — nominated for 12 Grammys and winning a record-breaking eight — made Jackson an unstoppable force who had to be taken seriously. “There were times during the Thriller project when I would get emotional or upset because I couldn’t get the people working with me to see what I was,” Jackson wrote in Moonwalk. But after “Thriller,” which would go on to become the first-ever music video added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, his creative genius spoke for itself.

[embedded content]

There’s a lot to unpack in the video’s 14-minute runtime. Its iconic choreography, horror narrative, dazzling costumes, and effects have all been the focus of decades of pop culture writing. But here are some facts you may have missed amid all the hype, analysis, and dance-offs.

While Epic Records was certainly thrilled (sorry) with the landmark success of Thriller after the hit singles “Billie Jean” and “Beat It” were released, the label viewed the album’s title track as something of a novelty and had no plans to release it as a single.

It wasn’t until the album started to fall on the charts in 1983, months after its November 1982 release, that promoter Frank DiLeo assuaged Jackson’s angst over declining sales by encouraging him to make a third video to join the other two. “Thriller” was considered an easy lift due to the content. “All you’ve got to do is dance, sing, and make it scary,” DiLeo recalled saying to Jackson in a 2010 Vanity Fair profile of Jackson and the film.

A screenshot from the “Thriller” video. Epic Records

At the time he was making Thriller, Jackson was a devout Jehovah’s Witness who would carry books about his and other religions around with him on set. After production wrapped on “Thriller,” as explained by Jackson’s longtime lawyer John Branca to Vanity Fair, Jackson started to panic because members of his church had told him the song promoted demonology.

Afraid the church was going to excommunicate him, Jackson begged Landis to have the film destroyed. Instead, Branca convinced him to include a disclaimer at the beginning of the film to distance it from his own personal beliefs. “Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the occult,” the title card read.

Ultimately, the disclaimer just added to the hype around the video and became an accidental stroke of marketing genius, even though it was only created to assuage Jackson himself.

Epic Records

Jackson undergoes two memorable transformations in the film: first as a were-creature and later a zombie. In the first scene, he transforms into what most people typically assume is a werewolf. This makes sense, given that he’s shown reacting to the full moon right before he changes.

In fact, Jackson’s transformation isn’t into a werewolf, but into a were-cat. The look was created by Rick Baker, fresh from winning the first Oscar given out for Best Makeup for his work on Landis’s American Werewolf.

“We made him into more of a werecat because I just didn’t want to do another werewolf,” Baker told Vulture in 2010. “At first I was thinking [it would be] almost like a black panther thing, but … I ended up putting a longer mane of hair on it and bigger ears.”

In a Guardian interview about the making of the film last year, Landis noted that he’d insisted Jackson’s transformation not be too unattractive. But Baker was amused at how into the idea of turning into the monster M.J. was. “I thought, he’s like a rock star — I don’t think he’s going to want to wear this makeup, but it turned out that’s what he wanted to do more than anything,” Baker said.

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Vincent Price’s famous “rap” had a rarely heard middle verse that was cut from the final performance in both the album and the video. Its lyrics — “Thriller” songwriter Rod Temperton allegedly wrote the lines the day of Price’s studio visit as a kind of Edgar Allan Poe pastiche — are arguably even more diabolically gleeful than the first half, and include the immortal lines, “The demons squeal in sheer delight / It’s you they spy, so plump, so right.”

Alas, Price’s meaty delivery of “Can you dig it?” also never made it into the final cut.

According to multiple accounts, Jackson would bring his pet snake, Muscles, to the set while filming “Thriller.” In a 2016 interview, Quincy Jones, who produced the album, said that Jackson’s menagerie — which also included chimpanzees — was ubiquitous in the studio. “One day I said, ‘Where’s Muscles?’ and we went downstairs and Muscles was in the parrot cage. He had just eaten the parrot and his head got stuck in the bars of the cage.”

Epic Records

When Jackson and his girlfriend in the film, Ola Ray, exit the theater after the movie-within-a-movie, they’re shown standing in front of a movie poster for a film called Schlock. This is a real movie directed by Landis, who cast his friend, the well-known makeup effects artist John Chambers, in his only credited acting role.

Chambers was a special-effects titan, most famous for crafting the apes in Planet of the Apes. He was also long rumored to have been responsible for a legendary hoax: the Bigfoot captured on camera in a blurry 1967 film known as the Patterson-Gimlin footage. Chambers reportedly always denied the rumor, but it’s worth noting that his protege, Baker, would go on to create a very similar creature when he created the giant puppet Bigfoot in Harry and the Hendersons.

Okay, we’re cheating. There’s no cool fact here; we just wanted to point out these hilariously intense members of Michael’s zombie squad. Maybe they’re un-born with it.

The modern era has given us some “Thriller” side effects that we never could have foreseen, such as:

The origin of popcorn.gif

Vox named the moment when Michael delightedly watches himself onscreen as the #1 reaction GIF of all time, suitable for reacting to basically everything.

Then there’s the sheer memetic quality of Jackson’s iconic “Thriller” dance itself, which has been endlessly mimicked, duplicated, and recreated in nostalgic pop culture moments. Among our favorite moments:

Taika Waititi’s Boy

Before he became a geek favorite for his adorable on-set antics as director of Thor: Ragnarok, Taika Waititi was a cult fave thanks to a charming cadre of films set in his home country of New Zealand. Among them was Boy (2010), a poignant coming-of-age dramedy about a kid whose obsession with Michael Jackson offers him an escape from dealing with his shiftless father. The movie is great, but the end credits, in which the cast performs a famous Maori anthem to “Thriller” moves, are the best.

[embedded content]

“Thriller” flash mobs

Ever since flash mobs started to become a whole thing, crowds around the world have broken out into the video’s iconic creepy-crawly dance. By far the most famous is this viral 2007 Philippine prison dance, featuring hundreds of convicts rocking their orange jumpsuits in style.

[embedded content]

Arguably worthy of equal and probably more fame is this truly epic 2009 gathering in Mexico City of 12,937 “Thriller” fans — and that’s just the official tally — to perform the dance routine en masse:

[embedded content]

The Indian “Thriller”

Kondaveeti Donga is a 1985 film that gained a second life on the internet around 2007, after its (in)famous “Thriller” parody scene went viral due to a video meme in which it gets a dose of misheard English lyrics. In it, legendary Indian actor Chiranjeevi does a tongue-in-cheek reenactment of the “Thriller” zombie sequence.

[embedded content]

The “Thriller” scene from 13 Going on 30

Okay, yes, it’s cheesy and emotionally manipulative, but you can’t help cheering for Jennifer Garner — a 13-year-old hailing from 1984 who’s trapped in a 30-year-old’s body — as she wins over a tough crowd by summoning their collective “Thriller” knowledge, which seems to have been magically encoded in each of their dance-loving genes. All of these people have the soul for getting down, and that’s the magic of rom-coms.

[embedded content]

One thing that’s striking about all of these modern moments is how fully global they are. Together, they paint a picture of the album Thriller’s universality. Writing for Vanity Fair in 2010, Nancy Griffin opined, “To me, Thriller seems like the last time that everyone on the planet got excited at the same time by the same thing: no matter where you went in the world, they were playing those songs, and you could dance to them. Since then, the fragmentation of pop culture has destroyed our sense of collective exhilaration, and I miss that.”

But if anything, the extended life that Thriller, and “Thriller,” have had all over the world suggests that we’re still capable of being brought together and feeling that collective sense of exhilaration. And while it’s true that our interest in “Thriller” peaks annually on Halloween, it’s really just an excuse to celebrate a love that flows year-round. After all, for fans of the King of Pop, every night is a Thriller night.

Original Source -> Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” is the eternal Halloween bop — and so much more

via The Conservative Brief

[roguenewsdao]

War Wizards on a Leash

While Americans were winding down a short work week and battening down the hatches for the annual national gluttony of Thanksgiving Day, The Boss in Russia was busy overseeing a well-engineered smackdown of the western Wizards of War by pulling off what has amounted to a declaration of cessation of hostilities in Syria.

The triumvirate representation of Russia, Iran, and Turkey made its presence known in Sochi earlier this week and effectively collared the necks of the bloodthirsty dogs who have been beaten back one chessboard square at a time and now see their butts hanging over an abyss of self-destruction.

Here is the video of the statements made by Putin, Rouhani, and Erdogan. A transcript is available at the Kremlin's official website [linked here]. Here are a few comments that stood out to me.

Putin: Experts of our countries conducted serious preparations for discussing substantive issues at the current talks, so I am confident that the discussion will be detailed and productive, and the agreements reached will help further restore peace and security in Syria and consolidate its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and in general facilitate stabilisation in the Middle East.

Rouhani: Unfortunately, some countries active in our region are following the examples of the United States and the Zionist regime to sow discord and hatred between the peoples of the region and to shift the responsibility for the outcomes of their hostile policy that seeks to tear the region apart.

The struggle against strife and unrest is one of the manifestations of the practical policy of Iran, which is taking an active part in the Astana format. Our strategy lies in joint actions and competition, coordination and oversight, cooperation with nations, and friendship rather than hostility.

Respect for the national sovereignty of Syria is an inalienable part of this struggle. There is no excuse for the presence of foreign troops on the territory of Syria without the permission of its legitimate Government.

Turkey's President Erdogan made a few remarks to conclude the press event. I'll say that his demeanor was a bit less "glowing" than Rouhani's. He made an interesting reference to the recent deadly earthquake that hit the border of Iraq and Iran. He also expressed his thanks to the republic of Kazakhstan and the city of Astana for the hospitality offered during the Syria peace talks. Astana is a name you should become familiar with as it will come up in future blogs - and has already come up in past ones - with reference to the Russian space program, the development of free energy, and the hunt for dark matter with all its esoteric connection to Artificial Intelligence. Just file that way for now.

Erdogan's comments included this: 

Today’s trilateral council is of great importance for finally stopping the bloodshed and putting an end to the tragedy that has lasted for many years. The whole world has seen the progress Turkey, Russia and Iran have made in their efforts on the Syrian issue.

I would also like to express my gratitude to President Nazarbayev for the event for which he provided the venue in Kazakhstan. Our meetings in Astana were of benefit to the whole region, praise Allah.

As many of you know, the Rogue Money team has been gritting its teeth, so to speak, in anticipation of calamitous events in the Middle East as the month of November approached. We saw the #SaudiPurge unfold, right on the dot, just as "W" predicted, and then we buckled up for the next temporal window of Nov. 22-23. Vladimir Putin was also watching the calendar. This meeting in Sochi threw a massive monkey wrench into the neocon machinery.

Are we out of the woods yet? Not by a long shot, as W. explains in his words here in the next section.

Perspective from "W" The Intelligence Insider

Below are comments from W. posted with his permission.

No one should underestimate President Putin’s level of insight(s) when it comes to anticipating the political AND HIDDEN OCCULTIC mechanisms and games being foisted against Russia and himself personally. Six times the western powers attempted to use false flags in order to justify broader NATO involvement in Syria; each time Putin waited for his opponents to commit and then used their energy against them in well executed Jujitsu counter moves. His tactical responses may appear to be merely good reflexes but they are actually a sign of years of training in ANTICIPATING your opponent's next move and practicing/preparing rapid and precise responses. Putin is an 8th degree black belt in Judo, and that is an earned degree not an honorific title for PR purposes. He is exercising those same types of skills in the world political arena.

President Putin has been immersed in the world of behind-the-scenes politics since his youth.  He is keenly aware that there is a dance done for the public consumption and another that is done by the real power brokers behind the scenes.  He has become very adept at recognizing patterns and preparing responses to neutralize the western sorcerer's next moves.  Besides speaking and understanding several languages fluently (including English) he also understands and communicates in occult numerological and sign languages to his western opponents - as does President Trump as he demonstrated with his Fiji water bottle antics last week.  Both men and their handlers are very proficient at communicating using esoteric languages and numbers.

(For a discussion of the symbolism of Trumps "Fiji water bottle" moment, see this video.)

All that said; it is interesting that as a broad push was occurring across NATO and the mid-east over the last several weeks, in a very public way preparing for some type of war or conflict with Hezbollah, Putin very deftly crafted an alternative outcome. Look at the timing of the purported missile launch against Riyadh and the resignation of Hariri. Look at the media reports of multiple Mideast countries moving to a war footing and related preparations in Israel, Lebanon, Syria, etc.  Even Hezbollah was very graphic in announcing that they anticipated a false flag to be done in their honor shortly and they went to extremes to stand down and control ALL of their members.  

Once the final move was committed to in the October 28 to November 6 window, and western alliance began its move/march to war with Hezbollah, the Judo expert Putin began his well choreographed response culminating in private meetings and in-person consultations with various involved parties on the most critical date of all - November 22.

President Putin had correctly observed and anticipated the western clockwork turning in preparation to begin a regional war starting in Lebanon on November 23 as a result of false flags to be blamed on Hezbollah and, by extension, its puppet master Iran, on November 22, 2017. His diplomatic efforts in bringing the critical players together and negotiating agreements overlapping exactly those critical dates may well have bought the world a little more time. I don’t say the danger is passed, only possibly that it is moved down the road a bit. However, we are still on a hair trigger.

His wizardly opponents were a little too coy and possibly over played their hand.  They were also a bit too overt and over confident in telegraphing their next moves; several times.  I expect that will now change; and Putin will anticipate this also.  

The risk for us all is that the ‘western powers’ and the puppeteers behind them are too vested in very specific outcomes in their plan to fundamentally reshape the Mideast borders/empires for them to back down or out now. They have an "all or nothing perspective" at this point. For the West and for their globalista puppeteers, failure is not an option; they’ll ‘be back’!  Most likely sooner than later, in part because they need to exert some leverage using real muscle in order to get a better deal and they have very little leverage at this exact moment.  

It would be very sophomoric to believe that the western puppeteers and wizards are defeated; there are always options.  There is ALMOST ALWAYS a plan ‘B’ or ‘C’ or ‘D’ (with the exception of WW III which must END, NOT START, with a nuclear exchange, on a precise year, month, date, hour). Don’t kid yourselves; the hidden diabolical machinery of the New World Order Globalistas is not prone to single point failure. There are backups to the backups. They aren’t perfect, but they aren’t pushovers either. They’ve just been a bit overconfident lately. That will now change, I’m sure.

An interesting little note I’d like to add here. There is a protected religious sect in modern day Russia that believes that President Putin is the Anti-Anti-Christ and that he is destined to ‘save the world’ from the Biblically prophesied End Times Anti-Christ!!! Now I am not a Putin advocate and I don’t know that I’m going to join in the chorus to convey sainthood to him anytime soon. However, I actually do think Putin does see his role as something akin to this.  I could probably write a book on his physiological profile in this context, as well as how he has been playing these cards to his own population, but I can’t do that now.  

Suffice to say that there are dynamics/energies in play behind the scenes that dwarf by several orders of magnitude ANYTHING we are currently privy to in the mainstream media.  Putin has successfully cast the leaders of the western powers as robber barons, sex fiends, occultists and wizards (in the spirit of Harry Potter) and, worst of all, as Pizzagate style pedophile rapists and murders.  His constituents are growing exponentially and, therefore, his power - and confidence - as he opposes the western based New World Order Globalistas.  

We will still have some type of ‘Dust-up’ engagement shortly, you can bank on it and unfortunately that will absolutely be followed by WW III (four actually by my way of counting because Reagan won III) unless Putin or Trump can come up with a super shifty ‘Jacki Chan’ move, and quick.

North Sinai Mosque Attack

No sooner had W. sent the above perspective to the RM team, but we wake up on Black Friday to hear news of one of the worst acts of terrorism committed by ISIS yet. This one is against a mosque in North Sinai. Egypt has already responded swiftly and we are sure to hear of a reprisal action any hour now. That is where I will conclude this blog as we await the next act in this war of wizards.

My contact information with link to my Karatbars portal are found at my billboard page of SlayTheBankster.com. Listen to my radio show, Bee In Eden, on Youtube via my show blog at SedonaDeb.wordpress.com.