#yikes is writing some original fuckin content for once

[yikesharringrove]

Devil Horns

Part 2/Billy version of Please Tell Me So

Read on Ao3

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Billy was six when he realized his mother was different from the other kids’ mothers in his class.

Billy loved her more than anything else in the entire world.

She was young, no lines adorned her face. She wore long dresses and didn’t brush her hair. She was beautiful, and kind, and sang to him. She bought him comic books and read literature like Little Women to him. She would take him to the beach and braid his long hair, grown out to mimic hers.

She was young when she became pregnant. She dropped out of college at fifteen, a sophomore kicked out of her parent’s house. She found the only people that would take her in, friends from concerts and peace rallies that lived in tents and trailers on a large property together. She delivered him in a trailer, an older woman, the matriarch of the community, acting as midwife for all the young mothers. She screamed and held the hands of other women and brought a tiny pink son into the world.

She always cared for her baby, but a child herself, she made mistakes. She welcomed Neil back into her life, keeping correspondence through letters his entire deployment. She married him at the courthouse, Billy swinging on her arm, one little hand fisted in her white gauzy dress.

She made sure Billy knew he was loved for exactly who he is every single day.

But where she was kind, sunshine and flowers, Neil was mean, gravel and boulders.

Billy was six the first time his father hit him.

It was a quick backhand for talking back one night after dinner.

His entire life changed in one instant. The innocence of childhood melted right off him.

Neil Hargrove was an angry man. He liked things a certain way. A military man, he served his time in ‘Nam. He wanted the precision and order of boot camp in his everyday life. He married Billy’s mother when he returned for war, returning to a six-year-old Billy raised entirely by a community.

He was tight-laced, didn’t like the free spirit Billy’s mother passed onto their son. He didn’t like that the boy was soft. He cried easily over small, stupid things. His blue eyes would fill with tears at the idea of eating meat, traumatized at the concept of eating animals .

Neil didn’t like hippies. He saw them as the scum of the earth, people who did drugs and had sex and lived disgusting, dirty lifestyles. He was livid when he returned to California to find his only son growing up in a hippie community, being raised by many. Being raised to be soft, kind, to love anyone, everyone .

He never forgave the boy for being emotional. He was a crier, his heart broke easily and quickly. He felt the pain of others as his own. His father was pain incarnate. All he did was hurt .

He called Billy’s mother a whore, a dirty hippie, a beatnik . He called Billy a lardass, a pussy, a queer .

So Billy got angry. Internalizing his pain in any way he knows how.

He was seven when he first got in a fight. Just a little tiff between kids. He spat ugly names fairy, pussy, queer and threw his hands, trying to make any contact he could. His mother told him it’s not right to hurt others. His father called him a piece of shit and pushed him into the wall.

He was eight when he discovered metal in the record shop down the street. He loved the anger, the fire, the passion, the fun . He loved the men with tight pants and long hair. He learned that his mother, with her soft rock and psychedelic tastes would still dance around the kitchen to Black Sabbath and AC/DC. His mother smiled at him when he showed her the poster he bought of Jim Morrison, knowing she loved The Doors. He told her he thought he was pretty. His father called him a piece of shit and slammed him into the wall.

He was nine when he first heard another kid call his mother a name. Said hippie like his father did, as though it was a swear. He tossed a milkshake in the boy’s face, only to cry as his mother, a waitress at the diner, was forced to mop up the spill. She stroked his hair and told him it was okay and gave him an extra plate of fries. His father called him a piece of shit and slammed him into the wall.

He was ten when his mother left. She was gone by the time he woke up the next morning, her dresses and hats, her books and perfume, gone , only an empty space left in Billy’s heart. She called him a few weeks later, explaining to him that she loved him, but his father was causing her too much pain. His father cornered him in his room and slurred that his mother left because she’s a whore and that she never loved Billy.

He was eleven the first time he met Susan. She made dinner for himself and his father. He was told to be on his best behavior and set the table and clean the dishes. He complimented her hair and her cooking and met Max less than two months later.

He was twelve the first time he kissed a boy. He and Thomas met up under the boardwalk. Billy ended the short, sweet kiss by pushing him to the sand, threw the same slurs his father threw so easily, and screamed if you ever tell anyone, I’ll fuckin’ kill you . Thomas never spoke to him again, and Billy lost the closest friendship he had ever had.

He was thirteen when he finally lost his baby weight. He was lean, growing quickly and bulking up due to the sheer amounts of sports he was playing, at his father’s will. He grew strong, and his mean streak only widened, now backed up by a punch that could break. Girls started noticing him, women started noticing him, but he never noticed them. So he began to learn.

He was fourteen when he started going to parties. He learned to lean over girls, to wink at them, bare his teeth and stare at their breasts. He learned they liked it when he was mean, when they thought he was a bad boy in need of fixing . They would give him gossip, a warm body, and hold him when he wanted it. He learned to close his eyes and press their heads down until they choked on him. He learned that parties usually had drunk boys that would stare at him from across the room. He learned that a smirk and a long bout of eye contact was enough to let them know to follow.

He was fifteen when he spent all his savings on the Camaro, a junker he began fixing up entirely by himself. The car was loud, and made him feel free . He drove two cities over, finding a bar that catered to his type and got in with an unbuttoned shirt, tight jeans, and a well-timed wink at the bouncer. He learned he liked pretty boys, soft ones he could bury himself in. He learned he liked it when they moaned, high and breathy. He learned to pull hair and coo God, you’re gorgeous .

He was fifteen when he began lying every weekend. Citing parties and non-existent concerts as covers while he followed nameless men to motel rooms from the crowded gay bar he had chosen that night. He learned to spray dainty perfume on his jacket before he re-entered his house. He learned to toss around names like Amber and Courntey and Becky .

He was fifteen when he came home past curfew, with a hickey on his neck, on his chest. His father slapped him across the face and locked him in his room, took his keys with a reminder that he shouldn’t be driving yet . He learned that piercing your own ear doesn’t hurt that bad. He learned that he liked the way a gold hoop looked in his lobe.

He was sixteen when his father caught him with a boy, Seth from down the street. They were in Billy’s bed, kissing hungrily. Billy learned what it feels like to tumble down the stairs. He learned what it’s like to be hated. He learned how long the drive is from San Diego to Hawkins.

He was sixteen the first time he saw Steve Harrington. A beautiful boy with fear and sadness in his eyes. Tommy loved to spin tales of King Steve, the Great and Terrible , but Billy couldn’t match up the bullying douchebag with the sweet boy who looked at Nancy Wheeler like she hung the stars in the sky, just for him. He learned that Steve blushed when he called him Princess and Pretty Boy .

He was sixteen when he was angriest at Max, blaming her for the move, knowing it was his own preferences that brought them here. Knowing it was a father that hated him enough to move him to a place he could be killed for being himself. He learned to pick on her friends. He learned to break her things. He learned messing with her made him feel like shit.

He was sixteen when he met Steve at the quarry for the first time. They tangled themselves together in the back of Steve’s car, the air smelling like sweat and cigarettes and cum . He learned that Steve had a big house, that his parents were almost never home. He learned that Steve had nightmares and was afraid of his own swimming pool. He learned that Steve liked it when he was gentle and slow, treating the porcelain skin like it was made of porcelain glass, pressing kisses and pet names into his body. He learned that Steve fell in love quickly. He learned that he fell in love quickly too.

He was sixteen when he told Steve about his father. He came to Steve when he was hurt, angry and ready to break, to break something . He whispered about how his father hated him, hated people like him, like them. How it felt to fall downstairs. How it felt to have a split lip in the same pattern as his father’s class ring. He learned that Steve didn’t mind if he cried. He learned that Steve cried with him. He learned that trusting Steve made him feel lighter the next day. He learned what apologizing to Max is like.

He was sixteen when he planned for his summer in Hawkins, getting a job he was overqualified for. He drove to the mall as often as he could, eating far too much ice cream for someone who was about to spend all summer shirtless. He learned what Steve’s ass looked like in blue sailor shorts. He learned that Steve could be convinced to leave it on, Pretty Boy . He learned that he wanted to save up money for college, for California, for his future, for his future with Steve.

He was sixteen when Steve cooked him an elaborate dinner, early into summer, staying awake in the sticky night to count down to Billy’s seventeenth birthday. Billy learned that Steve preened when Billy told him he loved him.

He was seventeen when he began taking the lifeguard stand at the public pool. Overtired moms and bored housewives flocked to the sun loungers, watching him sit and blow his whistle. He learned that if he called them by their names they would buy him cold drinks. He learned if he smirked at them just so they would tip him for swim lessons.

He was seventeen when he got in a fight with Steve, disappearing in the Camaro to cool down and think things out. His car got hit, the right side smashing inwards, the windscreen splintering. He learned that monsters are real, that the stuff of nightmares lives in Hawkins, Indiana. He learned what possession is like.

He was seventeen when his veins went black. When he felt nothing but the urge to build it, build it . He hurt the people around him, offering Heather and her family to the creature, knocking out Max and the Wheeler boy, and taking El to impending death. He learned what being afraid was like, he learned that he had been afraid his entire life. He learned that some monsters are made from stolen flesh, some monsters are made from the flesh that created his own.

He was seventeen when he died. Rather him than any of these children . He was only a child himself, but a child that had seen too much, been hurt too much. He learned that death in that way is painful. He learned that resurrection is only more so.

He was eighteen when he left the hospital, the one run by the government. He left with scars, a limp, and a large sum of cash for compensation . He learned that Steve still loved him. He learned that Steve didn’t mind his scars, his pain, would hold him through the worst nightmares. He learned that Steve would take him to therapy, one at the government hospital, and one in a local church for Survivors of Abuse .

He learned that his father was killed by the monster, the monster that was Billy. He learned he didn’t know how to feel about that. Steve had just pet his hair, said fuck him , and you don’t have to mourn that asshole .

He was eighteen when he took his college fund, his compensation money, his savings, and Steve’s paychecks and put them in a box in the back of the Camaro. He learned that Steve had a hard time reading maps and that the drive was more fun when all that was waiting was love and warmth.

He was nineteen when he earned his G.E.D., citing severe injury as the cause to his delayed education. He applied to college. He got into college. He began going to college. He learned he loved meeting new people, being able to tell them about his boyfriend, Steve . He learned the California sun was more healing than any amount of physical therapy. He learned he was not ashamed of his scars.

He was twenty when he held Steve to his chest and rubbed his back and told him he was so sorry you had to go through that, Pretty Boy, when he finally let Billy in on the secrets that haunted his big brown eyes. He learned that he had saved Steve’s life as much as Steve had saved his.

Billy Hargrove was twenty when he learned what happiness was.

[motheatenscarf]

So, I recently recommended Castlevania to people based on the first 2 seasons, and having now seen the 3rd season I’m still keeping that recommendation but with some pretty strong warnings going in.

The TL;DR version is, I still recommend this series with the caveat that your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for sexual themes and more specifically your sensitivity toward sexual assault. 

So uh, spoiler in the spoiler disclaimer, but content warning for discussion of the above themes. I apologize to mobile readers; this got long. I only feel the need to say all this because I have in the past recommended this show to people before these elements came into play in the first 2 seasons. So, I kind of owe it to those people who may have taken my recommendation to follow through now.

I’m sure it won’t come as a shock to anyone (or at least I hope it won’t) that Castlevania, the show which introduces its wandering drunk protagonist by having him overhear two inbred shit eating peasants in a bar talking about literal goat fucking, has a pretty cynical view on humanity and is a pretty hard R.

Most of that R rating and cynicism has been in regard to gore and Christianity and I’ve been extremely on board and pettily here for it. For all that it’s a gory mess with plenty of colorful language, however, it’s been extremely restrained when it comes to sexuality. 

For my ace ass, that was kind of an appeal. I’m not opposed to sexuality in my media, but people do tend to make it... egregious and often unbalanced. It often feels that any media that gets that R rating just goes “Fuck it, may as well!” regarding shoehorning its nudity and sexuality. And frankly, censorship laws in the United States are FUCKING ANTIQUATED AS ALL HELL, so a rape scene where the camera ogles the woman’s breasts as she’s assaulted? Yeah, sure, that’s an R. Consensual sex scene that shows no genitalia but the woman in clear arousal? That’s an NC-17 for you. And that’s just women; don’t get me started on queer censorship, we’d be here all day. So, given the country I live in, the fact that I like horror and fantasy, and the fact that I’m an asexual woman, you can maybe see where my stance on sexual themes in any adult oriented media is just, an exasperated sigh as I boredly sit through another rape scene.

So, our first scene in Castlevania S3 is of Alucard, having been alone for the last month now, slowly losing his mind to crippling loneliness and overwhelming guilt after having murdered his father where Trevor and Sypha took him at his word when he said he would be the lone guardian standing vigil over Dracula’s castle and the Belmont library. Turns out he was wrong about being fine, which we knew from last season as it ended with him alone in his room sobbing his heart out, but he’s already losing his grip here as he makes little puppets of Sypha and Trevor to carry conversation with. An eccentricity he fully acknowledges is insane.

Our next scene confirms through dialogue that Trevor and Sypha are now in a sexual relationship, even though they’re only ever shown cuddling up in bed talking about The Plot and various happenings a few episodes later. Nothing explicit is ever depicted between them.

Alucard, on the other hand, picks up a couple of strays who were the thralls of one of the vampires killed last season, specifically the evidently Japanese one named “Cho” and our two new characters............ I had to google their names, Sumi and Taka, are also Japanese. They ask him to train them to kill vampires to protect their clan. Alucard, clearly remembering what he said about “Think of all the things Dracula could have done if he’d put all this knowledge toward helping people instead of giving into his rage and destroying them,” decides to agree and help them. He is clearly trying to be the person his mother would have wanted. Aww. 

Except not aww, Taka and Sumi are two clearly traumatized and deeply flawed people from the masses which this series is, again, extremely cynical toward. They are unsubtley fixated on learning more and more powerful ways to kill vampires and Alucard is pretty chill about it because he can’t see through the 4th wall and hear the ominous music or the glances they exchange when he’s not looking. This is purely for the audience. They at one point have a discussion away from him where they try to psychoanalyze him and decide that his isolation is a self imposed punishment for killing Dracula and that this is as close as he can get to killing himself without actually doing it. THIS IS FOR THE AUDIENCE. Then they mentioned they should give him a reward for what he’s done for them.

What happens next is difficult to break down from their standpoint, as they’re not particularly well developed characters, not being Important Characters but just a duo from the masses which the show dismisses, but if you’ve caught a single frame of Alucard this season, is easy enough to explain from his perspective. They come to him at night when he can’t sleep, tell him he deserves a reward, and proceed to make sexual advances toward him, which he seems somewhat embarrassed and confused by at first before quickly becoming a participant in. Again, it is well established by this point that he desperately misses Trevor and Sypha, whom he was already jealous of the connection between last season, and is profoundly lonely. The sex, which he consents to, is clearly a proxy as it’s all he can get for now. The sex is also, unfortunately, initiated under false pretenses, and ends abruptly when the whole thing turns into a Christ allegory and they pin Alucard in the crucifix position after having betrayed him with a kiss (and then some) and demand he show them the secrets they’re certain he’s hiding from them. Alucard tries to reason with them, still insisting he knows they’re scared but that he’s been nothing but honest with them, but they’re too traumatized and broken to believe him, and so he kills them in self defense, all still right there on the bed where they were having sex. He then, reminiscent of Dracula from the series opening, stakes their bodies before the entrance to the castle as a warning to those who would come to harm him, telling the audience that he is Lisa’s son in many ways, but he is also Dracula’s, and is realizing with time and experience now that his father’s sentiment toward humanity may not have been so misplaced.

So you know. Lot to unpack there...

BUT THAT AIN’T IT, FOLKS!

There’s another, far less interesting (unbiased review here, folks) character named Hector. He’s a forgemaster which means he makes monsters which are loyal only to him. He’s no Isaac (whom I’d mentioned his backstory/characterization just kinda left a general bad taste in my mouth before but OH BABY, AM I CHANGING TUNE ON THAT ONE. Could write a whole review on Isaac but I’m gonna stay focused here) but he’s apparently here to stay, so fine. 

There was an evil femme fatale vampire last season who kinda bored me who tricked Hector into betraying Dracula and then took him captive when she got what she wanted out of him. She did not trick him with sex at least but was still “evil manipulative femme fatale” which... *yawn* In S3 she drags him back to her home country and then proceeds to talk to her own sort of war council on how to get him to make a monster army for them to use that won’t just kill them all.

The lesbian vampire war council are fuckin interesting and I love 2 of them. The other one is an actually evil seductress femme fatale who DOES manipulate him with sex. Yay. How original. Well at least there are finally enough interesting, compelling women in the story that this isn’t our token evil female vampire so it’s easy for me to shrug off and forgive. All you need to know about Hector is he played with dead animals as a kid, it freaked his parents out when he kept reviving dead things, he killed them, now he’s a dead critter loving sensitive weirdo who was willing to participate in a “humane cull” that would leave the human race in essentially livestock pens for vampires. 

So the entire time the red headed femme fatale is trying to get him to see that she’s not so bad, vampires can be civil, we don’t want what Dracula wanted, my sister didn’t trick you she appealed to your reason, blahblahblah, she’s calling him a “good boy” and leading him on, i fucking quote, “walkies” with a leash. There’s also a comment that she tended to an injured spider once. So,, y’know, she’s him, which means she’s best suited to manipulating him. And Hector even admits to being aware of what she’s doing and calls her out on it, but he’s trapped and doesn’t have much of a choice other than to go along with what she does and weirdly seems almost content at times. His weird naturalist... weirdness probably gives him some inferiority complex when it comes to vampires, I don’t know, his backstory and motive are not connected in the least and I’m frankly not interested enough in this character to give him much contemplation since it’s pretty clear there wasn’t much going into his creation. Anyway. Long story short, she eventually, with only technically lying to him about the purpose of a particular ring she wears, lures him into having sex with her and in the heat of passion has him swear loyalty to her before slipping a cursed ring on him which binds him exactly as he’d just sworn, essentially making him a slave. The sex, again, also stops here, but she makes some extremely unsettling comments later on about how he was surprisingly good at sex and she might “train him.” Which.... where to begin other than yikes, and why, and, where in the hell was a guy who played with dead animals supposed to learn to eat a bitch out like that anyway??

This is where we also, tying the themes together, learn that one of the allies Trevor and Sypha have been teaming up with was a child killer the whole time. They only learn this after he dies helping them fight the evil that had come to his town (and after the most iconic line of the season; “What the fuck is toilet paper?”) which they accomplish, but not before failing to save anyone in the village, which was consumed in an evil ritual. They’re alone again, with a distraught Sypha realizing what Trevor had tried to forget by getting caught up in her optimism, that, say it with me now;

So there is your mostly unbiased spoilery context for the scenes in question. You can make up your own mind from there if that’s something you can handle, I’m gonna go on to add a few of my own thoughts which do not represent how I believe anyone else should interpret the show, this is purely my own train of thought here.

Sex consented to under false pretenses is still rape. I don’t know that I would personally classify these as “rape scenes,” but that’s just me. The reaction of the characters afterward makes me think Hector’s comes closer than Alucard’s, but the fact that both have appropriate reactions to being sexually betrayed makes me think that’s mostly what people are talking about when they say either one was raped. Hector later falls to his knees in a panic and hopelessness as he realizes “You made me a slave, my life is over,” and Alucard just lays there on the floor where he murdered his father as he weeps silently in contemplation of his own despair. That’s... some heavy shit, and I can, again, easily see where someone with a history of abuse or assault can be completely traumatized all over again watching this. As for the leeriness/attempting to be titilating/making rape “sexy” that a lot of adult fantasy/horror does... eh? I’m asexual, none of it’s sexy to me, and I was paying attention to the visual and audio cues the entire time that were making the audience aware with their ominous music, flashing between sex and battles against evil, and watching the instigators (Taka and Sumi, and Lenore the femme fatale vampire) as the camera focused on their scheming faces. The camera in Alucard’s scene especially just seemed to want to show us how sad and lonely he is, but that was pretty well established by that point and I know a sex scene devolving into a murder scene is jarring for people.

The themes of the season were manipulation, trust, and betrayal. Hector’s story reaches a pivotal turning point the moment the ring is slipped on him. Could it have been implemented differently than through the femme fatale seduction route? Absolutely, the show hadn’t really adopted sexual themes until this season and probably could have done so without it. She’d already lied to Hector an said that the rings were symbols she and her sisters wore to unite them, she could have been lying and welcomed him to join them and gotten him to swear loyalty to them in a ceremony after spending more time getting him to trust her. It was dumb and unnecessary and probably added in there just so maybe Alucard wasn’t the sole bearer of such an experience, or maybe because they shifted his plotline to fit in with the established themes, or maybe they could only sneak a bisexual threesome past the censors if they threw in more straight sex. What can I say? The cynicism of this show is relatable.

Alucard’s was less “Yikes” for me because he was never in a position where he didn’t have emotional or physical power over Taka and Sumi, he was a mentor to them who made no sexual advances whatsoever and seemed to only want to participate in their advances because it temporarily made him feel loved and worthy only to have the rug pulled out from under him and remind him that much more painfully of how alone he is, and how right his father may have been, and how wrong he was for killing him. Could this have been done without a sex scene? Yep, it always can. I know what the writers were trying to convey and I personally don’t have an issue with it and see its effectiveness, but I fully acknowledge another hour of spitballing in the writer’s room would have avoided that. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good or bad thing that they included this, it just... is, for me. I personally think if they’re going to confirm the sexual relationship between Trevor and Sypha, though, and then show us that Alucard is clearly missing them, there’s kinda one natural conclusion to make on how Alucard’s relationship with these two was going to go. I actually think it should have been better established and more time should have been spent on his relationship with them and depicted it as romantic/sexual from an earlier stage rather than just seemingly coming out of nowhere to people who hadn’t realized, “Oh, they’re his proxies,” earlier. I personally found it more tragic than traumatizing, but I don’t have a history of sexual abuse, so that is my own biased interpretation. If someone has that experience, I would not blame them in the least for finding this unpalatable.

Other arguments I’ve seen are, why is the only bi character shown to go through this kind of trauma? I mean, Alucard is our only confirmed bi character left for now, but Isaac is heavily implied to be queer, and again. Cynical universe. And he isn’t the only character period to go through it. They’re not singling him out because he’s bi, he’s just going through a character arc and is bi. I acknowledge again it could have been handled better but I don’t necessarily think this is biphobia so much as it is... unfortunate tone deafness. Tokenism is the problem, not Alucard’s bisexuality, so here’s hoping that we get another bi or queer character soon because as of right now, it’s just rife with unfortunate implications. I had this exact issue with Isaac’s backstory/characterization last season as our lone man of color with a major role and they immediately fixed his arc this season along with introducing several new characters of color and it was honestly the highlight of the season, so... the writers have proven to me that they can learn from their mistakes and spin my suspicion into HYPE, so I’m willing to give them through season 4 to see what they do with it.

I have also seen the argument for, why are the only Japanese characters tricky and sexually manipulative? Well, because they’re human and the show is extremely cynical in its depiction of humanity, we’ve just mostly seen that with white Europeans so far. As I mentioned before, tokenism is the problem. Is it annoying to see a sexually manipulative femme fatale vampire? Yes. Can I live with it and shrug it off a helluva lot easier when we get butch warrior vampire and tactical genius vampire talking back and forth about how they plan to conquer and drink an entire nation while espousing their affection for one another? Also yes!  While we do finally get a lot more characters of color this season who are fleshed out and beautifully complex and sympathetic, I think Taka and Sumi could have been better explored, since their mistrust of Alucard makes sense but their decision to have sex with him in order to get his guard down is... really not apparent other than through speculation with 0 textual evidence to support it. I don’t think they’re sexually manipulative because they’re Japanese, I think they’re sexually manipulative because the plot calls for it and they happen to be the only Asian characters we have for now and the writers made another pretty tone deaf decision. Behind the scenes, I do wonder if they were chosen from specifically Cho’s court just so the animators had an excuse to draw her some more/get that Japanese audience invested. Orientalism is a helluva thing here in the west though, and the sexualization of east Asians is especially fucked up and I’m not gonna say this did not have catastrophically tone deaf implications. I hope we get more Asian characters with a nuanced depiction, and even though they are the only Asian characters, they are not the only sexual abusers and they are far from the only sympathetically broken but dangerous characters we see.  

This is also, I’m fairly certain, a dual-studio production, and I do know Castlevania is a Japanese video game series based on European vampire stories, and in the endless love letter between Japanese and American media, some things gets botched in the exchange. That doesn’t excuse it, and that doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful, but I also don’t think it means “Cancelvania.” But I’m Mexican-American, and Not Asian-American, or more specifically Japanese-American, so, this is purely my perspective. 

I won’t defend the choices, I certainly won’t argue with people who draw a line in the sand and say “This is unacceptable, I won’t watch this,” that’s a valid perspective to have. To me, the writers through Isaac have proven they know when and how to correct course when they need to, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this was all build up for a dynamite season 4 if/when we get it. The show is cynical, I’m cynical, but I can recognize careful writing when I see it, and to me the highlights of this unrepentantly stupid fucking show that I kinda love are gonna be worth sticking through the stuff that makes me wrinkle my nose with concern because I want to see where it goes. A time may come when that stops being the case, but for me it hasn’t reached that point yet. I completely understand if it has for anyone else though.

[thecourtreportersportedjorts]

Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2017

In December of each year, Billboard publishes its list of the 100 biggest hit songs of the last 12 months. In response, I take it upon myself to decide which of these songs were the real hits, and which were the biggest misses. As always, I’m starting with the worst. Let’s get started:

10. “Do Re Mi” by Blackbear

If you’ve read my earlier lists, I’ve made it no secret that I’m a big fan of The Weeknd. I’ve been enjoying his relentlessly bleak brand of R&B for years, so I was more than ready to celebrate his ascent on the pop charts with multiple spots on my Best Hit Songs lists in 2015 and 2016. Apart from choosing “Can’t Feel My Face” over Taylor Swift’s incomparable “Style” as my favorite hit song of 2015, I stand by all of it. Unfortunately, any great, successful artist is bound to generate a wave of cut-rate imitators, and thus we now have to deal with blackbear.

When blackbear first appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 last spring, I probably had the same reaction as anyone previously uninitiated: who the hell is this? Prior to this year, the rising R&B singer-songwriter had written and produced for such personality vacuums as G-Eazy and Machine Gun Kelly. He also co-wrote “Boyfriend,” one of Justin Bieber’s biggest and most embarrassing singles to date. If any of that suggests that his breakout single “Do Re Mi” would be a noxious whinge replete with countless fuckboy-isms, you’d only wish it were that good.

Blackbear unfortunately goes the extra mile, topping off his insufferable whining at his “crazy” ex with a failed attempt at wit. “Do, re, mi, fa, so fuckin’ done with you,” the chorus taunts, which becomes awkward when you notice that he’s singing up a minor scale, and the minor solfege progression is do, re, ME, FE, etc. All this is accompanied by a perfunctory Gucci Mane feature and a chord progression that’s eerily similar to The Weeknd’s “Wicked Games,” which is where my issues with the song clicked: when Abel made songs like this, he at least had the good sense not to cast himself in the moral high ground or center his hooks around laughable wordplay. And I thought Bryson Tiller was bad.

9. “Believer” by Imagine Dragons

I’ve been writing these lists for five years now, and while I wouldn’t say that my music taste has changed dramatically since then, it’s certainly expanded enough that I could rewrite my Best Hit Songs lists from 4 or 5 years ago and include songs that weren’t even on my radar before. With that said, doing this for such a long time leads you to wonder if you were ever too quick to heap praise onto something that ultimately didn’t deserve it. And while I wouldn’t say I suddenly dislike any of the songs Imagine Dragons landed on my previous lists, I can no longer call myself a fan when they keep churning out crap like this.

I first mentioned Imagine Dragons in 2012, when I saw them as an innovative new force in rock music, alongside the likes of Gotye and fun. While Gotye still hasn’t followed up his album Making Mirrors, and fun. guitarist Jack Antonoff has made even better music with his Bleachers project, Imagine Dragons doubled down on their stadium-ready sound to diminishing returns. After the sophomore slump Smoke + Mirrors failed to produce major hits, they somehow managed to notch one of their biggest successes yet with “Believer,” a dreary, un-catchy slog of a song.

There are a lot of things that I find deeply annoying about “Believer,” like singer Dan Reynolds audibly straining his vocals on a flat hook, the utterly dour and depressing music backing what should be an uplifting (if not esoteric) set of lyrics, or the “first things first” lyrical structure that gives me Iggy Azalea flashbacks. But my biggest problem with Imagine Dragons in 2017 is that their songs seem entirely calculated to fit into trailers and commercials, and I’ve heard “Believer” in these spaces far more than anything more organic. I don’t believe that rock is inherently more valuable or authentic than pop, rap, etc., but it has no chance of being so if this is the way “rock” is represented in the mainstream.

8. “Tunnel Vision” by Kodak Black

If there is a theme to my lists this year, it’s that content doesn’t exist without context. 2017 has seen countless powerful men rightfully fall from grace as allegations of sexual assault and harassment continue to come out of the woodwork. As somebody who loves to share music, this puts me in an interesting position. Was I right to top my Best Hit Songs of 2014 with “Do What U Want,” Lady Gaga’s infamous collaboration with R. Kelly? Can I, in good conscience, still call Brand New’s Science Fiction one of the best albums on the year? Despite my own investment in this music, I have to second guess whether or not I can actively recommend any of it when such information is readily available. These are tough questions, but at least I don’t have to ask them here since I never liked Kodak Black in the first place.

Horrific legal charges aside, I never understood the appeal of Kodak’s music. Sure, he may choose solid beats once in a while, and he may speak on the gritty realities of the street life, but so many other rappers have done so by using a more intelligible and far less grating voice. So many other rappers have done so without resorting to tired, juvenile punchlines like “That money make me cum, it make me fornicate / I’m the shit, I need some toilet paper.” And so many other rappers at least know that “winning” doesn’t rhyme with “penitentiary.”

Even if you somehow liked this song and wanted badly to separate the art from the artist, you can’t really do that in this case. The edited line “I get any girl I want, any girl I want” originally ended with “I don’t gotta rape,” which is eventually followed by “I need a bitch who gon’ cooperate.” YIKES. The only reason this song is so low on this list is because the beat, provided by the ubiquitous Metro Boomin, deserves so much better. Metro, please stick to working with Future and Migos and stay away from this little shit.

7. “Bad Things” by Machine Gun Kelly feat. Camila Cabello

Overall, I considered 2016 to be a pretty weak year for the pop charts. It’s not that everything was terrible that year, but I remember struggling to put together both of these lists because I was so indifferent to most of the hits. Still, one of the most damning trends to dominate the year was the rise of mediocre white rappers. Both Gnash and Post Malone ranked high on my Worst list, and I probably should have included G-Eazy’s tedious “Me, Myself & I” as a dishonorable mention. This trend hasn’t entirely disappeared, as Malone had a surprisingly successful 2017, but it really should have ended with Machine Gun Kelly.

The first of the many bad things about “Bad Things” is the generous sample of Fastball’s 1999 hit song “Out of My Head.” I already have reservations about songs with such recognizable samples - even in songs like “Anaconda” that I otherwise like - and this is no exception, since the sample doesn’t really add any personality or texture to the song. The chorus just gets witlessly rewritten and clumsily regurgitated by Camila Cabello, who only sounds slightly less like a goat than she did on “Work From Home.” Of course, the song also borrows Fastball’s chord progression, which sounds like ass when paired with this Marshmello-lite production.

Even worse is MGK, who’s trying his damnedest to sound like the personification of white alpha male posturing. The only time his delivery suits the track is when he attempts to add a melody in the pre-chorus, and even then it results in serious tonal whiplash. There’s also a baffling R.E.M. reference in his second verse, as if desecrating one 90’s alternative rock band wasn’t enough. I would call the title of the song truth in advertising, but it’s more of an understatement.

6. “Swang” by Rae Sremmurd

I first discussed Rae Sremmurd in 2015 when “No Type” made the #9 spot on my Worst list. And while I still stand by the song’s inclusion, I don’t have much against these guys. Sure, SremmLife had more misses than hits - including the milk-aged, deeply regrettable “Up Like Trump” - but I can take solace in that they earned their biggest success with “Black Beatles,” their best song. On top of that, collaborations with French Montana and Jhene Aiko could position Swae Lee as a breakout solo star with a charismatic (if amateurish) vocal presence.

It’s for that exact reason why “Swang” is such a failure. Critics have routinely praised the duo for their infectious energy, but for the duration of the song, very little of that energy really translates. The production from P-Nazty trades the thunderous, off-kilter synths that made “Black Beatles” so invigorating for something much more warbly, cheap and lifeless. Swae Lee spends the majority of his time droning on words like Alaska Thunderfuck on quaaludes, and by the time Slim Jxmmi attempts to liven things up, it’s too little too late.

“Swang” isn’t an entirely sleepy affair, however. The track has one truly memorable trick up its sleeve - and that’s when Swae leaps into his falsetto during the hook. And it sounds hideous. It’s not quite as ear-splittingly awful as the drop on “Starving” last year, but it doesn’t even have that song’s sense of momentum. It almost sounds like the shower scene from Psycho, only without any real buildup leading to the aural carnage.

5. “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran

Overplay doesn’t tend to factor into my selections for these lists, a fact which is evident when you see that my Best list for 2015 included songs like “Hello” and “Shut Up and Dance.” This is because I don’t listen to the radio or randomized pop playlists very frequently. I’ll seek out the most popular songs once, and whether or not I keep hearing the song usually depends on how much I like it. That said, sometimes a song becomes inescapable, and the more you hear it, you notice more and more problems with it.

This takes us conveniently to “Shape of You,” Ed Sheeran’s first ever #1 single on the Hot 100. Admittedly, I thought this song was decent at first, and so I’d listen to it once in a while when I needed to scratch the itch. But when I decided I was done with it after a few weeks, I started hearing it pretty much everywhere, and then it clicked: this song is incredibly stupid.

First of all, Ed Sheeran is somewhere among the final few names on my hypothetical list of people I want to hear making songs about sex. “Shape of You” is certainly more competent than I’d imagine a sex song would be coming from Danny DeVito, but it’s also weirdly lacking in personality, which makes sense since he didn’t write this with himself in mind. Like “Cheap Thrills” last year, “Shape of You” was originally intended for Rihanna, who’s probably getting annoyed by all these white songwriters trying to pitch her such watered-down, vaguely Caribbean sounding pop tunes.

Of course, I could just be wishing that the song lacked personality, because Ed can’t resist using his same Sheeranisms that have soiled so many of his stabs at pop. In addition to an out-of-place Van Morrison shoutout (which he couldn’t even confine to one song), the song has a host of clumsy, overwritten lyrics. “Your love was handmade for somebody like me.” “We talk for hours and hours about the sweet and the sour.” That whole chorus. “Shape of You” scans as an OkCupid message from a dude with no social skills. Now imagine getting that same message about 500 more times, and you’ve got one of the most overplayed trainwrecks in recent memory.

4. “Don’t Wanna Know” by Maroon 5 feat. Kendrick Lamar / “Cold” by Maroon 5 feat. Future

For this entry on the list, I’ll be doing something different - I’m giving it to two songs. Sure, this is occasionally done as an excuse to avoid making a concrete decision, but there’s a genuine reason this time. The songs in question are “Don’t Wanna Know” and “Cold,” both by rock band-turned-space-wasters Maroon 5. These two songs are essentially minor variations on each other, and all the more evidence that Adam Levine and his producers band need to go away.

“Don’t Wanna Know” was released late last year, while the charts were still saturated with so much half-assed tropical house. The lyrics feature Levine at his most petulant and unlikeable, harping on an ex so much that the characteristically repetitive chorus just sounds more like a failed defense mechanism. As awful as all this is, it’s nothing compared to the fact that these guys managed to rope in Kendrick Lamar - arguably one of the most important and talented artists of this decade - and make him suck. It’s a brief 8-bar verse, and yet half of the bars feature words rhyming with each other. There’s one thing I do wanna know after hearing this dreck - what Kendrick’s paycheck looked like.

Oh-so-cleverly released on Valentine’s Day this year, “Cold” effectively treads the same water as the other song. It’s more turgid tropical bullshit, only at a slighter quicker tempo. The lyrics are even more bitter, bordering on misogynistic at points. Another A-list rapper features, but this time, it’s Future, and while his verse is pretty average by his own standards, he sounds incredibly uncomfortable over this beat. Nothing about this song disappoints me as much Kendrick’s verse on “Don’t Wanna Know,” but it might be slightly worse by virtue of being more of the same.

Both of these songs were released well before their cluelessly titled album Red Pill Blues was even announced, and they were formally left off the standard track listing. Still, because of their chart success, they were included on the deluxe edition of the album, if only to represent the death of tropical house as a viable trend and an enjoyable sound in pop. And, of course, the death of Maroon 5 as anything resembling an actual band.

3. “JuJu on that Beat (TZ Anthem)” by Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCall

Since Billboard first put a greater emphasis on streaming in their calculations, it’s been interesting to see how songs perform on the charts. As a whole, album tracks chart longer than ever, and the last two years have seen such unexpected chart-toppers like “Panda” and “Bodak Yellow” thanks to the popularity of hip-hop on streaming services. Unfortunately, this also means that songs are also more likely to become genuine hits off of viral novelty than quality. It happened with the execrable “Watch Me” in 2015, and it nearly two years later, it happened with “Juju on That Beat.”

In retrospect, I may have been a little too hard on “Watch Me” when I named it the second worst song of 2015. I mean, we were still in the middle of Meghan Trainor’s window of relevance when it came out, and 2017 has seen rappers draw even more attention to their distinctive ad-libs. “Watch Me,” while still pretty grating, seems quaint and harmless now. The same can’t be said about “Juju on That Beat,” which is just as annoying and insulting to the intelligence as it was a year ago.

Let’s start with “That Beat,” which is lifted wholesale from Crime Mob’s crunk staple “Knuck If You Buck.” Forget what I said about the “Out of My Head” sample in “Bad Things,” this is particularly lazy. While rappers have used pre-existing beats in the past, this is clearly a dance song. Aren’t dance songs were supposed to have a unique musical identity to make up for inconsequential lyrics? The only audible difference is that the beat is transposed to a higher key, which makes sense if it’s meant to suit aspiring one hit wonders Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCall’s more youthful voices.

It’s too bad that their voices still don’t sound remotely good. Hilfigerrr (not that the name matters) is particularly irritating, his out-of-breath yelps cracking like his balls just dropped mid-recording. And while I may have critiqued “Watch Me” for lacking actual rap verses, maybe it was for the better, as the other guy attempts to freestyle, only rhyming the first two of his eight bars and dropping such gems as “if I compared me and you, there wouldn’t be no comparings.” The only good thing about this song is that it’s mercifully short, perhaps the shortest hit song of 2017 that wasn’t by XXXTentacion or Lil Pump. By comparison, “Watch Me” is a masterpiece in minimalism.

2. “Say You Won’t Let Go” by James Arthur

I’m pretty sure my decision to name “Treat You Better” the worst song of 2016 might have been strange for some. Sure, I’ve seen the song on several similar lists (including one that has it in the same position), but the general public actually seems to enjoy the song a lot. Maybe that has to do with the fact that the music is so blandly inoffensive that most people wouldn’t bat an eye at the content. But apart from the patronizing lyrics and the laughable singing, that was part of my problem. White-guy-with-acoustic-guitar songs tend to piss me off because they’re churned out by dudes with aspirations to Real Musicianship whose compositional skills are limited, so the lyrics tend to be transparent in their douchebaggery. And while very, very few things are as bad as “Treat You Better,” James Arthur’s “Say You Won’t Let Go” fits this mold to a T.

As with seemingly all music this year, some context is necessary. James Arthur won The X Factor in 2012 (which should tell you everything about this guy’s musical persona) before signing to Simon Cowell’s Syco Records imprint and eventually releasing songs in which he used homophobic and Islamophobic insults and compared himself to a terrorist. He left Syco in 2014, but two years later, he released Back from the Edge, an album whose title practically begs for sympathy for his lack of a filter. “Say You Won’t Let Go” was the immensely successful lead single, which somehow lasted on the Hot 100 for a full year.

Perhaps knowing all this before hearing the song colored my distaste for “Say You Won’t Let Go” from the jump, but I think this song is fucking terrible. Over acoustic strumming and an infinitely recycled chord progression, Arthur recounts when he first met the love of his life, including a deeply unflattering line where she vomits (again with that filter!). The rest of the song delves into the same territory that Ed Sheeran already exhausted with “Thinking Out Loud,” and the whole thing just scans as incredibly disingenuous coming from him. Hell, he even describes the song as “really calculated” in his annotations on Genius.

Truthfully, the content and the context are the least unpleasant things about this song. James Arthur nearly mumbles through the verses before bringing his voice up another octave for the chorus, which sounds like a drunken bro singing “You’re Beautiful” at Karaoke. A lot of people have praised his vocals, but I might just hate them even more than “Swang” because at least Swae Lee sounded like he was enjoying himself. James just sounds ready to throw up, which is probably karma at work after that lyric in the first verse (not to mention pretty much anything this guy has said that put him at the edge in the first place).

Before I unveil my pick for the worst hit song of 2017, here are eight dishonorable mentions:

“Chained to the Rhythm” by Katy Perry feat. Skip Marley: 2017 was not a good year for Katy Perry, whose self-awareness seems to be diminishing with each album cycle. “Chained to the Rhythm” was the ever-so-obviously co-written by Sia lead single, which boasts an extremely out-of-place guest verse from Bob Marley’s grandson and perhaps one of the clumsiest hooks of the entire year.

“Thunder” by Imagine Dragons: At least “Chained to the Rhythm” had an actual hook, not just chipmunked repetitions of a single word. Because it’s an Imagine Dragons song in 2017, it’s also padded out a with a trap beat, more vague nothings in the verses and grossly manipulated vocals in place of any actual instrumental tones.

“Mercy” by Shawn Mendes: It’s nowhere near as condescending and misogynistic as “Treat You Better,” but it’s every bit as whiny and overwrought, even sharing the same warbled vocals incessant drum beat. Really, it’s a damn shame he didn’t actually drown in the music video.

“Drowning” by A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie feat. Kodak Black: Speaking of drowning, isn’t a song with this title and these piano chords supposed to be about something more interesting than bragging about jewelry? Also, an accused rapist shows up to mumble and make awful jokes about farts. Let’s move on.

“Look at Me!” by XXXTentacion: Oh yeah, there was also this guy, who’s been accused of some extremely disturbing stuff (seriously, trigger warning). I can appreciate some more aggression in the beat and even X’s flow, but the distortion makes everything nearly incomprehensible, which is probably alright since the lyrics amount to little more than edgelord crap. Fuck this.

“Down” by Marian Hill: “Down” doesn’t really have any personality to speak of, driven almost entirely by a woman’s breathy voice, which later gets manipulated into a boilerplate trap beat. Seriously, what is it about this kind of pretentious “indie” pop wallpaper that attracts such an audience?

“Issues” by Julia Michaels: I’ve talked a lot of shit about Julia Michaels and her frequent collaborator Justin Tranter in the past, but “Issues” is actually a pretty compelling exploration of mental health and relationships, and Julia is a distinctive vocalist in her own right. Unfortunately, the song does have issues, and one of them is how bad it needs to pick up the goddamn pace.

“All Time Low” by Jon Bellion: Jon Bellion has a lot of potential as a songwriter and producer, but his vocals sound a lot like Adam Young with slightly more testosterone. The lyric about masturbation is questionable too, but I simply can’t hear that chorus without thinking of this video.

And now, for what I consider worst hit song of 2017:

1. “Body Like a Back Road” by Sam Hunt

Choosing between this and “Say You Won’t Let Go” for the bottom slot on my list was admittedly much harder than usual, but the decision ultimately came down to one thing. Sure, James Arthur’s song disgusts me on a very primal level, to a point where I can’t really listen to the chorus without wincing. But would the song really bother me that much if Arthur weren’t a total dick with a horrific voice? Probably not. Thus, I had to choose a song that was so unequivocally bad that literally nobody could make it work. I had to choose a song in which the awfulness was spelled out right in the title: “Body Like a Back Road.”

Before we open the can of worms that is this song, one thing needs to be addressed. Yes, this is a bro-country song. In 2017. I could maybe see the appeal if this were released in 2014, which was not only the saturation point for this embarrassing subgenre, but also for the DJ Mustard production style that this song clearly takes its influence from. But in 2017, country music has thankfully been working back towards a more organic sound, and DJ Mustard has been replaced by guys like Metro Boomin and Mike Will Made It as hip-hop’s guiding hand. From the word “go,” this song is dated and lame.

Of course, lame is a huge understatement for the lyrical content. You can infer a lot of things from the title alone, and it’s even worse than you might expect. Sam Hunt seems to dedicate this song to his fiancee, which is perhaps one of the most misconceived gifts imaginable. For fuck’s sake, Sam, you’re a country singer. It’s par the course that you’ve been on a back road before, you should know damn well that this comparison is insulting. As if that weren’t bad enough, he attempts to elaborate, waxing unpoetic about her “curves” (a word he draws out in a particularly grating manner) and how the two of them “go way back like Cadillac seats.” While the imagery is more consistent than Train’s abominable “Drive By,” it’s just as gross.

But really, the most egregious crime “Body Like a Back Road” commits is just flat-out sounding like ass. Hip-hop and country don’t exactly have a lot of aesthetic common ground to begin with, so when the rap producer this guy attempts to emulate is DJ Mustard, the whole track ends up sounding as cheap and awkward as his early abortions like “Rack City.” There’s also the weirdly lightweight live drums, not to mention whatever the hell is playing that melody in the intro and bridge. The whole song is so out of touch with the times that I’m convinced it wasn’t just a Montevallo demo. Sadly, it seems the bro-country trend never really went away, and maybe it still has legs to stand on (legs that, at some point, it’ll probably try to compare to the confederate flag or something). But last year proved that mainstream country can be so much better than this, so let’s just hope that this subgenre finally dies for real this time.

Thanks for reading my list, I should be uploading the Best Hit Songs of 2017 later this week!