#but also a guy who really conveyed the very subtle creepiness of house

[rivet-city-rebel]

I think the house casting was perfect because I could absolutely see that man being a playboy but then all the *working* women in vegas also have horror stories about being paid for several hours of getting their personalities and likenesses lifted and put into a little file that they have no idea how he’ll use at a later date.

[esselley]

Kinktober #30: Costume (this is SFW!)

Whoops, I backtracked! I’m climbing aboard the goth Kageyama train! I’m also mooching off Ally’s cheerleader Hinata idea, so this is a goth/cheerleader AU~ 

“This party is so wild!”

There is a vampire talking to Kageyama. Shouting, actually. The volume level is sort of necessary, because the environment around them is currently the definition of a rager—lights strobing and whirling, music thumping and loud, bodies pressing in on all sides.

But they are standing right next to each other, and Kageyama very much does not want to be talked to, and so he finds the level of shoutiness uncalled for at best and exhausting at worst.

“What are you supposed to be?” Dracula asks him. “Some kind of, like, emo kid?”

Kageyama stares at him. “What?”

Kageyama is not an “emo kid”. He doesn’t buy anime t-shirts and cheap makeup from Hot Topic. His eyes are lined dark and precise, and his lips are full matte black, without a hint of smearing or feathering. It makes the silver hoop ring in his lower lip stand out even more. It takes work to get his look this clean, but he has a lot of practice, because—

“I’m not a—”

“Kageyama?”

Someone calls his name, distracting him from what would have likely been a well deserved dressing down of Edward Cullen. He turns towards the source of the voice, and almost spills his drink.

“Oh, hey, Hinata—” the vampire starts to say, but he’s instantly brushed aside as Hinata Shouyou shoves past him to stand directly in front of Kageyama, staring down at him where he’s sitting.

“You—you decided to show up, huh?!” Hinata asks. He sounds like he’s trying to cover his shock with some kind of accusation, which is stupid, because it’s Hinata’s party and he’s the one who invited Kageyama.

“I had nothing better to do,” Kageyama says, in what he hopes is a very bored and unconcerned tone of voice. He’s not sure he succeeds, because Hinata is wearing… quite the costume.

To backtrack: Hinata and Kageyama aren’t unfamiliar with each other. They’re both in their first year at the same university, where Kageyama was scouted to join the volleyball team. He’s the only first year on the starting lineup, but that had nearly come to an untimely end when he’d nearly had to sit out due to the overwhelming presence of Hinata Shouyou.

Hinata is on the university’s cheer team, and the first time Kageyama saw him doing an aerial routine during a game, he nearly served into the back of the captain’s head. Eventually Kageyama learns (by asking seven other members of the cheer squad, as nonchalantly as he can) that Hinata used to play volleyball in high school. When he hadn’t been scouted after his third year, he’d apparently found a new way to fly.

Hinata is not as subtle as Kageyama. Not two weeks into the school year, he bursts into the men’s volleyball locker room and demands Kageyama go out with him, in front of the entire team.

“No,” Kageyama says, horrified and baffled.

“But you keep asking everyone about me!” Hinata yelps. “I thought you liked me!”

“I don’t,” Kageyama says staunchly, ignoring the what the fuck are you doing gestures the team’s wing spiker is making behind Hinata’s back. It is a poorly kept secret that Kageyama is unable to stop staring at Hinata during games.

“He only asked me out because he thinks I’m the only one on the team he has a chance with,” Kageyama explains later, to a chorus of groans.

“You are the only one he has a chance with,” says the captain. “You’re the only gay guy on the team.”

This is beside the point, Kageyama feels. He isn’t going to go out on some pity date with a guy who only wants to recapture his former high school glory days. Hinata clearly zeroed in on Kageyama because he’s the only volleyball player in the country who can pull off both a flawless smoky eye and a personal timed difference attack.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there, because Hinata is a ball of reflexes and determination—a combination which has, so far, resulted in Kageyama being asked out every time Hinata spots him on campus, and Kageyama turning and walking in the other direction as fast as he can. He has been late to class several times. But he’s fine with that, it sort of helps him keep up his aura of ennui.

And then comes The Invitation. A gaudy, orange-and-black, glittery card that Hinata waits after a game to give to him personally. A “spooky summons” (the card’s words, not Kageyama’s) to a Halloween bash Hinata is throwing on the night of the thirty-first.

“I’m not asking you out!” Hinata rushes to say, circumventing Kageyama’s usual response. “There will be a ton of people there.”

“How do you know that?” Kageyama asks.

“Uh,” Hinata says, head tilting, “because I’m super popular? Obviously.”

Kageyama rolls his eyes and starts to walk away.

“Wait!” Hinata says, hopping in front of him. He bows suddenly, thrusting the card in front of himself, at Kageyama. “Just think about it! If you’re not busy doing goth stuff on Halloween, then, maybe you could come.”

Fast forward to the present: Kageyama, whose schedule that night is free of “goth stuff”, has ended up at the party.

He’d only wanted to see what it was like, and maybe score a few drinks, and leave before Hinata spotted him—but he’s been caught out. Now Hinata is standing right in front of him, staring at him with something terribly like hope in his eyes. And he’s wearing the tiniest cheerleader uniform Kageyama has ever laid eyes on.

It’s not Hinata’s own cheer uniform; that one has shorts and sleeves and actually fits. This one is one of the girl’s uniforms. It has no sleeves, so Hinata’s lithe, built arms are fully visible past his shoulder, and it bares his entire midriff, putting his toned stomach and the small of his back completely on display. But even more distracting than that are the bottoms.

The girls’ uniform skirt is miniscule at the best of times, but on Hinata it would be almost laughable, if it weren’t so obscenely hot. Even in the loose cheer shorts the boys wear, it’s impossible not to notice that Hinata has curves. Now it’s unavoidably apparent. The skirt barely covers his ass, and the tops of his thighs are completely exposed, standing out pale under the pleated fabric, and perhaps worst of all, a pair of tall black thigh high socks. Kageyama’s mouth is possibly watering.

Hinata has very nice legs, he can’t stop noticing. They seem like they might belong wrapped around someone’s waist.

“You didn’t dress up?” Hinata asks, snapping him out of his thigh-related thoughts. He sounds disappointed.

Kageyama frowns. “I did.” He points at the black collar around his neck. It’s studded with sharp silver spikes.

“Don’t you… always wear stuff like that?”

Kageyama heaves his heaviest sigh, which he has practiced in front of a mirror in order to make sure he’s properly conveying how disillusioned he is. “No,” he says. “I came as a fetish goth. Normally, I’m just traditional.”

Hinata’s eyes go wide. “F-fetish?” Cautiously, he reaches out and touches the tip of one finger to the point of one, and gasps. “Oooh. So you came as a sexy goth!”

“Haah?” Kageyama asks, too surprised for words.

“Yeah, like, how people always dress up as sexy versions of things for Halloween!” Hinata explains. “Sexy nurse, sexy bumblebee, sexy firefighter…”

“Fetish elements have always been present in Gothic culture,��� Kageyama huffs. “On Halloween, I like to pay homage to that. Besides, what about you? You’re just a sexy version of yourself, too!”

Hinata’s mouth shapes itself into an O. Too late, Kageyama realizes his mistake.

“Kageyama,” Hinata asks, in a voice that is suddenly very low and possibly a little sultry, “does that mean you think I look sexy?”

Before Kageyama can answer, the sound of some type of loud gong being struck shivers through the whole house, and the lights dim ominously. Hinata claps excitedly.

“Oooh, ooh, it’s time!” he squeals excitedly.

“Time for…?”

“For the gates of hell to open Kageyama!” Hinata says, in what he clearly hopes is a very spooky voice. It’s mainly just cute.

“What does that mean?” Kageyama asks flatly.

“It means,” Hinata says, “that my haunted house is ready! Come on!”

He grabs Kageyama by the hand, yanking him along as he scurries through the crowd. Kageyama is definitely going to spill his drink at this rate.

“Where are we going?”

“To the haunted house!” Hinata says. “I get to cut the line, obviously, but I wanna go in before a bunch of people are in there.”

“Why—wait, hang on—stop!” Kageyama says, forcing his feet to a halt. Hinata turns to look at him. “You… I’m not going.”

“Why?” Hinata asks.

“Why do you want me to go with you?” Kageyama asks. He realizes this is a stupid question, considering Hinata has been doing everything in his power to get Kageyama to go out with him for several weeks now.

“Because I don’t wanna go just by myself, it’s going to be really creepy!” Hinata says. “Please, Kageyama?”

“These things are never scary,” Kageyama tells him. He knows what’s going on and he isn’t falling for it.

Hinata puts a hand on his arm and stares up at him imploringly, lower lip pushing into a pout. “Please?”

Fuck, Kageyama thinks. “Fine! Fine, whatever.”

Watching Hinata’s entire face light up in a delighted smile is terrible, because it makes Kageyama feel like he made the right decision.

The haunted house is basically just a pop-up structure in the communal lawn Hinata’s dorm shares with several other residential structures. There are already people streaming towards it, but Hinata gets beckoned up to the front, Kageyama following behind him. The entrance is lit up a fiery red, and skeletons and grasping hands are scattered all around it. It’s clearly meant to invoke some kind of infernal feeling, but it’s mostly just stupid. Kageyama glances at Hinata, to see his eyes are shining with excitement. It makes Kageyama feel slightly more charitable towards the stereotypical mess in front of him, which in turn makes him feel exasperated. No—it’s just stupid.

The inside is predictably dark. Menacing figures in dark clothing and masks lurk about in the shadows, jumping out every now and again to a guaranteed chorus of screams and shrieks from the partygoers.

Hinata, to Kageyama’s surprise, does not cling to him and tremble in fear. Instead, he insists upon going ahead of Kageyama, only to repeatedly become frightened and double back to hide behind him whenever things get too scary. He also seems to be caught permanently between a kind of fight-or-flight response—leaping away in terror like a startled kitten every time something pops out at him, before shouting aggressively and performing a questionable series of pseudo-martial arts maneuvers that seem to be adapted cheer forms more than anything else.

At one point, he reflexively high kicks his leg straight up into the air over his head defensively, and Kageyama is treated to the sight of a pair of red booty shorts, apparently what Hinata has chosen to wear underneath the skirt. Kageyama cannot stop snorting into the palm of his hand. Dammit, he was not supposed to find this enjoyable—although he supposes he’s enjoying Hinata more than the actual haunted house.

“You’re going to kick one of your friends in the face,” Kageyama tells him, watching Hinata freeze in place, balanced on one foot with both hands thrust into the air, after a blood-drenched ghoul had spooked him. Gently he tugs Hinata back. “They’re just acting, stupid.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Hinata says knowledgeably.

Kageyama snorts derisively. “What does that even mean?”

“Well, think about it,” Hinata says, pausing to yelp as a skeleton drops down from the ceiling above them right in front of his face. “If you were like some kind of murderer, a haunted house would be the perfect place to hide.”

“How?” Kageyama asks.

“You could have some kind of huge, big, giant knife or something!” Hinata explains. “Everyone would think you were joking until it was too late. No one would realize all the blood and stuff wasn’t fake!”

“That’s…” Ridiculous, Kageyama wants to say.

But, is it? Some of the fakeness of these costumes has been startlingly real—it’s only been lame and boring to Kageyama because of the knowledge that none of it is harmful. But would it be possible, in a split second, to distinguish acting from reality?

“What if someone were to lure you into this haunted house…” Hinata says, and Kageyama turns towards him to find his eyes are focused startlingly wide, gleaming and unblinking, face blank as he stares back at Kageyama, “...what if someone brought you in here with the intention of making sure that you never. Left. Again…”

Kageyama feels the hair stand at the back of his neck. “Hi-Hinata…?”

A horrible, grating growl erupts into noise near them, and a masked figure bursts through a door right next to them. They have a chainsaw raised high above their head, the teeth on the saw dripping with fresh red blood.

“FUCK!” Kageyama bellows, before bolting in the opposite direction.

Hinata hired a hitman to kill me, he thinks, frantically, as he looks for the exit. He went off the deep end when I kept saying no and he wore a sexy cheerleader outfit to lure me into a death trap, and I fell for it.

He makes it two doors down before he hears a loud chainsaw whine and a hand lands on his shoulder. He screams and spins around, fully prepared to demolish whoever has been sent to finish him off, or die in the attempt.

The chainsaw murderer is standing behind him, now unmasked—Kageyama recognizes one of the other first years from the volleyball team. He’s laughing hysterically. All Kageyama’s terror dissipates in an instant.

“What the fuck,” he says flatly.

“You should have seen—your face—” his teammate wheezes. “I didn’t believe Hinata when he said that would work, but holy shit—worth it—”

“Hinata put you up to that?” Kageyama asks. “Where’d he go?”

His friend gestures vaguely in the opposite direction, so Kageyama backtracks. Hinata never should have given him the idea about haunted houses being good for murder, because Kageyama is going to kill him.

“Hinataaa,” he calls, in a saccharinely sweet voice. Hopefully, Hinata will fall for it. “Where aaare you?”

“Kageyama?” he hears Hinata call back. Found him. “I’m in here…”

“Alright, you little shit—” Kageyama says, bursting through a bloodstained plastic partition and into the room Hinata is hiding in. He blinks.

Hinata is sitting against the wall, hands pressed to his knees, grimacing. He looks up when Kageyama walks in, expression pained. He’s clearly hurt, but Kageyama can’t imagine how he managed it, in the two minutes he was alone.

“D-did you get scared?” Hinata asks hopefully.

“What the hell happened to you?” Kageyama demands. He’s irritated, and worried, which makes him feel even more irritated. Hinata has to be faking, and Kageyama strides forward, intent on checking.

“I, uh, wasn’t expecting that to happen right then,” Hinata says. “It scared me, too! I ran in here, but I think someone dropped a bottle earlier… I slipped on it and fell.” He points to the offending spot in the room, where Kageyama can see the liquid stain and fragmented glass on the carpet.

“You idiot,” Kageyama says, hurrying to him and knocking his hands away from his knees. They’re bloody, and his socks are torn. “You dumbass, that’s what you get for trying to scare me. Just because I won’t go out with you—”

“No!” Hinata says, sounding shocked. “No, that’s not it.”

“Bullshit,” Kageyama says. He chooses to ignore the wounded look Hinata gives him, because what else could it be? “Your knees look like shit. Come on.”

He turns and squats in front of Hinata, waiting.

“What… are you doing?” Hinata asks.

“Get on,” Kageyama growls, and Hinata yelps. Quickly he scrambles on, and Kageyama loops his hands underneath him to keep him in place. The skirt is simply not long enough to act as a proper barrier, so he’s literally holding Hinata’s butt in his hands. It is distressingly firm.

“I can walk,” Hinata whispers.

“I’m already carrying you,” Kageyama replies, leaving no room for argument.

They slowly make their way out of the haunted house. Hinata keeps flinching at every scary encounter, tucking up against Kageyama’s back and shivering like a reed.

“Just hide your face,” Kageyama tells him, and Hinata buries his nose between Kageyama’s shoulder blades. “Fuck off, he’s hurt,” Kageyama growls at an approaching zombie with more venom than is perhaps strictly necessary.

The party is as lively as it was when they left it, and more people seem to notice that something is wrong. Hinata waves them all off, good-natured and embarrassed, and Kageyama finds out where the communal first-aid kit is located, before climbing the steps to the floor Hinata’s room is on.

“It’s unlocked,” Hinata tells him when they reach his door, so Kageyama pushes it open.

Hinata’s room is a mess. Clothes and textbooks alike are strewn about. The corkboard on the wall has lots of pictures, some of his old team it looks like. Mixed in are shots of the cheer squad, and a pinned schedule of all the university volleyball matches for the year.

Kageyama lets Hinata slide off his back onto the bed before clicking open the lid on the first-aid.

“Here,” Hinata says, holding out his hand, “I’ll do it.”

“It’s fine,” Kageyama grunts. He’s still frustrated, but it’ll be a lot harder for Hinata to clean glass out of his bloody knees himself, and since Kageyama is already there…

Hinata balls his hands into fists on the bed as Kageyama wipes his knees with a wet cloth. He’s impressively quiet, but when Kageyama starts to clean the cuts with peroxide, he whimpers softly.

“Why did you try and freak me out?” Kageyama asks, partially to distract him, and partially because he wants to know. “If it wasn’t because I rejected you.”

“I don’t mind that you rejected me,” Hinata says. “You don’t have to go out with me if you don’t want to.”

“Then why do you keep asking?” Kageyama asks, teeth gritted.

Hinata laughs weakly. “I don’t know.”

Kageyama shakes his head in disbelief. He checks Hinata’s knees, and deeming them fully clean, begins to apply the band-aids.

“If you don’t have a real reason, then stop trying to lead me on,” he chides.

“But—what?” Hinata asks. “I do have a real reason.”

“Like what?”

“I think you’re amazing,” Hinata says.

Kageyama’s hands freeze over his knees. He looks up at Hinata. “You what?”

“I think… you’re incredible,” Hinata says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “Can’t you… I mean, why did you think I wanted you to go out with me?”

Kageyama stares at him. “I thought you were a dumb guy who just wanted to date a volleyball player.”

Hinata stares back at him. “That’s—that’s exactly what I am, though.”

“You just said you think I’m amazing!”

“Yes,” Hinata says, “I’m just a dumb guy, who wants to date a volleyball player, because I’ve never seen anyone who gets as into it as you do!”

“You just… hang on,” Kageyama says. He can’t quite wrap his head around this. “You just want to date me because of how much I like volleyball?”

“Y-yeah!” Hinata says, and then wilts. “Sorry. I—I guess that is really stu—”

He cuts off with a small noise of surprise, as Kageyama pulls him forward by the front of his stupidly small uniform to kiss him.

He tastes like booze and flavorless lip gloss, and his lips are soft and a little sticky and warm, and Kageyama sighs into his mouth, easing up on his grip on the costume, to slide his hands over Hinata’s chest and up to rest against his neck.

“Hinata,” he says, before Hinata can do much more but blink dazedly at him. “Yes.”

Hinata’s cheeks go red. “R-really?”

“Mm-hm,” Kageyama says. He pushes Hinata onto his back on his bed and climbs over on top of him. “Really.”

“Does that mean you had fun tonight?” Hinata asks him breathlessly.

“What does that have to do with—”

“I thought if I scared you,” Hinata says, “you’d have more fun. That’s the point, isn’t it? Of a haunted house, I mean.”

He stares up at Kageyama hopefully, his warm fingers creeping to twirl in the hair at the nape of Kageyama’s neck. Kageyama thinks about all Hinata’s excitement, his insistence that Kageyama come along, his ridiculous reactions to the jump scares in the haunted house, and his stupid plan to frighten Kageyama. He remembers the way his heart leapt into his mouth, how his adrenaline started pumping.

His heart is pounding right now, but it really has nothing to do with being frightened.

“Yeah,” he says. “It was okay, I guess.”

“You guess,” Hinata says, and then wriggles and gasps as Kageyama slides his fingers up his bare stomach and higher, under the tight hem of the uniform top.

“How are your knees feeling?” Kageyama murmurs.

“Great!” Hinata says, lifting them to wrap around Kageyama’s waist. He hisses in pain, instantly, and lowers them. Maybe next time.

Kageyama kisses him again and Hinata’s arms slide fully around his neck as he returns it, smiling full on against Kageyama’s mouth. He slides his tongue slowly against Kageyama’s bottom lip, until he finds his piercing—and then Hinata’s teeth are there, tugging gently at the silver hoop ring. Kageyama groans and throws caution entirely to the winds.

There are a few things, it turns out, that are worth smearing his lipstick for—and one of them is the bare skin of Hinata’s thighs, right above where his thigh highs end.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (There’s a few more more Kinktobers that still need to get finished up, but I haven’t abandoned them -- don’t worry!)

More Kinktober? There’s a lot of sexy costumes to be found...

[thesinglesjukebox]

SAM HUNT - DRINKIN' TOO MUCH [5.33] What've we got here? Why, it's a CONTROVERSYBOMB!

Ramzi Awn: A bold experiment with a few good ideas, "Drinkin' Too Much" employs dark moments of candor to highlight a muddled mix. [5]

Olivia Rafferty: The heart and soul of country music is storytelling, which is why this track works so well. "Drinkin' Too Much" shifts the typical country subject of alcohol abuse to the context of sad man R&B, aka Drake's genre. The spoken verses contain a rawness that could only be conveyed with that style of delivery, and the lyrics themselves are so vivid. Lay this over a subtle blend of 808s and slide guitars, and you have a solid attempt to influence the direction of country music. Let the genre-mashing begin. [8]

Anthony Easton: John Prine, in a recent Rolling Stone cover story, spoke about how Dylan's Nashville Skyline broke apart country music for him (he was a folkie at the time): "Man, there's something there where their two paths crossed. My stuff belongs right in the middle." This is also in the middle: between soul and hip-hop, between the drinking and heartbreak of Nashville and the fame-wasted ennui of Kanye and Drake. But it's also at the bottom: the bottomed-out production, how Hunt trips over details, how he extends stories, how he never quite brags about his money, how his self-loathing bubbles up like swamp gas. It's the opposite of all those party songs, the opposite of Moore and Eldredge and Gilbert. It has a singular voice -- a songwriting voice, but also how he sings, a gravelly push that reinforces his production choices. It is the smartest thing he has done, and maybe the most heartfelt. [10]

Alfred Soto: I'm no country corn pone. I like electronic whooshes and the kind of manipulation of space more common on Drake or "Climax"-era Usher, but Sam Hunt can't even talk-sing without his sockless boat shoes tripping on his ill-lettered cadences. He comes off like a lunkier Chainsmoker, in the market for any hook that'll get him on the radio and laid -- two of his more admirable virtues. Find better songs, dude, and don't try so damn hard. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: This non-single posted on SoundCloud is the audio equivalent of a viral video, and like many viral videos, it's also essentially a journal entry set to music. Frankly, it's not up to snuff: this is him doing his rhyming couplets (he loves rhyming couplets) with a woozy rhythm track from Pro Tools or whatever. It also sounds a lot like a demo for Justin Bieber. Most of all, this is slightly creepy oversharing; I want a Silkwood shower after listening to it. [0]

Elisabeth Sanders: Everything about this is deeply embarrassing, and that's why I love it. While I can't pretend I like this as much as anything off Montevallo, it makes up for it with "I wish you'd let me pay your student loans," and I'd like to submit this as a great entry into a music category I'd like to call "voice-memo pathetic-wave." (The other artist in this genre is Mike Posner with his great, deeply pathetic album At Night, Alone.) The song approximates, sonically and with almost nauseating accuracy, the feeling of being just too drunk enough that the room is spinning a little, being very sad about something that might be your fault in a crowded place at 2 in the morning. BEEN THERE, SAM. [7]

Jonathan Bradley: In which Sam Hunt pens a letter to Montevallo's Courtney From Hooters On Peachtree and proves himself to not be country music's Drake, but rather its Mike Skinner. The hook is the weakest part; it doesn't resolve Hunt's thoughts but elides them. (The austere "8pm" take works better and is worth a point or two more.) There is frisson in a lyric that pushes too far past the fourth wall, threatening to combust as it reaches the event horizon -- for the non-country, non-rap examples to which "Drinkin' Too Much" draws nearest, look to emo acts like Cursive's The Ugly Organ or Say Anything's "Every Man Has a Molly." "Hope you know I'm still in love," Hunt closes, except it's a correspondence that is only intimate the way a performance is, and so his words are combustible as well as heartfelt. The sour sense that this song bears too much truth is its most compelling point but also its most repellent; Hunt is too casual in his exhibitionism. [5]

Will Adams: It feels right; we've reached the level of bleakness in our pop music that songs can now just be actual shitposts with first draft choruses tucked in. [3]

Katherine St Asaph: Did we need another country "Marvin's Room"? In every country review I keep harping on artists telling the same generic story addressed to the same imaginary sorority girl, but here's a lyric and addressee that are certainly not generic or imaginary, and I'm not sure what to think. If Sam Hunt's byline didn't scare off the traditionalists, the first vocoded note is almost deliberately scheduled to shoo away the rest (none of the subsequent vocal is so blatant), leaving a smaller audience of fans and an explicit audience of one specific, named girl. There's something inescapably creepy -- voyeuristically creepy for the listener, manipulatively creepy for the artist -- about this, this couple chords and a tirade. Most of his target demographic will hear this as romantic, but for those unfortunate enough to have been stalked, the details are so familiar as to be textbook: presenting her with his un-rebuttable imagination of her life, in which she stages the Everytime video every time she wants to cry, in which there's nowhere else in Georgia she can buy peaches, in which everything reminds her of him, or at least does now; reminding her of her debt while holding Montevallo money over her head; apologizing for boosting her profile while writing her name into a huge triumphant chorus; pondering "whether it's OK to lie" while careful to mention none of the indiscretions that got him there -- merely their consequences, which now seem unreasonable. Better to address this as fiction, then -- like most "autobiographical" songs by celebrities, somewhere between songwriting exercise and publicity stunt, because you don't cross over into pop and stay without some dating drama. What's left is slapdash: accurate-sounding candor spewed over a couple identikit country choruses, each piece well-crafted but only assemblable by a real-life happy ending. Which is the point, and the problem. [5]

Megan Harrington: Too much of my instant dislike of "Drinkin' Too Much" hinged on the preposterous way Sam Hunt apologized for (more or less) doxing his then ex-girlfriend, now fiancé Hannah Lee Fowler on his debut album Montevallo, only to turn around and close the song by singing her name. In case there were any straggler fans out there who hadn't quite put her identity together, I guess. It was incongruous in a way that grated on me until I realized that it was the perfect synecdoche for the song, one that indulges overwrought production as 40 as it was country and several different singing styles, including plain old talking. It's right there in the way he names her his first fan and then cheats on her, the way he dismisses her sisters as "matchmakers" but hopes her dad still prays for him. Real life is messy and filled with leaps forward followed by half-steps back, relationships are chaotic and confusing, and Hunt captures all of it, ending hopefully with a (sort of, he hopes) romantic pledge to win her back. And it (sort of, I think) worked? [7]

Crystal Leww: The first time I heard "Drinkin' Too Much," I did not like it. I did not like the 40-esque production, the sad sap lyrics, the way that Hunt called out his ex-girlfriend. Then I listened to the 8pm version, stripped of the production flourishes, and figured that it was just the production that was bugging me. The lyrics were sad, but they were so specific: peaches in Pelham, a hotel room in Arizona, and that devastating, heartbreaking "hope your dad still prays for me," a reminder that breakups are the deaths of families, too. I've never liked the comparisons to Drake -- Drake is someone who has clearly never been in an adult relationship with a real woman rather than a built-up image of a woman, but Montevallo and "Drinkin' Too Much" feel like they're about real adults who have genuinely loved each other and created lives together. I still like the 8pm version more, but I've come around on the full version. It's dramatic, but I appreciate the attempt to appeal to a broader audience, and it highlights that Hunt's lyricism shines through anything, even snaps and strings. [7]

Josh Langhoff: A prof used to tell us, "People who are sorry weep bitter tears." I don't buy Sam Hunt's sorrow. Nor do I buy that this song has a melody or a beat, that it has any connection to country or R&B, that this is the same Sam Hunt who did "House Party," or that picking peaches is anything but the pits. More schnapps! [3]

Katie Gill: Look, I'm sorry, I can't hate this. With the exception of that "I hope your dad still prays for me" bit, the verses are awful, not singing but the Sam Hunt Spoken Word Poetry Hour. They swing between endearingly hokey and the awful Nice Guy sort of patronizing that was the entirety of "Take Your Time." But the chorus is AMAZING. It's so silky and smooth, perfectly mixed, and Hunt shows that he has a halfway decent R&B(ish) voice. But the two never really meet. The transition between verse and chorus is awkward every time, as the buttery-smooth chorus butts up against the not very smooth speaking voice of Sam Hunt. [6]

Joshua Copperman: I keep singing this title to the tune of Twenty One Pilots' "Ride", attempting to remember what little melody this song has ("I've been drinking too much, help me..."). Until the bridge -- which would make a better chorus -- nothing is worth remembering: not the strings, not the drum machine, and especially not the single strum of guitar to signify that it's still country. What made "Marvin's Room" work was the honesty and subtextual self-loathing that Drake would spend the rest of his career distilling. This seems less stream-of-consciousness and more trying to write stream-of-consciousness, which rarely works as well and results in lines like "I wish you'd let me pay off your student loans." The dramatic piano ending makes clear Sam Hunt's lack of shame in copying Aubrey, but that just makes him sound even less authentic, even though the backstory contains more than enough drama for something genuine. [3]

Edward Okulicz: The first time I misheard the line as as "I'm sorry for making the album Montevallo," but this sketch wouldn't be a repudiation even if he were sorry for that. And it's really not that much more than a series of lyrical fragments and a chorus, but I find myself nodding along at some parts, and being frustrated at the lack of detail in others, and going to the "Personal life" details of his Wikipedia article to see the resolution. So that means it's fairly compelling for its limitations. [7]

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[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Knowledge of Causes, and Secret Motion of Things

Oh Donnie.

It’s been well-established that this show loves a farce. And this one is fantastic. We’ve got Sarah and Alison both being the same person in the same place at the same time. We’ve got Felix carrying an unconscious Vic all over the place. We’ve got Angie wearing a nametag that says “Pat” almost literally one step behind them the entire time. There’s even that explosive final scene. But the farce doesn’t start until about halfway through. First, we’ve got some dramatics to attend to. To that end, we need to drop in on Cosima and Delphine and that other shoe that was waiting to drop. It didn’t take long for Cosima to discover that the source of the stem cells they used for her treatment was Kira. The argument that follows that discovery is one of the show’s signature scenes. Delphine knows that this is what’s necessary for Cosima’s treatment. The only problem is, Delphine has a habit of unilaterally making decisions on other people’s behalf. Cosima had a right to know every detail of her treatment, both as the subject and as the scientist. Delphine is wrong in her methods, but she’s right that this is the only option right now. And Cosima knows that. That grey area is what makes that scene work so well. (Well, one of the things.) Cosima is right in the argument, but it’s also one she can’t win because yeah, she needs the treatment and this is the only way to get it. It’s a no-win situation for everyone involved. The other thing that makes this work so well is, as always, the performances. Tat is amazing as always; she always manages to convey so well in these scenes with Cosima that Cosima is a person who is just all heart. She feels things hard, and that makes the good things good and the bad things almost unbearable. I will likely (definitely) get into Evelyne Brochu’s performance as Delphine (there’s a lot to unpack there), but I just want to make special mention of her line reading in this exchange: "You knew it was Kira's." "But only after I realized that it was working!" She’s so good, guys.

Also in the dramatics portion of the episode is S facing down with Leekie for information. Siobhan in this scene is fully on enemy ground, which is not her preferred method of operating. She’d rather bring people onto her turf, as she does later in the episode, bringing Rachel Duncan into her house. But despite the fact that she’s super out of her element (she even looks out of place in her earthy tones amid all of the sterile monochrome), she still takes charge. For most of that scene, Siobhan has the upper hand. Leekie invites her to sit. She does not. He does, giving her the literal higher ground. But then, near the end of the scene, there’s a shift. Leekie throws something she wasn’t expecting at her. S sits, and the music cue changes from what it had been up to that point, the music of Siobhan Fucking Sadler being in charge, to what I’m pretty sure is the DYAD theme. It’s at least a bit of score that we frequently hear there. S still gets what she wants out of that encounter, but those subtle shifts remind us that although she’s very good at this game, so is everyone else playing it.

Lab Notes:

"And then I killed her." Jesus Christ, Alison.

I’m really disappointed in Cal that he doesn’t have his webcam covered. He worked in tech; he should know.

"I'm not that kind of girl." "Yes you are."

Leekie’s artificial womb project is so fucking creepy for so many reasons. He and Henrick really are birds of a feather. They’d do away with women all together if they could just figure out how to do reproduction without them.

"I like pottery." Bless you, Paul, for that wonderful moment.

"Well. This is a thing." Marion Bowles is very powerful and professional, but I am neither of those things, and that is the exact same thing I say when faced with Situations.

"I've been working on something for the past few days, and I think I might have the answer for us." "Okay." "Reykjavik." "What was the question?"

"Who's got people in Iceland?"

"Alison's little bout of criminal negligence" is an understated bit of phrasing that makes it sound like she owns a badly behaved rabbit, so to speak.

"Oh, he's being Alison." "That's right." "And I'm being Alison being Donnie?" Even Sarah’s got a breaking point of keeping things straight.

Okay, that shot of Sarah and Alison opposite the mirror is just the effects team showing off, right?