#cus it was around her release that I got completely obsessed

[the-ghost-of-a-cyber-princess]

omg wake up its cyber diva 8th anniversary outside

[bimbosupreme]

mephistopheles love post

the equivalent of a mental breakdown tangent is all going under a read more

yes believe it or not that freaky ass literally not even human clown in fgo gets love, and love from who? me and like 3 other people

first off

ok and with that out of the way,

i’m not even familiar with their lore. Reason why i stopped caring about the lore behind faust and mephistopheles is that an interlude happens that shows that mephistopheles is just some homunculi made by some mage nobody named faust. and even then the interlude doesn’t talk about the lore behind the novel, its just you helping mephy kill faust

that being said though i would hope the developers expand on their origins more and potentially even release a “true” mephistopheles (a girl can dream)

So, they’re not even the real deal demon known as Mephistopheles in the first place, and i can hear u going “well that’s lame” and like, no, we just need to redirect our feelings from appreciating a demon to appreciating a homunculi who has a weird characterization in the fate universe

Design tangent:

Fgo was actually my first gacha, and so when I came across this servant I kinda instantly fell in love with their design, I love the colors used in their final ascension and overall appearance. The hat that has horns but they're not quite horns, theyre these weird colorful pointy twisty things, the large garish butterfly ornament on their chest (which isnt ugly at all and somehow works so well with their everything on them) is cool, the tights are so cool to look at, i mean look -- a checkered pattern with golden lining on the shorts portion, the tits out look like yes we get it youre insane, the gloves??? purple and also cool, plus theyve got this gradient thing going on? and the fingers have this line going through them, thats so cool. actually the only other servant that comes close to this in terms of “out there” colorful designs is probably final ascension kama and qsh ( i love them both). Also, mephy has this scissor weapon?? thats so cool lol i dont see any other servant wielding giant scissors (for the love of god give mephy an animation update i need to see them use the scissors while doing flips) and they also have this bomb obsession going on? cant relate, but the bombs designs are so so cool i mean its a fucking centipede -- no idea if centipedes are a thing in the original faust but thats something Ill have to look up at some point. ALSO mephy is wearing heels oh my god anytime people wear heels is an automatic win. No clue whats going on with the hair but its kinda cute (dont question me on that) and it has curls and the hair colors are cool i mean its like a lavender thing with darker purple highlights? i love colorful things and i love people with wacky personalities so. Oh my god their tail how could i forget that its so cute and dumb i almost forgot it was there, like what is that even a whip? i dont.. but its got these little purple tips to them that are kinda cute/cool but more cool because tails are fucking up there alongside heels in terms of cool stuff on characters. and of course their fluffly cape -- again no idea what the designers were going for i mean look its a mess of a design i have no fucking idea what any of it means and i hope they explain it someday because that hair and the butterfly and the tail and the hat and the fluffy garb and a bomb obsession?? and this got the go ahead - yeah lets add that to the game like what

ALSO LETS TALK ABOUT THEIR EYES

appreciate these with me for a second

god.

oh and the blue lipstick and face paint god thats a cool design ugh

they can be normal too or at least as normal as possible i mean they even trimmed their eyebrow here lol but you can see the not so well hidden insanity/goofiness peaking through with the inside of the suit at the bottom being highlighter purple and a green shirt with gold accents underneath the black coat at the front <3, fuckin hate that hairstyle tho bro we gotta get that middle part hairstyle outta hereeeee--

TAKE A DETOUR AND LOOK AT THIS LINK THOUGH THIS IS THE MOST NORMAL AND BEST IVE SEEN THEM IN FANART. THE POTENTIAL IS THERE. WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS AND THEY LOOK GREAT ITS POSSIBLE. I HAVE TEARS STREAMING DOWN MY FACE FROM THAT DRAWING.

anyways this is me going off all about why i like their design! but we haven’t even touched the nitty gritty of it all. their personality! what personality you may ask? havent they always been some weirdo laughing a lot and saying dumb shit all the time? well yes and no

Characterization:

True to their dumb little clown design mephy also acts like one.

Some servants bond 1 lines are like “fuck off” and some actually talk to you, nah this bastard mephistopheles’ just laughing. and for the second bond line it seems to imply theyre fuckin with you more (showing up and dissapearing and saying ‘afterimage’) so thats nice that theyre actually making some effort to mess with you in a way? some servants take a long time to actually interact with you so this shows theyre not afraid of interacting with you and thats just at bond 2. and of course the third bond line implies they were probably trying to betray you, its stated in more than 1 place that mephistopheles (actually isnt this a caster class thing?) will betray you or attempt to do so. So the third bond line seems to imply that their attempts have been stopped by you and that’s what they say after some failed attempts. So after stopping this freak from doing some shit their next bond line is actually doing a confession! a jester being honest who couldve seen that one coming but theyre 100% not lying, they really arent a demon but a homunculi made by faust

speaking of faust we’re going to backtrack a little into their interlude that i brought up at the start of this post, its one of those dream interludes and it starts with mephy asking you to help him plant bombs for their eventual reuinion/showdown with faust -- in the meantime faust keeps sending golems in an attempt to kill both you and mephy

When you track faust down, it’s shown that faust was your typical mage, inhumane and uncaring. It’s also pointed out that this faust killed innocents, but this typical mage behavior is boring to mephy, and they say that boring typical behavior is why they wanted to kill them

 so i really cant blame mephistopheles for being the way they are, being raised by this type of guy, even if mephy was always messed up and wacky from the beginning its no reason for faust to attempt to kill him.

Mephistopheles also shows up in salem, cu alter’s interlude, and of course the knk crossover event, and some other things im most likely forgetting but those 3 are ones that i find notable

anytime they show up theyre actually helpful, in salem mephy points out that the nature of the being responsible for the salem epic of remnant is something alien rather than a typical foreign god, mephy also tells you that time is also being sped up and in their weird way they try to cheer you up by spouting some nonsense at the beginning (guda needed some kind of distraction from the grim events that had just transpired at that point in the story), i cant quite remember what mephy did in the knk event but they were a part of your group and were helpful the whole time, actually @/zeravmeta does an amazing analysis of their role in the knk event as well as some extra character analysis here

mephistopheles is kinda cryptic in a weird way though,

like overall i mean theyre a jester homunculi in appearance so yeah its to be expected but come on i love morally gray characters, despite their supposed betrayal hints scattered around here and there

they have this one line that always gets to me

and this line is said with a completely serious face too

the rare serious mephistopheles face! its kinda grim to see that line, no laughs, no nothing, their voice is kinda serious and monotone too. of course this could be just to get you to lower your guard but its still kinda out there that they have this rarely used portrait and that line, so i like to take it as being said to you when youre by yourself and with sincerity

and at least sei (with her wacky outfit and all lol) seems to get along with mephy and thinks theyre nice woohoo

so at the end of the day you have this guy that laughs a lot and gives mixed signals

and they fuck with you

and will most likely try to kill you more than once but hey thats just another tuesday at chaldea

Before I finish last thing I want to point out is this snippet from the fgo source material book which provides more information on servants, and this specific translated bit under mephistopheles

at the core of it all this homunculi....can be your friend! you just need to not go into despair i guess

of course this entire post is an overanalysis into an underwritten character, quarantine + all online college classes have done this to me, i have a douman icon what did you expect

OH...BEFORE I REALLY SIGN OFF AND FINISH THE POST HEY CLOWN LOVERS CHECK OUT THESE FANARTS AND FANARTISTS...

THE FIRST ONE IS HASENDOW YES THE DOUMAN DESIGNER... <3

i cant believe they drew mephy

twice !

and for those of you on twitter check out @cuz_pb and @L0VEYAMA003

[mindofharry]

Omg ok so w Harry reading a bedtime story for calm releasing tm 🥺🥺🥺 a blurb where the reader has the baby and he/she is crying because they want Harry while he’s stuck at the studio (he usually sings them to sleep or cuddles w him or her before bed but he can’t cus he’s at the studio or something) and so the reader opens calm and puts on the app of Harry reading the bed time story and he/she falls asleep and she records a snippet and sends it to him🥺🥺🥺

omg pls 🥺🥺🥺 thats so soft!

harry was in the studio all the time because he wanted to get the album done and dusted - so he could spend more time with the fam before tour started! he always made time for them, but he wasn’t home as much as he used to be. and bub was not happy about that. bubba was confused at first - he was used to not seeing harry for days, but because harry been off for so long it was all a bit weird.

his routine was all messed up! harry and y/n would using put him to sleep, harry on one side with a book and you on the other cuddle your bubba. he’s a very clingy baby - just like his dad, so he liked having both his parents around before he fell asleep. so when it was y/n reading to him he was upset - very upset. he loved his mama so much, but it just wasn’t the same! and y/n could understand.

one trait that the bubba got from harry was the sassiness or cheekiness - one that y/n most definitely hates. sometimes it’s funny, other times like now, when it’s 11:30 at night and your 4 year old is running around crying and sassing you like a 16 years - is when it get frustrating. “you don’t sound like dada.” “i don’t want you to read. your voice is not dada” no and you’re not like dada seemed to be his favourite words.

so when y/n finally had enough of the fight, she picked her bubba up and brought him to her room. she layed him down on his dadas side and placed harry’s special blanket over him. “now close your eyes, baby” y/n said kissing his forehead before playing the calm app. harry had released this about two years ago - but bubba didn’t completely understand it back then, just laughed a bit and carried on! now he was obsessed it.

the bubba smiled slowly drifting off to sleep within 5 mins. y/n giggled to herself opening up instagram with harry still talking in the back ground - she filmed her sleeping son and captioned the story “only wanted to fall asleep if dada read him a story - we had to compromise!”

[straightfacedstrangeness]

Not that anyone asked (but seriously I’d LOVE for someone to talk to me about PokeSpe (just no spoilers past vol 13)) but since I made an offhand remark about my Top 5 favorite characters, it occurred to me that I actually DO have approximately 5 top favorite characters, and I’m procrastinating on work, so I’m gonna ramble

**just in case, note that a lot of this will revolve around my childhood experience with gender in a “I’m AFAB (and present-day me still identifies as a cis girl) but I don’t fit in with what media is telling me girls are like” way, a brief childhood feeling of homophobia, and probably general TMI about my opinions and emotions throughout my life, haha

1. Yellow

Okay, so, I was a little kid when Pokemon Adventures started coming out in English, back when manga was released as single-issue monthly comic books instead of complete volumes.  So I was rereading the same chapters over and over while anxiously awaiting the rest of the story (and wound up missing a bunch of issues anyway)

I enjoyed the RGB arc, I thought it was fun, but I didn’t LOVE the series until Yellow showed up.  At that age my ideal crush was “a cute boy my age who would be nice to me” and Yellow was presented to the reader as a cute boy my age who was sweet and kind and gentle, but also good in a fight, as all shounen protags must be.  Extra bonus points because they had just a few physically weak Pokémon and tried to fight battles in a way that minimized damage to their own and the opponent’s Pokémon, which meant they fought in a particularly smart and clever way.  And I was considered “smart” for being good at school, so being a SMART cute “boy” my age who would be nice to me, Yellow was PERFECT.  I mean, I loved the arc in general because of the clever battles, and the mystery of what had happened to Red, why these people were after Pikachu, why Yellow was so secretive about themself and their mission, etc was really engaging.  But also I adored Yellow as a character and partly in a “I wonder if ‘he’ would like me??” kind of way X’D  So to my tiny child self who didn’t even know it was possible to like-like someone of the same gender (because I hadn’t read Cardcaptor Sakura yet XD ), the reveal that Yellow was a “girl” was devastating—I had to cross out floating hearts on at least one drawing of us holding hands (scandalous!) and, while kind of stunned and shaken for a while, decided that what I’d felt all along was a deep, intense desire to be friends X’D (which probably wasn’t too far from the truth since I was pre-puberty and later turned out to be asexual)

(Also note that I never got the RGB issue that had the chapter where Red helps a little ‘girl’ capture a Rattata—later proven to be Yellow’s backstory—so the gender reveal really came out of nowhere for me.)

But anyways, I still love Yellow as a character for all the above reasons, without the crush aspects because I’m way older than them now.

Also when I reread the series ten years ago, I finally realized “wait, aside from surprising the reader, there’s no real plot reason for Yellow to pretend to be a ‘boy’ except that Green told ‘her’ to—so why did ‘she’ do it?”...and because at that time I didn’t even know that nonbinary genders existed, I decided it was cus they had low self-esteem and pretending to be a different person gave them courage (the same reading I had for Mulan at the time).  These days I’m more inclined to “yeah, I think Yellow’s nonbinary,” but that other interpretation was deeply relatable to me and only made me love Yellow even more.

2. Bill

Bill’s definitely a character I’ve grown to love more as an adult, since I’ve gone from seeing myself as “a protagonist doing cool things” to “a side character just living their life who hopefully gets to do something once in a while.”  But as a kid and now, I like him mostly for the slapstick and goofy expressions and the (early chapters Viz translations) outrageous accent  X’D  My brain desperately craves endorphins and the best way to get em is through a good laugh.

But also, I liked that he was introduced as a goofy character-of-the-week who got into ridiculous trouble and had to be rescued, but then kept being brought back, was slowly built up to be the “smart sidekick who explains things,” and eventually got to the point where he was participating in big battles (the Yellow finale on Cerise Island).  I rambled about this in the tags of another post, but I liked that he was a character who was “weak” without being “useless.”  As a kid who was good at school, I was obsessed with being good at things and had developed a black-and-white view of the world where either you were “strong/smart” or “weak/stupid” to the point that failing or just being not-so-good at anything was devastating (it still kind of is), because that meant I was actually “weak/stupid” when I was supposed to be “strong/smart.”  So it was kind of awesome that this guy who kept getting into trouble and having to be rescued—and didn’t even want to BE part of the final battle—managed to hold his own and get through it and help out instead of being a burden that dragged everyone down.  Seriously, he used a MAGIKARP effectively—the Pokémon everyone makes fun of for being “useless” and he used its one attack to save his life!

(Bonus points for all this happening in contrast to my devastating childhood experience of stanning The One Girl Character in every popular shounen series, waiting desperately for her to get to do something in battle, and then her one spotlight episode revolved around her struggling because she was so weak...not only was that actually happening to a boy for once, it was actually happening in a more satisfying/empowering way :’D )

3. Gold

I have extremely specific tastes when it comes to “the dumb shounen/action movie protag,” because as a kid I hated it when the main character was “dumb” because I was “smart” (re: good at school) and people who were “dumb” shouldn’t deserve to be the main character and have all the cool powers and save the world and stuff.  As an adult, I hate it when male characters are dumb and/or jerks but it’s treated as fine or even sexy(??) and the other characters fawn over them, and I generally still kind of hate it when characters who are dumb and/or jerks get the big important role when there’s a female character RIGHT THERE who’s more competent (and OF COURSE she has to wind up falling in love with him)

But anyway, I have extremely specific tastes, and Gold is it  X’D  He’s the perfect combination of “unshakably confident in his own stupid/egotistic views” and “treated as annoying and/or comic relief by the rest of the cast” with a bonus dash of actually being really clever in battle (so my inner child goes “Ah yes, technically, he is ’smart,’ and therefore...worthwhile“)  Making me laugh while also impressing me is like the key to my heart.

4. Crystal

I’m too lazy to look it up, but when Viz was publishing Pokemon Adventures as monthly comics, they must have switched to publishing it as trade paperbacks only and/or had a huge gap between the end of Yellow and the start of GSC, because for YEARS I’d thought Yellow was the end of the series and was shocked the first time I saw later volumes.  (My dad was buying us the monthly issues at the local comic store, and either they wouldn’t have ordered the trade paperbacks or he wouldn’t have thought to check those shelves.)

Anyway, that’s a long lead-in to the statement of “Crystal would automatically be my #1 or #2 if I’d read her arc as a kid.”  She’s a girl, she wears pants, she’s EXTREMELY smart (genius-level “book-smarts” about every Pokémon’s behaviors and weaknesses PLUS being clever in a battle), was tough as nails (she KICKED her Pokéballs!!), had no interest in romance or her appearance, AND had a short arc about losing her confidence and training herself back up to full power.  I would have KILLED for a character like that when I was a little girl being told that “girls don’t like action shows like Dragon Ball Z” (but I was a girl and I did???) and that girls were supposed to be pretty and obsessed with fashion and dating, and that girls were never the main character of action series, just side characters who either did nothing or got one chance to do something and were pathetically weak (see above, and/or Sakura’s fight against Ino (Naruto), those couple filler eps where Téa/Anzu played Duel Monsters (Yu-Gi-Oh), Videl getting pummeled by Spopovich (DBZ), etc).

So anyway, she’s awesome, she’s exactly the type of character I would’ve loved as a kid.  The only reason she’s behind Gold here is because at my age, “makes me laugh” > “the kind of main character I used to wish I could be”

5. Green (the girl trainer...I’m just too loyal to the Viz version to call her “Blue”...)

I’m trying not to rehash the same “I’m a girl but none of the girls in my shows/comics are like me!” childhood woes over and over, haha, but as much as I always enjoyed Green for being extremely clever and outsmarting the boys and being funny when she did so, she always lost points with me for being “pretty” and flirting to get her way, because that put her in the box of “girls are supposed to be pretty and desired by boys and obsessed with their appearance and romance” that was so foreign and disheartening to me as a kid.

But her staredown with Ho-oh at the end of the GSC arc TOTALLY got me.  As a sad adult with anxiety, watching characters who are absolutely terrified overcome their fear, watching characters who are completely beaten down struggle back to their feet and keep fighting, is like my ultimate power fantasy.  That sequence genuinely had me in tears.

Also her bond with Silver is super precious, especially since that’s like the first time in the series we’ve seen her be genuinely emotional and vulnerable with someone instead of teasing or manipulating them.

Honorable mention: Sapphire

I haven’t gotten up to R/S in my reread yet, and I only read that arc once over like a weekend ten years ago, but I’m pretty sure she’s gonna be a Top Fave cus again there’s that “I'm not like other girls!” childhood feel  (last time I’m saying it, I promise)

It’s a story arc where one protag wants to fight the gyms and the other protag wants to win the beauty contests, but the one who wants to fight the gyms is the girl!!  And she’s the typical “dumb but extremely good at fighting” shounen protag but she’s the girl!!  She’s feral and illiterate and a total tomboy and wins all her fights and she’s a GIRL!!!!

--

Anyway, those are my kids and my dude and my probably way-too-personal reasons why.  If you wanna reblog, reply, or send an ask about your own faves...please

[princeleyjeans]

Personal trikey plot headcanon:

Call me old fashioned or just a sucker for a slow, awkwardly dysfunctional descent into romance, but when it comes to my ideas of a semi realistic/workable ending for Mike and Trevor blows through like an icy wind on a warm summer afternoon, like you’ve walked around Costco and hit the fridge storage room, the customer one, you’re relieved to not be hot yet kinda upset at how opposite it is to the point you’ll hop around the doorway just to balance yourself out. That’s the premise of my headcanon.  2015 starts like any other at the De Santa household, brief morning arguments about Tracey’s life choices and her on/off flings with the college professors of all her classes, yes, ALL OF THEM, while she’s not flirting it up with Franklin since his wealth means he can chill at home with Chop and Lamar and the last thing he wants is to listen to L bitch all day about why he ain’t a 3 bit gangster yet so Frank hangs at their place to sit quietly by the pool next to his future daddy in law and not have to destroy his ears with music to drown out his besties moaning (All that time at the De Santa’s means he gets to know everybody and develop a crush on Tracey which eventually leads to babies and public screaming matches because she cannot live without drama or dick) .  The money following the union depository heist (If we assume the timeline of the final few missions rounded off around mid to late 2014) has come through after being washed via Lester’s numerous amount of fronts (Usually it wouldn’t take more than maybe a week, three tops, but the millions they pulled obviously required extra people, extra roads to travel, extra everything) and the family are in the green once again, however, the lack of worry over money gives everyone time to reflect, to make important changes in themselves and their lifestyles, well, some of them, not all.  As you can guess, the thrill of the chase being gone brings back Michael’s...issue, if you catch the drift and the deeper psychological reasons as to why create tension, release topics of conversation he never wanted to have ever again or prod using the longest of fucking sticks known to mankind.  If it isn’t sex, it’s the lack of general affection between him and Amanda being incredibly evident, painfully so, to the point they might as well be brother and sister because no married couple hug like they do, no happy person in a semi working relationship wakes up eager to pull the covers and see just the indent of their partner (Unless you’re one of the rare types who have S/O’s and just like bed space in the morning). Anyway, the talk finally bubbles to the surface, that now is the best time to divorce as the kids are grown up and they have money again and everything is sorta settled already, it’s just packing their bags and heading out, which is how the tears start cus neither of them wanna push the button, neither wanna make it official or make that call you dread while knowing it’s the least painful option for everyone, even those you ain’t met yet.  Michael gets himself a lil Vespucci condo (You know the ones with the cute bridge over the water), Amanda is given the house in the settlement and later sells it because she can’t deal with the memories and just moves into the hills (She buys one of the homes similar to Martin Madrazo’s but still close to the city), taking Tracey because no way is she living with Franklin just yet, and Jim sorta hovers, couch hopping because he’s having a rough time accepting his parents have broken up and work. He eventually bunks at Lamars and they become platonic love bros.  Come September, Mike starts giving into the questions plaguing his sexuality and ditches the gentlemen club for Leather-Face’s (Popular gay bar based around leather clothing and a really poor choice of name given to it by the owners brother who loved horror movies and ironically died when a Pomeranian bit his leg and it got infected, leading to septic shock and heart explosion), seeing if his lack of ability to be fully intimate towards women stems from an underlying homosexuality which turns out to be less than helpful as despite his new love of boppy music and sparkly fishnet tops, the touch of a man that isn’t Trevor proves to be just as lacking, just as lonely as that of a woman, given a few exceptions (He can get a lil hard to nude mags but it’s sorta a fluctuating mood spectrum) which tend to be just even more confusing and gets him in trouble with anybody interested in him.    Eventually, everything just comes to a semi climax when, with help from friends, Michael gives into his overall infatuations and comes out to Trevor, completely, asking for a date or “Hang out, but it can go ANYWHERE”, Trevs usual for just about anyone he meets ‘Insert cheap laugh here’. and gets understandably told to go fuck himself because why now and after all the pain he’s caused and blah blah Trevor’s hurt, this is opening wounds, big pity party for Mr Philips.  It takes a good deal of arguing and crying to convince his buddy to trust him but after....a month? two perhaps, Trevor eases up and they have their first terrible attempt at romance in the form of a movie at the condo and some fancy ass wine too good for both their tastes, but it leads to a cute, disgusting, hella gay half smooch and some giggles, plus some deep convo that opens M up to a chance at second base but Trevor teases him with the whole “Going easy on you, since it’s your first time” and heads home, forcing M to scream into his pillow and call Amanda cus they besties now.  Overall the headcanon is a slow progression into Mike realizing he’s somewhere on the mostly Aromantic/asexual spectrum with the exception of those he’s in love/obsessed with (Remember when Amanda said he got big balls when Brad tried to get her, it was mostly infatuation, Alpha dogging it) and being in love with Trevor, getting the life he tried to have before but properly this time, accepting himself and being sorta better but not really but also kinda.  Yes I know “MICHAEL WOULD NEVER----” Really don’t care, Honey, my headcanon, don’t like it, the doors to your...’Looks around’---WHERE IS THE FUCKING DOOR! 

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: 2017: Favorite 50 Music Releases

Do we still move in 2017? In a year when our AI systems were becoming citizens and shut down for inventing new languages, when our social media interactions were weaponized with unprecedented precision by political campaigns, when our very DNA could be encoded with malicious software, what does movement even look like in such an information-rich world? A string of data waiting to be computed? If an average of 68 Facebook “likes” is all it takes to predict skin color with 95% accuracy, then it’s not hard to imagine a future when our movements find their significance not in expressing our desires, but in being algorithmically expressed. But how much data do we create when we cry? What does data look like when we are fake laughing? The musical movements of 2017 offered both a glimpse into our mental health and possible ways to reconcile our technopolitical anxieties with our overbearing, untenable individualism. Our favorites this year didn’t offer solutions to our waking nightmares — why should they? — but they helped remind us that, while life is fragile (Ryuichi Sakamoto) and death is real (Mount Eerie), recovery is still possible (Björk). Amidst our fantasiis (MHYSA), dreams (Twin Peaks), and distorted reflections (Bell Witch), even our electronic music felt like ethereal gestures toward renewal, whether it was through reflexive neo-songs (Klein), a dance in the smoke (Actress), or an effervescent faith (Yves Tumor). And our movements were many. For every articulation of bodily devotion (Perfume Genius), ruthless loyalty (Kendrick Lamar), and tender obsession (Lorde), there was a subversion of spacetime (Toiret Status), revelatory Euclidean algorithms (Konrad Sprenger), and circuitous experimentalism (Playboi Carti). For every instance of emotional nourishment (Charli XCX) and critique of power structures (Richard Dawson), there was a desire to build community “in the face of absolute fragmentation” (Club Chai Vol. 1) and to try “new forms of living in a deteriorating world” (Lawrence English). We left 2016 already bruised and exhausted, and while 2017’s shitshow can’t be completely undone, we are not beyond repair. It’s easy to question our obsession with music, especially when our audio-editing tools find parallels in a gene-editing tool like CRISPR, when the noise of our time could be silenced in a flash by Minecraft scammers, when our hybrid musics coincide with hybrid wars and whatever the fuck these are. But this year’s sounds continued to expose and counter our artifices and mythologies in compelling ways, and we should count ourselves lucky that there was even a semblance of healing in both the ambience and the losses of 2017. Our movements, especially in this small corner of the internet, remain vital — necessary, even. What will our movements look like in 2018? Hopefully something a little better than this. –Mr P --- 50 Perfume Genius No Shape [Matador] [WATCH · READ] In the music video for “Slip Away,” our introduction to the fourth Perfume Genius album, Mike Hadreas ran through a slideshow of soft-focus fantasies, away from a cast of hapless villains and toward an implied happy ending. Like a dream, the detail seemed both blurred and crudely exaggerated; the antagonists’ faces painted in caricature, overcome by Hadreas dashing through the exploding set with his fairytale bride. Most of all, for an artist who dealt nothing but shade on 2014’s comeback “Queen” — all vicious contours and slicked-back hair, lips frozen in a permanent sneer at American heteronormativity — “Slip Away” presented a palette that was warm, dynamic, and deliriously playful. From start to finish, the intersections of love and death that played out across the record (see: auto-erotic asphyxiation tribute “Die 4 You”) never felt cheapened by the gauzy nightdress they came swaddled in, but elevated by its vaudeville sexuality. Even the posthumanist tropes that swirled through the album were rendered with joy; at the death, No Shape swooned at the spirit’s liberation as readily as it lamented the body’s failure. –Matthew Neale --- 49 Sun Araw THE SADDLE OF THE INCREATE [Sun Ark/Drag City] [WATCH · LISTEN · READ] Strike the stage. Think of the desert as a set, an empty set, one in waiting. Potential, not unrest. Perhaps an inclination. Look around, it’s barren and stable, tough to soil. (A grain of sand ain’t nothin’). Here it is: total poiesis (There’s a snake’s scale on that bird’s tail); the verbal rendering of all forms present by no trick greater than insistence (Ain’t that a sight). The presentation of a gift: a hidden giver, a lost recipient (…ain’t nothin’). Nowhere to go, cannot go beyond all that is present unless presented (There is a chute). It’s a classic place, an old joke, plain enough. A cowboy story, “as futuristic as possible.” Dehydration, waiting for a sign. It’s a trip, an experience, a losing time. “IT’S MORNING. HARNESS IN. STRAP UP. RIDE ON OUT BRAVE INTO TODAY.” My tongue is a chair, and I like that. –Ben Levinson --- 48 Tara Jane O’Neil Tara Jane O’Neil [Gnomonsong] [LISTEN] In the summer, the light warms and deepens everything natural. Summer sunlight makes shimmering greens seem deeper until the end of August, but come December, even at high noon, the empty branches look washed out; the air looks washed out. In 11 gentle songs, on a self-titled album, Tara Jane O’Neil tucked that deep, warm summer light into her pocket. In fits and starts on tracks like “Flutter,” “Kelley,” and “Blow,” she raised it slowly over the horizon. “The path forward is well lit,” she sang on “Metta,” and even on the harshest winter days, it is, thanks to her druidic calm. The path unfolds like a clean line traced by the afternoon across a bedroom floor. Follow it to keep inside its warmth. Look up sometimes, but never too directly or for too long without those heavy-duty and professionally inspected eclipse glasses. This album was inviting and elusive. It pulled us in close but never let us forget how fragile our little human retinas are. And then it dipped out of sight. –Taylor Peters --- 47 Nmesh Pharma [Orange Milk] [WATCH · LISTEN · READ] Nmesh’s plunderphonic monolith Pharma was many things: a chemical cocktail for a future nightlife, a hallucinogenic trip through the dark fractures of 2017 and its nostalgic histories, a waking nightmare catalyzed by vaporized pop cultural memories. Pharma went beyond simulation, toward the tangible archaeological rescue of base cultural artifacts, offering a digital rendering of the remnants of human primitivity that felt especially appropriate in this historical moment. The melodic duality of “White Lodge Simulation,” the psychedelic brutality of “Mall Full of Drugs,” and the grotesque fantasy of “Acid Baby” were all the stuff of cosmic horror, but channeled through aggressive grooves and hooks that can only charm and intoxicate. Through Pharma’s many tributaries, Nmesh took on a whole society’s obsession with the artificial and gleefully liberated us. –Colin Fitzgerald --- 46 Colleen A flame my love, a frequency [Thrill Jockey] [LISTEN · READ] The events surrounding the creation of Colleen’s seventh studio album, A flame my love, a frequency, were as heavy as it gets. Colleen’s real name is Cécile Schott, and she is from France. She happened to be in Paris, getting a viola bow repaired the night of the 2015 terrorist attacks. For weeks after, as the songs started coming, the looming specter of death wouldn’t leave her mind. Yet, for how overwhelmed she felt, the album she created was full of light and hope. The viola de gamba that created the backbone of her 2015 comeback album Captain of None was replaced here by a focus on the Critter and Guitari Pocket Piano and Septavox synthesizer, as processed by a Moog delay pedal. The minimal compositions were recorded live, without vocal overdubs, fostering a sense of personal immediacy amid the waves of synthetic sound. A flame my love, a frequency remains an album of essential contrasts. –Alan Ranta --- 45 Bell Witch Mirror Reaper [Profound Lore] [LISTEN · READ] “Mirrors are the doors through which Death comes and goes. Look at yourself in a mirror all your life and you’ll see Death at work like bees in a hive of glass.” Jean Cocteau’s 1950 cinematic adaptation of the Orpheus myth has its hero journey through mirrors to the underworld in a vain attempt to save his beloved Eurydice. Mirror Reaper, Bell Witch’s somnambulant third album, echoed that film’s themes of dreamlike movement, distorted reflections, and an obsession with death. After former drummer Adrian Guerra died during the writing and production of Mirror Reaper, current members Dylan Desmond and Jesse Shreibman created an album that alternated between an elegiac dirge and its angrier mirror image, a mournful march showcasing that death is but an inverted reflection of life. The power of Mirror Reaper lay in its world-building; consisting of a single 83-minute track, the album forced the listener to meet it on its own terms. Through repetition and a loud/quiet dynamic, Bell Witch lulled us into a slumber in which the voices of the dead spoke to us again and then violently shook us awake to remind us of our own fetid mortality. –Jeff Miller --- 44 Toiret Status Nyoi Plunger [Noumenal Loom] [LISTEN · READ] Ingestion and invisibility, undo our reverse cornucopia; plunge and unplug, let loose the profusion. Microscopies swell to burst in bubbleshine, but don’t forget to meet the man, the man himself, who cans all that laughter. We’ve got lyrical machines, all pistons firing and tiring, building all those silly swirls of collapse and sweettoothing their hardware hollow. The arc of the priest’s staff leaves a sparkling trail of emoji — snap, swing, zing, plonk. Things move fast and then they move faster and then they don’t. Thank you, thank you, grazie. The trunk sort of explodes, splitting loose and scattering the grid, leaving queues all out of sort, and cutting the stone with recrudescence. While you can help it, never stop iterating += 1. TFW when the POP ROCKSTM pass the blood-brain barrier I caught the cows tangoing on the roof, clapping and clacking their hooves hailstone-style on the corrugate. A toast to every comet that explodes overhead! Drum rolls please, but we shouldn’t cater to bourgeois enjoyment. Quiet, the show is set to start… Elsa coughs a light cough and foghorns: Dedesnn nn rrrrr, Ii Ee, mpiff tillff toooo, Dedesnn nn rrrrr, Ii Ee, mpiff tillff toooo, tillll Dedesnn nn rrrrr, Ii Ee, mpiff tillff toooo, tillll,Jüü-Kaa?llll,Jüü-Kaa? Roshi, scepter at his side spilling smileys, nods. The crowd detonates. And what would you call that act? –Cynocephalus --- 43 Julie Byrne Not Even Happiness [Ba Da Bing!] [LISTEN] Not Even Happiness is Julie Byrne’s truth, honesty, desire, and memory laid bare. It’s a woman accepting the universe, chaos, and herself through a calm that’s almost hard to take in. It’s airy. It’s layered. It’s self-love in motion. It’s an attempt to discern a place in the cosmos. It’s Grouper out of the mist, Angel Olsen on Xanax. It’s pure consonance. It’s about moments both meaningful and mundane — a cup of coffee in the morning while looking out the window — but they’re actually all important if you care about how you live. My friend who barely talks to me anymore sent me the record in April; I played it on repeat for five hours that day, and I’ve kept listening to it ever since. –Adam Rothbarth --- 42 Pharmakon Contact [Sacred Bones] [LISTEN · READ] I spend more time than I’d like in meetings centered on teaching middle school students empathy. It’s something I care deeply about, but these meetings often make me doubt that adults (especially those in positions of interacting with children) are actually competent models of reaching out and making positive contact. These meetings feel a lot like how most people would describe Pharmakon’s music: chaotic, headache-inducing, dissonant. I don’t think it’s an accident that what “kids these days” are bumping always seems, by adult standards, alienating. “At least it makes them feel something,” right? Truth is, kids are really good at “feeling things”; adults have just had more practice turning feelings into ulcers. Margaret Chardiet hasn’t forgotten how noise can make us feel things. Contact was what empathy (feeling what other people feel) really sounded like: generative, alleviating, and cathartic, qualities that may be better taught through unadulterated sound than through rudimentary recalibration. So next staff meeting, I’m playing “Nakedness of Need,” hoping that it will expand our discussion on how we can build better connections between us. If it doesn’t work right away, at least it will have made us feel, and that’s something. –Jazz Scott --- 41 Amnesia Scanner AS TRUTH (MIXTAPE) [Self-Released] [LISTEN · READ] AS TRUTH (MIXTAPE) was as engrossing as it was adverse. With migrating noise and tones hammered out along pulsing rhythms, the mix was the out-loud dialogue of the desires and fears of machines laid flat. Of IP addresses beating like thumping veins. Of processors moaning and crying toward nothing. It was like the open wounds of aux cords oozing their creamy innards, reliving their nightmares on repeat, doled out into dulled infinity. This year has been tough, but out of strife and constant defeat comes a readmitted commitment to past truths. Processing grief and anguish is necessary for growth. Let’s just hope the machines have a better world in the works than what we have created for ourselves. Amnesia Scanner was here to help the wires deliver sensitive content with distance and grace, along with a mirror to gaze at our own created horror. –Bort [pagebreak] 40 Kara-Lis Coverdale Grafts [Boomkat] [LISTEN · READ] Montreal resident Kara-Lis Coverdale returned in 2017 with her most fascinating and poignant work to date: her first solo vinyl release titled Grafts. Over the course of its 22 minutes of playtime, Coverdale expertly layered various textural and melodic ideas, molding them into a whole that inspired reverence and wonderment in the listener. The piece drew inspiration from contemporary electronic music, seminal minimalist compositions, and church music, as overlapping muted piano flourishes, dense organs, gentle drones, and fluttering synths blossomed into fascinating meditations on texture and melody. As the third — and most peaceful — movement (“Moments In Love”) slowly drifted to its conclusion, there was tangible sacredness in the air. Grafts was spiritual, intimate, contemplative, and completely alive. And in 2017, it was a stark reminder that beauty exists, even amidst the ever-present chaos and confusion. –A B D --- 39 Actress AZD [Ninja Tune] [WATCH · LISTEN · READ] To enter such a realm, of life between being and nonbeing, of sound surging with numinous intensity and laboriously weaving itself into some vague, half-formed nightmare… The horror of reality, the limitations inside of genres like “dance” and “club” and outside: icy white silk of pouring rain and a backdrop of bleak office buildings. A ghost in the making, a figment, a cash register, a pistol, a zombie. People say that I am in a city, but I suspect I am amongst thousands of mountains. Expressive force over representational legibility, with the snowcaps amongst us. Slabs of marble dragged onto raw drips; flings of dust conjuring a far-away vision of the Dragon Gate, and in its fairy tale therein occurs a dance battle, or maybe a rap battle, or actually a 4/4 beat created from synths of yore, heavy with retrofuturism and insinuating something, something deep. So we go out, to the warehouses, to the studios, to the grottos, to the basements, with a question to ask: Do you remember real life? –Hydroyoga --- 38 Upgrayedd Smurphy HYPNOSYS [R-CH-V] [LISTEN] HYPNOSYS’s Giger-inspired cover art depicted Upgrayedd Smurphy morphing into something like an apex predator, xenomorph style. Smurphy’s beats were tighter and more austere on this album, driving the melodies while integrating classic post-punk texture into modern beat work. This approach effectively aligned her music with recent works by Andy Stott and Zomb while still sounding nothing like them. It was music for driving at night through morose, dilapidated cities. Dim-lit neon bulbs flickering out, exits collapsing in the rearview. The malaise of modern living, all connected yet lost (hypnotized, even) in reconciling that this was all actually meaningless. The whole thing felt appropriately bleak, the product of how awful our world has become. If we have to go on, let’s become something else. It’s already happening all around us. Upgrading to extraterrestrial. –Joe Davenport --- 37 Pan Daijing Lack 惊蛰 [PAN] [LISTEN · READ] Pan Daijing herself described Lack 惊蛰 as an “opera,” suggesting listeners were to consume the work as performance rather than music proper. Immediacy and vulnerability, then, were core tenets of the work: Lack 惊蛰 was an intimate process to be witnessed, not only by the listener, but by Daijing herself: “I saw myself being this absurd, mad person ‘acting’ out the sounds.” Taking listeners through various modes of sound affect, Daijing’s arsenal included experiments with verbal intonation/inflection, disquieting moans, aggressive synth loops, and arrhythmic percussion. Still, the album was less about sonic extremes and more an exploration of what noise — and perhaps the avant-garde at large — can achieve by forcing us into spaces that make both listener and performer more visible, allowing us to express and embody sincerity in an era rife with irony, superficiality, and untruths. Fundamentally, Lack 惊蛰 instilled awareness: the simple suggestion that we are here, we are feeling, we are real. In the years to come, art and performance in a similar vein will become paramount in creating spaces where we are free to feel vulnerable and consider our emotions and experiences as they relate to the human condition. –Alex Brown --- 36 Richard Dawson Peasant [Weird World] [WATCH · READ] Peasant detailed the lives of the 6th- and 7th-century peasantry during the violent unification of the Kingdom of Northumbria in present-day Northeastern England. Daunting stuff for the historically disinclined. But as TMT writer Sam Goldner pointed out, this obscure theme counter-intuitively allowed Richard Dawson to address very current, and very pressing, political concerns. By giving voice to otherwise mute historical figures — soldiers, prostitutes, beggars — Dawson implicitly critiqued the power structures that allow these characters’ oppression to persist today. Wary of drawing any explicit connections between his music and recent politics, Dawson nevertheless remarked that “some of the things that are described in the songs are not too different from some of the things that occur today in a supposedly civilized society.” And what is described in the songs was bleak: the world of Peasant was violent, superstitious, corrupt, and all too recognizable. Dawson’s powerful Geordie bark and discordant acoustic guitar brought this world arrestingly to life. The intensive historical research and dissonant experimentalism of Dawson’s earlier albums now seem like necessary steps toward creating Peasant’s sprawling narrative, one of those rare documents that perfectly encapsulates an artist’s approach. In retrospect, it’s obvious Dawson had to make this album, and that he had to make it in 2017. –Matthew Blackwell --- 35 woopheadclrms Meeting Room + Rare Plants [Ukiuki Atamata] [LISTEN · READ] It took a few listens to pinpoint what made woopheadclrms’s Meeting Room + Rare Plants so compelling. Putting aside the overwhelming amount of samples and otherworldly qualities hidden in the pitched-shifted mutant vocals, there was an underlying presence. It was almost like a secret, whispered between the barrage of sound. The smooth transitions between sounds, the gentle jokes, the memes, the chirping of birds, the conversations between friends, the jungle-like atmosphere: it all made for an experience akin to those overly romanticized depictions of death we see on television, where the character’s life flashes before their eyes, millions of moments rushing back toward a light that had shined for decades, maybe even a century, separating the unknown pre-birth world and the halcyon ocean that lay ahead. All the detailed subject matter blurred and the memories seemed randomly chosen, but when pieced together, they formed not a grandiose message, but feelings of warmth, solace, maybe even alleviation. –Sam Tornow --- 34 Giant Claw Soft Channel [Orange Milk] [WATCH · LISTEN · READ] There are few rockist tropes as worn-out as the breakup album. Many of rock & roll’s big names have one among their canonical works (Blood on The Tracks, Here My Dear, Rumours, The Boatman’s Call, Sea Change, Vulnicura, etc.). Is Soft Channel “a breakup album for the internet age”? Cutesy rhetorical clutches aside, the album indeed found Keith Rankin exploring the fragments that circle one’s head in the aftermath of a sentimental crisis, the mix of frustration, disappointment, relief, loneliness, regret, and everything else that threatens to overwhelm you in such episodes. And if Rankin’s post-digital approach to plunderphonics, his brutalization of modern pop and appropriation of the remains, suits the anxiety buildup that comes with a breakup, Soft Channel wasn’t just a trip through despair. The later part of the album pushed for a sense of closure, with melodies becoming recognizably tame and R&B vocals acquiring luminescent shapes. Striving for serenity might be naïve, but a measure of peace existed in letting memories and whispers dilute in the past. After all, we will all find a home in there eventually. Even awful exes and sanctified breakup albums. –jrodriguez6 --- 33 Konrad Sprenger Stack Music [PAN] [LISTEN · READ] Stack: With Stack Music, Konrad Sprenger put the authorship of music in flux. The music was authored by a system: user, interface, instrument. The user directed the interface to make choices for patterns of sound. Despite a complete oversaturation of questions regarding artificial intelligence in electronic music, Sprenger’s process stood monolithic in its reversal of “man vs. machine” rhetoric. Here, the system’s authors shared an economy of sound. String: Every sound came directly from a computation of resistance; the string resists its labor. The physicality/artificiality of the string was totally elusive, creating an audible treachery of sound. The string sounded like a train. Stanza: 7:01 / 18:56 / 18:07 / 6:28 Space: The Euclidean algorithm, here applied to rhythm, creates an interplay of space. The computer-author finds space and generates sound to fill it. Sprenger’s longtime influence and New York minimalism counterpart is Ellen Fullman, but where Fullman’s string instrument creates space, Sprenger’s devours it. When there is no space left, Stack Music sounds the most beautiful. Syncopation: “I can make syncopation sound like death.” –John Fahey. –E. Fosl --- 32 Khaki Blazer Didn’t Have to Cut [Hausu Mountain] [LISTEN · READ] Even Khaki Blazer felt it this year. Taking a respite from the whiplash frenzy and wormhole plunderings of his sample-heavy, hyperaccelerated pinball methodology, Pat Modugno launched an uncharacteristically patient, low-key textural investigation on Didn’t Have To Cut. Through lateral pathways into parentheticals and ellipses plunged into the hearts of his samples and discovered something like a universal glitch, stuttering alongside elastic harmonies and oblique slippages, plopped onto the cement like putty and smeared into the shape of a rainbow. Our bodies twitched, our eyes glazed over. Time was a bar of soap. Space was up for debate. “My battery’s almost dead. Do you have a charger?” We looked down, and Khaki Blazer was trapped in the grid, crying. He had flowers in his hand. The flowers were melting. It was a cartoon! –Mr P --- 31 Young Thug Beautiful Thugger Girls [Atlantic] [WATCH · READ] Wending his way gently into the crevices of a rich and sensuous realm of pop, Young Thug used Beautiful Thugger Girls as a faultless freeze frame that captured his increasing rise to stardom and the social misdemeanors that come with it. His observations were as astute and as resounding as ever, rapping about everything from his difficulties at school to family loyalty to individuality. Each cut carved fresh insight into the complicated world of a rising artist as he continued to veer away from the mainstream while flirting unabashedly with it. Although it might not have been as crass as Barter 6 or as uncompromising as JEFFERY, Thug made sure that his summertime mixtape proved to be one of his most captivating releases to date, and for that we were truly grateful. –Birkut [pagebreak] 30 Lawrence English Cruel Optimism [Room40] [LISTEN · READ] You don’t hear the sounds so much as you feel them, like a distant mudslide slowly moving your way, when everything stalls and a moment seems to last forever. Sharing its title with Lauren Berlant’s 2011 monograph, Cruel Optimism addressed the same affect theory concern of an individual’s optimistic attachment in an increasingly compromised society. Across Cruel Optimism, English was able to push his own boundaries, combining freeform ideas with captivating instrumental sequences, conceived, at times, by ”happy accidents.” With repeated listens, Cruel Optimism became unshakable, its scope and imagination conveying a divine, indeterminate place and time. Picking out moments to describe the whole feels Sisyphean, as the whole was simply an intense masterclass in sound sustention. Cruel Optimism embraced Berlant’s theory of “crisis ordinariness,” but sought to experiment, to try new forms of living in a deteriorating world. In doing so, this release saw this extraordinarily talented composer deliver his most beautiful, pathos-laden, and, above all, human masterpiece yet. –David Nadelle --- 29 CupcakKe Queen Elizabitch [Self-Released] [WATCH · READ] By turns lurid and lucid, CupcakKe had the stamina to out-pace, out-rap, and out-fuck just about everyone this past year, and Queen Elizabitch was her glistening testament to the fact. Whether she was raiding your shit (“Quick Thought”), preaching body positivity (“Biggie Smalls”), or fucking in the back of an Uber (“Cumshot”), there was little room for the sacred in her urgency and diligence. Put simply, this was 100% profane to its very core, jettisoning any notion of radio-friendliness or crossover appeal in her perverse outlook; if I could point to any one rhyme as a suitable M.O., this might be it: “Name anything freaky and you know I’m ‘bout the shit / Only time I’m not on the dick is when I’m ‘bout to shit” (“CPR”). And, consistent with her meticulous impulse toward what’s real, Queen Elizabitch was bookended by two of the most thoughtful cuts anybody could muster in 2017, introducing and capping off a tale of personal triumph amidst societal anguish. Long live the Queen — true to her word, the 33rd of the month never came. –Soe Jherwood --- 28 Léo Hoffsaes & Loto Retina Early Contact [PERMALNK] [LISTEN · READ] The nuclear family of Early Contact includes father, mother, son, and soon-to-be second child, who, in this perfect narrative, would be a daughter. The first time we heard the pregnant mother, our narrator, speak, her voice inspired a surge of strings to burst forth from her swelling heart and belly and announced two of the album’s three scores: the mother’s internal monologue, written by Bastien Vairet and performed in the distinctly superficial style of true-blue American artifice; and the orchestral arrangements that soundtrack her thoughts with extreme, almost Disney-like pathos. But a third, subtler score was also present, though in suspension, and sounded its poignant piece through muddy, atmospheric synths and electro-acoustic compositions that seemed to come from far off or, more likely, from deep within. It seeped like a vapor through the album’s amniotic fluid — unformed sometimes, as in in the beginning of “11 am”; and eternal other times, as in “2 pm.” The tension created by the three tracks spoke to the whole absurd theater of this life-in-the-day-of, and even though we were listening to the scripted thoughts of an archetype, I couldn’t help but wonder how our own thoughts do so churn. –Cookcook --- 27 Big Thief Capacity [Saddle Creek] [LISTEN] SNOWFALL, a word like an other, a root transformed by circumstances. Words are containers for wonders, imagined expressions of the world we see. In words like in snows, the world is temporarily transfigured, a familiar thing under bright fabric. Sound and snow transfix; “you won’t recognize your house.” MYTHOLOGICAL, almost, legends of our every days, we walk in the feel of falling skies. The dog pulls, happy haywire in the shifted smells of these streets. In snows like in songs, silhouettes of the world resound from under a momentary veneer, a changed air. Somewhere, tree’s leaves. Somewhere, a dead deer under these new white mounds. “Will you recognize the iris of the body?” Half-familiar home, a streetlight of us stepping, “forgetting the word “dog” and looking at that naked animal and getting much closer to it and how it is different to you.” CAPACITY bridges could-know and have-known, fabrics worlds and traumas in folk and rumbles. Capacity contains all our breaking engagements, all our dog-walk joys, the paths that fade from the steps that can’t be taken back. Worlds break but songs make, myths for forward. “You’re all caught up inside/ But you know the way.” Hearth and hurt, coma and home, Capacity takes and holds, getting us much closer to us than we can without it. –Frank Falisi --- 26 Various Artists Club Chai Vol.1 [Club Chai] [LISTEN · READ] How do you build something communal in the face of absolute fragmentation? Is there a way out of the hell of singular ready-made identities, something that allows one to carry solidarity further than individual interests? Club Chai Vol. 1 sought answers to these questions while bridging the gap between the local and the global to find a common tongue, regardless of the variety of struggle. The comp managed to locate a solidarity that progressed beyond common interests of a single identity group, a solidarity of simply caring for others who are different. Rather than artificially creating common ground by imposing an overarching theme or artistic direction, the record embraced the differences of its co-creators, their varied backgrounds, their unique musical styles. This created a sonic world wherein FOOZOOL’s tense “AZAT Ազատ” felt right at home next to the gently sung “BLACK WAX” by SPELLING. Every contribution to the compilation was irrevocably different, and yet it never felt incoherent or arbitrary. In its disregard of borders, be they political or artistic, Club Chai Vol.1 brought to the fore voices routinely excluded by the West and the faux-liberalism of middle-class uniformity. It succeeded by forging out of them a harmony that felt complete and unafraid, destructive toward the existing rulesets and intent on creating new spaces of possibility. –Acedia --- 25 Slowdive Slowdive [Dead Oceans] [WATCH · READ] The news is grimmer every year. We find ourselves at the crossroads in modern society: party over country, corporations over people, division over unity. We fall neatly into categories and find ourselves embracing or rejecting what is reported about our adopted identities. So, here we are, staring at our shoes, deciding where next to stride. I chose the light, where it seems Slowdive have been hiding for two decades with open arms, hoping society came to them naturally. We didn’t, so they’ve reemerged and are urging us toward the inner peace of doing the right thing. Slowdive has broken my shackles, and I’m no longer tethered to characters typed out on a screen that may or may not speak to my demeanor, message, and identity. I’m transcending it all, leaving the orange psychic shadow behind. We have better things to do with our time and energy, and it begins with a deep dive into the return of Slowdive and our roots of making the change we want. –Jspicer --- 24 Chino Amobi PARADISO [UNO NYC/NON WORLDWIDE] [LISTEN · READ] An understated appeal of the circus or carnival lies in the elevation of “characters” that we otherwise neglect to acknowledge in our daily lives, but whom we know exist in the shadows. PARADISO offered a similar promotion, although in lieu of so-called “freaks” with biological conditions, the musical sideshow centered around a plethora of artists affiliated with Amobi’s NON WORLDWIDE label, which arrived on the scene a few years ago figuratively offering the mic to a variety of underrepresented. Elysia Crampton recited Poe with variations on a couple of tracks, and the title track had a veritable litany of artist features, which began with the defiant and possible mission statement: “I’m not an animal.” Cages were for sure lifted accordingly on an overall musical level, and the whole of the release showcased the chaotic stew that possibly represents our current societal state better than vanilla and holidays sales ever did. Some of us still need a blatant welcome, despite a distant organ. –Mike Reid --- 23 Various Artists Twin Peaks (Music from the Limited Event Series) / Twin Peaks (Limited Even Series Soundtrack) [Rhino] [WATCH · WATCH · WATCH] It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that, for most of us at TMT, the most important event of the year (particular stages in the ongoing degeneration of the globe notwithstanding) was not primarily musical, but televisual. But, of course, in the new Twin Peaks series, as with anything involving David Lynch, the musical side could never have been less than crucial, whether as a conduit of signification and significance, as punctuation, or as a peculiar kind of marginalia to the show. The original series left innumerable traces on the wider world, detectable ever since in television, in film, in our favorite music — in our very perception of things. Even detached from the accompanying pictures and story, the soundtrack has always possessed an almost uniquely powerful ability to evoke a polyvalent kind of nostalgia. Now, disoriented by novelties, the old is given strange new salience and sent down an entirely renewed confusion of interpretative possibilities. Twin Peaks has grown, expanded to fill voids it had left behind, and engendered new ones. In the years since its first incarnation, it found points of entry into our own world; this year, ours found a way into its. Could “Laura Palmer’s Theme” ever mean the same thing again? –Michael J --- 22 Jlin Black Origami [Planet Mu] [WATCH · READ] Watch it fold. A few things, maximized, then steady. Singularity: each sound an organelle, tiniest units of tissue, collectively defining the tissue, gradually forming the organ, one formal unit, one after the other, track by track, slowly shifting. It doubles back, flips the script, keels over. Origami. “The fold serves as an apt metaphor,” says Prathna Lor on Renee Gladman’s “Calamities.” “The fold is at once additive as it is subtractive. Folds, as they increase in number, generate more and more possibilities, and completely reimagine the space within which they are reconfigured. Space is reconfigured, (re)constructed, diminished, and translated along new and different planes.” It sounds good. “[It] feels knotted; like being in a mouth.” It speaks from another, from within another (mouth), it moves the body. “What becomes necessary is not the untangling of its density but the tracing out of its textures, surfaces, and shapes. […] It is therefore not in the name of teleology but of experience that we must seek a phenomenology, an erotics, a contouring of writing.” Working with steel, working the body, working toward elegance. Refining, tempering, deliberate, shifting. –Ben Levinson --- 21 Björk Utopia [One Little Indian] [WATCH · READ] Recovery’s tricky. You know it’s been rough, don’t worry, it’s fine now, etc., but shit can and will dive down again. The cycle repeats, and Utopia was an abstract pop frolic through it. Having endured the breakup that inspired 2015’s Vulnicura, Björk, again partnered with producer Arca, pondered the confounding trials of emotion. Against frustrating soundscapes that allowed industrial thuds and ethereal flutes to coexist, Björk cooed and wailed over the sensory/biological overload of first kisses, brokenness, and the responsibility of guardianship. Mysterious noises scattered, never to be heard again. Flames and birds crackled, and the question of their authenticity added to the experience; we have our fantasies of love and pain, but what is the reality? By the end, having addressed tactile, spiritual, and digital communication, she reached beyond herself, bore the world’s angst, and protected its lantern, even though it has prompted her to shift shapes. Guardedly optimistic, Björk faced an increasingly indifferent world, so maybe her hope will falter, but that was Utopia’s point. It was a gorgeous mess, a contradictory album by/for contradictory minds, and its enigmas will persist. –Snacks Kyburz [pagebreak] 20 M.E.S.H. Hesaitix [PAN] [LISTEN · READ] “How did I become so stupid?,” Hesaitix asked, in sonic pursuit of a grotesque metamodernism. An anagram of “cathexis,” Hesaitix invested profound energy into the imponderable bloom — a bloom declared as “essence” by so many discredited philosophies — but a process rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. M.E.S.H. tensely collected the grapes of wrath on record, pooling expired audio into cisterns filled with birdsong, vision, electricity, and pulsing acid-shade hues of burnt purple-gold. The hybrid result was an organic/plastic sound with half-utility as an armored “club record,” while still half-fantasizing a dilapidated attempt at introverted worldbuilding: “This is my world…but how did it become so stupid?” Over-rendered, fleshy, but recast rigidly into stark obsidian, M.E.S.H. sketched hopeful boundaries for form, as if creating lumpy sculptures out of a constantly melting red clay. There was no real reconstruction happening here, only ephemeral reactions that merely complemented M.E.S.H.’s previously deconstructionist audio agenda. Here, there was only the search and the reveal — a revelation in the sound of void-wind cuffing the plaza. –Nick James Scavo --- 19 Chief Keef Thot Breaker [Glo Gang] [LISTEN · READ] They’ve been asking for the old Sosa since he was 17. But how can you miss the old Chief Keef when he can be the pill that you gotta take, your night shift, your light-year, the sun in your rainy weather, your listener, your boat? Your Number 1 Pop Star, your “LOVE.” He’s changed (“Slow Dance”), and he’s stayed the same (“My Baby”), turning his Gucci/Wayne smear resplendent. Thot Breaker arrived overdue and yesterday, a pop time slide, a HNDRXX from the future, in 2017, after the honestly equal albeit unmastered Two Zero One Seven. Anamoly (Almighty So), phantasmagoria (lil glo). The old Sosa’s ttttturbo made us go “Whoa,” then his voice took us inner, outer, and higher. How far is a light-year? –Pat Beane --- 18 GAS Narkopop [Kompakt] [LISTEN · READ] Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that, even after a 17-year pause between albums, GAS felt, in essence, unchanged. Wolfgang Voigt’s most sublime musical outlet has always felt more like a natural phenomenon than a project, tied not to the passing of trends or eras, but to the epochal aging of the Earth itself. If that sounds grandiose, great — Narkopop was a giant piece of music, tall as sequoia and unapologetically huge in scope. And yet it was Voigt’s personal touch for turning his few ingredients into an entire world that stuck when the record ended — the wisps of fog-synth and floor tom, masterful in their ability to subtly play the human senses. The cap on a now 20-year experiment in opening ambience to its widest point, one hopes this is, for Voigt, just one of many trips back to the forest. –Dylan Pasture --- 17 SZA CTRL [Top Dawg] [WATCH · WATCH] While Taylor stumbles through her deferred quarter-life crisis and Vagabon’s Laetitia Tamko stakes her claim in the socioeconomically monopolized realm of indie rock, Solána Rowe, d/b/a SZA, forged a middle ground between the two artists on CTRL. Her debut long-player after a string of EPs, CTRL channeled Swift’s narcissistic empowerment and tempered it with Tamko’s outspoken insecurity and tacit gender politics. Oscillating between off-the-cuff lyricism and carefully deliberated melodies, SZA located personal trepidation in the album’s stream-of-consciousness musings and discovered affirmation in its mantra-hooks. When she sang “Leave me lonely for prettier women/ You know I need too much attention for shit like that” on the blank-verse confessional “Supermodel,” it was a supplication to be proven wrong. And on the would-be capstone single “Drew Barrymore,” she asked confidently, knowingly, “Am I warm enough for you outside, baby? Is it warm enough for you inside me?” Rowe’s mother graced CTRL’s interstices with soundbites of maternal wisdom and exhortation, the most pertinent of which inaugurated the album: “That is my greatest fear: that if I lost control or did not have control, things would just be… fatal.” –Sean Hannah --- 16 DJ Escrow Universal Soulja Vol. 1 [Self-Released] [ http://j.mp/2Bw9CuU

[thedramafilesblog-blog]

Appearing before The Dramacourt: 20th Century Boy and Girl Eps 1 to 4

***If this is your first time browsing The Drama Files, please read The Rules section first for our reviewing and rating system***

Issues:

Whether Sa Jin Jin, Han Areum, Jang Young-shim are friendship goals.

Whether it’s possible to be a 35-year-old virgin and be a famous actress.

Whether Sa Jin Jin dealt with her scandal well.

The Rule(s):

Hell, yes!

It’s possible!

Yes!

Analysis:

Jubiemon J: These first episodes of this drama had everything I wanted in a romance/slice of life drama. I loved how realistic the situations that each character faced were and for once, I’m actually totally adoring the lead actress’s character, Sa Jin Jin. Han Yeseul has also been bumped up a lot in my books of good actresses. She does a great job portraying a down-to-earth popular actress who has a sweet, caring personality. At first glance, Sa Jin Jin might give someone the feeling of someone that’s a bit arrogant, but we see that she’s a hardworking, honest girl who doesn’t do anything scandalous and has a great attitude. Contrast that with the young actress that’s jealous of her . . . ugh that young actress was such a bitch to Sa Jin Jin. I got quite mad! I would have wanted to throw something at her if she did those things to me, yet Sa Jin Jin handled everything with so much class and coolness.

Honestly, this drama does so well with these delightful surprises. I wasn’t expecting Sa Jin Jin to have this first love reunion type of scenario. In the beginning, she seemed head over heels over Anthony, but now it seems like that’s just a fan girl type of crush. I also love how these coincidental meetings she has with Gong Jiwon just feel so natural and serendipitous. They aren’t like those meetings that we see often in rom coms where they’re totally unrealistic and just way too into fantasy land. I love how often, we see that it’s Jiwon who spots Jin Jin and then he does this look of awe where we can tell that he is completely in love with her. My heart melted so many times when he looked at her from afar in that way. Moreover, I wasn’t expecting him to save her so many times and the beautiful part was that he never proudly claimed that he was the one saving her or showed directly that he was supporting her. He just quietly . . . helped her along. Man . . . what a perfect guy.

RedRosette J: I agree with Jubiemon. This drama totally surprised me too! I wasn’t expecting it to be written, produced and acted so well! Han Ye Seul surprised me. I have seen her previous works and wasn’t really impressed, but she really does capture the heart of Sa Jin Jin as a down-to-Earth celebrity with a heart of gold. And blowing me away with his quiet glances and wistful eyes is Kim Ji Suk! I’ve been a long time fan of his since I saw him in I Need Romance 2 and fell totally in love with his weirdo womanizing character who falls for his friend’s noona in Oh Hae Young Again. He’s really the one that sells us on this romance at this point. I’m totally totally #TeamJiWon!

Is this Ji Won?

Fame with class

Celeb who’s not above hanging out with her makeup artist

This is what a biatch looks like

RedRosette J Aside: Here’s Kim Ji Suk giving us those awesomely wistful, lovelorn eyes:

Jubiemon J: The side characters too are so amazing! Usually for dramas, I get obsessed with one character’s story and am indifferent to other people’s stories, but then for this drama, I’m 100% there for all of the side characters. They’re very relatable and genuine. Areum adores food and is awkwardly funny in her own way. Jang Young-shim is more shy and quiet, but she isn’t boring at all. She was looking for a job as a lawyer and I could . . . totally sympathise with her efforts. Been there. Done that and will still have to do that later on in life. Each guy that the girls meet seem promising too. I can’t wait to watch more of them!

RedRosette J: I totally agree. I usually also get invested in one particular story line and tend to gloss over the others but in this case, I’m totally interested in everyone’s story line. I want to know if the awkward, food loving Areum ends up with the Peaked-In-High-School Doctor or the Young-And-Hot-Pilot. I’m also really really siding with Young Shim and I can’t wait to see her put her awful father in his place and possibly also fall for her hot lawyer boss.

Have friends who have their priorities straight

Areum – the flight attendant who loves food

Young-And-Hot-Pilot

Peaked-In-High-School-Doctor: Present 

Peaked-In-High-School-Doctor: High School

Young Shim: Lawyer looking for a job

Hot lawyer boss

Jubiemon J: And can we just talk about the wonderful editing and the touching OSTs? I wished that some of the production crew from Scarlet Heart Ryeo could take lessons here. This is top notch editing! I loved how natural it was for us to see all of them during their high school years and those memories gave us a good understanding of the characters. The transitions between scenes were done so well that I could barely feel this weird gap for scenes like you know how sometimes the character will just be driving and driving and wasting time . . . yeah none of that was there. And the OSTs were cued RIGHT where I needed them.

Okay . . . I confess. I cried during one point of this drama. It was the part where Jin Jin was reminiscing of the days when she and her boss were still struggling to make ends meet. She was just becoming an actress and he was doing everything he could to promote her. He was putting up posters of her while it was snowing super hard. Then we saw this interview of her saying that she was going to switch agencies but then she said that they’d have to pay her 1000 billion won for her to do that. Then the boss laughed. I found this whole scene to be particularly touching because it felt like years of trust, friendship and work relationship were at play.

When everything starts going wrong

The good old days

Jubiemon J: And the ending . . . with Jin Jin in the elevator with Jiwon. Oh my God! Deja-vu vibes. We had seen this scene before where he’d take the 14th floor to walk her home instead of sticking to the 13th floor. Now it’s similar, except he asks her those questions and then we get a recap of what happened in the elevator before. They had kissed. Ah! What a way to end things. Man I’m craving more. I’m so looking forward to Mondays now. What is this? I’m supposed to despise Mondays.

RedRosette J: I also really really loved the awkward high school scenes between Ji Won and Jin Jin. It’s so funny how they were laughing and singing with the other girls and the minute they left, the air changed and the awkward crush vibes set in. It’s so so well done; from the palpable awkwardness to the shy glances to the sweaty palms. It’s your first crush in all its glory and horror. The elevator kiss goes down in drama history this year as the best awkward first kiss this year (for me at least). I’m excited to watch them re-create this as adults.

Being with your high school crush around friends

The minute your friends leave

Awkward af

First kiss!!

When you find yourself in the same elevator where you had your first kiss with the guy who kissed you…

…you become your awkward 17 year old self again…

Jubiemon J: Finally, can we just say that Kim Ji Suk is absolutely amazing in this drama? He hasn’t said much in this drama, yet you can tell how his character feels about Jin Jin just by one look. I took a look at his acting profile and man he has always been stuck as one of the 2nd leads or side characters. Why did they keep him in a dungeon? Release this man from the depths for more lead roles!

Why have you not played lead roles before???

Issue 1: Whether Sa Jin Jin, Han Areum, Jang Young-shim are friendship goals.

Jubiemon J: Yes, yes, and yes! I loved watching how tight and close they were from high school to now. They’ve had hiccups before to their friendship where they all had feelings for one guy, which was likely to be Jiwon. However, their friendship prevailed, except . . . Jiwon is back!

They’re always bonding over food and talking about anything from lighthearted subjects like celebrity crushes to more serious ones about Jin Jin’s scandal. The friends also rushed out to help Jin Jin to clear her name. They went to the radio show to help back up Jin Jin’s story that she was only at the hospital to visit Areum and that she wasn’t there for some abortion. She just overslept there for seven hours.

RedRosette J: For me, the real selling point in this drama was the friendship between the girls. It’s really a friendship that is built on trust, respect and time. These girls are more than just friends at this point. They are family. And I think that even though in the past Ji Won came between them, as adults, I doubt that it will tear them apart because there was never really any contest. It was Jin Jin and Ji Won from the very beginning and there really isn’t any room for anyone else. It’s also in the little things that the friendship is so great. They are so supportive of each other ranging from Areum’s surgery to Jin Jin’s scandal. These guys are totally #friendshipgoals.

Friends at 15

Friends at 35

Supportive to the end

There is no space for anyone else in their bubble

Issue 2: Whether it’s possible to be a 35-year-old virgin and be a famous actress.

Jubiemon J: I think it’s totally possible for that scenario to happen. She might be super popular, but she might not have met people that she liked. Since she seems like the serious sort for love, she wouldn’t be dating someone randomly or having flings here and there. Plus, Jin Jin appeared to be very career-oriented and worked very hard to get to where she is today, so she probably didn’t have much time to date or be in a steady relationship. I think it’s normal for people to sacrifice some things to get to where they are today and for her, that was likely love. I don’t think there’s anything shameful about her being a 35-year-old virgin. It’s her choice whether to date or not. I’m glad Jin Jin is proud enough to flaunt that there’s nothing wrong with her.

RedRosette J:  I totally agree with Jubiemon. It’s nobody’s place to judge Jin Jin’s life choices and the fact that she consciously made the decision not to date anyone (while I’m sure that men were throwing themselves at her) is representative of her priorities and principles. I also agree that I think its very admirable that Jin Jin is strong enough to stand up for her choices and say that she isn’t ashamed of her choices and that this is a normal choice for a woman.

People need to MYOB

Issue 3: Whether Sa Jin Jin dealt with her scandal well.

Jubiemon J: Totally! She kept her cool all the time. When she was faced with that huge airport crowd, she just kept walking until . . . it hit her that she had some alleged sex scandal out there. Thank God Jiwon showed up, held her hand, and marched forward with her! When that young actress was clearly bullying Jin Jin, Jin Jin still stood up for herself. Jin Jin also kept her cool at home until she finally couldn’t take it anymore and snapped at her mom. Her mom was really adding a lot of stress to her even though Jin Jin was doing her best to not make her mom worry. Jin Jin didn’t even get all pissed when this scandal went out and didn’t blame anyone. She settled it well herself and cleared her name. Fortunately, Jiwon was also helping her secretly, but I doubt he would have helped her had she not been someone that made him fall for her in the first place.

RedRosette J: She totally handled it really well. I liked what Jin Jin said on the radio show when she talked about how she wasn’t the woman in the sex tape. In particular she talked about victim blaming and how it impacts and ostracizes women (who are usually the victims in those scenarios) and how that needs to stop. She stands up for herself and for what is right and isn’t afraid of public perception. I’d like to think that even if Ji Won wasn’t there at the airport or to send that video about her having always been single, she would have still managed to handle the situation with grace and dignity. I really like the way that Jin Jin’s character is written and acted.

Standing up for yourself like…

Conclusion: Appeal Allowed.

Rating: 5 = Kyaaahhh!! ❤ (This drama is giving us all the feels. We love it so far!)

File No: 20th-Century-Boy-and-Girl-EPS-1-to-4 Appearing before The Dramacourt: 20th Century Boy and Girl Eps 1 to 4 ***If this is your first time browsing The Drama Files, please read 

[junker-town]

When exactly did you become a fan of your college football team?

Here are a bunch of fun stories. Give us yours!

SB Nation has a cool series right now: each of our team sites discussing the origins of fandom. I wanted to share a few of the best from our college team blogs, though there are many other good ones. (To join in and enter a contest, find your school's blog.)

College fandom often goes deeper than the pro kind, whether due to regional history or alumni status or family ties, and a lot of these stories stand out as pretty unique.

Like becoming a Texas fan because your mom was into Russell Crowe's rock band:

Mom decided to visit Austin in 2001 to see TOFOG and re-connect with a friend from graduate school.

I was looking at at a handful of schools at that time — Montana, Montana State, CU-Boulder, a liberal arts college in Minneapolis, and Indiana as a back up. I wasn’t really sold on any of them and basically eliminated the school in Minnesota because I made the smart choice of visiting it in December.

Mom and her friend decided I should visit Austin, so I did in October of 2001.

Or finding UCLA by way of the New York Yankees:

In the late 70s, it was all about the Yanks, no matter how much you Dodger fans hated it. My guys on those Yankee teams were catcher Thurman Munson and first baseman Chris Chambliss, who kickstarted the Yankee dynasty of that era with a walk-off home run in the 1976 American League Championship Series to send the Yankees to the World Series.

It would be years later that I came to know that Chambliss had played his college baseball at UCLA.

My next step towards the Bruins probably didn’t come until the late '80s when Troy Aikman faced off against Rodney Peete.

Or finding Penn State because the Browns pulled a Browns:

On Nov. 9, 1993, the Browns made a shocking move by releasing Bernie Kosar, a hometown hero whom every kid (and many adults) in my region idolized. He was the ultimate underdog, a slow-footed quarterback with awkward mechanics. Kosar was able to use his understanding of the game to become one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks throughout the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s.

I was too heartbroken to cheer for the Browns for the remainder of the season. I followed Kosar to the Cowboys and cheered as he filled in to lead them to an NFC Championship victory by filling in for an injured Troy Aikman and took the field for the final play in Super Bowl XXVIII.

I was determined not to cheer for the Browns again until Art Modell had sold the team and Bill Belichick was long gone from Cleveland, and decided to pay more attention to college football and my adopted team of Penn State.

Well, let’s just say my timing couldn’t have been better. As you know, the Nittany Lions went undefeated behind one of the most electrifying offenses in the history of college football, led by the likes of Kerry Collins, Ki-Jana Carter, Kyle Brady and Bobby Engram.

Or becoming a Sooner immediately after immigrating from India:

When my family made the move from India decades ago, we first settled in the great town of Norman, Oklahoma, where my uncle’s family who’d sponsored ours for immigration had been living. My uncle, a professor and administrator at OU through the 1980s and ‘90s, gets most of the credit for teaching me about American sports, and my two older U.S.-born cousins get the rest. Truth be told, the first football game I remember was Notre Dame taking on West Virginia. My attention was fixated on the Irish’s helmets.

Forgive me, for I was only six and had never before seen the crazy game of football. (I will mention, however, I was a pretty damn good cricketer.)

My fickle infatuation didn’t last long, and the colors of the Crimson & Cream took over. I remember my cousin, Vijay, would fill me in on all things OU daily, and I’d eat up that knowledge. About a month into my indoctrination, I knew all about Coach Switzer, the wishbone, Mookie Blaylock and the Kansas Jayhawks, who had robbed the Sooners of the 1988 basketball crown and were the epitome of evil.

Or getting the full brunt of Oklahoma State pain right up front:

On October 30, 2004, I cried like the nine-year-old I was. Since the first home game I’d attended nearly a year before, I'd developed a passion for Oklahoma State. What happened on October 30, 2004?

Adrian Peterson happened.

It was another classic Bedlam. Back-and-forth, and neither team could stop the other. Peterson had 249 yards on 33 carries, and rattled off an 80-yard touchdown run that all of us remember.

A Vernand Morency touchdown with 11 minutes left cut the second-ranked OU lead to 38-35. The momentum swung toward OSU, and it felt like if the Cowboys could just score one more time, they’d steal a Bedlam win.

With ten seconds left, OSU set up Jason Ricks for a 49-yard field goal from the left hash.

Good snap. Good hold. Wide right.

From our seats, I thought it went in. I went ballistic. I then looked at my dad and saw the horror on his face.

Or becoming a Louisville fan at an even younger age:

I can't tell you when precisely when I "decided" to become a Louisville fan. All I know is there are tapes of me asking which team is "the good guys" very soon after the time I learned to talk. All I know is there are videos of me in a U of L basketball uniform performing mock starting lineups at an age where psychologists say I couldn't form conscious memories. All I know is that for as long as I can recall, Cardinal sports have been something that I've cared about far more than I care about most things.

Or being literally born into fandom:

Following a discharge as a Major, this family put in roots in South Jordan, Utah. Partially due to the chance to go to BYU sports.

Early in the 3rd quarter, Steve Young threw a dart to Mike Eddo for a 24-yard TD, and a Lee Johnson PAT put BYU up 42-7 against the Bowling Green Falcons.

It was around this moment when I pulled my best Lee Johnson imitation — in my mother’s uterus. That’s right. My mom not only went to a football game while she was 9 months pregnant, she also went into labor.

Or finding rivalry while in the middle of making your college decision:

In February of 2008, I visited the University of Oregon for the first time. By the time I completed the tour, I knew this place was special. I just felt like I was at home, especially because I am a runner, and how could I turn down a town with running at its core?

On the way back up to the airport, we stopped at Oregon State for a visit. As soon as I heard they didn't offer a journalism program, I popped the trunk and pulled out my Ducks sweatshirt I’d just acquired and tossed it on while still on campus.

I also visited Washington State and loved the campus. What crossed it off the list was when someone on the campus tour asked what people do for fun in Pullman. Well, they can't be honest and say drink heavily, so they pointed us to Moscow, Idaho, where I think there was a Walmart and maybe an IHOP.

(Our Washington State fans are over here.)

Or having one of those geographically disparate piles of fandoms that mark a person as being from a time, rather than a place:

I got into sports when I was five, and I was five in 1995, and the Gators were great at football then. I would be up early for school every morning, and started reading the sports pages of the Orlando Sentinel daily and watching SportsCenter almost as often, falling for the Gators and Atlanta Braves and Green Bay Packers and Orlando Magic because they were all prominent and potent.

I was a bandwagoner, but we who are fans all are bandwagoners at least once, whether we jump on the back of the wagon, or are placed on it by parents, or amble up onto it as children who would have no use for the word “bandwagon” in the first place.

Or the greatest fandom explanation of them all: picking a lifelong allegiance just to troll your friends:

I followed the best players and tuned into whatever the prime games on ESPN and ABC were. That is until I got sick of my friend and his borderline obsession with [Iowa State QB] Seneca Wallace. I’m not embellishing when I tell you that at the peak of this love affair, he owned three Seneca Wallace jerseys and had them in a rotation. To top that, when Wallace made it to the league, my friend would trade him to whichever team he used to play me in Madden.

So, I did what all of us would do to their friend… I started rooting for his favorite player’s rival, just to bust his huevos.

Now, I didn’t know anything about Iowa to start. I thought their jerseys were some of the cleanest in college football. But that was about it. As I started watching more intently, it didn’t take long for me to get hooked.

I was raised a fourth-generation Georgia Tech fan in Atlanta. My first sports memory is a Clemson fan roaring in my face when I was three. The first sports thing I cared about was the Yellow Jackets' 1990 national title season. I assumed things would stay good forever, so I became a Falcons and Hawks fan too. Things didn't stay good.

I went to Kennesaw State, a little north of Atlanta, but mostly rooted for Tech until KSU's 2010 announcement that we were starting an FCS team. I'd never identified with Tech's fans, because I'm not smart and because Jackets aren't used to embracing sidewalk alumni, so transferring all my emotions was easier than it sounds.

Otherwise, in my job covering college football full-time since that season, I think I just root for whatever would make the most people happy at the time. Clemson winning a good title game made people pretty happy.

Tip on over to your school’s blog to share your own story.