#he's a lesbian and one of the guys and also perhaps Most significantly of all. A Sabaton fan

[angeltannis]

warming back up after this stupid neck injury by drawing my favorite she/him 🧡

[menalez]

Anon providing context with state ballots again. Frankly, I do not consider voting to be a “moral” thing so much as I consider it to be a pragmatic thing. Biden is absolutely horrific on Palestine and I wrote in “uncommitted” during the primary as a protest myself because of it. However, I am someone who both believes that the tiny degrees of less bad do definitely matter and based on Trump’s comments (including comments he made where he advocated for nuking Gaza) I am confident that he would be significantly worse if you can imagine it. Biden is also markedly better on labor, social policies, and the environment and as a working class millennial lesbian who will have to live on this planet for several more decades that is very significant to me. However, I think the most important thing I can say regarding this election is that I can not in good conscience drop out of the political system entirely because one of those guys is going to be in office come January unless the revolution comes before then and… honestly all of the people who are big talk about that are huge larpers so I absolutely have my doubts here. May as well be the marginally less bad one who doesn’t have explicit dictatorial aspirations.

hmm yeah i just dont know if i think theyre any different. theres some areas where i do think there may be a difference like perhaps if trump came back into power then he might outlaw gay marriage for example but i havent seen evidence of biden being better with social policies or on labour or women's rights or most things rly and i find trump's talk and biden's actions irt israel/palestine to be equally disturbing & therefore i find it hard to argue one would be significantly worse in that regard. ill repeat again bc i dont want this to be misconstrued that ultimately i am powerless to who americans vote for and what they choose to do about their country's corrupt system but i do find the american mindset around it to be disturbing especially how every election theres this pressuring of people to choose between two awful choices bc otherwise theyre ~throwing away their vote~ or ~helping [presumed worse choice] win~ and thus discouraging anything that does not further enable this system. like when people were writing in the "uncommitted" thing during the primaries there were already people arguing that u have to choose biden there bc otherwise ur giving ur vote to trump. and after seeing this cycle repeat over and over again for as long as ive been old enough to understand US politics at least to a decent enough degree (which isnt that long), it just feels exhausting as an onlooker seeing the only people who actually CAN do sth about their govt throw their hands up and say they cant do anything.

[ms-demeanor]

Some meandering thoughts about jokes about rape and cultural changes in the last decade and a half

Like, don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad we’re in a place now where we DO question rape jokes and it would be much harder to get away with “raping Jonah Hill is incredibly amusing” as the center of a scene the way that you could in 2007-2013 but I do kind of feel like we don’t talk about how sudden that change was enough.

People talk about how you should have always known that awful things are awful but if you’re surrounded by rape jokes and pedophilia jokes all the time and that’s what’s funny to the other kids around you and the adults in your lives and what makes up the jokes in the movies you watch then it’s hard to act like you always knew it was wrong.

Dead baby jokes were a HUGE thing when I was a teen and in my early twenties and sitting around swapping dead baby jokes was just a thing we did, and tossed in among them were things like:

A joke about incest with the punchline “Get off me pa, you’re crushing my smokes.”

This joke about a pedophile murdering a child.

Let’s not turn this rape into a murder.

And hell, look at the activity graph for “soap on a rope” on urban dictionary:

2014 starts a significant taper.

Letterboxd has their “sexual assault against men played for comedy page” and if you sort by release date there’s a downward trend with 2014 as a really stand-out year for rape jokes about men in popular movies:

2010 - 10

2011 - 12

2012 - 14

2013 - 12

2014 - 18 (jesus, which includes a prison rape joke in “Paddington”)

2015 - 9

2016 - 9

2017 - 11

2018 - 15

2019 - 4

2020 - 1

(this is of course with the caveat that this is only what has been documented so far)

Shock porn sites used to be a thing and they used to be a COMMON thing. A thing that would get remixed and have late night hosts make jokes about them and that got parody music videos.

So on the one hand I was really glad that in 2010 the hacker conference WASN’T asking me to make a rape joke on their tee shirt, but since Pool 2 Girl came up at every single “this is what defcon is about” discussion and some of the guys from the con had printed up “lemonparty.org” stickers to slap up around town it wouldn’t have been *surprising* if they’d been asking for that.

If you were a teenager in 2005 would you have known how much of a dick move goatse-ing people was? We didn’t have the same culture of trigger warnings (not that I disapprove of trigger warnings, they are good and I like them) and there was very much an attitude online at the time of “if you can’t handle it log off.”

I think the fappening was the turning point for a lot of this stuff - I think that was a big cultural moment that changed a lot of people’s attitudes really quickly and I’m seeing echos of that with what Chris Evans is dealing with right now: people are a lot faster to say “oh, that sucks, don’t be an asshole, report people for posting the pics” while I remember sitting and arguing in an imgur thread because there were a bunch of people saying “if you don’t like it don’t take nudes” about the celebrities who got caught in the icloud leak.

People look at Shane Dawson’s (admittedly gross and incredibly inappropriate) behavior with a poster of Willow Smith and act like it’s unprecedented***** but as someone who remembers not only Olsen Eighteenth Birthday countdowns but ALSO the jokes about fucking the Olsen twins that came BEFORE they were legal that’s just bizarre. Seeing people my age and older react to James Gunn’s pedophilic twitter jokes like they’re worse than Jay Leno’s jokes about Michael Jackson (which were made on TV! Across America! On a major network!) is just. It’s bizarre.

I’m glad we are where we are now, I’m glad that making rape jokes in public or jokes about incest or pedophilia (or murder or abortion) is less common and less okay (especially in children’s media, jesus fuck) and more likely to get criticized.

But I’m also pretty sure I’m going to get called a rape apologist by *someone* for saying “2010 was a different time, rape jokes were more common and we didn’t realize how shitty it was” when it really was a different time and rape jokes were more common and most people didn’t realize how shitty it was. I sure didn’t. I do now, and I’m glad I do now. But pretending that we should have ALWAYS known this, pretending that this was NEVER acceptable, pretending that it WASN’T a different time is ignoring the fact that for over a decade there was an entire genre of pedophilic rape jokes (that were frequently also racist) centered around one celebrity and that people told these jokes in public and in pop culture *all the time.*

Does that make it right? Fuck, I don’t know, shit is relative. It was still largely acceptable to electrocute gay kids and people tossed around the word “faggot” pretty freely. Mean Girls is full of jokes about how awful it is for people to think you’re a lesbian and Superbad is full of jokes about getting people shitfaced so they’ll sleep with you (so date rape) and there’s an entire “cute comedy” from the 80s starring Kurt Russel and Goldie Hawn that’s an extended rape-by-fraud joke. I think that as a whole we’re better now as people than we were in 2010 and the 90s and the 80s and the 50s and I don’t think that someone who made a sexist joke in the 80s is irredeemably evil and I don’t think people making rape jokes in the 2010s are rape apologists in 2020 and I wish there was a lot more understanding of both history and nuance in these conversations.

*****to be very, very clear Shane Dawson has been filmed kissing underage fans on the mouth and having explicit sexual conversations with his very young cousin - Dawson has done things that go beyond “inappropriate” and fall clearly into “wrong” “bad” “dangerous” “illegal” etc, which is all the more reason that it’s so strange to see people focusing on him fake masturbating on a poster of Willow Smith. YES doing that was gross but why is it even being compared to the way he’s been filmed interacting with fans? The lack of nuance, making “fake masturbating at a poster” and “creating a sexually abused puppet character” the same as “inappropriately touched and kissed minor fans and engaged a young child in explicit sexual conversations” is NOT GOOD. That is a bad thing. Two of those things are tasteless and two of those things are actively harmful and it’s the actively harmful stuff that we should be focusing on and part of why it’s really weird to see shit like “pizzagate conspiracist accuses James Gunn of making inappropriate jokes” like yes Gunn please don’t but can we maybe refocus and talk about the dude who can be pretty significantly assigned blame for a fucking shooting? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/01/james-gunn-alt-right-marvel-film-director-tweets

Actually, you know what, I thought I was done ranting, I’m not.

It’s purity culture.

YES you should attempt to do less harm with your language, YES you should attempt to not use slurs, YES you should try to avoid making rape jokes. But there’s an entire huge group of people who are willing to drag up rape jokes from a decade when rape jokes were REALLY REALLY common in order to say that nothing you say or do today matters.

And that same group is ALSO really interested in expanding the concept of what pedophilia is to include age differences in adults or liking the wrong style of drawing and it’s a purity culture silencing tactic and can we PLEASE stop pretending that gross, tasteless jokes are the same thing as actually sexually abusing people? Can we stop pretending that pointing out “rape jokes were more common fifteen years ago and I feel bad about it but that’s just the way it was and I don’t make jokes like that anymore” is the same as saying “rape isn’t bad and you shouldn’t make a big deal out of it.”

It’s always good to try to be a less shitty human but if you’re only allowed to grow and improve and be less shitty if you never fucked up in the first place then it’s all just calvinist bullshit and none of us could ever really be saved in the first place.

I dunno, dudes. We got so careful about disapproving of the wrong kind of language that we let a white supremacist concern troll Disney into firing a director who caught the attention of the alt right by shit-talking the president.

I think perhaps we need to reexamine some strategy here.

[rotationalsymmetry]

A brief history of Unitarian Universalism (casual, with swears, have not fact checked as such but I think it’s correct): In New England back before US independence, there was Calvinism -- you know, that predestination thing, you’re already going to go to heaven or hell, but you should be good anyways so people will think you’re going to heaven, or something like that. Then there wasn’t. Then there was Congregationalism. Which was a lot more chill, but still very “fuck Catholicism”. And around this time, deism was on the rise: the idea that maybe God created the universe, then fucked off, and hasn’t been actively involved with anything since. Then, some people who were actually reading the Bible, because you can’t look down on Catholicism unless you actually read the Bible, were like... wait, maybe Jesus isn’t all that. You know -- the Savior, the Son of God, one third of the Trinity, all that. Maybe he was just, like... a prophet, or some guy who said some interesting things. A teacher. And other congregationalists were like: uh, what, no, Jesus has to be all that. If you don’t think Jesus is all that, how can you even call yourself a Christian? And they decided they couldn’t really be around each other any more. So the first group, which was mostly in Boston, started calling themselves Unitarians (because they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and instead believed in a one part God), and incidentally at some point also stopped calling themselves Christians because the other guys had a point, and the others called themselves the United Church of Christ (UCC.) Emerson and Thorough -- sorry, Thoreau -- were both Unitarians, as were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and pretty much everyone else from Boston in early US history. (We like to claim Jefferson, because his beliefs were kindasorta similar to Unitarian beliefs at the time, but as I understand it he was never actually part of a Unitarian congregation.) (Btw: if you’re lgbtq+ and Christian, they’re a pretty friendly denomination. If you’re lgbtq+ and Christian and you think the UCC is too liberal (in the religious sense) or you want a majority-lgbtq+ congregation, consider MCC, which is otherwise unconnected to all this. If you’re not Christian and are lgbtq+ -- atheist/agnostic, or maybe something else if you’re down with worshipping with people that aren’t specifically your thing -- Unitarian Universalism tends to be pretty good. As in: we have a bunch of gay/lesbian ministers and other religious leaders, and a few transgender ones. (Knowledge of less mainstream lgbtq+ identities can vary a lot between congregations and generations -- the younger generations tend to be more aware than the gen x’ers.) I’ve been involved with Church of the Larger Fellowship for most of the past year, which did zoom worship before it got cool and serves people around the world, and people like me who live a mile from a UU brick and mortar congregation but still can’t get their disabled ass over there anyways. Anyways, CLF has more POC on the worship team than most UU congregations (the denomination does tend to run pretty white), is very social justice oriented even by UU standards, and is somewhat more cool about general weirdness than most congregations, which again for UU congregations is saying something.) Then, at some point (sadly, I’m significantly more familiar with the history of the first U than the second) there was this other protestant denomination in the South (as in, the US South) where people decided that God was too nice to send people to hell for all eternity, so they started calling themselves the Universalists, as in Universal Salvation. All dogs go to heaven. Well, time passed, each denomination evolved in its own way. (In particular, Unitarianism caught humanism pretty hard -- the joke was the Unitarians believe in one God at most.) In the -- ok, I’ll look this one up -- in 1961, there was a big old merger, creating Unitarian Universalism, and in the process, everyone got together and was all...wait, so what are our official beliefs about God and stuff? Should we even have official beliefs about God? Maybe we can unify around some ideas around how people should treat each other instead. So they did: they drafted a set of Principles (broad-strokes guidelines on how people should act -- peace is good, truth is good, people have value, stuff like that) and a set of Sources (where UU’s get their ideas about God and morality and so on from, starting with direct experience) and left everything else up to the individual. And then a little while later, the tree-huggers got a seventh Principle and a sixth Source added in -- respect for the environment and Earth-centered religions, respectively -- so now the joke is that UU’s believe in one God, more or less. Currently there’s a movement on to add an 8th Principal that explicitly names racial equality and fighting oppression as something we value, since while the current Principles mention justice and equality, they don’t specifically name race, and the people of color who have stuck with the predominantly white denomination figure Unitarian Universalism can and should be doing better on that front. Unitarian Universalism runs religiously liberal (ie, decentralized, individualistic, non-authoritarian, non-dogmatic, inclined to believe science over the Bible) and politically progressive. Unitarian Universalist congregations tend to be very politically active and concerned with social justice, mostly in a well-educated middle class kind of way: committees, Robert’s Rules of Order, donating to non-profits, Get Out the Vote, inviting in speakers and asking “questions” that aren’t really questions, forming partnerships with other congregations and community organizations, etc. Many UU congregations have put a Black Lives Matter sign out (and when necessary keep putting it out when it gets torn down or vandalized), shown up for the protests, opposed the weird immigration BS that’s been going on in the US recently, etc. In addition to more charity style work, like food pantries and homeless shelters.

Point is: yeah it’s got flaws (don’t even get me started on Unitarian Universalism’s flaws) but if you’re a social justice person and want to meet other social justice people who are doing things, Unitarian Universalism can be a good place to look for that. You get more done in groups.

You’re less likely to burn out, too. With marginalization, it’s complicated, right? Again, for LGBTQ+ people, it’s going to be better than most religious organizations. For people a little bit on the autism spectrum, you probably won’t be the only one. (If you’re unmistakeably autistic, people might be weird/ableist; it might depend on the congregation.) If you’re from a working class background or are currently kinda broke, you might run into some frustrations or feel like you don’t fit in; if you’re a poc or if you’re disabled (or your kid is) or you want a lot of personal support, you might struggle more -- this really might vary a lot, but at least the congregations I’m used to tend to assume congregants can mostly stand on their own feet, metaphorically speaking, and have some extra time/money/skills/whatever that can be directed out into the wider world. It can be a good place for pagans and Buddhists and other people who don’t want a church but are having trouble finding a church-like religious community where you can hang out with people on the same spiritual path. (Uh, for a while UU congregations were emphatically not churches and some officially still aren’t; others gave up and were all “eh, it looks like a church, whatever, we’re just a weird church.) Some congregations are more atheist-dominated than others -- many avoid Jesus language most of the time, some avoid God language most of the time (UU’s who believe in God tend to believe in God in a relatively abstract/metaphorical way), some I hear are pagan-heavy, others do use Christian language a lot more. In all honesty you don’t have to go to Sunday worship if you don’t want to, and really a lot of UU’s don’t; if you want to be heavily involved in the congregation but don’t want to go to Sunday worship and don’t want to deal with pressure to, one way out is to teach RE (religious education -- basically “Sunday school”) the RE curricula are amazing, just absolutely astounding, and if you’re teaching it you get a ton of leeway with adjusting anything you don’t like. (Which could happen -- a lot of this stuff was developed before the idea that cultural appropriation is a big problem became mainstream in social justice circles.) What adult worship is like has basically zero correlation (perhaps negative correlation) to what RE is like. (Which sucks for young adults coming of age in a UU congregation, like I said don’t get me started on UU’s flaws.) Finally: for people who care about sex positivity and sex ed, Unitarian Universalists (in partnership with UCC) developed Our Whole Lives, a sex ed curriculum that, well, it’s not abstinence based education. You wouldn’t expect sex ed coming from a religious org to be better than the sex ed in schools, would you? And yet. Comprehensive sex ed that acknowledges gay bi and trans people and that disabled people have sex too and teaches about birth control and masturbation and abuse and consent and boundaries and bullying and internet safety and abortion. It’s good stuff. The course aimed at teens is most popular of course, but there’s actually (age-appropriate) OWL curricula for all stages of life: young kids, adults, older adults, everyone. And it’s versatile enough to be taught in secular contexts (after school programs etc). Given the direction that unfortunately a lot of school districts in the US have been going in in terms of sex ed, it’s a really important program.

[strawberry-jules]

i think i’ve mentioned my project to start dating myself and learn to fall in love with myself. i’m going to start documenting it here.

i’m in such a better place, thank god. i was really scared for myself, in a constant state of dissociation so far removed from myself i truly didn’t care if i died. i’m learning how to recover from an experience like that. i have such a short time here, i’m tired of feeling like i was feeling. i know that accepting myself as a whole and no longer projecting my insecurities on to a “person” i created in my mind (the shadow man, i’ll get to that in a minute) isn’t an option for everyone. i’m lucky in that i have a lot of choice and will when it comes to my mental health. i forget that sometimes. i always have had that ability to just choose how i’ll feel, it’s very helpful. anyway, onto my constant projection.

when i was in 4th grade, i wrote a story about the Shadow Man, a fictional character i created specifically for this school assignment. he was probably about 8 ft tall, and he was almost entirely 2 dimensional, like a cartoon, except his eyes. his head held no facial features except the sockets where his eyes would have been. two deep, somehow blacker-than-the-rest-of-his-being holes sunken into his flattened skull. he was solid when you looked at him, you couldn’t see through him. in actuality, he was a whisper of a black smoke that you could only feel near you. 

we wrote these stories for a halloween activity in class. after i turned mine in, i looked across the room to the whiteboard, my eyes passing over the window momentarily. there was a man standing at the window, his shoulders and head were the only things visible, and he had a hat with a wider brim than i had ever seen, blocking out a majority of the light trying to filter into the room. i quickly glanced back, realizing that no one could be standing outside the window looking into the classroom-- the side of the room with the window was on the edge of a sudden almost 3 foot drop, the edge of a very sharp little hill, blocked in with a fence. there was only about 6 inches of space between the wall and the drop, perhaps even less. to be looking inside the classroom, someone would have to be standing on that narrow grass ledge between the wall and the fence, or they would have to be so tall that they could stand behind the fence at the front of the school, looking inside the window. no one was that tall. by the time my eyes found the window again, he was gone.

he stayed with me for many years after that. i was 9 at the time. as a child, i would feel him with me in the dark, when i was in the bathroom and steam fogged the mirror and i couldn’t see anything in detail, when i would trek out into the woods alone and i would feel the faintest brush of his hand on the back of my neck. i was 16 when i realized that he was a manifestation of my insecurities and fears, and he wouldn’t go away until i accepted them. unfortunately, i was too young and emotionally immature to actually act on that realization. i continued to allow him to be where i projected my fears of failure; didn’t pass that test? that makes sense, i could feel him breathing down my neck, in retrospect. instances like that. 

the most intense encounters i had with the shadow man were my freshman and sophomore years of college, when i was truly alone. i had no one else to protect me from myself, and in my eyes, he took advantage of that. he would follow me home from nights i was so high i couldn’t find my dorm, knowing that i had put myself in a situation so dangerous with men i didn’t know. he would walk close enough that he could push the small of my back, urging me forward. i could hear his laughter, feel his cool breath through my hair. it became a game of cat and mouse: i would behave in a way that put me in danger, or i just simply knew wasn’t correct, and he would chase me home when i was finally alone, making me pay my penance. if he caught me, i would finally atone for my sins with my life as the payment. if i let him finally catch me and make me whole again, mistakes and emotional projections and inability to deal with sadness and anger and fear and hurt put back into me, the place where it really belonged, i would surely die. i couldn’t handle being held accountable to myself. sometimes, i would try to be brave. i would turn to face him, and he would be gone. i didn’t understand why i could never actually see him again after that day as a child. i could only feel him near me, constantly hovering, constantly watching.

it wasn’t until i came out as lesbian that i had my final encounter with him. i finally admitted to myself that i had been lying and hurting myself and pushing down who i really was, that i had been projecting my insecurities about my attraction to women onto him rather than dealing with it myself. i realized that i would never be able to accept all the bad things about myself until i accepted some real, hard to swallow truths. i’m a lesbian. i have an eating disorder that stems from control issues, more than likely due to my inability to control my sexuality. i have a hard time understanding who i am, because i never allowed myself to become myself. i put myself into a box and hid in it and never let my mistakes or real feelings near me. and that’s okay. it was my coping mechanism. 

that’s when the walls of that box fell away, and i was left with this feeling that none of it was real, and the only real thing about me was a part of my identity i had spent no time with. so i managed to push away all of the good things about myself that came from the time spent in that box, because i felt like i didn’t deserve them, that they weren’t found in an association with my sexual identity and therefore weren’t who i actually am. with that feeling came the need to deal with all the bad things about myself, too, because i deserved it. i deserved to feel that pain for how i treated myself for so long. i got so high that i felt like i went to a different dimension. i saw the shadow man. i cried and i apologized to myself for letting it go on so long, and to him for making him the pinnacle of everything i hated about myself for so long. he forgave me, and he took my hand. he gave me back all the feelings i had pushed away for so long, and i was hit by this tidal wave of love. i opened my eyes and found that i wasn’t looking at the shadow man, i was looking at myself as a child. at some point in my early childhood, i think i was about 4 or 5, i realized i liked girls, but i also realized i wasn’t supposed to. so i hid it, and found it easier to hide all the feelings i didn’t like in that little box, that eventually morphed into the shadow man. at 9 years old, i wrote a scary story that i took so much to heart, i made it a place for everything that scared me, and what scared me the most was myself and everything i thought i shouldn’t be feeling. i had protected myself from myself for so long, that by the time i made it back around to me, the damage was severe. in that moment, i finally understood self love.

it’s taken a couple days for me to realize that i’ve been projecting my anger at myself onto my dad’s family, and that’s the reason i want to stop talking to them. they’re the main reason i hid who i am for so long. i wanted to be perfect in their eyes, to gain their approval and love that i was never given. there’s a lot to unpack in that sentence, i’m not going to get into it, but just gather that my dad’s family can be very toxic and didn’t like me growing up. i finally got to a place where they would approve of me, when my life fell apart, and i was forced to come to terms with who i am. is it right of me to be so angry at them when i was really the one doing the damage? no. but do i think they should be held accountable for how they made an innocent child feel, do i think they should be held accountable for their racist tendencies and selfish world views and constant purposeful ignorance? absolutely. and do i want to be the person to educate them? not really. there are so many of them in such a deeply rooted group think, it would take more out of me than i have to offer, to try to affect actual, substantial change in them. i have so little time on this earth, i don’t want to waste it on them when i could be helping people who deserve my help. i would spend so much of my time on wealthy adults who have college degrees and are willfully ignorant and have obviously made their choices to be such, when i could be helping someone who can’t help themselves, when i could be helping the people who actually want to make a change in themselves, who are open and kind enough to put others first. i’ve wasted the last 16 years of my life trying to please them, i don’t want to waste another 16 trying to educate them. they’re big kids, they can do it themselves and join me when they’re ready, or they can stay where they are while i surround myself with people who are committed to making a change and being good people.

and i want to be tolerant of them, to be able to look at them and say, it’s okay that you’re like this. but i can’t reconcile believing black lives matter while simultaneously making an exception for my wealthy, politically influential family and saying, well, black lives matter but it’s okay that you guys don’t necessarily think that there’s any real importance behind that phrase and i’m okay with that. because i’m not! and i’m not saying that they don’t believe that black lives matter, because i truly think they’re generally pretty ambivalent toward people of color, i just know that they don’t see any validity in saying that people of color are marginalized and oppressed and disenfranchised and persecuted/prosecuted at a significantly higher rate than white people and that’s a really, really big issue. in itself, in my eyes, apathy toward racism is just as bad as being racist, because you’re being willfully and knowingly complacent in hate crimes and perpetuating a society in which shit like this has to be said. guilty by association. it’s bullshit, and i’m tired of being okay with people’s apathy because we’re related. however, i do find myself drawn back to just resigning myself to my fate with them. 

and this ties back into me dating myself. i don’t want to love someone who is so intolerant, i don’t know why i’m being so intolerant because it’s making it hard to love myself. i’m behaving like such an asshole, but i truly am stuck in such an emotional crossroads and i feel like i have to pick between advocacy and complacency, and it makes me feel so resentful toward my family for making me make the choice. why am i projecting my anger on them? what am i struggling with that i can’t get over? am i really this upset with them over their racist tendencies, or am i upset about something else and using this issue as a scapegoat? is it for how they made me feel about being gay for so long, so i’m using something else about them to fuel my anger because i’m angry and i have to feel like i have to have a valid reason to be angry? why am i not angry for myself? i don’t feel that upset when i think about how they made me feel, i’m mostly upset at myself for letting it get to me the way it did. i didn’t deserve that. i’m upset at how they made me feel, not necessarily at them. but i feel like i should be, so i’m using something else about them that does genuinely bother me as a way to cover up the fact that i’m angry that i’m not more angry and hurt, because i really deserve to be and someone needs to stand up for me because i never seem to be able to. i’m projecting my anger at myself onto them so hard that it’s hurting me. 

i don’t know where else to go from here with this realization. i’m fairly sure i just hit the nail on the head with this issue, i just don’t know how to resolve it. i guess i need to learn what family means to me first. i just wish they were better people so that i didn’t have to deal with this.

[kinetic-elaboration]

December 9: 1x27 The Alternative Factor

Well, this episode was pretty bad! And as such, I don’t have anything interesting to say about it.

Yet again, Spock is wrong. “Nothing weird or eventful going on here, Captain” just minutes before the whole ship almost explodes.

Actually this episode is pretty boring so maybe he wasn’t so wrong over all.

“I want facts, not poetry!”

“Danger? Mr. Spock, let’s beam down!”

“Violent, unexplained stress and force” is way less poetic than “on the verge of winking out” see Spock, it can be done.

That’s a cool little spaceship there!

“Full crystal power” sounds like Sailor Moon.

Code Factor One! Sounds important.

How do they get “possible prelude to invasion” from this lol? Seems like a leap to me. They’re so suspicious.

“Can we have help?” / “No, you can have the opposite of help.”

Love that Spock anticipated Kirk would want to talk about all this so he just conveniently made himself available right next to The Chair.

Haha the subtitles identify this guy as “Guest.”

No offense but I feel like this actor is perhaps...not so great.

“I came to the logical deduction that you are a liar.”

Mmm, Spock’s hair is getting very slightly windblown. Bet Kirk think it’s hot.

Honestly these Starfleet uniform boots are amazing. They’re so tall, and they have HEELS.

“I’m a promising young medic.” “This is a big ship and I’m just a country doctor.” Lol at McCoy just losing his patients, but I love this take on his voice.

This is a good ep for Kirk and Spock having conversations.

Masters is a lieutenant but she’s wearing an Ensign’s uniform. Also it’s blue when it should probably be red. Very suspicious. Lesbian Masters accidentally wore her girlfriend’s uniform headcanon confirmed.

Jim’s not into this tomfoolery of McCoy’s. “If I had time, I’d laugh.”

“Another riddle? First Dr. McCoy, then you.” He seems a little more patient with Spock’s though.

“A rip in the universe.” There he goes, being poetic again.

Spock is lucky Kirk likes him so much or Kirk would be very annoyed by all these vague-ass answers.

And so Lazurus is back in the sick bay. I feel like this is just a repeat of what already happened? Like truly what is the point of this ENTIRE sequence? What have we learned? What has been accomplished?

If he were really a time traveler this might be more interesting. Like, this is probably the only time I’ll ever say this, but this ep could learn from AOS.

“Get that muscle man out of my sick bay.” Lol

"Sometimes pain can drive a man harder than pleasure. I'm sure you know that doctor." Loooooooool what?

“He’s not going anywhere,” McCoy says, after dismissing the security guard and right before walking out himself.

The closeups in this K and S conversation are so dramatic. Trying so hard to make this ep more interesting or give it any kind of stakes. “Annihilation, Jim.”

Could this adventure be Spock’s inspiration for telling AOS!Kirk that the universe would end if the two Spocks were to meet? He should have just straight up stolen lines from this ep. “If the two Spocks meet...eternity could blow up.”

Soft pastel Kirk. His true form.

“Kirk enters parallel universe” honestly should have been the first 10 minutes, not the last 10.

The idea that seeing your double could drive you insane is actually an interesting one. Like the Southern Reach. Which did that concept better.

This fight scene is pretty awesome though.

RIP cool flying saucer.

“The universe is safe for you and me.” What kind of romantic shit is this lol.

Well... that was in fact pretty awful!

The only good parts of this ep: Kirk and Spock spent a lot of time together; Lt. Masters; Bones’s folksy dialogue; cool spaceship design. Decent concept I guess? But they don’t do anything with it!

Tbh I almost feel like...it might have been okay if it had been shorter? Sort of like The Squire of Gothos, it really didn't feel like there was 50 minutes of story here, hence a lot of repeating of scenes and random filler. But at least Gothos had a decent mini-story. This one couldn’t just be shortened. It would have to be significantly changed to develop the little kernels of interesting ideas into something more... significant.

Parallel universes are a cool sci fi concept, and I’m even into the idea of the alien of the week being a guy who lost his mind meeting his parallel self. Like on its face that sounds awesome! But somehow they took that idea and created a 50 minute episode in which ALMOST NOTHING HAPPENS?? And also simultaneously I didn’t really get the few minutes of stuff that did happen?

So frustrating. Anyway, this was definitely the worst S1 episode but at least there was a lot of Kirk and Spock.

Next up is the Classic ep, The City on the Edge of Forever. Imo this isn’t necessarily one of the best Trek episodes specifically in that it doesn’t feel that much like Star Trek? Without most of the crew, the space setting, etc., it’s not really what I’d call representative. Plus I’m unsure about some of the Kirk characterization. But it is a good story generally and it’s a great K/S episode and it has one of the best lines in the whole show SO I’m looking forward to it.

[earwaxinggibbous]

Top 10 Worst Hit Songs of 2019

So 2019 was kind of a weird year, wasn’t it? Not just for like, life, though it was weird in that aspect, but in music.

I can’t tell if 2019 was an incredibly strong year for music or a weak one. This, to me, is a sign that we’re transitioning into a new era of popular music. The youth are once again taking the reigns of the music scene as did the punks of the 70′s and the grunge kids of the 90′s. Meanwhile, the oldheads flounder for relevance in the face of this new adversity. “Nobody could’ve expected this!”, said no-one ever.

There was a lot of great pop this year, which I will get to, but there was also a lot of bad pop. All of it was either by shitty new artists who have no talent or previous hitmakers swimming around in their own piss. Regardless, it was all interesting to look at. You won’t see any “this entry is short because this song is boring” sections. I also won’t have to rant and rave constantly about the reprehensibility of certain artists, though it will come up. So I guess 2019 was a better year to talk about bad music.

Less do dis.

10. Senorita - Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes

I can’t explain why I hate Camila Cabello so much. I didn’t even realize I hated her until, like... now.

I thought Havana was okay, and her work with Fifth Harmony was tolerable, but every other single she’s dropped has been fucking excruciating. Bad Things sucked, that one song where she can’t pronounce the word “heroin” properly sucked, and this song sucks.

Much like Selena Gomez above, Camila Cabello is yet another female singer who lacks the ability to display any chemistry with anybody, even her actual real friend Shawn Mendes. As well, like sister Gomez, she fills the chart niche of sexy Latina women for men to drool over. “I love it when you call me senorita” is one of the corniest and stupidest lines ever written. She may as well have said “it gets me hot when you call me Ms. Cabello” because that’s essentially the equivalent. 

There’s nothing sexy about the airy whimpering or the obnoxious “ooh-la-la”s or the way Shawn harmonizes, which implies he also loves it when you call him senorita. Nobody actually bothered to think any part of this song through because nobody ever thinks very hard about writing Camila’s songs. Otherwise Bad Things wouldn’t have accidentally sounded like an abuse anthem when it was supposed to be kinky and sexy. And it’s how creepy lyrics like this got by in Senorita.

If he says you’re just friends then you’re JUST FRIENDS. Did we learn nothing from Ann-Marie and Marshmello last year?

This is just yet another lame, plotless, meandering love/sex song by Camila Cabello who has a good voice, but only ever performs these god-awful sex jams with no sex and no jam. And it’s unfortunate because this is sort of the lot dealt to most Latinx artists. Pop-friendly artists like Camila are divvied up into racial categories without anyone even noticing, and most likely she will only ever write and perform sex jams because that’s what a Latina woman in pop is pushed into. Not that I think she has any problem with it, it’s more indicative of a bigger problem than specifically one with Camila herself.

People have been sexualizing the Latinx community since the dawn of time, and while the new movement of Spanish music might change this, it sure as hell hasn’t started yet.

At least it isn’t seven minutes long like Te Bote.

9. Money in the Grave - Drake and Rick Ross

Drake had 25 hits last year, and only one of them was a song I might say I actually like. I remember I said there’d be no boring songs, but... Drake hasn’t been interesting in a long time. Even when I found out about his secret son, or the fact that he was with a significantly younger woman, I just kinda shrugged and said “oh”. Drake has to be on his way out. How much longer are people going to stand this?

Money in the Grave isn’t as turgid as 2018’s Nonstop, or as audibly inept as the 2017(?)’s Pop Style, but God. At this point, every Drake song sounds the same. The man is incapable of bringing forth any kind of emotions, his beats are pathetic drum loops, nothing he writes has any personality. It’s almost funny how boring his music is.

Rick Ross, if you remember him, was known in his time for writing shouty drug dealer anthems. He yelled a lot, and I was sitting with bated breath waiting for him to fucking 6ix9ine scream over this track, only to be disappointed when he lowered into a calmer register for this tune. Drake even made Rick Ross boring, and Rick Ross is one of the funniest bad rappers I can think of, aside from like, Soulja Boy.

I no longer understand what niche Drake fills. You can’t dance to this, you can’t get high to it, nobody’s gonna think you’re cool if you enjoy it, the lyrics aren’t even passably interesting. It’s the same rap cliches as always, perhaps with a new coat of paint, but said paint is the same color as it already was previously, and makes no change. 

No wonder Drake endorsed Lil Baby. Nobody else can equal his talent at sounding bored.

8. Bad Guy - Billie Eilish

So here’s an unpopular music critic opinion: I don’t like Billie Eilish.

I’ve known of her for a long time, and never once has she drawn my intrigue. I’ve gone all over asking people why they like her, and I’ve heard all sorts of answers. Her voice is good, her lyrics are good, her production is interesting, her subject matter is deep... whatever it actually is, I couldn’t tell you. But in the end, I basically feel the same way about her as I do about Twenty-One Pilots. She’s an artist in an oversaturated micro-genre who, despite being of lower quality than her contemporaries, managed to do something different enough that she rose up in the latter part of the genre’s life. In Billie’s case, it’s the trend of female alt-pop singer-songwriters who write about things like politics, feminism, and ESPECIALLY mental health.

Lorde was the original, but we also have Lana Del Rey, the more pop-friendly Halsey, Marina and the Diamonds, the dreaded Melanie Martinez, to some extent even Alessia Cara, just a whole bunch of them. They all had their own unique personality. Billie Eilish’s personality is that she has none.

Okay, I’m being a little mean. I do think that Billie’s music videos are actually very interesting, but good music videos does not a good musician make. Her voice is more of a phlegmy whisper than people let on, and her lyrics... like, what, what makes them so special? And why didn’t wish you were gay get ANY backlash when it’s basically just a backwards version of Little Big Town’s Girl Crush?

Bad Guy is the worst of her singles without question. Its beat, much like most of her songs, sounds like two people accidentally banged on top of the Cassio and somebody pressed record. Her voice continues to be boring and flat, for some reason she has to whisper everything, and the lyrics are some of the most mind-numbing shit I’ve ever heard. Which moron at corporate told the 17-YEAR-OLD to write a “steal yo man” song where she threatens to seduce my dad? Like, ignoring my own personal history with my dad, you are literally a CHILD.

Generally speaking, the song sounds like someone gargling mouthwash in my ear for a minute or two, but like, very quietly. Which is kind of pathetic for a song called Bad Guy. You sound like a pretty average guy to me.

It’s obvious from the music video that Billie’s main inspiration is grunge, and if that isn’t the case I’ll be surprised. The weird imagery and intentionally dressing like a homeless person to every public thing she does gives off big Nirvana energy. One could argue that Billie Eilish is a good segway into teaching the youthsters about the ghosts of music’s past. There’s just a few problems with that.

One: Bad Guy sounds nothing like a grunge song.

Two: Billie Eilish does not have a grunge voice.

Three: Billie Eilish just... isn’t doing it right.

Billie Eilish’s parents are two wealthy actors and she was basically born with the ability to get into the business easier than other people. I’m not saying that you can’t be a grunge artist if you’re wealthy and have a decent family life, but I am saying that Billie’s music doesn’t convey any kind of grunge appeal. There’s no roughness or rawness to it because she could immediately walk into a producer’s studio with a wad of fifties and ask for a sick beat. Her music displays no emotion, and emotion is the main draw of grunge. Like, Kurt Cobain wasn’t a very good singer, but he knew how to perfectly channel how he was feeling. Grunge music is about feelings, not polish. And Billie Eilish is all polish.

I’m not gonna get all angry because grunge is being gentrified by a tiny girl when it was originally started by broke heroin addicts and lesbians, but I am gonna get angry because her music sounds worse than albums made on a budget of 600 dollars by a guy who has had one voice lesson his whole life.

She should just go into modern art.

7. Worth It - YK Osiris

Originally I was gonna give this spot to a different song. Worth It was so immediately bad that it rescued Lil Baby from my list this year.

Don’t expect to be this lucky next year, bitch.

But we’re not talking about that squealing douchebag, we’re talking about THIS squealing douchebag:

YK Osiris. I have no idea where he came from, I think he was part of last year’s XXL Freshman Class? He’s more of a singer than a rapper, so I’m not sure why he was, other than the predetermined idea that all black artists in pop are rappers. I wouldn’t even call him a singer, because the man cannot sing.

At the beginning of the music video, you see dozens of paparazzi swarming around YK Osiris’ car as he exits with a girl. This is the set-up for the song’s impressive amount of self-fellating narcissism, as YK Osiris assumes he has fans. Who the fuck listens to YK Osiris? I mean, clearly someone, because he charted, but like... what does a YK Osiris fan look like? Do women actually like hearing him wheeze into their ear? Like BEES?

NO MORE BEES!

Hearing this fucking chicken nugget talk about whether or not I’m worth eet is the lamest thing. Why does she have to be worth it? Are YOU worth HER time? Who the fuck are you? The attitude is very, I guess, mid-70′s Paul Anka-esque. And now I’ve made you imagine a YK Osiris cover of You’re Having My Baby. I also remember Todd in the Shadows compared this song to Earned It by The Weeknd, but I dunno if I get that vibe.

I mean, Earned It is a song about like... BDSM sex, presumably. So that’s more of an “if you’re good master will make you squart” kind of thing. This is more some sentient dildo insisting that you prove his worth to him before you’re even DATING. That’s a red flag on the same level as meeting a guy who lives alone and still puts a lock on his fridge. Like, what’s in there? What’s in the fridge? Is it human meat?

The guitar solo in this song is the only thing about it that’s... worth it. ZING!

6. ZEZE - Kodak Black ft.Travis Scott and Offset

ZEZE is a bad song. Plain and simple. It’s the essence of bad.

It feels like... it wasn’t even finished. Like everyone involved came in the next day to finish tweaking it only to find out that it was already sent out to be published and sold. I feel like there are things missing. Like yeah, the steel drums are nice, but where’s the rest of the instrumentation? There’s a drum and a steel drum and then nothing. Why does this song feel so naked?

Kodak Black sure doesn’t help, still sounding like he’s half-man half-screaming rubber chicken and mumbling like an actual infant still figuring out the whole “talking” deal. It’s not like Travis Scott or Offset add anything. I can’t remember what they did. ZEZE sounds the way I imagine taking ketamine and cocaine would feel. This song is so amateurish, I almost have good will for it.

If this was made by, say, a couple of high school kids dinking around with a Garageband, I might find it a little cute. The problem is that this song was made by several Whole Ass Adult People who have enough money to not make shit that sounds like ZEZE. It’s cute until you remember that Travis Scott produced big sexy SICKO MODE and yet somehow his presence couldn’t make ZEZE sound like it was made on a higher budget than 20 bucks. Someone even put an echo on Kodak’s voice, like that’d make him ANY BETTER.

It doesn’t help that I have continuing ill will towards Kodak Black because he’s a sex offender and nobody seems all too pressed about it. (Some rappers even congratulate him for having a rough past, like yeah, I guess some of those serial killers really did deserve better, huh?) I won’t be satisfied until he’s wearing orange pajamas on an island far away, and until then my feelings stand.

As it is, ZEZE is a song so chintzy-sounding and lame that I can’t imagine who would enjoy it. This song has the same energy as one of those hula girls you put on the dashboard of your car: Cheap and ugly.

5. The Git Up - Blanco Brown

Whenever something new is created, there’s always a leech.

I probably don’t need to tell you about the monstrous year Old Town Road had on the pop charts. For weeks and weeks, Lil Nas X was blocking people from his throne at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, bumping off new faces like Billie Eilish and oldheads like Taylor Swift. Old Town Road knew no mercy. This is the year that a gay black kid singing about horses ruled the world.

And Blanco Brown wanted a piece.

Blanco Brown is one of those artists who started out producing and writing for other hitmakers. He worked on some song by 2Chainz, a couple by some woman named Demetria McKinney, he produced that accursed MILF song by Fergie, a lot of relatively famous people. But he looked at Old Town Road and realized that he, being a black man from the lovely state of Georgia, could also do that.

He could not do that.

The Git Up is a husk of a song, only validated by the fact that it achieved what it was aiming for: TikTok memes. It’s as shameless as Watch Me, but doesn’t even have the small sense of excitement Silento gives off. Blanco Brown’s The Git Up and the “challenge” that it’s attached to are pathetic. The only reason Blanco isn’t too ashamed to go outside after writing this is because he knows plenty of people have fallen into his trap, and that they’re bigger fools than he is.

I started off hating Old Town Road, but over time I’ve sort of come to love it. There’s innocence in it. Lil Nas X didn’t mean for it to be a number one hit, it just happened. A lot of artists were trying too hard this past year, and I suspect it’s why Old Town Road made the pop charts its bitch. It didn’t have to try.

A lot of people will point at rock bands for being “fake”. If they draw inspiration from grunge or punk, and they don’t have the proper edge, many will point and laugh. But just because something is fun and hip doesn’t mean it’s easier to make. In fact, I feel it’s a lot easier to tell if someone’s making a shitty pop song for any reason other than themselves. A lot of people thought Lil Peep was faking, and he really, really wasn’t. There’s grey area in topics like depression, but Blanco Brown (and anyone like him) is as transparent as a window. I see through his mock-excitement, his cute little dance challenge, his “innocent” song. We all do.

I believe Tyler Durden put it best:

“Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”

4. I Don’t Care - Ed Sheeran ft. Justin Bieber

Speaking of being fake...

I don’t know if Ed Sheeran realizes how embarrassing this song is. More than any other song he’s been involved in. More than Shape Of You, or that one song on Revival, more than anything. I Don’t Care is an exercise in humiliation.

Generally speaking, I don’t like Ed Sheeran’s music. I think he’s had a couple good songs, we all like Sing and Castle on the Hill, it’s not like he’s untalented. But every time he’s gotten a big hit these past few years it’s been so shitty or mediocre that I wanted to scream. I’m not sure why, but all of his fans seem to flock towards his worst songs. And of all of them, I hate I Don’t Care the most.

Usually the problems with Ed Sheeran’s music just revolve around his meek, tiny personality and his weird style of lyricism. The level of detail he gets into can be both an asset and a detriment. I remember I basically described Shape Of You as a virgin anthem, because Ed Sheeran exudes dorkiness. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and when it comes to nerd music I’d rather take Thomas Dolby, but he definitely had a style.

I Don’t Care is Ed’s Intuition.

As in, the Jewel song. The blown-up pop song released by Jewel, a previously sincere folk singer who played acoustic guitar and sang about break-ups and The Media(TM) and stuff like that. Ed Sheeran is a lot like Jewel, if you think about it. Both of them are skilled lyricists who play acoustic guitar and sing about personal topics, and both of them suddenly decided to throw that away and make a sell-out pop hit. If this kills Ed’s career, they’ll have had basically the same musical trajectory.

Ed Sheeran opens the song by saying he’s at a party he doesn’t wanna be at, and that’s how the song feels. You, the listener, are at a party you don’t wanna be at. What good did adding Justin Bieber to this song do? Oh, right, that’s what made it a hit. I Don’t Care goes far beyond Blanco Brown’s brand of shamelessness. Blanco Brown specifically wanted a dance challenge hit. Ed Sheeran just wanted a hit. Any hit will do. He brought in guaranteed hitmaker Justin Bieber, tossed out his acoustic guitar for fully electronic production, and sang about something vague and already done. And the worst part is that it WORKED.

I imagine this was almost entirely through radio play, because this song is so radio-friendly and milktoast it’s unreal. With a stupid music video greenscreening Ed’s face onto shit and “ooh ooh”s and all, this song exists to pander. It wasn’t created for humans, rather, it was created for the pop music algorithm that’ll shove it into people’s laps without them asking. There’s no artistic integrity, nothing worth thinking about for longer than its runtime. It made it to the Hot 100 because it can be played in grocery stores and clothing stores and really any kind of store. Ed Sheeran is a God of nothing, and I can’t imagine he’s proud.

3. No Guidance - Chris Brown ft. Drake

This song is bad on every possible level. Starting off with the fact that it’s nine minutes long. It out-lengths last year’s overly long garbage fire that was Te Bote. 

And then you look at the credits and know exactly who’s to blame for all this:

I don’t know if Lil Dicky anticipated giving Chris Brown’s career a second wind with Freaky Friday, but I think that’s what he did. I defended Lil Dicky last year, and I’m still not clear on how much he actually wanted to work with Chris Brown since that’s not really the kind of thing famous people are honest about, but this wasn’t Lil Dicky’s hit. This was a springboard to launch Chris Brown back into the limelight. Earth didn’t even chart. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the last gasp of Lil Dicky’s career in the spotlight.

But I’d take Freaky Friday over No Guidance any day.

No Guidance is the formal beef-squash between Chris Brown and Drake. Apparently they both dated Rihanna at some point and allegedly had an actual literal bar fight. Despite Drake claiming he still loves Rihanna, he’s also choosing to publicly make up with and work with the man who got her hospitalized at 19 years old. Then again, Rihanna also wants nothing to do with Drake.

(source)

Over time, Drake has proven himself to be his own flavor of scumbag, a weirdo who dates younger women and pretended not to have a son. Perhaps this is his way of getting back at Rihanna. Or he’s simply using Chris Brown’s new power to bolster his own career. Regardless of why it is, it’s gross, especially when he’s dropping bars like this:

Someone else here is looking a little violent, no?

On pure quality, it sounds like every other Chris Brown song, just with Drake tossed into the mix haphazardly. It’s a lame song about hitting on some girl where both artists drop references to their old songs because that’s the easiest way for a failing artist to feign relevance. Assuming nobody features Chris Brown on another massive hit next year, there’s a fair chance he’s done for, and after years of oversaturation, the public finally tires of Drake. No Guidance is a nothing song with scummy shit going on behind the scenes.

RIP Lil Dicky.

2. 7 Rings - Ariana Grande

I never really understood the hype around Ariana Grande. She has a few songs that I enjoy, and her voice is very good, but nothing by her really stands out to me as an amazing song. Ariana stans are relentless. When I posted my review of the thank u, next album some complete stranger replied to it with “Uhhh ok sis”. Like barring the fact that I’m not a girl and we’re not related... it’s an opinion, calm yourself.

Frankly I don’t know how people enjoyed this song. Her stans are insane, but surely not that insane, right? I mean... this isn’t a song. It’s a MISTAKE.

Between Gwen Stefani and Ariana Grande, sampling The Sound Of Music for your pop song is a dangerous game. And really, she should’ve sampled like, anything else. Because nothing says “wealthy, savage girl” like a cute song about your favorite things, I guess!

I’ve never felt quite so immediately gross and uncomfortable as I did when listening to 7 Rings. I have no problem with women flexing, of course I don’t, but this isn’t flexing, it’s mocking. 7 Rings makes me feel like I’m being bullied.

Ari had a horrible 2018, and she’s more than allowed to flex a little, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want to essentially play the villain of a high school movie. She’s not Cher Horowitz or Regina George, because then at least she’d be entertainingly bitchy. I judge a flex anthem based on how much I get excited for the person being wealthy and cool. This song makes me want to commit a robbery.

The lyrical content isn’t the only bad element. It also sounds like shit! 

Ariana Grande is a belter. Everyone knows she’s here to sing and not... rap. Which is exactly what she does on this song. The filters she puts over her voice during the rapping sections are just... gross. When she drags out certain words it hurts my ears. That and apparently multiple people have accused her of stealing their flows, though that’s really hard to say since it’s an incredibly generic rap flow. Also, she samples Gimme The Loot by Biggie Smalls, a song about robbing people. Which makes sense because if you bought Ariana’s album, you were robbed! Congrats!

But in the end, the most damning thing about this song is its lyrics. Why should I be excited about this absolute bitch having tons of money? Why should I care when she has the gall to say shit like this?

There were ten writers on this song and nobody thought of saying “hey, maybe the phrase ‘happiness is the same price as red-bottoms’ is a little fucking shallow!” 

And I’m not making any judgments on Ariana’s character in real life. I’m sure she’s a perfectly nice person, but if this song was supposed to project some sense of camaraderie and a “we did it!” attitude, it fails. What it does project is a snide, rich girl looking down on you for not just buying yourself out of depression. Never write a song like this again.

Honorable Mentions

Happier - Marshmello and Bastille

I’m not gonna be the first to say every Marshmello beat sounds exactly the same, but every Marshmello beat sounds the same. I picked this one because it charted highest, but really it makes no difference which Marshmello song I pick on.

Sweet But Psycho - Ava Max

This song reads like a 12-year-old’s deviantART journal.

Drip Too Hard - Lil Baby and Gunna

Like I said, this song almost got on the list proper. It’s a slow burn. At first you feel like the beat is solid, and Lil Baby rides it decently enough, but then it keeps going and the flows never switch and Gunna basically sounds the same as Lil Baby and you begin feeling like you’re losing your mind.

Thotiana - Blueface

People kept memeing about this. I thought it’d be fun. I hate you guys.

God’s Country - Blake Shelton

Namedropping The Devil Went Down To Georgia does not make you Primus. Because you are not creative or interesting.

Trampoline - Shaed

I wouldn’t have even given this song a second thought except apparently it’s hit the alt-rock charts? Where is this rock? Like I get we’re pushing the boundaries of genre but I think the bare minimum of a rock song would be a GUITAR.

Knockin’ Boots - Luke Bryan

This song is dumb. But I’m oddly amused by how dumb it is, so it may live.

Baby - Lil Baby and DaBaby

Sometimes things sound like a good idea, and then they’re not. This didn’t even sound like a good idea and it proved to be an even worse idea. Something definitely could’ve been done with this, but Lil Baby is essentially a creative void that consumes all it sees.

Someone You Loved - Lewis Capaldi

Another song that’s too dumb for me to really get mad at. God knows, Capaldi is putting a hell of a lot of effort into something. What it is, I’m not sure, but he’s doing his best.

With those out of the way, we move onto

Number One:

You Need To Calm Down - Taylor Swift

"I AM LAID LOW BY THE HUMAN RACE. ME, AN INNOCENT WOMAN, MUST DEAL WITH ‘HATERS’ EVERY SINGLE DAY. MY HEART HAS BECOME WEAK WITH ALL OF THE UNKIND WORDS. DARE I SAY... I AM OPPRESSED?”

It’s ironic hearing Taylor Swift tell me to calm down. She hasn’t been calm for a long time. She sure as hell isn’t calm in this song. It’s basically the equivalent of someone screaming “I AM NOT ANGRY!”

Like, you’re... still mad about the snake thing? It’s been a few years now and you’re still bothered enough by an emoji that you referenced it in a song about how not-bothered you are? I mean, apparently this song (as well as ME!) is about celebrating individuality. It definitely is celebrating an individual: Taylor Swift.

I think a big theme of this year was “embarrassing”. The Git Up was embarrassing, I Don’t Care was embarrassing, but none of them are more embarrassing than this. You could probably do a list of the ten worst Taylor Swift lyrics and it’d be mostly this song. And if the lyrics aren’t terrible enough, it also blatantly copies the beat from Sunflower, the second-biggest hit of the year and a personal favorite. Like, a fellow critic remixed them together and the backing track is essentially unchanged.

And then we get to the gay stuff.

I’m not the first to point out that the underlying message of this song is pathetic at best and offensive at worst: “I have haters, and gays have haters, so we’re basically the same.” This is essentially Taylor Swift hoping she’ll get an invite to judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

There’s just kind of an eensy weensy problem.

Gay “haters” are like... ACTUALLY DANGEROUS.

They’re not just the goofy, protest-sign waving boomers she depicts in her music video. An internet comment is harmless. Homophobia isn’t. Homophobia leads to suicide, gets teens kicked out of their homes, causes hate crimes, it can cause incredibly serious harm. Someone sending you a fucking snake emoji isn’t the same as years and years of systematic oppression!

Does Taylor Swift have to worry about her safety when she tours in more conservative areas? Does she have to fear the possibility of losing friends and family ties when opening up about herself? Does she have to worry about letting the public see who she dates, beyond the usual celebrity drama? Do people shout slurs at her on the street? Do churches and politicians campaign against her right to marry?

Of course not.

Taylor Swift has always made everything about herself. She’s lied and been petty for years and years in her music. Imagine lying about KANYE. You don’t need to lie about fucking Kanye to make him look bad! He does it himself! She was the victim that time, and every time. But at no point until now did she stoop low enough to openly compare herself to oppressed groups because people are mean to her on the internet.

Like this isn’t even about articles or tabloids or anything, it’s about people being nasty online. The phrase “shade never made anybody less gay” is basically a crackhead way of diminishing our suffering. It’s not “shade” we’re worried about, Taylor, it’s having our fucking legal rights taken away. Your biggest worry is “haters”. Haters aren’t going to ban you from being married.

This song is phony, it’s a rip-off of a much better song that literally came out in the same year, it’s repetitive, it’s petty, and most of all, it tries to diminish the oppression of the LGBT+ community by boiling down all of our pain and suffering to simple “shade”.

I will not calm down.

Woo-ee. That was something alright. We’ll be moving onto the best list soon, if I don’t get caught up in my other quarantine activities.

[zwei-the-penguin-with-a-pen]

‘Snow (Hey, Oh)’

The Rooster's Teeth club in downtown Vale was packed nearly to bursting. Ruby kept worrying the Fire Marshal might come shut the concert down. Then again, there would probably be a riot if anything interrupted this show. It was Weiss Schnee performing, after all. Still, it felt almost as though all of Vale had made the scene.

Ruby Rose absentmindedly danced to the tunes coming over the club's PA between sets, sipping her tasty lemonade in between dance steps. She had all the moves... or so she liked to believe. She probably looked ridiculous, but she didn't mind at all. Music was her most favorite thing in the universe... Well, except for Weiss.

The breathtaking Miss Schnee had always tickled Ruby's ears with her powerful voice and her crazy random violin music. Something about Weiss's lyrics drove Ruby wild. Recently, though, she had caught up with Weiss by chance, and the two had become fast friends. The way she looked at Weiss, and the way she sometimes caught Weiss looking at her, she thought they could maybe be more than friends... like cute friends that kiss sometimes or something.

OOH COOKIES!!! Ruby zoomed over to the snack bar and scratched together a few Lien, politely requesting one of the shiny red cookies. The woman behind the counter slipped two of them into a paper bag and passed the bag to Ruby.

"Schnee says you're not supposed to pay, but shall we call this a donation?" She asked. Ruby beamed as she nodded.

"Yeah, I would really like this club to keep its doors open." She replied, the rainbow-haired lady winking and grinning.

But wow, Weiss had told the club to give Ruby free snacks? Perhaps Yang had been right earlier that night.

"If you really dig this girl, you might want to think about dropping the 'L' word..." Her sister had suggested as she brushed her flowing golden locks in a mirror. Ruby had been trying to make her hair cooperate, but the climate in Patch was having none of that.

"...Lesbian?" Ruby queried. Yang couldn't help but chuckle.

"No, hon, the other 'L' word..."

"Lesbians?" She asked again, putting heavy emphasis on the latter S.

"Well, I was gonna say 'love' or 'like', but I bet 'lesbians' would work, too!" The sisters shared a laugh at that. Ruby's smile fell away after a moment.

"I don't even know if she likes girls..."

"Really? Have you ever noticed her band?" Ruby pondered Yang's question for a moment. "Ruby, they're all girls! And they're all fine as all get-out, if you ask me! Weiss Schnee is a gay disaster, and she will totally be into you!" She rushed Ruby and cupped her face in one hand. "I mean, look at this face? How can anyone turn down this face?" Ruby struggled to get free of her sister's grip. "Especially when it's not so far North of those legs..."

"Oh, stop it!"

"Hey, at least you got Mom's legs! I got stuck with Dad's..."

"At least you didn't get Dad's chest!" Ruby chuckled. Yang rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, I definitely got those from her, and more than that, according to Dad." Yang sighed loudly. Ruby frowned at the sound, but Yang grinned lightly. "Hey, at least he talks about her sometimes now. It's not so difficult as it was before. Anyway, enough of this somber talk! Let's get you looking spiffy for your lady-friend!" Yang tossed tiny Ruby over her shoulder and ran into her closet to find Ruby the shiniest threads they could get.

So that's how she wound up in this dynamite red dress, black tendrils hanging from everywhere. it matched her hair perfectly, although it fit her body a bit... tightly. If she leaned over too far, someone might catch a nosebleed. Sure, she had her trusty stockings on as well, but she still felt a tad too large. Thick, even.

Well, she really liked thick girls, so maybe Weiss would too.

The stage lights dimmed significantly, calling the crowd's attention forward. Ruby gulped down the last of her lemonade and made for the stage. She cheered loudly for her favorite girl, as did the rest of the concertgoers. The trumpet girl from the Mechanical Girls took the stage, her neon green eyes and bright orange hair coming to life in the stage light.

She produced her horn and played a royal-sounding fanfare. A flowing white gown appeared at the back of the stage as a violin refrain sounded. Ooh, Weiss's introduction was the best! Ruby squeezed as close to the stage as she could get, wanting to see the white-haired masterpiece and hear her unmatched violin chops.

Weiss swayed and danced to her own music, her gown bouncing and whipping in time. Her long white hair in its off-center ponytail bobbed around, flowing as gracefully as its owner. The violin notes seemed to hang in the air around the stage. The drummer began her fill as Weiss took a short solo. The rest of the band filed in one at a time, and before Ruby knew it the show had begun.

Her first few jams were mostly instrumentals with small vocal chants here and there. Her fourth song was the first with actual singing, a hard-driving masterpiece called 'It's My Turn'.

"WEEEEIIIISSSSSS!!!!!" Ruby yelled at the top of her voice, feeling all sorts of reactions at the sound of Schnee's impeccable singing. A blistering violin solo came during an instrumental break, and Ruby lost it at the sight of Weiss's fingers traversing the instrument's neck and strings. Such precision and agility, such attack and speed. Holy Dust, those fingers!

The song ended with a crash from the guitars and drums, and Weiss scraped her strings viciously. "Thank you all for making the scene tonight!" She spoke as the music died away, receiving raucous cheers. "It's always a pleasure to jam at the Rooster's Teeth! I think this might be my favorite club in Vale!" They audience cheered more at that. Ruby grinned in Weiss's direction, catching a wink back from her.

She thought her soul might leave her body at that.

"So, I don't usually stray far from my setlist, but I've been practicing something pretty diligently lately. See, this song was shown to me by one of my favorite people in the world. She sings it all the time, saying she picked it up from her Dad. Well, I wanted to try and play it for her. So, would you guys be down to try it?" The crowd cheered loudly in agreement.

Weiss began her violin riff, and Ruby's eyes turned to stars as the notes grazed her ears. Weiss was actually playing 'Snow'! Ruby and her dad always jammed Chili Peppers records, and that song was one of her favorites. She danced and bounced in rhythm with her jam. Weiss did craft a nice remix of it. Ruby's eyes definitely had hearts in them, she could feel it.

"RUBY! I'm so glad you came!!" The white-haired beauty told her as she rushed up for a hug after the concert. The warmth of Weiss's arms and the scent of her engulfed Ruby. She thought she might drown in this masterpiece of a woman.

"You learned my song! It was amazing, too!" Ruby finally spoke, hoping her nose wasn't bleeding or anything.

"It was fun to learn, and I knew you'd love it." Weiss winked at her. Ruby felt drunk, whatever that felt like. Weiss had taken over her whole existence in that moment.

"Weiss, I think I'm in lesbians with you..." She announced before she realized the words had come out of her mouth. She instantly prayed for her own quick and untimely death.

"...Lesbians? I like those!" Weiss laughed. Ruby fell at ease at the remark, the ice broken. Albeit awkwardly, but broken still.

"I meant to say 'like' or 'love' or something... I'm sorry." She confessed. Weiss gave her a curious look.

"What a coincidence..." Weiss mentioned. Ruby's eyes narrowed at the frozen apple of her eye. "As it happens, I'm in lesbians with you, too!" Ruby's heart fell out of her body at that, her eyes turning to stars and hearts. She hugged Weiss tightly, enjoying the returned embrace.

"So, does this make us a thing?" Ruby asked, forever polite and awkward.

"Sure, I want to be a thing with you."

"So... does this mean we can make out?"

"RUBY ROSE!" Weiss exclaimed with an unsolicited laugh. "I mean, certainly, but not here! I have an idea. Let's catch a late bite and head back to my place... So we can be a thing." She decided, kissing Ruby's lips. Weiss was just as terrible at flirting as Ruby. She really was a gay disaster, but that's what helped Ruby snag her.

Now that she was done snagging, perhaps she could get up to some shagging. Wait, that sounds like it might be the wrong word. Ugh, I don't know what I'm talking about. All I know is I have the cutest girlfriend in Remnant now, and her legs are making my nose bleed.

It's okay, Ruby, I'm sure everyone understands.

Thanks, ZweI, now shut up and send me on this date!

Yes, ma'am.

And so Ruby and Weiss snagged up some local fast food and talked things over before journeying back to Weiss's flat... to be a thing.

\/\/\/\/\/

\/\/\/\/\/

\/\/\/\/\/

Day Two: Team RWBY Member

I plan to write about the rest of Team RWBY when Crossover Day comes, so I figured I’d give Ruby herself a slot.

Music AU where Weiss Schnee is basically Lindsey Stirling. I’ve done it a few times and it seems to work. Plus, I think Taiyang would jam Red Hot Chili Peppers, and I feel like Ruby would be into them by association.

Also, White Rose shenanigans, since those always seem to get a note or two.