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anotheronechicagobog · 4 years

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Advil and Water (Cause Goodwin Ain’t No Schmuck) 1 - You’re An Idiot Part 1

written by: @anotheronechicagobog

A/N: THIS IS A MANSTEAD FIC - you have been warned

A/N 2: Okay, so I have not seen season four or the majority of season five (partly because I didn’t have access for a while and partly because now I’m a bit nervous to), so I’ve been a little hesitant about starting up this series even though I’ve been working on Volomag and Vodka for Chicago PD, and Tylenol and Tequila for Chicago Fire for a little while now because of how pairings have been written in the show, both that I have and have not watched, and the state that all the characters were left in at the end of season five. So, I’ll try to watch season four and five (despite the anxiety I have because I know how things end up), but I’ll probably just act like neither of those seasons ever happened except for Marcel being added to the cast and Maggie getting ahppily married. Please comment your thoughts on this, I’m curious to see how it will be recieved.

Warnings: some swearing, I haven’t actually watched the season all this happened in so I’m kinda just working off of clips from youtube and info from some other fanfics that may not be entirely accurate, the Hippocratic oath, Will Halstead is slightly less idiotic than usual in this

“You’re an idiot.”

“Why this time?”

“You’re lying to Natalie. Everyone knows that you are, just not what about. And I suggest you tell her before everyone else finds out first.”

“Ms. Goodwin-”

“Don’t you ‘Ms. Goodwin’ me, not only are the two of you doctors in one of the city’s most frequented and respected emergency departments where you both play crucial roles in how said emergency department functions, I consider Natalie to be a treasured friend, and you are her fiance who gives me migraines. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“I’m serious, William. I don’t know what you’re keeping from Natalie, but you need to tell her.” She levelled the ginger with a ‘do as I say or else’ look before sashaying down the hall to return to her office with Dr. Halstead unable to do anything but contemplate her words.

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Well, he told her. And now she wasn’t speaking to him. And kicked him out. So here he was, getting a sore back from Jay’s shit couch, trying to figure out what went wrong. If Goodwin hadn’t stuck her nose where it didn’t belong, I wouldn’t have told Nat, and I wouldn’t be here right now. I would be at home cuddling the love of my life with my son down the hall.

Calling Owen his son wasn’t something that shocked him anymore. It had been a little trying at first, Owen clearly did not like him, but they bonded. Neither had been consciously aware of that for a while, but one day after a really long shift filled with blood, and crying, and death, and Will really just wanted some food loaded with butter and carbs and to go to sleep. But Natalie had caught a double, and Helen had plans to go on a cruise. So once Will had gotten to Nat’s place (now their home) he was left alone with Owen by an exuberant Helen. At first, Owen threw things, and cried, and pouted. Will was close to tears, why did Owen hate him so much? So Will grabbed the backpack Nat kept stocked with everything Owen could need on a day out, a red-faced Owen, and got in his car. Truthfully he hadn’t been sure where he was going at first. Just somewhere kid-friendly where Owen could spend his energy in a way that didn’t involve hitting him with blocks. They ended up at the Kohl’s Children’s Museum. A fussy Owen was lead through the exhibits, slowly calming down and enjoying himself. When they got to the turtle room, Owen grabbed his hand and tugged him along as he tried to find all the turtles. Will was shocked. They spent the rest of the day together, after the museum they went home and laughed over grilled cheese and The Lion King. The perfect day ended with Owen shyly requesting a story. Unfortunately, Will was not good at reading stories. He made up for it by singing a song in Gaelic. Owen was out before the last verse. He kissed Owen on the forehead before heading to bed himself.

And now he was here, driving into work alone, not even getting a good morning text from Natalie. He saw her get out of her car and walk inside, not even sparing him a glance. Goodwin glared at him once he walked in. Seriously? I did what you told me to and I still ended up in the dog house!

Will was grumpy all day, he missed Natalie and Owen. It had become a tradition to sing Owen to sleep and he really missed it. Will could acknowledge that he should have told her. He’d been subpoenaed into going along with everything. He didn’t want to do it, he knew how dangerous the Burke family was, he knew that they would not hesitate to go after Natalie and Owen. Or him, but that wasn’t his main concern if he was being honest. Natalie and Owen, God, they had become his whole world. Bile rose in his throat and tears painfully prickled his eyes as he thought about losing them.

She was alone in the doctor’s lounge. Her hair was mussed after running around all shift, her eyebrows were pinched together, and she looked like her limbs were being weighed down by cinderblocks. “Can we talk? After shift? Please?”

“Okay, Will.”

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They sat across from each other awkwardly. The tightness in his chest only got worse and Will could feel his heart fragmenting into microscopic pieces. “I’m sorry. I should have told you what was going on much sooner. I... I don’t quite know how to explain what I was thinking. I didn’t even want to be doing it, the feds subpoenaed me, and I grew up a few blocks away from these guys, I know how they work. They’re dangerous men. And if they wanted to hurt me, they wouldn’t lay a finger on me... They’d hurt you and Owen. And somehow keeping you in the dark, it just- It made it a little easier to pretend that wasn’t a stake. That if you didn’t know, they wouldn’t touch you. It was wrong. I was wrong. You and Owen mean everything to me Nat, I can’t- I can’t lose you. I love you”

“I love you too. But Will, do you not trust me? Why didn’t you just tell me? I’m your fiance, how can you love me and want to spend your life with me if you couldn’t tell me this huge secret?”

“I thought I was keeping you safe.”

“Tell me everything, Will.”

“Okay.”

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So Natalie hadn’t left him. And he was forever thankful. Owen had probably been the most excited that Will and Natalie were back on good footing. His first day back Owen ran into his arms and wouldn’t let go so Will had to eat his pancakes with a small child curled up in his lap. The day had ended pretty similarly, too. They didn’t even get halfway through the movie before, nestled in Will’s lap again, Owen was sound asleep. Despite their troubles, neither Will or Nat could pretend that they didn’t feel wholly and utterly content.

Their peace and progress in couple’s counselling was interrupted two months later when Burke needed to be admitted to the hospital. It called more than his undercover skills into question. His ethics, and his doctoral oath. It didn’t matter what Will thought was right or not, when he became a doctor he took an oath to treat people, and if he didn’t bring Burke in he’d be violating his oath which was a serious legal document, regardless of whether the feds tried to give him a pass or not. Will was caught a bullet and two dreadful bodybags. The feds were close but not close enough. Will asked Ingrid, his ‘handler’, to meet with him and Natalie. Ingrid was not happy that he’d told Natalie, but Will just scoffed and told her to shove it.

“Look, Will’s right. He has to take Burke to the hospital-”

“Oh get off your high horse Ms. Manning, this is a serious-”

“Okay, first of all, it’s Dr. Manning, and second of all, do not. Interrupt. Me. Ever. Again. Third, both Will and I, as doctors, have a legal obligation give proper medical attention to everyone and anyone. You or your boss, or any other federal agent can’t tell Will just not to do it, because Will is liable for Burke’s health.”

“I’ve already called him to come down to MED. This meeting wasn’t to ask for your permission, it was to inform you of what’s going to happen.”

#One Chicago #chicago med #Natalie Manning #will halstead #will halstead x natalie manning #manstead #sharon goodwin

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deliriumsetin · 4 years

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So here’s the thing...

I’m really freaking hard to scare. Unlike my cat that just booked it into another room when our UPS guy dropped a package off at the door. Perfect timing, Percy. Perfect timing...

Anyways! I have NOT had a good scare in probably two decades. No matter what fiction I pick up that promises to chill and thrill me, neither happens.

Now keep this in mind.

As of right now I am launching a business and yes, this will tie into the weird opener. Be patient, please.

I am launching Vox et Liber, a publishing house for ALL kinds of stories and ALL kinds of voices. I started working on this in November 2019, what do you mean that was only 8 months ago?! I originally thought the publishing house up after learning a bunch of facts about the publishing world over the summer.

VeL publishing will be a new kind of publishing and I can say that with 100% confidence because I am building this beast from the ground up, with the help of @hazandlouwho, my fiance, and a few other amazing people!

Because this business is getting started independently, which means no investors, we are working with a VERY small amount of cash reserved for start up. Initially all works will be published digitally. We do plan on launching a Kickstarter in September/October to get enough funds to keep this going and to do it right which means getting stories published physically and sold to both indie bookstores and Barnes and Noble. Please be on the look out for that.

If any awesome people want to donate to help us not break my own personal bank, which will be easy to do since Covid-19 forced me to quit my job working with the public because I’m high risk and unemployment has kept me in limbo for going on 3 weeks, you can tip us on Ko-Fi by clicking here. ALL donations and funds raised go towards launching VeL and all projects under the VeL umbrella.

Bringing it around to the scares. VeL is launching our first project and we need all you awesome writers’ help. As of today we are opening submissions for our first ever anthology, Graveyard Visits. It’s horror with the theme of marginalized voices written as Own Voice fiction. Meaning stories written by marginalized groups with their marginalized groups as main characters.

Submissions are going to be open from July 1st until August 12th 11:59pm EST. Stories are expected to be between 2.5k-5k words in length. We will be paying $.02 per word as well as giving you a digital copy of the anthology. Submission Guidelines can be found here.

Now the whole me being hard to scare; I want to be scared. Submit your best, your scariest, and most bone-chilling stories.

Also, not so subtly gonna add a nudge to @thebibliosphere because I feel like she might have something up her sleeve. If not for this anthology then definitely our erotica one that will be announced later this summer.

We also have a podcast series in the works but I will do another post on that once I or my awesome soon to be brother in law (that’s STILL weird) have a moment to do up some graphics.

Click below for my rant on why traditional publishing right now is a soul sucking leech on EVERYONE.

On average with hardcover books an author is lucky to make $1.50 off each one sold and that’s only AFTER they sell enough to cover their advance. I also found out the average advance is like 3k per book. Some (not including the wicked big names who get a shit ton more) can get as high as 5k but others can get as low as a 1k. An author is lucky to see that twice a year (selling 2 books) because they have to spend time MARKETING book 1 instead of writing book 2.

Keep in mind fiction hardcovers are generally sold between 19.99 (usually YA) or 29.99 (usually adult). Wicked big difference, huh? I get there’s a lot that goes into making a book, trust me I do but the split between should leave the authors getting around $4 per copy instead of less than $2. That $2.50 is just extra that the publishing house takes because it can.

Then there are the mass paperbacks which an author gets paid 50 damn cents per copy. Yes, those books retail for anywhere between 7.99 and 14.99 per book and sell way faster than hardcovers. Take it from an ex-bookseller.

Most books take on average 500 to 1,000 hours of work put into them before they even get handed off to the publisher for the FIRST time. At minimum that author sees an hourly return wage of $6 which is BELOW the United fucking States shit-tastic minimum peasant wage. We devalue the arts so fucking much- arg! But that can be a separate rant for another day.

Then after doing more research I realized just how off balanced the publishing world STILL is in the year of hell 2020. Don’t believe me click the link. Sarah Park Dahlen did a great article with a great graphic on it.

As of 2015, yes I’m paraphrasing to continue to rant, children’s books had ALMOST more books about anthropomorphic cars, household items, and animals than there were books about Black kids, Asian Pacific kids, Latinx kids, or Native American/First Nation kids combined. Talking teakettles and their kindred got a whopping 12.5% while if you add up all the groups above you get 14.2%. None on there own beat out the freaking Easter Bunny! Of course books about White kids are the highest at 73.3%. Yes, this was as of 2015 but as an avid reader who reads middle-grade and up books for fun I can tell you nothing much has changed. Books about black kids maybe SLIGHTLY higher since the BLM movement (fuck yes progress!!) but I’d be heartstoppingly shocked if they beat out talking fucking trucks.

And that’s just race. From what I gathered with all the publishing houses less than 100 books with LGBTQIAP+ main characters are published each year. Wtf? And among that as of 2015 55% percent are about cisgendered males and 31% are cisgendered females. (Thank you @malindalo, you are awesome and I’ve enjoyed meeting you at the Boston Teen Author festival the last few years.) So, just focusing on those 2 first letters, huh? I want to read a story about a kickass transwoman that has to deal with transitioning WHILE demons have torn their way out of hell. That would be badass! Holy shit, someone trans write that!

Same goes for people that live with disabilities whether they are physical or mental, including mental illness and neurodivergents like myself. If you haven’t figured out by this rant just how ADHD I am than you might need an ADHD in your life. My brain works differently and I would have killed growing up to read about characters that have to deal with what I deal with. We have Percy Jackson now and his all ‘verse but it’s not enough and it wasn’t published until I was on my way to college.

All that aside we now have all the bs coming out about what’s been going on in traditional publishing. About all the dickweeds that have been using their power and pull to sexually harass new authors, most often the new authors are young women. I unfollowed people and canceled a pre-order because fuck that shit! Also, I don’t give a fuck how big a name someone is if the hate they spew makes all their trans fans collectively feel like shit for not believing the simple fact that transwomen are women then they deserve to get dropped like the bag of shit they are. TERFs can fuck right off.

All the publishing bs has made me more determined to get VeL off the ground because no, no, no. We’ll have none of that. All the listed above reasons can go play in traffic. We will be paying our authors better and taking care of them from day 1. We will be making sure our catalog is so damn diverse that you’d have to be looking at the wrong website to not find a story that you can’t see yourself in and lastly, if we hear of any of our authors pulling a Myke Cole or a Sam Sykes than they are dropped. It is in the best interests of our authors futures that they aren’t shitbags. /end rant

If y’all have any questions about anything of this, I think my dms are open or if I’m wrong just tag me. My days lately have been chained to my shit dell computer with one or both cats pinning me to the couch. I finish this up as Percy settles in on my legs. Also, thunderstorm is starting up and both are sleeping through it? If only I could be so lucky when the fiance and I have kids...

#publishing #anthology #writing #writing challenge #writers unite #supernatural #horror #writblr

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flipsideds · 4 years

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“ oh, haha... ” a default response to a very non-default situation –– a little post-show, barside rendez-vous with an older man who insists nour has been singing to directly to him the entire night. “ flirting ? i... ”

gentle eyes gloss over the banquet hall’s dimmed lights, bright smiles, flickering electric candles... “ . . . what’s that ? ” and then he’s off, gin and tonic in hand. three strides and it’s already half-drained. yikes.

or, alternatively : greetings loved ones!! my name is linc ( 21 / est / she/her ) and here is the ever so graceful, ever so unintentionally magnetic nour al-busiri! below the cut you’ll find a messy run-down. i am so excited to plot & write with all of you !!

( i’m scheduled for a tonsillectomy tomorrow so i’m gonna be so grateful for the distraction, y’all have no idea. )

if you want some great mood-setters for this beb’s backstory / insight into his soul, slap on some jacob collier, kevin garrett, or charlie burg ‘n let’s get cookin’ !

so this is all copy-pasted from a discord chat with devon bc i improvised nour’s entire life story over a span of... 10 minutes ?? bahaha pls enjoy i apologize in advance. ( i also put this in normal text size bc it is v long and i don’t want anyone hurting their eyes !! protect dem beautiful retinas <3 )

h i s t o r y .

his parents met in grade school in egypt, but then didn't reconnect until their masters studies crossed paths in london... immediately fell head over heels again ( had they been searching for one another in crowds since being 6-7 years old?? maybe... ). graduated top of their class, accepted job offers in london in the biopharmaceutical realm. but then. when nour was 3...

they were involved in a freak monorail accident on their way back from a science conference in amsterdam. the babysitter paid 80 quid to watch the kids for two nights became their sole protector in this world. british authorities had trouble contacting other kin, but managed to reach mr. al-busiri's mother, rashida, who was still living in dahab with her second husband, zaim.

the al-busiri's came from old money. so off nour goes ( and potentially his older bro if i decide he exists... potential wc with a rami malek fc tbh ) to live in the city which, unbeknownst to him, sparked his parents' storybook love.

so nour grows up in this like... picturesque seaside childhood. collects shells. bonds with his grandmother and her husband. they encourage him with school, etc. but he quickly shows that he excels at maths and... music? wow. that's unexpected. gets his first piano at 5. first guitar at 6. by 8 1/2, he's managed to hodge-podge together a little recording studio for himself in his bedroom, and he's constantly serenading his friends at school.

( death tw / illness tw ) then comes zaim's stroke. he lives for four months after, but he loses his ability to speak. his motor skills deteriorate. nour and his grandmother do their best to tend to him –– she's already about 40% down the macular degeneration path, but hasn't told him yet that her vision's going. so 10 y/o nour does what he does best: unconditional love and support, delivered through the gift of song. zaim dies after requesting his favorite song: 'blackbird' by the beatles, sung in verses alternating from english to arabic.

after, it's just nour and rashida against the world ( maybe his brother too bergorghre if i decide he's a thing ) . rashida's forced to come clean about her vision the day she can't for the life of her find the bloody pen she just put down so she can finish signing off on nour's choir trip permission slip. ( it's right next to her, to her left, just out of her closing field of vision. ) things progress more rapidly after that. by the time nour's 16, his grandmother is legally blind. it's not an uncommon sight to see him at the markets or strolling along the beach with her on his arm. she refuses canes as long as nour's around. ( “ don't rob me of my youth, nuri-nuri [ my light ] ” )

despite her growing dependency on him, she encourages him to apply to unis all over the globe. by the time college apps roll around, nour is somewhat of a local household name: he plays summer concerts, coffee shops, and is even asked to play at his teacher's wedding ceremony –– and his neighbor's cat funeral.

acceptances roll in. julliard. berkeley. chicago school of music. he chooses chicago, because there's someone there. someone he connected with online a few years back, a friend, but... could turn into something more. this hopeless romantic heedlessly ventures off to find out if this boy in chicago might... be someone. something more.

spoiler alert: he gets to chicago, starts music school. and each meet-up they set? gets pushed. sometimes it's traffic. a cold. transit trouble. can't get work off, sorry. things with ma are really tough. the excuses kept coming but... nour's naive. he believes every word. but in his second year of uni, things....... start getting suspicious. by chance, he spots this man in the window of a coffee shop downtown. overjoyed, he texts as much. but ... messages go read and unanswered. phone calls dwindle.

his music suffers. so does his muse. so much so that he's tempted to drop out, to throw in the towel, to just...... go back home. he speaks with his grandmother each day on the phone. she's doing well, stop worrying, nuri-nuri, your uncle is taking good care of me. nour goes on dates. thinks about chicago boy. thinks about him a lot.

he's 20 when it happens. sat on a stage in a little dive bar, tuning his acoustic guitar for an opening number, and there. those eyes. he knows them.

they talk after the show, in the alley. share a cigarette. and it's almost like... maybe things are finally clicking. maybe this is finally their shot.

except chicago boy ( neil ) says they have to stop talking. that he had to just... see nour for himself. see that he's real. hear him sing, and... move on. nour doesn't buy it. pushes back. asks why the hell neil'd come out now only to slink back to the shadows. things get heated. neil yells. and the men... the men who hear and come running ? they think nour is the cause of it all.

( hate crime tw, violence tw ) how many kicks does it take to break to the center of a broken heart ? twelve. how many broken ribs does it take to immobilize a probably terrorist, dude ? four. shattered wrist. snapped ankle. broken arm. cracked skull. and neil scuttles off like nour's bad meat. bad blood. like he asked for this.

chicago school of music receives a call from weiss memorial three days later.

nour never gets his degree. he breaks his apartment lease. flies home after he heals, spends a year with his grandmother and uncle. just... creating. writing, playing, trying to fill that void with something. but then things with his uncle get heated. he wants to put his own mother in a home, sell the estate, pocket the cash. nour fights it, but he's got no legal bearing.

the nursing home concept never takes hold, though, because his grandmother's still sharp as shit and refuses to sign anything nour doesn't read first. eventually the uncle grows tired of fighting and stops trying, just... slinks back to his husband and keeps his mouth shut. nour's grandmother pressures him to go back to chicago, make that city wish he never left. take back his own story. together they work to find a live-in aide they trust. freshly 22, nour ventures back to the city that broke him.

he finds cheap housing, a gig. the malnati, seems legit. good money. good exposure. and then he meets @ryderxmms –– they form one night stand. when not scheduled for malnati banquets, you can find nour providing vocals ( and occasional keys ) in the dive bars / parties the band lands gigs at.

g e n e r a l .

nour creates like food and drink don’t exist, sunlight is an illusion, and all the human body needs for sustenance is sound. he can find his way around just about any instrument under the sun, but his main poisons are piano, acoustic guitar, and digital recording tools –– think jacob collier and you’re right on the money.

actually, i’m stealing a lot of jacob collier discography and pegging it as his creations. this kid’s got an experimental sound and loves it.

he grew up speaking english and arabic equally, but because he learned english in london and then continued in egypt, he does have a mild brit-arab accent. it’s v cute, i promise.

looks like he’d be a total lothario, yeah ?? but. he’s so shy ? so sweet ? get him on a stage and he’s shameless but plop him in a bar and eye him up and he’ll honestly just smile nervously and pretend you’re looking at someone else.

love languages : singing to his succulents and plants before his 5am morning runs. facetime calls at times least convenient for him, but most convenient for you. little notes written on napkins, smiley face doodles included. candy bars. lingering a little longer in doorways after saying hello, just to see you smile.

he’s got major water sign vibes. birthday comin’ up in march, woot woot !!

he often wears very simple statement pieces. he likes rings, crystal pendants, leather bracelets. soft tees layered with embroidered jackets, metallic blazers. somehow he pulls off mixed media and crazy prints that should never go together ? he just... is so easy breezy.

he often wears his hair wild ‘n curly, unless the gig he’s got mandates a more streamlined look.

falls in love.... 14 times a day ?? really.

has a scar across his left temple from the incident with neil. will probably write it off as a bike riding accident. ( he doesn’t know how to ride a bike. )

don’t let him cook ever, okay ?? unless you want him to literally do this.

pls come at me for all the plots ? i’m so open for all the things !!! y’all got me on discord, so feel free to slide on into my dms. i promise i will be so thrilled <3

#intro.#☼ –– gimme that afterglow ! inspo.

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

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youtube

ARIANA GRANDE - 7 RINGS [4.28] For the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone...

Iris Xie: Ariana, NO. Riding on the rhythms of Black artists like Princess Nokia and 2 Chainz and mixing it with "My Favorite Things": I am astounded at her dismissive fluidity between the verse and the chorus, and her blatant entitlement in the hook, "I want it, I got it." This is not the same way that Beyoncé and other artists have used it; when they say "I want it, I got it," it's not just for the singer, it's representation for all who need to seek power and strength in that message. This is a declaration of privileged entitlement and is only sympathetic to those who need to seek power in not being held accountable, in feigning innocence, in hiding behind privilege to do whatever they want without consequences. Ari's built her empire, and the discarded cores of the songs wrung dry for "7 Rings" is part of the plan for her expansion. The disrespect of Black artists has always been part of the story in popular music (and the world) and is threaded into the very framework and sound of popular music, but it's honestly breathtaking how obvious and easy Ariana is about it. It's brutal, it's self-indulgent, it's disrespectful as fuck, and if she decides to cast herself as Alexander the Great for the "7 Rings" music video, that would just be perfect for this song. [0]

Vikram Joseph: I really thought Ariana might be self-aware enough to understand how downright obnoxious she might come across in releasing a glorified flex about her gigantic wealth, but apparently not. It's brazenly over-the-top ("my receipts be looking like phone numbers") and I hoped, vainly, that it might be satirical -- her own explanation of the backstory behind the song makes it plain that it's not. No right-minded person resents her success, but in this socioeconomic climate -- oh, fuck it, in any socioeconomic climate -- a line like "I see it/I like it/I want it/I got it" is craven and crass. Musically, it's a bland, passable slow-jam, apart from the parts which exhume the decaying corpse of "My Favorite Things," which nobody wanted to see. Ariana Grande has called this a "friendship anthem" (because she bought rings for 6 of her friends), which reveals more about her concept of friendship than she perhaps would have liked. [2]

Alex Clifton: I know Ariana's described "7 Rings" as a friendship anthem, which on the surface is true; it's inspired by a shopping trip where she bought her girls friendship rings. But for a song about friendship, it feels awfully distant. The lovely thing about "Thank U, Next" was that it was personal and empathetic, exes named and thanked with grace in a way we rarely ever see in pop music. Here, friendship seems to be replaced with luxury; her posse feels anonymous, like they could be any girls in the club. The song's an absolute bop, making "My Favourite Things" into something sexier than it should be while also giving Ariana the chance to rap impressively. [7]

Danilo Bortoli: It was not impossible to see this coming. After the song that pretty much defined the social media zeitgeist in all of its lack of glory, comes the contractually-obliged, self-congratulatory victory lap which anticipates an also mandatory album rollout ritual. Meaning: "7 Rings" should be a mere filler. Not only because it sounds like Princess Nokia with less wit and bravado and more privilege, and not only because it evokes mindless "Pretty Boy Swag" comparisons (suggesting Soulja Boy's flow is not in public domain by now). No, "7 Rings" is bad because it strips away Ariana's empathy and replaces it with a bunch of meme-worthy signifiers: Breakfast at Tiifany's, ATM machines, retail therapy, all wrapped under a cold, soulless beat. Yet, given how calculated that beat is, you can tell cold was what she aimed. Sadly. Here, "I want it, I got it" is her mere wish, lacking the wit to make it happen. [3]

Thomas Inskeep: "I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it," Grande sings on this ode to conspicuous consumption, and while I'm happy she's doing well, it's hard to relate when I've been unemployed for almost five months. And the track, based around a chunk of the melody of "My Favorite Things," is nothing special. She's raised expectations for her music, after the quality of last year's Sweetener, so this doesn't cut it on multiple levels. [3]

Julian Axelrod: I hoped "Thank U, Next" would be the Lemonade to Sweetener's Beyonce. Now I'm worried it's Ariana's Reputation. [6]

Katherine St Asaph: Viktor & Rolf just released a set of comically expensive reaction GIFs, also known as their Spring/Summer '19 collection. You probably shouldn't continue reading this blurb until you've seen every single one. The dresses themselves are either nightgowns with epaulets or hyper-femme tulle ziggurats, like Mount Everests constructed entirely from bubblegum and Marie Antoinettes. The main details -- if you can really call something a "detail" if it's in huge meme font -- are emblazoned snot-slogans like "I Am My Own Muse" or "No Photos Please" or just "NO." So swamped in fabric, all the models look even more like children than usual, making the collection resemble Abercrombie tees or Nickelodeon tween shows, in all their oversassed questionability. But there's craftiness to the brattiness. Said the Vogue writer, perhaps with a slight whiff of "oh god, I really have to, don't I": "All the assorted typography and graphic design -- the text as well as the eagle head, the skull, the candy hearts, and so forth -- resulted from layers of additional tulle. Trite sentiments backed up by technical prowess." This also describes Ariana Grande's music: tart but frilly, meme-ready but warmly produced. Or rather, it's a description of her music since Sweetener and before this. For all the suffocating memesphere around it, "Thank U, Next" is a fine standalone Mariah Carey pastiche. "7 Rings" is a Gwen Stefani pastiche, primarily of "Wind It Up": garish showtune interpolation, slapdash arrangement, half-assed lyrics (being tied up with cuffs? Weird sex, but OK), and borrowed hip-hop posturing, as if her main takeaway from "Formation" was it being about buying shit. Can you even imagine how bad a fast-fashion version of those gowns would be? You can certainly hear it. [3]

Will Adams: Ariana Grande's post-Sweetener rebranding as an Extremely Online #queen is an instructive, if tiresome, example of how social media has blurred the lines between genuine authenticity and personality as imagined by PR suits. "7 Rings" does the same trick of "Thank U, Next" in that it attempts to reverse engineer memes as desperately as Katy Perry. But while "Next" was at least tuneful, this is a joyless cover of OMG Girlz's "Pretty Girl Bag," no more effective at fostering goodwill than a deluge of tweets that only serve to remind you that you'll never be her. [3]

Maxwell Cavaseno: There was once a time where Ariana singles needn't be based around their ability to serve as content and memes. That time may feel like years behind us but it was quite literally three months ago and yet is titanically irreversible. Now Grande's songs feel less like any real ability to showcase the talents of her singing, just more like suitable IG Story content based on an effervescent bitchiness demonstrated as "#confidence" and beholden to boringly cynical rap cadences. "Spend It" sucked years and years ago as a dead-eyed anthem by a 40-year-old pro making songs for 30-year-olds trying to hang with the 20-year-olds in the club. Distressingly, its progeny in "7 Rings" doesn't sound any less cynical. People can say all the critiques about the Sweetener run they could, but nevertheless that was a period in which you could honestly indicate that Ariana Grande was enjoying herself and doing her best. I'd be hard pressed to find such from material like this. [3]

Nicholas Donohoue: I get in fights over Ariana's message discipline. It is now settled law that "Thank U, Next" is the high point of Ari's career in terms of self-mythologizing, but I couldn't help feeling stung by: i) her releasing the song right before the peak of "Breathin'" (her actual high point of artistic expression), capping herself at the knees by cutting off one great point of personal vulnerability in lieu of addressing her less interesting public persona and, ii) by attaching "Thank U, Next," her tight construction of showcraft and narrative shifting, to a music video Frankenstein-ing four early 2000's movies with distinct tonal and subject conceits together. For as much love as I have for a titan of courage and rolling-with-the-punches like Ariana, I feel she might be careless as to what she transfers into her own sound and image. I don't know what "7 Rings" is suppose to mean. I have confidence this style of more showtune trap is an element of Ariana, but I don't know if it's a wise progression from the tuneful, honest, and numbly reminiscent take in "Thank U, Next". The money and excess politics over a spare beat are confounding mostly due to people loving it because they seem destined to never have it. This isn't even touching the racial critiques that Ariana is strolling where pop-based Black women have had to stomp (re: Rihanna and the word "savage"). Undeniably there is power here for Ariana, but who is meant to benefit from this, including Ariana? [4]

Jonathan Bradley: From the R&B undertones of debut album Yours Truly on, Ariana Grande has been a white pop artist who has attempted to situate her work in a racially liminal space: not black, and not even a pantomimed blackness in the mode of Miley Cyrus's less estimable moments or Iggy Azalea, but one nevertheless imbued with performative and stylistic cues borrowed from that cultural context. It's a position that is complicated by the proficiency of her baby-Mariah vocal, by -- perhaps unconsciously on her part -- the historically contested whiteness of Italian-Americans, by a debut hit that interpolated the Latino rapper Big Pun and featured a guest verse from white rapper Mac Miller, by pop's history of making African American ideas into mass culture, and by Grande's own political advocacy for civil rights causes. And alongside this has been her claim on a decidedly non-liminal gendered space: from pastels and ponytails to short skirts and rom-coms, Grande's image is underlined by stylized femininity. In her post Sweetener singles -- and even on "God is a Woman" -- she has used this to stake out a claim of maturity and independence, and, by extension, a distinctly feminine authority: "Thank U, Next," for instance, was a sugary distancing from the men with whom she'd been associated that asserted self-reliance ("her name is Ari") and professional success ("this song is a smash"). "7 Rings" continues blending girlishness with power, and like Taylor Swift on Reputation, Grande is making herself more untouchable by making her music chillier. She nods at Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn from the opening line on, and posits feminine solidarity and capitalist consumption as the enabling force of her dominance. Her flow here has been sourced to everyone from Princess Nokia to 2 Chainz to Soulja Boi, but considering the lyric, the likely inspiration seems to be Beyoncé on "Formation." And that rapping, the trap beat, and the nods to luxury goods combine to form Grande's most overt and most questionable tracing of blackness in her career. Conspicuous consumption in black music is an implicit challenge to systems of wealth that have excluded its makers; in a white context, it's just shopping. Grande's ability to sustain public goodwill in maintaining the tenability of these contradictions seems dependent as much on the sensitivity of her approach as it does on the context of the music. "7 Rings" makes more explicit some of the uncertain contours of Grande's music, but it does not fail: it is delicious in its fluffy imperiousness. [8]

Stephen Eisermann: I said this last year about Drake, but it rings true now about Ariana: it was only a matter of time before things got too problematic to ignore. Someone, somewhere will surely write about the musical blackface (as well as excessive use of bronzer), but focusing on the song alone -- yeah, this is hot. Ariana's coos play well with the trap arrangement and although she may have stolen someone's flow, she sure wears it well. It's a fun song to bop to, and I'm all for a good friendship banger, but ignoring all other circumstances for a banger is just irresponsible at this point. [6]

Crystal Leww: Ariana Grande's always made some incredible music, but the art direction and conversation around her has been subpar, at best, and oftentimes kind of icky! That first album Yours Truly was so beyond in how well it paid homage and tribute to the feeling of the late-'90s/early-'00s R&B pop. But there were accusations of playing into the idea of the Sexy Baby to sell records. A lot of this was super unfair -- Grande was so young at the time and most of this was projection by gross, older men who should have known better -- but this weird dichotomy between Grande as a really excellent musician and Grande as a frustrating image, brand, pop star, object of obsession from stans has persisted. "7 Rings" kind of rules as an actual track; Grande's created a super polished, slick product that pays homage to Soulja Boy flow while borrowing the melody and concept from The Sound of Music. But everything around this track sucks from the continued "borrowing" of Black culture (e.g., 2 Chainz's pink trap house) to use of "Asian" characters and urban culture to the insane defensiveness from Grande stans around all of this. I can't believe that Ariana Grande is going through her Katy Perry phase. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: God, this was a bad idea. Everything here shouldn't work -- the metronomic synths, the unholy fusion of Rodgers & Hammerstein to Soulja Boy, the diving head-on into the murky cultural appropriation accusations that have dogged Ariana for a minute now. And yet despite all of these (entirely self inflicted) problems, Ariana manages to pull together the best possible song given the circumstances. It's still not good, but her sheer force of personality makes "7 Rings" into an object of fascination. [5]

Alfred Soto: It's not any more mediocre than her other mediocre singles, but despite the famous sample and rap cadences she sounds like a person visiting a childhood home she happily left. The home is deluxe but sparely decorated, and the wine good. Guests are welcome, especially Mariah Carey. [5]

Edward Okulicz: I've seen The Sound of Music a number of times that is more than I wish to admit here. Rephrasing the song so it's not about things that are believably in the life of an Austrian nun and instead are about things you'd go buy or consume conspicuously isn't original, though. Big Brovaz did more with this chorus and I think poor-shaming is a PR mistake. [3]

Tobi Tella: Sampling The Sound of Music is an inspired choice, and one that will always get the inner theatre kid on me on a song's side. But the chorus mostly leaves me cold -- it's a fun boast, but there's not much too it and I don't think hip-hop is a particularly good genre for her. When she starts spitting bars during the bridge and saying things like "gimme the loot!" I just get secondhand embarrassment. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: The inversion of "My Favorite Things" is sly: there's no admittance of sadness, the things in question aren't quotidian, and Ariana's able to attain everything at a moment's notice. The lay person can't just fly somewhere to witness "raindrops on roses" or "silver-white winters," but everything that Ariana lists is a consumable product that's readily purchasable. Since she was never sad in the first place, there's no actual need for "simply remember[ing]" anything -- she's creating her list of favorites as she has them rung up. As such, "7 Rings" isn't a song about surviving the present, but it does implicitly acknowledge its potential for being unsatisfactory. The cryptic synths and sparse arrangement hint at this sad undertone, but it never quite gets there. And therein lies the song's biggest flaw: the lack of melancholic (sub)text makes this less interesting, and the display of opulence is frequently offset by Ariana's fumbled rapping. There's little resembling actual human emotion or personality here, but given her success with "Thank U, Next" and now this, Ariana is maybe more interested in being a meme. [3]

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