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shallow-seas-we-sail · 3 years

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“Okay!” Alex bellows and claps her hands together, “Next game! You gotta partner up!”

Nia scoots in close around the coffee table and pushes into Brainy’s side, while Kelly settles down on the arm of the chair that Alex is sitting in and cards a hand through her hair.

“I’m with Lena!” Sam claims across the room from the kitchen and runs over with two precariously balanced glasses of wine in one hand, plopping down next to Lena on the couch.

Kara, hunched over in front of the fridge, stands up quickly and lets out an indignant scoff, “That’s not fair! Lena is my partner by default. House rules.” Kara closes the door and jams her finger into the scoreboard stuck the front of the fridge. “See!”

“She’s my best friend!” Kara and Sam say in unison, and Alex swears she can see her sister’s eyes pulse with a burst of hot anger and sinks down into her chair a little further.

“I am the property of no man.” Lena counters, which causes an elbow to jab her in the side from a smirking Sam.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Sam says conspiratorially under her breath, and Lena snorts into her wine glass as she brings it to her lips.

Kara’s brow crinkles as she makes her way over to group and takes a spot on the floor across from the couch, “Fine, I guess I’m the game master.”

Kelly glances down at Alex, who gives a small grimace as she reaches into her pocket and removes her phone, “Uh, okay. So I-..”

“Not going as planned?” Kelly dips her head and whispers into her girlfriend's ear.

“Nope,” Alex reponds under her breath with a pop.

Nia clears her throat and gives Alex a pointed look from across the room and motioning with her eyes discreetly towards the couch.

Alex opens her mouth to speak, but realizes she is taking too long and juts her hand with her phone out to Kara, “You gotta read the questions and keep score.”

Kara eyes her sister suspiciously and she plucks the phone from her hand. She scrolls through the screen for a few seconds before glancing up and looking around the room.

“Really?” Kara deadpans.

Alex tries her best to hide her pained expression, so she picks up her beer bottle and presses it to her lips and tilts her head back with an emphatic thumbs up.

This is going to be a disaster.

Kara rolls her eyes and places the phone down on the table and picks up a pen and paper to keep score, “Okay, so, you gotta guess the answers based on what you know about your partner.”

“Like the Newlywed game?” Nia asks, perking up.

Brainy tilts his head, taking in his girlfriends information, “Yes. Exactly like the Newlywed game, we discussed this earli-.. OOF! ” He is effectively silenced by a sharp elbow in his side. Brainy clears his throat and forces a smile, “continue” he whines through a breath and raises his hand weakly, relinquishing the floor back to Kara.

“What is the Newlywed game?” Lena asks, arching a quizzical eyebrow.

Sam waves her off, “Don’t mind her. She has never had a stay-home-from-school-sick day and watched daytime tv.”

Lena scoffs and presses hand to her chest in offense, “I would never watch daytime tv.”

Sam turns her hands over in a so-there gesture, “See.”

Kara smiles softly, because of course Lena doesn’t watch daytime tv. Though, she does remember the one time she had to convince a hungover and couch-bound Lena not to order Lifelock just because “Jane Rizzoli said so.” Lena had relented only after Kara made her a mimosa to nurse her headache and sang “Take my identity as a Luthor, take all my money too, for I can’t help falling in lo-..” until Lena’s bright laughter had cut her off and filled the room.

“Hey,” Alex leans forward, snapping her fingers in front of her sister's face, “ground control to Major dork. Let’s go!”

Kara shakes her head, loosening the memory from her thoughts, but a floating warmth remains in the center of her chest. She adjusts her glasses and smiles in Lena’s direction, who has a single finger pressed against her lips and a curious look.

“Wha-.. oh, yeah, right. So, I ask a question, and both of you come up with an answer. If the answers match, you get a point.”

Everyone nods agreeably, and Kara lifts her glass, and takes a long pull of the amber, alien liquid inside, “First question, what is your partner’s favorite movie?”

Alex and Kelly raise their hands in unison, “Terminator 2!”

Alex pumps her fist and gives her girlfriend a high-five, “Yes! And yours is....” Alex snaps her fingers, hoping that perhaps it will jumpstart her brain, “honestly, anything black and white. She’s a sucker for classics.”

Kelly nods and presses a quick kiss to the crown of Alex’s head.

Brainy’s favorite is ‘any movie with Keanu Reeves’, which causes a ten minute reprieve of the game as he launches into nearly a film-thesis-length speech about the transgender allegory of The Matrix until Nia clasps her hand over his mouth.

“Babe, I love that you know that, but just answer the question.” she says.

“Ah, yes. Nia Nal’s favorite movie is the Harry Potter series. She is a Gryffindor and her Patronus is a dapple grey stallion.”

Kara tallies two points each under their score column, and taps her pen against the table with growing impatience as Sam stares intently at Lena.

“God, you had the VHS box set in college. I can picture it on your shelf.. fuck, I can’t remember it!” Sam throws her hands up in frustration.

“Titanic.” Kara says under her breath to no one, and averts her gaze down the point sheet in front her, because how could Sam not know that? Best friend, her alien ass.

“Yours was that obscure French one, Jeux d’enfant,” Lena laughs, “God, how many times did you watch that? I swear you just wanted to impress that French exchange girl. What was her name?”

Sam lets go of a breath, “Esmée.” she says, dreamily, “I could be living in the French countryside right now as a vineyard wife.”

Lena gives Sam a playful swat against the arm, “What’s yours, Kara?” Sam asks between playful attacks and fits of laughter from her friend.

“Working Girl,” Kara and Lena say in unison, and Lena’s laughter dies down, “she always cries at the end.” she says, punctuating with a wink at Kara.

“All of the hair in that movie is just so horrifically 80’s. It would make anyone cry.” Kara counters as she marks down a one under Lena and Sam score column.

The game continues, and Alex and Kelly are so finely tuned that Kara reminds herself to tell her sister to wife Kelly quickly, because she has already started a mental catalogue of what she is going to need for their wedding.

“Favorite TV show?”

“Game of Thrones!”, “Greys Anatomy!”

“Worst handwriting?”

“Alex. She writes like she finished medical school.”

Brainy and Nia seem to find a rhythm, even if Brainy keeps going on tangents about each of his answers.

“Her favorite musical artist is Taylor Swift, but not 1989 era Taylor. She considers that album too popsugar polished, especially since it is widely believed that she played up her so-called ‘beef’ with fellow singer, Katy Perry.”

Kara’s scoring has started on a sideways slant, because every time she ends up on Sam and Lena, she finds herself drinking more and tempering down her annoyance at Sam who can’t seem answer one fucking question right.

Kara instead has started a running tally in the corner of the score sheet, checking off each answer as she mentally screams.

Lena’s favorite junk food? Big belly burger. Check . Silliest pet peeve? Lena hates fliers and leaflets because “They are a waste of our time and trees, Kara. Honestly, if one more follower of Rao tries to shove one in my hand, I’m going to shove a redwood tree up his ass.” Check.

Lena’s favorite color is purple. Check. Lena hates salmon. Check. Lena doesn’t like tequila, but if she is buzzed enough will take a shot of it, but only with lick of salt and a lime as a chaser. Check. Lena hates her brother. Triple Check. Lena takes her coffee black. Check. And Lena always looks like she stepped out of a noir film with a dark shade of red on her lips that Kara is sure, ‘so sure’, would not smudge if she was kissed. Check (tbd).

Kara is throwing her head back, finishing off the liquid in her glass, burning and hot in the back of her throat when Sam answers ‘Maleficent’ for what Disney character Lena would be.

“Oh my god,” Kara shakes her head, “how are you so bad at this?”

Sam seems taken aback and looks between Lena and Kara, “Excuse me?”

“This.” Kara gestures towards Lena and then drunk and loose over the scribbled score sheet in front of her, “You haven’t gotten one answer right. Lena is carrying your team. You,” Kara sits up straight, trying to center herself but sways as she points an accusatory finger in Sam’s direction, “suck.”

Sam looks around the room. Kelly and Nia are both suddenly very interested in their phones, while Alex’s eyes have grown wide, wondering briefly if her sister is going to rear up off the floor and throttle their friend. Lena is staring at Kara with a bewildered look from over the rim of her wine glass while Brainy’s searching eyes move across the room from each person, trying to form the proper reaction to this level of intensiveness.

“Relax, Danvers. It’s just a game.” Sam scoffs as she leans forward to pick up her wine glass from the table.

“No!” Kara shouts a little too loudly, and brings her hand down on the table, splintering a corner and nearly rattling the drinks off of it, “No.”

“Kara,” Kelly leans forward, and with her best therapist voice, tries to defuse the situation, “perhaps we should just take a break from the game, and get some wate-..”

“No. Anyone with eyes knows that Lena is Moana. She would cross oceans and fight Gods and do whatever it took to do the right thing.” Kara says resolutely towards Kelly, and then turns back to Sam, “Lena is Moana. She is a Queen and she is good, and she isn’t fucking ‘Maleficent’!” Kara punctuates with air quotes.

Sam’s eyes grow wide, and she settles a steely glare on Kara, “Fine. You wanna do this?”

“You’re damn right I do.” Kara bites back, pushing her sleeves up her arms, “Lets go.”

“Well, fuck me I guess.” Kelly mutters under her breath as she sits back, defeated. Alex cautiously leans forward, and takes her phone from in front of her sister.

Brainy narrows his eyes and glances between Kara and Sam, “Am I to believe they are fighting for Lena’s honor?”

Nia waves a hand frantically in Brainy's face, “Just.. shush.” she says squeezing her eyes shut, “Shhh.”

Sam finishes the last of the wine in her glass, and juts out her arm in Lena’s direction, a silent demand for a refill. Lena rears back and plucks the wine glass out of her friends hand at the stem, “Oh kay, then.” and cautiously moves from the couch towards the kitchen.

Kara and Sam’s eyes never leave the others as Lena scoots past.

Alex clears her throat and lets a silent prayer float up into the rafters of her sisters loft that Kara has home insurance in the event Sam ends up dangling over the fire escape.

“Describe your partner in one word.” Alex says, and glances up from her phone.

“Bitch.”

“Good.”

Kara nearly digs her fingers into the hardwood floor beneath her.

“How are we gonna keep score?” Nia whispers over the table to Alex.

Alex grits her teeth at the realization and shoots the woman in the kitchen a sympathetic look, mouthing “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no.” Lena shakes her head, “No.” she says, pointedly.

Brainy perks up, “So Lena must determine the answer, and then deem one worthy of her affections.”

Nia smacks him in the chest.

A pair of bright blue and honeyed eyes look towards Lena, who is gaping in the kitchen with one quaking hand holding a scotch tumbler and a wine bottle in the other.

“You must decree it so, Lena. Who gets the point?” Brainy bellows enthusiastically, and then flips a single kernel of popcorn into his mouth with a smile.

“Where the hell did you get popcorn?” Nia asks, dumbfounded.

“Inconsequential!” Brainy declares, shoveling a fistful into his mouth.

Lena swallows hard, and dips her head towards the living room, “Kara.”

“HA!” Kara barks, and raises her hand, which is promptly high-fived by Brainy.

Sam cranes her neck side to side and shakes out her arms, “Again.”

Alex glances up at Kelly, “Is this how I die?”

Kelly gives a noncommittal shrug, and leans over her girlfriend's shoulder, scrolling through the questions on her phone, “What is your partner’s worst habit?”

“Biting her nails when she is nervous.” Sam says, glancing at Lena as she sits, who promptly pulls her thumb away from her mouth.

“Running on three hours of sleep and thinking of a large, black coffee as a meal.” Kara counters.

All eyes land on Lena, leaving her drumming heart echoing in her ears and the steady crunchcrunchcrunch of popcorn filling the room, “Nails. It is horribly unsanitary.” she says with a wince.

Kara curses in Kryptonian under her breath, and Sam sits back on the couch, arms crossed with a smug smile plastered across her face.

Nia raises up on her knees, and reaches across the table, quickly snatching the phone from Alex’s hand, “My turn!” she declares and scrolls for a few moments, “Ideal vacation?”

“Beach, getting her cute, pale ass burnt in the sun with a margarita in her hand.” Sam waggles her eyebrows, and nudges Lena with her elbow.

Lena sways and keeps her eyes set on a single thing; the door, her only escape from this current hell on earth.

“Swiss alps. Skiing and just relaxing in the lodge,” Kara answers with a smile that shifts with a distant look, “bundled in some cozy sweater, hands curled around a cup of Irish coffee. She’d probably read a book and enjoy the quiet of the falling snow. She’d doze off on the couch by the fire, and she’d look so at peace and warm that you wouldn’t want to move her, but you know she’d complain in the morning about the knots in her neck, an-..”

“Okay,” Sam raises her hand, “we get it. You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

Lena turns her head and looks at Kara, who gives her a soft smile, one that she returns.

“Oh, you gotta give Kara that one.” Kelly says, propping her head up in her hand, nearly swooning.

Alex takes in her girlfriend’s dreamy reaction and looks around cluelessly, “I’ve lost her.”

“Whatever,” Sam rolls her eyes, “you’ve clearly never seen her in a bikini.”

“Oh, snap!” Brainy bounces in his spot.

Nia places a calming hand on his shoulder, “Not the right time, babe.”

“Yeah,” Lena concedes with a sheepish smile that she masks behind the tumbler at her lips, “you get that one.”

Kara straightens and gives a quick nod and bright smile towards Lena, who gives a subtle wink.

Brainy flips up fingers on his hand, “So, that makes two for Kara and one for Sam. At what score does Lena determine the winner?”

“Best of five?” Nia offers, and Lena tips her glass towards her friend, “Five is good.”

Nia hands the phone back to Alex, who smiles as she lands on the next question, “Who is your partner's hero?”

Lena nearly spit-takes her scotch, but instead dribbles it down her chin and shirt.

“Well, it sure as hell wasn't Reign, that’s for sure.” Sam mutters under her breath. Lena gives her friend a sympathetic smile, and a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“Oh, I’ve got this,” Kara says, pushing up on her knees so she is nearly level with Lena on the couch. She clears her throat, and pulls back her hair into a tight ponytail, “Supergirl may have saved me, but Kara Danvers,” she gives a sly smirk, donning her best Lena impression, “you are my hero.”

Lena pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and forces a tight smile, “Oh, so you can do me now? You think you’re so clever.”

“Oh my god,” Sam breaths out under breath, and looks over to Alex, “do they even hear themselves? Are they always this stupid?”

Alex closes her eyes and gives a pained nod, “ No, and always.”

Kara quirks an eyebrow and shuffles on her knees closer to the couch, “Am I wrong?” she asks, all the alcohol having burned out of her system. She is simply gloating for the sake of gloating at this point.

Plus she likes the flush that is creeping up Lena’s neck, and settling in her cheeks.

Nia leans over towards Brainy, “Now you can ‘ oh snap.’ ” she whispers.

Alex puts down her phone, “Sorry, Sam. It goes to Kara in the best of five.”

Brainy suddenly stiffens, “Wait,” he turns fully towards Nia, “this is not going according to our original plan.” he says, conspiratorially.

“Ya think?”

“Lena was supposed to partner with Kara, so that Kara would gradually be led into her feelings for Lena. Sam has co-opted this entire operation!” he hisses, “every scenario that I ran had Lena and Kara confessing their feelings to each other with 98.6% success rate, leading to their eventual coupling.”

“Does she always have that lovesick puppy thing going on with her face when she looks at you?” Sam says out of the side of her mouth.

“Samantha!” Lena admonishes.

“What?” Kara’s gaze shifts from Lena to the woman beside her, and a warm pulse flickers behind her eyes.

“Oh, chill with the theatrics. I already handed your ass to you once, I can do it again.” Sam says a little drunk and with far too much bravado.

A round ‘WOAH’s’ quickly moves throughout the loft. Kara is on her feet, along with Alex.

“I’m going to say it. Lena must know how Kara feels. Their future depends on it.” Brainy says resolutely, and stands, taking in a deep breath.

“Brainy, don’t!” Nia pleads, pulling on her boyfriend's arm, trying to reel in the control of a situation that has clearly lost it.

Kara takes a confrontational step forward and cocks her head to the side, “You need a flight back to Metropolis?” she says raising a fist, “Oh? You have a layover? Then I’ve got your connecting right here.” Kara mocks, raising her other fist.

“How about I dangle you over the fire escape and drop you off the side of a building again?” Sam sneers.

“HEY! WOAH!” Lena stands abruptly, positioning herself between the blonde and brunette, “We are all friends here. What is going on?!”

“She started it!” Sam and Kara say in unison, pointing an accusatory finger at the other.

“Lena! You must know that Kar-..” but Brainy is effectively silenced by his girlfriend’s hand clasping tightly around his mouth.

“Shut it.” Nia says curtly, and pulls Brainy back down the floor with her.

Sam closes her eyes for a moment and shakes her head, “It’s just a game. Why are you so bent out of shape about it?”

Kara scoffs, “Because you claim to be Lena’s best friend, and you don’t know a damn thing about her!”

“Defensive much?” Sam counters, and arches an eyebrow as her eyes flit to Lena, “I know more than you think.”

“Sam.” Alex warns, quietly.

Sam scoffs, and rolls her eyes, “Watch this.” she says, raising a finger, “I’m going to take care of this in less time than it took you dummies to set up this game night coup.”

An offended noise rumbles in the back of Alex’s throat, “Wh-..what are you talking about?”

Sam cranes her head back, “Ugh, you’re what? The director of a covert government agency? Kelly has a Phd in psychology, so she should really be better at this. Nia is...” Sam glances down to the woman on the floor.

“A journalist.” Nia finishes.

“A journalist, and Brainy is what, a twelfth generation Texas Instruments calculator?”

Brainy’s mouth falls open, and he lets out an offended, high pitched whine.

Sam turns her attention back to Kara, “You wanna be Lena’s partner?”

“More than anything.” Kara grinds out.

“Oh my god. Grant me the serenity.” Sam mumbles under her breath, “Lena, you have what? An IQ of 168?”

Lena straightens slightly, and tilts her head, “180, why?”

“Because you’re the dumbest genius I know.”

Lena’s mouth drops open, “I beg your pardon?”

“And Kara” Sam glances over Lena’s shoulder, “I bet you learned calculus at seven.”

“Five.” Kara says, the anger draining from her tone.

“And you probably know all about quantum entanglement.” Sam says with a smirk, which causes Lena to turn around with a surprised look.

“You do?!” Lena asks, affronted.

“Pfft, of course she does. She just likes to hear all the words that come out of your dumb, pretty face.” Sam says with a tone that leaves no room for an argument, “Do you know how long I had to hear Lena go on and on about your stupid, cute, dumbfounded face after that conversation?”

“You think I’m stupid?” Kara asks dumbly.

“You think I’m pretty?” Lena says, giving a hopeful smile.

Sam cuts her eyes to Alex, who raises a hand, effectively cutting her off before she has the chance to ask the question, “Yes, it is like this all the time.”

Sam sighs, “Look, I’m going to ask you both rapid fire questions. You need to answer at the same time.”

“Why?” Lena asks, glancing over her shoulder.

“Because we ,” Sam gestures vaguely around the living room, “can no longer live like this. Just humor me, okay?”

“Fine.” Lena says sharply and turns her attention back to Kara, “Ready?”

Kara gives a resolute nod.

“Okay, great. Favorite color?” Sam starts.

“Navy blue!”

“Purple.”

Lena and Kara both smile at each other, and Kara gives her a playful poke in the shoulder, “Nice.”

“Favorite junk food?”

“Eliza’s chocolate pecan pie, but that is only rivaled by Noonan’s sticky buns.”

“Those little scones from Dublin.”

Lena’s eyes flutter shut for a moment, “God, those are good.”

Kara leans forward and winks, “I’ll make a trip soon.”

Brainy narrows his eyes, “This is actually quite clever. I did not take this into account during my scenarios.”

Kelly, Alex, and Nia nod in agreement and continue watching in rapt awe.

“Who is the little spoon?”

“Lena.”

“Me.”

Sam pinches her chin, and taps her index finger against her lips, studying the two women in front of her, “Anything clicking yet for you two?” When she is met with resounding silence, she continues, “No? Great. This isn’t painful to watch at all.”

“What song best describes the other?”

“Where You Are.”

“Glass Vase Cello Case”

Kelly throws up her hands, and Alex sinks down into her chair, nearly collapsing onto the floor, “Oh my god, from the movie?!” she groans.

“I didn’t know Kara was so emo.” Nia whispers towards Alex.

“We went to Warped Tour three years straight,” Alex says, pulling herself back up into her chair, “It was a whole phase.”

“It wasn’t a phase.” Kara says, keeping her gaze fixed on Lena and taking a tentative step forward.

Sam quirks an eyebrow and takes a step back, “Phew, it’s like a sexual tension black hole,” she glances over her shoulder at the audience behind her, “how do you guys deal with this?”

“You get used to it.” Nia says nonchalantly, throwing some popcorn into her mouth.

“Right, so last question,” Sam claps her hands together and rubs them together, “are you two in love with each other?”

The collective gasp nearly sucks the remaining air that Lena and Kara haven’t already burned up out of the room.

“Yes.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Great!” Sam chirps, “My work here is done.”

There are a few beats of silence, and Lena blinks hard, breaking the moment, and bringing Kara back to reality along with her.

Kara’s hands shoot up and clasp over her mouth tightly, skewing her glasses, eyes wide behind the sideways frames

Lena lets out a bubble in incredulous laughter and shakes her head in disbelief, “Oh.”

“Ho-..how did you do that?” Alex asks.

“Sometimes you just gotta light a fire under their asses.” Sam chuckles, and smacks Lena firmly on the backside, the impact sending her forward and into Kara, who catches her with steady hands on her hips as Lena’s arms wrap around her neck

Brainy is the first to stand and offers his hand to Nia, assisting her to her feet, “This is our cue to leave.”

“Mhmm.” Alex hums in agreement, swatting Kelly against the leg, “Let's get out of here.”

Sam scoots past the two intertwined women and gives a sly wink as she passes, “This was a fuckin’ blast. You two have a great night.”

“Oh, they will. There is a 100% probability they will be engaging in a copious amount of lovemaking tonight.” Brainy says, gathering his and Nia’s jackets from the coat rack by the door.

Alex’s face scrunches up, “Ew. Copious?”

“Nice.” Sam says, opening the front door.

Brainy waves his hand towards nothing in particular as he steps into the hallway, “It will be an entire thing in the future. Any available surface will be a target for their insatiable sexual appetite: work desks, kitchen counters, the bathroom stall at Al’s, Alex’s bed.”

Alex turns on her heels in the threshold of the door, “My bed, Kara?!” she shouts as Kelly pulls her back, and leans around Alex, closing the door and muffling her girlfriend's curses.

“I-..I haven’t done anything yet?” Kara says confused, looking back at Lena, who is barely containing her laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

Lena loosens a hand from around Kara’s neck, and waves in between them, laughing “It’s just... have we always been that clueless?”

Kara snorts out her laughter, “I mean... I guess so?” she says with a growing, bright smile.

“Well,” Lena says quietly, bringing her hand up and removing Kara’s glasses, “I’m glad we figured it out.”

Kara hums her agreement, and kneads her fingertips firmly into Lena’s hips, and walks them around her lower back, pulling her in closer, “So now what? I heard something about copious lovemaking ” she says in her best Brainy impression.

Lena tosses the glasses behind her, somewhere forgotten on the couch, and wraps her arms around Kara’s neck, absently twirling soft, blonde hair around her fingers, “How about,” she presses a soft kiss to Kara’s cheek, who turns her head in an attempt to capture Lena’s lips, “you explain quantum entanglement to me.”

Kara drops her head to Lena’s shoulder, and sways in their embrace, groaning her displeasure into the fabric of her shirt before lifting her head and flipping her hair dramatically away from her face with a pout.

“Alexa, play Warped Tours greatest hits.”

#supercorp #supercorp fic #crack!fic #anyway here is two idiots being idiots #supergirl #sam is the real mvp here #this is also on my ao3 #but i wanted to x post it here

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taperwolf · 2 years

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There's a detail in the Senpai ga Uzai Kouhai no Hanashi manga that's been tugging at my mind for a long time.

See, we've seen Takeda-senpai relaxing at home a number of times, lounging on his bed. On his headboard, he's got a couple of framed photographs. There's never been enough detail to see what they're photos of — just the glare from the protective glass. So you'd figure they're unimportant.

But every time Futaba has been in his apartment, those photos have been turned face-down. You can see the pair of frames lying there, the little fold-out stands poking up. Every time. So — there's something he doesn't want her to see? Something he doesn't want her to ask about?

A theory I've seen is that he's actually a widower. That the photos are of his deceased wife, and possibly a child. There's only one scrap of evidence for this — just a single thing that's possibly nothing — which comes when, in chapter 70, they're talking about the start of the Reiwa era.

To digress slightly, Japan's calendar is divided into eras based on the reigns of its emperors, and given their Buddhist — their burial — names. So the reign of Hirohito, from 1926-1989, was the Showa era; the reign of his son, Akihito, from 1989-2019, was the Heisei era. When he abdicated at the end of April 2019, his son Naruhito became emperor, starting the new Reiwa era.

So Futaba and Takeda are talking about how nothing's really changed, when they see a woman on TV complaining about a new online insult. It seems that people who were born in the Showa era and who are still unmarried at the start of the Reiwa era — i.e., those who lived through the Heisei era but didn't get married — are being called "Heisei jumpers". And Futaba immediately latches on to this to tease Takeda with. "Hey, you were born during Showa, right? Aren't you a Heisei jumper?"

And he dodges the question. He laughs without his usual belly mirth, and just tells her to be worried about herself.

There's been 80-odd chapters since then, without anything I could construe as evidence one way or the other.

So is he hiding this past tragedy from his coworker he obviously cares for? Or is this tiny detail a big red herring?

#senpai ga uzai kouhai no hanashi #fan theory

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loved-lefthaunted · 3 years

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What are your thoughts on all the evermore songs?

oh my god. this is such a hard question for me so brace yourself. it’s taken me nearly 2 months to write this out and i still don’t think i’ve managed to encapsulate all my thoughts.

So, I have very strong feelings about evermore. I immediately loved it three times as much as folklore, for a variety of reasons. I can do a song-by-song breakdown alongside my general thoughts of the album below:

Firstly, I want to preface this by saying that I do not disregard the impact that folklore had on me prior to evermore’s release. I am not oblivious to the fact that folklore likely primed me for the sound that evermore had and that my mind was set up for a similar sounding album so was willing to receive it with more open ears.

That being said, I think that evermore is the superior album. The overall emotional range and sonic variety of the album is wider and more thought out. The different songs provide a more well-rounded listen in my opinion and give me much more emotional investment than folklore. Each individual song feels strong and there are far more songs with single potential than folklore.

So let’s get down to it:

1. Willow - iconic. The big sister that cardigan deserves. The song that I wish the Lover album had been. A song so fully devoted in such a soft and sweeet way without feeling sickly. A mature way to dedicate a song to the person that you can’t live without but in a way that doesn’t throw pink confetti at your face and tell single people to fuck off. TAKE MY HAND? OKAY TAYLOR. WRECK MY PLANS? FOR SURE BABES. THAT’S MY MAN? 100% FEEL U GAL.

2. Champagne Problems - LOOK. I AM CLAIMING THE NAME SAMPAGNE PROBLEMS FOR ALL FUTURE CONTENT. I want to be proposed to just so that I can reject them and then get wildly drunk on overpriced alcohol. It’s heartwrenching in a way that Taylor hasn’t been since the likes of Treacherous. It doesn’t throw sadness at you, overwhelm you with tears. It hides heartbreak within a soft piano riff and gorgeous imagery.

3. Gold Rush - a sapphic daydream. i cannot believe this is real. The return of a heart-thumping drumbeat and the most lovely, pure song that just describes the infatuation with someone beautiful and how you can wonder about them and be so happy about them and jealous of them all at once.

4. ‘Tis The Damn Season - this christmas song makes me wish i had a boy next door in my hometown that i could randomly sleep with. why don’t i have a fluffy hallmark holiday film based upon this premise? why isn’t there a christmas music video to show me how their interactions work during the holidays and how it differs so vastly with their normal lives? Why can i feel both the distance and the closeness that these two people feel? the cutest dedication to a very un-cute casual relationship. a bittersweet shout out to the people who make us happy for a few fleeting moments spread out over the long haul.

5. Tolerate It - i have very VERY strong feelings about this one. it feels like it both encapsulates romantic and non-romantic love so perfectly. It pairs perfectly with the likes of Closure (more on that later). We all deserve to be celebrated. In a world of people settling for less than they deserve, we should reach for those who deserve us. We are worth it. Find someone who will show us how worthy we are. It’s aching and slow and painful and just....everything. Just because someone has always been there doesn’t mean they deserve to continue to be there. Tolerating you is not the same as deserving your loyalty.

6. No Body, No Crime (feat. HIAM) - IT TOOK 14 YEARS BUT TAYLOR FINALLY MURDERED A MAN IN COLD BLOOD AND I AM HERE FOR IT. MEN ARE TRASH, LADIES. REMEMBER THIS. ENGRAVE IT INTO YOUR TOMBSTONES. TATTOO IT ON YOUR FOREHEADS. MEN AS AN ENTITY DO NOT DESERVE US. MURDER THEM. A YEEHAW DREAM. (I have no strong feelings about HIAM but the existence of Este’s name is a blessing in itself, their backing vocals are a lovely addition and a true testament to their friendship as we know how protective Taylor is about mixing business and friendship through collaborations)

7. Happiness - this song is HURTFUL. a song about growth, a song about finding yourself amidst the loss of a partner, a friend, a family member. a loss so deep that it will hurt you for years to come and take a piece of you away forever. but a loss that you have to be resigned to and grow from and let go of. the slow build of the backing is something i haven’t heard since Holy Ground. Both songs talk about loss and moving on in such starkly different ways but still encompass the feeling of reminiscing on something good and pure and perfect whilst battling the knowledge that it’s over and trying to be happy for the person now that they’re gone.

8. Dorothea - the sweetest girl in the neighbourhood. a childhood friend that we all miss having. a person we watched grow into something massive and successful and we’re so genuinely happy for them. the song encompasses the feeling of a distanced joy. a joy that has nothing to do with you, everything to do with this person that you’d be happy to accept again with open arms but will be equally as happy to watch succeed from a distance. a bouncy backing track and lovely vocalisations that really build a sense of a warm hug and the feeling of soft morning sun on your skin.

9. Coney Island (feat. The National) - alright. so i’m sat on a bench in the cold, wrapped up in a winter coat and a hat and gloves and a massive scarf that covers half of my face. i can see the air when i breathe out. there’s an empty ferris wheel at a deserted fairground and i can remember when it was alive and bustling and when i was surrounded by all of the people closest to me on a late summer’s day. and i miss them. i yearn for that to be back. the way we yearn for a time before covid, before masks and elbow touches and sanitising everything. a time when you could sit around a table with your friends and welcome someone with a hug and visit your family for the holidays. a time of joy that was so overlooked until it was gone. The presence of The National is also a breathtaking addition and truly deserved after Aaron’s input on both folklore and evermore. I’m glad they saved it for this song.

10. Ivy - this song just radiates GREEN. Am I in a forest? Am I just in a greenhouse, watering the plants? The guitar/banjo sounds make me so horrifically nostalgic for Speak Now era. The male backing vocals remind me that Taylor has evolved so far from the girl we used to exclusively listen in conjunction with Caitlin Bird and Liz Huett.

11. Cowboy Like Me - one of the only songs I don’t really care about? it’s not bad, it’s just not great. it’s yeehaw without the accompanying passion. It’s the end of a sad, sad wild west movie. It’s a backing track in a scene of a TV show when someone is going on a journey alone to find themselves. But it’s nothing special.

12. Long Story Short - DO NOT FUCKING TOUCH ME. THE BEST SONG ON THIS ALBUM IN MY OPINION. THE STRONGEST BEAT, THE NOSTALGIA OF 1989, THE LYRICS OF RED, THE FUCKS GIVEN OF REPUTATION. THE PERFECT IMMERSIVE TAYLOR EXPERIENCE. TRULY A 10/10 ENTITY. I WILL HAVE THIS PLAYING AT MY GRADUATION. I SURVIVED.

13. Marjorie - the loss of a grandparent is always a lot. i’ve lost 2 due to Covid and it’s cut me deeper than I ever imagined. Marjorie is the 50′s sepia toned daydream that sends you flying back to being a child and being taught life’s most important lessons when you were far too young to understand them from someone so much wiser than you. It feels like I’m being taught to live again. Another build up backing track, but in such an uplifting way? A way that makes you think of the sun slowly coming out of the clouds. Of the end of a rainstorm and the start of a new day. Optimism and innocence. Peace and hope.

14. Closure - right, the return of sadness. The use of the clatter and discord in the background. The death of a Big Machine (subtle and perfectly done). She’s doing better. We all are. It reminds me of the friends I’ve lost and crave to have back but know I’m better off without. We have to let go of this. Close the chapter. You don’t even need the epilogue, it’s over. The production makes me so uncomfortable and it’s SO NECESSARY because lack of closure is UNSETTLING. It’s horrifying. It’s devastating. But the lyrics and the power of the song show how strong you can be and how important it is to push through the discomfort and continue to live.

15. Evermore (feat. Bon Iver) - the titular song. The return of Bon Iver’s vocals and the lone piano background are truly something to be commemorated for years to come. Although it lacks the painstaking hurt of Exile, this is one of her most simple pieces of artistry on this album and it’s BEAUTIFUL. Something that feels bare and raw. A song that cuts deep and shows us the true core of what she’s currently feeling right now: that although pain might feel forever, it’s not. all pain, much like joy, is fleeting and we have to feel it but we need to remember that it’s only a piece of our experience and place it into context. The song veers on self-pity and wallowing in hopelessness until the latter third, where suddenly hope rises out of the ashes alongside a slightly padded out production from Bon Iver’s vocals. A strong end to the album. This song sets us up for future albums on a note of optimism. It’s a new dawn.

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youareinlovees · 3 years

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Hello! long ass rambling incoming, but bear w/ me I just need to let this out. To start, I was a big fan in early 2015 up until mid-2017 then I stopped (sorry tay, I'm not your strongest soldier 🥲). It wasn't until she starts doing promo again that I saw her in my timeline, and I thought oh wow, this is going to blow at any moment (2015-6 made us swiffers built different ik💀). But anyway, she returned with folklore evermore and subsequently reach a new level of success. For real, it's just so amazing to witness this arc. Seeing how ambitious she is--like you could make a tv series based on after Red losing that grammy to Folklore winning aoty, and you'll see the rollercoaster that is the 7 years of Taylor Swift life, it's just so crazy.

There's so many things I want to touch on, but mainly 1989 era. In the light of what we know she went through, I felt sick to my stomach. I struggle w/ ED too and we pretty much had the worst years of our lives together lmaoo. So, I feel her. I mean idk about her, but I always go out of my way to avoid looking at pics of myself from that period. I had mini ptsd flashback every time I was reminded of memories from my worst time. Let alone her having to sing songs she wrote and perform during that time for re-records 😰 it's really sad when you think about how she was the one that orchestrated the whole thing. I mean let's not kid ourselves--candids for like two years straight with your bffs + power couple publicity + striving for #1s and Grammies + her biggest tour yet + not eating + every single industry bitch tryna take you down? boy, I would have a mental breakdown every night.

Looking back, I almost felt complicit. I'm not gon lie, she did sold me first with her PR than she did with her music, so at least the overexposure worked. But man... it tells you everything you need to know how a perfectionist like Taylor works tbh. Obviously, she knows better now. But looking back, I wonder if she views that era as a necessity for her to reach where is now, or just simply as one of her messy mid-20s schticks (not saying it's trivial, but like "I know everything when i was young" yk?). Because how one of pop culture most well-executed era ended up in flames should be studied by sociologist moving forward 😩 like we know she was chasing 1989 commercial high with Lover. How it resulted in ME! should be a case for the fbi 💀 my theory is that she was surrounded by too many yes man (while big machine put her on a leash, they know what's up). Seeing her doc, while it’s cool seeing her sitting in the head table, not one of them dare or has the musical experience to tell her “Taylor wyd” Maybe her mom, but Taylor herself is her biggest hater, and her mom trusts her.

So, seeing that it took her a literal world-changing event to make folklore; in that she needs to make one pop album longer w/ Lover to arrive in Folklore—I was going through your tag; you said she was on a 'crisis' during Lover. Care to shed a light on what happened in season 7? I saw that one toe-curling tumblr post where she passive-aggressively drops a "💗" to that cupcake post about ME! being a disney song... it was bad that for ha? 💀

Okay so the masters situation was much more than just a business deal and having to rerecord. The issue wasn't Scott selling her masters, it was that he sold them to Scooter who managed Kanye in 2016 and helped orchestrate everything that happened, and that was the catalyst to a lot of dark stuff that she's alluded to in music + interviews. Like Scott was there from the very beginning and that would've been beyond painful, and the situation took her back to 2016 because of Scooter's involvement, and on top of that, there was also the Karlie betrayal.

Based on some of the decisions she made that era, I think she was also stressing about turning 30 and how her career would be affected. And if you read her interviews from back then, you can tell she was pretty anxious about doing press too.

Plus, we know her mom's cancer relapsed around that time (and I don't feel comfortable talking about it but her 2020 Variety interview mentioned specifics that were quickly taken out). Those are the main things I can think of, but she said in Nov 2019 that she had a difficult year and not all those things were made public, so there might be more.

#your point about having a mental breakdown every night:#yup 100%#and i would've done a lot worse than that tbh #long post #lets talk taylor

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3nding · 3 years

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Sanremo Italian Song Festival: love at first sight

It all started with Inna, my Russian teacher. I thought that she had had enough of my tardiness, lack of concentration, yawning, incomplete homework; while I prepared myself for a severe chastisement, I still tried a “You are right, from tomorrow I will put more effort”. Much to my surprise, Inna, instead looked at me with resignation and started singing “Parole, parole, parole…” (words, words, words..). I said, “Pardon?” And she answered, in Russian, “Slova.”

“How do you know the Italian singer Mina?” I asked her. Inna soon abandoned our language class in favour of a nostalgic monologue about her memories of watching Sanremo Italian Song Festival on channel 1 of Soviet State TV when she was a young girl. I started reviewing the images that I had registered recently, but not put into the “correct” context: posters advertising Al Bano’s concert (October 2013), Celentano’s songs on the radio, and being apostrophized with the gag from the song of singer Toto Cutugno “Un Italiano? Un Italiano vero?” (“An Italian? A real Italian?”), all in Moscow. I surfaced from my thoughts and in her dulcet, calming tone Inna continued. “The streets were empty, people no matter their age, were glued to the television set, from grandparents their grandchildren. We girls would make sketches from the clothes and would sew identical ones for ourselves. We found it most unusual that Romina was taller than Al Bano, so we would gaze at her feet but there were no high heels, she was wearing flats! Was she a giant? He a midget? We ignored the height issue and concentrated on the fashion and decided we liked them too, the “balekti”, ballet flats. We would sing along, although we didn’t understand what the lyrics meant, except for ‘Felicità’ (happiness). My love for the Italian language was born with Sanremo, and consequently the reason for studying it at University. Italian is a sweet, mellow language, which makes it remarkably close to the essence of the Russian soul. For us Russians, Sanremo was a breath of fresh air, a window on Europe, the only one on the Western world. The Festival of the canzonets, all about love, passion and happiness, was the only western TV show the Soviet government would allow to be aired”.

The reason why Soviet TV broadcasted the Festival is a mystery that maybe finds its roots in the Russian love for classical music, for the “Bel Canto”, in the first cultural agreement between Italy and the USSR in 1960. Already in 1965, Gianni Morandi and Rita Pavone were with the Cantagiro (Italian summer Festival) at Gorky Park in Moscow. Anyway, no matter the reasoning behind it, what is hard fact is that the Festival of Sanremo is a piece of musical

heritage enjoyed as much by Russians as it is enjoyed by Italians. In 1973 the radio transmitted a programme about former Festival winners like Mudugno, Bobby Solo and Peppino di Capri. Inna’s father recorded this production with a reel-to-reel tape recorder and then made pirated prints. That’s how “Non ho l’età “ (“I’m not old enough”) by Gigliola Cinquetti conquered the whole apartment block. The first time songs from the Festival were aired on television was in 1982, during a show about “foreign melodies”. Ten songs were shown in 1983 and in 1984 programmes were made exclusively about the Festival, which were then aired in the whole Soviet Union giving the performers universal glory! From 1987 onwards, San Remo has become an important part of the Russian Kultura, keeping pace with Perestrojka, and two evenings each year have been dedicated to the Festival. In 1989 clips of all the winners were broadcasted. In 1990 all of the competitors were examined. In 1991 and 1992 both of the two Finals were shown from start to finish. From 1994 to 1998, when Russia was hit by a crisis, Sanremo Festival adapted itself and was transmitted in a limited version. Silence for 15 years and then…Sanremo returned on the crest of a wave in 2013, shown live and for the full five nights of its entire length! This exciting event saw Toto Kutunio performing together with the Red Army Choir singing “L’Italiano”. Furthermore Andrei Malakhov, (a popular Russian TV presenter), dedicated his show “Tonight” to the Festival. On that occasion he reminded of: “In 1987 Sanremo Festival was shown purposefully on Holy Easter night, on 19th of April (to prevent people from going to Mass). My parents were absolutely against me watching that show “on that very holy night”, so I had to record the concert and watch it later”.

After Malakhov’s show was aired, the demand for holidays to Italy and Sanremo went through the roof in travel agencies. Italian songs from that era onwards were all the rage into every single radio and TV show, and the records signed by the State label, Melodia, were everywhere. Al Bano and Romina Power, Ricchi e Poveri, Pupo, Mattia Bazar, Riccardo Fogli and much more were invited for music tours in Moscow, Leningrad and in many, many Soviet Republics until they were finally given the privilege of being awarded a show in the Kremlin in 2005 – the ultra-special “Sanremo Gathers Its Friends.” This also involved singers that were less well known in Russia, like Amedeo Minghi and Anna Oxa, to perform together with famous Russian singers, like Valeria, Nikolay Baskov amongst others.The decision of showing San Remo in the 80s was an absolute goldmine of opportunities for a handful of artists that, maybe inadvertently, wrote the soundtrack of Russian history and inspired the love for Made in Italy in the ex Soviet Union.

The moral is: Sanremo was born during the Cold War. It grew throughout the Soviet era, survived its decline and blossomed in the global age.

A “Real Italian” miracle: long life to Sanremo – truly Russian too!

- WebArchive

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ts1989fanatic · 4 years

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Taylor Swift And The End Of An Era

Love her or hate her, Taylor Swift embodied the contradictions of the decade in pop music

“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can,” Taylor Swift sings in the chorus of “The Man,” a song from her latest album, Lover. She chose the up-tempo tune to open her “Artist of the Decade” medley at the AMAs last month, and it’s a return to familiar Swiftian themes; she claps back at unspecified, sexist critics who fail to acknowledge her “good ideas and power moves.”

Whatever one might think of Swift’s underdog complex, it’s not surprising that the end of the 2010s finds her exhausted. Her transformation from tween country sensation to tabloid-friendly pop star to polarizing Twitter talking point and, finally, to celebrity supernova, required — at the very least — plenty of stamina.

There’s no question that straight white femininity still occupies a privileged place in the cultural landscape, which helped pave the way for Swift’s rise and decade-long pop dominance — even as she became a zeitgeisty symbol of that privilege and a target for those seeking to contest it. Yet as many of her similarly situated peers have faltered, she has endured as one of the last pop behemoths of her kind.

Time and again Swift strategically read and rode the decade’s cultural waves, deciding not just which trends and genres to jump on but, perhaps more importantly, what to pass on. As pop music became feud-centric reality television, there was Taylor; as stan culture transformed the way listeners interacted with performers (and each other), there was Taylor; as artists’ rights in the streaming era entered the conversation, there was Taylor; as politics infiltrated music, there was (sort of, eventually) Taylor.

There are definitely plenty of other contenders for Artist of the Decade (a title both the AMAs and Billboard recently bestowed on Swift) — artists who have hugely impacted pop music over the past 10 years and managed to ride out the seismic, industry-wide shifts they’ve contained, from Beyoncé to Lady Gaga to Kanye West. But you don’t have to think Swift was the “best” or even most significant artist of the decade to acknowledge that her cultural domination, and her ability to pivot and reinvent herself, captured many of the defining tensions of pop music over the last decade.

It’s hard to remember (in internet years) that before 2010, Swift was just a teen pop star and not yet a cultural lightning rod. She was already taken seriously as a musician and had plenty of cultural capital coming into the decade; in 2009, having already won Artist of the Year at the AMAs, she was about to accept a Video Music Award for Female Video of the Year when Kanye infamously interrupted her speech. In early 2010, she won Album of the Year for Fearless at the Grammy Awards, beating out Beyoncé and Lady Gaga.

Her early stardom revolved mostly around the fact that she was a precocious young country artist who wrote her own songs, without the risqué edge or sexy-but-wholesome cognitive dissonance of someone like an early Britney Spears to worry white parents and inspire pearl-clutching tabloid magazine covers. And it wasn’t really until Speak Now — when Swift was already a mainstream star but still categorized as country — that she began teasing the media and her fans about the ways her autobiographical lyrics mapped onto her real life, especially regarding the men she was dating.

People are still wondering whether Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” is about Uncle Joey, so it was startling for a young woman songwriter and musical celebrity of her commercial reach to use her songs to consistently craft such intimate stories about such equally public men, including Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, and John Mayer. And there was something uniquely bold about the way Swift started using her confessional songwriting and melodic sensibility to “get the last word” on her relationships, as People magazine framed it in her first cover story.

People hardly batted an eye in 2018 when Ariana Grande’s first No. 1 hit, “Thank U, Next,” literally name-checked her list of ex-boyfriends, and that’s in no small part because of Swift. Because even as reality TV stars like the Kardashians and Real Housewives were figuring out how to create multiplatform storytelling through social media, Swift was already pioneering the strategy in the big pop machine. Yes, she opportunistically used this to shame exes, create fodder for talk shows, and garner magazine covers; and even then, it raised some hackles about the way she was using her power. But it was undeniably compelling theater, and even nonfans were watching.

That multiplatform mixture of music and drama wouldn’t have succeeded without the undeniably catchy earworms Swift’s diary entries were wrapped in, or without the devoted fanbase of Swifties that she cultivated online. This all helped her break chart records with her most explicitly pop albums, including 2012’s Red and 2014’s ’80s-inspired 1989. The latter garnered the biggest first-week sales for a pop album since Britney Spears in 2002, helping Swift keep the tradition of the monocultural pop star alive.

But as Swift’s music saturated airwaves, and her willingness to tease behind-the-scenes details of her life in her songs moved beyond ex-boyfriends like Harry Styles (“Style”) into swatting at other pop stars like Katy Perry (“Bad Blood”) the public began to sour on Swift’s strategic use of her personal life in her music. (To Swift’s credit as a performer, no other pop star could sing the lyrics “Band-Aids don’t fix bullet holes” about a dispute over a backup dancer with a straight face.)

Juxtaposed with Swift’s self-celebrating “girl squad” feminism, her opportunism — and seeming hypocrisy — started to rankle. By 2015, even racist sympathizer and critic Camille Paglia came out of the woodwork to anoint Swift a “Nazi barbie,” calling out her tendency to treat friends as props. And all these contradictions of Swift’s persona would come to a head when Swift’s seemingly buried feud with Kanye came roaring back the following year.

It makes sense that her clash with Kanye and Kim Kardashian West became the first time she experienced a real backlash. Unlike the drama around her dating life or with Perry, it was the first time Swift was up against equally savvy adversaries — celebrities who, like her, were professionals at merging their public and private lives.

The fight was a meta moment by design, inspired by West’s song “Famous,” where he raps: “I made that bitch famous.” In retrospect, it seems clear that West, as much a publicity-seeking pop diva as Swift, was trying to get the last word after going on an apology tour about the interruption heard round the world. Swift claimed to be annoyed over what she saw as the song’s credit-taking message, and she tried to make it part of her own narrative. “I want to say to all the young women out there,” she intoned in her speech accepting a Grammy for Album of the Year in February 2016, “there are going to be people along the way who will try to undercut your success or take credit for your accomplishments or your fame.”

In another era, Swift’s storyline might have won the day. Her publicist denied that she had approved the line in the song, despite Kanye’s claim that he had checked with her before releasing it. But celebrity narratives, to some degree, were no longer being decided just by white-dominated mainstream media. Black publications were the first to tease out the racial undertones of Swift’s lie in the ensuing “he said, she said,” specifically as a white woman playing on the ingrained sympathy and benefit of the doubt that white women are given in US culture.

Still, it wasn’t until Kim’s Snapchat leak that July — where Swift could be heard approving the song — that the Swift-as-victim narrative became a framework for understanding her entire career. Contemporary white pop stars like Grande and Miley Cyrus had faced musical appropriation backlashes, but this time it was Swift’s entire persona — not just her music — that were under scrutiny.

Swift’s memeable response to the leak — “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative” — was followed by her own disappearance from the media landscape. By the time the 2016 election happened — amid the chatter about white women’s complicity in electing Trump — Swift’s refusal to take a political stand solidly cast her as a cultural villain, and her symbolism as an icon of toxic white womanhood was sealed.

If the clamor of social media (especially Twitter) was central to the Swift backlash, it was also central to her eventual resurgence. Over the past decade, social media (especially Instagram) has tipped the scales in celebrity coverage and helped celebrities tell their stories on their own terms, almost without intermediaries. Swift knew how to use that to her advantage and decided to play the long game.

By refusing interviews for 18 months, wiping her social media clean, and focusing on cultivating her Tumblr fanbase, Swift removed herself from the cultural conversation for a beat. This kind of brand management helped her keep an ear to the ground while in a self-imposed exile. But it’s as if the culture couldn’t stop conjuring her; rumors about her absence spread, including that she had traveled around inside a suitcase.

In August 2017, she wiped her social media clean and reappeared with a snake video — reclaiming the serpent emojis — in what was ultimately the announcement for her Reputation album, and which remains one of the most iconic social media rollouts ever. “Look What You Made Me Do,” the lead single, was endlessly memed — Swift couldn’t come to the phone, a perfect metaphor for her cultural disappearance and, perhaps, a kind of ghostly remake of the Kanye call. The album succeeded because it seemed as though Swift was finally open to owning her melodrama and messiness. She subsequently broke records with the tour and album sales.

Still, her political silence was affecting her image and music. By 2018, insipid corporate wokeness had become the order of the day, and Swift Inc. again pivoted musically and culturally. Swift came out for the Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms, framing her support in terms of LGBTQ rights and racial justice. And this year, the second single from her latest album, Lover — “You Need to Calm Down” — was a perfect encapsulation of her politics of messiness, conflating anti-gay prejudice with Twitter drama. (And somehow turning the video into a celebration of pop queens supporting each other). This fall, she has made sure to include über-stan–turned–pop star (and video coproducer) Todrick Hall at her awards show moments, attempting to expand the range of racial and sexual identities included in what used to be her mostly straight white “girl squad” feminism.

For all of Swift’s success at updating her persona, she’s never quite regained her massive radio dominance — but no pop star can depend on the success of singles for over a decade. In fact, Swift is one of the most interesting figures of the decade because her stardom is caught between the old-school era of album buying and our current streaming moment.

And, inevitably, Swift has turned her own industry issues around streaming and artistic ownership into a wider commentary on artists’ rights — which happens to work as a canny form of further brand management. She framed herself as an ethical businesswoman when she called out Apple for not paying artists, and she battled with Spotify over streaming royalties but without really pushing for wider systemic industry change.

Earlier this year, Swift started a new artist-versus-industry fight about her music masters being bought out from under her by nemesis Scooter Braun. It’s a complicated story, one that Swift has framed as being about “toxic male privilege,” and the fact that Braun mocked her during the Kanye era — once again blurring, in her trademark mode, the personal with the public and the systemic with the individual.

Instead of being seen as opportunistic, Swift seems to have succeeded in framing her campaign as a fight for unsigned and less powerful artists’ rights, which has resonated at a moment where content creators are all pitted against the 1% of the tech and corporate worlds. This time, even Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a squad member any star would envy — backed her up.

Swift’s response to being anointed Artist of the Decade by the AMAs and Billboard provides interesting insight into how she sees herself now and where she thinks the next decade is going. She chose Carole King, one of the preeminent symbols of pop music authenticity, to present her AMA, squarely placing herself in a genealogy of great women singer-songwriters. She also enlisted shiny next-gen pop stars Camila Cabello and Halsey to join her during her performance of old hits.

In her Billboard speech, Swift name-checked newer stars like Lizzo, Becky G, and Billie Eilish as the future of the industry. Tellingly, they are women who, so far, have not played into the tabloidy pop dramas that dominated the 2010s. If this decade has shown us anything, it’s that blurring public and private through music can reap big rewards, but it also opens up stars — especially the women of pop — to more intense scrutiny and a higher degree of personal accountability.

In a Billboard interview looking back on the decade, Swift spoke about her relationship to fame and learning to hold things back. “I didn’t quite know what exactly to ... share and what to protect. I think a lot of people go through that, especially in the last decade,” she said. “There was this phase where social media felt fun and casual and quirky and safe. And then it got to the point where everyone has to evaluate their relationship with social media. So I decided that the best thing I have to offer people is my music.”

Like Lana Del Rey denying she ever had a persona, or Lady Gaga stripping down with Joanne, there seems to come a point when white pop divas need to declare themselves authentic and all about the music — as if their ongoing narratives aren’t part of the show. But the way Swift used her image and the never-ending soap opera that swirled around her to make space for her music in an increasingly saturated attention economy was itself a kind of art. ●

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pochrm · 4 years

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happy 13th Tay

worHere’s to the woman who has taught me multiple things the last few years, such as daring to dream impossible things, new english words I found myself using as often as I can (such as “treacherous”, “nonchalat”, “indentation”, and many others who make me feel fancy af), the value of love, friendship and kindness, to jump into things unknown even though I might me petrified to do so, cause that’s just fearless, a bomb-ass recipe of chai tea vanilla cupcakes inspired by her sugar cookies version, to speak whatever it’s in my mind no matter what the repercussions could lead onto but also to watch the way I use my words cause they might me the most hurtful weapon I could utilize against someone or yet the most rewarding they could ever hear.

Here’s to the woman who was taught me really a lot, to laugh about me, not care about what anybody else has to say about me, as long as it is negative criticism, hate or gossip, to value every little moment I can get with my parents cause they are getting older too, to embrace who I really am, to sway my hips everytime I dance cause she does that every single time (and thanks for that Tay, people really think I’m a great dancer cause of that), and to tilt my body either left or right everytime I try to not succesfully sing the high notes of every song, cause she does that (and she actually nails that part). Here’s to the woman who taught me black clothes could really work in my wardrobe and now I can’t get enough full black outfits in my life. Here’s to all the splendid things Taylor Alison Swift has taught me over the last few years. And not gonna lie about it, it has been a journey I regret no getting into early, but I believe God works in mysterious ways.

I first remember hearing about this invaluable human being with Love Story and You Belong With Me, just like many other swifties have. And the first time I saw her perform live on TV at the 2010′s AMAS when she sang Back to December and wore her hair all straight for the first time which my sister says was a great and iconic fashion moment. I remember jamming to I Knew You Were Trouble with my cousin in one of our Chirstmas Eve dinners back when I was just 13. I recall hearing Red (the song) a lot in radio and jamming to it but in a subconscious level.

Long story short, I became a Swiftie during the 1989 era. I recall one sunday watching the VMAS while doing homework and they announced TS was about to play her new song called “Shake It Off” which would be her first official pop single from her soon to be released full pop album “1989″. I freaked out hearing the song for the 1st time cause it was SICK! after that I found myself looking at the music video in youtube a lot actually, but then in my feed a live performance of “Welcome to New York” appeard. I clicked on it. And that was it. There was something so captivating about that song that got me hooked into the Taylor universe.

I went and bought the 1989 album months later just cause of that song. I LOVE IT SO MUCH, THE BEAT, THE STORYTELLING, THE WHOLE TOPIC OF STARTING AGAIN AND FEELING BRAND NEW IN A BRAND NEW CITY.

1989 really became the soundtrack of my sophomore year in which I learned so much about friendship, myself, romance and most of all, hearbreak.

I’ll def write on how much Taylor has helped me into my vision of love, I’ll do it someday cause that’s gonna be extensive and Im still trying to find the proper words to do that.

Cheers to everything you’ve accomplished the last 13 years. I love you to the moon and back, Thanks a lot for molding me into the human being I am today in such a possitive way. @taylorswift

#tay #taylor swift #swifties

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raifuujin · 5 years

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MK Treasured Edition Commentary

From here, here, and here.

Volume 1

Hello, it's me, Aoyama.

In the course of the republication of Magic Kaito I take the liberty to show my memories of this time straightforwardly. (grin)

The Revived Phantom Thief The memorable first chapter! Actually I became a Mangaka because I wanted to write about a high school phantom (grin) and so I drew it under great tension! Well and back then I was short of money which is the reason why his hatband around his tophat isn't shaded with screen tone…

The Police Are Everywhere The original title „Keikan ga ippai” referred to a movie... „Taiyou ga ippai”, a movie with Alain Delon („Purple Noon”). Detective Doron is an allusion, too, because „Delon” is written as „Doron” in Japan. (grin) By the way! The words „When you bend them, they...” Kaito announces the light-emitting diode were literally written on the package of one of those things I purchased on a public festival as a kid. (grin) Appearantly they're actually known as „glow stick”.

The Clockwork Heart A science-fiction-thriller! A rarity for Kaito (grin). I recall that I perceived it as really exhausting to draw all the parts of the robot and that I had no computer, so that I had to write Kaito's farewell letter by hand (Haha!). By the way! In the panel the robot says „I'm Kuroba Kaito... Haha!!” Kaito's pupils look kinda strange (?). There I mimicked Akemi Matsunae of which I was a big fan back then. (grin)

Kaitou Kid's Busy Day Off Back then, the 3D movie „Captain EO” starring Michael Jackson was being played in cinemas and has been satirized in this chapter, although I never thought 3D movies could have been revived because of „Avatar”... (grin) By the way! When I read the closing scene today I think that the phrase „But, ice cream... still tastes great!” is my most embarrassing quote ever (grin).

The Pirate Ship Unsurfaced A sea adventure with Kaito? This is a rarity, too! (grin) I can't remember at all why I wanted to draw this story, but maybe I wanted a confrontation between a thief from the mainland and a thief of the seas...? (Ha!) Well, and so Kaito brought his costume of Kaitou Kid even to this place...?! (grin)

The Scarlet Temptress There she is! Mistress Akako! To be honest, she, as practitioner of black magic, is the reason who drove me into the corner the most during Kaitos appearances in Conan. Well, you just have to accept these works as parallel universes. (grin) By the way, Kaito Kuroba is written on the handkerchief, this probably was a prank done by his mom (Chikage)... (grin)

Aoyama Kid ♥

Volume 2

Stay Away From Him Although it's more of a romantic tale than a thief story I really like this one ♥ Especially the panel with „Well, excuse me for being an idiot...“ is a real gem, because of how often I had to redraw it! (laughs) Additionally, Superman and Top Gun appear... which is according to my taste! It's also revealed in this story that Aoko is flat-chested. (laughs)

Japan's Most Irresponsible Prime Minister A story I used one of my then-favourite actors Hitoshi Ueki, who has passed away in the meantime, as model! I also dared to use the Japanese prime minister - this was probably really audacious... And then characters appear who look like the past leaders of the USSR and the USA, Gorbachev and Reagan... (sweating). By the way, did anyone notice the „Akako balloon“ in the night sky? (laughs)

I Am the Master! This story was purely written because I felt like it! Anyway, I really wanted to draw how Kaitou Kid makes a balls to the wall ride down the facade of a building... (laughs). I would be nice if they one day made an Anime out of it ♫ Oh well, even if Cleopatra's Vanity case should really exist, two thousand years later one probably couldn't use it anymore... (laughs)

Would You Grow Up If I remember correctly, the hang-glider associated with Kaitou Kid lifted the first time in this story. Well, one could also say that Kaitou Kid could have fled from the get-go with it, instead of stretching a rope to the Tokyo Tower first (laughs). I'd really like to bring the motorized roller skates again.

The Boy Who Bet on the Ball It has also been really daring to take real professional baseball player as a model... (laughs). I think the story was created after I talked with my editor in charge about how thrilling it would be if Kaitou Kid appeared on a pole in Tokyo Dome. Well, the Yomiuri Giants are working together with Conan in several ways anyway, so I hope they can turn a blind eye to this... (fierce laughter)

Ghost Game If I remember correctly, I was frantically busy because I had to draw „Tantei George no Minimini Daisa-kusen“ („Detective George's Mini-Mini Big Strategy“) three weeks in a row for the Sunday magazine, so I finished this chapter in a very short time... (laughs). Directly afterwards my series „Yaiba“ started, because of which „Magic Kaito“ had to pause for a while. Hard to believe that the series is continued until today...! (laughs)

Hustler vs. Magician Originally this was the true second chapter of „Magic Kaito“! But... it was rejected! Since my debut in „Sunday“ there was never a story before or after it that was rejected. It's real luck that it made it into this volume! (laughs)

Omake „Magic Kaito“ was the first Manga I was allowed to publish as a Mangaka, which could be the reason I drew this story with zest and high motivation... Oh well, this probably was my youthful enthusiasm... (laughs)

Aoyama Kid ♥

Volume 3

Star Wars The first „Magic Kaito“ story I drew in the Heisei era (since 1989 -editor's note). There are several stories in which someone tries to gain profit from using a false Kid, but this is the shining first one! At the crime scene Kid announced a lot of Kid fans have assembled and shout "Kid! Kid!". Pretty clever idea, huh? Because this has developed to a classical element until today.

The Great Detective Appears!! Entrance of Saguru Hakuba! No, not only that, the chief inspector also shows his face...! Perhaps the junior was just worried because the top policeman never appears at the crime scene? (grin) By the way, Kid is so bad at ice skating because I'm so lousy in it myself.

Kaitou Under Scrutiny The skirt of Aoko's school uniform is so long and Kid's television is so big! From this you can tell the time! (Haha!) Apropos, the newspaper appearing on the last page is called „Oshima Daily Paper“ in the original version. Most of the newspapers shown in „Magic Kaito“ were named after my then editors. I beg your pardon. (grin)

Akako's Delivery Service Kaitou Kids measurements, 1.74 m (~ 5'9") and 58 kg (~ 128 lbs), naturally are my measurements from back then! The same goes for his blood type! (grin) Back then I thought it's really cool that it's possible to figure out skin colour and age of a person just by a single hair, but today, with DNA analysis you can figure out the whole identity of the person the hair belongs to. The progress of science is frightening... (Haha!)

(Extra Chapter) Yaiba vs. Kaito! I was told to draw a short, self-contained story and this dream sequence is the result. Back when I was a kid I already loved collaborations like „Mazinger Z vs. Devilman“, so I wanted to draw something like this. This is also the reason Kaitou Kid appears in Conan... (grin)

Blue Birthday The first time the gem Kaitou is after is the name origin for the title! Because this was the first „Magic Kaito“ after a very long time I debuted Kaitou Kid's arch-enemy and I can remember how much this motivated me... but it's also a story about a nightly firework in the midst of the city which must have made a lot of trouble in the surroundings... (grin)

Green Dream Oh well, this story is nothing special, but to be honest, it's this story which grew dear to my heart. (grin) What should I say about it? The rhythm is felicitous. This story was the first time I drew Kid's „signature“ we've grown so accustomed to. You can also tell from the name of one of the persons appearing that I really loved „Furuhata Ninzaburō“ back then - a japanese police detective drama.

Aoyama Kid ♥

Volume 4

Hello, it's me, Aoyama.

Since Magic Kaito is being republished I allow myself to show my memories about the past without further delay. (grin)

Crystal Mother This is the Kaito-train story I always wanted to draw! Including some allusions to "Lupin III" or "Sherlock Holmes" it became a story during which I could live it up... (grin) Snake, who got severely hurt in the tunnel returns in the following chapter completely unharmed. That's what I call "tough“! (Ha, ha!)

Red Tear Back when this story was published the first time, the thre first pages were in color! In fact, this created a mystery: „The gem on page 1 is blue, but the one on the cover page is red... Why oh why?“ Great that we can revive this mystery in all its glory! (grin) By the way, the closing scene in which all the photos containing the fondest memories are projected against the wall is an homage to the closing scene of the movie „Cinema Paradiso“. ♪ I used this highlight again in „Detective Conan – The Last Wizard of the Century“. (grin)

Black Star The first confrontation with the one and only Shinichi Kudo! In this story, Kaito says: „The inspector couldn't catch him even if he used a satellite system!“ But really, it's kind of surprising that he hasn't caught him before, isn't it?! (grin) Shinichi is firing a pistol? Akako wants to use magic to get rid of Shinichi? Little Kaito is flirting with Aoko? What a crazy story! (grin) Well, the scene in which Akako uses her magic powers was cut from TV syndication, but it was restored for the DVD, so everyone who wants to watch it, can do so now. ♥ Oh yeah, the title „Black Star“! I believe there are some readers who ask themselves why this gemstone served as the namesake of the story even though it's just mentioned in passing at the end. That's because Kaitou Kid himself is the "Black Star" after all ★ – hence the title! ♪

Golden Eye The first duel of the phantoms! (... maybe.) Catherine Zeta-Jones was the model for the character Ruby Jones. ♥ Well, they don't look very much alike... (Ha, ha!) In this story it's made clear that Kaito was born in June and Aoko in September! Exactly... Kaitou Kid may be a thief, but he is also a magician, so it really delighted me to slip in the name of the grandiose real-life magician Harry Houdini. (grin) There are a lot of tricky moments that show how much Detective Conan "poisoned" this story... (Ha, ha!)

Dark Knights The mask Nightmare is wearing is based on one I bought during a vacation in Spain, because I really liked it. It now hangs at the wall of my living room. (Ha, ha!) Again, in this story is a lot to analyze and moreover, it ends in a thought-provoking, grim mood, which isn't very typical for „Magic Kaito“. On the other hand, this isn't bad either, isn't it? Superintendent Chaki, an old acquaintance from Detective Conan, had his origin in this story. Further on, Hakuba's nanny „Baaya“ has her very first appearance in here! Actually, it's said that there is another nanny for him who has a more docile personality, but that's a different story altogether... (He, he...)

Phantom Lady (Preannouncement) This story revolves around how the original Kaitou Kid obtained a wonderfully beautiful jewel for the first time. ♥ It will be the first in Volume 5... I wonder when it will be released? (grin)

Volume 5

Hi, it's Aoyama ! Since a new volume of ''Magic Kaito'' came out, I have to delve into my memories from the past. PHANTOM LADY I wrote this story about Kaito's parents four years ago. I had stopped writing Magic Kaito for Conan and I thought : ''Wow, so much time has passed ?'' (laughs) If I recall correctly, his mother mutters ''Kaito, it's time for you to know'', and the story's finally here ! It's this story that finally revealed that Kaito's mother's name is ''Chikage''. It was my first time digitalizing a manuscript, I was glad I managed to portray the security sensor similar to phantom thieves stories so cooly, but I had to drew one night scenery after another, and that took time and so I almost didn't make it in a deadline. By the way, this story leads to Conan's Ryouma case, in volume 70. Read it if you're interested ! MIDNIGHT CROW When it was decided to animate the series, I had a meeting with the animation staff. We asked ourselves ''How are we going to finish the story ?''. So I suggested : ''Why not do one about a black Kaitou Kid that would be published in the Sunday ?''. And that's how I wrote Midnight Crow. I will never forget the staff's face when I told them ''Actually, Touichi is alive'' (laughs) Ikeda-san, Touichi's voice actor, had difficulty saying the line ''When you come in contact with an audience, it's a scene of duel...'' quickly ! <3 The ''sucker trick'' line comes from Kaito Kid's anime screenwriter Kunihiko Okada, who I thank very much. In the Phantom Lady chapter, Kaito's work as Kid was given by Chikage, but in Midnight Crow, he's supposed to quit because a lot happened in Las Vegas... but it's another story (laughs) SUN HALO This chapter was written to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Magic Kaito, so it had to be a love comedy <3 When I drew the chapter, Kaito's bike is a Suzuki GSX 250 R. I had forgotten that it was supposed to be broken, so I had Jii-chan say that a ''doctor friend'' helped him... I leave that to your imagination (laughs) Speaking of characters, Lucifer appears again ! As I thought, Akako uses red magic ! (Fortunately Akako doesn't exist in Conan's world (laughs)). The entrance hall in the chapter is based on Tottori's entrance hall, so please go there if you visit Tottori ! By the way, in Sun Halo, Aoko rides the bike with Kaito ! NONCHALANT LUPIN It's a short story I sent to a shounen magazine, and I got an award for it. As you can see, it was a prototype for ''Magic Kaito'' (laughs) The forms are different but there's no card gun. I drew this because the editor I had at that time told me : ''Show me a story you want to write''. It's my second work ! Now that I look back, I'm embarassed because it looks bad. (laughs) Anyway, the hero's name is Lupin, and the name of the story ''Nonchalant Lupin'', but I don't know where he's nonchalant... (laughs)

#reference #These are the ones that bug me the most about the translations honestly #Because these are the comments where people like to point and say 'DC and MK aren't the same world'#When the terms used only really indicate that their stories are separate; not their worldds #They're more separated into 'DC world' and 'MK world' in extremely loose terms that don't actually mean 'separate universes'#More just things like 'Akako is only going to be in MK because she can't appear in DC'#Which. Really gives more argument for their universes being the same; if there can't be a 'DC version' of Akako without breaking DC #Means if Akako were to appear in DC; she's implied to have magic; which could only be if she's the same Akako as MK #...Anyway; last post about this; unless more MK stuff comes up or I missed some #Which is possible; there's a lot of random information everywhere

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diamondskyswift-blog · 5 years

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dear taylor,

the 12 year anniversary of your debut album was this week, and so I felt it was the perfect time to take a minute to thank you for being a part of my life for that long. your music found me when I was only four years old, watching a “discover country” tv show. they played ‘tim mcgraw’, and talked about how they had a feeling you would go far in life. never in my wildest dreams did I expect that an artist on a show my parents watched would be such a massive part of my life, but here we are, and I wouldn’t change a thing!!

debut. when your debut album came out, I was in preschool, and every single day I would carry your album with my in my backpack. it was my most prized possession, and every time I got in the car I begged my parents to “play my cd”. in february of 2007, my parents took me to see you as the opening act for the opening act, and I loved every minute of it!! back then, the arena lights stayed on and you sat on a little stool and just played your guitar. this album was such a defining time in my life because it brought you into my life, and 12 years later you’ve never left my side.

fearless. oh boy. if you’ve never seen my instagram, i’m @/fearlessplatinumstan, my twitter is @/thefearlessstan, and on here i’m diamondskyswift. fearless is SUCH an important album to me for many reasons. it reminds me of a time in my life when I was 100% happy, it got me to be a more active swiftie, it’s full of amazing songs, and it just really seems to understand me. I interpret fearless as living through my mental disorders, and not letting fear stop me from living my life. it’s a personal strength for me, and gives me hope. my cousin and I bought our cds at walmart when this album came out, and although I couldn’t afford to go to the tour (still so sad), I did absolutely love through this album. thank you for fearless.

speak now. this album was such a masterpiece. it was an album that defined a chapter of my life as the songs seemed to perfectly fit like the missing piece of a puzzle, right into my life. every single song is so dear to my heart, and helped me through one of the hardest chapters of my life. I truly would not be here without speak now; it was an album that seemed to have my back even when I felt my absolute worst. I couldn’t afford to see the tour, but I still absolutely LIVED in this era and I will never forget how wonderful it was, or how blessed I am to have had speak now.

red. this is another ‘oh boy’ moment for me. by the time red came out, everyone knew loud and proud that I was a complete swiftie. prior to the album, I finally became old enough to join social media, so right to instagram I went to talk about you. although I didn’t know you could have fan accounts, my personal account was all about you. I was so excited for red to come out. things were finally starting to be okay for me, but I really needed an album that had some ballads to cry to, and red seemed to know exactly what I was needing to hear. I proudly told everyone that I had been following you for as long as I could remember, and even my teachers caught on. on the day of the livestream for red, my teachers put it on during class because they knew how much it would mean to me, and it was so sweet. another favorite moment of this era was when I saw the WANEGBT video, and decided to pick up the viola because I was hoping to one day be part of the agency. it’s safe to say that by the red era, you definitely owned me lol.

1989. this one in particular. 1989 was the album that really empowered me and kept me the happiest I had ever been. it was the first album where I was able to afford seeing you on tour as the headlining artist, and the first time I made social media dedicated to you. i’ve since deleted those accounts and replaced them because I didn’t want anyone to see them (they were such a mess) but i’ll never forget the experiences I gained from social media, and how it brought me even closer to you. this was such a happy era for me and I can’t thank you enough for everything it brought me.

reputation. where to begin? during the three year hiatus, a lot happened. through the me too movement, I was hit with the realization that my experiences as a child, that happened for over two years, were sexual assault, and I was feeling more helpless and weak than ever. I started high school in this time, and had lots of friendships end devastatingly, leaving me feeling even more alone. on top of that, I developed anxiety, depression, and ocd. I was feeling so helpless and lost...and then reputation came along. this album gave me a new purpose. I started making new friends through your music, I grew closer to some of my friends i’d known for awhile, I discovered who I was and who I wanted to be, and I finally felt complete again. of course, the pain is not totally gone, but I no longer feel like the helpless and lost girl I was. reputation changed my life and helped me to feel myself again when I was afraid I never would again. just like you, I had people turning against me when I needed them most, and spreading rumors about me and trying to create my reputation for me. it felt impossible to keep my head above water, but I survived, and I learned that “without your past, you could never have arrived.” (a great mind once taught me that hehe) I saw you on tour in columbus and cleveland, and I made memories that will last a lifetime. you helped me through so much just by giving me this album and I cannot thank you enough. this was the era of firsts— my first floor seats for your show, my first time meeting your parents, my first time meeting paul sidoti, my first time traveling for you, and of course, my first time feeling like I was going to be alright.

thank you, taylor, for a lifetime of memories and understanding me, and being the only friend I had at times. you mean everything to me and I can never truly thank you enough but I want you to know that without you I would not be here, and I especially would not be this happy.

@taylorswift 💛 @taylornation

#taylurking #taylor swift #reputaylurking #12yearsoftaylorswift #fearless #debut #speak now #red #1989 #rep #reputation #meredith #olivia #andrea swift #scott swift #austin swift #pls love me

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blackkudos · 6 years

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Gil Scott-Heron

Gilbert (Gil) Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011) was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues, and soul, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. His own term for himself was "bluesologist", which he defined as "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues". His music, most notably on Pieces of a Man and Winter in America in the early 1970s, influenced and helped engender later African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul. In fact, Scott-Heron himself is considered by many to be the first rapper/MC ever, a recognition also shared by fellow American MC Coke La Rock.

Scott-Heron remained active until his death, and in 2010 released his first new album in 16 years, entitled I'm New Here. A memoir he had been working on for years up to the time of his death, The Last Holiday, was published posthumously in January 2012.

His recording work received much critical acclaim, especially one of his best-known compositions "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". Gil Scott-Heron received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. He also is included in the exhibits at the National Museum of African American History and Culture that officially opened on Sept. 24, 2016 on the National Mall, and in an NMAAHC publication, Dream a World Anew. During the museum's opening ceremonies, the Sylvan Theater on the monument grounds was temporarily named the Gil Scott-Heron stage.

Early years

Gil Scott-Heron was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Bobbie Scott-Heron, was an opera singer who performed with the New York Oratorio Society. Scott-Heron's father, Gil Heron, nicknamed "The Black Arrow", was a Jamaican football player in the 1950s who became the first black man to play for Celtic Football Club in Glasgow. Gil's parents separated in his early childhood and he was sent to live with his maternal grandmother, Lillie Scott, in Jackson, Tennessee. When Scott-Heron was 12 years old, his grandmother died and he returned to live with his mother in The Bronx in New York City. He enrolled at DeWitt Clinton High School, but later transferred to The Fieldston School after impressing the head of the English department with one of his writings and earning a full scholarship. As one of five black students at the prestigious school, Scott-Heron was faced with alienation and a significant socioeconomic gap. During his admissions interview at Fieldston, an administrator asked him, "'How would you feel if you see one of your classmates go by in a limousine while you're walking up the hill from the subway?' And [he] said, 'Same way as you. Y'all can't afford no limousine. How do you feel?'" This type of intractable boldness would become a hallmark of Scott-Heron's later recordings.

After completing his secondary education, Scott-Heron enrolled at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania because Langston Hughes (his most important literary influence) was an alumnus. It was here that Scott-Heron met Brian Jackson with whom he formed the band Black & Blues. After about two years at Lincoln, Scott-Heron took a year off to write the novels The Vulture and The Nigger Factory. Scott-Heron was very heavily influenced by the Black Arts Movement. The Last Poets, a group associated with the Black Arts Movement performed at Lincoln in 1969 and Abiodun Oyewole of that Harlem group said Scott-Heron asked him after the performance, "Listen, can I start a group like you guys?" Scott-Heron returned to New York City, settling in Chelsea, Manhattan. The Vulture was published by the World Publishing Company in 1970 to positive reviews.

Although Scott-Heron never completed his undergraduate degree, he was admitted to the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where he received an M.A. in creative writing in 1972. His master's thesis was titled Circle of Stone. Beginning in 1972, Scott-Heron taught literature and creative writing for several years as a full-time lecturer at Federal City College in Washington, D.C. while maintaining his music career.

Recording career

Scott-Heron began his recording career in 1970 with the LP Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. Bob Thiele of Flying Dutchman Records produced the album, and Scott-Heron was accompanied by Eddie Knowles and Charlie Saunders on conga and David Barnes on percussion and vocals. The album's 14 tracks dealt with themes such as the superficiality of television and mass consumerism, the hypocrisy of some would-be black revolutionaries, and white middle-class ignorance of the difficulties faced by inner-city residents. In the liner notes, Scott-Heron acknowledged as influences Richie Havens, John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Jose Feliciano, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Nina Simone, and long-time collaborator Brian Jackson.

Scott-Heron's 1971 album Pieces of a Man used more conventional song structures than the loose, spoken-word feel of Small Talk. He was joined by Jackson, Johnny Pate as conductor, Ron Carter on bass and bass guitar, drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, Burt Jones playing electric guitar, and Hubert Laws on flute and saxophone, with Thiele producing again. Scott-Heron's third album, Free Will, was released in 1972. Jackson, Purdie, Laws, Knowles, and Saunders all returned to play on Free Will and were joined by Jerry Jemmott playing bass, David Spinozza on guitar, and Horace Ott (arranger and conductor). Carter later said about Scott-Heron's voice, "He wasn't a great singer, but, with that voice, if he had whispered it would have been dynamic. It was a voice like you would have for Shakespeare."

1974 saw another LP collaboration with Brian Jackson, the critically acclaimed opus Winter in America, with Bob Adams on drums and Danny Bowens on bass. The album contained Scott-Heron's most cohesive material and featured more of Jackson's creative input than his previous albums had. Winter in America has been regarded by many critics as the two musicians' most artistic effort. The following year, Scott-Heron and Jackson released Midnight Band: The First Minute of a New Day. 1975 saw the release of the single "Johannesburg", a rallying cry to the issue of apartheid in South Africa. The song would be re-issued, in 12"-single form, together with "Waiting for the Axe to Fall" and "B-movie" in 1983.

A live album, It's Your World, followed in 1976 and a recording of spoken poetry, The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron, was released in 1979. Another success followed with the hit single "Angel Dust", which he recorded as a single with producer Malcolm Cecil. "Angel Dust" peaked at No. 15 on the R&B charts in 1978.

In 1979, Scott-Heron played at the No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden. The concerts were organized by Musicians United for Safe Energy to protest the use of nuclear energy following the Three Mile Island accident. Scott-Heron's song, "We Almost Lost Detroit" was included in the No Nukes album of concert highlights. It alluded to a previous nuclear power plant accident and was also the title of a book by John G. Fuller. Scott-Heron was a frequent critic of President Ronald Reagan and his conservative policies.

Scott-Heron recorded and released four albums during the 1980s: 1980 and Real Eyes (1980), Reflections (1981) and Moving Target (1982). In February 1982, Ron Holloway joined the ensemble to play tenor saxophone. He toured extensively with Scott-Heron and contributed to his next album, Moving Target the same year. His tenor accompaniment is a prominent feature of the songs "Fast Lane" and "Black History/The World". Holloway continued with Scott-Heron until the summer of 1989, when he left to join Dizzy Gillespie. Several years later, Scott-Heron would make cameo appearances on two of Ron Holloway's CDs; Scorcher (1996) and Groove Update (1998), both on the Fantasy/Milestone label.

Scott-Heron was dropped by Arista Records in 1985 and quit recording, though he continued to tour. The same year he helped compose and sang "Let Me See Your I.D." on the Artists United Against Apartheid album Sun City, containing the famous line, "The first time I heard there was trouble in the Middle East, I thought they were talking about Pittsburgh". The song compares racial tensions in the U.S. with those in apartheid-era South Africa, implying that the U.S. was not too far ahead in race relations. In 1993, he signed to TVT Records and released Spirits, an album that included the seminal track "'Message to the Messengers". The first track on the album criticized the rap artists of the day. Scott-Heron is known in many circles as "the Godfather of rap" and is widely considered to be one of the genre's founding fathers. Given the political consciousness that lies at the foundation of his work, he can also be called a founder of political rap. Message to the Messengers was a plea for the new generation of rappers to speak for change rather than perpetuate the current social situation, and to be more articulate and artistic. Regarding hip hop music in the 1990s, he said in an interview:

They need to study music. I played in several bands before I began my career as a poet. There's a big difference between putting words over some music, and blending those same words into the music. There's not a lot of humor. They use a lot of slang and colloquialisms, and you don't really see inside the person. Instead, you just get a lot of posturing.

Later years

Prison terms and more performing

In 2001, Scott-Heron was sentenced to one to three years imprisonment in a New York State prison for possession of cocaine. While out of jail in 2002, he appeared on the Blazing Arrow album by Blackalicious. He was released on parole in 2003, the year BBC TV broadcast the documentary Gil Scott-Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised—Scott-Heron was arrested for possession of a crack pipe during the editing of the film in October 2003 and received a six-month prison sentence.

On July 5, 2006, Scott-Heron was sentenced to two to four years in a New York State prison for violating a plea deal on a drug-possession charge by leaving a drug rehabilitation center. He claimed that he left because the clinic refused to supply him with HIV medication. This story led to the presumption that the artist was HIV positive, subsequently confirmed in a 2008 interview. Originally sentenced to serve until July 13, 2009, he was paroled on May 23, 2007.

After his release, Scott-Heron began performing live again, starting with a show at SOB's restaurant and nightclub in New York on September 13, 2007. On stage, he stated that he and his musicians were working on a new album and that he had resumed writing a book titled The Last Holiday, previously on long-term hiatus, about Stevie Wonder and his successful attempt to have the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. declared a federally recognized holiday in the United States.

Malik Al Nasir dedicated a collection of poetry to Scott-Heron titled Ordinary Guy that contained a foreword by Jalal Mansur Nuriddin of The Last Poets. Scott-Heron recorded one of the poems in Nasir's book entitled Black & Blue in 2006.

In April 2009 on BBC Radio 4, poet Lemn Sissay presented a half-hour documentary on Gil Scott-Heron entitled Pieces of a Man, having interviewed Gil Scott-Heron in New York a month earlier. Pieces of a Man was the first UK announcement from Scott-Heron of his forthcoming album and return to form. In November 2009, the BBC's Newsnight interviewed Scott-Heron for a feature titled The Legendary Godfather of Rap Returns. In 2009, a new Gil Scott-Heron website, gilscottheron.net, was launched with a new track "Where Did the Night Go" made available as a free download from the site.

In 2010 Scott-Heron was booked to perform in Tel Aviv, Israel, but this attracted criticism from pro-Palestinian activists, who stated: "Your performance in Israel would be the equivalent to having performed in Sun City during South Africa's apartheid era... We hope that you will not play apartheid Israel". Scott-Heron responded by canceling the performance.

I'm New Here

Scott-Heron released his album I'm New Here on independent label XL Recordings on February 9, 2010. Produced by XL label owner Richard Russell, I'm New Here was Scott-Heron's first studio album in 16 years. The pair started recording the album in 2007, with the majority of the record being recorded over the 12 months leading up to the release date with engineer Lawson White at Clinton Studios in New York. I'm New Here is 28 minutes long with 15 tracks; however, casual asides and observations collected during recording sessions are included as interludes.

The album attracted critical acclaim, with The Guardian's Jude Rogers declaring it one of the "best of the next decade", while some have called the record "reverent" and "intimate", due to Scott-Heron's half-sung, half-spoken delivery of his poetry. In a music review for public radio network NPR, Will Hermes stated: "Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes ... But I was haunted by this record ... He's made a record not without hope but which doesn't come with any easy or comforting answers. In that way, the man is clearly still committed to speaking the truth". Writing for music website Music OMH, Darren Lee provided a more mixed assessment of the album, describing it as rewarding and stunning, but he also states that the album's brevity prevents it "from being an unassailable masterpiece".

Scott-Heron described himself as a mere participant in an interview with The New Yorker:

This is Richard's CD. My only knowledge when I got to the studio was how he seemed to have wanted this for a long time. You're in a position to have somebody do something that they really want to do, and it was not something that would hurt me or damage me—why not? All the dreams you show up in are not your own.

The remix version of the album, We're New Here, was released in 2011, featuring production by English musician Jamie xx, who reworked material from the original album. Like the original album, We're New Here received critical acclaim.

In April 2014, XL Recordings announced a third album from the I'm New Here sessions, titled Nothing New. The album consists of stripped-down piano and vocal recordings and was released in conjunction with Record Store Day on April 19, 2014.

Death

Scott-Heron died on the afternoon of May 27, 2011, at St. Luke's Hospital, New York City, after becoming ill upon returning from a European trip. Scott-Heron had confirmed previous press speculation about his health, when he disclosed in a 2008 New York Magazine interview that he had been HIV-positive for several years, and that he had been previously hospitalized for pneumonia. As of May 2015, the cause of Scott-Heron's death was not announced.

He is survived by his firstborn daughter, Raquiyah "Nia" Kelly Heron, from his relationship with Pat Kelly; his son Rumal Rackley, from his relationship with Lurma Rackley; daughter Gia Scott-Heron, from his marriage to Brenda Sykes; and daughter Chegianna Newton, who was 13 years old at the time of her father's death. He is also survived by his sister Gayle; brother Denis Heron, who once managed Scott-Heron; his uncle, Roy Heron; and nephew Terrance Kelly, an actor and rapper who performs as Mr. Cheeks, and who was a member of Lost Boyz.

Before his death, Scott-Heron had been in talks with Portuguese director Pedro Costa to participate in his film Horse Money as a screenwriter, composer and actor.

After Scott-Heron's death Malik Al Nasir told his story to The Guardian's Simon Hattenstone of the kindness that Scott-Heron had showed Malik throughout his adult life since meeting the poet back stage at a gig in Liverpool in 1984. The BBC World Service covered the story on their Outlook program with Matthew Bannister, which took the story global. It was subsequently covered in many other mediums such as BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live, where jazz musician Al Jarreau paid tribute to Gil, and was mentioned the U.S. edition of Rolling Stone and The Huffington Post. Malik & the O.G's performed a tribute to Scott-Heron at the Liverpool International Music Festival in 2013 with jazz composer Orphy Robinson of The Jazz Warriors and Rod Youngs from Gil's band The Amnesia Express. Another tribute was performed at St. Georges Hall in Liverpool on August 27, 2015, called "The Revolution will be Live!", curated by Malik Al Nasir and Richard McGinnis for Yesternight Productions. The event featured Talib Kweli, Aswad, The Christians, Malik & the O.G's, Sophia Ben-Yousef and Cleveland Watkiss as well as DJ 2Kind and poet, actor, and radio DJ Craig Charles. The tribute was the opening event for 2015 Liverpool International Music Festival.

In response to Scott-Heron's death, Public Enemy's Chuck D stated "RIP GSH...and we do what we do and how we do because of you" on his Twitter account. His UK publisher, Jamie Byng, called him "one of the most inspiring people I've ever met". On hearing of the death, R&B singer Usher stated: "I just learned of the loss of a very important poet...R.I.P., Gil Scott-Heron. The revolution will be live!!". Richard Russell, who produced Scott-Heron's final studio album, called him a "father figure of sorts to me", while Eminem stated: "He influenced all of hip-hop". Lupe Fiasco wrote a poem about Scott-Heron that was published on his website.

Scott-Heron's memorial service was held at Riverside Church in New York City on June 2, 2011, where Kanye West performed "Lost in the World" and "Who Will Survive in America", two songs from West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The studio album version of West's "Who Will Survive in America" features a spoken-word excerpt by Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron is buried at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County in New York.

Scott-Heron was honored posthumously in 2012 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Charlotte Fox, member of the Washington, DC NARAS and president of Genesis Poets Music, nominated Scott-Heron for the award, while the letter of support came from Grammy award winner and Grammy Hall of Fame inductee Bill Withers.

Scott-Heron's memoir, The Last Holiday, was released in January 2012. In her review for the Los Angeles Times, professor of English and journalism Lynell George wrote:

The Last Holiday is as much about his life as it is about context, the theater of late 20th century America — from Jim Crow to the Reagan '80s and from Beale Street to 57th Street. The narrative is not, however, a rise-and-fall retelling of Scott-Heron's life and career. It doesn't connect all the dots. It moves off-the-beat, at its own speed ... This approach to revelation lends the book an episodic quality, like oral storytelling does. It winds around, it repeats itself.

Scott-Heron's estate

At the time of Scott-Heron's death, a will could not be found to determine the future of his estate. Additionally, Raquiyah Kelly-Heron filed papers in Manhattan, New York's Surrogate's Court in August 2013, claiming that Rumal Rackley is not Scott-Heron's son and should therefore be omitted from matters concerning the musician's estate. According to the Daily News website, Rackley, Kelly-Heron and two other sisters have been seeking a resolution to the issue of the management of Scott-Heron's estate, as Rackley stated in court papers that Scott-Heron prepared him to be the eventual administrator of the estate. Scott-Heron's 1994 album Spirits was dedicated to "my son Rumal and my daughters Nia and Gia", and in court papers Rackley added that Scott-Heron introduced me [Rackley] from the stage as his son." .

In 2011 Rackley filed a suit against sister Gia Scott-Heron and her mother, Scott-Heron's first wife, Brenda Sykes, as he believed they had unfairly attained US$250,000 of Scott-Heron's money. The case was later settled for an undisclosed sum in early 2013; but the relationship between Rackley and Scott-Heron's two adult daughters already had become strained in the months after Gil's death. In her submission to the Surrogate's Court, Kelly-Heron states that a DNA test completed by Rackley in 2011—using DNA from Scott-Heron's brother—revealed that they "do not share a common male lineage", while Rackley has refused to undertake another DNA test since that time. A hearing to address Kelly-Heron's filing was scheduled for late August 2013, but, As of March 2016, further information on the matter is not publicly available. However, Rackley still serves as court-appointed administrator for the estate, and donated material to the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture for Scott-Heron to be included among the exhibits and displays when the museum opened in September 2016.

According to the Daily News website, Kelly-Heron and two other sisters have been seeking a resolution to the issue of the management of Scott-Heron's estate. During the time Scott-Heron's 1994 album Spirits was being produced, he was living in Brooklyn, New York, with Nia and her mother.

Influence

Scott-Heron's work has influenced writers, academics and musicians, from indie rockers to rappers. His work during the 1970s influenced and helped engender subsequent African-American music genres, such as hip hop and neo soul. He has been described by music writers as "the godfather of rap" and "the black Bob Dylan".

Chicago Tribune writer Greg Kot comments on Scott-Heron's collaborative work with Jackson:

Together they crafted jazz-influenced soul and funk that brought new depth and political consciousness to '70s music alongside Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. In classic albums such as 'Winter in America' and 'From South Africa to South Carolina,' Scott-Heron took the news of the day and transformed it into social commentary, wicked satire, and proto-rap anthems. He updated his dispatches from the front lines of the inner city on tour, improvising lyrics with an improvisational daring that matched the jazz-soul swirl of the music".

Of Scott-Heron's influence on hip hop, Kot writes that he "presag[ed] hip-hop and infus[ed] soul and jazz with poetry, humor and pointed political commentary". Ben Sisario of The New York Times writes that "He [Scott-Heron] preferred to call himself a "bluesologist", drawing on the traditions of blues, jazz and Harlem renaissance poetics". Tris McCall of The Star-Ledger writes that "The arrangements on Gil Scott-Heron's early recordings were consistent with the conventions of jazz poetry – the movement that sought to bring the spontaneity of live performance to the reading of verse". A music writer later noted that "Scott-Heron's unique proto-rap style influenced a generation of hip-hop artists", while The Washington Post wrote that "Scott-Heron's work presaged not only conscious rap and poetry slams, but also acid jazz, particularly during his rewarding collaboration with composer-keyboardist-flutist Brian Jackson in the mid- and late '70s". The Observer's Sean O'Hagan discussed the significance of Scott-Heron's music with Brian Jackson, stating:

Together throughout the 1970s, Scott-Heron and Jackson made music that reflected the turbulence, uncertainty and increasing pessimism of the times, merging the soul and jazz traditions and drawing on an oral poetry tradition that reached back to the blues and forward to hip-hop. The music sounded by turns angry, defiant and regretful while Scott-Heron's lyrics possessed a satirical edge that set them apart from the militant soul of contemporaries such as Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.

Will Layman of PopMatters wrote about the significance of Scott-Heron's early musical work:

In the early 1970s, Gil Scott-Heron popped onto the scene as a soul poet with jazz leanings; not just another Bill Withers, but a political voice with a poet's skill. His spoken-voice work had punch and topicality. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and "Johannesburg" were calls to action: Stokely Carmichael if he'd had the groove of Ray Charles. 'The Bottle' was a poignant story of the streets: Richard Wright as sung by a husky-voiced Marvin Gaye. To paraphrase Chuck D, Gil Scott-Heron's music was a kind of CNN for black neighborhoods, prefiguring hip-hop by several years. It grew from the Last Poets, but it also had the funky swing of Horace Silver or Herbie Hancock—or Otis Redding. Pieces of a Man and Winter in America (collaborations with Brian Jackson) were classics beyond category".

Scott-Heron's influence over hip hop is primarily exemplified by his definitive single "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", sentiments from which have been explored by various rappers, including Aesop Rock, Talib Kweli and Common. In addition to his vocal style, Scott-Heron's indirect contributions to rap music extend to his and co-producer Jackson's compositions, which have been sampled by various hip-hop artists. "We Almost Lost Detroit" was sampled by Brand Nubian member Grand Puba ("Keep On"), Native Tongues duo Black Star ("Brown Skin Lady"), and MF Doom ("Camphor"). Additionally, Scott-Heron's 1980 song "A Legend in His Own Mind" was sampled on Mos Def's "Mr. Nigga", the opening lyrics from his 1978 recording "Angel Dust" were appropriated by rapper RBX on the 1996 song "Blunt Time" by Dr. Dre, and CeCe Peniston's 2000 song "My Boo" samples Scott-Heron's 1974 recording "The Bottle".

In addition to the Scott-Heron excerpt used in "Who Will Survive in America", Kanye West sampled Scott-Heron and Jackson's "Home is Where the Hatred Is" and "We Almost Lost Detroit" for the songs "My Way Home" and "The People", respectively, both of which are collaborative efforts with Common. Scott-Heron, in turn, acknowledged West's contributions, sampling the latter's 2007 single "Flashing Lights" on his final album, 2010's I'm New Here.

Scott-Heron admitted ambivalence regarding his association with rap, remarking in 2010 in an interview for the Daily Swarm: "I don't know if I can take the blame for [rap music]". As New York Times writer Sisario explained, he preferred the moniker of "bluesologist". Referring to reviews of his last album and references to him as the "godfather of rap", Scott-Heron said: "It's something that's aimed at the kids ... I have kids, so I listen to it. But I would not say it's aimed at me. I listen to the jazz station." In 2013, Chattanooga rapper Isaiah Rashad recorded an unofficial mixtape called Pieces of a Kid, which was greatly influenced by Heron's debut album Pieces of a Man.

Following Scott-Heron's funeral in 2011, a tribute from publisher, record company owner, poet, and music producer Abdul Malik Al Nasir was published on The Guardian's website, titled "Gil Scott-Heron saved my life".

Filmography

Saturday Night Live, musical guest, December 13, 1975.

Black Wax (1982). Directed by Robert Mugge.

5 Sides of a Coin (2004). Directed by Paul Kell

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2005). Directed by Don Letts for BBC.

Word Up (2005). Directed by Malik Al Nasir for Fore-Word Press.

The Paris Concert (2007).

Tales of the Amnesia Express Live at the Town & Country.

Wikipedia

#Gil Scott-Heron #04-01 #05-27

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pashpops · 3 years

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LVLMAX

Debuted in 2007 as fresh-faced youngsters and back in action after completing their military service, LVLMAX are either a legendary senior group or washed up tryhards who can't accept their glory days are over, depending who you ask. But despite all odds, they've stayed together through enlistment, scandals, botched cosmetic surgery and 3 flop releases in a row. (Those odds might be pushed in their favour by a deliriously obsessive domestic and international fanbase and just enough nostalgia appeal/name recognition for the general public that they continue to sell out stadiums despite not charting in 4 years.)

Members: Duyeon/Big D (leader), San, Justin (fake maknae), Min, Jintaek, Daero (maknae), Sangwoo

Fandom name: Hundreds

Stage Name: Duyeon/Big D Birth Name: Kim Duyeon Position: Leader, Vocalist, Composer, Lyricist, Rapper Birthday: 1987 Zodiac: Leo Height: 179cm Weight: kg Blood Type: O Favourite Colour: Black Favourite Food: Good coffee Least Favourite Food: Bad coffee Hobbies: Writing music, DJing, making mixtapes

Facts: - LVLMAX’s musical genius, writes a lot of their music. - Very serious and passionate about his work as he is aware that everyone views him as “just an idol”. He tends to be very pushy about the “Real Artiste” thing, even when writing stupid pop songs about getting drunk and partying. - Self-proclaimed “hopeless romantic”, his groupmates prefer “idiot who falls in love at first sight”. - Ideal type at debut: someone tall and slender, with a nice smile. Ideal type now: someone with a beautiful voice.

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - Serial monogamist, very clingy and emotionally fragile. Has nearly gotten married about 4 times, but luckily none have happened or even made news, mostly due to San and Justin begging him not to reveal his relationships until they reach the 2 year mark. - Doesn’t have many sasaengs and didn’t even in their boom era because he would just stand outside and complain about his hardships and lecture those who would crowd around their dorm until they got bored and left on their own.

Stage Name: San Birth Name: Lee Minsoo Position: Rapper, Vocal Birthday: 1988 Zodiac: Cancer Height: 183cm Weight: 89kg Blood Type: O Favourite Colour: Light blue Favourite Food: Fatty beef Least Favourite Food: Protein shake Hobbies: Working out, video games, watching scifi movies

Facts: - Looks wild and hypermasculine on stage, but he’s actually quite mild-mannered. - Got picked on a lot in middle school for being into nerdy things, so he started working out, and was on the cover of a men’s magazine within a month of debut. - Still into nerdy things and has a reputation of being either the most entertaining member on variety or the absolutely most boring, with no in between. - Nicknamed “Mama-San” because he’s always fussing and worrying over his members and famously started crying on TV when talking about when Daero was called for his military service. His manly looks combined with his delicate tears became a huge meme, to the point where people who don’t even know who he is use the screencaps and gifs from that show as reaction images. - Ideal type at debut: someone smart and talkative. Ideal type now: someone strong-willed and who shares his interests.

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - Worries about Daero the most because he’s seen him get in lots of relatively minor trouble and doesn’t want him to get involved in serious shit just because he’s too naive to say no. His famous tears were more because he wouldn’t be able to look after him in the military than just the fact he had to go.

Stage Name: Justin Birth Name: Justin Park Position: Vocals, Dancer, Fake Maknae Birthday: 1989 Zodiac: Capricorn Height: 172cm Weight: kg Blood Type: O Favourite Colour: Pink Favourite Food: Candy Least Favourite Food: Pickles Hobbies: Girl group dances, making up new aegyo, teasing Minwei

Facts: - Born in Houston, Texas, but moved to Korea 13 years ago. - Was the industry’s #1 It Boy during LVLMAX’s debut and boom era, and has not changed his personality or style since then. - Infamous for his crossdressing, girl group dances, and extreme aegyo. - Well known as the industry’s “rumour factory”. Especially loves dating rumours about himself. - On every single variety show you can think of and a few more plus. - Used to have long platinum blonde hair during their debut and boom era, but had to cut it as it was literally melting off. His fans were distraught at the time, but they’re gradually coming around to the fact that he looks better with shorter hair anyway. - His predebut photos have become kind of a punchline because of how different he looks in them, having had his jaw shaved, his nose and eyes done multiple times, and his chin and cheeks changing shape every few years. He’s mostly settled into this face, but he posts with such heavy filters on social media that people can’t really tell if he’s going to change it or has already changed it. - Ideal type at debut: a pretty noona with lots of aegyo. Ideal type: the same

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - Desperately, desperately wants his boom era popularity back, but can’t comprehend why doing the same old cringe shit he did back in the day isn’t working. - Knows he’s a shipping magnet and that he got a large part of his popularity from people who ship him with Daero, but Daero has proven popular by himself, and he doesn’t like that Daero calls him “hyung” despite them only being a few months apart because it makes him sound old. - Convinced that Subi of DTSY saying he was her ideal type but then taking it back just means that she’s a tsundere playing hard-to-get, and he will NOT stop bringing it up. - Very, very vain. - Best friends with Minwei, but also a little jealous of his late boom of popularity.

Stage Name: Min Birth Name: Li Minwei Position: Main Vocal Birthday: 1989 Zodiac: Pisces Height: 180cm Weight: kg Blood Type: A Favourite Colour: Forest green Favourite Food: Anything super spicy and aromatic Least Favourite Food: Anything dairy Hobbies: Writing music, playing video games, teasing Justin

Facts: - Originally from Chengdu, but he’s lived in Seoul since debut and people can hardly tell he has an accent any more. - Got a lot of panda-related things during their debut and boom period and got into a fairly big scandal for donating all of it to a local preschool. His words were “I never even said I liked pandas. You assumed it because I’m Chinese, isn’t that wrong? It’s not that I don’t appreciate gifts from fans, but please think about the feelings of others.”. To this day he still has a contingent of antis because of how “ungrateful” and “overly sensitive” he was, but he’s stopped getting panda gifts, so he considers it worthwhile. - Even though he has a shy and quiet image, he gets quite rowdy and mouthy on variety, and has started to overtake Justin on variety show appearances because of how funny and outrageous his “no bullshit, just facts” behind-the-scenes stories are. - Ideal type at debut: someone gentle and understanding. Ideal type now: the same, but also someone who’s smart with money.

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - Was so upset by the panda gift scandal that he considered leaving the group, but the other members, especially Sangwoo and Jintaek, convinced him to stay. To this day it’s still the only time the group has ever fractured, and he’s very glad he decided to stay because his popularity has only grown since. - Feels a little sorry for Justin because they’re best friends but he doesn’t know how to tell him to change his act up without making him angry or having him assume he’s trying to sabotage him.

Stage Name: Jintaek Birth Name: Han Jintaek Position: Vocalist, Visual Birthday: 1987 Zodiac: Taurus Height: 190cm Weight: 70kg Blood Type: O Favourite Colour: Silver Favourite Food: Grilled chicken Least Favourite Food: Pungent foods Hobbies: Modelling, photography, cooking

Facts: - Better known as an actor to the public than an idol, and better known for being incredibly tall and having super long legs than as an actor. - Although he has a cool and chic image, he’s actually very warm and kind and is known to convert even the most staunch hater into a fan just with one short conversation. - Advocate for mental health, has admitted to suffering from depression and anxiety and wants to change the way people speak about mental health to destigmatise what he believes shouldn’t be a thing people are scared about talking about. - Ideal type at debut: none. Ideal type now: someone trustworthy and proud.

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - More than just depression and anxiety, he was suicidal as a teenager and once tried to kill himself rather than go to school the next day. Luckily, he was saved by his older brother who had just happened to sneak into his room to borrow something from him. To this day he still thinks about how much his brother cried while apologising for not understanding how he felt, and made a vow that he would try his best to be more open about his feelings and to replace those memories in his brother’s mind with happy ones instead. - Whenever he has dark thoughts, he cooks. He’s especially good at plating food, as he feels the perfect presentation can make even the most average dish seem spectacular. - Known to stick to Daero a lot, which makes a lot of people ship them. The truth is that Daero just has a high body temperature while Jintaek is always cold, and Daero is more than happy to cuddle for warmth.

Stage Name: Daero Birth Name: Yun Daero Position: Main Rapper, Main Dancer, Maknae Birthday: 1990 Zodiac: Pisces Height: 180cm Weight: kg Blood Type: O Favourite Colour: Red Favourite Food: Hamburgers Least Favourite Food: Tripe, anything with too much fat Hobbies: Working out, drawing, fashion and hair styling

Facts: - Has 20 piercings! - Has a rough and tough image on stage, but he’s actually very soft and gentle and a bit of a coward. - Despite all his piercings, he’s too scared to get a tattoo. - Even though he and Justin are about the same age, he still calls Justin “hyung”, to Justin’s dismay. - Very cuddly, loves skinship and hugs. His favourite thing is when people ruffle his hair and tell him that he did a good job, which they did a lot more back when he was the cute maknae, and not so much now after he’s returned from the army and gotten his nose bridge piercing, to his dismay. - Ideal type at debut: noona. Ideal type now: someone patient and kind.

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - Of his 20 piercings, 2 of them are through his nipples, and 1 is a frenum piercing (that is, just under the glans of his penis). He is heavily considering more genital piercings, but it’s hard to find the time off to let them heal. - Not very bright, and is easily convinced by others. This makes him a great target on variety, even though sometimes he’s still too dumb to realise that he’s the butt of the joke. - Gets into the stupidest scandals possible, like driving a forklift unlicensed.

Stage Name: Sangwoo Birth Name: Kim Sangwoo Position: Main Vocal Birthday: 1987 Zodiac: Virgo Height: 178cm Weight: kg Blood Type: B Favourite Colour: Light blue Favourite Food: Samgyeopsal Least Favourite Food: Limes Hobbies: Reading, hiking, singing

Facts: - LVLMAX’s ballad and OST king. - Like Daero, famous for his “gap” between his on and off stage personas. He has a dark and brooding persona on stage, but he has a fresh and simple aesthetic in his everyday life. - He’s very serious at all times and is often the unwilling “straight man” on variety. - Suffered a lot of trauma during LVLMAX’s boom era because of sasaengs who broke into their dorms and stole his personal belongings and antis who constantly sent him threatening messages and one who almost killed him by cutting the brakes of his car. - Ideal type at debut: Someone who looks cool on the outside but is innocent and kind on the inside. Ideal type now: Someone who has their own career and family so isn’t worried about being together all the time.

BEHIND THE SCENES DATA: - Because of his traumatic experiences with sasaengs and antis, he’s become very suspicious of everyone he meets and is paranoid whenever he’s in public. Because of this behaviour, he’s also become known as someone who’s very cold to fans.

#group: LVLMAX #c: Duyeon #c: San #c: Justin #c: Min #c: Jintaek #c: Daero #c: Sangwoo #profile

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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31 Best Horror TV Shows on Streaming Services

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Horror and television have always been a bit of an awkward fit. What’s scary and what’s bingeable sometimes seem mutually exclusive. Horror requires that you suspend your disbelief and the longer it asks of your attention span, the higher the risk that the tension wanes.

Still, in the modern streaming era, there are plenty of horror TV shows that get the spooky job done. Gathered on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and HBO Max are some truly great bingeable options to elevate the heart rate. Here we’ve compiled the very best of the best. What follows are the 31 best streaming horror TV shows.

American Horror Story

Available on: Netflix, Hulu

Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story is revolutionary in quite a few ways. Not only did it help usher in a renewed era of anthology storytelling on television, it also was arguably the first successful network television horror show since The X-Files.

Like all anthologies, American Horror Story has its better seasons (season 1 a.k.a. Murder House, season 2 a.k.a. Asylum, season 6 a.k.a. Roanoke) and its worse (season 3 a.k.a. Coven and season 8 a.k.a. Apocalypse). Still, for nine years and counting, American Horror Story has been one of the go-to options for TV horror fans.

Apparitions

Available on: Amazon Prime

When The Exorcist first premiered in 1973, it changed everything for horror. A whole world of demonology and exorcism entered into our collective unconscious to torment the masses. Still, the TV world hasn’t done much with exorcism-based horror since that then. BBC’s Apparitions from 2008, however, might be the exception. This is a nifty little horror drama that goes about demons the right way.

Apparitions stars Martin Shaw as Father Jacob Mays. Mays is tasked with examining potential miracles for canonization. But as Mays sets out, he begins to come into contact with dark forces in need of some exorcising. Apparitions is an excellent miniseries that has a shockingly complete perspective on how the Catholic Church operates.

Ash vs Evil Dead

Available on: Netflix

Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series (consisting of Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, and Army of Darkness) are some of the most deliriously bloody and fun slasher films ever committed to celluloid. Surely, however, a TV series made decades later couldn’t possibly bring the same level of thrill, could it?

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Wrong! Starz’s Ash vs Evil Dead is another installment of fantastic comedy horror. Bruce Campbell returns as Evil Dead hero Ash Williams, who has done seemingly little with his life since battling the forces of evil (and dead) 30 years ago. That all changes when the dead walk once again and Ash, and some new friends must pick up the chainsaw once again.

Black Summer

Available on: Netflix

In a zombie television landscape largely dominated by AMC’s The Walking Dead, Syfy’s Z Nation found a nice with a more playful, tongue-in-cheek presentation of the zombie apocalypse. In this spinoff, Black Summer, things get a touch darker.

Jamie King stars as Rose, a mother who is separated from her daughter during the height of a zombie apocalypse. Rose sets out on a mission to recover her and in the process builds a group of like-minded individuals looking for something they’ve lost.

Castle Rock

Available on: Hulu

Stephen King properties have made their way to television before. There have been miniseries for classic King texts like The Stand and ‘Salem’s Lot and even full series for works like Rose Red and Under the Dome. Still, none of those series has had the audacity to adapt multiple aspects of the Stephen King universe itself…until Castle Rock.

Castle Rock takes multiple characters, storylines, and concepts from the vast works of Stephen King and puts them all in King’s own Castle Rock, Maine. The first season featured inmates from Shawshank prison, extended family of Jack Torrance, and maybe even a touch of the shine. The show has opened itself up for more storytelling possibilities in season 2, adopting an anthology format and bringing Annie Wilkes into the fold.

Castlevania

Available on: Netflix

Netflix has beefed up its anime offerings in recent years and one of the first IPs they mined to do so was atmospheric Konami videogame series Castlevania. Originally planned as a film, Castlevania makes good use of its serialized format to pick up the horror story from where it begins with 1989 gameCastlevania III: Dracula’s Curse.

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And what a story it is. Wallachian lord (and vampire, obvs.) Vlad Dracula Tepes (Graham McTavish) falls into a mighty rage after his wife is wrongly accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Vlad summons an army of the dead to declare war on the living of Wallachia. The only people who stand in his path are a ragged band of heroes led by Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage).

Chambers

Available on: Netflix

Chambers only survived one season at Netflix, proving once again that it’s tough out there for horror television shows. But the one season legacy the show leaves behind is a decently spooky one.

Chambers tells a story that contains a pretty familiar, yet effective horror trope. Sasha Yazzie (Sivan Alyra Rose) receives a much-needed heart transplant from a girl named Becky Lafevre. Soon, Sasha begins to experience troubling visions and begins to unravel a conspiracy that brings her into contact with Becky’s parents (Uma Thurman and Tony Goldwyn).

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Available on: Netflix

After the Archie comic universe got a gritty reboot in The CW’s Riverdale, it was only a matter of time before Archie cousin comic Sabrina the Teenage Witch got her turn. Thankfully Netflix stepped up to the plate with the Kiernan Shipka starring Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and even more thankfully…it’s gritty as all hell.

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The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina brings witchcraft back to its absolutely metal satanic origins. Sabrina Spellman (Shipka) is like any teenager at Baxter High. She’s concerned about her grades, her social status, and her impending 16th birthday in which she must undergo a dark ritual in which she’ll have to grant her loyalty to the Dark Lord Satan. Such is life for a half-mortal/half-witch.

Dark/Web

Available on: Amazon Prime

For those interested in anthology and serialized horror storytelling, Dark/Web offers the best of both worlds. This Amazon Prime original tells a single spooky tale, spread out over eight largely self-contained “chapters.”

Dark/Web picks up with the disappearance of cyber analyst Molly Solis (Noemi Gonzalez). As her friends investigate what happened to Molly, they begin to uncover some truly dark secrets hidden within the fabric of the Internet. Dark/Web expertly exploits real world fears about the spreading influence of this omniscient communication technology.

The Exorcist

Available on: Hulu

The Exorcist is one of the greatest horror films ever made. The Fox series that bears its name and premise isn’t quite as good (few things could ever be) but it’s still an excellent horror story in its own right.

The Exorcist is a two-season long anthology series that follows two different cases of demonic possession. In the first installment, two Catholic priests assist a woman with a possession in her home. In the second, two new priests help a young girl battle evil.

Folklore

Available on: HBO Max

HBO’s 2019 series Folklore is based on a novel concept. HBO Asia has access to some of the best horror storytellers in the East. Why not give them carte blanche to tell the horrifying stories they want to tell in an anthology format?

Folklore features episodes from filmmakers based in Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea. Each installment is unique to that country’s sensibilities and also entirely terrifying.

Ghost Adventures

Available on: Hulu

Since the turn of the millennium, television has not been lacking for shows involving paranormal investigations. But even within the crowded spooky market, Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures stands out.

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First premiering in 2008, Ghost Adventures follows paranormal researchers Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley, and Jay Wasley as they travel the world looking for ghoulish occurrences to investigate. Over its 200-some episodes (not including specials), Ghost Adventures has proven itself to be the gold standard for people who just want to watch some dudes stumble around old properties in night vision.

Haunted

Available on: Netflix

Haunted is a bit of an odd duck among Netflix’s horror offerings. It was introduced for the 2018 Halloween season, just a week before the juggernaut Haunting of Hill House. As such, it got lost in the spooky shuffle. Still, this is a surprisingly effective take on your classic “tell a scary story” style TV series.

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In Haunted, people tell their real life scary stories. That’s it. This is well-trodden ground on long running cable series like Ghost Stories and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Where Haunted differentiates itself is in its shockingly high production values, as witnessed in the ethereal screengrab above. Also, these stories are like…really scary.

The Haunting of Hill House

Available on: Netflix

Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House is considered one of the most important texts in the horror literature canon. It’s only fitting then that it’s Hill House that Netflix turned to when the time came to make its first big original horror series. It’s also fitting that they turned to Hush director Mike Flanagan to make it happen.

Flanagan’s version of The Haunting of Hill House is quite different from the novel from which it takes its name. This Haunting is a modern story that follows the Crain family as they try to recover from the trauma they sustained as kids living in the terrifying Hill House. Of course, Hill House is still out there just dying to call them all back home. Netflix is going to keep “The Haunting” going with The Haunting of Bly Manor and presumably more to come after that.

The Haunting of Bly Manor

Available on: Netflix

The consensus is that The Haunting of Bly Manor is significantly less scary than Mike Flanagan’s original Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House…and that consensus is correct. But there are still plenty of scares to be had in this worthy followup.

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Bly Manor borrows elements from the works of Henry James, including The Turn of the Screw, to craft another affecting ghost story. Hill House‘s Victoria Pedretti returns as Dani, a young American woman who takes on a job as a governess to two young children at the titular Bly Manor. Soon Dani and all involved will come to find that Bly Manor holds some serious (weirdly romantic) secrets.

The Living and the Dead

Available on: Amazon Prime

The BBC’s The Living and the Dead is an aesthetically beautiful show. It’s not entirely dissimilar to a British-ized The Returned. It stars Colin Moran as Nathan Appleby, a psychology who inherits a beautiful, if creepy manor.

Sure, the property is a touch isolated but that doesn’t concern Nathan and his wife. It should because what comes next is a bit more Amityville Horror than The Returned.

Lore

Available on: Amazon Prime

Aaron Mahnke’s history horror podcast Lore has always operated under the theory that truth is stranger (and scarier) than fiction. That’s the same philosophy that this Amazon Prime original adaptation adopts.

Both seasons of Lore tell a handful of real life stories that illustrate the origins of some of our world’s spookiest legends and events. Narration combined with live action recreations present tales of vampirism, grave-robbing, werewolves, and more.

Lovecraft Country

Available on: HBO Max

Classic horror literature is largely dominated by white voices and white characters. HBO’s bold adaptation of the book Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff, seeks to seamlessly insert some Black voices and characters into the historical horror canon.

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To that end Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett star as Atticus “Tic” Freeman and Letitia “Leti” Lewis – two Black Chicagoans discovering magic in 1950s America. The plot is structured as a sort-of anthology with Tic, Leti, and their friends and family dealing with the supernatural weekly while also engaged with the machinations of the ancient Braithwhite family. With a deep appreciation of monsters, both real and imagined, Lovecraft Country is worthwhile horror programming.

Monsterland

Available on: Hulu

Since Netflix acquired the rights to Black Mirror back in 2015, the streaming world has been a veritable arms race of sci-fi and horror anthology series. Hulu has already tried its hand at horror anthology with the Blumhouse-produced Into the Dark, and Monsterland represents the latest effort.

Monsterland is based on the short story collection North American Lake Monsters: Stories by Nathan Ballingrud. It consists of eight spooky, unconnected tales and features the acting talents of Kaitlyn Dever, Bill Camp, Kelly Marie Tran, and more. The twist here is that each episode focuses on an urban legend from a different city within the United States. And given how weird this country is, the series won’t be running out of of stories anytime soon.

One Step Beyond

Available on: Amazon Prime

The amazing drama you are about to see is a matter of human record,” runs John Newland’s introduction to this Twilight Zone-esque series. “The real people who lived this story, they believe it, they know, they took that one step beyond.

Famously, Newland took one step beyond himself when making “The Sacred Mushroom” episode in which he ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms and filmed his reaction. It’s not available here, but it’s out there in both senses of the phrase.

The Outer Limits

Available on: Hulu

When The Twilight Zone premiered in 1959, it set off a brief little renaissance of anthology horror storytelling on television. The best of these contenders to the Zone‘s throne was probably the sci-fi centric The Outer Limits.

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Outer Limits aired from 1963 to 1965 on ABC. In that span it generated 49 spooky episodes, several of which made an impact on pop culture. Alan Moore infamously borrowed the plot of the episode “The Architects of Fear” for the ending of Watchmen. The Outer Limits received a Sci-Fi Channel revival in the ’90s and is currently poised for another bite at the apple.

The Outsider

Available on: HBO Max

Stephen King is among the most adapted authors of all time. And yet, even after all this time, the King canon is able to produce some surprises. HBO’s miniseries (or series, they’ve not really made that clear) The Outsider, based on a 2018 King novel of the same name and developed for television by The Night Of‘s Richard Price, is one such pleasant surprise.

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The genius of this story is how it first presents as a true crime tale, with little league coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman) being arrested for the unspeakably violent murder of a local boy. But as Detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) looks further into the case, he discovers there might be a supernatural force at play. The Outsider deftly delves into themes of belief, skepticism, and family, all the while asking viewers “how long would it take for you give in and believe the unbelievable?”

The X-Files

Available on: Hulu

The X-Files is quite simply the gold standard for horror on television. Chris Carter’s conspiracy-tinged supernatural masterpiece not only inspired every horror TV show that came after it, but just about every other TV show in general.

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The X-Files follows FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) as they investigate the unusual cases that traditional law enforcement won’t touch. For 11 seasons (and a handful of movies), the show expertly balanced a massive series-long story along with what came to be called “monster of the week” self-contained tales.

Scare Tactics

Available on: Netflix

Scare Tactics is what happens when someone looks at the prank camera show format and thinks “What if this but also dangerous and terrifying?” The concept of Scare Tactics is simple: take normal people, put them in elaborate horror movie situations, and film what happens. Awful? Yes. Entertaining? Absolutley!

Shannen Doherty hosted the first incarnation of the show that premiered on Syfy in 2003. Stephen Baldwin took her place in the middle of the show’s second season. Then after a three-year hiatus, Scare Tactics returned with Tracy Morgan at the helm and lasted three more seasons of hilariously cruel pranking.

Stan Against Evil

Available on: Hulu

To parody horror, one needs to love horror. And Stan Against Evil creator Dana Gould really, really, really loves horror. The longtime standup comedian and comedy writer brings his unique humor sensibilities and lifelong appreciation of horror to tell the story of a quaint New Hampshire town that just happens to be built on the cursed site of a massive witch burning.

John C. McGinley stars as the titular Stan, a disgraced former sheriff who opts to pick up the battle against evil after a close call. He teams up with new sheriff Evie Barret (Janet Varney) to defend the town (and sometimes world) from supernatural threats.

Stranger Things

Available on: Netflix

It seems so obvious now but in hindsight there was little buzz about this nostalgic tweenage horror project on Netflix from the relatively unknown Duffer Brothers. Little did we know that the Stev(ph)ens Spielberg and King inspired Stranger Things would be one of Netflix’s biggest hits.

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Stranger Things takes place in the fictional Hawkins, Indiana in the mid-’80s. Hawkins is your typical smal ltown American city. The kids like to ride bikes, play Dungeons and Dragons, and tease one another. Little does everyone know that the mysterious government building on the outskirts of town may have opened a portal to another world – a portal that will usher in multiple seasons worth of monster fighting mayhem.

The Strain

Available on: Hulu

The most novel thing about FX’s vampire horror thriller The Strain is how it equates the ancient fear of vampirism with the more modern, global fear of pandemic. The Strain, produced by Guillermo del Toro Chuck Hogan and based on their novel series opens with a flight landing with all of its passengers mysteriously dead.

As CDC director Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) steps in to investigate, he discovers that there might be something more sinister…and ancient afoot than a simple virus. The Strain lasted for four mostly decent seasons on FX and if nothing else helped re-embrace the vampire as a monster and not some sort of noble antihero.

The Terror

Available on: Hulu

Based on a 2007 book of the same name by Dan Simmons, The Terror season 1 tells a fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin’s expedition to the arctic in 1845. In real life, the doomed men likely got lost and succumbed to the cold but the show asks “what if there was something more sinister than low temperatures lurking about?”

The Terror features a cast impressively full of “hey it’s that guy” guys like Jared Harris, Ciarán Hindis, and Tobias Menzes. It deftly turned itself into an anthology with the second season The Terror: Infamy that tells a ghost story within the setting of a Japanese interment camp in World War II.

The Twilight Zone

Available on: Hulu

The Twilight Zone is an all-time television classic for good reason. Join Rod Serling each episode for a new tale of mystery, horror and woe.

Whatever you do, however, do NOT drop your glasses.

Unsolved Mysteries

Available on: Netflix

Any reboot of continuation of the classic ’80s/’90s true crime series Unsolved Mysteries just needs one element to be considered authentic: that music. Thankfully, this modern iteration on Netflix maintains a version of the original’s haunting theme. Beyond that crucial aspect, Unsolved Mysteries honors the original by continuing the formula to great success.

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Unsolved Mysteries remains largely a true crime enterprise. The show covers unexplained disappearances, murders, and crimes. But it also spends plenty of time with the truly unexplained: the paranormal. This reboot has covered UFOs and some tsunami ghosts. That, combined with the atmospheric music, makes this a suitably spooky watch.

The Veil

Available on: Amazon Prime

1958’s The Veil consists of dramatizations of strange tales, the majority of which also feature host Boris Karloff in the cast. At story’s end, our host is back to offer a conclusion to that particular story of “the world beyond our understanding.”

Not that 1950s TV audiences would have known about it, because The Veil wasn’t broadcast. Footage from its episodes appeared in some late sixties TV movies, and a DVD release followed in the 1990s, but its cancellation prior to airing have made it a cult find.

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