#i didn’t include this lil moment when charlie first points at him and he goes :o! does a little gasp

[palettepainter]

Do any of your hazbin NG's have pets? I know Velvet has a guard dog thingy forgot the name sorry but do any others have pets?

It's been a hot minute since I've done something for Hazbin, so lets go! Will also include Helluva NG's

Brinda (CharlieHusk)-

-So I didn't want to give Brinda a pair of goats like Charlie, I didn't really have the motivation to design two identical goat guards and I didn't wanna rip off the designs in Hazbin. So I debated the idea for a while on if she has a pet and the answer is: Yes and No

-Sorta like in the Owl House Brinda has a Talisman, it was crafted from the bark of a poison fruit hell tree (there are trees and other plants in hell which are non poisonous or non lethal to demons, but more or less the majority I imagine are poisonous) and was crafted into the shape of Hell Bat.

-Hell Bat's are big, mean fighting machines. Will eat anything and attack anything, a ferocious species that has been none to even eat other demons species. Despite this they are still social creatures and often roost together. Brinda is the only one seemingly able to control her giant hell bat - it can grow larger in size and is extremely agile. It "lives" on Brinda's coat rack, but in an attempt to make it more domesticated and less of a ferocious beast with an insensible appetite for blood Brinda has brought it it's own bed and given it it's own name

-Her bat is called Trixy. Trixy is a moody, prone to hissing, biting and chasing other demons. The only one she is remotely docile around is Brinda. Brinda is not above being growled or hissed at, but perhaps Trixie enjoys a little snuggle under Brinda's chin, her fur is especially soft for cuddling

Junior (CharlieHusk)-

-Like his sister Junior also has a bat talisman. His is much smaller then his sisters to accommodate the fact Junior himself is very small and can't really handle taking care of a bigger bat, but like Brinda's his can get bigger if it needs to.

-Junior's bat lives too on his coat rack and Junior himself isn't very affectionate with it...jk he loves it. When he's out he tries to present himself as uncaring to his bat body guard, but behind closed doors he's very fascinated by him.

-Junior likes to train his bat and so his bat does know some simple verbal commands such as: maul, attack, fetch, kill - all the innocent things a young prince would need to teach it's loyal pet

-Junior has named his bat Bugsy

Tristan (VaggieNG)-

-Tristan does not have a pet, but he enjoys studying insects and reptiles

-For some unknown reason Tristan seems to be a magnet for bugs, especially butterflies which are for some reason very fond of him. Tristan is not sure why these tiny creatures take such an interest in him, but he doesn't really care, he likes butterflies a lot

Iridescence (VaggieNG)-

-Like dear old papa before her she has a pet pig...only it's a hog, a hell hog, a big massive hairy hell hog

-Iridescence was given him as a "gift" from dear old Uncle Arackniss. Arackniss got double crossed in a bet and instead of walking out with a big ham joint he got the runt of litter. He assured his Angel who was teasing him for going soft that the wretched thing wouldn't grow any bigger then a handbag dog...oh he was so very wrong. Iridescence's hell bore is fucking HUGE. She's a big, slobbery, hairy, squealing beast to which Iridescence fondly dubbed Daphne

-Iridescence when she's not causing chaos spends her time riding around her hell hog like it's a horse around the hotel, making her hell bore pretty flower crowns or plots her next pranking scheme while Daphne eats her bed blankets. Vaggie and Angel have..thought about getting rid of the thing, they're pretty sure it has rabies at this point, but alas Iridescence is glued to it sooo Daphne stays

Velvet (AlastorMimzy)-

-I've actually already drawn Velvet's pet here! https://www.deviantart.com/palettepainter/art/Velvet-s-guard-dog-844244280

-Abaddon was given to her by her parents when she was very very little, though beast like and more animal demonic species are rare within hell's nine circles it is not uncommon for them to captured from the wastelands and sold on the black market. Abaddons, though not pack creatures, and very protective of their cubs, and so Abaddon grew up viewing as itty bitty Velvet as a "cub".

-Abaddon is still very much a lethal animal when she's not receiving pets and hunting crows in the back garden of the hotel. Her interets are stalking the halls without making a sound, perching on top of shelve and furniture, hunting crows and rats, chasing after little dots of light bouncing of reflective surfaces and sleeping in typical cat fashion

Francis (AlastorMimzy)-

-To Alastor's absoloute dismay he has fondly adopted one of Mimzy's shadow wolf puppies

-Mitzy currently owns 11 shadow wolves, one of which was especially smaller then it's brothers and sisters - a runt, like Francis. Francis, being the only teen in the hotel feels a little left out, so took the tiny puppy instantly under his wing the moment he saw it. The puppy is still a baby and so isn't much of a wolf, the only danger he possesses is the danger to your beloved slippers, which he will happily chew and teeth on.

-Still has itty bitty baby puppy teeth so chews a LOT, especially on deer old Alastor. Alastor...puts up with it for his wife's sake, knowing how much his wife loves her wolves..doesn't help that the puppies blasted parents, the female and male alpha, will be death staring Alastor down from the other side of the room while Francis and their pup play

-Francis has named his dog Pongo after the odd dark patches of fur he has on his back legs

Aldo (NiftyBaxter)-

-Has a pet priranha named Da Vinci whom he loves. Aldo is a big fan of marine life, one might call him a marine biologist. Unlike his father who is deathly scared of water Aldo can't seem to learn enough about it. He has many books on sea life in his room, a part of him dreams maybe he'll be able to see marine life on the surface. The only thing in hell is...sharks, which Aldo is terrified off

-Aldo was given Da Vinci by his teacer, Mister Aquarius, the project was for the students to disect the fish, but Princess Charlie thought that was "cruel", so instead Aquarius had to change it around. The task was for students to gain an understanding of responsibility, as expected most students didn't do the assignment, lost their fish or killed their fish, Aldo was the only one to pass. He has kept his lil piranha ever since, who is not so little anymore

Nidra (SirPentiousNG)-

-Nidra doesn't have pets, but she does enjoy the company of zombies

-Nidra's number one assistant in the study of the dark arts is none other then Hornet: her very first successful experiment in bringing back the deceased. Hornet is a harmless little rabbit, he just wants to chew on his toys, nom on a carrot and get some fond chin scratches from his mistress. Hornet is the one of the few people Nidra will actually talk to - she insists in the beginning she will never talk to her assistant as though it can understand her, but she does, and finds herself doing it a lot

-Her second pet is Tempest, a sassy cat that just started showing up one day and never left. Nidra more or less lives at the hotel, Sir Pentious is constantly on the move in his air ship and Nidra is not fond of travelling. Tempest lived in the alleys near the hotel, feeding on the mice and rats that infested the building. One day Hornet catches her wondering the halls and eagerly offers her his chew toy wanting to play. Tempest is of course not interested, but Hornet is presistant and in the end instead of Hornet searching for Tempest, Tempest would meow until she found Hornet

Thomas (TomVilla)-

-No pets

Riley (CherriSirPentious)-

-A chicken, given to her by dear old bar friend Husk Riley named her Henrietta and loves her dearly. Being part snake Riley likes birds that dart and can be chased, and Henrietta is also especially good to snuggle, but fat feathery lovable bird

-Riley comes and goes from the hotel, Cherri and her do have their own place, but Riley is a bit of wanderer and so tends to hop about from place to place, but she's never gone long. Henrietta more or less stays with her sister Nidra. Nirda was at first bothered to take care of her sisters stupid poultry, but Hornet seems to like her so she can't be that bad

Kiki (KatieVox)-

-IDK what inthe world these things are called but she has one of these weird creature thingies (skip to 15.38 and look to the right where Millie is ) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpnwRg268FQ

-His name is Sprinkles, she fondly gives him glittery little bow ties to wear, takes selfies of him and carries him around in her little back pack. Matthew is endlessly discussed by the thing, but Kiki just can't seem to see the truth, to her Sprinkles is a precious little angel

Nero (ValVox)-

-Has no pets cuz Val doesn't allow them in the house (lowkey thinks Iridescence's hell hog is pretty cool though)

Mathew (HelsaNG)-

-Has two snooty up tight hoity toity ferrets named Snip and Snap

Mako (CryminiHusk)-

-Also has no pets, but Coal gave him a houseplant to practise with

Crash and Dash (MillieTravis)-

-Also no pets

Lucy (MooxieMillie)-

-Also no pets

#HH #HHNG #Hazbin Hotel #Helluva Bos #Helluva #HHOC #My OC's

[ckret2]

So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

#anonymous #ask #hazbin hotel #reference #helluva boss

[arecomicsevengood]

Is This How I See Jaime?

Objectively speaking, I am not that old. Still there’s no getting past the fact that I am getting older every day, like everybody else. I might not be at the point where my body betrays my age, where I ache all the time and grunt when I stand, but my mind still carries with it the weight of decades of lived experience, and this can at any moment make me want to lie down.

There are few artists that capture the feeling of aging quite like Jaime Hernandez. Partly this is because of his working method. No one else does what he does, making serialized comics for close to forty years, that tell stories with the same characters. These are not truly STORIES, utilizing flashbacks that provide crucial context to events and create literary effects, even as the overall narrative they tell moves forward in time and builds an attachment between reader and character comparable to long-running television series. Still, when broken up into serialized installments in issues of Love And Rockets, it can frequently feel like nothing is happening. Often, what you get in an individual issue is around fifteen pages, split between multiple pieces focused on different characters. These fragments are focused, compressed in a manner closer to cinema than television, but you’re still only getting what might amount to three to five minutes depicted on-screen. With a few exceptions, what you get in an issue is not a complete short story with a beginning, middle, and end. For all the influence the Hernandez Brothers have had on alternative comics, reading the people they’ve influenced will not prepare you for how much Love And Rockets is modeled off of serialized comics, and how much of its power it draws from continuity and extended engagement.

This pacing demands a certain level of expectation-free interaction, which is crucial to deep relationships. It’s worth noting Jaime’s strips run alongside his brother Gilbert’s work, which is similar in some ways, but by no means the same. Gilbert’s body of work is a lot more complicated, due in part to how prolific he is, the meta/self-referential/self-deconstructive elements of the stories he’s telling, and also how he draws tits like Mark Newgarden draws noses, that just keep getting larger. He deserves a deep critical reading, but I don’t have the energy, money, or time to keep up with him. Running the two brothers’ work side by side makes Love And Rockets implicitly about family, which then in turn becomes a subject each cartoonist explicitly makes work about. And not just “chosen” family, but the actual people who’ve known you your entire life. Which is, inherently, a concept which both means more the older you get, and remains somewhat alienating. As a reader, it helps to be prepared to extend to Love And Rockets the goodwill one would a family member, to begin to get on its level.

On a superficial level, making work about family seems somewhat conservative and nostalgic. That’s not to suggest it’s not valuable, or worth fighting for. There’s just a certain adjustment of values or attitudes a reader needs to make to get on board with the work, that might be at odds with the punk rock alternative comics reputation that precedes it. The comics themselves are built on a formal language of cartooning that’s older and out of fashion: Sixties Ditko comics, Lil Archie, Dennis The Menace Goes To Mexico. This adds to a feeling of being about aging in a way younger art cartoonists inspired by their same-age immediate peers can’t get to. For instance, I love Olivier Schrauwen, and I can see the influence Yuichi Yokoyama has on his work, and I view the two of them as peers in dialogue, creating the future of comics, which creates a totally different reading experience than I get reading work that feels more in dialogue with the past. The formal choices of the Hernandez brothers, including that their work appears for the first time in serialized comic book formats, calls conscious attention to history. Consciousness of the past hurts, and this truth is a huge element of the plots and themes of Jaime’s work.

It’s the sheer graphic strength of Jaime’s drawing that enables it to stick in the memory. He’s able to capture a tiny gesture and render it iconic through use of line and spotted blacks. The precision he brings his images gives them a certain ease of recall. This is the crux of a two-page spread at the climax of The Love Bunglers where, as a bunch of different stories and images are recalled, now rendered at different angles, they’re all there in your consciousness, in a mix of your memories of the comic and your memories of your own individual life. It’s a hugely cathartic climax.

However, both Gilbert and Jaime have this aspect to what they do that can easily frustrate a reader, and it is seemingly inextricable from the core of their power: Once a point is reached where you can easily follow along, and a satisfying conclusion to a story occurs, the next several issues will completely destabilize that and you will again not know what exactly is going on. For instance, if you read the Perla La Loca collection, collecting the “Wigwam Bam” and “Chester Square” graphic novels, by the end of it, you will have a very exciting experience that should convince you Jaime Hernandez is one of the greatest cartoonists in the world. Reading the Penny Century collection of the work that followed, plenty of stories will leave you feeling like he lost his touch, or is spinning his wheels. At the end of the book, and the “Everybody Loves Me Baby” story, you’re knocked flat on your ass again, but if you had read the original comic books as they came out, who knows if you would’ve stuck it out that long.

This, by the way, is one of the most realistic things there is. Life’s “things just keep happening” quality will fuck you up time and again. While I haven’t given up on life just yet, I have stopped reading Love And Rockets a few times. I’m not the sort of reader who sticks with a series out of inertia. I have always been hyper-aware of the value of my comic-book buying dollar, and therefore pretty fickle. If I read two issues straight of a comic that feels like it’s treading water, I would be done with it. I’ve gone back and picked up things after the fact and filled in gaps, or I’ve switched to reading trade collections checked out from the library. I bought the first two issues of the recently relaunched Love And Rockets volume 4 in one go, realized that it was continuing stories from Love And Rockets: New Stories, and didn’t go back for more, put off by the stories’ continuation from the previous volume.

It’s only now, with the release of Is This How You See Me and Tonta, that I am reading the stories that followed up The Love Bunglers in a complete form. They blew me away. The effects Jaime’s going for at any given moment may be subtle, but they accumulate, and this accumulation then becomes the true effect, and why I analogize it to aging: There’s this sheer weight that results from how things just continue to happen, and each time they hit you with what feels like more force, even as the moments themselves are minor ones. This is a true-to-life feeling that is very hard to capture. It’s present in the relentless pace of Charlie Kaufman’s masterpiece Synecdoche, New York, but that is a movie too intense to rewatch for many. Jaime’s work is built around you returning to it, which means it has to be somewhat inviting, and include levity.

Is This How You See Me focuses on the characters of Maggie and Hopey, introduced in 1981 as teenagers, now presumably in their mid-fifties, happily married to other people but still weighing the possibility of cheating with their ex. The characters return to a “punk rock reunion” in their hometown, to reminisce on the past with old friends, and old characters we haven’t seen in years appear, visibly older than when they were last drawn, but still recognizably themselves. This plot lends the comic some elements of nostalgic fan-service that I intellectually feel an aversion to. It feels almost like the plot is designed transparently for those purposes. Bringing back old characters would strike me as a crass project in the pages of X-Men or Legion Of Super-Heroes, but the naturalism of Jaime’s approach means that it allows him to show me things I legitimately haven’t seen in a comic book before. It’s probable they’ve been in movies or books, but I would argue they work better in comics.

For instance, there’s a scene where the reunited cast are showing each other photos on their phones.  This is a normal thing people do, and so surely it has been depicted in a film. But in a comic, there’s this weird meta element to it. Smartphones have text message conversations appear in little word balloons, right? The word balloon being a technique comics used to depict speech, as part of their normal communication system of images. Then, when interacting in physical space, people show pictures to each other, using this device they usually use for the mimesis of speech over distances, but they’re communicating using pictures to show what their life is like. Which is what the comic itself is doing more generally. So, there’s there’s this semiotic quality to the gesture of the outstretched hand with phone in it which feels really profound when depicted in comics, while it would feel sort of stupid and uncinematic in a movie, where the aging theater audience would have to squint and ask their neighbor what is being shown in the text message they’re seeing on screen.

Similarly, we see the married couple of Maggie and Ray, separated from each other for the length of the weekend, fretting over how much they should be in communication, drafting texts and deleting them. There’s an intimacy people who live with each other share, where much of what they encounter apart from the other person they want to talk to them about, because to be close to another person is to have them in some ways always present inside your head. Depicting the writing of a text, and then the decision to delete it, captures both the intimacy of a couple and the intimacy of one’s own private thoughts, in a way that only a form with the intimacy of a comic is able to depict effectively. Prose alone can’t capture the fluctuations of posture and self-presentation which is the heart of deleting a draft.

Concern for one’s image is depicted as well in the title pages to individual chapters, showing characters taking pictures of themselves in mirrors with their phones. These pages seem to depict not so much the cultivated selfie but the self-awareness of the drafting process, the titles above them taking on a certain poetry, built around the words spoken to oneself unconsciously that are the opposite of the language one chooses to send in a message to convey a precise thought.

This stuff really impressed me, and it all fits within a language of small gestures. While there are tons of books that are about how connection works in the digital age, it also always feels like that stuff is a commentary on how young people live. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything as interested in how people in middle age use these devices. Of course, it’s possible examples exist in work targeted to older audiences, and I just missed it because it wasn’t marketed to me.

It was actually Jaime’s other 2019 book, Tonta, that spoke to me more. Here, the aging the book is about is a coming-of-age thing about a high school student, and the book has this spirited youthful quality to it from the outset. While other, darker, plot elements unfold as it goes on, what was interesting to me is that the noir-like narrative that exists as a counterpoint in the finished book might not have even seemed part of the same story to a reader of Love And Rockets, where the character nicknamed Tonta just sort of suddenly emerged. There’s even a few pages in this collection given over to narration by Ray, who otherwise doesn’t appear in the book. These elements don’t seem dissonant or like they don’t belong. It just makes the book itself feel loose, like it feels as free and exploratory as a teenager looking for something to do. Placed together inside a book, the disparate threads become united by having a main character to pay attention to how developments of the plot affect her. The book has a real tonal arc as it unfolds, and the way the book gets you in its grip from such a goofy start seems to replicate how the stories about the Maggie character developed over time, here captured in miniature.

The sum of these two books will at some point only be a portion of a future volume of the Love And Rockets library, the formatting of the Perla La Loca and Penny Century books I mentioned earlier. There are portions from recent issues of Love And Rockets that are natural continuations and codas from these books, and what tapestries these fragments will be woven into is unknown to me. Another gutpunch could be just around the corner or years in the offing. There’s really no way to know what the future holds.

[milliebeeweasel]

Draco Sinister: Still a Better Time Travel Story than The Cursed Child

A while ago, I read Draco Dormiens, the fanfic famous for propelling Cassie Claire into BNF-dom, and for being a terrifying Frankenstein’s monster of plagiarism.  My masochistic streak kicked in again, and I decided to try the sequel, Draco Sinister: a tale of dumb love triangles, Shakespearean Wormtail and ignoring Voldemort for 900 pages.

The fic starts when Draco wakes from a nightmare, and struggles to decide who to tell about it, before settling on writing to Hermione … in exactly the same way as Harry wakes up from a nightmare at the start of Goblet of Fire and writes to Sirius.  Yeah.  The plagiarism starts that early.

Harry and Draco are spending the summer at an unnamed Magid school (and yes, it remains unnamed for the whole fic), where Fleur Delacour is also a student/Magid.  Weird Canon Divergence #1: Fleur here is not described as having veela heritage.  She is a veela.  Because Cassie Claire only skimmed the Harry Potter books .  Also Lupin teaches at this school, because the whole drama about him being unveiled as a werewolf apparently didn’t matter in Cassie’s world.

Anyhoo, Draco got this fancy sword at the end of Draco Dormiens during the epic bitchfight with Lucius.  It’s all green and sparkly, and totes belonged to Salazar Slytherin (because if Godric Gryffindor got a sword, Slytherin did too, apparently). But Harry’s hella suspicious of it and convinces Draco to let Lupin take the sword and make sure it’s not, like, cursed as all get out.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at the Burrow, Hermione’s chilling with Ron and Ginny when she gets Draco’s letter.  She merrily writes back to him and Harry, before receiving another letter from Victor Krum.

Because the love triangle in Draco Dormiens wasn’t infuriating enough. Now we need to toss Krum in the mix.

She agrees to meet Krum in Diagon Alley.  Yeah. I’m sure this’ll shake out fine.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Magid school, Draco wakes up in the night again, this time because a demon has broken into his and Harry’s dormitory looking for the sword.

Weird Canon Divergence #2: despite JKR’s efforts to keep the afterlife vague and mysterious, Cassie whacks a Christian Hell into Draco Sinister a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, complete with fire and brimstone.  O … OK?

Harry and Draco banter with the demon for a while, but since Lupin currently has the sword they can’t exactly hand it over (and Draco doesn’t want to because, you know, Draco Malfoy). Eventually the demon decides fuck it, and tells Draco to keep the damn sword because it’s cursed as all get out anyway, and promptly disappears.  Lupin works out the sword is a Living Blade, meaning it has a mind of its own and that mind is kitten-murdering  evil, and Harry’s like, ‘Mate I told you that sword was cursed as all get out,’ and Draco’s like, ‘Shut up I still want it.’

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Diagon Alley, Hermione promptly loses both Ron and Ginny and talks to Victor Krum alone.  Because of course.  When she comes back, she says screw Harry, she’s madly in love with Krum now and is going to run away with him to Bulgaria.

Well that didn’t take long.

Back at Magid school, Harry receives a letter from Hermione informing him of her newest true love, at which he has a full on meltdown, smashing everything in the vicinity with his Magid powers until Draco yells, ‘Oh hell nah, we did not go through all this love triangle bullshit for Hermione to run off with Krum, something is up,’ and slaps some sense into Harry, a scene which essentially ends in Lupin running in screaming, ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MOTHERFUCKERS?’

And I wish that was the last My Immortal comparison I’d find in this fic.

They get Fleur Delacour to seduce Lupin out of his office (I threw up in my mouth a little), before breaking in so Draco can nab his cursed sword back. Lupin’s locked it in an unbreakable case, but Draco deliberately pisses Harry off until his Magid rage comes back and smashes the case open.  This is the first of several times they use enraged Harry to break shit, a trope I will henceforth refer to as Incredible Hulk Harry.

Harry and Draco team up with Ron and Ginny, and march up to Krum’s hotel room in London.  But Krum’s like, ‘Oh, Hermy-ninny?  I haffn’t seen her, but then I don’t remember literally any of yesterday except someone yelling “Imperio” at me.’

Luckily for the gang, Draco gave Hermione his epicyclical charm—that ugly ass necklace Lucius had in Draco Dormiens that contained Draco’s life force or whatever.  So Draco can use that like a homing beacon to find Hermione.  Also Harry has another mini meltdown because he’s so glad Hermione does love him after all

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away Hermione wakes up locked in a tower.  Wormtail walks in and she’s like, ‘Aha, I should’ve known this was Voldemort’s doing!’ but Wormtail goes, ‘Nah, I got a bitchin’ new master now, check it out,’ and in walks motherfucking Salazar Slytherin.

Hermione understandably freaks the fuck out, not least because apparently Slytherin thought it’d be fashionable to get the Dark Mark tattooed on BOTH HIS CHEEKS.  Yeah.  Like Star Butterfly’s lil’ hearts.

He tells Hermione the Dark Mark was actually totes his idea, and Voldemort’s basically just a DeviantArt thief. Then he shows Hermione a tapestry of the Hogwarts founders, who look suspiciously like Hermione (Ravenclaw), Harry (Gryffindor), Ginny (Hufflepuff) and Draco (Slytherin).

The fic continues to spiral wildly into insanity as Slytherin announces Hermione is the Heir of Rowena Ravenclaw, who he was in love with until she ditched him for Gryffindor. But that’s OK because Slytherin has a handy dandy love potion to force Hermione to love him 5ever!  Wormtail blindfolds Hermione and makes her chug the potion, and says she will fall in love with the first person she sees once the potion kicks in.  Like a baby duck!

Side note: why does everyone, including the villains, want to sleep with Hermione?

So at this point I’m side-eyeing the fic furiously, because I can sense incoming love triangles like cats can sense earthquakes.  Cast your bets who she falls in love with.  (No, it’s not Wormtail.)

Halfway to Hermione (a great band name), Harry and co. are attached by dementors.  Draco falls off his broom and breaks his leg, so while Ron and Ginny look for help, Harry teaches Draco the patronus charm.

Draco’s patronus is a dragon. Because of course it is.

Ron and Ginny happen to find Charlie Weasley, who happens to be in England and not Romania and happens to have a hoard of dragons with him and happens to have plenty of healers to fix Draco’s leg.  Of course! He patches them up, shows them his dragons (not a euphemism) and lets them nance on to save Hermione.

Except Ginny.

Ginny’s not allowed to go.

Weird Canon Divergence #3: Ginny’s characterisation.  Hindsight is 20/20 when you’ve read Order of the Phoenix, and I know the Draco Trilogy started before that.  But still, reading Ginny Weasley, the quidditch champion, queen of bat bogey hexes, tomboy badass as a ‘girl’s girl more interested in boys and make up’ /stroppy teenager from hell is just … wrong.  She acts, and is treated, much younger than the other characters, despite the pretty minimal age gap.  I had 15 year-old friends when I was 16.  The maturity level was not that different.

ANYWAY.  Harry, Ron and Draco march up to this old castle in the woods, but it’s all locked up and guarded, so Draco’s like, ‘Well everyone pretty much still thinks I’m a Death Eater anyway, so why don’t I go in and let you in after?’  And Harry says, ‘Good idea,’ and Ron says, ‘Actually I’m also still 90% convinced you’re a Death Eater,’ but Draco goes in regardless.

He runs into a bunch of veelas, who fawn hilariously over him and reveal Weird Canon Divergence #4: veelas in the Draco Trilogy are straight-up bonafide dark creatures, who seduce men and then fucking eat them.  Like a praying mantis.

Why not?

The veela tell Draco he’s defo got some veela heritage in him, before waltzing off, presumably to seduce and eat some men who aren’t related to them.  Draco decides fuck Harry and Ron, and goes off to rescue Hermione on his own.

Hermione, also currently trying to escape, has a moment of mind-numbing stupidity and takes her blindfold off—and of course, sees Draco Malfoy.

It could’ve been Wormtail, Hermione.

He was in that castle.

WHY WOULD YOU TAKE THE BLINDFOLD OFF?

Hermione’s nearly as devastated as I am to discover the plot triangle Cassie killed at the end of Draco Dormiens has risen from its grave, and begs Draco not to tell Harry about the love potion.  Because, you know, honesty isn’t that important in a relationship.

Weird Canon Divergence #4: love potions are illegal in the Draco Trilogy.  I actually approve of this, because it’s always kind of boggled my mind how literal mind-control date rape drugs are A-OK in JKR’s world.  Good job, Cassie, I guess?

Draco and Hermione leg it out the castle, but Slytherin blocks their way.  He’s surprisingly chill, though, considering his whole love potion plan is now utterly fucked—he essentially pats Draco on the head and says, ‘Go get ‘em champ,’ before letting them out the door.

Suspicious as hell, but whatever.

Hermione sees Harry outside and flies into his arms, because apparently the love potion hasn’t cancelled out her love for Harry.  Because otherwise the love triangle couldn’t continue!  Then they all toddle back to Charlie’s dragon camp, and THEN.

Draco.

In leather pants.

YES IT HAPPENS.

(For those who don’t know, Draco in Leather Pants is a trope coined specifically from this fic, referring to bad boy characters who are really good at heart, but struggling with an inner turmoil because they might be kinda evil.  Like Spike from Buffy. Except Spike was well written.)

Anyway, Ginny sees Draco in leather pants, and her ovaries basically leap into her throat and throttle her.  She tells Hermione she fancies Draco now, and not ten minutes later she catches Hermione and Draco snogging the shit out of each other.  Because love triangles.  Painful, painful love triangles.

Ginny’s mad as hell, but for some reason also agrees not to tell Harry about the love potion, and they all jet back to Malfoy Manor, aka Sirius and Narcissa’s house.  Because yes, in case you forgot, Sirius/Narcissa is a thing in this fic.  And they are engaged.  Making Harry and Draco soon to be brothers.  Sort of.

Hermione hits the books looking for love potion cures and they send a letter to Snape asking for help, figuring Snape will at least help Draco if not the rest of them.  Meanwhile, Draco visits Daddy Dearest in prison, who tells him being good is dumb, Malfoys are always evil, and Draco is destined to murder the shit out of Harry and become either Slytherin or Voldemort’s minion. Then, shortly after Draco leaves, Lucius summons demons in his cell and accidentally blows himself the fuck up.

Good job, Lucius.

All the love potion research comes up nil, and they find the only way to end it is for either Draco or Hermione to die.  Then Harry finds out about the love potion after all and has another Incredible Hulk meltdown.

Draco, who by now is living through Draco Malfoy and the Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad, No Good Day, takes the epicyclical charm/ugly ass necklace off Hermione, kisses her, probably insults her, and shoots away on his Firebolt. Not his Nimbus 2001, because apparently Cassie forgot what broom Draco has.

I won’t lie, a good chunk of the middle of this fic is a blur, but it involves:

Sirius and Lupin having 10x the chemistry of Sirius and Narcissa

Slytherin’s Evil McNasty sword trying to make Draco kill Harry, and also refusing to be thrown away like goddamn Three Wolf Moon

Ginny exploring a quarry underneath the Burrow and finding Fred and George’s porn stash

Draco getting a will-strengthening potion off Snape so he can fight the temptation to murder Harry, and discovering Snape’s heart-print pyjamas and beautiful singing voice

Draco making out with Fleur, because why not?

Sirius, Lupin and Snape going to St Mungo’s because a ~mysterious dark wizard~ killed Cornelius Fudge and put Dumbledore in a coma

Neville giving Draco a concussion

Harry and Hermione doing lots of kissing and not much else

An illustration of Snape and Malfoy in which Snape has a fucking evil goatee

Arthur fucking Weasley is announced as the new Minister of Magic

Draco appearing at the Burrow to apologise for being a dickweasel to Ginny, and then making out with her as well

Harry appears outside the Burrow to try and talk sense into Draco, but Draco’s will strengthening potion runs out and he stabs Harry in the chest.  Luckily, Harry isn’t really Harry, but a magic projection thing, and the real Harry is chilling in bed back at Malfoy Manor courtesy of some spell I can’t remember well enough to explain.

Regardless, Wormtail chooses this moment to pop up and … Christ on a bike, Wormtail is without doubt the single worst written character in this entire godforsaken fanfic.

See what I mean?  It sounds NOTHING LIKE Wormtail.  Although I’ve never seen that dialogue before, my suspicion is it’s nicked from something else.  When I said I read Draco Dormiens with constant paranoia, this is what I meant.  Some dialogue’s out of character, or the style changes for a few paragraphs, and the alarm bells just won’t stop ringing.

Wormtail demands Draco come and work for Slytherin, and Draco refuses, so Wormtail reveals his shiny new arm-sword and they have a scrap, until Wormtail pushes Draco in the river and drowns him.

Wormtail vanishes, and Draco gets to have a fun time in Purgatory nattering with Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and also Harry’s parents, while Ron and Ginny drag Draco out the river. Harry makes Ron perform mouth-to-mouth on Draco because boys kissing is hil-arious!

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away at Malfoy Manor, Hermione knows instantly that Draco’s died because she feels the love potion break.  She panics and runs for Sirius, but finds him a wee bit occupied with Lupin, who’s turned into a werewolf because Slytherin is Calling all the dark creatures to come join him.  Luckily, Hermione found this funky silver necklace, which turns out to be a lycanthe, which repels werewolves, and also does whatever other plot-helpful Cassie needs for a given chapter.

They lock up Lupin safely, and also manage to lock up the demon that attacked Draco right at the beginning of the fic in the cell right next to him.  So you know.  He’ll have a friend.

Harry wakes up and tells Hermione to chill, because Draco is alive thanks to Ron’s CPR, and they zip to the Burrow together to celebrate with Jesus!Draco. Then we get Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #1: Ron offering to teach Draco to play chess.  D’aww.

We get some flashbacks via Draco and Hermione’s dreams, and learn that Slytherin got all his power from Hell, and also his bitchin’ ass sword, which he was meant to give back but has somehow wangled his way out of it until now (thus the pissed-off demon in the Malfoy Manor basement).  Also he created werewolves, veelas, basilisks and a shit tonne of other dark creatures, which he refers to as ‘experiments’ like a mad scientist.  Hermione reads a bunch of books about Slytherin and tries to tell Harry and Ron about this magic orb Slytherin has that either unleashes all his powers or kills him or probably both, but they’re like, ‘Yawn, boring,’ because of course they wouldn’t be interested in information about the villain they are supposed to be fighting against in this fic GDI.

Anywhoo, the group all chill out until Salazar Slytherin kicks in the door, like ‘GRANDMA, IT’S ME, ANASTASIA’ and kidnaps Harry and Draco, leaving the others behind because meh.

At this point, I’d like to take a brief break from the plot to address a question I kept asking myself throughout the entire fic:

What the fuck is Voldemort doing all this time?

He’s nowhere.  Wormtail makes vague assertions he might be dead, but Slytherin later says he’s alive. Voldemort’s return in canon is the turning point of Harry Potter.  It changes everything.  Hogwarts isn’t safe anymore.  The children have to grow up.  Characters die.  But in the Draco Sinister, Voldemort’s fobbed off like he’s unimportant or uninteresting.  Characters keep crying ‘Slytherin is far worse than Voldemort!’, which might make sense if Cassie had killed off Voldemort in Draco Dormiens, and needed a bigger, badder villain for the sequel.  But she didn’t.  Voldemort is still out there.  Twiddling his thumbs.  Knitting jumpers for Nagini ,for all we know.

OK.  OK, back to the fic.

So, Narcissa has a natter with the demon in the basement, who reveals that yep, the demons want the sword back from Slytherin, but Slytherin has to return it by his own hand. Otherwise, the demons will have to take a descendant of Slytherin blood has repayment.  Handily, it turns out Harry and Draco both have Slytherin heritage, so now Slytherin has a choice. Good for him.

Hermione’s lycanthe activates GPS mode, and takes them into the quarry underneath the Burrow, where Ginny says she had another older brother who drowned.  Seems like a weird, shoe-horned in detail now, and that’s because it kind of is.  After some puzzles, they discover a time turner that used to belong to Hufflepuff. Since Ginny is the reincarnation of Hufflepuff or whatever, she gets the time turner.

You may be wondering why the boys get swords and the girls get necklaces.  And I’m sure Cassie Claire has a good explanation for that.

But I don’t.

So, Harry and Draco wake up locked in a big adamantine cell.  Adamantine is basically Cassie’s Magid kryptonite, meaning they’re basically stuffed. They argue for a bit about whether Draco is gay, ending in Draco giving Harry hair care tips because this fic is weird, and then for the lols, Draco decides to teach Harry how to fence.

Now, I’m not an expert on sword fighting.  I know a bit.  But one thing I know for sure?

You cannot fence with swords made in the Dark Ages.

Fencing foils are lightweight, thin and poky, made for stabbing your enemy so full of holes he bleeds to death. Swords in the Dark Ages were whacking great bludgeons with sharp edges, made for separating limbs from bodies. They were heavy bastards; they were not made for lunging and poking and riposte-ing.

You cannot fence.  With a sodding broadsword.

While Harry and Draco are having their ridiculous and physically impossible sword fight, the cell door opens and Fleur Delacour walks in like, ‘I’m here to rescue you, bitches!’  Harry doesn’t trust her because she’s ‘boy crazy’ (a trait of every female character in this fic, so hardly a reason for distrust) but regardless they follow her outside.

She leads them through the famously plagiarised nightmare grass scene, and then underground to a locked door. Draco gets Harry to Incredible Hulk the door open by informing him his dead parents are stuck in Purgatory, after which Fleur betrays them and leaves them to get eaten by a manticore.

Harry and Draco kill the manticore, getting Harry utterly soaked in manticore blood in the process.  Like, ‘took a bath in blood’ kind of soaked. Slytherin shows up, and in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #2, Harry yells, ‘We killed your monster and we’re not sorry!’ and Slytherin says, ‘Well, duh, that’s what I wanted you to do.’

Slytherin sends Harry back to the dungeons but keeps Draco to be his evil minion, then hacks open the manticore and pulls his magic orb out of its stomach (um … you might wanna wash that off, bud).  But now he needs all the Hogwarts founders’ Heirs to touch the orb so he can get his power back.  Or die? The fic never seemed decided on whether opening the orb was a good thing or a bad thing.  Both sides seemed to want it to happen, and also to not happen.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Ron, Hermione and Ginny use the time turner to go to the Dark Ages, during the original war with Slytherin.  They meet wee Ben Gryffindor, Godric’s twelve-year-old son, and Rowena Ravenclaw, who is dying.  Rowena initially refuses to speak to Ron because he’s not an Heir, at which point I started screeching incomprehensibly, because that’s not how heirs work.  If anything, Bill should be Hufflepuff’s heir.  Definitely not Ginny, the youngest sibling.

But no, Heir is Cassie Claire’s dumb way of saying “reincarnation”, and eventually Ravenclaw lets Ron in anyway and tells him that, as a seventh son, he’s totes psychic.

If you just counted the Weasley brothers on your fingers, don’t worry, I did the same.  I also got to six, got annoyed, and then remembered that extra brother Cassie shoehorned in who drowned.  I guess you got me, Cassie.  Bravo.

Wee Ben Gryffindor takes the gang to Slytherin’s castle, and lets them in the adamantine cell.  Ginny uses the time turner to take them back to the future …

… Where Slytherin is having a whale of a time psychologically torturing Draco.  He has his own Mirror of Erised dealie, which shows you ‘who you truly are’.  Draco sees his whole ancestral line of unapologetic dickfucks and realises he can never be truly Good™.  Slytherin also gives Draco the Dark Mark, because FASHION, then sticks him in a room with Fleur Delacour and tells them to get it on, because apparently he invented veela for the sole purpose of procreation and I just threw up in my mouth again.

Draco and Fleur do not get it on. Draco does what any sensible person would do in this situation: orders cocktails and gets thoroughly shitfaced.

See the thing is, Draco’s whole tortured evil/good dilemma would be a lot more compelling in this fic if he actually had to overcome something besides teenage angst bullshit. The fic separates everything into pure Good and Evil, states that Harry and Hermione are just naturally good, and the Malfoy family are just naturally bad, and that’s it. But that’s not how morality works.  

Real people have good traits and bad traits, and in fiction, overcoming those bad traits is how redemption arcs happen.  For Draco’s redemption to be rewarding, we need to see him overcome a character flaw. But he doesn’t.  He just Decides To Be Good.

SIGH.

So Hermione, Ginny and Ron pop into the future, and find Harry sitting in the adamantine cell alone. And Harry’s like, ‘I guess Draco’s evil now?’ and they’re like, ‘I doubt it, this fic is literally named after him,’ but then the door opens and Hermione, Ron and Ginny all have to huddle under the invisibility cloak.

Draco comes in with Slytherin, gloats evilly for a bit, cuts Harry’s arm probably by accident, and nances off again.  Ron and Hermione run out to free Harry, and realise Ginny’s missing because she ran after Draco.

Oh.  BOY.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Sirius gets a will-strengthening potion off Snape to cure his lover Lupin’s permanent-werewolf-ness, then they visit Godric’s Hollow to get Harry a magic scabbard that also used to belong to Godric Gryffindor.  Happy Christmas, Harry.  No more chopping your belt off every time you try to sheathe your sword.

(And yes, swords do basically replace wands in this fic.  Magids can do wandless magic anyway.  IDK. Cassie Claire just really hates wands, apparently.)

Sirius and Lupin break into Slytherin’s castle with a scene ripped from Buffy, and are swiftly separated as Lupin is shut in with the other werewolves, and Sirius, claiming to be a vampire, is dragged off to meet the new general of Slytherin’s armies.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Draco, still pissed as a parrot, is chilling in his room when Ginny marches in.  Then, in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #3, Ginny proceeds to rip the sweet shit out of Draco Malfoy’s emo ass, because if he wants to be Good™, he can start by being less of a pussy and fixing his shit.

Draco kisses Ginny, and the whole thing is thoroughly ruined when Fleur reminds them she’s still in the room. Ginny assumes Draco is sleeping with Fleur (and pretty much anything on two legs); Draco does nothing to help this assumption; and Ginny magically sobers him up as revenge.

At this point, Draco’s called away to deal with some other shit, so Ginny talks to Fleur and finds out she’s not evil either, she’s just protecting her sister, blah blah blah. Fleur also gabbles more about how SUPER SCARY Slytherin is, like he made a whole army disappear once, and he can control his minion’s minds, and Ginny’s like ‘OK cool bye’ and uses her time turner to GTFO.

The other shit Draco has to deal with turns out to be Sirius, because Draco is apparently now head of Slytherin’s armies.  For convoluted reasons, Draco has Sirius locked in the dungeon.  For his own protection.  Or something.

Then Draco runs off to rescue Harry with Hermione and Ron, but Slytherin catches them.  He locks up Draco with Harry in the adamantine cell, and sends Hermione and Ron to the dungeons with Sirius.  Lucky for them, Sirius has his magic pencils, which they get to work using to draw a door back to the adamantine cell.  (Ron can draw in this fic.  Ron the Psychic Artist, still better than Ron the Death Eater.)

In the adamantine cell, Slytherin makes Draco run Harry through with his sword, but it’s OK because manticore blood apparently makes you temporarily immortal, and Harry got drenched in it.  Cassie actually points out that this is in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is great and all, but good writing would have still involved actually foreshadowing that shit in the fanfic.  Then bunch of demons pop up to explain the whole contract with Hell Slytherin’s got going on, and to remind them they really, really need to get Slytherin to give that sword back by his own hand, or Hell will take one of them instead.  Just to remind you.  No pressure.  The demons vanish as Hermione, Sirius and Ron get inside the room.

This is another part of the fic that I don’t 100% remember because there’s a lot of Scooby Doo style running about and getting separated and getting unseparated again, but it includes Sirius running to save his one true love Lupin and finding Fleur as well, Harry and Hermione winding up in an underground cavern with a bunch of merveela (yes, mermaid-veela) and Draco and Ron getting chased by dementors.

In the distant past, Ginny meets grown-up Ben Gryffindor, and convinces him to let her pinch his army and send them to the future.  It turns out Slytherin didn’t make the army disappear—Ginny did.

So Cassie Claire understands how time turners work better than the people who wrote Cursed Child.  Go figure.

Ginny pops into the future with her army, and in Moment I Unironically Enjoyed #4, rides in on a FUCKING DRAGON to rescue Ron and Draco from the dementors.

Sirius gets Lupin and the other werewolves out safe, who turn out to be … pretty adorable?  They all just want to bake cakes and make bunting. Lupin stops them all going haywire by giving them Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans spiked with his will-strengthening potion, so they basically all wander off and make a drum circle somewhere for the rest of the fic.  I don’t know.

Ron’s injured and thus out for the count, but Ginny and Draco charge back in the castle to rescue Harry and Hermione.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Harry and Hermione find Slytherin’s orb and try to open it, because … ???

Well, the orb doesn’t open because they’re still missing the Hufflepuff and Slytherin Heirs, but Slytherin himself appears and promptly captures Harry and Hermione until Draco and Ginny show up, and also try to open the orb.

That’s all four Heirs, so Slytherin now becomes Super Saiyan Slytherin, laughs maniacally, and mind-controls Draco to toss Harry over to the demons.  Draco has one last moment of pure emo dipshittery, until Harry, Hermione and Ginny collectively yell at him to get his shit together.

Draco chops off Slytherin’s hand, wraps his fingers around the sword, and tosses that at the demons. This would be a clever twist on the whole ‘give it back with his own hand’, except I read Avocado’s exposé and I know it’s stolen.

Oh well.

The demons take the sword, and for good measure also take Slytherin to Hell.  Draco passes the fuck out while the castle collapses like Ganondorf’s dungeon at the end of Ocarina of Time, but they all escape ready to live happily ever after.

At this point, I looked warily at the word count.

Draco Dormiens wasted half a fic on sodding love triangles long after the plot was over.  Draco Sinister is way longer, and I was honestly dreading slogging through the miles of shipping at the end of this fic.

But actually, Cassie was merciful. The end of the fic is one chapter, featuring Harry’s birthday, for which Sirius basically throws together a freaking Gatsby Party.  I guess he realised he had access to the Malfoy vault all of a sudden.  For some reason I cannot fathom, Snape is invited to this party.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t end with him getting shot in the swimming pool.

Harry and Hermione smooch. Ron makes out with a veela … which … not a great idea, considering they’re still literal man-eaters, but whatever I guess.  Draco and Ginny do some romance, but it’s interrupted.

By Enoby Raven Dark’ness Dementia Way.

I’m not kidding.

Well I kind of am.

But not really.

She’s pale, and black-haired, and wearing a corset, and she introduces herself as Draco’s cousin, Rhysenn Malfoy.  And immediately invites him to stick his hand down her top.

She gives Draco Lucius’s signet ring, and also a message from Lucius, which essentially reads, ‘Not dead, ur lame.  Thnx 4 killing slytherin tho, voldy sends love and kisses.’

Because apparently Voldemort has finished knitting Nagini’s sodding jumper.

Draco runs into Dumbledore, now recovered from his coma, who tells him not to worry about Voldemort, because that’s Harry’s job.  He also says Draco did a good job resisting Slytherin’s mind-control because of love. I suspect Dumbledore whips this explanation out for anything he doesn’t know the answer to.  What happened to Amelia Earhart?  Love.  What’s with the Bermuda Triangle?  Love. What’s the answer to life, the universe and everything?  IDK, probably love.  Or 42.

Dumbledore also says Slytherin lied about that magic mirror—it actually shows your greatest fears, not your true self.  So Draco totes has every chance to be Good™ after all.

Draco heads back to the party, and he and Harry agree to be frenemies next year, and … that’s the end of the fic.

 --

 When I read Draco Dormiens, I couldn’t understand how Cassie Claire became a BNF.  Draco Dormiens was bad.  Bad characters, bad plot, bad writing, bad, bad, bad.

The first half of Draco Sinister is bad.  Dredging the Harry/Hermione/Draco love triangle back up with a love potion is dumb.  Voldemort just pissing off doing nothing for the whole fic is dumb.  Every line of dialogue given to Wormtail is dumb.  The dozens upon dozens of lines lifted from Blackadder, Red Dwarf and various other sources, regardless of whether they’re in-character or suit the mood or the scene or the setting, are infuriatingly dumb.

But about halfway through the fic, it’s like Cassie got her act together.

I don’t know if this is because halfway through the fic, Cassie was banned from FFN for plagiarism.  I don’t know—she still uses quotes all the way through, but possibly doesn’t lean so heavily on them.  Maybe it’s because she realised an actual plot was more interesting than constant angst romance.  But for whatever reason, it got better.

And I want to read Draco Veritas now.  Not just to look at a trainwreck, but because I’m kind of invested. But when I do, I will spork the hell out of it.

#cassie claire #draco sinister #spork #draco trilogy

[weeklyfangirl]

Previously on Frat Boy...

*this does not include chapters 1-3, we’re getting straight into it!

Jumping into CHAPPIE 4

IT’S A NIGHTMARE AT KEANS! A potentially seductive tutoring session gone wrong, Harry ends up beating up some good-for-nothings (remember the cheap cologne and snake tattoo) who tried to mug her and potentially something mUCH WORSE. She gets a slice on her neck from it and Harry is all brooding and rain-soaked and carries her to the car in sILENCE

HE SPENDS THE NIGHT BECAUSE SHE’S TOO SCARED TO BE BY HERSELF AND HE JUST DEADASS CHOOSES THE FLOOR OVER GETTING INTO BED WITH HER

BUT THEN she scoots over to make some room for him and they end up mAKING OUT AND Harry is just being so cuddly??? And soft???? And when she asks him why he’s being like this he says, “Not everyone’s you.”

Renny walks in though and that leaves an awkward moment when Harry picks up his pants and leaves in a rush and then she’s not quite sure where that leaves her and Harry #THANKSRENNY      

CHAPPIE 5

She doesn’t listen to harry and goes to class the next day because she can’t be alone so when she enters the lecture hall she sees Harry and – ALERT! ALERT!!!!! THERE’S A GIGGLY GIRL BETWEEN HIS LEGS *cough* it’s Vivienne *cough*

After class is over she quickly leaves in hopes she’ll be able to escape Harry’s attention BUT he races to catch up with her *swoon*

After last night’s cuddle and MAKEOUT SESH HELLO things seem to be going well with them and so he asks her to wear his jersey before the big game

SHE SAYS NO!??? WHAT!??? SHE’S SUCH A BISH WHAT THE FUCK

Exact words: “It was a mistake. I was scared and lonely and you were… you were just there.”

Harry points out that HELLO it was HER who kissed HIM first

Then Vivienne comes out of class to join them and has to butt her head into it and mention some random dress requirements about how he should be looking good tonight

That CLEARLY meant it was a date (wrong) so she felt justified in turning him down like that (wrong)

Anywho, mum finds out about Keans and Renny wants her to go to the authorities but they both don’t push her.

And it’s the... *drumroll* Sorority Halloween party! She was NOT expecting harry to be the DJ

^^^ Basically how it went down in a few bullet points

The sorority girls were emotional hoes and made an open-ended invitation so they could see what the girls took away from it (aka who dressed as a hoe and who didn’t) - Renny exposed her hoe-ish side whereas she was dressed nicely

SO they switch clothes so Renny can save her own skin. Fast forward five minutes and she’s bent over the sink in a short plaid skirt while she tries to get the boob stain out when Harry comes up behind her. Her exact thoughts -

SO she tries to take the high road and apologize to Harry about earlier BUT HARRY’S A HURT PUPPY NOW OKAY NO ONE GETS TO MAKE HIM FEEL STUPID

So Harry interrupts her apology. But she thought he’d cared a bit?? And he looked actually hurt this morning??? He was acting different last night too and here she was actually APOLOGIZING …. But now he’s back to being a dick and he tells her it meant nothing to him and is, well, pretty harsh. (Which OBVI gets her butthurt)

She runs away to grab Renny and escape but Renny wants to stay because this is THE choicest party of the year and she NEEDS to get into this sorority

She gets it, so she turns to leave but then races up the stairs because she saw him up there and DAMN IT SHE WILL HAVE THE LAST WORD IF IT’S THE LAST THING SHE DOES BECAUSE SHE HAS A SUSPICION THAT HE’S LYING TO HER AND DAMN IT SHE WON’T BE MADE TO LOOK THE FOOL

BIG MISTAKE- she hears him with another woman behind the door. 

She runs away. Sadness. Confusion.

She sees Zayn in the street and he’s bummed because it isn’t working out with this model he’s drawing but he’s nice, and sweet...

CHAPPIE 6

It’s FOOTBALL TIME – they go to a soccer game and she drools over how hot harry is and he seems EXTRA worked up on the fieLD. A little ANGRY. A little HURT.

They win and some drunken sportsman just grabs her face and kisses her

They camp to celebrate their victory and Zayn is getting nice and talkative with her, but Renny is texting Niall and he invites her to the beach party the team’s throwing at the expensive vintage cottages on the other side of the highway

THIS HOE MAKES HER WALK HER ALL THE WAY THERE but of course she isn’t going to stay because HARRY IS THERE. So she has to leave. By herself.

But not before she sees the guy who kissed her in the stands and he was HELLA beat up

*suspicious*

We get a little insight into Harry’s judgemental “i hate every single one of you” mindset and he has a sass down with Renny before running after her because HELLO RENNY U DUMB SHIT SHE JUST WENT THROUGH ALL THIS TRAUMATIC NASTINESS AND U SEND HER OUT TO THE CAMPGROUNDS ALONE?!!!!

SO harry is a lil stalker and follows her back to the grounds. She almost has a heart attack when she sees him but she (though annoyed) accepts the company. They try and play a little game of 21 questions but it really turns into “I’ll answer one vaguely and you can ask one later” after harry gets snappy about his parents #parentproblems.

Things get a little foggy but he ends up whining and getting into the sleeping bag with her

BUT GET THIS…. SHE’S THE ONE TO SNUGGLE UP AGAINST HIM IN HER SLEEP INDUCED STATE

And then in the middle of the night she has a nightmare and he comforts her, holds her, says it’s gonna be okay :(

That was a little aggressive. Let’s move on to CHAPPIE 7 

IT’S THE MORNING AFTER HEY-O and Zayn offers to take her out for pancakes with the guys but Harry’s all like nah man I’m taking her, look I already took down the tent and everything I’m such a hunky man. So Zayn leaves. Harry takes her home (not to bed) before leaving in his nice ass range rover because he has these elusive “plans” and she ALMOST gets him to smile but then he offered to pay for her notes and she took it the wrong way

MOM VISITS and she bought her a dress for the sorority dinner tonight at the fancy shmancy restaurant. There’s a lil bit of tension because...well… where is this money coming from??? But she doesn’t say anything, because her mom is trying so hard. And she just wants her to be happy.

We jump to the sorority dinner and Vivienne’s there. She misses out on dessert which she was NOT happy about. Why’d she miss out? Because Harry paid for her meal while he was on a date with another woman and she ran out in a huff. Harry chases her, but they get in an even bigger argument because she’s fired up about harry being with ANOTHER girl and she’s all I FEEL SORRY FOR YOU OKAY YOU’RE GOING TO DIE ALONE

(basically)

Which leads us to our most-recent CHAPPIE 8

She regrets being so angry last night at Harry because she revealed her emotions to him – well, the alcohol did. But - no going back now!

Zayn asks her to model for her at the coffee shop!! You say yes!! Shocker!!!! He leaves happy with a pep in his step. But she hopes it’s not because he LIKES her in a certain WAY ;)

But…. *dramatic music* SHE SEES THE MYSTERY DATE KISSING ANOTHER MAN AT THE COFFEE SHOP WHEN SHE’S ABOUT TO LEAVE

So she goes to visit Harry’s practice to rat out the cheater because she doesn’t want a girl using him (why does she care though amiright?)

BUT THE GIRL IS HARRY’S SISTER WHAT

And thus she gets invited to their family dinner and she has no idea what she’s gotten herself into

The long awaited CHAPPIE 9 starts up in the Styles’s mansion home on Coast Hills Drive

passing Teslas, Porsches, you know, the standard, turns out Harry has THE LARGEST FREAKING FAMILY HOME ON THE CORNER (obvi, did we expect anything less) 

A “meet his highly dysfunctional family” kind of dinner with the unwelcomed guest Viv, and hosted by Mary and Lionel Styles. All is well until... Y/N points out that only Harry, Gemma, and her bf Charlie are the ones with the accent 

AND THEN Harry flips his sh*t over his dad saying he’s a beach bum because apparently that’s a lie that runs DEEP (#daddyissues?). Basically everyone is uncomfortable and Harry ditches the table. 

She’s leaving, too, when Viv runs after her and dishes that the reason they don’t all have accents is because Harry is adopted. 

JUST WHEN SHE THOUGHT SHE COULD LEAVE.... her car dies. Embarrassing, really. Right in front of Harry and his gazillion dollar mansion.

Now it’s a forced impromptu sleepover and Harry gives you a tour of the house - there’s the living wing where his parents sleep and where his dad keeps live animals, the movie theatre, sunroom, panoramic ocean views...

the guest room she gets set up in is nice, and she tries to find face soap in the cabinets but THERE’S JUST PILLS AND WABAM! - MARY STYLES IS SITTING EERILY AT THE FOOT OF THE GUEST BED WATCHING HER. She points to the sky and mumbles something about how she picked it. And something about a Jane. 

Harry comes and whisks crazy lady away, but now she has the heeby jeebies in that empty room and she walks to Harry’s door in the middle fo the night becAUSE WHAT OTHER HUNKY MAN WILL MAKE HER FEEL SAFE.

We pick-up right where we left off in CHAPPIE 10 

Harry’s all rambly and cute and fetches her some different pills (melatonin) to help her sleep 

Somehow she makes it to his bed HELLO and they’re listening to the waves crash when she mentions Viv because that bish is still on her mind and she can’t shake the feeling that THAT is the hoe harry’s been with

obvi he answers they’re just longtime family friends

AND THEN LIKE A BIG GIRL SHE APOLOGIZES FOR BEING NASTY TO HIM AND SAYING MEAN THINGS AT THAT SORORITY DINNER 

And then she finally expresses her vulnerabilities!! Yes girl!! She tells him he says it doesn’t matter a lot, and he whips it back and says she’s the one who said it first after the make out sesh post-Keans coffee mugging fiasco. SO she tells him why she said it didn’t matter!!! AKA because she didn’t want to get hurt and believe he thought of her any differently than all the other girls in the past. Progress! Expression! 

But then...BUT THEN... HE APOLOGIZES FOR KISSING HER. Even though people kiss all the time she wasn’t “people” and hE THINKS HE TOOK ADVANTAGE OF HER SCARED STATE!?? Why so sweet??

and then when he offers for her to sleep there there’s this weird tensiony “you’re really hot and sexy in the moonlight and you’re right freaking next to me” tension & she tries to kiss him 

BUT HE SAYS DON’T, THAT HE CAN’T, THAT HE’S SORRY SHE CAME THERE

 After agonizing minutes of observing his peaceful chiseled body, she asks him why there’s a crib in the closet - but naturally he’s already asleep SO NO ANSWERS ARE GIVEN 

Then in the AM Charlie gets the jumper cables that were there the ENTIRE TIME (thanks for NOT mentioning that, Harry) so she and her car “Grandpa” are good to leave

Gemma’s there to say goodbye, too and she said that Harry handled everything well yesterday.... that they didn’t hear anything...

But when Charlie pulls her in for a side hug it triggers a distant memory about someone and she pushes it away... 

Back at school, she’s wrapping up Matt the perfect American boy athlete’s shoulder when he says she smells like boy. It’s Harry. She smells like his cologne and bedsheets, and she rips off the shirt as soon as she can. 

And now that we’re all caught up, CHAPPIE 11 IS DROPPIN WITHIN 24 HOURS!!!!

#frat boy update #frat boy #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles fan fic #one direction fan fiction #frat boy harry

[deadcactuswalking]

HIDE IT IN MY SOCK -- THE TOP 10 BEST HIT SONGS OF 2017

Well then, 2017 was fantastic! Well, I mean, for popular music; in terms of anything else, 2017 was pretty horrible, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss. We’re here to discuss...

THE TOP TEN BEST HIT SONGS OF 2017

Yeah, it’s finally here – I wanted to really finalise my list before it was released so I kind of missed List Season entirely, but hopefully those extra weeks of working on these lists will be for the best. Now, throughout the last year, I’ve been more fascinated by and involved in the world of hip hop and rap music, including listening to artists such as Tyler, the Creator, BROCKHAMPTON and Anderson .Paak much more than I used to simply because the genre overall is much more easily enjoyable and accessible, even the more underground and alternative stuff. The reason for that is probably the dominance of urban music on the charts in 2017, with hip hop and R&B overthrowing rock as the most popular genre as of right now. This was expected for a while now, but it’s crazy how much hip hop and rap is more easily available now and especially insane how much hip hop and rap is on the charts now. I’m not really complaining for most of it – you’ll be seeing quite a lot of hip hop on this list – but the oversaturation of trap music, a brand of Southern hip hop, has really gotten on my nerves and honestly I’m starting to get sick of how anyone with ‘Lil’ in their name and lean in their cup can get a Top 40 hit nowadays, but that’s enough rambling and complaining! This is the best list, so let’s start things off positively and reveal the honourable mentions, because there’s a hell of a lot of them.

Honourable Mentions

These are ranked from how far they are from the list proper, furthest to closest. Let’s go!

XXXTENTACION – “Look at Me!”

I was tempted to put this on the list for the meme, but, nah, this sucks.

The Chainsmokers and Coldplay – “Something Just Like This” / Migos – “Bad and Boujee” featuring Lil Uzi Vert / French Montana – “Unforgettable” featuring Swae Lee / Cardi B – “Bodak Yellow” / The Chainsmokers – “Paris” / Justin Timberlake – “Can’t Stop the Feeling!”

I can’t decide if these songs are terrific or terrible. Other than that, I have nothing really to say about these other than I’m excited for Swaecation.

Adele – “Water under the Bridge”

I want to like this song.

DJ Khaled – “Wild Thoughts” featuring Rihanna and Bryson Tyler

I don’t want to like this song, but that groove is tight enough for me to forgive Bryson Tiller comparing sex to a cremation.

twenty one pilots – “Heathens”

I’ve yet to come to terms with the fact that I kinda like these guys.

Miley Cyrus – “Malibu”

This is the sweetest song of the year. Ew.

Zedd and Alessia Cara – “Stay”

This was on the list at some point. Guess it couldn’t stay.

Also, yes, since I don’t have much to say about these songs, a lot of these reasons will just be puns.

21 Savage – “Bank Account” / Post Malone – “Rockstar” featuring 21 Savage

21 Savage has never bored me like he bores other people.

Sweeter than a Pop-Tart

The only reason “Rockstar” isn’t on this list is because of the Pop-Tart diss. How dare you!

Travis Scott – “Goosebumps” featuring Kendrick Lamar

God, Kendrick is terrible on this.

Demi Lovato – “Sorry Not Sorry”

I ain’t got no problem, got no problem with this.

Niall Horan – “Slow Hands”

Why does everyone hate this again? This is too cute for me to dislike, even if it does compare sex to laundry.

Shawn Mendes – “There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back”

Yeah, that guitar melody holds this back.

Rae Sremmurd – “Black Beatles” featuring Gucci Mane / Migos – “I Get the Bag” featuring Gucci Mane

Happy belated birthday, Gucci Mane.

Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber – “Despacito” (remix)

This is a really fun song, but it kind of bores me towards the end.

Big Sean – “Bounce Back”

Tragic irony.

The Weeknd – “I Feel it Coming”

This is one of the few times that a song is too repetitive for my taste.

Rihanna – “Love on the Brain”

Doo-wop-wop, shooby-doo-wop.

Charlie Puth – “Attention”

The ultimate battle between good and evil: bassline vs. falsetto.

Bruno Mars – “24K Magic” / Bruno Mars – “That’s What I Like”

Sorry, Bruno, you’re not #blessed enough.

Got to blame it on Jesus

Kendrick Lamar – “HUMBLE.”

I’m just not very good at talking about Kendrick, probably because if you hear his songs you’ll immediately know why I like them.

A Boogie wit da Hoodie – “Drowning” featuring Kodak Black

This nearly topped my list until I got sick of Kodak Black’s verse.

KYLE – “iSpy” featuring Lil Yachty / D.R.A.M. - “Broccoli” featuring Lil Yachty

These are fun but Lil Yachty exists, so they’re not on the list.

Touch my gang, we gon’ turn this s**t to Columbine

I hope KYLE and D.R.A.M. won’t end up as one-hit wonders, though they probably will be.

Ed Sheeran – “Castle on the Hill”

This is the only time you will see me endorsing Ed Sheeran because this song rocks. Too bad the rest of his output is cringeworthy or boring.

Harry Styles – “Sign of the Times”

We’re at the point where the only reason these songs didn’t make the list is because there were a few songs that were better. Exhibit A.

Playboi Carti – “Magnolia”

Consider this my honorary #11.

Charlie Puth – “How Long��

If this made the year-end, it would have been on the list.

Jason Derulo – “Tip Toe” featuring French Montana / CamelPhat and Elderbrook – “Cola”

These songs didn’t cross over to the US in time to be a hit, and that upsets me because these probably would have made the top five. Hell, I’m listening to “Cola” as I’m typing this.

N.E.R.D. – “Don’t Don’t Do It!” featuring Kendrick Lamar

This is my favourite single released this year overall. Tied with...

Tyler, the Creator - “Boredom” featuring Rex Orange County and Anna of the North

Lil Uzi Vert - “The Way Life Goes” featuring Oh Wonder and Nicki Minaj

Lorde - “Perfect Places”

Now to get to the actual list of ten—well, twelve—songs that I consider to be the best that American popular music had to offer throughout the year. Let’s start with #10.

#10

I have never heard a good Fifth Harmony song in my life, mostly because of how unappealing Camila was as a singer. I personally found her voice very squeaky and at times aggravating. Sure, artists improve over time, but when she went solo, I did not expect this big of an improvement.

#10 – Camila Cabello – “Havana” featuring Young Thug

This took me by surprise when I first heard it because it is so smooth despite its blending of many popular genres, including jazz-influenced piano and Latin percussion that despite classic influences, still feels incredibly fresh, especially in today’s pop climate. What I love most about the song apart from the obvious which I’ll talk about later is actually the lyrics and the performers, especially Young Thug. Camila is the main star, obviously, with her almost sassy performance, but the lyrics she’s singing contrast that swagger completely, and are about a boy who seemingly doesn’t care about her when they initially meet, with a careless stride into the club Camila’s in and a chessy pick-up line along the way which, of course, he says to all the other girls. A Joey Tribbiani reference starts Camila’s verse, and if you mention Friends, I’m pretty sure you get on this list automatically.

I’m doin’ forever in a minute (that Summer night in June) / And poppa says he got malo in him

Camila uses the Spanish word “malo”, meaning “bad”, describing Young Thug as a typical bad boy. That pre-chorus is also one of the catchiest moments in the top ten right now.

And he got me feeling like (ooh)

Camila’s great but Young Thug, however, is a genius. You know how guest rap verses usually talk about something completely unrelated, usually just bragging about all the typical rap subjects? Well, somehow Young Thug both does exactly that and subverts it at the same time. For the first part of his verse, he gives us more detail about who this bad boy is and reveals his name, Jeffery – Young Thug’s real name. Talking from the perspective of Jeffery (or himself), he details how he just graduated from college, where he was “fresh on campus”, to brag to Camila about his perceived “coolness”, for lack of a better word. He continues to brag and talk about how he’s a bad boy, paying prostitutes like Uncle Sam – yes, that is the similie he uses – until he starts to talk about the sex that Jeffrey and Camila supposedly had, describing it with several food metaphors, even proclaiming that it’s “history in the making”, shredding his bad boy persona and revealing glimpses of hope to raise a child and settle down. He then hilariously retracts his statement, going back to Jeffery bragging, showing how Jeffery’s fear of getting too close has really left Camila’s heart in Havana.

This is history in the makin’ on me / Point blank, close range, that be / If it cost a million, that’s me

He ends his verse by begging Camila and trying to reason with her, but his persona has clouded his mind.

I was gettin’ mula, baby!

What makes this even better is that this verse both fits into the story and is a throwaway rap verse about himself. Young Thug is a genius.

Also, it has a saxophone solo, which obviously makes it God-tier in my books. Fantastic song.#

Havana, ooh, na-na

#9

Let me make this clear: not every section will be as long as #10, but I had a lot of lyrical stuff I wanted to talk about for that song, so I did my best to keep it kind of concise while I explained why I love it. Most of these songs, however, I enjoy purely based on a musical standpoint and what better way to demonstrate this other than a song about what I assume is hipster nonsense.

#9 – Portugal. The Man – “Feel it Still”

This year was full of two things: stilted trap rap and funky-as-hell grooves. This is probably the funkiest and grooviest song out of the bunch, but it’s also psychedelic and eerie, creating a beautiful contrast between the percussion that sounds fitting in a disco or energetic soul track and the creeping bass and the jumpscare-worthy horns, as well as the fantastically creepy falsetto vocals performed by this indie rock band’s frontman, John Gourley, as well as the deep and reverb-effected vocals from the other members of the band, specifically the repetition of “is it coming?” just to lead to a non-climax; the feeling is still. The dial-up phone sounds during the first verse are also pretty clever and work with the “is it coming?” theme excellently as well. It feels like it’s right behind you and you’re constantly afraid of it, but it never comes. For a song that’s actually about wanting life to be peaceful like it supposedly was in the 1960s and 1980s again, it musically represents paranoia brilliantly. This psychedelic pop tune will be in my rotation for years to come.

#8

Yeah, I don’t have much to talk about for this one so I suppose we’ll just jump right into it.

#8 – Khalid – “Young, Dumb & Broke”

Khalid as a vocalist is one of the best newcomers to the pop world, and for someone with such a mature smooth soulful vocal, you wouldn’t expect him to have had his 20th birthday just a few days ago. Despite that, his first big single “Location” didn’t work for me, I suppose it just felt too minimalistic and slightly drab, somewhat dull in fact. His follow-up, however, is an R&B jam about reminiscing on when he was a young, dumb and broke high-school kid that just clicks with me. Maybe it’s the chill trap-hinting production, maybe it’s the catchy vocalisation in the post-chorus, maybe it’s Khalid himself, but I’m not entirely sure. This just really clicks with me on a level I didn’t really think it could, and I don’t have much reason for it either, but for an incredibly basic song like this I don’t think it’s necessary. It’s just a solid jam you should definitely check out.

#7

Who can relate? Whoo!

#7 – Post Malone – “Congratulations” featuring Quavo

That meme of a quote from Logic pretty much sums up why I like this song. It’s relatable to a degree where everyone can relate to it (whoo), because it’s just about having a small achievement in your life, and being happy that you accomplished it. It’s an anthem for people overcoming milestones in their life that mean more to them than it does to anyone else. Post mentions being on TV, which gets you some level of fame overall and gives you recognition, but the only people that truly notice and take it to heart are you and your closest friends and family.

My mama called, “seen you on TV, son” / Said, “s**t done changed ever since I was young”

Nothing has really changed at all, but to Postman Malone and his family, it means the world. It’s also an anthem for dismissing your haters – the main obstacle for anyone to get ahead – but maybe they’re not typical or conventional “haters”.

I dreamed it all ever since I was young / They said I wouldn’t be nothing, now they always say, “Congratulations!” (yeah)

He says “they” but he doesn’t specify, leading me to believe he’s talking about the voices in his head and his self-esteem pushing him down. What leads me to this theory, though? Huncho Houdini himself, Quavo. Do you notice that in the verse and the chorus, both Post Malone and Quavo have faint repetitions of “yeah”? Those are the voices that Post is being kept down by. In Post’s verse he even mentions what the voices have to say.

I know I sound dramatic, yeah

But he’s still determined.

But I knew I had to have it, yeah

Quavo, in his verse, portrays Post’s mindset and how all over the place is thoughts are: reminiscing on graduation...

Young n***a, young n***a, graduation

Attempting to find some energy and buzz to do something...

I pick up the rock and I ball, baby

...but he can’t. He tries to get help from out of this rut but he just can’t pick up the phone.

I’m looking for someone to call, baby / But right now, I got a situation

He later drops this beautiful line, wrapping everything up in one sentence.

My life is like a ball game

But in the end, despite everything all collapsing, Post gets through the struggle and reigns on top.

If you f**k with winnin’, put your lighters to the sky

Come on, who doesn’t f**k with winning?

#6 / #5

Hey, look, two consecutive Maroon 5 songs! God, there goes my dignity.

#6 – Maroon 5 – “Cold” featuring Future

#5 – Maroon 5 – “What Lovers Do” featuring SZA

I know everyone hates these songs but too bad, they’re awesome and also polar opposites.

“Cold” is a loose, dark tropical house track where Adam’s screeching vocals stand out as not a negative but a positive, being the only possible release of his anger and confusion against the muted bass in the verse, before the explosion of the chorus, where Adam outright asks his girlfriend, “why have you been so cold?” He shouts desperately, not worried but distressed and confused, in a state of isolation almost, until he finds a friend who can relate (whoo) in the form of Future. The whole song is a spill of Adam and Future’s emotions towards this woman, and it works beautifully in the tropical instrumentation. My favourite line is from Future:

So cold; this colder

The girl’s so cold that Future is cracking up a cold one with... himself.

“What Lovers Do”, however, is a tight funky synthpop track that focuses on Adam and SZA trying to do what lovers do, trying to be close but can’t. It’s not one-sided anymore, hence the instrumentation is much less natural and more stiff, because it’s not one man screaming at a wall, it’s a couple screaming at each other. Sonically, both of these songs are very fun, free songs with “What Lovers Do” having a tight groove and “Cold” feeling sparsely empty in its instrumentation but has a driving kick to it that shows Adam’s uncertainty. If you slander these songs, you can shut right up. Maroon 5 has never failed to delight.

I don’t wanna know, know, know, know

Oh, hey, ha, hey. I’ll be seeing you on my worst list.

No more, please stop

#4

There’s three very predictable choices for the near-top of this list, and here’s probably the most predictable one.

#4 – Childish Gambino – “Redbone”

Have you ever just loved a song so much because everything works? Everything is so beautifully meshed together that it’s almost too perfect.

Well, that is not what happened here at all because I shouldn’t like this as much as I do, and nothing works about it. The bass is too overwhelming, especially in the pre-chorus, sounding very sludgy for that whole passage, also, Childish Gambino’s falsetto is grating to the point it makes me want to eat some Red Leicester, but you can never deny that melody that started the meme that created – or at least developed - the surge of popularity for this excellently-composed track. I think its imperfections are why I love it, it sounds clunky and at times drags on too much but it fits in perfect with Gambino, who is vocally all over the wall, with a weak murmur in the verse, and a powerful screech in the final chorus. Despite being out for more than a year now, this hasn’t grown on me, this has just become more and more interesting and mind-boggling that it became a hit. It’s strange but so is 2017, which leads me to the reason I have this song so high. It represents 2017 extremely well – everything is strange, new and worrying, especially with Trump in office and the current political climate.

#3

What? You think he wasn’t gonna be on the list at all?

#3 – Kendrick Lamar – “DNA.”

Kendrick talks about racial, social and political issues a lot, and honestly, I couldn’t care less about what he brings up because his flow, punchlines, bars and especially production are all killer. This applies to this song more than any other Kendrick song I’ve heard. The stuttering trap production from Mike WiLL Made It brings more power to Kendrick’s first verse where he raps repetitively about what he has in his DNA or in his blood, stuff he’s dealt with so much it’s just natural for him. It is a hyped banger for its first minute and a half or so, before it switches to Geraldo Riviera being sampled stating that he believes hip hop music has damaged African-American youth culture, until Kendrick absolutely rips him apart in the second verse as the beat switches to a more gloomy and complex beat.

My DNA not for imitation / Your DNA an abomination

In this fantastic verse, he talks about the typical lyrical subjects Geraldo Riviera thinks hip hop is only about, and sarcastically glamorises them, saying sex, money and murder are what Riviera thinks are in his DNA. These verses from different perspectives make up and incredibly pumped-up track that is just excellent in every which way. Love it.

#2

And now for our only tie, both songs by two artists who have a hit-and-miss track record and one artist I absolutely love. Drank.

#2 – Jason Derulo – “Swalla” featuring Ty Dolla $ign and Nicki Minaj / Calvin Harris – “Slide” featuring Frank Ocean and Migos (Offset and Quavo)

Both of these songs are here not because of any deep lyrical meaning or any beautiful mesh of instrumentation or its elements, they’re here because of peer enjoyment. They also both have some of my personal favourite elements of music overall, just stuff that tickles my fancy more than anything objectively great. The simple melody of the synth in “Slide”, as well as the brilliant synth-solo in “Swalla” in the post-chorus, which I have grown to absolutely love and herald as the best moment in pop music this year, maybe tied with the start of Offset’s verse in “Slide”.

(Offset!) Good gracious! / Staring at my diamonds while I’m hopping out the spaceship

Everyone’s favourite homophobic hip hop duo, Offset and Quavo, provide verses on “Slide”, with Quavo’s being more of a transition and bridge from the moody slow drone of Frank Ocean’s lead vocal to Offset’s energetic verse, which proves him as more than a trap rapper, who can star on a disco song and steal the limelight from one of the best R&B singers of the past few years. They also provide great quotables.

Mama too hot like a (like a what?) / Mama too hot like a furnace (furnace)

B****es be dippin’, dancin’ with n***as like a nacho

Like a nacho? Huh?

The song itself is about someone who just wants to enter a richer man’s life, but also about a Picasso painting.

I might empty my bank account / And buy that boy with a pipe

I don’t know, and I don’t care because this song rules, as does “Swalla”, with Jason’s vocals fleeting over the upbeat instrumental, right before the excellent drum fill, which is more of a breakdown than anything, but not just a drum breakdown – a breakdown in sanity and a crazy moment in this party that doesn’t feel full until this insane drum fill, which fits perfectly with Ty Dolla $ign’s verse, but the true star here is Nicki.

Bad girl, no swalla nuttin’, word to young Dalai Lama

Her verse is fire, nothing else to say, truly one of the best verses she’s ever written.

Bless her heart, she throwing shots, but every line sucks

Let’s be fair, Remy Ma, you got bodied on not one but two hit singles. You’ve lost. Overall, two flabbergastingly great tracks.

But they’re still not the best hit songs of 2017.

#1

I may be breaking rules here but nonetheless, I believe this was the best hit song of 2017.

#1 – Lorde – “Green Light”

Nah, just kidding, it’s the joke song about the girl with the thicc booty.

#1 – Aminé –“Caroline”

The reason I do Reviewing the Charts and the reason I’m making this list is partially to analyse, review, talk about and share my opinion on pop music and culture, but what I really attempt to do is make you laugh, make you entertained, because that’s what we all want, right? At our very core, we want entertainment, and I don’t think any song this year is more entertaining than this.

Bad thing (s**t), fine as hell (whoa), thick as f**k

Over the beat that blends trap and old-school hip-hop synths pretty greatly, Aminé throws some lighthearted shade as he comically condemns one of rap’s longest-surviving lyrical mainstay, loving a woman only for her appearance, as he over exaggerates how careless he is for this woman to hilarious proportions.

Caroline, listen up / Don’t wanna hear about your horoscope / Or what the future holds / Just shut up and shut up and let’s get gory

There are some incredible quotables here as well, like this...

Holy s**t, I’m really lit

...and my personal favourite lyric of the year.

You say I’m a tall thug, guess I’m a G-raffe

That is the corniest yet also most outstanding pun I’ve ever heard a rapper spit.

If you want safe sex, baby, use the knee pads

Aminé manipulates his voice in some of the most interesting ways a pop-rapper has, and sounds great, especially when he’s singing on the chorus and then immediately goes to rapping about the girl again, like going from Ray Charles to Ying Yang Twins, or Ne-Yo to Ray William Johnson.

The reason this is on the list isn’t just because it’s funny, no, it’s because of his performance on the Tonight Show.

9/11, a day that we’re never forgetting / 11/9, a day that we’re never regretting / If my president is Trump, then it’s relevant enough / To talk ‘bout it on TV and not give a (f**k) / I’m black, and I’m proud / My skin is brown, and I’m loud

The outro of his performance is one of the best uses of someone’s platform to speak out against Trump I’ve ever seen. Nobody expects the one-hit wonder who eats a bunch of bananas in his music video to be talking about this, and to use his fifteen minutes to spread the word to millions of people on The Tonight Show is a very smart decision to use your fame. Make a difference before you fizzle out, or you’ll burn away without changing anyone’s life, without affecting anyone, which is the whole point of entertainment and art, to make a change in someone’s life who enjoys the music, or the films, or the art. It’s better that Aminé leaves his career as a one-hit wonder because I cannot imagine any better way to leave than this. Aminé, you’re divine, and your song is mighty fine. I’m out!

You can never make America great again / All you ever did was make this country hate again.

#pop #pop music #best hit songs #hit songs #2017 #list season #best songs #best list #songs #amine #maroon 5 #future #sza #jason derulo #ty dolla $ign #nicki minaj #calvin harris #frank ocean #migos #quavo and offset #kendrick lamar #childish gambino #post malone #khalid #portugal the man #camila cabello #young thug