Today we are continuing the discussion we started last week about Wooyoung!
We've discussed our many confusions about this moment in the story where the boys finally lose the Cromer, and now we will work to make meaning through some sacred practices! Today, we're doing a sacred reading practice, which is where we attempt to make find new meaning through reading a single line very deeply.

03: Sacred Reading Practice

GD: The line is 4, which I'm interpreting as:

Tired of being chased and running away, we fell asleep immediately, and in the meantime, the girl healed my ankle.

But there are arguably two clauses in that sentence. We could just look at the second one "in the meantime, the girl healed my ankle."
BobbyJ: Not arguably even. There just are two clauses
GD: Lol yes
BobbyJ: Okay. Well. I'm down for whichever
GD: I think let's just do the second clause because it's the part that is mostly on 4. Alright, so, what's happening at a narrative level?
BobbyJ: Ateez have just escaped the guardians for the second time but lost the Cromer in the process because they chose to save Wooyoung. Though that might be conjecture on my part. So just--they escaped but lost the cromer
GD: Yeah, I have so many questions, but there are no answers. So the next step
BobbyJ: Actually it's not even that they escaped
GD: Right--they just left after getting the thing they wanted
BobbyJ: The guardians leave and then the Grimes girl opens up her secret cave entrance to let them in. Is it a cave actually?. . . Yes. A cave in the forest
GD: That's what it suggests. So, what's happening at an allegorical level? What does this remind you of in other stories, other parts of ateez lore, etc.
This is only mildly relevant, but it is what I immediately thought of: my writer friend and I often joke about how someone in our stories always hurts their ankle in third act
BobbyJ: The Grimes girl reminds me a bit of Primrose Everdeen. As like an archetype
GD: Oh! I agree
BobbyJ: The young innocent and trusting girl. I want to talk about how she trusts them immediately
GD: I have two differing thoughts/questions on that, actually. Does she trust them because she too recognizes their faces? Or is it more of an intuit/innocence thing?
BobbyJ: I was just thinking about that--does she recognize them? And my question is, do the people in strictland know what Halateez look like? They wear masks and hats. Like, she never says "wow y'all look just like the Black Pirates.” Not just because she can't. But I'm not sure that Halateez's faces are widely known
GD: Also, thinking ahead, the brother seems to explain a lot of things to Hwa, and he wouldn't need to do that if they assumed they were the Black Pirates
BobbyJ: Right. It's the uniform that is recognizable
GD: Have you read a Christmas Carol?
BobbyJ: Ages ago, but yes
GD: You know the ghost of Christmas present? How he has the two children underneath his robe that are for like want and ignorance? The grimes kids sort of remind me of that, but with like innocence and faith. The opposite side of humanity
BobbyJ: Wow I have no memory of that at all. But, yes. They seem to represent the goodness that is trying to survive
GD: I taught Christmas Carol to 7th graders so my knowledge of it runs bone deep
BobbyJ: I only taught it for one year before I was like "how about we don't?"
GD: LOL. 7th graders do not understand or appreciate it at all
It is, on the other hand, one of my favorite stories of all time, so I do listen to it every year
Anyways, every thing in the story is metaphorical, basically, since it's a parable. And it makes me think about some of the thoughts I've been having as we read this story. Like, the story itself is very streamlined, which you can argue is because they have to fit it into these short diaries
but, I guess I would argue that they're also relying on a shared understanding and metaphor to make the story work despite the streamlining of it. Which is why we are able to so easily connect with it and pull a lot of different meanings. And I do mean streamlined in that they leave a lot of things out and skip over a lot of parts--not that it's simple.
BobbyJ: But back to the original question--I do think that it is innocence that leads the girl to open her home to them. She probably saw that they were being chased by the guardians and likely knows what it's like to run for her life. She's been taken by them at least once before. I still think it's interesting that they chose to take her voice rather than recondition her.
GD: I agree on the innocence, and as an aside, I feel like the girl without a voice is an archetype as well? Like it represents something on a deeper level, and if you think about the story as a metaphor instead of a traditional hero’s journey, the only correct choice was to have an innocent girl with no voice.
I sort of have an interest in the phrase "in the mean time" and the word "heal.” We talked a bit about what does it mean that she healed it so quickly, and I guess looking at those words now, it reminds me of the saying "time heals all wounds"
BobbyJ: I interpret it more as she "treated" his ankle with some herbs or something.
GD: I also interpret it that way
BobbyJ: But it also isn't clear how long they spend in the cave
GD: Gave him some ice or something
BobbyJ: Where would she get ice?
GD: The magic fridge she keeps in the cave
BobbyJ: I can't get over that they just immediately fell asleep. I don't care how tired I was, I would be freaking out. But that makes them also seem very innocent and trusting. Not that they would need to be wary about a young boy and girl.
GD: This is what I mean when I say streamlined. We literally skip over any normal human behavior, and have to interpret their actions based on metaphor for what it tells us about them
They should, absolutely, be demanding answers and losing their god damn mind. But they don't
And I think that's a little similar to what the writers do in the intro when they first arrive? They have the android guardians come immediately so we miss the story beat of the characters interacting and freaking out about what just happened. Normal story beats being streamlined by the use of metaphor so that the story is intuited instead of told
BobbyJ: Like, because we've been armed with so much character knowledge, we're left to interpret or supply all character-based actions and interactions ourselves.
Quick note--I've been editing on the side and last week you mentioned that Strictland might have advanced medicine that can insta-heal. So I'm bringing that back to the table
GD: Yes, I do think that's a reasonable interpretation for how Woo was healed in the meantime
I feel like people are often frustrated by the lack of clear answers in the diaries about some story things--and I guess my whole point today is that I think that's by design. The writers could have easily spelled it out if they wanted to, but being told things clearly doesn't necessarily make for an engaging story.
BobbyJ: Here's what I know about kpop fans (and people in general): they don't like uncertainties. It's why we're so obsessed with numbers. How do we know who's the best if we don't know how many albums they sold or streams they've earned?
GD: The world is an uncertain place--people want answers. Answers often do not exist
BobbyJ: Yes, it's understandable. But I'm not interested in that energy applied to art
GD: I think that's why the word heal is interesting to me. Regardless of what she did or how she did it, the important thing is that this young girl with no voice still made a difference with the skills that she does have, and she has arguably set off a series of events that will lead to the change of the whole world. Because she was kind.
What would've happened if she'd left them out there? Would they have survived? Would they have figured out what was going on? Who knows, you know? The character itself represents the power that a childlike innocence and faith can have against the evils of the world, so who cares if she used an ice pack or actual magic?
BobbyJ: Right. Kindness and hospitality are very overlooked qualities. And it's not just Ateez that she has helped along the way. She and her brother become wrapped up in the story as well and join in on the journey. It leads to Left Eye and the healing he experiences thanks to Yunho
Given what they represent, it makes their end all the more tragic.
GD: But sort of fitting...
It reminds me a little of the ending of the Hunger Games series? Innocence and kindness are values that get lost when evil takes over, and it is sad. We should be sad about that--and that's why you can't ever let evil win long term. It's why everyone has to keep fighting. No one should be silent and let it happen.
BobbyJ: I think too that choosing to do what's good and right doesn't guarantee you protection from evil. I think it's also telling that their deaths (or whatever happens to them actually?) are senseless? Like they don't lead to any grand conclusion. They are just more casualties of the war and of Z's greed or lust for power or whatever his deal is.
GD: Death is often senseless.
BobbyJ: It's dissatisfying on a narrative level, but still important
GD: I read The Inheritance Games recently, and I will probably write a post about this for booktiny, but there's a line from one of the characters about how "moral choices depend solely on the outcome of an action"
And he was talking about how when he's giving to charity, the impact he can make with his money tells him the morality of the giving. So, giving to a single homeless person wouldn't be as moral as giving to a town. And I don't think he was right, but it reminds me of some of the things at play here. A question of scales maybe? Like, if you give to a town, the homeless person there could still die, but maybe someone else wouldn't? Or you could give to the homeless person directly in the town and make sure he survives, but not at all change the suffering level of the rest of the town
BobbyJ: That's a millionaire question
GD: They are in fact millionaires in the book, and that's basically exactly what the main character tells him
Anyways, I don't have any meaning to pull from that and what happens to the Grimes/Left Eye. But I guess both things remind me of the fact that senseless and tragic things happen regardless of what you do, the question is how do you live with yourself and how do you keep going
BobbyJ: We can only do what we each are capable of. There's no amount of money I could give to a town that would make any sort of impact. But I could give $50 to a homeless person for them to eat for a few days. Am I less moral than a millionaire because of the size of my contribution?
But I think that connects to GG because she did what she could with what she had. Sure she just provided shelter for some boys but that relatively small gesture, like you said, created a wave of change
GD: Make a wave. I'm reminded of The Giver a bit too?
BobbyJ: You mean Jonas really only saved Gabriel? Or rather--on the surface he just saves this one child, but it had greater impact than that
GD: Sort of? I guess I'm thinking.. if you ignore the sequels, the end of the book was open to interpretation. And I did interpret it as Jonas and Gabriel dying. So, if you interpret it that way, then they didn't even really save themselves or make that change. But, they did release the memories hoping that the memories would cause the town to wake up one day, which we don't actually see. So it's like, we did this thing that may or may not have an impact because we couldn't sit by and do nothing.
I guess I'm saying something like, evil doesn't win when good people die senseless deaths--evil wins when everyone gives up.
BobbyJ: Mmmm, yes. I'm also thinking of our discussion two weeks about choice. You can only choose the sort of person you will be, not the outcomes of your choices
GD: Yeah, and I think it's just important to show what characters do when senselessly tragic things happen. Are they defeated? Or do they keep going? So story wise, the deaths aren't senseless at all, and they do represent the very real chaos and unfairness inherent in many aspects of life
BobbyJ: Yunho is really a perfect example of this. We don't get to see any of the fallout of his brother's second death, but we know he doesn't give up but he keeps fighting the fight that is arguably the reason his brother died
GD: Oh my god, I realized we still have 2 more steps to our reading practice. Any other thoughts about allegory before we talk about our own lives?
BobbyJ: I don't think so
GD: Okay, then what does this remind you of in your own life?
For me specifically, I keep noting and coming back to the words "in the meantime", and I guess it is making me think about what I'm doing with my "meantime" if that makes sense?
BobbyJ: Right--like it feels like I spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen. But that period of waiting doesn't need to be a stagnant time for me, you know?
GD: My "what is the text inviting you to do?" is related to this. Anything else it reminds you of in your own life before we go to that?
BobbyJ: I think this idea that she did what she could with what she had. It often feels like I could be so much more [fill in the blank] if I could have/be/do this thing.
GD: Yeah, I agree completely. I could be the person I want to be only if [whatever]
BobbyJ: I don't know if this is an internet comparison thing or if it's my inability to measure up to my own standards. But I appreciate that GG didn't have a grand house, but she still offered her humble little cave
GD: We've talked about this before, but studies show that comparison is one of the most natural human things we do. Like even if we don't want to compare ourselves to others, our brains do it without conscious thought. The internet just gives us just more people to compare ourselves with
You're a teacher, and I was a teacher, and I'm thinking about what it was like to be a new teacher. IDK how it went for you, but I was given nothing and had to really figure it out for myself
BobbyJ: Same
GD: Looking back, I feel it would've been nice for someone to give me access to their cave, you know? Even if the cave was humble--it would've been nice
BobbyJ: Everyone told me that year that I did a great job, but I remember telling my mentor teacher (that I rarely spoke to bc she was super busy) that I felt bad for the kids that year because I knew I wasn't doing the best I was really capable of
I wish that I'd had a more developed mentor relationship with that teacher but it just wasn't a priority. And it's something that's very important to me even today where I feel pretty settled into my role. So, I've told my principal and my department chair that if they hire someone new to teaching, I'd be happy to partner with them because I feel like having someone you can just connect with on a regular basis who is invested in your success can really make or break your early teaching career
GD: I felt this way about the students too...
Like I had a list of students that I gave to my principle when I quit and said "all of these kids are kids that I meet with every week to check on. I go to their teachers and ask about their grades, and I talk to the kids in the halls before or after school. Someone has to do that when I go."
Relationships, and feeling like someone is on your side, are just so vitally important
BobbyJ: Yes. Building relationships with the kids is a big deal at my school. Which since I'm at a mid-sized private school is decidedly easier than most public schools. I have 93 students, which is still a lot to get to know, but I also have the advantage of having kids with parents who really care. So it's not like I'm the only adult in their lives who's trying to keep them afloat.
GD: Yeah, this was when I was 504 coordinator at a public school, so genuinely kids who would and probably did fall through the cracks when I left, which I felt soooo guilty about and still do
BobbyJ: But that's not and shouldn't be your responsibility. Which I know you know
GD: Logic and feelings rarely match up, unfortunately
BobbyJ: But the teaching profession really comes with a lot of guilt built in because we deal with children
GD: Teaching in public school, I had 140 students. As a 504 coordinator, I had the whole school
Anyways, if we get side tracked by the failing education system, we will never finish
BobbyJ: Seriously
GD: So, as far as what it's inviting me to do, it is to use my meantime more thoughtfully
My author friend is currently working on a book where the theme is about growth, and we had a 3 hour long conversation about what it means to grow and whether or not we had a moral choice to grow, and I argued that we didn't. And I maintain that change is constant, but growth is a capitalist trick/trap. But with the same breath, I'd say that I am often frustrated with the ways in which I fail to use my own meantime 'well'
Perhaps on the day, 'well' means productively, and perhaps some days it means something similar to healing, and maybe it could also mean something akin to what GG does: helping others, making a difference, etc. So I want to be more cognizant of how I'm using my meantime instead of just letting it pass me by and being frustrated when I get into bed at night thinking about where my day went
BobbyJ: I guess I would argue it depends on your definition of growth, but I disagree that growth is a capitalist trap/trick. There's a person that I want to be, and I don't believe the choices I make to become that person are related to capitalism at all. But if you're saying growth as in increased productivity--which I think is what you mean?--then yes. Capitalism all the way down. The idea that I MUST spend all my minutes productively is nonsense. I'm not a machine
GD: I suppose my real thought is something more like capitalism has invaded our vocabulary in such a way that it is hard to remove the capitalist baggage I associate with the word growth.
BobbyJ: Interesting. The concept of growth is entirely divorced from capitalism in my mind
GD: Perhaps this is why I'm so anti-capitalist. It's ruined me.
BobbyJ: Like I automatically think mental/emotional/spiritual
GD: I call that enlightenment and fulfillment, not growth, but of course it is a type of growth
BobbyJ: You need the specificity to create distance
GD: When I hear growth, I think "more" and "better" and "bigger"
BobbyJ: Huh.
GD: I grew up in a very capitalistic environment, including going to law school, and am really tapped into the hustle culture (like there is no one more likely to monetize a hobby than me) so I think it's just a product of my environment
BobbyJ: There is no one less likely to hustle than me
GD: Even on reddit--I could've just had a nice time discussing ateez, but I turned my hobby into a job (even if it is one I don't get paid for). I took us diving deep into these lore books and decided we should make it into content. I just cannot help myself
BobbyJ: Would bible study be as fulfilling for you if it never left our chat?
GD: I genuinely have no idea. I think it would probably maintain it's fulfillingness, but I think it would lose something else. I don't know what that something else is? We know most people aren't interested in this, but there is something about sharing it that feels Important in the big scheme of things
BobbyJ: I feel you're being too critical of yourself. There's a difference between trying to monetize something and simply wanting to share something with others who might appreciate it.
And I think it goes back to choosing to be the person you want to be? You find the diaries interesting and important and why wouldn't you want to share that?
GD: I think this is where my critique of capitalism comes from though
BobbyJ: That it makes things seem capitalist when they aren't?
GD: I am more likely than anyone to try to monetize things I enjoy, which I think is not so much my own capitalism as much as this feeling in my soul that finds it deeply frustrating that the things that make life worth living for me are not things that I can get paid to do. I think it's me being frustrated at having to play a game I don't want to play. If I knew of a way to monetize our bible studies, believe me, I'd be doing it.
BobbyJ: Podcast. It's right there
GD: The obvious answer is a podcast with ads, but the amount of things I'd need to learn compared to the very little money we would make is the only reason I haven't forced you into it
BobbyJ: Funny considering it's always been my idea
GD: I have made the very capitalist determination that I need to wait for you to learn all the things that need to be learned
BobbyJ: Well, my fatal flaw is inaction, so you will be waiting a good long while.
GD: I mean, it's entirely possible that I will decide enough is enough and this has to bring me some income, but for now, I can wait
BobbyJ: I can't wait to be earning $3 a month from bible study
GD: Incredible you think we'll get 3 whole dollars a month
BobbyJ: I dream big.
Okay, so. . . can I be honest and say that this passage is not inviting me to do anything at all?
GD: Yes
BobbyJ: And I can't say whether it's the passage itself just not fully resonating with me or if it's more where I am in my life right now
GD: We did shorten the passage to a relatively small sentence, but just in general, I think it's okay to be fine with examining something and then putting it back down without letting it really touch you
BobbyJ: I do think that's true. But I'm also in this weird and awkward place where I know something bad is on the horizon and I'm forced to just wait for it to happen without knowing when that might be. So, I'm in a meantime. And during this meantime, intentional growth is not for me.
GD: There is something to be said for not examining our meantime to closely too. We've certainly talked in bible study about living in the present and being grateful for small moments

04: A Closing Hymn

BobbyJ: What is our song for Wooyoung? Or for GG?
GD: Hmmm. This one feels hard to me. Have we used Better before?
BobbyJ: We have not.
Can I make an odd suggestion? Just go right off book
GD: Yes
BobbyJ: I would like to consider dedicating Eden's 'Little Bird' to GG
GD: Well in this household we love Eden. Let me look it up real quick. Remind myself of it
BobbyJ: It's very melancholy but a bit hopeful?
GD: Yes, I like it. So today's bible study song is Eden's Little Bird for GG?
BobbyJ: Yes, if you approve. (A quick note on the lyrics.)
GD: I love that bit about each translator doing it differently, which is why I would like KQ to give me all of their official translations for each song please.
I approve.

05: Closing Rosary

BobbyJ: I think my prayer for Wooyoung is that he will always be surrounded by as much love as he gives
GD: We see this in real life too--his love attracts love. Everyone loves Wooyoung, and I think it's because he gives his love so freely once he's decided you're one of his
BobbyJ: I have a rosary thought--are we ready to close?
GD: Yes
BobbyJ: Never alone
GD: Wooyoung
BobbyJ: Be the light
GD: Halazia
BobbyJ: Well done everybody
GD: High fives all around.
Nice work on the rosary. My brain has stopped braining.
BobbyJ: Wooyoung is an inspiration to us all
------
And that's it for our discussion on Wooyoung! Next week we will be back with the start of Seonghwa's page. Let us know what you thought of Wooyoung's section and whether you had any different thoughts on the quote we looked at today!

To begin with, this a Throwaway account, i will not say any personnal informations about me or anyone else and i will maybe a bit harsh when telling the story, also sorry if my english is not 10/10 it is not my native language. This actual thing include me (18M) my brother(16M) let's call him bob,his friend bobby and some guys let's call them the team rocket(probably between 16 and 18 M ) this is the first time i'm using reddit so maybe my story look like nothing It maybe a long story. I just want to get that off me because it is creating a huge stress coupled with anger and i do not care at all if you don't belive me or you feel like this is a fake story.
We live in a small town. All of this started arround 2 years ago when the team rocket started annoying my little brother and his friend by insulting them, thowing rocks at them etc they are know in town for being troublemakers. My brother does not get the idear that he can get in trouble so he start inssulting them too and that is where he messed up those dudes are stubborn as hell. After this inccident they all started to pick weakly on bob and bobby so one time they two started to respond to the picking by being verbaly agressive. The team rocket then started to stalk my brother by staying in front of my home accross the street for about 5 hours every occasion they had, this is the point where i enter the story. At this stage i was not aware of the situation at all so i took my brother aside and demamded an explanation of everything that happened after a good 30 minutes of talking i was fuming with anger. Quick introduction of myself i am about 240lbs for 6.3ft my friends call me the White bison i don't really know why but ok.
So the stalking lasted for about 2 month and like every two to tree days they where in front of my home waiting to catch bob one day they insulted my Mother( it is one of the most direspecteful insult you can say to someone in France) i took it by heart, i screamed to them to repeat again, they did. They was 8 of them in front of my house so i went to talk to them with enought adrenaline to revive a dead corps. Right there i saw one of the dude in front of me pulling out a knife and another one pulling out a tear gas spray, i directly backed of and started hardly discussing with them, (one of them even called his step dad for me but this is another story for another time) all they said was that they wanted to beat bob and bobby, for me family is very important so it was a categoric no, so they said that they will continue this, after an hour or so of talking they were annoyed and left and from this day we got 1 year and a half of calm with no altercations what so ever.
In that period of time most of the team rocket members stoped caring about this altercation but 1 month ago as i'm writing this, i was out riding my dirtbike with some friend and one tell me about a dude who was planning something to hurt my brother and was asking infos on my brother,when was he comming back from school, Whitch way he's taking etc.
I said nothing at all to my friend about this and was playing the innocent dude. The same day i did research of this a**hole and found him, his adress, the facebook of his entire family and more so i knew who he was exactly. After this nothing at all, dead silence.
Today my brother showed me screens of text messages of the same dude and a mutual friend, he was saying "il va voir quand ont va le planter" "il va pleurer sa mère" translated : "he is gonna see when we are gonna knife him" "he will cry for his mother".
All i can say is that i was shaking in anger and stress out of my mind, it maybe seem corny but if this happen i will not stay still and do nothing, my parents are well aware of this and are scared if something will happen or not. That is the problem i am scared of doing something causing huge jail time, i even thought of beating the guy to a coma or something more, it isn't even my darkest idear.
I don't expert anyone to see this, if you do and have questions pls ask them and i will try to answer them with honnesty.
I will try to keep you updated but i don't promise anything and as i said on top of this page i do not care if this story seems fake/corny asf or of you don't belive it i just want to express things has i see them. I could explain with more details but decided not to.

To begin with, this a Throwaway account, i will not say any personnal informations about me or anyone else and i will maybe a bit harsh when telling the story, also sorry if my english is not 10/10 it is not my native language. This actual thing include me (18M) my brother(16M) let's call him bob,his friend bobby and some guys let's call them the team rocket(probably between 16 and 18 M ) this is the first time i'm using reddit so maybe my story look like nothing It maybe a long story. I just want to get that off me because it is creating a huge stress coupled with anger and i do not care at all if you don't belive me or you feel like this is a fake story.
We live in a small town. All of this started arround 2 years ago when the team rocket started annoying my little brother and his friend by insulting them, thowing rocks at them etc they are know in town for being troublemakers. My brother does not get the idear that he can get in trouble so he start inssulting them too and that is where he messed up those dudes are stubborn as hell. After this inccident they all started to pick weakly on bob and bobby so one time they two started to respond to the picking by being verbaly agressive. The team rocket then started to stalk my brother by staying in front of my home accross the street for about 5 hours every occasion they had, this is the point where i enter the story. At this stage i was not aware of the situation at all so i took my brother aside and demamded an explanation of everything that happened after a good 30 minutes of talking i was fuming with anger. Quick introduction of myself i am about 240lbs for 6.3ft my friends call me the White bison i don't really know why but ok.
So the stalking lasted for about 2 month and like every two to tree days they where in front of my home waiting to catch bob one day they insulted my Mother( it is one of the most direspecteful insult you can say to someone in France) i took it by heart, i screamed to them to repeat again, they did. They was 8 of them in front of my house so i went to talk to them with enought adrenaline to revive a dead corps. Right there i saw one of the dude in front of me pulling out a knife and another one pulling out a tear gas spray, i directly backed of and started hardly discussing with them, (one of them even called his step dad for me but this is another story for another time) all they said was that they wanted to beat bob and bobby, for me family is very important so it was a categoric no, so they said that they will continue this, after an hour or so of talking they were annoyed and left and from this day we got 1 year and a half of calm with no altercations what so ever.
In that period of time most of the team rocket members stoped caring about this altercation but 1 month ago as i'm writing this, i was out riding my dirtbike with some friend and one tell me about a dude who was planning something to hurt my brother and was asking infos on my brother,when was he comming back from school, Whitch way he's taking etc.
I said nothing at all to my friend about this and was playing the innocent dude. The same day i did research of this a**hole and found him, his adress, the facebook of his entire family and more so i knew who he was exactly. After this nothing at all, dead silence.
Today my brother showed me screens of text messages of the same dude and a mutual friend, he was saying "il va voir quand ont va le planter" "il va pleurer sa mère" translated : "he is gonna see when we are gonna knife him" "he will cry for his mother".
All i can say is that i was shaking in anger and stress out of my mind, it maybe seem corny but if this happen i will not stay still and do nothing, my parents are well aware of this and are scared if something will happen or not. That is the problem i am scared of doing something causing huge jail time, i even thought of beating the guy to a coma or something more, it isn't even my darkest idear.
I don't expert anyone to see this, if you do and have questions pls ask them and i will try to answer them with honnesty.
I will try to keep you updated but i don't promise anything and as i said on top of this page i do not care if this story seems fake/corny asf or of you don't belive it i just want to express things has i see them. I could explain with more details but decided not to.

Authors note: This is fiction inspired by my real personal life events. The following takes place during the prologue, Wojak has a lucid dream. It's hella messed up hahaha
INSIDE WOJAK’S HEAD, A LUCID DREAM
“Daddy, tell us a story!” she said, and Gina nodded her head in sympathetic valence to Vikki’s high-pitched request for a tale; her lips red from the wine and en bon point from her own Romanian-genetics. Gina -lithe and blonde- danced around eager for his words to lay upon her soul. She loved his words.
He laughed and agreed to tell an honest to God absolutely true tale or two for his girls.
Their dinner was strewn about and bottles of wine were overturned in the sink and the Stargazer Lilies had dropped red stamen and white & pink petals on his grey concrete slab of countertop. The curry powder paint on the walls seemed to breathe as Wojak took another sip of wine. The music played over the integrated speakers and Moby sang of the Natural Blues
“Ok, fuck these dishes, let’s go to bed,” he said as they waited for his decision, and once they had it they screamed and giggled and ran about like feral cats. He shook his head and tried to cobble together each move in life that had brought him to this spot; but it was too variegated, and he had been going too fast to take notes , he thought. This is just where he was, and now he ought to, he thought, tell his girls a bedtime story for Christ-fucking-sake.
They waited in silence now, as daddy was in charge, they thought, and anything said now would only ruin what was to come. He followed them into the bedroom.
“Ladies, did I ever tell you about the story of the Little Jackass Bunny?” he asked, and they grinned, and he now saw that they had glitter -and a little bit of arousal in their faces. They loved the way he talked about work , it was like warto him; and they saw his war-stories as grand; saw it all as love, and poetry and ancient masculinity on display. Wojak was a chad who was now providing Orange Kush Mints Weed of the highest quality
They passed the pipe and held their knees; they blew smoke into the air above them. The sheets were stained with amorous effluvium from weeks of him wearing our their most soft parts; and they tried to make space for him in the middle of the bed by moving pillows and blankets.
“Jesus,” he said as he spied the sex-stained sheets, “you can make out the face of Donald Trump on these things. How much fucking do we do; exactly?”
“A lot,” Gina said. “Tell us about the Jackass Bunny!”
“Ah yes… Isaiah Lobsterbusch… AKA the Little Jackass Bunny!” Wojak laughed in contempt for mentioning the name of the Jackass Bunny and out of amusement for the story he was about to tell Vikki and Gina. “I met this stupid fucker four days after a Deftones concert I went to while I was still in college, and he noticed me wearing a Deftones t-shirt I bought from a stand at the tour!”
“Fuckin’ Deftones baby…” Vikki said, biting her lip in a soft, seductive, horny manner as she gently scratched Wojak’s chest with her nails. “Wait, why is he the Jackass Bunny?”
“You’ve seen Disney’s Alice In Wonderland?” Wojak asked as Vikki and Gina both nodded. “Isaiah strongly resembles that one character who sits at the table with the Mad Hatter… the March Hare! His face and this look he had in his eyes!”
“And his personality was that of a jack-ass too?” Vikki asked as Gina giggled.
“Indeed… well anyways, we got along initially because of Deftones as well as other bands such as Metallica and Soundgarden... When I was twenty-three, that was when I moved into a house with ten other people…” said Wojak. “Isaiah was actually one of those ten roommates. And believe me… he was fine at first, but he began going down a bizarre downward spiral where he was paranoid and accusing everyone of being passive aggressive to him… when it was the other way around!”
“Like… he was legit unstable?” asked Gina.
“He was such a cuck! GOD, he was always such an insufferable person who always found reasons to complain! “Oh my God, a spider is in my shoe!? Someone put it there! Why is there a sock on my jacket!? Personal attack!!!” Wojak laughed. “But man… he was always complaining about people from the skate park always coming up and vandalizing his car, just non-stop bitching!”
“Oh… so he’s paranoid…” said Vikki. “How did he get kicked out?”
“The final straw was when after the first roommate was kicked out, a person named Joe Ludwigson. Joe got replaced by Terry. Terry was a recovering meth addict trying to get his shit together, and everyone was trying to help Terry, but Isaiah was just harassing him and accusing him of stealing and doing meth in the house.” said Wojak. “After I kept sticking up for Terry, as did my other roommates… Isaiah decided to retaliate against me by stealing my weed, which was not ok…”
“Bastard!” Gina exclaimed in sympathy. “So did you beat him up?!”
“I yelled at him, and Isaiah did nothing but give excuses!” Wojak laughed. “Because you’re a little punk! Because you’re a child!”
“You’re more of a man than this little fuckboy hun…” Vikki whispered into Wojak’s ear loud enough for Gina to hear and elicit a warm smile out of her. “Continue…”
“I even said that it was my weed and stealing was not ok, if the little bastard had asked beforehand, I would have been ok. And he just kept downplaying everything; “Wojak, it was less than a gram, you make yourself sound like such a kingpin!” said Wojak. “And then Terry called him out on all his bullshit which resulted in Isaiah literally spitting on him!”
“Eww! Spitting!? GROSS!” Vikki said with shock.
“Did he get arrested!?” asked Gina.
“Yes, but not right away; here’s the good part; I yelled at him and told him he needed to get the fuck out, and he began saying he didn’t need us because we were all gay and that we could go fuck each other!” said Wojak. “His constant homophobia was also getting old, and always revolved around seventh grade insults, so I told him to shut up. After he yelled “what did you just say!?” Terry called him a festering cum-bubble on a dead f-----’s ass!”
Vikki and Gina both guffawed as Wojak gleefully smiled at this.
“And it was then that he pulled a knife on Terry, so I punched Isaiah in the sternum. Then Terry threw Isaiah out the window!” Wojak laughed. “This is the part where Isaiah’s got arrested; he drove over to his brother's house asking for help, but his father who he always complained about attempted to intervene.”
“Oh?” asked Gina.
“Yeah, Isaiah became paranoid and he accused his father of pulling the strings behind everything! He actually accused his own father of reaching out to David and Elliott to find Terry so Terry could be a spy for him!” laughed Wojak. “And fuckin’ Isaiah assaulted his dad as he screamed the lyrics to Master of Puppets by Metallica and the cops came!”
“That’s one hell of a story, daddy…” Gina seductively whispered into Wojak’s ear as Vikki began digging her nails into Wojak’s chest, eliciting a horny growl from Wojak that sounded much like a male grizzly bear having settled to take a nap near the river bank.
Given that this is the life of Wojak McLeod, a Doomer, none of this would be real. Just a lucid dream. As Wojak was prepared to have a threesome with two fictitious women inside his own head, the sound of his Alexa went off. Wojak McLeod was awake… And what was once orgasmic bliss slowly transmuted into a chthonic anger that was daily fuel for him. Another day in the sad reality that is clown world was waiting for Wojak…

I love bobby songs, and I have had many dead songs that didn't quite click for me, click and click hard when they clicked. The Music Never Stops was one for me, and now it's one of my favorite tune.
But I always fined my self bored during Let It Grow, I don't know if it's the tune of the song or what, I enjoy the lyrics, I just don't really get into the song.
I would love some recommendations to maybe change my mind, or other folks opinions on the song.

• Sincerely just another Ramblin Rose

Somebody made the great suggestion of name tags. Here is my list.
- Bus Boy
- Bus Driver
- Cancer Lady
- Druggie Chick
- Medic
- Mack the Knife
- The sheriff
- The deputy
- The Sheriff's son
- -The Sheriff's son girlfriend
- Killer
- The Peach eating Guy
- Silicone Valley Millionaire
- Radio Man
- Hole digging bitch - she displaced enough dirt to rig a house down. Where did all the dirt go?
- Dumb fucking kid that does not want to be on a quest.
- Fake Priest
- The bartender
- Colony Boss
and Old Marine
Please feel free to add to subtract more as needed. Your suggestions please

As I get ready to start my day on this wonderful Sunday. I’m heading to work because someone called out to cover a shift. My wife is getting ready for work as well, which is usual because when you run your own small business it’s just as hard finding people to work and she had someone call out too. I’m not going to sit here and complain and bitch because of the state of the economy it’s just fcked up. Everyone wants to restructure and make things easier and employ people to do things on their own or be simplified by a machine. That’s just the way the world is, just wishing I knew where the damn work ethic went. News flash people are lazy and now before anyone goes on their empowered bitch session calling out whatever they can or making justifications. Here is the reality you have great workers, good workers, ok workers, bad workers and people that just don’t give a shit. I’m not coming on here to bitch and complain but to tell a story and a true one at that. I will ramble on, and people will bitch about that too! Anyways on to my story and for the record I’m aware this is too long and only like 1% will read it fully and to you good old VZ maybe one day but this is even beyond you, but you played a big part. I wish whole heartedly this business would change, and customers would change, and the world would change, cause for fcks sake people need to freaking hug each other. Also, for the record I’m generally just an honest hard-working dude that gives a shit about everyone around me and my heart bleeds through my sleeves. I have done my best to just show people there are just good people out there!
So anyways here’s my damn story and my frustrations which overflowed yesterday and to start this story let’s start with some changes and effects. The easiest way is to start this script for a shitty movie because I can’t shut my trap. Anyways I was talking to an employee a few weeks ago that has been in this industry for a lot longer than me for the record. I would say they are from the bag phone age. I started 18 years ago selling flip phones with no color and every phone had a different charging port. I have always been a fixer and if you have been in this industry and have grown with it and you have a general understanding people will come to you for help. Now I encourage people to ask me questions and for help there is no better feeling than taking care of a customer or employee that is a little lost and being selfless about it. Just for example a customer came in recently that lost her son 3 years ago. She had a voicemail saved and didn’t want to lose it. I assured her that I got her covered. A long time ago before this wonderful age of tech. The solution here was to hook up a mini tape recorder, play the voicemail, and record it on the tape. For all you young pups it’s those square things with brown film running through it. So, I showed her how to email the voicemail and then helped her save it to the cloud. I completed both and played the message, I comforted her knowing as we go through this process, she’s going to get emotional. I didn’t try to sell her anything, my goal was simply for her to know that no matter what happens to her phone or her service that she can hear her son’s voice and she won’t lose it. Now for all you uneducated sales people sometimes it’s not all about making money, but it will result in money. Here is the fact and I guess the moral of the story. While I didn’t make a cent today, I made a feeling for someone. I showed that I cared and took care of them. Now when they go into a store or call customer service for something, and they don’t get treated right or someone somewhere bitches about there cell phone service to this nice lady she is going to mention the nice gentleman and what store he’s at. So, say what you want but that’s a strong lead in my book. Anyways off this exit and back on the road. This employee knows I will help figure out the issues and since we lost our account managers our direct connection to the good Old VZ was cut, that the days of fixing the issues are limited. I had to tell them that are days of going above beyond are ending and there are going to be situations where we just can’t do anything. Mind you this isn’t because it is not possible or that it’s the wrong thing to do. It’s because the person on the other end of the phone these days is comparable to having a toddler come up with a business plan for a fortune 500 company and it work flawlessly. This isn’t the CS reps that have been around and know the system and care about people. This is Jake that has you repeat yourself ten times over while he’s talking to bobby and frank trying to figure out what the hell they are doing. For the record, outsourced names have been withheld because they get to choose it on their first day of work in outsourcing. When I informed this employee of CS outsourcing more, well it was the same look my mom gave me when I came home one night with my ear pierced and bleach blond hair.
Now I started with the big old red many moons ago. I was supposed to transfer states with what used to be a fantastic company that was the epicenter of customer service (oddly no longer around) decided that money had a shit ton more value than people and my column in excel got lost. I was supposed to go to that home office in the new state and have a store all set to start at. Yeah lol no one had a clue of who I was, and something got lost along the way. No biggie just 6 years of blood, sweat and tears. So started my 18 yearish journeys indirectly with VZ. Back then you could do well for yourself to start a company and open a VZ store. There were small companies, medium companies and large ones. It was a different world where customer service was king and VZ was the shiznit! Now I’m biased here but sold the beep beep, the Nokia snake game, the sidekick! I had experience with it all. Man was I nervous from what I came from starting from the bottom as an employee coming from being the go-to manager. I could write a top selling book about these 6 years that formed me. Maybe if I get upvoted enough that could be a career path as the masses are typing TL/DDGAS/CRC. Lmao typing that just let me know how my dad felt when we were laughing as he was moving the Nintendo controller trying to move the person on the screen. Oh, that’s just fcking great damn I’m old lol. Anyways I learned that leaders and mind you leaders and managers are too different things folks. I saw selfless caring people that ran a great business and to this day even with all the bullshit treat every customer like family. Seriously don’t people fcking miss that when you walked into a store and got a smile instead of someone looking at you like your wasting their time. Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t bitch anyways back on track. I learned how to make money feel good about yourself and other people recommended you and it just went full circle. So that is how I have tried to run my business. That was the start of my journey which brought me here to make a long ass post that no one will read because I want people to give out more fcking hugs! Lmao!!
The paragraphs are for the one commented I have potential this was the next chapter I appreciate you!! I hope you’re enjoying this one! Anyways off I went and started the same cycle moved to another state and there was a lot more than just Big 5 back then and I had the experience of managing a store and enjoyed what I did. So, I started with another small VZ company and shaped the last 12 years of my career. I have had a blast and I love the company I work for which is one of the Big 5 cause that’s all that exists these days. I was fortunate to be able to continue with the same values and teach and show a bunch of people along the way. The crazy thing is you wouldn’t imagine the things you come across in this industry. I have had people threaten to kill me multiple times, had people throw things, knock over chairs, there have been multiple bathroom accidents on the sales floor, lots and lots of crying, some picketing here and there. I mean just why people. I had someone threaten to try to destroy one of my stores by bashing it online and to everyone he knew. The reason was for a phone he had over the warranty of a year, and he wanted it replaced. Now I kindly told this man what to do and how to handle his situation I also said if you want to bash my store because I am doing everything I can to help you please go ahead. I am confident in my ability to provide service. You know because well I haven’t done anything else, and I truly love what I do, and I wouldn’t leave the industry. I will put up with any bullsh!t and I will do it for that nice lady that just needed someone to care and save her voicemail. Now on to the last paragraph and if you made it this far thank you! I also realize at this point I am just bitching lol.
Anyways here is the thing we are in a service-based industry. If you slowly take the ability of providing service to the service-based industry it makes it super freaking difficult. So here are the realities people need phones, they need stores, they need customer service. It’s not a want or a luxury, there is a shit ton of need. We can’t change any of it, nothing you read or that I wrote will make a difference. So, I guess I’m asking myself was there a point of all of this and thinking of Eminem lyrics of Stan lmao. Did I just do the same thing that I am bitching about a lot of bitching. I guess I do not know what the hell I’m reaching for and joyfully doing it on a public forum lol. So, I guess the point is if you read this long as fucking post there are good people that generally care. Slow the fck down and ne nice try to understand that everyone has sh!t going on. So, if you read this or just scrolled to the bottom cause its to fcking long be a little nicer today cause this post will be seamlessly lost among a bunch of other posts. To you shady reps out there that give the industry the name it is be a little less shady today maybe care a little. As I’m getting judged now lmao for those companies that push your people to be shady… well you probably won’t see this. To big VZ you control it all you squeezed the juice out the lemon. You’re going to and will continue to drink the lemonade. I will continue my journey and ultimately this is how I support my family. I’m going to continue what I do and I’m going to enjoy it. It just sucks that it gets harder and it’s not that it gets harder because it’s harder work. It gets harder because people make harder work to make more money. Have a wonderful day folks! All you great, good, ok workers and the ones that show up thank you. I guess even you shitty people too cause in the end you don’t control that either as long as you show up as well. Peace out said the rambling man!

I channel my rage
Dubious thoughts on the stage
In System of a Down's wit
Melodic twists never quit
An emulated style
Words sharp as a knife
Im in control
Rhyme and flow taking a toll
A lyrical master
Rapping some disaster
From the grandmaster
Diabolic Rage
From my cage
Lies black as licorice
Movin lips
Speaking jibberish
~the dawg~

I channel my rage
Dubious thoughts on the stage
In System of a Down's wit
Melodic twists never quit
An emulated style
Words sharp as a knife
Im in control
Rhyme and flow taking a toll
A lyrical master
Rapping some disaster
From the grandmaster
Diabolic Rage
From my cage
Lies black as licorice
Movin lips
Speaking jibberish
~the dawg~

I channel my rage
Dubious thoughts on the stage
In System of a Down's wit
Melodic twists never quit
An emulated style
Words sharp as a knife
Im in control
Rhyme and flow taking a toll
A lyrical master
Rapping some disaster
From the grandmaster
Diabolic Rage
From my cage
Lies black as licorice
Movin lips
Speaking jibberish
~the dawg~

I channel my rage
Dubious thoughts on the stage
In System of a Down's wit
Melodic twists never quit
An e mulated style
Words sharp as a knife
Im in control
Rhyme and flow taking a toll
A lyrical master
Rapping some disaster
From the grandmaster
Diabolic Rage
From my cage
Lies black as licorice
Movin lips
Speaking jibberish
~the dawg~

I channel my rage
Dubious thoughts on the stage
In System of a Down's wit
Melodic twists never quit
An e mulated style
Words sharp as a knife
Im in control
Rhyme and flow taking a toll
A lyrical master
Rapping some disaster
From the grandmaster
Diabolic Rage
From my cage
Lies black as licorice
Movin lips
Speaking jibberish
~the dawg~

One nice side-effect of the lifting of secrecy was that the entire team (human and alien) could now be reassigned to somewhere more palatial than a sealed-off side-entrance into a hollowed-out mountain. But where, oh where, to put them? What was needed was someplace A) which was much nicer than a tunnel (humanity must treat our alien guests properly, after all) and B) was already set up with the necessary security precautions and secure communications in and out.
In the end, there was, really, only one choice of location…at least if they wanted to stay in the United States proper.
Camp David.
Corporal McCoy spread her arms out along the back of a very nice red-leather sofa, in the middle of a room dominated by a red-brick fireplace in one corner. Along the two far walls from the fireplace stretched multiple windows which showed, at the moment, the denuded stick-like forms of leafless trees. She knew that in the spring and summer they’d be a veritable explosion of green; somehow, she didn’t mind that she wasn’t able to see leaves at the moment. Off in a far corner of the room sat a wet bar that she also eyed with quite evident lust. There was at least one nice single-malt scotch there that she wanted to get ahold of. Just for a taste, mind you.
Not everyone was there; Chao and Grakosh were off in the midst of some giant nerd mind-meld with some Lockheed Martin Skunk-Works types, trying to figure out how to lift what materials were needed into orbit so that humans could help fix the Rithro and show the Coalition that we are very good and oh so helpful little sapients, yes indeed we are, please help us out just in case we get discovered by some genocidal robots who want to do a little bit of trolling.
Moquon, the knuall-toua who was the ship’s lifesystem engineer, coiled around her shoulder as the latter looked with interest at the wood paneling which made up the rafters and roof.
“Now this is more like it!” McCoy exclaimed to all and sundry.
“Yes, indeed! It does seem much nicer than our previous lodgings,” said Mouquon.
“This is not a vacation, corporal.” Sergeant Shaw stood next to one of the nearly floor-to ceiling windows, looking out over the grounds below with a practiced eye.
“You need to relax, Sarge,” said Martinez. “We got something like a million Secret Service agents prowling around here. I went shooting with one of ‘em once, trust me when I say those people are no joke.” He chuckled. “First time I got my ass kicked in a shooting contest by a woman.”
Shaw let out a grunt. “We are the last layer of the onion.”
“Sir?” asked McCoy.
“Someone can figure out we’re here pretty easily.” Shaw pointed out into the wintry woods. “If they send a determined and well-armed force, they might just make through those million agents to here.” He turned away from the window and stared at his team, who, at the moment, sprawled or sat with evident relief on the furniture within the room. “The OPFOR might get taken down. But then again, they might not. What do we do then?”
McCoy felt Mouqon coil herself tighter around her shoulder. Almost on instinct, she reached up and patted the snake-like alien’s head. “Don’t you worry. I’m here.”
Shaw pointed at the corporal. “Exactly. We are the last, and I do mean the last, line of defense. We are gonna run some drills at a time and place of my choosing. We are going to protect our esteemed guests to the very last…and yes, I do mean the very last. Make sure your gear is ready and that you are ready, or I will give y’all an ass-chewing they’ll feel clear out to the Coalition.”
Agent Milton Vila strolled into the lounge at that particular moment with a grin on his broad face. “Sounds like we’re getting an upgrade to our security, Mack.”
“Aw hell, you know how it is. I gotta keep these assholes on their toes or everything breaks down into chaos.”
The Secret Service agent grinned. “Anyways…we now have a new member of our merry band of misfits.”
“Misfits?” Martinez looked appropriately indignant. “I’ll have you know I am a perfectly normal functioning member of society!”
The agent and soldier held each other’s gaze for a few moments before they both busted out in laughter. “Anyways,” continued Vila, “He’s the medical expert that the general requested.” He turned to one of the entrances to the lounge. “Come on in, sir.”
A dark-skinned, lean man with an uncertain air entered. “Zawahir Ibn Harith,” he said by way of greeting. His eyes widened upon viewing the various alien forms now stretched out in various relaxed postures before him.
McCoy decided to throw him a bone. “Welcome!” She gave a wave of her arm…the arm around whose shoulder Mouquon was currently coiled. “Welcome to our…merry band of misfits!”
“Thank you!” The newcomer still looked a bit at sea.
“Hey, Dhuz?” McCoy called out.
The auhn turned from her gazing out the windows. “Yes?”
“I figure you and this guy got a lot to talk about.”
Dhuz met Zawahir’s eyes and smiled. McCoy was still getting used to that; it was a gesture of happiness just as with humans, but auhn teeth were very numerous and very sharp. “I imagine so. Mutual exchange of medical data, yes?”
Now that he had a task before him, Zawahir looked a lot more focused. “Of course! I mean, from what I’ve read thus far all of your species use some method of metal-oxygen bonding to deliver the necessary oxygen to your tissues, but not everyone uses hemoglobin!”
Dhuz lit up. “Exactly!” She touched her forearm and a big old wall of text and diagrams formed above it. “Here, let me show you…”
McCoy chuckled as the pair moved off into a far corner to continue their conversation. “Another nerd mind-meld,” she said to no one in particular.
“Pardon?” asked Mouquon.
“Oh, sorry. Just…Chao and your engineer are now off doing a big old nerd mind-meld with our best and brightest. The last time we had that much talent in one place, we wound up dropping the sun on some people.” The corporal regarded the pair now in the midst of an animated conversation. “I hope this particular nerd-gasm results in something more constructive.”
“Oh!” Mouquon perked up. “I should be a part of this ‘nerd-gasm’. At least, if they start talking about what foodstuffs are viable for the various species.”
McCoy sighed. This was a very comfortable couch, after all. “You’re right, Mouquon.” She hauled herself up and off of the furniture with a bit of reluctance. “Let’s get you involved.” She walked towards the pair, who were both still gesticulating at the display over Dhuz’s forearm.
__________
Milton Vila had, much to his annoyance, been pulled off of President Correa’s detail and assigned to a new one…one to protect the alien captain. Sure, Agent Keynes had taken his place…and if he was forced to admit it, the guy was as good of a shot as he was…but Keynes wasn’t him, and that knowledge ate at him.
Still, he supposed that at least he wasn’t alone in his misery. Sergeant Shaw (who had finally admitted to Milton he was a Green Beret, which helped nail down exactly which branch of the armed forces his team worked for) was also pulled into the task of guarding Sadaf…upon Milton’s request. Not that he would tell the Green Beret that. The sergeant had also gotten the tailoring treatment from Milton’s wife, and now he wore a navy-blue suit which complimented his red hair quite nicely. But the Secret Service agent could tell that the man still wanted to be clad in full battle-rattle and toting a rifle instead of a mere hidden handgun.
“I still say I should be able to wear my normal shit,” said Shaw, not for the first time. At the moment, the three rode in a limousine, on their way to some gala luncheon event held by some upper-crust DC types who wanted to get a speech by one of the brand-new alien celebrities. Milton hoped that they’d also decide to open their damn pocketbooks to help fund the repairs needed for the alien’s ship; in the short time he’d known her, the agent had become won over by Sadaf’s no-nonsense and in-charge attitude.
“We’re trying to not scare the normies, Mack,” replied Milton.
Sadaf, who sat next to the hulking red-bearded man, looked over at him in curiosity. “You want to wear your usual fecal matter?”
“Frinxing translators,” muttered Shaw. As was usual, the various profanities of alien language were the first things to percolate into human speech. “Sorry, ma’am, I meant my normal gear. Yeah, I’m wearing body armor but this stuff is class two at best.” He plucked at his jacket. “Plus I’m not used to moving in this monkey suit.”
Milton grinned. “You’ll get used to it soon enough, Mack. Hey, my people have cleared the place beforehand. Our job is just to stand there behind the good captain and look menacing. And then when she’s doing the meet-and-greet afterwards we need to look extra menacing…and, of course, keep an eye out just in case someone makes a false move.”
“I don’t want to get used to this,” grumped Shaw. “I don’t want to get used to any of this. I want some proper goddamn body armor and a proper goddamn rifle with some goddamn extra magazines. A rifle with an M203 launcher, just in case someone gets really squirrelly.”
The agent winced. “Um, Mack, we civvies do have to worry about things like ‘collateral damage’ and such.”
Shaw’s normally cheerful demeanor fell into a somber look towards the agent, one that brought Milton up short. “Agent Milton, have you ever fallen victim to an RPG attack?”
“Um, no?”
“I have. Trust me, there is never such a thing as overkill.”
Milton sighed. He reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a city map. “Okay, I suppose that’s as good an excuse to go over everything again. This is the courtyard for the shindig.”
“Shindig!” exclaimed Sadaf in pleasure. “I don’t know why, but that word brings me joy.”
The agent smiled at her. “You’re gonna get used to it, believe me. So, we’ve got the whole area blocked off here, here, and here. Full-body scans for everyone going in, and believe me they’d better have the proper ticket to be there or they’re in for some looong questioning in a little dark room somewhere. No outside translator beads allowed, we issue ‘em after they get through the perimeter. We have snipers located here, here, here, and here. Each one has their own designated field of fire, the four of ‘em cover all angles. Anyone who pops their head up on any of the surrounding roofs will get a fifty-cal bullet right through their noggin before they can even blink.”
“What about the courtyard itself?” asked Shaw. “Before you set up the perimeter, I mean.”
Milton grinned. The sergeant had the makings of a first-class agent. “A very good question. We swept the area prior, using metal detectors and dogs. Especially for the dais and podium where Captain Sadaf is going to make her speech. If I was gonna try for a hit, that’s how I’d do it. Plant some explosives in the podium and trigger it remotely. But we didn’t find anything.”
The sergeant smoothed his beard in a nervous tic. “Drones?”
“Jammers for a thousand-yard radius around the podium. Anything remotely piloted into that space will just fall to the ground. As a bonus, just in case someone decides to try something cute using their cell phone, those won’t work either.”
Shaw grunted in grudging approval. “Sounds good.”
“This is how I earn a living, Mack. Relax.”
Sadaf rubbed a hand on her forehead. She was now clad back in her black-and-silver uniform; somehow the powers that be had determined that it was now okay for her to wear the supposed ‘militaristic’ uniform in public. “Is all this security strictly necessary? I mean, thus far most of your world’s nations seem to be behaving rationally.”
“Oh, we’re not worried about state actors, ma’am,” said Milton. “Well, except for a few. There’s always North Korea, after all.”
“Frinx, don’t get me started on those assholes,” muttered Shaw.
Milton continued, in what he hoped came across as a soothing tone. “Look at it this way. Does your kind suffer from mental disease?”
“Originally, yes. But thanks to medical intervention we can catch almost all of them. At present, we suffer from less than one in three hundred million who have an incurable derangement of the brain…” Sadaf’s eyes widened as she trailed off. “Oh. I forgot, you don’t have access to our level of medical technology.”
Shaw sighed. “No, ma’am, we don’t. Not to mention there’s almost eight billion of us on this here planet. Even assuming only one-hundredth-of-a-percent of those people wish you harm, that’s far too big of a population for us to relax.”
Sadaf seemed to shrink into the cushions of the limousine. “But we come in peace. We don’t mean you any harm.”
Milton knew that it was a breach of protocol, but he reached across and patted her knee. “I know that, ma’am, and almost everyone on the planet knows that. But there are some…well, there are some you just can’t reach.”
Shaw rubbed his jaw as he regarded the map again. “Damn. Wish I had Toke here. That guy could sniff out something hinky like nobody’s business. Plus if something did kick off, he could sort it out no problem.”
“He’s the skinny, taller guy, right?” asked Milton. “Marine Force Recon, I do believe. I know they are double-tough. Yeah, I admit he’d be good for something like this. But the powers that be want to keep him back at Camp David.”
The sergeant grunted in annoyance and looked out the window of the limousine. Then he looked up with a quirky smile. “I guess so. Look at it this way, if something does kick off, then having him at Camp David means that whoms’tsoever tries an assault there is gonna die.”
Milton replied to Shaw with a raised eyebrow. “All right, Shaw. Just between you and me, we deal with very dangerous people by being very dangerous people ourselves. Don’t try to feed me a line of dramatic bullshit.”
For once, Shaw looked flustered. “No, you don’t understand! Toke was the guy you’d drop into the shit, into the middle of any utter hell on Earth, and he’d get you your grid coordinates for arty or drone strikes while escorting two other guys and, oh yeah, he’d kill ten enemies at long range while doing all of that. And not just long-range. He once took out five guys in ten seconds with a knife…and he’s supposed to be a fucking sniper!” The sergeant shuddered. “I can’t tell you about the mission where he got his knee messed up, but let’s just say…he earned every single one of his medals during that action. He’s a throwback.”
Milton tilted his head, as did Sadaf. “Explain,” said the Captain, and not as a question.
“I mean, mentally, in some ways, he’s kinda from way back when we humans were all ooga-booga and lived in caves and smacked each other over the head with clubs. Toke just…ends things. Nice guy, hell if I had kids I’d let him watch ‘em with nary a care in the world. But you press one particular button and he…well, he reverts. He reverts to what we used to be.”
__________
Most of Camp David’s staff was still in bed; Matt had to admit that they’d adapted with admirable speed to having a motley crew of human knuckle-draggers and literal fucking aliens plonked down amongst them. But now it was early morning and Toke was hungry. If he was an asshole, he’d rouse one of the staff to assist in that but he’d rather slice off a toe rather than bother some hard-working person just to make him something to eat. Thus he headed for the kitchen to rustle up some grub for himself.
As he walked through the lounge, which was fast becoming the go-to point for everyone, he saw Kexal, the other udhyr, standing in front of the windows looking out over the wintry scene outside. The massive alien’s head just brushed against the auburn-colored wooden rafters that stretched upwards to form the roof overhead.
“Morning,” said Matt, trying to keep it casual. He’d never spoken much with the planetologist.
“Good morning, Matt!” replied the big alien, with enthusiasm. “I was just in the midst of getting my feel.”
The statement brought the Marine up short. “Feel?”
In response Kexal motioned him over with one of his lower arms. Matt had picked up enough alien social cues to know that such a gesture was intended as something more intimate. He stepped up beside the udhyr, who then proceeded to steer him around in front of him using his big upper arms.
He looked out over the wintry scene. Dawn was just starting, and the sun was beginning to peek over the leafless trees. “Okay, what am I looking or, should I say, feeling for?” he asked.
“The voice of your planet,” replied Kexal. “Being a planetologist is indeed a matter of knowing about weather patterns, about how the types of water, methane, and carbon dioxide ice react under various temperatures and pressures, of how a planet’s entire atmosphere changes when life is present. But there is also this.” He pointed with one big, three-fingered mitt out the windows in front of them both. “If you simply allow it, this planet can speak to you. Those in my profession call it getting the ‘feel’ of a planet. It may sound strange and mystic, but…I am getting my feel.”
That made Matt ruminate on his own view of his planet. Up until now, as far as he was concerned, it was just…there. “So, what kind of ‘feel’ are you getting thus far?”
“This place is wonderful, a lovely oasis. It welcomes me and my colleagues. This is a bastion of life in the midst of an unfeeling dark, much like other life-bearing worlds we’ve encountered…all too infrequently, sad to say.”
“So you’re saying we should treasure this planet?” Matt smiled. “I sure can’t argue with you there. We are trying to be more appreciative of it.”
“Indeed.”
The pair watched the sunrise in pleasant silence for a few minutes, until Matt’s stomach growled again. “All right,” he said. “This is nice getting our feel and all, but I gotta eat something. You hungry?”
“I could consume something.”
“Good, because I’m fuckin’ starving. Follow me.”
He led the big alien through to the kitchen. Thanks to heroic efforts by Dhuz and Mouquon back when they were sequestered in Cheyenne Mountain and then by efforts by those two and Zawahir in the last few days, all possible poisonous or allergic foods had been removed from the premises. That did limit the meals available, but as long as he didn’t have to eat it out of a pouch Matt was content.
He opened the fridge, surveying the contents. “I was just gonna do a sandwich. You want one?”
The udhyr sat at the nearby table; both of the big aliens had long ago forsaken chairs and simply sat on the floor. They claimed it was just as comfortable, and Matt for one was not going to press them on the matter. “Yes, I would like a ‘sandwich’. If it’s not too much trouble.”
Matt scanned the fridge interior. “No trouble at all. Okay, bread, we got.” He pulled a loaf out of the fridge; it had confused him the first time he’d seen it stored like that, since he’d grown up in northern, drier climes. But even in mid-winter this was a humid climate and it was way too easy for bread to go all moldy far too quickly. “Now all we need is filling…” His eyes lit on a big tub and he let out a little ‘ah!’ of pleasure. “Pimento.”
“Pimento?”
With reverence, Matt removed the tub from the fridge and set it on the counter next to the bread. “It’s a cheese-and-pepper spread. They call it the caviar of the South. I got addicted to this stuff back during my basic training days.” He shut the fridge, opened the upper cabinets, and was again pleased to see plates right where he expected them. He took down two.
Martinez strolled into the kitchen as he stretched his arms over his head. He was clad in sweatpants and a hoodie. “Morning, folks. Nothing like a nice little 5k to get the blood flowing in the morning.”
Kexal clicked his mandibles in puzzlement. “Five Kay?”
“Five-kilometer jog. Gotta keep fit, my man. Otherwise Sarge is gonna come back from his deployment and kick our asses.” The corporal’s eyes lit upon the foodstuffs laid out on the counter next to the fridge. “Hmm, breakfast?”
“Just pimento sandwiches,” said Matt as he took out another plate. “You want one?” It was a bit of a trick question; if you ask a soldier if he wants something to eat, the answer was always ‘yes’.
Martinez did not disappoint. “Oh hell yes. Not quite breakfast food, but I’ve for sure eaten way worse way earlier in the morning.”
“Vomlet?”
The corporal shuddered. “Shit man, I somehow wound up with one of those once in spite of it being way out of date. Nothing but a solid orange brick of nastiness, even with the salsa added to it. Are you tryin’ to give me PTSD?”
Matt pulled out a drawer and found a convenient knife. He began laying out the sandwich makings on each plate. “Could be worse. Could be the dreaded Four Fingers of Death.”
“Oof, I only heard about those. Were they bad as they say?”
“Oh, yes, they were,” replied Matt.
“Four Fingers of Death?” asked Kexal.
“Hot dogs,” replied Matt. “Um…little sausages. Ground-up meat, put it in a long casing, boil it or steam it or smoke it. It’ll last for a long time.”
“Ah!” The giant alien looked pleased…at least, Matt was pretty sure he looked pleased. “We have a similar cuisine involving smoked fish, ground up and molded into cakes.”
“Interesting. Then you should know that it should be a no-brainer to make good hot dogs. I mean, go to any ball game and you’ll see ‘em getting wolfed down by the ton. And yet, somehow, someway, Uncle Sam figured out how to screw up damn hot dogs. Four to a pack, and it was the nastiest shit you’ve ever ate.” He held up a hand, showing his fingers held together. “Hence the Four Fingers of Death.”
Kexal let out a pleased click as Matt continued assembling the sandwiches. “I really do feel like I’m getting a better feeling for human society.”
“It’s a very weird and small cross-section of human society,” said Martinez as he seated himself at the table. “We need to get this guy out to Yosemite or, or even better Yellowstone. I was out in Yellowstone once as a kid, it’s really damn cool. He needs to see some proper scenery. Or hell, just drop him into Times Square to chat with the locals.”
“We will do so, once we’re sure that the rest of humanity hasn’t lost its collective shit,” Matt replied. He finished putting the top slice of bread on each sandwich, then turned and fixed the two at the table with a gimlet eye. “Now. We have two important questions to answer. Crusts on or off?”
Martinez blinked, then responded. “Crusts on! Hell, I would always make sure to get the heel when I was a kid.”
“You’re a man after my own heart, Martinez. Kexal?”
“Um, as long as there are no allergens, then I will also go crust on?”
“Good. Next important question. Horizontal or diagonal cut?” Matt hovered the knife over one sandwich, showing each potential slice.
Martinez opted for horizontal, while Kexal requested diagonal. Matt cut each sandwich as requested, then placed each one in front of its recipient with the appropriate regal air. He then took his own, uncut sandwich and sat at the table.
“You don’t cut yours?” asked Martinez.
“Nope. That’s because I’m a savage.” Matt held the corporal’s eyes while he took a big bite out of his own uncut sandwich.
They all munched happily for a few minutes…right up until the alarm went off.
__________
“…and so I am humbly thankful to receive this honorarium on behalf of my crew and all of the Coalition…”
Milton figured that he had the easier job; just stand there and get across the message of ‘if you bum-rush this little blue-scaled person, you will die, and it will hurt the entire time’. He didn’t envy Captain Sadaf her newfound position as Representative Of All Of Alien-Kind, but then again he’d always been more of a wallflower-type anyway in spite of his impressive size. How he’d landed a dreamboat like Teresa was still a mystery for the ages. Although, if he was honest, she had approached him rather than the other way around.
He smiled internally at the memory of her walking up to him at the Sadie Hawkins’ dance and asking if he wanted to go for a spin on the dance floor. Something in her smile and direct gaze had awakened a more confident version of himself, and he’d accepted her request with the requisite gravity.
However it had happened, he now had a family. A wonderful wife and a son, the apple of his eye. But that wasn’t enough. He and Teresa were working hard on adding a daughter to the mix. If it turned out to be another son he wouldn’t be put out, but in his heart of hearts he wanted it to be a daughter. Just so he could spoil her rotten. But then again, if the Breakers arrived, whatever sex his next child turned out to be might be irrelevant.
Milton stopped his woolgathering and focused back on his job. Thus far his earpiece was silent save for periodic check-ins, which was good. No news was good news, after all.
Beside him, Sergeant Shaw constantly scanned the skies. That was fine, since Milton was busy scanning the people arrayed before him. Most of them were older blue-hairs who he could take with a pinky finger, but you never knew. Even an old person could wield a knife with deadly intent.
“…you must understand, we never intended to be here. It was sheer dumb fate that landed us in your, if I’m honest, quite generous lap. I understand that there is, amongst you humans, a lot of concern that we did not approach you directly. But I would invite you to look at it from our point of view. We had fragments, a few little transmissions and video images without context. We had no idea if you would respond to our presence with reflexive hostility. We were only here to gather data, to determine if a follow-up First Contact fleet would be welcomed.”
Sadaf paused and shook her head, a gesture she’d picked up from her time amongst humans. “As you well know, we were not given such a chance. But thankfully things have worked out well in spite of those circumstances…”
Milton’s forehead wrinkled as he heard a weird noise. It sounded a bit like ripping cloth, descending in tone. He reached up towards his ear to ask his team if they heard it as well…
Shaw straightened up, looking like a navy-blue wall of flesh. “INCOMING!” he bawled, just before lunging towards Sadaf at the podium.
The agent suddenly realized the source of that noise. “EVERYBODY DOWN!” he yelled in return as he threw himself at a few VIPs seated near him on the dais.
The huge sergeant simply yeeted the diminutive captain off towards the far end of the dais, before throwing his own considerable bulk at the other VIPs off to the other side.
Then the entire world seemed to explode. Milton’s ears just shut down at the resulting noise. After a moment, he picked himself up and looked over towards his principal, his ears ringing. He knew people were shouting, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.
The small alien was out at the perimeter of the blast, and as she got to her feet she patted herself down in an automatic maneuver that Milton knew very well. She looked up, met his eyes, and gave him a thumbs-up.
“One thing gone right, at least,” he muttered to himself as he hauled himself upright. Okay, damage check…legs okay, feet fine…get moving, you asshole, get to your principal, keep her safe. As he lurched forward, he realized his right arm wasn’t moving properly.
He looked down.
Oh.
His right arm was gone below the elbow.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Am I supposed to learn to shoot left-handed now?”
Then he realized there was quite a bit of blood streaming out of his new stump…maybe he should sit this one out?
No.
Fuck that.
He was going to reach his principal, if nothing else he’d act as a meat shield. As he continued his determined lurching, in some distant corner of Milton’s mind he wished he could have given his beloved Johnny a little sister to torment.
Someone tackled him to the ground, and he performed an automatic hip-throw before jamming his still-existing left forearm across the throat of a terrified…wait, this was just a kid.
“MEDIC!” screamed the kid. “I’m a MEDIC!”
“What…oh.” Milton looked up into the astonished face of Captain Sadaf; he’d managed to made it all the way to her. “She okay?”
“SHE’S FINE!” yelled someone else.
Then another thought came into his adrenaline-fueled brain. “SHAW!” he all but screamed, looking back towards where the sergeant had been before this whole horrible business had kicked off.
What he saw was a big man, clad in navy blue, sprawled over several blue-haired gentry who looked appropriately terrified. And that big man’s leg ended just below his left knee, with blood streaming out of it.

I was transcribing for my music pleasure Mack the Knife from Sonny Rollins (Saxophone Colossus album). When I listen Spotify's version the tune starts from C#. From any other source (and that's indeed the original) like Tidal or YouTube it starts from D. Any idea what's the reason?

As part of my last semester of English class, I wanted to give my teacher a little trip into the teenage minds of the United States. Since our textbooks aren't the newest anyway, and Tyler was still 18 or so at the time of Goblin (I think I got a little confused with the age), I thought this would probably give this album the best opportunity. It's clear that I didn't include some obvious passages in Tron Cat, but he probably listened to the album himself for that.
He liked the music.
Now the real professionals can have fun with the essay...
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Goblin (2011) by Tyler, the Creator
Tyler, The Creator, also known as Tyler Okonma is a US-hip-hop artist, who already entered the branch at a very young age and is know world famous for works like Flower Boy or IGOR. One detail in his albums, which made him so famous is his shifting between different, well-structured personalities, who all tell different stories. But his origin where he began is lesser known or recognized, even by the best informed hip-hop-heads in the scene. Tyler’s first mixtape “Bastard” was published in 2009, when he was just 17 and already recorded, when he turned 16/17. His second album “Goblin”, the follow-up story to “Bastard” was published roundabout 2 years later. During the recording sessions, Okonma was around 18-19 years old. “Goblin” became his debut studio album and earned the MTV Music Award for “Best new Artist” in 2011. In retrospect, many fans say, that this is not his best album due to the fact, that he wasn’t that good at making music at that time, but I think that’s the reason why the album shouldn’t be ignored. All tracks are only written and produced by Tyler himself. He was the universal mind behind his projects and led all by himself – something not many artists do today.
The Album contains 15 Tracks plus 3 additional bonus tracks. The story sets in after the first therapy session, Tyler had with Dr. TC who is the school psychiatrist. Tyler was sentenced for multiple sessions, the first one being told in “Bastard” and the second one now in “Goblin”. Dr. TC can be recognized by his low pitched voice. Tyler himself is performing as three different persons in this album: Tyler, Wolf and Sam. Context to them is given during the second track “Yonkers”. Who also can be heard on the album are members from Tyler’s Gang Odd Future Wolf Gang (better known as Odd Future or short OF) Frank Ocean, Hodgy, Jasper, Taco, Domo Genisis and Mike G.

Track No.01 – Goblin

Goblin is the title track for the Album and leads us into the therapy by a short monolog of Dr. TC, saying “You wouldn't do that Tyler, kill yourself or anyone. You don't even have the balls to begin with. What you need is me, someone to talk to, uh, it's been a while since our last session. So, tell me what's been going on”.
Tyler starts his verse with very aggressive wording, paired with silent and long stretched melodies, which are very contrary to his emphasis. “I'm not a fucking role model. I'm a 19-year-old fucking emotional coaster with pipe dreams” gives us the listener an impression on how Tyler portrays himself to Dr. TC and other people. With lines like “The devil doesn't wear Prada, I'm clearly in a fucking white tee” he states very clearly, that he himself sees his person as bad and harmful, like the devil.
After his rap part, Okonma and Dr. TC have a short dialogue, in which Tyler questions his appearance. "Okay, you guys caught me, I'm not a fucking rapist or serial killer, I lied". Dr. TC answers with "You know, you just want attention, you'll be fine" and Tyler says "I try too hard, huh?" on what Dr. TC ends with "No, you don't". Dr. TC now asks Tyler how his trip to New York went, which leads us to the next Track.

Track No.02 – Yonkers

Yonkers is a city in the US state of New York. It often refers to itself as being the founding city for golfclubs in the USA. The track portrays the clash between him and Wolf. Tyler often told Dr. TC, that he wants to kill himself and Wolf, but as we heard in the intro track Goblin, Dr. TC thinks, that Tyler is not brave enough to kill himself or anyone else. Also Sam, the third person that is mentioned in this Song want’s to kill Wolf too for stealing a girl he had an eye on, underlining Wolf’s aggressive appearance we have in this track, because it’s only performed through Wolf’s perspective. “I'm Wolf, Tyler put this fuckin' knife in my hand. I'm Wolf, Ace gon' put that fuckin' hole in my head”. Wolf can be seen in the whole album as the cool and very aggressive guy, who is often at the skatepark, talking about his insanity and hurting or killing people.
“This ain't no V. Tech shit, or Columbine, but after bowling, I went home for some damn Adventure Time” is referencing to the famous Virginia Tech shooting and Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine with Wolf telling, that he is potentially build the same to go “bowling”. Other lines like “stab Bruno Mars in his goddamn esophagus and won't stop until the cops come in” follow the same shock effect. Wolf calls himself a “walkin' paradox, no, I'm not” which itself is again a paradox. He also has a lack of emotional empathy and tells his friend Syd to shut up and meet his therapist, because he is good at listening – a very important line for the later plot. “Jesus called, he said he's sick of the disses. I told him to quit bitchin', this isn't a fuckin' hotline” reveals Tyler’s religious believes, because all members of Odd Future are atheists, except for Frank Ocean.
With this track, Tyler earned the MTV Music Award for “Best new Artist” in 2011. The song caused a lot for attention for his music video where Tyler can be seen vomiting and eating a living cockroach.

Track No.03 – Radicals

Radicals displays Tyler’s “fuck everything”-mentality with himself turning himself into an extremely radical person, which is no wonder after we heard the first two tracks of the album. But this Radicals is going one step further.
The Track begins with the following disclaimer: “Random disclaimer! Hey, don't do anything that I say in this song, okay? It's fucking fiction! If anything happens, don't fucking blame me White America, fuck Bill O'Reilly”. Tyler is again referencing to the Columbine shooting, where Bill O'Reilly, a famous FOX News Reporter at that time, blamed musicians like Marylin Manson for radicalism and school shootings in the youth. Marylin Manson was also interviewed by Michael Moore and speaks himself out against gun violence.
In the refrain Tyler is chanting the words “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school. I'm fucking radical, n*gga, I'm fucking radical” over and over again, underlining his aggressive style and building a metaphor for youth radicalism, at that time a heavily discussed topic and widespread phenomenon in the USA. With the line “I ain't got no motherfucking daddy, he ain't teach me shit. Child support ain't come, that faggot still ain't bought me anything”, Tyler is mentioning the disappearance of his father, when he was a child, a problem that will come up many times again on the album and which also shaped his career and topics, he is rapping about.
After almost four minutes of radical combat announcements, the beat, flow and topic suddenly change: “I'm not saying just to go out and do some stupid shit, commit crimes. What I'm trying to tell you is: Do what the fuck you want”. After more minutes of appeals to his listeners to be free and doing the things, they want do instead of being captured in their everyday live – a appeal that can may be interpreted as radical, Dr. TC makes an appearance again and weaves Tyler back to reality, saying “You gotta let these shits go, man. It's not making sense to you right now […] getting too old for this shit, man, you gotta grow out of it. […] You gotta look at reality, understand that shit, so you don't get caught. I'm just being real” to which Tyler answers with “N*gga, fuck you”. Dr. TC explains himself, that he just wants to help Tyler but after that the rapper gives a very “radical” statement about maturing and tells the doctor “Look, I mature day after day, nigga, you don't know shit, you're a fucking therapist”.
Tyler often spoke out against a society of forcing people to mature and instead wants to help everybody to mature by themselves instead of getting them to therapy, like he has now with Dr. TC. The track becomes a parable and gives us both extremes of Tyler by first showing his one radical site, which tells the listener to kill people and don’t care about school but then turning into a whole new radical, that gets more content about maturing and adolescence for US teens, written by a teen himself, which makes the track quite impressive and very self-reflective about Tyler’s actions.

Track No.04 – She

She is the most known track of the album, that Tyler made, this time together with his friend Frank Ocean.
In the first verse, Frank tells us a story about a new girl, that moved on the block, called Raquel and that he fell into a relationship with her, but suddenly things change. This night, when Frank slept at her place, he saw a stalker, that somehow got into the room and sliced his back with a ninja sword. “A sword sliced the air, I pulled out the na-na. Rolled off the bed, then shot back, pow-pow”. Frank shoots back with his glock, but didn’t hit him, only to see him run away like: “Looked out the glass, seen him sprintin' on the grass: A real ninja, with the blade and the mask”. “If that's your ex, you should probably own a pistol” is the last advice, that Frank can give to Raquel before he ends his verse.
“The blinds wide open so he can see you in the dark when you're sleepin'! […] You're sleeping alone in bed, but check your window. He's at your window!” is sung by Frank in the refrain. It’s an urgent request to Raquel to take care of herself, because a stalker could be dangerous for her. But let the stalker himself talk.
The second verse now is shared from Wolf’s perspective. With “Night light hits off, turnin' kisses to bites. I'm a down to Earth n*gga with intentions that's right” Tyler introduces us to the scene, his imagination what is happening, when no one is at her place, giving a small hint to the next track Transylvania. He also asks the girl to go out with him to the lake, also a hint to the eleventh track Analog, where he prepares a meetup with the girl at the mentioned lake.
In the third verse, the track reaches its highlight. The line “One, two; you're the girl that I want. Three, four, five, six, seven – shit. Eight is the bullets if you say no after all this” is a pretaste of what will happen with Raquel if she declines Wolf’s offer. Tyler uses one of his most famous personal stylistic devices by starting with a harmless nursery rhyme and mixing it with gruesome and dark themes like necrophilia in lines like “I just wanna drag your lifeless body to the forest and fornicate with it, but that's because I'm in love with you, cunt”, which then again switch up to Wolf, expressing his more human side and talking about an interpersonal relationship, that he want’s to build up with the girl.
The second and third verse underline the “paradox”, that wolf called himself by unforeseen switches between falling in love with Raquel but then turning insane and fantasizing about killing her just to eventually turn back to thoughts about love and a relationship.

Track No.05 – Transylvania

Now after all that intense of a storytelling, Wolf is comparing himself to Dracula in the track Transylvania. With lines like “I’m Dracula, bitch” and “'Til I grab them throats and start smacking them shits” Wolf is comparing his aggressions to the prince of darkness, who also kidnapped women in his earlier stories. “She keeps sending me garlic! How many times I gotta tell her I’m allergic? ” is another detail about vampires, in which he sees as a parallel to himself. “I don’t want a bride, I just want bone marrow” an allusion to Bram Stokers original novel where Dracula kept three female vampires in his castle called Brides of Dracula.

Track No.06 – Nightmare

After these insane outriggers by Wolf, we come back to the therapy and Dr. TC asks Tyler, which Problems he has and how his life is going downhill now. The Track starts with “So, you tell me that everything just isn't going well. Well, first off...” by Dr. TC. A very important detail here is, the beginning of the second sentence, which is also spoken by Dr. TC (a hint for the later plot) and immediately leads to Tyler’s first verse.
In lines like “My only problem is death” he falls into existentialistic dilemmas and reveals his worst fears to Dr. TC. “Fuck heaven, I ain't showing no religion respect” is another harsh statement about Tyler’s atheistic lifestyle and beliefs. “When I was younger, I would smile a lot. I'm getting older, getting bolder, but a wiser top. Now I'm drunk driving, lap's full of Budweiser tops. Life is a movie and you're just a prop”. Tyler is less and less caring for the people around him and starts losing control over his moral, which he had back then, when he was younger and much happier. In “Love? I don't get none, that's why I'm so hostile to the kids that get some. My father called me to tell me he loved me - I'd have a better chance of getting Taylor Swift to fuck me " Tyler is trying to explain his hostility against the other kids he hangs with and gives an ridiculous example, how unlikely it is, that his father would get in contact with him. During therapy conversations, Tyler often refers to both these problems, his depression and the loose of his father.
Dr. TC is working as a waking mechanism for Tyler to question himself, building up a more and more close up relation between them. “Ignorant as fuck, offend people for the hell of it, because I am the devil, fucker, get on my level” is now a correlation to the heaven mention in the beginning, presenting how he is only moving in the extreme ends that the religious afterlife offers and mocking them. One of the most depressing line in the track is “I won't feel the feelings I be feeling when I'm sobered up”, when you think about the fact, that he was just becoming an adult at this time and still has his life ahead of him. “One ear I got kids screaming, ‘O.F. is the best’. The other ear I got Tron Cat, asking where the bullets and the bombs at so I can kill these levels of stress, shit” OF a reference for his hip hop group Odd Future and Tron Cat is a new introduced inner voice of Tyler, which tells him to go insane like Wolf does by asking Tyler like a hypothetical question about arming himself with weapons and bombs. Tron Cat will be introduced more in the following track Tron Cat.
Tyler ends his third verse with “Ain't kill myself yet, and I already want my life back”. He wants to go back to the life he originally had without all the interviews, shows etc. and just enjoy being a kid so his old life is metaphorically “dead” which goes along with wanting to kill himself as well. He starts to lose control again and Dr. TC asks him what happened, to which Tyler answers with “it's like I'm a different person at times. Sometimes I'm fucking mad, sometimes I'm not. It's like I got a fucking voice in my head telling me to do all this fucked up shit, man. He tells me to do this shit, that I don't wanna fucking do”. Dr. TC asks for the person’s name and Tyler answers with “Tron Cat” which just leads us to the next track.

Track No.07 – Tron Cat

The seventh track of the album gives us a deep look into the behaviour of Tron Cat. The term cat is very important for the beginning of the track because Tron Cat’s name is an oxymoron, paradox like Tyler mentioned his whole personality is, in Radicals.
The Track starts with an innocent la-la singing and abruptly switches into a deep screaming. “You got a fucking death wish? I'm a genie, it'll get done. Nice to meet you, but it's more pleasant to eat you” are just the harmless thoughts by Tron Cat. Which power he possesses can be heard in the line “I'm Tyler, The Creature”, which shows, that Tron Cat has the ability to control Tyler’s whole person and not just talk into his thoughts as Tyler said in Nightmare. He is a real problem for Tylers sanity and brings up extreme thoughts about violence and Harassment.
“What the fuck? I... I'm speechless […] Shit, Tyler, you're gonna need some help” is Dr. TCs reaction to Tron Cat’s introduction in the therapy. I don’t want to get too deep into Tron Cat’s thoughts will leave it to each himself to listen to this track. Dr. TC moves on to the next topic and asks Tyler the following question: “fuck it, different subject. How's that girl you were telling me about?”. Yes we go back to Raquel, the girl we already know from the track She.

Track No.08 – Her

In this track, we see Tyler falling back in this paradox and bipolar behaviour, with now becoming harmless again after his very extreme Incendiary-like revelation.
It’s the first time, that Tyler shows real affection for a girl. Throughout the whole track the use of repetition as a stylistic device, gives the verses a constant flow, starting over and over with the line “it’s this girl!”, showing how euphoric he is, when he talks about Raquel. “We talk every night, she cry to me about her guy”, refers to Frank, who is currently in a relationship with her. As the track moves on we find out, that he has much contact to her on Facebook and is video chatting with her, very common in his age and that Tyler also feels invited to her “world of privacy” when chatting with Raquel. When rapping “I see her in class. Not really, two doors down, but anytime that I pass to take a piss in a stall, I picture us in the hall”, Tyler is letting his imagination run free and is imagining himself with her in the school, they both visit. Another line like “I know, to y'all, I come off as rough; but I'm the nicest to her and I just want to concur, a relation. I want the cheesy dates at the movies and stupid walks at the beach”, is again an allusion to Tylers alter egos and his bipolar disorder, the conflict with Tron Cat.
We find out that the relationship between Raquel and Frank, who he is now calling “Mr. Faggot” isn’t going very well: “Things are looking great […] Last time we talked, she said that her relationship was rocky. Now that Mr. Faggot's gone, there's no one that can stop me” but our tragic protagonist is not going to fulfil his wishes of love, because as the track moves on, Tyler tells us “Next day, metro's taking me home. I see her in the cut at Wendy's, she's not alone. Who's that guy? Wait, why the fuck he 'bout to kiss her? Come to find out, she got back with her n*gga.“

Track No.09 – Sandwitches

The Track Sandwitches is not really that important for the storyline between Tyler and his therapist Dr. TC, but gives the listener a deeper look inside the hard rap style of his gang Odd Future, performing together with is long-time friend and gang member Hodgy, who is now the second heard feature on the album after Frank Ocean.

Track No.10 – Fish

The title of the track is an extended metaphor which compares picking up girls with fishing, which possibly derived from the popular “many fish in the sea” metaphor. Tyler expresses his love and tension but also different problems, he has with “annoying women”.

Track No.11 – Analog

Coming back to the story, as teased in the track She, Tyler is now inviting the girl Raquel, about who he is gushing so much in Her, and wants to share a good time with her, talking about, what they could do, if she is getting along with him and drops Frank for him.
“We could count the shooting stars, well could you meet me by the lake? Summer never has to end with me” is a very catchy description of how they can spend their summer time together, but Tyler is seemingly being fine with this style. It differs extremely from the other other tracks and is again pointing to his extreme personality disorder, making the listener uncomfortable considering how it can drag others into dangerous situations with its mood swings.
In the first verse, we got Tyler’s friend Hodgy, bragging about his girl and how they spend the, already teased “never ending summer” together. He gives a short hint into this summer time with the line “I'm give it to her, she wants that summer time. I'm give it like no other cause she knows I'm hers. Damn right she's mine, we both know it. So when we separate everything fine, her phone ringin' in her purse” and calling himself “her n*gga, n*gga”. Following to that, Hodgy goes shopping and clubbing at Venice Beach and transitions over into the hook, which is sung by Tyler again. Tylers verse fell short in this track, only rapping four bars, that give us a very unsettling feeling again.
“I packed a couple sandwiches inside that basket”, yes Tyler prepared a package for a nice day at the lake but mystery unfolds, after he says “brought some extra towels if anyone was asking”, which might or might not be a hint on, what Tron Cat is planning to do with the girl, when they meet at the lake. After that, Tyler falls back into his lovely imagination and wants to do something with the girl, that’s “beyond what we both can imagine”. The track ends with a repetitive outro of Tyler saying “Watch the sunset, we can watch the sunset” and then closing the track with the words “Look, you know, the water's pretty deep, let's go to sleep”. A happy or not so happy ending to his date at the Lake.

Track No.12 – B.S.D.

B.S.D. features both fellow Odd Future members Jasper and Taco, or as Jasper told us in the intro: “Three icy ass n*ggas from Odd Future doin' some crazy shit” and yes “By the way, we do punch bitches”.
Like Sandwitches and Fish, B.S.D. doesn’t suit the story of Goblin that much and is rather a gate to the mind of Odd Future’s mindset and gets the young teens flexing with money and jewellery in lines like “See my neck? Iced the fuck out. I'm getting money, n*gga”.
In the outro, the track gets a twist again. The beat stops and we hear Jasper and Taco getting shot and killed by Tyler, which leads us just to the next and maybe most important track of the album.

Track No.13 – Window

Now we get to the retarding momentum. Dr. TC introduces us into the Track Window with the words “Tyler, we, ah, I know it's short notice, but I brought all your friends here. For some reason, I couldn't get a hold of Taco and Jasper, but I just brought all your friends here to talk to you, because they're really worried about you I thought it would be better if, they could talk to you”. the mention of Taco and Jasper refers of course to the end of B.S.D. where Tyler kills his two Odd Future friends, which is why they could not be invited by Dr. TC now. Everyone of Tyler’s friends opens up a “window” to their lives, show Tyler what is important to them and try to convince them of their ideas to move on. The track is with 8 minutes the longest track on the album and I think the best way to make yourself a picture from it is by listening to the album by yourself, but I just want to make a short personal comment about this track, because it’s one of the best storytelling tracks I’ve ever heard and the fact that these people were just my age when doing this is very impressive.
I want to give short summaries about everybody’s verse on this track, starting with Domo Genisis. “It was all a dream, I used to read ‘Complex’ magazines” is the starting line in his verse. He talks very extensively about consuming weed and fyling from city to city, asking the listener “Where we at? We on top of the world, where we at?”
Frank Ocean’s introduction into his part is just perfect. “And five minutes from suicide, I biked it to the park” mentions his suicidal thoughts after suffering through hurricane Katrina and how Odd Future saved his life, by giving him a new meaning and gang to be around him, possibly teasing to Tyler, that Frank almost went exactly the same way, Tyler want’s to now and stop him from doing so. “All was gray, all was gray, Frankie had the blues in fact […] Teenage males, couldn't tell I was going through it” refers to his comeback to New Orleans after the strike of hurricane Katrina and finding his home and studio completely destroyed with nothing left to use from. Frank also has answer to Domo’s question “where we at”, which he replies to with “Deep inside the ear canals of Bill O'Reilly's daughter, that's where I'm at” again hinting to the FOX reporter and now telling, that his own daughter is listening to the music, he says is motivating gun violence and terrorism. After that he ends his verse with the same question as Domo, asking his gang “Now, where we at? Where we at? Wolf Gang, where we at?”
The third verse, now by Hodgy, alludes to the maturing of Odd Future “No longer, but we were in premature, immature” and how he is also consuming grass for a particular reason: “Hell yeah, I smoke weed 'cause I like to go green”. Hodgy again ends his part with the question “Where we at? Where we at?” and answers it with “We on top of the world, on top of the world”.
Mike G explains to Tyler how far they have now made it with Odd Future. "And too often they think that they could stop me. Now every show we makin' half a Maserati". Mike sees a change in his life, how the enemies of the past can now only marvel at the success Tyler and his group have to offer. Mike sees a destiny in the fact that he now sees everything in front of him that they told him then he would never have, confirming Hodgy's statement that they are now on top of the world, having reached their horizon. "Now it's gold Rolex's if they try to clock me" is of course a pun on watches and the Rolex brand, which generally stands for high wealth. "They say life switches pace when you got shit made. So I'm just tryna get paid, don't you remember the days when your dreams were the only thing that kept you sane?" Mike G reminds Tyler of the hard times when dreams were the only thing that kept you sane, to keep going no matter what. But Tyler has to realize that they've finally managed to get out of the muck of yesteryear, and so Mike G also ends his verse by saying "Where we at, n*gga? Where we at, n*gga? Uh, we on top of the world, on top of the world".
Now follows Tyler’s part and we get feedback on how well his friends influenced him on his depression and suicidal thoughts but signs are not looking good for our protagonist. “Where the fuck we at, man? Y'all niggas don't know me, huh. Where we at?” mocks the question of before and sounds more serious, than his friends because he actually wants to know, where he is right now. His friends don't know him and Tyler, as you could hear at the beginning, is afraid to open up and as he now gradually completes the final transitions to his total decline into madness in his part. “Down to fucking Earth, huh? Fuck everybody” is his reaction to his friends making irrational, unrealistic, unreasonable and impractical verses that don’t suit him. With “My window is a book, and I'm a fucking crook. Stealing phones to call home, but the line is off the hook” Tyler openly talks about his loose of contact with his family and how everybody can watch his emotional downfall if he wants to. “Look, you can't stop me, I'm going full Monty. Fuck that, I'm Hitler, everyone's a fucking Nazi” is a very raw and cynical comparison on the base, that everybody is just his follower. “When I'm on that stage, I feel important. A whole fucking assortment of children that's taking Ritalin because the teacher said that the therapist wasn't feeling him. You gotta be fucking kidding me”. Tyler speaks openly, as he did in Goblin, about the fact that only the stage makes him happy and that he has become addicted to Ritalin in the meantime - another tragic case to be despised at such a young age. “In school, I was a zero, now I'm every boy's hero, and they fear it. You can hear it when that little fuck is reciting my lyrics” describes the transition Tyler made over the years, how everybody turned in and stopped hating him for his creative ambitions but all that is not enough and so the tragic highlight begins with words “Cheer it, dead parents everywhere, it's smelling like teen spirit. Okay, fuck it, Elvis has left the building”.
After this, a 100 second misery follows, how Tyler now shoots all his friends to death and after his murderous freakout is beckoned back to reality by Dr.TC and only now becomes aware of his deeds and suffers an emotional breakdown - all this accompanied by the constantly repeating instrumental in the background, which in my opinion is the crucial point to complete this audio-visual environment. Dr. TC tries to calm him down and make him feel comfortable again: “You're in your good space with me. We'll figure all of this out. You don't have to worry about a thing” and so the story of Window comes to an end.

Track No.14 – AU79

AU79 is the first instrumental track on the album. AU is the short form for gold in the periodic table and 79 is the number of protons. This name gives us a hint for the last track Golden and puts a space between the events of Window and the end of the therapy session.

Track No.15 – Golden

In Golden, we can hear one last dialogue between Dr. TC and Tyler to end the session and with it the album. Dr. TC starts in the track with “Tyler, you... obviously have some fucking problems and, this— This is... This is the end of this session. Let's... Anything else you've gotta say?” to which Tyler answers with many different problems, which he has addressed on his journey, such as his gang.
“My friends are turning into opposites, because my life is turning into opposite” is a short summary on his relationship to his friends and how it changed over time. Tyler says “I'm missing my only friend” and Dr. TC answers with “You have everyone around you. You have thirty meetings a day. I don't see what it is. I mean, you— you act like you don't have anyone to talk to. I'm here for you. I'm your friend” and is visibly confused by the words of his patient, because he can’t get himself into his situation and so tension starts to rise. Tyler begins to question about his mother, why she didn’t abort him and we had to become the self-called “Bastard”, that he is today, but Dr. TC doesn’t know what to answer and so The dialogue between TC and Tyler is getting more and more strained. TC tries to tell Tyler, that he is living the time of his life and that he wishes to be that free in his age. Tyler just answers with “Fuck that, fuck all this shit!” and “You don’t help me with shit! I killed my fucking friends”. Dr. TC calls in security and Tyler yells, that he isn’t going insane but that he morphed into a table “And I’m not even human, I’m a body-shaped demon” brings us back to the beginning of the album, where Tyler already told us, that he can be compared to Satan. After a bit of mess between Tyler, the security and a nurse who gives him “two doses” it finally happens:
Dr. TC causes the house of cards to collapse. He explains the whole situation to Tyler. Dr. TC - our accompanying psychiatrist; Tron Cat - Tyler's crazy alter ego; Wolf Haley - Tyler's best friend with a tendency to snap, who Tyler wanted to kill; and Sam - Tyler's other friend, who was very shy and reserved, but had murder fantasies about Wolf: None of them are real. “The person that gave a fuck was me. See, you’re not going crazy... It’s me, I’m your best friend, Tyler. I know everything. I know everything about you. You’ve been helping yourself this whole time. Your friends? They’re just figments of your imagination. Dr. TC... See, Tyler, I’m your conscience. I’m Tron Cat... I’m Sam... I’m Wolf Haley...” After this, the case about Dr. TC, or better Tyler’s Conscience is closed, the album ends with a Cliff-hanger and the story of Goblin is over.
This plot was often teased during the album, for example in tracks like Yonkers, where Tyler tells his friend Syd, to shut up but then says, that he knows a great listener, his therapist, which was again a paradox move by Tyler. Also, in Nightmare Dr. TC says that “everything isn’t just going well”, just to then immediately transfer over to Tyler’s rap part without even having a real transition – a hint for, how Tyler is switching through his personalities all the time.

Conclusion

Goblin is the continuation of a unique story of a teenager who is in the process of finding his place in the world and has to deal with personality disorders, problems at home, betrayal and depression at an early age. We observe an eternal struggle of suffering, which reminds us again and again what consequences of such mental illnesses can bring to social participation. Songs like She, Her, and Analog provide unique storytelling about Tyler’s love while Yonkers, Transylvania, and Tron Cat prove how easily Tyler can empathize with and flesh out the personas of strangers.
Tyler was an early talent at both writing and producing music, as the entire album was also produced entirely by himself. Not only that Tyler himself sets here a highlight in his career, also his friends like Frank Ocean or Hodgy prove themselves on this album with sophisticated lines and elaborate stories, which are described on a duration of over an hour. Goblin works almost like a radio play and gave many young people in the U.S. at the time a lot of courage to become creative themselves and to prove his artistic creativity. Therefore, especially young artists like Tyler, The Creator should also be presented more strongly on the subject of youth and adolscence to the students to strengthen their courage to create something in the world and pursue their dreams. Even if Tyler is perhaps no longer as convinced of this album as he once was and also many fans nowadays give the tracks rather a rejection, it is nevertheless only fair to think at least once into the story of the bipolar, mentally disturbed, aggressive murder-fantasy and creative head of the young Goblin-Tyler / Dr. TC / Tron Cat / Wolf / Sam purely and also to pay respect to this work, what young creative people, with just 18 years or even younger can create.

Finished reading the series a few weeks ago and it’s stuck with me. I’m a Pink Floyd fan and was listening to this 20-min song called “Dogs” this morning. The lyrics really reminded me of Darrow’s journey so wanted to share!
Lyrics: “You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking And after a while, you can work on points for style Like the club tie, and the firm handshake A certain look in the eye and an easy smile You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to So that when they turn their backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you get older And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south Hide your head in the sand, Just another sad old man All alone and dying of cancer And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw around So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone Dragged down by the stone (stone, stone, stone, stone, stone) I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this maze? Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner And everything's done under the sun And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer Who was born in a house full of pain Who was trained not to spit in the fan Who was told what to do by the man Who was broken by trained personnel Who was fitted with collar and chain Who was given a pat on the back Who was breaking away from the pack Who was only a stranger at home Who was ground down in the end Who was found dead on the phone Who was dragged down by the stone”

When the Colt was introduced it was said to only work when it's using the original bullets. It was shown to kill a vampire like that.
After the Azazel arc they ran out of bullets so the Colt was useless against most monsters. Ruby taught Bobby how to make bullets for the Colt and they started using it again BUT
After that point they exclusively used the Colt to kill demons only. There were even episodes where they faced vampires again but didn't use the Colt and cut their head instead. So I assumed that whatever bullet they were using were meant for demon only. Made sense since Ruby had a demon killing knife and she would only know how to make demon killing runes being a demon herself.
THEN
In season 12 they kill the Alpha using Bobby's formula for demon killing bullets?? So the Colt is back to being an all (but 5) monsters killing tool again?

LPs

• Kodak Black - Pistolz & Pearlz (w EST Gee, L.O.E. Shimmy + more) [Florida Trap, Atlantic]
• Lil Durk - Almost Healed (w J. Cole, Future, 21 Savage, Kodak Black, Juice WRLD, Morgan Wallen, Alicia Keys, Rob49 & Chief Wuk) [Chicago Drill, Alamo]
• KHEA (🇦🇷) - SEROTONINA (w Tiago PZK + more) [Argentine Trap, Interscope]
• Dorrough Music & DJ Drama - Number 23 (w UGK, Shawty Lo, OJ da Juiceman, Slim Thug + more) [Southern Hip Hop]
• Mr Eazi's ChopLife SoundSystem (🇳🇬) - Chop Life Vol. 1: Mzansi Chronicles (w Moonchild Sanelly + more) *[Afrobeats, *emPawa]
• Peter Fox (🇩🇪) - Love Songs [German Rap, Warner]
• Cruz Cafuné (🇪🇸) - Me Muevo Con Dios (w Westside Gunn, BOJ + more) [Spanish Rap]
• Monaleo - Where The Flowers Don't Die [Texas Hip Hop]
• Alex Zurdo (🇵🇷) - CONXSIÓN [Latin Rap]
• Khary - A Desperate Attempt To Love Everything [Alternative Hip Hop, RI]
• Jay Worthy & Roc Marciano - Nothing Bigger Than The Program (w Bun B, Kurupt, Ab-Soul, Da$H, A$AP ANT, Kokane, A$ton Matthews & Bart Oatmeal) [Hip Hop, Griselda]
• Cookin Soul (🇪🇸) - RAW TAPES vol. 1 [Producer]
• Nonso Amadi (🇳🇬→🇨🇦) - When It Blooms (w Majid Jordan, BEAM, Zinoleesky, Tay Iwar & Tamera) [Toronto Rap, Afrobeats, UMG]
• Rory - I Thought It'd Be Different (w Ari Lennox, Jay Electronica, dvsn, DRAM, Phonte, Conway the Machine, GoldLink, James Fauntleroy, REASON, Alex Isley, reggie, Emotional Oranges, THEY. + more) [R&B]
• Carlitos Rossy (🇵🇷) - Sad Valentín [Reggaetón, Warner]
• Bliss Station (Flamingosis & Ehiorobo) - Bliss Station [East Coast Hip Hop]
• La Zowi (🇪🇸) - La Reina Del Sur [Spainish Trap]
• Dom Corleo - On My Own (w Yung Kayo + more) [Rage, PHX]
• Ethereal - Heat Death 4 (w Faye Webster + more) [Cloud Rap]
• Devito (🇷🇸) - Plava krv [Hungarian Trap]
• Rosalie. (🇩🇪) - Motherlode [Alt-R&B, Def Jam]
• Kid Quill - Good People (w T-Pain & Caye) [Feel Good Rap, Indiana]
• Khamari - A Brief Nirvana [R&B, Boston, RCA]
• Lil' Keke - 25 Summers (w B-Legit, Big K.R.I.T., 8Ball & MJG, Slim Thug, Paul Wall, Peso Peso, Big Jade + more) [Texas Rap]
• Kari Faux - REAL BITCHES DON'T DIE (w Devin the Dude, Gangsta Boo, Big K.R.I.T., Jazz Cartier, Phoelix & theMIND) [Southern Hip Hop, Neo-Soul, drink sum wtr]
• Lakim - Life's Prism [Future Beats, Tufcat]
• Duwap Kaine - Duwap So Based [Cloud Rap]
• Guvna B (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿) - The Village Is On Fire (w Ghetts + more) [UK Rap, Allo Mate]
• Daz Dillinger - Dat Nigga Daz (w Kurupt + more) [West Coast Hip Hop]
• Xanman - Barmelo Xanthony [DMV Trap]
• Portraits of Tracy - Drive Home [Emo Rap]
• Kassa Overall - Animals (w Danny Brown, Wiki, Nick Hakim, Lil B, Shabazz Palaces, Francis and the Light + more) [Jazz, Warp]
• Thelonious Martin - Season 1. Episode 5. [Beat Tape]
• Trdee - Trapped In My Bag 3 (w BabyTron, StanWill, GrindHad E, Babyfxce E, Certified Trapper, Kasher Quon + more) [Michigan Trap]
• FMB DZ - P-Rock Baby (w Icewear Vezzo, Sada Baby, BabyTron, Skilla Baby + more) [Michigan Trap]
• Suppra (🇨🇱) - EPIFANÍA [Chilean Boom Bap]
• Manu Manzo - Luna En Geminis [Latin R&B]
• Mo Thugs (Bone Thugs + friends) - Family Reunion [Midwest Hip Hop]
• Rory Fresco - Fantasy Camp (w Doe Boy & Skilla Baby) [Southern Hip Hop, New 11]
• Mr Brady & BudaMonk - Art [Boom Bap, King Tone]
• Wiardon - Road Music [Rap, Austin]
• Basi & Mikos Da Gawd - Supernova [Bay Area Rap, Text Me]
• Abby Jasmine- GROWING PAINS [Pop Rap, Cinematic]
• Migo Lee & Anti Beats - Anti Tyler [DMV Trap]
• MarijuanaXO - Black Homer [Milwaukee Trap]
• SME TaxFree & Dai Ballin - House Party [Milwaukee Trap]
• Al-Doe & Spanish Ran - Holy City Zoo (w Ab-Soul + more) [Underground Rap]
• Sleep Sinatra - P.T.G (POST TRAUMATIC GROWTH) [Griselda-core]

Deluxe

• thuy - girls like me (w Rexx Life Raj & MIN) [West Coast R&B]

EPs

• Ozuna (🇵🇷) - Afro (w Davido + more) [Latin Rap, Sony]
• Yng Lvcas (🇲🇽) - Six Jewels 23 (w Peso Pluma + more) [Corrido Tumbado]
• KayCyy & Gesaffelstein - TW2052 [Hip Hop]
• $UICIDEBOY$ - YIN YANG TAPES: Winter Season [Emo Rap, G59]
• Cochise - NO ONE IS NICE TO ME [Rap, Columbia]
• Apache (🇻🇪) - SONGO [Latin Rap]
• K CAMP - Spin the Block [Trap]
• Neurto Shorty (🇻🇪) & Chucky73 (🇩🇴) - Cartel del Caribe [Latin Trap, Rimas]
• Prok (🇪🇸) & Akapellah (🇻🇪) - 16 Millas [Latin Rap]
• Earlly Mac & Sango - MearlGo Vol. 4 [Rap]
• Hunxho - 4 Days In LA [Trap, ATL, 300]
• nascar aloe - HEY ASSHOLE! [Trap Metal, Epitaph]
• V9 (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿) - 08701 [UK Drill]
• Mannywellz - Don’t Tell Anyone (w Foggieraw) [R&B, Afrobeats]
• C.S. Armstrong - The Southwestern Legacy [R&B]
• EMT LA & Cypress Moreno - Hardest Out [West Coast Rap]
• Drippin So Pretty & Hi-C - Dio Brando [Emo Rap]
• Serane & SURF GANG - SGPM [Plugg]
• Cabra (🇵🇷) - MARTÍNEZ (w De La Ghetto + more) [Latin Alt-Rap]
• KT Foreign - Footalytics [San Diego Trap]
• Don Trip - Die Another Day [Memphis Rap]
• Joe Nora - Still Life EP [Beat Tape, FoF]
• A-F-R-O & 60 East - At The Sideshow EP (w Ras Kass) [Boom Bap]
• Manga Saint Hilare (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿) & Blay Vision (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿) - Save Yourself [Grime]
• Wee2Hard - Secret Code [Trap, ATL]
• Kickkone - Talked2GodBoutIt [Florida Trap, Jugghouse/Lava Baby]
• Goya Gumbani - When The Past Bloomed (w Pink Siifu, Lord Apex, August Fanon + more) [NYC Indie Rap]
• RXKNephew - Summer in Miami / Drunk Nights [Rihanna Favorite Rapper FR FR]
• Shaggy 2 Dope - Professor Shaggs and the Quest for the Ultimate Groove [Horrorcore]
• Billionaire Black - Black Sheep 2.0 [Chicago Drill, VALLEY CLUB]
• Grunge Gallardo (of The Opioid Era) - Atlantic Shores [Virginia Rap, Pill Press]

Singles

• Taylor Swift - Karma (Remix) [feat. Ice Spice]
• Sexyy Red & Tay Keith - Pound Town 2 (feat. Nicki Minaj)
• Tainy & Myke Towers - obstáculo
• A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie - MVP (NBA Finals Version) [feat. Myke Towers]
• Juice WRLD - Cheese and Dope Freestyle*
• Yeat & Pi’erre Bourne - My Wrist (feat. Young Thug)
• Anitta, Rvfv & Sfera Ebbasta - Captián
• Sleepy Hallow & Lil Tjay - Pain Talk
• Nio García - Yeska (Remix) [feat. Jowell & Randy]
• Papa Shawn Boo - For the Moment (feat. T-Pain)
• Juneyear - LaDaDa (feat. Jeremih)
• DVBBS, Jeremih & SK8 - Crew Thang
• Dominic Fike - Antpile
• Swifty Blue & Mustard - Jugglin' (feat. Baby Stone Gorillas & Joe Peshi)
• $NOT - Easter Pink
• Victoria Monét & Buju Banton - Party Girls (Michaël Brun Dancehall Remix)
• EST Gee - Turn The Streets Up
• GloRilla - Lick Or Sum
• REASON - At It Again (Remix) [feat. Jay Rock]
• Lu, Pouya, Kxllswxtch, Terror Reid - 456 (Freestyle)
• AkaAction, Bootsy Collins & Jamie Jones - Time For Some Action
• Lachy Doley - Get Out Your Ear's Way (feat. Bootsy Collins)
• Kap G - RR Activities (feat. 03 Greedo)
• J Hus & Fumes - It's Crazy
• Adekunle Gold - Tio Tequila
• Metro Marrs & Mike Dimes - Payroll
• D.Bill$ - Block Boy (feat. Juvenile)
• YMN Gus - Canada Goose V2 (feat. Babyface Ray)
• BLK ODYSSY - YOU GOTTA MAN (feat. KIRBY)
• Big Boss Vette - Ion Need
• Slayter & Retch - Juice Sipper (feat. Fenix Flexin)
• 1030 Montana - Jumped In The Game (feat. Wacotron)
• NSG & Meekz - Unruly
• Korralle & FloFillz - Blunotte
• Taylor Ricard - WAYYY (feat. Jim Jones)
• 7xvethegenius & DJ Green Lantern - Brainstorming (feat. Conway the Machine)
• M Huncho - Crazy Titch
• SetUpCity & 22Gz - Lights Out
• G MiM$ & Dave East - Luv Me 2 Life*
• Sauce Walka - Micheal Beasley*
• Diar Lansky - Explosive (feat. Royce Da 5'9")
• That Mexican OT, Paul Wall & DRODi - Johnny Dang
• Icewear Vezzo - Back On The Road
• Sofi de la Torre - 4 Sure Sure (feat. PHABO)
• Young RoyBoy - Wallah (Remix) [feat. Sada Baby]
• Cootie - Trap Nigga Investment*
• RiskTakerLeek & Cootie - Bird Talk
• Earlly Mac & Kamaiyah - All Night
• Bryan Bandit - Livin' Off the Phone (feat. Veeze)
• Yella Beezy - To The Floor
• Saviii 3rd & Kalan.FrFr - Been That (Extended)
• Milli Major, Novelist, Safone, So Large & Chronik - Skeem Set
• Ghost Dawg & Cico P - Visa
• JGREYY - Boys?
• Jdot Breezy - Addict
• Lil Ray - Hold On (feat. DB.Boutabag & Lul Ace)
• Valee & MVW - Could Be
• Dro Fe, NARCOWAVE & Ralfy the Plug - Trap Evangelist
• Good Gas (FKi 1st) - Coochie Appointment (feat. The Act & Chow Lee)
• Caleborate - B4 U Judge
• Xian Bell & Dende - Have It All
• Beedie & Billy Hoyle - Never Say Never (feat. Your Old Droog)
• Lil Ronny MothaF - Painting Pictures Flow*
• Mike Henny - How It Feel (feat. FCG Heem)
• Payroll Giovanni - On My Own (feat. Nick Varsity & The ATG)
• Ant Beale - BROKE BOY
• Black Milk – Is It Just Me?
• Darius James & Kai Ca$h - No Pressure
• Nate Husser - Itchy Palms
• RXKNephew - Come Find Out
• WhatUpNolan & YSR Gramz - Make Believe (feat. KrispyLife Kidd, YSR Loski & Clean Up Man)
• Darin Steele & Big Sad 1900 - Down n Around
• Kyle Splash & Big Sad 1900 - Take Them Risks
• Tyb - Like Us (feat. Nef the Pharaoh)
• M-Hunt & Nef the Pharaoh - Spazzin'
• Dillon & Diamond D - Comin’ Out Swingin’ (feat. Elzhi)
• Love Spells - Over & Over
• Dominique Fils-Aimé - My Mind At Ease
• Hotboy Wes, D Flowers & Yung Ro - Block Starz
• Luh Soldier & Quoncho - Mudd Bruddas
• Leo Laru$$o - Dojo Slayers (feat. Tha God Fahim)
• Q Da Fool - Heisman
• Charles Hamilton - Girl Scout Cookies
• Joseph Chilliams (Pivot Gang) - Soft Serve (feat. corylovesyou)
• Bikoko - Destiny
• Pioneer 11 & Rhys Langston - Amber Deception
• Black Cobain - Ain't Picking Up (feat. Fendi P)
• Mack Moo & Helluva - Detroit Love
• Bane Capital & Koncept Jack$on - Diamond
• Matt Mars - Hard Times (feat. YL)
• myst milano. - Thirteen
• Bub Styles - Casket Suit (feat. Sauce Heist & Dot Demo)
• Sonny Miles - Over & Over
• Janette King - How Sad
• Joy Postell - At Ease
• DRIVEBY - Sex With The Leopard Print Lady (feat. Fatboi Sharif & Beans)
• Maze Overlay - Danny Ocean

and (unsorted):

• Chester Watson - fish don't climb trees
• Travis Thompson & Jake One - Happiness (feat. Jay Worthy)
• GMF FatBoy - Sturdy (feat. Big Yavo)
• Andrei Lgnd - SMile (feat. OMB Peezy & Bussdown Bandy)
• Zacari - Touch of Gold
• dylAn - that's 1989
• Lilbubblegum & Jasiah - slurpy
• Diddy, City Girls & Fabolous - Act Bad
• KitschKrieg, KenTheMan & SFR - BAD BITCH (Body, Waist, Lips, Face)
• GOON DES GARCONS* - LIVING IN EXCESS
• Sam Truth - Wishing Well
• Matt Cab, MATZ, Grace Aimi & Ace Hashimoto - Again
• Pressa - Unfollow Me
• Riff Raff, Tommy Cash & Salvatore Ganacci - Ferrari
• Teezo Touchdown - Rock Paper Strippers
• Pablo Alborán - 4U (feat. CKay & Leo Rizzi)
• Rasheed Chappell & Little Vic - Show You How
• The Gemini Twins - Gave You My All (feat. Elzhi & Prop Dylan)
• Eli Fross - Me Time
• HDBeenDope - Can't Get Rid Of Me (feat. Fergie Baby)
• Jaxxon D. Silva - Black Flag (feat. A$AP NAST)
• Colt Fingaz - Way from Me (feat. WESTSIDE BOOGIE)
• TYL3R DAVIS & WESTSIDE BOOGIE - Hieroglyphics
• Jordan Commandeur, Knowledge the Pirate & Rick Hyde - Each One Teach One (feat. 38 Spesh & Flee Lord)
• Planet Asia & 38 Spesh - Upscale (feat. Tha Musalini & a Plus Tha Kid)
• James Fortune - Voyage (feat. Waka Flocka Flame)
• Drakeo the Ruler - Money & Problems (feat. Lil Travieso & MoneySign Suede)
• Brazeonday - DUALLY (feat. Z Money & TTM Dawg)
• Yhung T.O. & Big Sad 1900 - In the Field 2
• Sabrina Claudio - Modo Avión
• Azizi Gibson - F.W.M.
• JUICE MENACE - Weak Attempt
• Reel People & Raheem DeVaughn - Deja Vu (Blue Lab Beats Remix)
• Chingy - Rewind Time
• Malik Baptiste - I'M OK
• Nyck Caution & Erick the Architect - All Around
• Swedish House Mafia - See The Light (feat. Fridayy)

Bold songs drop at midnight
Songs in bold came out at midnight
* means not on Apple Music or Spotify
Sorted by Spotify Monthly Listeners

Old Drop Watches

Full Calendar