10| Fuck this

Losing David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen all in the same year was unimaginable. In our pop culture society, we love our athletes and actors / actresses but we idolize our musicians. To lose three as iconic as them all in one year feels like the first significant shift into a new time.

9| Fuck that

The amount of divisiveness we saw this year was heartbreaking. You can blame Trump, but really his efforts just brought it all to the surface. The world is far from where we want it to be.

8| Fuck off

2016 marked my first time (though probably not the last) being on the receiving end of Twitter trolling. Not fun. And pretty challenging to not tell them all to go fuck themselves.

7| Fuck yeah

Time for some positivity. And nothing felt more positive to me this year than Chance the Rapper. The songs, the good vibes, the Kit Kat commercial(s) — they weren’t just welcome, they were needed.

6| Fuckin’ Right

There was a lot of great music this year — Anderson .Paak, Beyonce, Blood Orange, Hamilton Leithauser + Rostam, the above mentioned Chance the Rapper, Solange, Angel Olsen, Bon Iver, and Snoh Aalegra to name a few — but nothing compared to the music of Frank Ocean. Endless and Blonde were worth the wait.

5| Fuckin’ A

I didn’t see a lot of movies this year, but I did see Don’t Think Twice (a few times now) and that’s pretty much all I needed. I can’t recommend this movie enough for its heart, its wit, and its insights into the creative community. Stop reading this and go watch it.

4| Holy fuck

On a similar note, I didn’t go to a lot of live shows this year, but I did make time to see Anderson .Paak at the Phoenix during a heat wave here in Toronto. That shit was life affirming, and hot as hell.

3| What the fuck

It didn’t come as a total surprise, and I’m happy there’s going to be a third and final season, but still… The Leftovers deserved a better fate.

2| What. The. Fucking. Fuck.

11/8/16

1| Fuck it

Adios, 2016. Don’t let the champagne cork hit you on the way out, you heartless shit.

Troy is the managing editor here at Little Fiction | Big Truths and once in a while, he remembers to write things. His latest is a nonfiction piece called “Me & Iggy & John” which you can read in A Mixtape of Words, our new music anthology featuring many writers far more talented than him.