#I just want to experience Taylor live so badly

[urfavfandomles]

everyone absolutely loves "she would have made such a lovely bride/what a shame she's fucked in the head" but i personally love "how evergreen, our group of friends/don't think we'll say that word again" because their group of friend was THEIRS. both of their friends. this couple will never have anything "ours" or "theirs" ever again because they're done. and the narrator most likely believes they will side with the proposer. "and soon *they'll have the **nerve** to deck the halls that *we* once walked through." not only will they never have anything theirs again, but the narrator sees their friends moving on, or rather, not stopping their own celebrating simply because their friends are over forever after the failed proposal. the narrator is bitter despite knowing they were the one who made this choice. how *DARE* "their" (as in both of their friends that were once THEIR group) have nerve to go along and decorate and be festive in a place that one belonged to that couple.

in this essay i will—

[matthewkniesys]

LA - trevor zegras x famous singer!reader au

a/n: so every time gracie plays a new show at the eras tour i'm making an edit for it (since shes the face claim) so here you go!! we are here!! it's the last leg of the usa eras tour and that means y/n's last show!

trevor zegras x famous singer!reader

yourusernameofficial

Liked by @/ taylorswift, radvxz, abbyweiser and 704 304 others

yourusernameofficial - okay so where to start... i don't even know. this has been the most amazing summer and the best experience of my life. i'm so grateful to have gotten this opportunity and i cannot begin express how i'm feeling.

thank you to @/taylorswift for your friendship, your guidance, and for letting me be a part of your amazing tour. getting to see you preform every night was the most magical thing in the world.

thank you to all the amazing crew who helped run this show because it could never have been possible without you.

thank you to everyone who supported me, especially my mom, my dad, my best friend bea @/radvxz, and to you guys who were there with me every step of the way.

thank you. i will forever be thinking about this.

Tagged: @/ taylorswift

View Top Comments

taylorswift - 💙💙💙💙💙

↳ fan17 - 5 BLUE HEARTS WHAT ARE YOU UP TO TAYLOR

↳ y/n#1fan - 👀

*view 16 457 other replies*

trevorzegras - so very proud of you and so extremely happy to have been beside you for this journey 💙

↳ yourusernameofficial - 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

↳ fan283 - WAIT trevor was travelling with y/n???

↳ y/nfan3 - probably not cause we probably would've seen him at more than just the 4 shows he was spotted at

↳ fan17 - trevor with a blue heart too??? and y/n with 5 hearts??? you guys are killing me

radvxz - bestie i love you, you are stunning, you are amazing, you deserve the world and i am so proud of you 💙

↳ yourusernameofficial - bestie i love YOU, YOU are stunning, YOU are amazing, YOU deserve the world and i am so proud of YOU 🤍

↳ fan17 - NO MORE BLUE HEARTS I CAN'T

fan1989 - i love you y/n i'm so happy i got to see you on the best night of my life

*yourusernameofficial liked this comment*

jamie.drysdale - my best friend

↳ trevorzegras - nope y/n is my best friend

↳ yourusernameofficial - nope jamie's my best friend not you trevor

↳ radvxz - what about me??

↳ yourusernameofficial - you are my ride or die forever, my sister

↳ radvxz - i won

jack.hughes - honestly seeing y/n and taylor live in one night was the best experience of my life

*yourusernameofficial liked this comment*

trevorzegras

Liked by @/ yourusernameofficial, jamie.drysdale, jack.hughes and 403 945 others

trevorzegras - recharging after the best experience of y/n's life

Tagged: @/ yourusernameofficial

View Top Comments

fan17 - awww they're together

fan3 - can't be convinced they aren't dating like people usually recharge by themselves but they want to spend time together so badly they are doing it together

jamie.drysdale - me not being there is honestly the biggest loss

↳ yourusernameofficial - agreed

↳ trevorzegras - disagreed

↳ jamie.drysdale - honestly y/n should just ditch trev and come to canada

↳ yourusernameofficial - looking at tickets rn

↳ trevorzegras - uh no you're not... i'm trapping you here with me

↳ yourusernameofficial - jamie save me

fanaccount8 - coffee date perhaps??

*trevorzegras liked this comment*

jack.hughes - i love y/n so much, like literally the coolest person in the world

↳ yourusernameofficial - factsss

y/nfan6 - they are gonna hard launch in the next month mark my words

thanks for reading🫶requests are always open for fics, blurbs, ig edits and just thoughts!!

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[sevensoulmates]

I wanted to say something to address some other posts I've been seeing about why some people would be "disappointed" that Buck getting with another man (causally or seriously) before Eddie would be the same as him getting with "another woman" and therefore remaining "on the hamster wheel". (I fucking hate that phrase now).

Anyway, this is SPECULATION because Bucktommy having any sort of romantic relationship is not confirmed yet.

BUT if Buck were to get with Tommy in any capacity I, personally, do NOT see it as Buck backsliding or returning back to Buck 1.0 (if he and Tommy are casual) or "not choosing himself" (ie. choosing Eddie immediately as his one true love).

First I want to address if Bucktommy are casual and if Buck just has a casual sexual relationship with Tommy that doesn't evolve into a full on long-term relationship. I would not see this as Buck reverting back to his Buck 1.0 ways. Because you guys are forgetting that Buck 1.0 wasn't just sleeping around to sleep around because he couldn't go a day without getting his dick wet. That's part of the reason why I didn't like in 7x01 that they were calling Buck a playboy because it, unfortunately, did not hit the truth of WHY Buck was sleeping around so much. Buck was sleeping with any pretty consenting girl he came across because he thought that was the only way he could get them to love him because he inherently believed that who he was would never be enough for anyone and that the only thing he could offer people was sex.

But sleeping casually with a man has a whole different layer to it that's inherently different than sleeping with a woman at this point in Buck's character arc.

He learned a lot in his relationships with Abby, Ali, Taylor and Natalia. Why wouldn't the same come from a relationship (of any kind) with Tommy? And him discovering that he's attracted to men and actually ACTING ON IT???? That IS choosing himself!!!

It is, unfortunately, a common bisexual/queer experience that sometimes people will realize that they do have a same-sex or nb/trans attraction AND opposite-sex attraction and they will CHOOSE not to act on their queerness because unfortunately, it is easier and safer to stick with the heterosexually perceived choice. This doesn't even have to be a conscious choice either. That's where comphet lives and thrives.

If Tommy is actually the catalyst that FORCES Buck to realize he has a real attraction to men (because again, it seems to me like Buck is not CONSCIOUSLY aware of his attraction to men and therefore was NOT sleeping casually with men in his 1.0 days or previous) then him actually choosing to act on it is MONUMENTOUS. We don't know how far that will go, if they will end up sleeping together or developing a bit of a relationship, or if Buck will actually be depicted on screen coming out. I don't know!

But sleeping casually with a man this time does not inherently have to mean that he's making the same old mistakes. It's possible we could finally see Buck setting firm boundaries, or it's possible Tommy says hey this is causal to me and Buck (as the GROWN MATURE SERIOUS ADULT y'all so badly want him to be) is able to accept that without being insecure about himself. There's so much we don't know that could happen as part of this relationship.

In my opinion, Buck allowing himself to actually go the tough route of exploring his sexuality IS choosing himself, opening himself up to a world of future possibility. And if he manages to actually be open about it with his friends and team too? Oh my goodness.

The circumstances are already LEAGUES different from where he was in season 1. If Buck is able to accept that he's into men, able to act on it and be open about it too? That IS accepting himself which was always the issue he had for many years. If he believes in himself to be enough to be brave and open about queerness as he discovers it? That IS "getting off the hamster wheel". It is breaking the pattern of self-destruction, of self-harm, of self-denial.

As for the possibility of it being a long term relationship, we already saw that Tim doesn't currently have plans for Tommy to stick around too long so I'm not really worried about that.

I personally believe that both Buck and Eddie require baby steps before they can get together romantically. Sorry to the people that just want them to confess and boom. I don't think that's satisfactory for myself and for a lot of other people and I don't think the writers would be satisfied with it too. I think we all want to see the nitty-gritty process of both of them realizing their queerness, the growing pains that come along with it, and the eventual step-by-step active choosing of each other.

Buck being able to accept himself and his queerness with another man is the perfect step to him eventually discovering that the place where his deepest love lives is in Eddie. You have to understand that Buck and Eddie have been STAGNANT in their relationship since season 4. They NEED something to come in and show them that their relationship CAN and SHOULD evolve and in order to do that they NEED to be BRAVE and take LEAPS. Buck with Tommy could be the first big leap. After that, it's Eddie's turn.

[supercalime]

i heard about the whole jatp drama, and i totally get your worries in that regard 😭 sooo often a show has something great going for itself, just for the creators to fuck up so badly that it's almost unfathomable sksksk (also looking at the umbrella academy season 4 disaster). gotta say that at this point, i think i will leave 911 behind fr if bucktommy aren't together anymore. i am out with one foot simply because i only watch certain storylines while skipping others, some characters haven't interested or excited me in literal years. but i love buck. after so many years of watching him try to find real happiness, and with the show slowly reaching a point where imo it's seriously time to wrap it up very soon, i cannot imagine that they will manage to strike gold the way they did with bucktommy ever again. tommy is the first love interest of buck that they actually tried to integrate into the world and the firefam. tommy got the seal of approval, we see buck seemingly finally reach that point in life he was searching for. making him go through ANOTHER breakup just to introduce ANOTHER love interest, nullifying all that bucktommy has established? there is a limit for how often you can press the reset button, and we have reached it with buck a long time ago. let the man finally have something else to work towards. we need a breath of fresh air in here. i am optimistic about s8, and i will live no matter what happenes, but i think that would be my final straw to disconnect from 911 amd canon buck ngl 🤔 fingers crossed that bucktommy is alive and well because it's got sm potential!! 🙌

Couldn’t agree more bestie!

Tbf my reaction to the jatp bs is on me haha. Everything was more intense in 2020/2021 for obvious reasons so it wasn’t surprising for me to have latched on to a tv show and relying on it for my mental well being. But all that bullshit made me learn to change my mindset and behavior on how to interact with media and fandom, which is to have the bar so low it’s in hell.

Anyway, back to 911. I wouldn’t blame you for stopping to watch the show at any point if it’s not interesting any more. I’m not even a fan of this one. I saw bits and pieces throughout the years as one tends to do with procedurals and didn’t want to have my experience tainted with the fanon ship that shall not be named. In fact, I’ve followed lone star from the beginning and I think I still prefer it over the og.

Now onto buck and his relationships. I completely agree with what you said about hitting the reset button over and over. Procedurals tend to stall instead of committing to a solid change unless they get repetitive and/or write themselves into a corner (which both apply to buck here). So yeah, it would be a disservice to bucks character if he yet again goes through another breakup and the cycle keeps going, specially since tommy was pretty well received as his LI unlike all the other ones that weren’t meant to last from the beginning (Abby, Ali), were the wrong person for him (Taylor) or were forced down our throats (Natalia - there was so much telling and not showing how “right” their relationship was, it’s embarrassing).

So, unless there’s outside factors preventing tommy to come back and stay for good (contracts, conflicting schedules, etc), it makes no sense for bucktommy to not continue on the path they are going.

I want bucktommy to thrive, but I won’t hold my breath waiting just yet. If they are broken up or eventually will break up (which I must emphasize I do not want cause I ship them with all my heart) I might quit the show as well. Buck and Tommy were a breath of fresh air and I would love to see what could happen to them if we are lucky enough to see their romance continue

[cametotheshowinsd]

Okay, some things about Clara. I've seen a lot of posts and tweets and stuff pointing out Clara's retirement from acting after marriage, and assuming the song might lean to that angle. I just want to say that I think there's A LOT behind the reasons of her retirement, it's not just marriage. Clara Bow was the IT girl of the roaring 20s, but she never, N E V E R , E V E R, got recognized, like, when you watch old documentaries about the flapper ladies & screen godesses of the 1920s, if that docu was made before New Hollywood era, you won't find Clara in it. They just erased her. She hailed from the poorest area of New York and had such a fucked-up childhood, yet she was so carefree and just living her life. And she was just the best actress. She was so popular at that time that media would write anything about her. She was painted by the tabloids as a "slut!", and even her maidens and assisstants were snitching to the tabloids about what men she was sleeping with at night. Being such a vivacious young woman, Clara went down with the narrative and even wrote a "confession" piece on a magazine about her flings with Victor Fleming, Gilbert Roland and Gary Cooper. Her image was badly smeared over those years. And then talking pictures era came upon Hollywood, she's an excellent silent film actress but when it comes to talking pictures she just didn't like it. She hated filming talking pictures. In the meantime she wasn't very lucky in her lovelife, her assisstants and lawyers had been skimming money from her, and her mental problems (and drinking problem, lets be honest) were getting worse. Hence the erasure. She was not pretty for the glamours Hollywood anymore. imo her retirement was mainly attributed to her mental problems (before marriage) and career downfall. The marriage is more like a tunnel exit for her. She got married in a RUSH and got the hell out. Later, she briefly made a comeback for a while, but it did not go well. Her mental illness finally got to her and led her to a tragic ending. I can see why Taylor resonates with Clara and her story, they have so many similar experiences. From Blank Space to Nothing New, from Castles Crumbling to I Did Something Bad, from dorothea to champagne problems…I see Clara in so many of her songs. I love that it's the last track on the standard album. Taylor being the "IT girl" in the 2020s is the perfect parallel of Clara was in the 1920s. I've got a feeling that Clara Bow could be a Timeless -ish song, I would like to assume that she's talking about how the society treats a female superstar and things haven't changed much. Is marriage a way out? Does she want it? Can the society endure her success for another year? Can the man endure her success? How would people remember her 100 years from now?

[cookies-over-yonder]

you've got yourself a heart of gold (but you look awfully tired)

The catbus is quiet and calm when the weight of it all comes crashing down on Taylor Swift. And god, he misses his mom.

[title from Colorless by Oubliare]

ao3

☆

The catbus is quiet and calm when the weight of it all comes crashing down on Taylor Swift.

He's been riding the high of anime protagonist antics and battles and epic swordsmanship.

But as he presses against Link's side with his legs swinging back and forth, it hits him like a ton of bricks.

He's seen people die.

Like, people that he knows .

He saw his dad get sliced in half.

He has friends as backup now, but, all his life it's been him and his mom, and she isn't here.

He hasn't seen her in days .

He hasn't been home in days.

His body is aching.

Every day, a hug and kiss from his mom would make it feel like all the pain drifted away, even if only for a second.

And now there's a lump in his throat and stinging in his eyes.

He wants that hug so badly.

He wants his mom.

A sob breaks through him, and he shudders.

Taylor thinks he might feel Link shifting in his seat, but he can't acknowledge anything because once the sobbing starts, it doesn't stop.

And now he's curled in on himself with his face in his hands and the wet and warm tears staining his palms.

And he whines, he whines because he just wants his mom. This is too much.

"Taylor—"

"Taylor, hey, what's wrong?"

Voices are crowding him now. People are crowding him now.

The sobs are loud and shake his whole body, he couldn't quiet them if he wanted to, and he doesn't really want to.

When he tries to speak, he can only cry. But the questions repeat, a cacophany of concern crowding him and suffocating him and he just—

"I—"

Another sob. Breathe in. Breathe in. Breathe in.

"I miss my mom… "

Saying it out loud only makes him cry harder.

They're saying more things now around him but it's all so blurry. Can sounds even be blurry? Muffled. It's muffled. He's being pulled away from his hands and his vision is blurry and he doesn't know what he's looking at.

All that he knows is that his mom isn't here.

There's a hand on his arm. There's a hand on his face. He doesn't know. He sobs, and then he's breathing fast, and he sobs again.

They keep saying his name but he can't respond.

Someone says that it's okay, and it's not, and Taylor whines and shakes his head.

It's like everything is being pulled out of him at once. Every tear, every scream, every wail, every whine, every sob.

His mind is fuzzy and all he can think about is how his mom would make him feel better, and she isn't here, and she's so far away, and he misses her so much, and he wants to go home.

Someone's telling him to slow down. There is no slowing down. He can't do anything.

He's not sure if he says anything. Maybe. It's all unclear.

His vision, his mind, the future, when he'll get to go home and get hugged and kissed. It's all unclear.

And it freaks him out.

Living a shounen anime dream is cool, but not when he's away from her.

He needs her.

His face is pressed against something soft.

There's pressure on his back now, it's strong. It's protective.

Link.

Taylor's mind is immensely foggy, but he's certain that's Link. And he's still crying, but Link's saying something, and Taylor doesn't know what it is, but the sound of his voice is enough.

So Taylor presses his face further against Link's chest and cries into his shirt, until the fuzziness of his mind overtakes him… and everything slowly fades away…

♤

Nick Close was a kid who smoked, gamed, and felt nothing. With his dad.

Nicholas Foster was a kid who listened, obeyed, and enforced rules. For his dad.

Nicky Freeman is an amalgamation of two childhoods. Not necessarily two lives, but two sets of memories, two sets of experiences, two sets of feelings.

The catbus is calm and quiet while Nicky stares ahead at the backs of the seats in front of him.

The catbus is calm and quiet, until Nicky hears a sob.

And he hopes it isn't the voice it sounds like, but when he hears it again…

"Taylor—"

"Taylor, hey, what's wrong?"

Nicky's stomach drops.

It's his son.

He can't see much, but he can see Taylor, diagonal to his own seat but far ahead, and it looks like he's buried his face in his hands.

Now Sparrow's—Lark's?—Sparrow's kid, Normal, leaves his seat and moves across the aisle.

"Taylor, are you okay?"

"Taylor, what's going on?" Link asks.

When Taylor doesn't respond to them, just continuing to sob and gasp, Nicky fights every urge in his body to get up and rush to him. He has to keep the other dads at bay with his sword.

(And he's not sure what he would even do.)

"What's wrong?" they keep asking him. 

The next words Nicky hears feel like a stab to the chest.

"I—I miss my mom!" he practically screams, and the sobs get louder and he's wailing and whatever Normal and Link are saying is barely audible from the sheer volume of Taylor's breakdown.

And when he stops sobbing for a second and whines and gasps, Nicky can make out the frantic repetition of "Taylor" and "it's okay. "

It doesn't seem to be helping at all.

Taylor won't stop crying.

Nicky has never cried like that.

Nick Close… never cried like that. Not when he found out. Not at the funeral. Not once in the five years after.

And then she was back… so he didn't… he didn't need to…

She's alive.

Cassandra is also alive, but here Taylor is crying over missing her.

Nicky isn't a stranger to grief. He felt it. He feels it. It feels almost like… like there's a knife stuck in him that he can't pull out because it was never actually there in the first place no matter how real it might feel. The process will never be completed because it never really happened.

Not in this timeline.

Nick Close didn't let himself feel.

And having seen Taylor stay upbeat throughout everything since he'd met him, and now this…

It's unnerving to say the least.

Nicky is snapped out of his thoughts when Taylor's sobbing is replaced by hyperventilating.

Then there's three voices:

"Shit."

"Taylor, slow down."

"Can you breathe in with me?"

Nicky Freeman isn't a crier, but he feels like he might start when he hears how small Taylor sounds.

"No, no, no no no, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't —" another sob cuts him off, but it's strained and he's breathing so fast and so shallowly and shakily and Nicky turns to the three dads held behind the blade of his sword for comfort in him not being the only one that's scared.

Sparrow's eyes are wide and frightened.

Grant has tears falling from his.

Lark is glaring at him.

"Okay, okay, it's okay, come here," Link says, and the sound of the sobs and gasps become muffled.

Link is talking a lot quieter now, but one phrase Nicky can make out is "it's gonna be alright."

Taylor keeps crying for a while, but it eventually dies down.

"He's asleep," Link whispers.

No one responds.

Silence falls over them once more, but this time it's eerie.

• • •

When Taylor wakes up, there are a few small "are you okay"s and long pauses followed by uncertain yeses and Nicky's stomach churns because he feels it so deeply in his heart—that feeling of trying and failing to be okay.

It's still rather quiet.

• • •

The chatter resumes, and they've arrived, and they're getting off, and Taylor looks a little tired but aside from that, he looks fine.

Still, as soon as he's off the bus, he walks up to Taylor and wraps his arm around him.

Taylor seems confused at first, but then he returns the embrace.

Nick Close didn't talk about his feelings with his dad because he felt like he couldn't. Nicky Freeman doesn't know how to talk about feelings with his son, but hopefully this is enough for now.

☆

Taylor isn't sure why his dad randomly hugged him, and it's nothing like his mom's hugs, but it's warm, and it's safe, and he feels a little bit more okay.

♡

[whydoifeelthisquiet]

People are pissing me off trying to circulate this line from “I Hate It Here” and take it out of context to make her look evil.

She’s discussing the very human experience of wanting to live in a different time period only to be smacked in the face with the fact of how horrific it was once you really start thinking about it. When you’re depressed, you literally want to go anywhere else. You want some kind of miracle fix. You want to jump timelines. And suddenly you’ve spiraled so badly that things like crusty wigs and candelabras sound like a cure. But then as the song continues, (like literally 10 seconds later if you actually listen) she realizes that no time period is lacking nastiness, including the present. She’s not saying that there’s no bigotry current day. She’s not having a “look at me I’m not a bigot” moment. All she’s doing is showcasing the random ass escapist mental gymnastics you do when you’re so deeply depressed. This does not change the fact that racism is still alive today, this does not change the fact that I think Taylor should absolutely be speaking out politically because of how powerful her voice is, but in this song she is literally just talking about feeling trapped and searching for nostalgia. Nothing more, nothing less.

[this-is-getting-silly]

I’m going to preface this by saying that I’m not a professional critic or reviewer, and these are just my subjective opinions. There’s no need to get upset that someone on the internet has a different opinion than you.

Now, with that out of the way- I THINK WORM SUCKS

Okay just kidding. It’s good, I like it a lot… but for the most part, I like it despite its protagonist, rather than because of her. And not just because I think the story contorts itself around her in a frustrating way, although it very much does do that. It’s just that, at the end of the day, I don’t think there’s much about her that makes for an interesting viewpoint character.

At the end of the day, what actually motivates Taylor? She starts off wanting to ‘be a hero,’ but gives up on that pretty quickly, yet never really commits to ‘being a villain’ either. It’s not saving the world, either, that’s just basic self-preservation. Her real motivation is simple- protecting her friends, and having them continue to like her. She continues being a villain explicitly for the latter reason (once Coil is dead and Dinah is free there’s no real reason for her to remain a villain other than that), and does most of what she does in service of the former.

Self-preservation and the desire to protect one’s friends are fine primary motivations for a main character… in the right context. For the former, we need only look at Blake from Pact, whose life is in constant danger through pretty much the entire book, so he never gets the chance to develop any goals beyond ‘stay alive,’ and instrumental to that, ‘get stronger.’ That’s fine- it would be weird if Blake was really preoccupied with some other goal considering all that’s happening to him during the events of that story.

Likewise, in the latter case, you have Sylvester from Twig, whose desire to protect his friends is important because their lives are considered expendable, so wanting to protect them motivates him to act proactively and pursue other goals. He even extends his definition of ‘friends’ to basically all experiments, which eventually pushes him to take on the entire Academy and Crown, because he’s got a problem with what they do to his fellow experiments and him. That’s a great motivation for a character! (Twig is the best thing Wildbow has ever written and I hope it never gets a sequel.)

On the other hand, Taylor wanting to protect her friends is a much weaker motivation, because they are almost never in any danger that they didn’t put themselves in. I can’t really cheer for her beating up on Protectorate heroes to save her pals because they chose to take over an entire city. That’s on them. Of course, Taylor is incapable of not perceiving it as unjust persecution, because she has a literal victim complex, and rightfully so, she was a victim for a long time, but not for most of the events of the story itself.

So when it comes down to it, her motivation is basically ‘me and my friends should be able to do whatever we want, and get to kill anybody who tries to stop us.’ Which isn’t an especially compelling motivation from an outside perspective! If she was really driven to be the best parahuman criminal in the city, and supplanting Coil as a crime lord was her plan all along, that would at least be interesting, but she just kind of gets dragged along into everything, and then retroactively justifies it in her mind by deciding the people opposing her are ‘bullies.’

As a consequence of this, Taylor doesn’t really stand for anything, either. She does plenty, but in many ways she’s still basically a passive protagonist, going in whichever direction the flow of the narrative takes her. It just so happens that the narrative flows very quickly, so she never ends up spinning her wheels too long (badly mixing metaphors there, I know), but if things weren’t constantly happening for her to respond to, Taylor really wouldn’t end up doing much on her own.

So- we’ve established why I think Taylor makes for a weak protagonist. Let’s take a look at who I think would make for a compelling replacement.

Number one with a bullet, it’s your boy Theo. I’ve touched on this recently elsewhere, but I want to make a more comprehensive pitch for him now. You might say ‘but isn’t Theo also largely reactive and motivated by self-preservation?’ To a degree, yeah- most of what he does in the story is motivated by not wanting to get killed by Jack Slash. But even if you take Jack out of his story completely, he would still have a more interesting motivation than Taylor. The heroic scion (heh) of a villainous legacy trying to atone for his parents’ misdeeds is a way more interesting story than whatever she has going on. The thing with Jack is just a cherry on top.

(Atonement is a great character motivation in general, which is part of why Rain would have been a far superior protagonist for Ward than Victoria, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.)

Obviously you’d have to rework the story somewhat significantly to make him work as the protagonist, but I think it’s doable. If you wanted to keep things as much the same as possible, you’d probably start with Theo already in the Chicago Wards, and tell the story of how he got there in recurring flashbacks. Taylor could also still be in the story, I actually kind of think she’d work better as a supporting character (as long as you got rid of some of the truly ridiculous shit she did like killing Alexandria). Seeing her training Theo from his perspective would be very interesting, since canon Worm skips pretty much all that stuff.

Next pick: Weld. You might think you’re detecting a theme here, but not so much, actually. Weld’s story is more about him becoming disillusioned with the Protectorate, and even with being a hero in general. But unlike Taylor, who gives up on being a hero roughly three chapters into Worm, that would be a slow arc, starting with him as a true believer, who over the course of the entire story loses his faith and quits to found his own team. It’s worth noting too that the Irregulars weren’t just an independent hero team, but mercenaries, which suggests Weld has soured on the ‘hero’ thing overall.

Plus, Weld has a very solid motivation- finding out who the hell turned him into a Case 53. That’s an actual goal he could pursue over the course of a story and get closure for! We could see his relationship with Sveta actually develop, watch him try to manage the internal tensions of the Irregulars, and go up against Cauldron, which Taylor only really interacts with incidentally until the very end of the story.

Third choice: Faultline. We know a lot less about her than any of the others I’ve named so far- her interlude is so unmemorable I actually forgot it existed before writing this. We never learn her actual name (I’d keep ‘Miss Fitts’ because I like the pun but modern wildbow is a joyless monster so he’d probably change it) or even her trigger event, but I still think she’d make a solid choice. Clearly Wildbow agrees because she was the protagonist in an earlier draft of the story.

Much like Weld, she has a strong motivation in wanting to track down Cauldron, and I think the cast of characters surrounding her is more interesting than the Irregulars, and arguably even the Undersiders themselves.

My next choice is gonna be controversial, but… Armsmaster. Yeah, he starts out as an antagonistic force in Worm, but only because Taylor perceives literally every authority figure in existence as her enemy. His actual story is really compelling, not least because I firmly believe he was framed for the armband thing. That interpretation isn’t canon, but the facts fit, and I think it makes Worm a hundred times more interesting, so I choose to believe it.

So you have a kind of autistic, extremely driven but also somewhat self-involved hero, who gets framed for something he didn’t do, loses everything, and has all the people whose respect he was hoping to earn turn on him. And he comes back from that! Tell me that isn’t a more interesting story than Taylor, who never meaningfully loses a fight or has anything taken from her.

Bonuses for him include: getting to see him fight Leviathan one on one from his perspective, getting a better look at the inner workings of the Protectorate and Guild, giving his relationship with Dragon more development, and seeing a Tinker actually do some tinkering, which is something we’ve basically been completely denied across two books.

And finally, we have the wildcard option: someone else entirely. There are vast swathes of Worm’s world left entirely unexplored, and I’m sure there are plenty of more interesting protagonists hiding somewhere in them. People with more interesting powers, histories, and motivations than the protagonist we actually got. Or Victoria. Goddamn do I wish we got someone other than Victoria for Ward. Rain was right fucking there, hoW DO YOU FUCK THAT UP AAAA

okay that’s it, post over, thanks for reading. bye

[deluweil]

My biggest question is: how are they going to wrap all the stories in 40 minutes!?!!??

There’s a lot to tell: Madney, the bridge thing, the sperm donor story, Natalia/Marisol, hopefully some Buddie…

I’m really intrigued about how they’re gonna play it all!

It's a LOT for 40 minutes, I am not completely sure that they can wrap all of it up in one episode.

I have a feeling that for all of KR love for wrapping up stories for the season, this one has the potential to end on a cliffhanger.

I believe that the Madney situation may only be resolved next season, the bridge thing is totally dependent on when in the episode it happens, if it is at the end of 6x17, like 4x13 when Eddie was shot? Or maybe a cliffhanger where we're left to wonder if one of our favorite firefighters live through this disaster.

Buck's talk with Connor told me two things, one Connor is not entirely sure he wants a baby or ready to have one, now that it's a reality, and something is waiting just around the corner for Buck.

Now the clown in me says that all the references from both Buck and Eddie to the future and things becoming very real very soon have a hidden, or maybe not so hidden, message that buddie canon is very near. I'm optimistic that way.

So Buck, imo, came to terms with the sperm donor thing, but I don't think the couple itself has their story resolved. I'm semi hoping they ask Buck to be godfather, or for Connor to get cold feet and for Cameron to come to Buck for help with her birth and later with the baby.

But those are all fanfics materials lol, we'll see.

The Cameron thing, imo, will probably happen in the beginning of the episode, thus leaving the firefam to maybe discuss it as the universe screams at them again, that life is short and they're wasting time.

I'm thinking maybe Natalia helps Buck come to terms with something, and they separate as friends or whatever, because dating Natalia will be pretty much dating Taylor under another profession, but same attitude.

Natalia is an interesting character, but she doesn't feel concrete enough to stick around, I think she's just a way for Buck to move past his ordeal and come to terms with whatever is holding him back now.

In my experience, those that find death fascinating were either touched by it (family members or trauma of some sort) or are facing the possibility of their own mortality, Natalia's motives to why she chose to be a death doula may shed light on what her function in this story is. -So if the disaster doesn't happen at the beginning of the episode, Natalia may show up to wrap up her appearance in this show at the beginning of 6x18.

Marisol, I'm pretty sure, is one if the victims most probably, in the bridge crash, I can't see any reason as to why she would suddenly show up, unless it's another one of Pepa's attempts at matchmaking lol.

If they do manage, by some miracle, to shove all of those things into one episode, it will probably end up being hurried and leave us with the same unsatisfied feeling we all experienced at the end of 3x18. (At least for me and my mutuals.) The train wreck resolution felt very anticlimactic, so I'm hoping 6x18 doesn't suffer the same fate.

As I've said before, this whole season we've been counting down to some bonus, as far as I'm concerned, it's time to put up or shut up, because we can't have so much character developments on all levels with all the characters only to be fated to watch them making the same mistakes all over again.

I do hope that we get a Bobby sending Buck away, while he and Ravi try to get to Eddie. While Buck, worried about Eddie, is making his way to save his older sister Hen and his future brother in law.

It's known from one of the bts pic that Chimney will be hurt badly, so I'm expecting something, emotional and heart-wrenching and frantic maybe, and maybe a little crazy Buck stunt 👀

I'm hoping, that once Eddie and Buck reunite we'll finally get a hug or better yet, a desperate 'you're a sight for sore eyes, I fucking love you' kiss.

Manifest with me 🙏✨️✨️✨️

Ps. Also manifest Buck's couch catching fire and Buck moving to the Diaz household where his favorite and chosen couch resides. 😌✨️🙏

[sibylsleaves]

listen it's pretty obvious buck and tommy is not endgame, they very much are the second coming of buck and taylor so many parallels between both pairings. tim is literally recreating s5, eddie in a horrible place and buck being there for him 100% going through his mess and tommy likely being bothered by how much time buck is spending with eddie and putting the pieces together. Just like I suspect Taylor was going to be but they Network said to gay Eddie which Oliver has basically suggested was coming in 5. He's coming in S8 so now Tim is recreating the S5 he was going to have with the pieces all set. it just seems so clear BT is not going to last. He's very much playing this teacher role for Buck and getting him ready and being comfortable with being with a man. That's all that relationship is, a first queer experience for Buck but Buck is not going to end up with the first man he dates, that literally never happens in TV. Buddie is the obvious endgame and it's the only thing that makes narrative sense for both characters because we know how badly Eddie wants to be in a romantic relationship but he just keeps on blowing them because they're not with the write person or *cough* sex *cough* .

i honestly think the thing that will ultmately break up buck and tommy si buck and eddie's relationship just like eddie and jealous is what got them together, jealousy involving eddie is what will break them up.

Plus lets not forget that Maddie knows the truth, she knows that Buck is in love with Eddie. Is she gonna play a role in all of this or sit back with her wine and watch?

I love when you guys come into my inbox 100000% certain how the story is going to play out. Live your truth and go with god, my friend.

I, on the other hand, cannot with any certainty predict what Tim Minear is going to do next. because he did write eddie's dead wife's doppleganger into s7 😭😭😭

[televisionenjoyer]

hello, I’m interested in your labor and communism post but I’m not sure I completely understand (saying this genuinely, hope it doesn’t come off badly). I think I agree with the post, I’d like to ask about the specifics of Ability (how is that decided? on a volunteering basis maybe but also what might be the expectations?) and what you meant by people not wanting to work. i don’t mean What About Disabled People because I get that’s not what you mean, but I think especially on tumblr people are burnt out and overworked and want to have lives and that might seem like not wanting to work. (I am maybe biased though because I do believe people are inclined to work…). More just wanting fair work, I think. I do agree with your overall point and conclusion, though- the harm of capitalism isn’t because it requires work, and our sacrifice to one another Is the whole foundation of society.

not happy with how this came out and there’s more I was thinking but I can follow up?

I made that post thinking on a global scale and I think the fact that I'm from the global south is a really good context indicator for all of my posts where I get kinda political. what I mean to say with this clarification is that I've seen exploitation up close. real exploitation. what the general tumblr population thinks of as exploitation doesn't even begin to cut it.

I have a desk job. I do complain about it sometimes. but I'm so acutely aware that I could be working as a slave mining lithium or making taylor swift merch so that some pencil pusher would say working a 9 to 5 is what makes capitalism evil.

I think when most people say that we should be all working less because the rich don't work at all and are ridiculously loaded -which I agree with. let's eat them!!- ignore that actually "eating the rich" would not have as much of an impact in usamerican work conditions at all but rather -as I mentioned before - kids working 12 hour shifts in honduras making tswift merch. slaves in sudan mining the lithium needed for you to post from your iphone.

To each according to his ability I think is shallow in itself if the amount society consumes outweighs the ability of the people to safely do the job needed. On that note the amount of fast fashion landfills and techno waste speaks of a society that has normalized hyperconsumerism at the cost of insane amounts of unethical labor.

Either way our society is fucked and I think most people who agree with "capitalism is evil" in a surface level and try to relate on personal experience don't even begin to grasp the real harm of capitalism and how they actually benefit from it.

[elytrafemme]

i am once again finding myself drafting up the ending notes for the next cough syrup chapter, and once again find myself too afraid to actually touch the draft.

cough syrup was-- is? was?-- a love letter to so many things. originally, a love letter to the DSMP, but i cannot deny that events within the DSMP community (mostly, the dream situation) are part of the reason why i could not bring myself to work on the fic. originally, a love letter to the mental health revelations i experienced, but so much has changed and i’m healing in a different way and it feels so strange, looking at the DSMP writing again, trying to imagine when i was there and why i’m still there yet everything has changed insurmountably. 

part of me wants the fic to be over with in a blink of an eye, so i can move on to other fandom works without feeling chained. another part of me wants to savor this, reignite the community that never really died. another part of me never wants to touch the fic again, to be bitter and angry at the amount of times i’ve used fanfiction as an escape, but then never really escaped. and there’s this other piece of me, too, so outraged at how much other people have loved this fic, so much more than i feel like i have even loved it. but is it outrage, or just me recognizing a responsibility? 

i knew that so many creators get upset about not writing frequently, write these long apologies in their notes only to receive responses like “it’s okay!” and “take your time!”. i think about this, and i think about the fics i have waited years for, and i knew this and i know this and part of me says, okay. you aren’t going to do that. you know that you had to step away, so you aren’t going to feel guilty. but i feel guilty for not feeling guilty. wasn’t i supposed to pour my heart out?

cs!tubbo has been theorized by some to have bpd. this was unintentional. i want this to stay unintentional, but in the time between last september and now i’m beginning to realize that bpd is the explanation for the questions i’ve had for so, so long. cs!ranboo’s psychosis was meant to help me with my own, but i’m no longer suffering avidly from psychosis, so whose story am i telling? this fic was my way of exploring a queerplatonic relationship, but i don’t experience queerplatonic attraction, at least i don’t think so, and what i had mistaken for that was just the way my brain works with love and i don’t know how to write this story because it’s no longer my own.

and here’s the selfish bit of it: i want to stop writing this fic because i know people don’t like the dsmp. i try not to care about that, people don’t like a lot of things. i don’t like taylor swift but one of my old friends and i are working on healing things, so we talk about their love of taylor swift and i listen to her songs and think about them and we’re fighting uphill. but in the same way that i demean my hometown to future college roommates, i want to demean my time in the dsmp fandom because i want to be loved so, so badly. and how much of me writing this fic was me just wanting to be loved, so badly. 

and i was loved! and the characters were and are loved. but i remember the exact point where the fic started getting popular, and things started changing, and i remember going “this isn’t going to end well”. and for all things considered, it didn’t end badly, but i still remember my first rage episode when i saw someone talking about a fic that wasn’t my own. i remember how scared i was when i did see people talking about it, realizing that there’s this clock ticking inside of me; i knew how this was going to end. and i realized that cough syrup was this living, breathing child of mine, one i cannot abandon or hate or write, all the warnings people gave me about not burning out, and i’m sitting with this fic writing a post about it not even knowing if this is true. not sure how to put it all into words.

my beginnings in fandom began in a broken place. i was thirteen when i really started, and i wanted to write and create and soon i got attention from my broken, messy things, and i got so much attention that people said i was so mature, and then i met some bad people, and i started having public breakdowns, and i left the fandom with a dramatic ending note because it felt like it ripped so much from me. and then i came to dsmp, and i wrote cough syrup from this place of finally, finally escaping this period of trauma-- i say it all the time, but cough syrup was written a month after the most traumatizing period of my life ended. i wrote it to feel free, to feel silly and creative. and it was loved and this time, i wasn’t chasing attention, until i did. and i loved it! i love it! it was a good thing in my life it was undeniably good and it still is! but i think part of me never really learned my lesson, i guess.

and now, i want to write from pain again. i want to write from pain and the little bittersweet spots in life because i am so much older than the girl who started cough syrup. i am older and i am so much more cowardly and i am seeing people realize that the blinding optimism i used to have is no longer a steady track. my life lost its control and cough syrup deserved nothing more than my control, but i can’t stomach it again. i don’t want this fic to fix me. because it isn’t going to do it right, this time.

in one of my ending note drafts, i wrote “this chapter is quite possibly one of the hardest things i have ever written”. the chapter isn’t done. so maybe i’m fatalistic. maybe i think people will be crueler to me than they are. maybe i’m still broken about the two or three mutuals i lost for inexplicable reasons, people who loved cough syrup but i wanted to forget about the fic, to just love me, to rip into me and make me whole again. maybe i’m just addicted to attention and this is all a consequence of that.

cough syrup ends happily. cough syrup ends happily, and part of me finds it unbearable to think that some people waited for that happy ending, only for me to start on the most painful chapters. i want to write this happy ending but i want it to feel like it’s a happy ending for me, but how the fuck can i write that? when is it most poetic? do i write it by graduation? by the time i start college? how do i even move forward with this fic i have to finish but a fic i never want to start?

there have been times i’ve been so anxious about how to progress with cough syrup that i felt like i was going to pass out. there have been times where i was so happy about cough syrup that i wanted to tell the entire world, look at this thing i wrote. look at what i’m capable of. look at the friends i am making because we are all searching for hope. there have been times, more recently, where i wish i was still searching for hope in the ways that feel marketable, creative. 

but mostly, i feel like a coward. i feel like i’m giving up on myself. i read the draft, and i hear the crowd roaring, why don’t you love your creation. 

and honestly, it’s not that. 

i think the mare who wrote cough syrup loved herself. and i think the mare that is writing this, now, is angry that she can’t ask herself, then, would you have ever loved me past the ending of this story? 

[breebrandnew]

I can’t stop thinking about how special this tour is for some of us. I’m 26, and have loved Taylor since seeing her performance of Should’ve Said No at the 2008 ACM Awards. I’ve been here for a long time. But, my parents were incredibly strict. I was never allowed to go out with friends, definitely wasn’t allowed to go to concerts, and wasn’t allowed on any social media until sophomore year of high school in 2012. For a long time, I had a radio in my room that I would sneakily listen to at night. When I got my first iPod, I downloaded all of Taylor’s music and that’s how I stayed connected to her. There are lost videos of my friends and I singing her songs together - Back to December and Our Song were our favorites. I never got to see Taylor live until 2018 for rep tour. I was a junior in college making my own money and could do things that I couldn’t as a kid. It’s so, so special to feel like I’m experiencing something now that I so badly wanted to experience as a kid. I get a chance to make new memories again, in new ways, after cheering on from the sidelines for so long. It’s just all so meaningful for me. 🫶🏼

[automaticllamacycle]

Hey! I think i was the last anon you answered. What I meant by shaming addicts is that on twitter I started to see more and more people talking distastefully about addictions and addicts due to the lyrics about drugs and the meaning people created around it, not that taylor talked about it. I completely agree that Taylor should be able to write about her life and experiences, and i also know that they are normal swifties dw. Unfortunately we see less and less of them. And i know that taylor cant control every one of her fans, those lines just didnt sit well with me.

I didnt know she lost a friend bc of addiction. But i knew what she said about addicts in the long pond studio sessions of folklore so just casually mentioning drugs like that was definitely weird to me and i didnt like them. But hey! I guess its not for me and i think thats okay. Im also probably very biased and protective of matty that's why i jumped into conclusions a little bit so that was wrong of me to say or maybe i shouldve said it in a different way. I definitely don't think that she purposely wanted swifties to hate someone but she didnt really talk about that person kindly (maybe matty but could be fictional or literally anyone else) at least in the smallest man who ever lived, i dont remember the other

I understand being protective of Matty. I love him too I get it. My issue with what you said was that Taylor intentional put those lyrics in to paint him badly because of his addiction. She wouldn’t do that because of that friend she lost. We don’t even truly know the lyrics for sure? And we don’t know who it’s about. The line that mentions drugs in the smallest man to me just seems like a description of an event. It was just saying whatever happened, whether that be a fictional event or something based around reality. The rest of the lyrics of that song doesn’t even make sense to be about Matty. I didn’t even see Swifties mention it at first I just saw tons and I mean TONS of 75 stans say OH ITS MATTY. Most of the crazy Swifties aren’t listening to the leaks out of respect to Taylor

So I see what you mean and I understand being upset over it but I just don’t think the outrage is channeled in the right direction. Be pissed at the Swifties. They’re the ones causing shit. There’s nothing wrong with the lyrics she wrote and she isn’t responsible for what her fans do. She should be able to express art though music without treading lightly in fear of what her fans might do.

[heyftinally]

Actually I'm still angry about this, so I'm adding on to this post.

TW: I'm going to get VERY blunt about some of the things that happened in real life asylums under the cut. If you're disabled and/or have experience with psychiatric abuse, proceed with caution. If you're a swiftie, I expect you to read every word of this and understand EXACTLY why it's so disgusting that Taylor Swift compared her cushy silver platter life to an institution of torture.

A (non-exhaustive) List of Psychiatric Asylum "treatments" Abuse:

ice baths - forcing someone having a mental health crisis, trauma episode, or other "difficult" behavior into a full body bath of ice water in order to sent the body into shock

electric shock therapy - literally just electrocuting people, either on their body or head. This often resulted in literally burning the brain and thus permanently brain damage. It was considered a success if it fried the person so badly that they lost the ability to respond to their surroundings (because a docile patient was consider a good patient, even if that meant being docile while being actively abused)

bloodletting - cutting into someone to let them bleed out intentionally.

straitjackets

forced drugging

lobotomies - literally sticking a metal pick up through the eye socket to stab the brain, again in hopes of destroying the person's brain so badly that they wouldn't react to anything

tooth pulling

organ removal

starvation

sexual assault and rape

murder

The people locked in these horrific prisons ranged from being children to adults. That means that, assuming you lived to adulthood, your life might look like this:

You're committed at age 8. You have no idea where you are or why you're here. You don't know anyone here. Your family has abandoned you.

Even day you get only one or two meals that are barely enough to feed a toddler. You're always hungry. The food is bad, maybe even moldy.

You're frequently taken for "treatments" by the doctors. Sometimes they cut you, or shock you. It hurts so badly that when you bite down, you crack your teeth. Other times they chain you up to your bed or the radiator for hours. The radiator burns you. Nobody cares. If you cry out, you get beaten with a stick.

The doctor sexually assaults you. Nobody notices, or they know about it and do nothing.

This is your life, every day, for the next twenty years. Nobody visits you. Your family pretends you never existed. After two decades or more of abuse, one day you're taken for another "treatment". This time they tie to to the table, and the doctor stabs a metal spike through your eye and into your brain. It's the most excruciating pain of your already painful life, and then it's over. Because you're dead. The doctor murdered you. And not one day in your life did you even know what it was like to feel safe, or loved, or cared for. All you know was abuse, pain, and fear. And your family doesn't even claim your body for burial, because they don't want to admit they know you.

That's what asylums were. Children and adults being raped, tortured, and murdered, and nobody did anything to even try and help them for DECADES.

THAT is what Taylor Swift considers acceptable to use as a metaphor for her life of luxury in which she has had every opportunity handed to her. In which she is now a billionaire.

Taylor Swift has autonomy. Has a voice. Has the ability to pursue both legal and social action against anyone she chooses, even if they don't deserve it. She has private security, and can travel freely whenever and wherever she wants.

None of these things were even something to hope or wish for for victims of asylums. If you were committed to an asylum, that was the end of the road. There was no one coming to save you. You would be abused until you were murdered, and there was nothing you could do about it, and nobody involved would ever face any repercussions for what they did to you.

So yeah, I'm pissed about Taylor Swift's callous use of asylum imagery in her song and video. Because she so easily turns decades of systematic torture, rape, and murder into a "quirky" aesthetic that she can adopt and shed as she pleases. She gets to joke about being hand fed a pill and ignore the countless victims who had pills forcibly shoved down their throats to make them unconscious at best or as an experiment at worst. She gets to lay down and pose on a medical cot and not think for even a second about the people who were chained to those cots and abused, day after day. She gets to walk off set and never spare a thought to the people who would have given their lives for just two minutes outside of the walls of that building.

There's nothing aesthetic about torture. There's nothing quirky about romanticizing the institutions where so many were experimented on, raped, and murdered.

There's nothing acceptable about that line or that music video.

"You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me."

Somehow I don't think this is where Taylor Swift was raised.

Asylums we centers of horrific abuse, primarily of disabled people.

They were tied or chained up.

They were experimented on.

They were sexually abused and raped.

They were beaten.

They were degraded.

They were neglected.

They were murdered.

Asylums served as a way to hide away people with disabilities from society, pretend they never existed, and leave them to die alone, afraid, and in pain. Many having little to no idea why.

The fact that Taylor Swift, an able bodied, neurotypical billionaire who has never encountered even a fraction of the oppression asylum victims did and disabled people still do, thinks this is an acceptable metaphor is nothing short of selfish, vile, out of touch ableism.

She is profiting off of the abuse and the murder of disabled people. She's making light of their abuse by comparing it to her cushy, well to do childhood.

Let's take a look at Taylor Swift's "asylum":

Huge house. Huge yard. Detached two-car garage. In ground pool.

This is not an asylum. It's a home. She had a home. She had her family around her. That family did what they could to support her and make her successful.

That is not asylum life.

She was not experimented on by doctors who believed she was incapable of thinking or feeling. She was not left for dead because nobody could be bothered to clean and feed her when she was incapable of doing so herself. She was not denied access to society or human connection. She was not murdered for being disabled.

Might she have been abused? Sure. Abuse does not make an asylum.

This lyric is nothing short of ableist, and it demonstrates with incredible clarity that Taylor Swift only supports minorities when it makes her look good and suits her purposes. She doesn't care about actually being informed about oppression or being a good person. She'll use minorities in whatever ways she believe will rake in the most profit. She doesn't care who she hurts, as long as she adds another couple millions to her billions.

It's time to demand some real accountability.

[badlandsatlove]

I think I want to talk about Taylor Swift on my main blog so badly because I trust and like a lot of people over there and I want them to understand that their vitriol toward an artist I like is frustrating and unfair and honestly kind of pathetic and hypocritical

I could write a 10 page essay on how fandoms I've been in twice as long as I've been a swiftie are nearly as weird as the swifties are

but here's the thing

the other main reason I want to talk about Taylor Swift on my main blog is that I don't want to have a Taylor Swift blog and have to follow other Taylor Swift blogs because shit be crazy over there sometimes

I love her music, I think she's incredible, I KNOW she's the fucking GOAT and I'm vibrating with excitement just thinking about my upcoming Eras tour date, but I also don't love every thing she's ever done, including recently, and I don't think all of her music is good and she's nowhere near my #1 pop artist (hence this blog being Halsey-themed)

A lot of the things I see some Swifties praise/admire her for or celebrate about her or even just gleefully assume about her are things I don't like at best and while that could comfortably be a difference of opinion, the notes on those posts, as well as the language, tend to make me feel like I am going against a consensus that going against earns me a warning from an army

I want to celebrate the art I enjoy from an artist I admire but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place where the internet spaces I've been a part of since before I knew of Taylor Swift (aka right before debut) are overrun with snooty, pretentious takes that are honestly correct at times and the spaces I would like to enjoy as a fan of Taylor Swift who lived through the Wildest Dreams video, who jolted with confused excitement at the media blackout and first snake video, who grimaced through the Lover rollout, who hugged folklore during some really rough times and still tears up when I hear seven... those online spaces just don't exist for me, anywhere, as far I've searched for them. and I've searched quite far!

I think, honestly, at this point, I am going to Eras just to get it out of my system

I have been to some epic tours in my time but nothing seems so epic as a 3+ hour celebration of nearly 20 years of music from the greatest songwriter of my generation

I want to see Paramore, one of the greatest bands of their time, one of the most important bands of my life, whose lead singer Hayley has been friends with Taylor for 15 years, open for her and feel the energy of many tens of thousands screaming to their hits in a way I haven't seen and felt before

I want to experience that elation and joy and pure euphoria of hearing songs I've memorized and that have mesmerized me echo through the throats and hearts of even more people, pouring out into the sky of a major city with incomparable exuberance and once-in-a-lifetime vigor

but I don't see this claustrophobic, exhausting feeling of being a fan of Taylor Swift when I neither praise nor condemn the ground she walks on going away if I keep engaging online

maybe it's a me problem. maybe she's reached a point of stardom that I can't interface with on a regular basis. I dunno. but come the end of August, I might just leave and never look back.

or maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll find my place amongst the strangest, most dedicated, most insufferable, most passionate fanbase of all time