#I'm also like the only person in my department who understands why it's doing what it's doing besides my boss

[pr0cyonid]

I have the kind of autism that makes me go crazy if I can't figure out what is causing a problem and how to fix it. This is being made worse by the fact that I KNOW the cause of the issue with our phone client at work, but am incapable of fixing it because I'm not a software Dev for the company that made the cursed beast

I rolled for initiative and instead started an Any% speed run of my own descent into madness

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The TTPD Deep Dive (Part ?)

It’s no secret that I have a lot of Thoughts about The Tortured Poets Department and it has lived rent-free in my head since it came out earlier this year. I’m absolutely blown away by how underneath the chaos, it’s actually an exceptionally cohesive story and is probably the closest to a concept album Taylor has ever done.

There are so many themes that have stood out to me over the last five months, and there’s one in particular that I think not only drives the entire album, but ties into previous albums to help deepen understanding of it.

This is it, my fangirl magnum opus, my months of posts consolidated into one place. This is also my disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of the album, and my summary of the story it tells, and I don’t pretend to have any special insight or authority. I’m not saying I’m correct at all, do not take any of this as fact, it’s just what it sounds like to me, and these are my silly not-so-little thoughts about it.

(Under a cut because it’s way too long and involves discussion many may not care for or be sick of.)

Come one, come all, it's happening again (I'm thinking too hard about Taylor music)

The overarching theme in TTPD to me is: Grief. If you’re looking at TTPD as a story being told (instead of just as someone’s real life), the inciting incident of TTPD is loss, and the grief from that loss is what drives the narrator’s actions and the fallout, as well as unpacks those complicated feelings and how they apply to the her life in general. By the end of the standard album, it’s also about recovering from that pain, moving on from it and learning from it.

The loss specifically is the loss of the dream of having a family (with one’s partner). One thing that is abundantly clear both on the top line and under the surface in TTPD is how Taylor (as a person and as narrator) longed not only to for marriage but specifically parenthood, and the fear and then realization of losing that chance absolutely wrecked her— which is why the next lover’s (the conman's) wooing worked so well, because it preyed on that yearning. Yet that loss also dovetails into the grief of many things: of youth, of idealism, of relationships, of ideas, even of self, which causes almost a deconstruction of a belief system to piece one’s life back together by the end.

THE CONTEXT

TTPD weaves in the topics of marriage and motherhood both explicitly and in the subtext, in various forms and scenarios. The cheating husband in “Fortnight.” The wedding ring line in “TTPD” the song. “He saw forever so he smashed it up” in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” All of “So Long, London.” Running away with her wild boy in “But Daddy I Love Him,” fantasizing about weddings and joking about babies. The imaginary rings in “Fresh Out The Slammer.” The cheating husband (again) and the friends who smell like weed or “little babies” in “Florida!!!” “You and I go from one kiss to getting married,” “Talking rings and talking cradles,” and “our field of dreams engulfed in fire” in “loml.” (And arguably: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.”) “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short,” in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” They may not sound like much on their own, but they paint a picture about how the topics pervaded her thoughts and her writing, and in many cases express her desires, and her pain.

It’s something that goes back several albums when you pick up on context clues. You get the first hints on Reputation with “New Year’s Day,” and “you and me forevermore.” Then Lover is very forward with it: “Lover” is basically wedding vows, “Paper Rings” is very engagement-coded, “I Think He Knows” is cheeky but low-key “you better put a ring on it,” “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” has wedding/marriage imagery in the last verse. As a self-professed diaristic writer, it’s the type of stuff one presumably doesn’t put out there unless those conversations have already happened, and she was very excited about it at the time it was released.

Then the pandemic happens and folklore comes out, and while there is still happy love there (“invisible string”), there are also the first indications that something has happened to put a halt to whatever future she once dreamed of (“hoax,” “the lakes”) and that she’s trying to reassure herself and him that it can still happen even if she’s scared it might not (“peace”). Notably, as far as I can remember it’s the first time Taylor explicitly brings up the idea of family (with her partner) with “you know that I’d give you my wild, give you a child,” which stood out at the time because it’s so incredibly vulnerable, but it’s even more poignant when you really take in that the whole song is like a confession of her deepest worries, and this is her vowing to give him these things that she holds most sacred if he’ll let her. These are what she cherishes most dearly and wants to return in kind: her youth and commitment (my wild), the family she craves (a child), unconditional support (swing for the fences/sit in the trenches) and understanding/compassion (silence that only comes when two people know each other).

Evermore follows an even darker path, and suddenly the album explores relationships that end and grappling with loss. There are toxic relationships (“tolerate it”), dangerous marriages (“no body, no crime,” “ivy”), failing/broken relationships (“Coney Island,” “champagne problems,” “happiness,” “‘tis the damn season”), as well as grief (“Marjorie,” “evermore”). Even some of the happy songs have uncertainty in them: in “willow” she’s begging for him to take her lead, like she’s still trying to decipher him and ask him to commit; in “cowboy like me,” still a beautiful love song, she’s thinking, “this wasn’t supposed to work and we were supposed to bail on each other but we fell in love instead”; “evermore” is about the depths of severe depression (and more) with the love story being the one saving grace in her darkest hour. And it’s also notable that after all the “fiction” writing, shortly after this album she writes “Renegade” where she’s telling the subject: I’m ready to start the next phase of our life now, why aren’t you? Is it me you don’t want after all? It’s like there’s something telling her that this stall might not just be a stall.

Midnights is a jumble (in a good, but in hindsight, also sad way) with the “sleepless nights” concept, but it seems pretty clear now that the themes and events and relationships she was revisiting tied into a lot of what she was feeling in her present life. I wrote the cliff notes version awhile back, but she’s questioning so much of her life that’s reflected in past events and relationships. Am I actually always the problem? How did we lose sight of each other and what we had? We only seem to work when we block out everyone and everything else. Can we ever go back to when things were good? Why are you neglecting me? I once thought I was going to lose everything but you saved me in the nick of time, can that happen again? I chased my career, but did I give up my chance at having a family in the process? Nobody knows what I really suffer from behind closed doors and I’m all alone.

And so on, which in retrospect now that we have TTPD, is very much what she was grappling with in private while writing and releasing the album. The inspiration behind the songs may have been different events and muses, but regardless of their origins they all end up feeling too familiar, like she's seen this film before (ahem). We’re seeing her view of commitment change too, or rather how she writes about it: she’s not making the outright declarations of it like on Lover, or even the implied ones on folklore, nor is she talking of the dark side of it like evermore. For the most part it’s a return to the early days of some relationships, before things got hard, or the end of them when there was nothing left, and also pushing away the discussion of it altogether by the outside world. “Sweet Nothing” is a sweet slice of life, but even at that, it’s the peace of the home in conflict with the pressure of the outside world. Now that we have “You’re Losing Me,” which was written at the same time as the rest of the album, we can probably deduce that she was going back to the start because something happened that made her doubt the future.

THE SETUP

So much of Midnights directly ties into TTPD, and I said in the post I linked that it’s like Midnights is asking the questions that TTPD answers. But there’s one song in particular on Midnights that sticks out to me as being key in the broadest sense to understanding the state of mind that led to the events of TTPD, and that’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” because the way it expresses grief is reflected in the theme of mourning a life built and the dreams along with it that are never realized in TTPD. There are several instances in TTPD that are basically variations of: “every single thing to come has turned into ashes,” and that’s what makes her snap, and leaves her vulnerable to someone who promises her those things when she’s bereaved at losing them in the first place. (In other words: “the deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling.”) The song tells a story about how that loss of hope colours one’s entire mindset, and in some ways is a bridge to TTPD to understand what such a low point feels like.

I think that that grief, and most importantly losing hope for an imagined future in its wake, is fundamental to understanding TTPD on so many levels: both the decline with one partner that kept her hanging on then led her such a dark path, and why she fell for the conman's apparent bullshitting because it offered an express pass to what she was losing with her partner. And I also feel like it plays a part into the ruminating she’s doing all over Midnights, trying to make sense of where she finds herself when she’s writing the album, which directly leads to “You’re Losing Me.” Loss permeates so many of the stories on Midnights: of lovers, of innocence, of youth, of faith, of control, of life’s work, etc. “BTTWS” is just one of the ways in which it is expressed so fully, capturing that deep depression and subsequent extinction of faith in something that once felt assured and very much wanted. (Which is also mentioned in her writing process in the “Depression” playlist on Apple Music.)

If you understand why that feeling of loss in general across so many parts of life is so important to Midnights, then it illuminates so much about the “narrative” in TTPD too. If on Midnights she’s wrestling with the seeds of grief and loss (on multiple fronts), TTPD is her reckoning with it in its full form. “So Long, London” is the song that is the most explicit about it: How much sad did you think I had in me? How much tragedy? Just how low did you think I’d go before I’d have to go be free? You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. It’s the sequel to “You’re Losing Me.” It’s, the air is thick with loss and indecision, I know my pain is such an imposition, I’m getting tired even for a phoenix, all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, I’ve got nothing left to believe unless you’re choosing me, my heart won’t start anymore, but from the other side of the break.

This is highly speculative, but if you follow the thread about the topic and the relationship as told from Rep through TTPD, in broad strokes it goes: young love with a serious connection (Rep) -> growing up and making life plans (Lover) -> something happens that delays those plans or makes them grind to a halt (folklore) -> serious doubts arise and cause a loss of faith in their future (evermore) -> struggling with the loss of that future and trying to make sense of the problems in a last ditch attempt to save the relationship (Midnights) -> fallout from that grief after the blowup of the relationship (TTPD). Understanding that progression of events (through the music) explains not only the storytelling side of TTPD (e.g. the jump from the partner to the conman) but also how the experiences/muses blend in the music, and how the music that on the surface is about the short-term relationship is really driven by the destruction of the long-term one.

Following the music, it’s IMO implied that Taylor (the narrator) was holding out for marriage and family with her partner, for years, and it seems like it was at one point a shared dream until something happened to pump the brakes, and seemingly on her partner’s end. And extrapolating further, given how the sorrow expressed in former albums bleeds into TTPD, it sounds like a plan that had been concrete in some form before it had fallen apart, and losing something that once felt so tangible is what drives her in her grief to find any kind of respite from the pain. Which is why the situation with the conman becomes so appealing as the one with the partner splinters further and further.

(If everything you’ve once touched is sick with sadness and you don’t want to be sad anymore, what are you left to do?)

THE STORY

So (one part of) the story kind of sounds like this from the standard album: the relationship with her partner as well as his mental health slowly deteriorate and he withdraws emotionally (“London,” “Fresh Out The Slammer”) and physically (again, “London,” and “Guilty As Sin?”) and takes his resentment out on her (“London” and arguably “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” even though I don't want to get into muse speculation here). As she sinks deeper into her own depression as a result, the weight of the failing relationship starts feeling like a cage— or a noose (“London,” “Guilty”), but coming to terms with the loss of their life together and the future they’d dreamed of was killing her (again, “London,” but also “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”).

Enter the conman who she reconnects with at the very point where this is coming to a head (knowing that IRL she reconnected with him around the time Midnights was being worked on) , and if you read between the lines, she confides some deeply personal things to him (“Down Bad” and “hostile takes overs”/“encounters closer and closer,” “Smallest Man” and the entire sleeper cell spy imagery which is one of my favourite things and I could write a whole essay about the meaning of it, “loml” and “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme”). Then after she’s confided these secrets to him, he insinuates himself back into her life (“Guilty,” “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man”) and sells her a dream that HE can give her all these things she hopes for (again, “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man,” “loml,” song “TTPD,” “Broken Heart”).

But the thing is, he only knows these are the things she wants because she’s revealed it to him, and presumably, told him that was what she was losing by staying with her partner. And instead of the normal response of, “that is really sad that your partner is not supporting you and you deserve to be treated better,” to a friend in growing distress, it seems like it was, “well I can give you all those things!!!! Right now!!!! Trust me!!!!” And worked on her until she believed it, and jumped at the chance at a precarious time in her life. And one thing I want to underscore is: Taylor has agency in the situation always, it’s not like she’s been kidnapped and brainwashed. (In fact, she implores on songs like “But Daddy” that SHE is in charge of her own choices, good or bad.) She chose to rekindle the friendship and then relationship, and she chose to eventually leave her long term relationship for another man, and she reiterates on the album that she owns this all. But it’s also: nothing exists in a vacuum, and she makes choices based on emotions and information she has at the time, which is why it gives so much whiplash.

THE ALBUM

When you look at it as, the situation with the conman only happens because of what happened with the partner first and that the appeal of the conman and the fantasy he sells her is a direct reaction to that, it makes the “swirliness” of the music make so much more sense. And for much of it, even many of the “conman” songs on the surface are really “partner” songs underneath.

Fortnight

A suburban gothic allegory about a broken marriage with a distant husband with a wandering eye, which makes the rekindled romance with the neighbor so appealing. She’s miserable caged in her stifling house because she’s been abandoned by her spouse, so the reappearance of this past love reignites the passion that’s dead at home.

TTPD

“So tell me, who else is gonna know me?” “I chose this cyclone with you.” I’m gonna kill myself if you ever leave. Everyone knows we’re crazy. She’s laying it out there that she’s already in a dangerous state of mind, and she’s actively putting herself in more danger by pursuing the conman. “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding,” spells this whole thing out so clearly: whether it’s an actual event (likely) or a metaphor for the promise he makes to her, the reason why it makes her heart explode is because it’s the thing she’s been waiting for forever with no movement, and here this person comes in and slips it on her finger in an instant like it’s nothing. (And eventually, as we’ll come to know, it is absolutely nothing to him.) You mean it could have been this easy this whole time?! (Well, no. Not until a certain other suitor makes his appearance later.) It feels like she’s finally getting everything she wanted in the blink of an eye! How lucky! How convenient! What was that about the get-love-quick scheme you say? (Unsaid: the reason why this feels so urgent is because there’s a sense that time is running out in so many aspects of her life and not just the obvious. Which reappears later on.)

Down Bad

“Did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” sets the scene for this euphoric experience in the moment that starts to feel violating once the dust settles (which is then followed up in “Smallest Man” and the spy mission on her). The bridge spells out how he weaselled his way into her life, preyed upon (intentionally or not) her emotional state, sold her a dream and then vanished, without the benefit of hindsight yet we see later in the album.

The alien abduction metaphor is pretty brilliant, because it shows both how she was desperate to escape the place she found herself in, and how much it screwed her brain to then be left stranded when the affair was over. “[I loved your] hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer,” is so evocative because it details how the situation came to be: his overtures under the guise of friendship blurred lines until he made her an offer that she eventually couldn’t refuse (hostile takeovers) as he infiltrated her life more and more intimately. The sad thing is that the song has parallels to how her relationship with the partner started too in earlier albums, in that they ran away to live in their own bubble (or planet) only for him to metaphorically abandon her as the years went on. (Oven, meet microwave.)

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Being continually emotionally broken down by a person who knows he’s hurting you but still acts the way he does. (The original voice memo version makes this even clearer and it’s rather heartbreaking.) “He saw forever so he smashed it up,” speaks to the loss of a future the person became scared of, and the original lyrics (“he saw forever so he blew it up”) somehow cut even deeper to me because it feels so much more intentional.

Also in the original version, “he was my best friend and that was the worst part,” also speaks not only to the loss of an entire partnership in the wake of this hurt, but also to the feelings of betrayal that the person you trust so deeply has the ability to hurt you in this way too, and how it’s a one-two punch of not only losing the relationship but also your closest confidant. (It’s like the sequel to “Renegade” and the missiles firing to me.) Again, there are shades of both/many situations in the song, pointing to an unfortunate pattern in some ways. The situation in “My Boy” is part of why she was so low, and why the “get love quick scheme” was so appealing later on. And it dovetails nicely into…

So Long, London

The most explicitly “partner” song that puts a coda on “You’re Losing Me,” and is Track 5 because it’s the emotional underpinning of how she got to where she was, and drives the events of the rest of the album. It spells everything out: He withdrew, she tried to fix it for both of them, eventually even that stopped working, he was oblivious to or minimized how badly she was suffering and his (in)actions couldn’t reassure her, he wouldn’t move forward on their future plans and stewed in his own struggles, she was spiralling out of control trying to hang on and ultimately felt like she was going to die if she didn’t leave.

But Daddy I Love Him

Like a direct reaction to “So Long, London” in that she breaks free from the death of one relationship and throws herself with reckless abandon to the next, fuck the haters. How dare you judge me, when the relationship you think I should have stayed in was killing me? (Dutiful daughter all the plans were laid. All you want is gray for me.) Fuck all of you, I’m going to choose whoever I want! (So what if I have a baby with HIM, huh?! I tried doing it the proper way and look where that got me so now we're back to square one) It’s again her imagining how wonderful and freeing this “wild boy” is going to be for her, and how wrong she’ll prove everyone. THIS TIME she definitely got it right. So what if she has to run away! So what if she scandalizes the whole town! They don’t know what she really wants or needs anyway! She’s the only one of her (hee-hee-hee) and she’s the only who gets to decides how this goes. (Because: she longs for control in a situation she’ll eventually realize she has little of it in, which we’ll find out is a recurring theme in her life.)

Fresh Out The Slammer

Also spells out what happened with the partner in the first verse and the pre-choruses, which is what makes the conman so appealing as the imagined jailbreak. The bitter loneliness vs. the sultry passion she builds up in her head as she awaits her release from prison is key to understanding the two sides of the story in the album. There’s this whole outlaw imagery (which is also carried through in “I Can Fix Him”), but it’s contrasted in the end with her and her reunited lover sitting on park swings like children with “imaginary rings” — because “Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake.” What’s at stake is lasting love and the promises that come with it (marriage/family) that are precious and time-sensitive. The imaginary rings are both a nod to the youthful dreams of her and her new/old lover, but also has a double meaning to me because those promises aren’t built on anything together; they're made up, intangible. (They’re no more concrete than the plans that went up in smoke with the partner.) Like with most of the conman situation, it’s all a fantasy in her head that has yet to happen, and as we find out later in the album, reality ends up leaving much to be desired.

Florida!!!

Broadly speaking, it’s running away from your problems and wanting to disappear from your life. (But again: the life she’s disappearing from is the cheating husband she may or may not be feeding to the swamp-- another miserable marriage.) What kind of flies under the radar though is the “I don’t want to exist,” line, which points to her dire state of mind that led her to fleeing to that metaphorical timeshare down in Destin. In many ways about cheating death.

Guilty As Sin

Yes it’s the “masturbation song,” but again the nuance is that she’s left to pleasure herself because her partner has abandoned her emotionally and even physically, i.e. “my boredom’s bone deep.” To be blunt: they aren’t even intimate anymore, so she starts fantasizing about the guy she used to have chemistry with who’s reentered her life and is making moves on her. And realizing that she’s now finding release in another man (albeit imaginary) breaks her even as it reinvigorates her because she finally understands that the relationship she’s in is effectively dead. (“Am I allowed to cry?”)

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

This isn’t about relationships, but about society and its reaction to them in a general sense. But again, she’s left to stew in all this anger and hurt as she’s been abandoned at home, then abandoned by public opinion, and the public attack on her is part of the origin as well as the end of that story. The trauma inflicted upon her detailed in the song is the reason why she felt trapped in the first place, which led to the decisions she’s made and habits she’s leaned on ever since.

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

This is one of the few songs that is the most completely conman-coded, and shows when the delusion finally breaks at the end of the song. She spends the whole song being like, “no really, I alone can make him better! You’ll see! I know he’s gross, but he’s mine! It’ll be fine I swear! You don’t know anything! Uuuuuum hmm wait actually what the fuck—“

Loml

Oof. THE song. Again the surface reading is about the “conman” who comes in and sells her the lie, but the pain is because all the dreams she writes about are HER dreams and implied that they were the dreams she built with her partner that the conman sold back to her. I could do a deeper dive on this but most of the song is applicable to both relationships, which not only shows the “swirliness” of her writing, but also how they both ultimately did the same thing to her in different shades.

The bridge and the last chorus are kind of fundamental to understanding it all, and her ending it with “you’re the loss of my life” is about, among other things, how falling for this trap blew up the life she built and dreamed of for good. (I could talk about this one forever.) “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles” to “Our field of dreams engulfed in fire” is a hell of a line and progression, and again, indicative of what the real driving force behind the whole album is. The shit-talking is because he took her dreams (of marriage and children) and hyped it back up to her tenfold whether in a moment of his own delusion or for more nefarious reasons — much like how the man prior kept promising these things but never followed through, which left her vulnerable to someone who appeared to offer them enthusiastically. The field of dreams isn’t just the one with the conman, it’s the one with the longterm relationship she’d built the dream with in the first place, because the conman’s actions are part of the reason the LTR went up in smoke. (Not the reason for the rift, but the consequence of the final break.) And THAT is why it’s the loss of her life, so completely.

When she says “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” IMO it’s not just the fake future that the conman lures her into, but also (and perhaps mainly) the once-real one she had with her partner and the loss of which that made her susceptible to falling for the con in the first place. There’s honestly so much between the lines in this song that covers every theme and speaks to the grief of seeing the life she imagined slip away, slowly by the first man then annihilated by the second.

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

The juxtaposition of “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short” and “He said he’d love me for all time, but that time was quite short” sums it up to me (and parallels “loml”), because they are two different situations, but they cut her just the same. In the first, “that life” IMO was the life they’d built with the dreams that went along with it and it was too short because he never followed through, and in the second, the “time” was quite short because it was the frenzy of the whirlwind romance that fizzled as quickly as it began. The life that was too short led to the time that was quite short.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

This is definitely THE conman song. The rage, the shame, the violation, it’s all in there. But the key to it is the bridge and the espionage imagery woven through it. A honeypot scheme is when spies target a mark and seduce them to gain their trust and their privileged information for their homeland. So her likening him to a sleeper cell spy who set her up just to mine her deepest secrets and use them against her is a heavy, loaded statement. And implied: that valuable information she unknowingly held were her longings of marriage and family (the aforementioned shit-talking about rings and cradles she never got to have), and more importantly, those dreams preceded him reentering her life and then beginning his mission on her.

The insinuation then is: she confesses these are her deepest wishes which are now seemingly unattainable in her current situation (e.g. with her partner) -> he convinces her HE will give them to her and make the dreams she pines for come true -> she falls for him and blows up her life to make it happen -> he gets what he wants (thrill of the chase/sex/the idea of her/whatever his intent was) -> he abandons her when he gets what he wants, or rather it isn’t what he wants or can handle -> she’s left a) all alone b) with dreams unfulfilled c) with no answers d) feeling used at having her most sacred wishes used against her.

Again, the song is unquestionably about the way the conman absolutely destroyed her, but he was able to do that because there was this thing she wanted more than anything, that was dying in her previous relationship, that he was able to prey upon to seduce her, then discarded her and her dreams as soon as it was inconvenient for him while absolutely hollowing her inside out. (And again: the devastating thing is that this also applies to other relationships she’s written about, in different ways.)

The Alchemy

Not about either the partner or the conman directly, but it (loosely) touches on her finding herself after the whole oven-to-microwave experience and opening herself up to life and love again. #GoodForHer

Clara Bow

This isn’t about the romantic relationships on the surface, but it is about how damaging the entertainment industry and public life are on women, and how women are only valued for their beauty as commodities until they can be discarded and destroyed in the process. Which I think plays into the circumstances that led her to make the decisions that she did years ago, and why she makes the ones she does now. (But also, being valued for physical traits and appeal for the male gaze brings us to…)

The Manuscript

The “original sin” that kicks off all of this. Again, at first light this isn’t about the partner or the conman, but the person it is about is the reason why she has made all the decisions she has ever since in relationships (and that’s Mr. Plaid Shirt Days from “All Too Well”). The realization that her first serious adult relationship is what cemented these patterns, and this view of herself and her worthiness in relationships, is profoundly sad. An older man who valued her for being so mature for her age and implying that the mature activities ahem associated with that were the performance benchmarks in her ability to carry a relationship, only to leave her, was earth shattering. She placed her faith in this person, but then the way he treated her changed her view of love and of herself.

She took his innuendo about “pushing strollers” as a sign of potential commitment, whereas he ultimately meant it as foreplay, and she was too young and naive to know the difference. So not only did she learn from that that this man (and men) didn’t view commitment and family the way she did and that it was something to be toyed with, but she also learned that her value to them among other things was sex. Imagine being an idealistic 20 year old and your boyfriend ten years your senior tells you, “if the sex is anywhere near as good as our dates have been, we’re going to be making babies before you know it,” (e.g. this is relationship is serious) and then he dumps you: does that imply that the sex was not in fact that good? (E.g. that you’re not worthy after all?)

No, obviously from this side of life, it’s because he was a commitment-phobic playboy, even if he did love her, but she couldn’t have known that at 20 and instead internalized that shame. But, it did send her on a path of how she approached sex and love and relationships for over a decade afterwards. And her coming to the realization that that first act of (perhaps unintentional) manipulation is what informed her actions thereafter helped her break the pattern. Her worth to men is not just sex, she has value and her hopes and dreams have value, she doesn’t have to change into a different person to please anyone, because if that is what they want, they won’t ever want her anyway.

It’s been described here on Tumblr by people more eloquent and astute than I as a song that encapsulates the album as this: one did it slow (partner), one did it fast (conman), and one did it first (first love)— and that is haunting. After years of men minimizing her dreams and desires, if not outright using them against her, she’s finally at the point where she can let it all go and move on for good. (There’s a whole other tangent about consent and shame and manipulation, but that’s an entirely different kind of discussion. But it is so devastatingly contrasted with “you said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die.”)

THE SUMMATION

This is just my interpretation of it, but in going through the standard album, it feels pretty clear how cohesive the album is about a story of love and loss and grief, then reckoning with what caused it all in the first place that set a person on this path. It’s a formative experience at a young age that was traumatic and led to certain coping mechanisms and a shaping of one’s self-perception, as well as the reaction to external pressures that try to dictate behaviours and influence how one feels one deserves out of love which makes it harder to know when one absolutely deserves more and better. And leaves one struggling to cope with loss when there isn’t anything else to hold onto. Then in light of one’s life blowing up, learning to find oneself in the aftermath all over again.

On another tangent that is somewhat related to the theme of loss, the way she writes about the two main muses on the standard album also ties into how the situations converged to create absolute carnage on her emotional and mental well-being. With one situation, she’s talking about a concrete life that crumbles under the weight of their struggles; with the other, the entire thing is a fantasy that she builds up in her head, and when it comes to fruition it falls far, far short.

If you look at the “microwave” (conman) relationship, you realize that almost everything she writes about it happens before it actually becomes reality, and it’s mostly her imagining how great it’ll be, but with few exceptions, when she writes about what actually occurred, it doesn’t even come close to living up to her expectations. “Fortnight” is an imagined future where she escapes to Florida and his touch finally starts her stalled engine (ahem). “TTPD” is perhaps the most positive retelling of their time together, but even that implies he was better off stoned and when he sobered up he succumbed to his demons all over again, and more importantly she conveys how she also is in extreme distress, barely concealed by the veneer of being infatuated with him. (E.g. saying to that she’ll kill herself if he ever leaves her — the implication is that she is absolutely serious about it when she “felt seen.”) And that the warning bells are going off in her head, but she feels like this person is the only one she can be with (because they’re equally fucked up and the chaos he brings into her life makes her feel alive when she felt so close to death).

“Down Bad” is the most explicit about being in love, but she’s also left completely confused and disoriented by him disappearing, wondering if any of it was real and the seeds of violation creep into her consciousness (“did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” “Waking up in blood.”). “But Daddy” is her imagining she can tell everyone to fuck off for telling her what to do with her life. “Fresh Out The Slammer” is her fantasizing about this man while feeling trapped in her relationship — but never in the song is she actually reunited with him; she’s using him as the projection of all the things she’ll make right after being wronged by her partner. “Guilty As Sin?” Is very obviously about her fantasizing about sleeping with him, but again it’s such a minefield for her because it hasn’t happened yet; they’ve only just reconnected. “I Can Fix Him” is the only song other than “TTPD” that shows them actually together, and it’s the one where she keeps saying, essentially, “I know he’s gross but I can rehabilitate him into an upstanding person, trust me,” until the mic drop at the end of the song where it finally hits her that no, she can’t, because this is who he is, not the person she’s built him up to be.

“Loml” is when it all comes crashing down, and the song emphasizes everything he did and told her, e.g. that she’s the love of his life, but she doesn’t return the sentiment in the song about their time together. Because now that it’s past tense, she knows it wasn’t actually love. (And says as much in the album epilogue poem.) “Broken Heart” is her reeling in the aftermath, but again, it’s “he said,” not “I loved.” And then there’s “The Smallest Man,” where she eviscerates him: he also pursued an idea of her but didn’t care much for the real her in front of him (who else is gonna know me?), he love bombed her only to hurt her (crushing her dreams), he was constantly stoned (and not just in the funny munchies kind of way), and he wasn’t even a good lover (despite the fantasy she’d created before). That last point is especially striking because she spent albums singing about the importance of and pleasure in (sexual) intimacy in the relationship with her partner (sometimes to both their own detriment) and how it was at times the only way they could connect, but in this case, the idea she hyped up and acted on in her head about this lover never panned out in practice. She spells it out in the epilogue: it wasn’t a love affair, it was a mutual manic phase.

In contrast, there’s a lot more tangible action in the “oven” (partner) parts of the album, showing how hard she tried to make the relationship work in real life instead of just in her head. All of “So Long, London” is her detailing how she tried to break through to him and support him, even when he rejected it and pushed her away, thinking she could carry them both until they ultimately sank, but she did it because she “loved this place for so long.” (The place? Not just the city, but the home and perhaps most importantly, him.) In “Slammer” she stayed with him even as things disintegrated for “one hour of sunshine.” (E.g. holding onto the rarer good times even as they were fewer and further between, hoping things would eventually turn around.) And like in “London,” she held on despite people in her life pleading with her that it was hurting her. (Which is also echoed in “Slammer.”) In “Guilty” her boredom is “bone deep” because the passion that once drove their relationship (and papered over their problems) has finally gone out too, so there’s nothing left to hold onto, leading to her fantasizing about the new suitor, which makes her realize her relationship has passed the point of no return. “Loml” is about the conman on the surface, but the undercurrent of all the things she says about him is that he was co-opting the dreams that she was clinging onto for dear life in the previous relationship, which is why the con is so painful; the field of dreams he sets ablaze isn’t just the fake painting he sold to her, but the original artifact (her life with her partner) too.

All the physical and emotional labour she puts into the relationship with her partner ends up reflected in the fantasizing she does in the one with the conman, which is why it is so confusing in the moment and so lethal when he leaves her without any answers. She wants to get married and start a family with her partner which keeps getting stalled; the conman mock-proposes which makes her think he’s immediately serious (“TTPD,” “loml”). She feels caged by having to hide with her partner and shrink herself; the conman promises he’ll stand by her side publicly and let her shine (“Smallest Man”). She sinks into a deep depression in her loneliness as the relationship with her partner careens off a cliff; the conman convinces her they’re meant for each other in a them-against-the-world way (“Down Bad”). The intimacy (in all senses of the word) in her relationship with her partner fizzles; the conman stokes the fire by sending her secret messages and reigniting passion (“Guilty”). She spent years trying to help her partner to no avail; the conman makes her think she has the power to reform him (“loml”). She feels misunderstood by her partner; the conman acts like he’s the (only) one who truly gets her (“TTPD,” “loml”).

In short: there’s nothing that the conman does or says that isn’t a direct response to what her partner did first, and it’s even worse because the conman knew how much her partner’s actions hurt her and he used that privileged information to paint a picture of what he could give her, but in doing so in some ways aimed at her heart with even deadlier accuracy. (I’ve likened it to him borrowing someone else’s life for his own joyride, until he crashes the rental car and flees the scene.) It’s why in the aftermath, the difference in emotions are so different: she feels nothing but rage and violation towards the conman for getting in her head and using her, whereas her feelings towards her partner are more complicated. There’s anger (at her lost youth and being taken for granted), but there’s also sorrow (at their lost life and future), disappointment (that he never could step up the way he’d promised or she’d needed), even compassion (towards his struggles) and a tiny measure of appreciation (for the good times they did share).

When you look at the bigger picture, the story the album paints is just so painfully normal. You have two people (Taylor and her partner) who once loved each other deeply, and despite warning signs early on telling them they have fundamentally different needs and ways of living their lives they fight like hell to make it work (the epilogue) until those warning signs become grenades that destroy their home (“My Boy,” “London,” “Slammer,” arguably “loml”). Having already been through at least one rough patch/break/breakup that she felt almost destroyed her (harkening back to Midnights on “You’re Losing Me,” “The Great War” and “Hits Different”), the final and fatal downward spiral of the relationship (“YLM,” “London”) and the grief over losing that future sends her into a tailspin, just at the time where a flame from the past (the conman) reenters her life and tells her all the things she’s been longing to hear and feel (“TTPD,” “Down Bad,” “Guilty,” “loml”) and, crucially, missing from the relationship that was once her entire life.

So in her panic, she falls prey to the (empty) promises of the past lover (“loml,” “Smallest Man”) and decides he’s actually what will save her from the free fall, because the alternative (that she will end up in a situation she doesn’t think she can survive) is too painful to bear. When she finally acts on these circumstances (leaves her partner/runs to the conman), she snaps, acting on pure emotion and adrenaline (“But Daddy”), but before she knows it, the new lover abandons her, and she’s left to reckon with the fallout of the episode and process everything that has happened (“Down Bad,” “loml”) — with the conman, with her partner, with the choices made in her adult life personally and professionally which leads her back to the moment she feels set her down that road at the start.

The TL;DR of this unintentionally long essay is that the reason the conman affair was so serious was precisely because it was meant to fulfill the promise of what was her life with her partner. To me, a large part of the story is that she projected that life onto the conman (or he projected her life back to her for his own purposes) because she wasn’t ready to deal with that massive grief and the life raft he offered felt like the only alternative to an even darker end. Whether the conman actually believed what he told her, or he went along with it or encouraged it because it served his purpose, we’ll never know, just like we’ll never know the finer details of what went on (nor should we). But no matter what, the album is just an extreme deep dive into all the ways grief can consume us, and whether it’s a long, drawn-out death or a sudden, inexplicable one, it can turn a person’s life into such a trainwreck that they act in ways unfathomable to even them, let alone the people around them. It can also unleash repressed trauma and mental illness that can crater your sense of self. And when those situations are compounded? It makes for a nearly impossible type of breakdown to unpack. (Which is why you might need a 31 song album to process it.)

[lucysarah-c]

The way I'd never survive a relationship with Levi. A relationship with him is NOT for the weak, lol. Like...I love him a whole lot, but...no.

I think his devotion and his deep love for his s/o is something we all are looking for, especially in our time rn. But damn...I'd end up crumbling.

Like...money wise, personality wise, etc.

Again, a relationship with Levi? NOT for the weak.

Hello! Haha, I just received this ask and felt a mix of amusement and conflict.

I'm always apprehensive about writing Levi too harshly in response to asks. I often think, "This anon probably wants to read about Levi doing what they're asking and maybe they need to read about it because they're having a bad day." But then I also think, "If they truly want my interpretation, I should be honest about how I view Levi as a person."

I am aware that I don't portray Levi as the most perfect persona and boyfriend, and that always makes me nervous. Lately, my blog has seen a lot of new traffic concerning "how I interpret Levi," and I’m constantly torn between giving anons what they probably want to hear to brighten their day and staying true to my thoughts.

This ask made me chuckle but also made me nervous. What if those who read my posts start to think that having Levi as a boyfriend is difficult or unenjoyable?

Levi is my favorite character, and I often think of him in terms of a poem about cats that I once read. The poem essentially suggested that "You should love a person as you love a cat. Allow them to reach out to you when they feel ready, understand their changes in mood, their personalities, and their distance. You love a cat even when they are surly because you understand that when they climb on top of you to purr and sleep on your chest, it’s because there’s no other place in the world they would rather be."

I think Levi aligns with this a lot. That’s also why it’s hard for me to write "modern AU" Levis. For me, Levi is who he is because of the situations he has endured. He's a man from a cruel society, facing high expectations and a difficult life. He's kind and lovely in his own way because he’s not only a man who has suffered greatly, but also from a time and society where therapists didn’t exist—and if they did, their "treatments" were electroshocks. He's not perfect. I dare say that probably a lot of people within the walls don't like Levi because he's not a charismatic person. We love him because we know him, but we are omnipresent readers. Normal people just hear him being blunt with words and stoic.

Levi is probably hard to deal with in many departments, as all of us are to some degree, I believe! I'm sorry if I ever wrote him too harshly. I usually try to think that I love and write Levi in love as a rescued cat: he may be surly, he may have issues, but when he's with someone, it's because he wishes to be nowhere else in this world.

Sorry for the ramble.

Love ya <3

[qqueenofhades]

https://www.tumblr.com/qqueenofhades/751102464296665088

*Puts on old man costume*

"Back in my day, we used to cheat and procrastinate like real people! With copious amounts of bullshitting and pulling things out of our asses at the last minute! Secretly sneaking in little things written on our hands or in our phones fer tests and shit! Heck, maybe we didn't even NEED to cheat because it turns out we actually knew stuff, we just didn't know we knew stuff until our last minute papers got a good grade anyways because our shit actually had some analytical relevance borne from deep in our psyche, but we just didn't realize it because we had massive cases of imposter syndrome where we thought everyone else was smarter than us, while overlooking our own abilities!

Now these newfangled ChatGPTs are just taking the easy way out of the easy way out! What's up with that!? These new procrastinators and cheaters make us look even worse than we already do, cuz they ain't even doing the work of not doing the work! And y'all can't even say that you can learn from it in the art of bullshittin', cuz that's not even YOUR bullshitting, it's someone else's bullshitting mangled up with hundreds of other peoples' bullshittin'!

Feh, kids these days!"

*Takes off old man costume*

Addendum: old man anon griping about cheating with ChatGPT does not endorse cheating or procrastinating. I'm just being silly.

I mean... at least with regular old-fashioned cheating, also an academic tradition since time immemorial, at least you're engaging with the material somehow. You are putting your own two god-given eyeballs on that and using your own ickle brainikins to do SOMETHING with it, even if that something is morally questionable. We've all seen the elaborate cheat devices where someone managed to engrave all the exam answers onto a pen or a pair of socks or whatever -- at least that person went in and used their initiative to remember information SOMEHOW, and to do it under their own power. Now, yes, it will get you into trouble, and yes, there are plenty of conversations to be had about accessibility and the fact that not everyone learns by sitting in a room and being lectured at and then having to regurgitate it all from memory with no notes in a final exam, which is why there is a whole thriving field of educational pedagogy and best practices and how to accommodate students with different learning styles and etc. etc. I sometimes see AI framed as "uwu accessibility issue :(" and like... cmon. There are educational professionals who spend their whole lives and careers working out how to shake up the traditional learning format and present material in an engaging way and teach students how to think and write and otherwise be academic and rigorous. And like, if you're voluntarily in this space, then we presume you WANT that instruction! Not to just sit around and whine about how we aren't catering enough to you personally and this means you should get to use the Bullshit Plagiarism Nonsense Machine to never ever think at all!

Now, I will say that the naivete around AI is not only limited to students. I was in a department meeting yesterday where the literal associate dean of the college seemed startled to discover that AI might not be a) totally reliable b) able to totally replace lesson planning and evaluation/grading by an actual human professor (after several faculty members pushed back, shall we say, briskly on the idea that it could). Plenty of people still think it can just magically solve Academia (or /insert field here), and those are not just limited to clueless undergraduates. And yes, undergraduates are clueless in different ways and for different reasons in every era of the world; it is likewise an academic rite of passage. But I still cannot for the life of me understand why you, in ye olde benighted 21st century, would pay tens of thousands of dollars and/or accrue it in debt to go to college, to learn nothing, to whine and blame your professors for "not designing assignments well" (when again, every remotely decent educational professional agonizes for eons about how to do a good job of this for all kinds of students), to insist it is your entitled right to use the Bullshit Plagiarism Nonsense Machine, and then presumably be /shocked pikachu face/ when you don't learn anything and spend your time posting idiot takes on the internet. I mean. The state of critical thinking is /waves hand/ Already So Bad, and the AI craze plays directly into that by fulfilling the insidious fantasy that the hard things in life aren't actually hard and don't have to be learned by patient and careful practice. And that is just. Yeah. C'mon.

(I realize this was a funny/lighthearted ask, but yeah, we can consider this one old man turning to another old man on the park bench and making a joke, and the other old man bellowing YOUTH THESE DAYS!!! and scaring all the pigeons and/or passersby. Ahem.)

[wild-west-wind]

Hi 👋As a Park Ranger (interpretative, like me?), I assume you know all about how the NPS was formed- most of the land was brutally, illegally taken from the local tribes. I've been having a moral dilemma about my role in the national park system. I love educating the public and being a positive influence, but am I upholding an oppressive system? I know that if I were to switch to education or to museums, it'd be the same question. What I'm asking is: how do you reconcile with that?

I mean, this is true of all the land in the US, so it's bigger than the park service.

Before I dig into this as a white person, here's what Deb Haaland has to say:

I think that the Park Service has a lot to reckon with historically, and I think parks lately are showing some interest in trying to do that. From big parks like Yellowstone bringing diverse Indigenous stakeholders to to table on management decisions while also supplying buffalo to regrow and strengthen herds thousands of miles away, to Canyon de Chelly's requirement that tourists travel into the canyon only with a Navajo guide in recognition of the location's sacred nature, to Pipestone National Monument celebrating ongoing traditional pipestone quarrying, to advocacy for protection by the Department of the Interior at Bears Ears.

As a (pretty much entirely) white interp ranger, I understand that I'm living in someone else's home, but I was living in someone else's home when I lived in LA too, and none of that is unique to the US. And honestly I think, for the tremendous flaws of the National Park idea, at least we try to preserve things. In a lot of colonial nations that hasn't been the case.

I think more National Park Sites should form better relationships with local tribal governments, and see what they want. Different people have different relationships with different places, and will want different things. I think the Park Service should open the door to co management more, and encourage more opportunities for Indigenous people to tell their own stories and not leave it all in the hands of randos like us. I think we're moving the right direction in that regard.

The fact of the matter, in the end, is that none of this begins or ends with the Park Service. It's a puzzle piece, a tool used to enact, enforce, repair, undo, and uphold the ideals of a nation that has never effectively dealt with its past, present, or future. I think protecting land from development and preserving natural spaces is a valuable, albeit naive, goal. It can't be done in a vacuum though. As I look toward a future of the National Parks, I see a lot more Native involvement in their management. That will look different in each site, in reflection of the different cultures there. I can't speak to what that will look like for anywhere in particular, but it is happening already, and as educators it's part of our job to explain the whys and hows of that to people who don't get it, and who think sharing will mean losing something they love. At the end of the day, that thing they loved was broken, and there is good momentum behind fixing it, and most people can understand that given time.

I think it's good that you feel guilty. It means you're paying attention. I think the important thing now is to turn that into momentum and passion. Figure out what you can do and do it.

[viesantewrites]

𝐈𝐧 𝐇𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬

Robert Fischer (Inception) x Reader

summary: This story explores Robert's personality and describes how he met his wife (the reader) who helps him through his emotional struggles.

English isn't my first language so I apologise in advance for any mistakes

word count: 3500+

masterlist

Only the quiet ticking of the clock on the side table and the soft scratching of a pen on paper filled the room. Robert exhaled slowly and looked at his hands in silence.

"You went through a lot in your childhood, Mr. Fischer." The lady sitting opposite him in a dark blue armchair looked at him compassionately over the rim of her glasses.

"Yes, that’s true, madam."

He had told her everything. Everything that had happened in his childhood. It was a strange feeling to open up like that to a stranger, but that was why he was here.

"And you really feel that you were never enough for your father?" his therapist asked.

"I've never done right in his eyes. My grades were never good enough, he called me lazy, and he always accused me of living off his money." Robert sniffled softly. It was very hard for him to talk about all this.

The lady looked carefully at the clipboard in front of her. "But if I read this correctly, you're anything but lazy, Mr. Fischer. You have a master's degree in business administration and engineering and have completed further training in energy management. You're a department head at the energy company Fischer Morrow, and even the deputy CEO."

Robert bit his lower lip. "I know," he said quietly. "But it’s still not enough for my father."

"If I understand correctly, your father is the CEO of the company, is that right?" she asked.

He nodded. "Well, he still is. He's almost 67 years old, and his health is very poor."

The lady looked at him thoughtfully. "Oh, are you going to take over the company completely?"

"I don't know if I'm up to such a big job."

"Of course you are, Mr. Fischer. You underestimate yourself far too much." The therapist leafed through her files. "Let's move on to another subject. What about other people who are close to you? You're married, aren't you?"

A small smile appeared on his face as she mentioned his wife. "That's right. About a year now. We got married last August."

"Do you have any children together?"

"No," he replied immediately. "But I have a daughter with my ex-wife."

She looked at Robert with interest and put the clipboard on her lap. "So this is your second marriage."

He nodded slightly. "My ex-wife and I were married for nearly eight years. Suddenly it was over so quickly. She... she left me for another man."

The woman wrote something on the clipboard. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Fischer. Something like that can also affect you mentally."

"But my current wife is different... She's just wonderful." The therapist noticed how his eyes immediately lit up when he talked about her. "She is an incredibly warm and loving person. I've never felt so accepted and loved in my whole life as I do with her. And she's absolutely beautiful."

She smiled a little. "That’s wonderful, I'm really happy for you."

Robert looked thoughtfully out of the window. "But sometimes I can't believe why she's with me. There are so many other men around who are better than me."

"Maybe because you're a really nice, intelligent and attractive man and she loves you."

Robert's cheeks turned slightly pink after she said that. "I don't know why anyone would love me."

The therapist exhaled slightly and adjusted her glasses. "I can see you've got a lot to work through. You have quite low self-esteem. I'm afraid we're going to need a few more sessions. Mr. Fischer, do you think your wife would mind if we had a talk? I'd like to hear her point of view."

Robert shrugged a little. "No. I think that can be arranged. I'll ask her when I get home."

"This would be wonderful. Just let me know when she's free, you have my phone number." She smiled kindly at him.

And Robert got up from his chair. "I'll do that. See you then."

"Goodbye, Mr. Fischer."

***

She looked curiously at the young woman sitting in front of her. She was a couple of years younger than Mr. Fischer, had long hair and was wearing a beige blazer.

"How nice of you to come, Mrs Fischer." She smiled politely at her. "Your husband told me a lot about you."

YN laughed a little and crossed her legs. "Well, hopefully only good things."

"Don’t worry, he's raving about you."

YN ran her fingers through her hair. "You know... I've never talked to anyone like you before, I have to admit I'm a bit nervous."

"Oh, you don’t have to be. You can tell me anything. And if there's something you don't want your husband to know, then that stays between us."

"I have nothing to hide from him." She laughed a little and played with her necklace. A gift from Robert for their anniversary. A little 24-karat gold heart pendant.

The therapist also laughed and pinned a new blank page to her clipboard. "That's a very good sign." She cleared her throat and leaned back a little in her chair. "Right, let's get started. Your name is YN Fischer. You were born in Bristol, UK, and moved to Australia when you were six years old."

YN nodded.

"You married Mr Robert Michael Fischer in August last year and live together with him in Sydney. You know that he has some problems with himself as a result of his childhood and his, shall we say, troubled relationship with his father. Unfortunately, I can't talk to his father because he's in the hospital and very ill. That's why I wanted to talk to someone else in his life. The person who is probably closest to him—you, Mrs Fischer. My question to you now is: how do you perceive your husband? What do you think of him? Please be honest, you are not being judged for anything."

YN let out a short breath and sat up a little in her chair. She looked thoughtfully at her red-painted fingernails.

"Well, I think I can say that Robert is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

The therapist immediately began making notes on her clipboard.

"He's wonderful, intelligent, funny... And he’s always there for me. I can't believe a man like him married me."

With an interested look, the therapist lowered her pen and rubbed her chin. "That's exactly what your husband said about you, Mrs Fischer. Very interesting..."

She looked at her with a smile. "Really? He said that?"

"Yes, he did. But go on."

"Well... Robert has always been someone I looked up to. He always seemed so unattainable to me. He's incredibly intelligent and educated. I met him when I worked in his and his father's company. Almost every woman was secretly in love with him, but at the time he was still married to his ex-wife. I know it all sounds strange because he was sort of my boss. But I only had a romantic relationship with him after he got divorced and after I stopped working at Fischer Morrow."

"That sounds very interesting. Please tell me more about how you met him," the therapist told her.

YN closed her eyes and was silent for a moment. In her mind's eye, she saw the long corridors of Fischer Morrow. It all seemed so real again.

***

"Here's a list of all the tasks you have to do today," YN's new colleague handed her a piece of paper. She glanced at it, her eyebrows rising in surprise as she noticed every inch of the paper covered with tasks. "Wow, Ariane, that’s a lot. It‘s only my fourth day."

"Oh no, I’m pretty sure that you can do this," Ariane said. "The first person to arrive is MrRichard Lambert at 9:30 am. He has a job interview with Mr Fineman from Human Resources. You meet him at reception and take him to room 015, where Mr Fineman is waiting. Be friendly, smile a lot, it's very important. At 10:30 am, room 461 in the headquarters is free. An important meeting is taking place there between Maurice Fischer, his son Robert Fischer, and some representatives of the Ministry of the Environment. If I've understood correctly, it's about adjusting the emission limits for pollutants."

YN looked tiredly at the page in front of her and shrugged. "That doesn’t sound very interesting."

"You don't have to join the conversation, YN. You just have to prepare the conference room. I've already ordered the catering; it'll be delivered around 10:40 am. You put the drinks and sandwiches on the small side table. Put the coffee pot in the middle of the table. Then wait for the Fischers to arrive. It's best to offer the coffee to them personally. And remember to always be friendly; this is the CEO and his deputy, okay?"

YN looked at her colleague, a little overwhelmed. "My head is spinning, to be honest. I've already forgotten half of what you just told me."

"That's why I wrote it all down for you. You can do this, YN. And if something goes wrong, it's not the end of the world. You just have to be careful with Fischer Senior. He's a bit... strict." She gave her a meaningful look.

"This could be fun," YN sighed ironically and folded her arms across her chest.

"If there's anything, you can always call me. You know my extension." Ariane finally changed the subject. "What kind of training do you have, if I may ask?"

"Me?" YN laughed. "I'm a hairdresser. I don't really have anything to do with all that office stuff. I just wanted to try something new. Maybe I'll like it."

"So, a career changer, how interesting. But you'll manage, I'm quite confident."

At that moment, one of the glass doors opened, and a man in a formal black suit entered the corridor. He was slim, with perfectly styled dark brown hair, high cheekbones, sharp features, and bright blue eyes. His long coat hung loosely over his shoulders, and he typed absently on his phone. He was very attractive. If they hadn't been in the corridors of Fischer Morrow, YN would have mistaken him for a high-fashion model from Yves Saint Laurent or another well-known luxury brand.

"Who's that?" she whispered to Ariane, who was a little startled and looked at YN with wide eyes when she saw the man. "That's Robert Fischer! Don’t forget to greet him!"

"Good morning, Mr Fischer." Ariane gave him her best smile as he passed them, and YN did the same.

"Good morning, ladies," he greeted them politely, turning his attention back to the phone in his hands.

When he was out of earshot, YN started to giggle. "He looks gorgeous. I pictured a nerd when you told me about him."

"Yes, he’s really handsome." Ariane sighed a little. "He's really nice too, unlike his father."

YN was silent for a moment and then cleared her throat a little. "Is he... you know... single?"

Ariane looked at her colleague as if she had just said something completely stupid. "Are you crazy? A man like him? Of course not. Every woman here secretly fancies him. But he's been married for years."

YN bit her lower lip. "Just asking."

"I think you should go now. You have a busy schedule and the first visitors will arrive soon."

YN finally nodded, folded the piece of paper with the notes, and put it in her handbag before saying goodbye to Ariane and walking on her high heels to the lifts.

YN nervously brushed the sleeve of her blouse across her forehead. Everything had gone well so far. The man who was invited to the interview had arrived on time, and she had taken him to Fineman, the human resources manager, who had been very friendly to her and had thanked her almost five times.

She had then rushed to the car park outside the building, where the catering for the meeting had just arrived, and had taken it to the conference room, which she had fortunately found straight away. Then she had prepared everything as Ariane had explained.

She stood there a little breathlessly, her arms crossed behind her back, with a friendly smile on her face, waiting for the participants to arrive. Finally, the Fischers approached the meeting room.

"Good morning, ma'am, thank you for preparing everything for our meeting," Robert Fischer greeted her with a friendly smile and held out his hand. Trembling, YN took it and looked at him shyly. His fingers felt unbelievably soft, and she lost herself in his bright blue eyes for a second. "What's your name?" His deep voice cut through YN's thoughts, bringing her back to reality.

"YN... Y/LN..." she mumbled, struggling to articulate her own name.

"My name is Robert Fischer. Very nice to meet you."

"There's no need to thank her, Robert. This woman does her job and gets paid for it." Suddenly, a loud voice echoed from behind them, causing Robert to release her hand.

"Dad, please don't say such things." Robert gave her an apologetic look and then walked away to talk to his father. As far as YN had heard, it was about some energy guidelines or something like that.

She stood next to them, a little lost, while she greeted the arriving participants of the meeting. Eventually, her eyes fell on the coffee pot on the table. Wait, hadn't Ariane told her to serve the coffee to the Fischers?

She hurried towards them. "Coffee, gentlemen?" she asked, forcing a smile.

"Yes, ma'am, I would love some," Robert Fischer looked at her gratefully.

"With sugar," his father grumbled next to him, flicking through his papers.

YN quickly grabbed the two cups.

"You have nice legs," Maurice Fischer said suddenly, and YN flinched a little, wishing she had worn a longer skirt this morning.

"Dad!" his son interrupted him immediately, looking at him in shock.

"But Robert, I'm right, aren't I?" The older man grinned.

YN pretended she hadn't heard what he said and forced herself to smile again, even though her hands were slightly shaking and sweaty. She nervously poured the hot coffee into the cup and was about to hand it to Robert Fischer when the cup slipped out of her hand.

At that moment, everything happened in slow motion. YN's hand reaching into the void as she tried to catch the cup, the shocked faces of the two men in front of her, and Maurice Fischer, who quickly tried to get his documents to safety. But it was too late. A huge dark brown stain spread across the table, sparing all the important documents.

"Are you crazy?" The angry voice echoed through the room, and she stared into Maurice Fischer's angry face, which was slowly turning red. She felt the eyes of the others in the room on her.

"I'm so sorry, sir... Are you okay? Did the coffee scald you?" She felt tears well up in her eyes, and her vision blurred a little.

Suddenly, a hand rested protectively on her arm, and she looked up in surprise as she realized it was Robert Fischer's. "We're fine; luckily, the coffee only landed on the table."

"Luckily, Robert? All the documents are ruined!"

"Dad, it's not that bad. The most important thing is that no one is hurt and has to go to the hospital."

"She can't even serve coffee! Why did Fineman even hire her? Just because she's pretty?"

Without another word, YN grabbed a cloth lying next to her, wiped the table, dabbed the documents as best she could, looked back at the two men, and muttered, "I'm so sorry," before turning and leaving the room.

She blinked the tears away quickly. She wouldn't cry now. She wouldn't shed a single tear for this company and especially not for this dumb idiot. Sighing, she leaned against the wall and rubbed her forehead.

Of course, it was her fault, but if that old man hadn't said those stupid things, she wouldn't have been so upset, and none of this would have happened.

Suddenly, she remembered Robert Fischer's hand on her arm, and her heart immediately warmed. He had been so incredibly kind to her. How could such a disgusting man have such a kind and lovely son? "Miss YLN!" a familiar voice suddenly sounded behind her.

Confused, she turned and looked straight into two bright blue eyes. "I'm so sorry for the way my father reacted. I keep telling him to stop, but he won't listen."

"It's okay," YN said, smiling a little.

"It's really not that bad what happened. There weren't any original documents on the table, just copies. I think the shock was more than the damage itself." As Robert ran his hand through his hair, a loose strand fell onto his forehead. It looked kind of cute, YN thought. "You don't have to worry about him kicking you out. I'll talk to him later."

YN held her breath for a moment and shook her head. "That's really very kind of you, sir... But I think I'll be leaving. This job isn't for me. I wanted to try something else, and I did, only to find that my old job is what makes me happy after all. But thank you for everything. You've been so kind to me."

He lowered his hand and nodded slowly at her. "I'm sorry, of course, but I won't stand in your way. I wish you all the best in your future."

She closed her eyes for a short moment. "I wish you the same, Mr Fischer. I wish you the same."

***

YN blinked slowly and let out a deep breath. The words had left her mouth as if on their own and her listener seemed totally captivated by the story.

"So you've left Fischer Morrow and returned to your old job as a hairdresser?" the therapist asked.

"Yes," YN said. "I did."

"And how did he become your husband?" she wanted to know.

"Since that day, I've never been able to get him out of my mind. I've always tried to block him out... But it's like he's always been in my heart."

The therapist nodded slowly and tore a sheet of paper full of notes from her clipboard.

"Fate has brought us together. Robert doesn't believe in fate, but I do. Especially since that day." Thoughtfully, she leaned back in her chair.

"About eight months later, I was shopping alone in the mall when I saw Robert standing in front of a fashion store. At first, I thought about just walking on and pretending I hadn't seen him, afraid he'd still be mad at me for quitting Fischer Morrow. But then I decided to talk to him."

The therapist nodded and folded her hands in her lap.

"He was happy to see me and asked me how I was doing in my new job. I noticed immediately that he wasn't wearing a wedding ring anymore, but I tried to ignore it. We chatted for quite a while, and everything seemed so relaxed. Maybe it was because he was no longer my boss. Eventually, I asked him what he was looking for in the mall, and he replied that he wanted to buy some new shirts and suits, but he didn't know what would suit him, since he divorced his wife who helped him choosing his outfits. YN suddenly stopped and started to laugh.

The therapist looked at her questioningly. "And then what happened?"

"Then I told him that I had an eye for stuff like that and that I could help him. And he said yes," YN closed her eyes again. Her heart beat faster at the thought. "We started seeing each other more and became closer, and our relationship developed naturally from there. He needed someone to believe in him, to remind of his worth. And I wanted to be that person for him. When Robert's father found out that we were a couple, he wasn't happy at all. I think he was still angry with me after all this time. He also called me stupid and uneducated because I never went to university."

"And... What did your husband say?"

YN smiled a little. "Of course, it affected me. But Robert told me that a degree says nothing about you as a person. He believed that true intelligence lies in passion and determination".

She paused, listening to the gentle ticking of the clock. "We got married last summer. Robert's father didn't come to the wedding. To be honest, I was glad. We spent our honeymoon in Hawaii, and it was the best time of my life. Robert is an incredibly wonderful person, and I'm lucky to have him in my life. Only this man who still has the nerve to call himself his father has completely destroyed his self-image."

YN slowly rose from her chair and straightened her jacket. "I'm done now."

The therapist smiled at her as she said goodbye and placed the clipboard next to her. "Thank you for your trust, Mrs Fischer."

"You're welcome, madam."

***

thank you for reading🤍

[buckbuckbarnesstuff]

Two-Parts

Get yourself a snack, enjoy these wonderful two-parts and leave some love for the creative writers :)

●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

1. Conflict of Interest [2.9k] @elixirfromthestars

Detective!Bucky x Lawyer!Reader

Summary: After the many failed dates Natasha set you up on, you decide to give up on the dating scene all together. That is until Bucky makes it his mission to change your mind, but will he be enough to change it?

{personal comment: Bucky is so nice and my heart broke for him, but it’s really beautiful and the way you end it definitely tempts people to read the second part}

2. Conflict of Interest - part ll [8.5k]

Detective!Bucky x Lawyer!Reader

Summary: After deserting Bucky at the fair, you are left dealing with the consequences. This becomes difficult as you are all assigned to a new case. 

{personal comment: I like the writing style and the way it’s portrayed how hard it is for them to interact normally thereafter. And Bucky is so sweet for wanting to fix things even if it meant he could end up hurting}

●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

1. Graveyard [10k] @wkemeup

Bucky x healer!Reader

Summary: As the unofficial healer for the Avengers, you pride yourself on the ability to mend heroes with the touch of your hand. Only, your gift comes at a heavy price — one you keep secret from your friends —and when Bucky asks you to do the impossible, they’ll discover why your gift is called a sacrifice, too. 

{personal comment: I can hardly imagine there's people who haven't read this, but it’s one of my favourite fics so I have to put it here. I love the way Bucky acts and it’s so sweet how reluctant he is to let reader heal him, not wanting to take advantage of her powers}

2. Sacrifice [13.6k]

Bucky x healer!Reader

Summary: In the midst of an attack, you’re dosed with an unknown chemical and your healing ability becomes compromised.

What if instead of relieving pain – you became the cause of it?

{personal comment: The little insights in the reader's backstory and how she dealt with her powers before the Avengers was really interesting to me. Also, I'm loving Bucky here so much. Him being so fiercly protective has me on the edge of my seat}

●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

1. The shot heard round the tower [3.7k] @pellucid-constellations

Avenger!Bucky x reader

Summary: You just want to know if Bucky has feelings for you. Bucky just wants you to be okay.

{personal comment: Bucky being such a softy for the reader gives me butterflies. I love this}

2. Unwarranted Weaknesses [3.3k]

Avenger!Bucky x reader

Summary: Ever since you’d been attacked, things hadn’t felt right. Work was harder, you weren’t sleeping, and the smallest things set you off. No one could convince you to get help. That didn’t mean Bucky was going to stop trying.

{personal comment: Bucky is so sweet, patient and understanding and I really love him. I liked how this is written}

●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

1. Public affair [8.2k] @kaznejis

Avenger!Bucky x Avenger!Reader

Summary: The Avengers PR department designs the perfect fake relationship for you- the key to instant fame and high ratings. Except, you’re already in a relationship with Bucky. 

{personal comment: This had me feeling so many different things, I was so invested. I'm glad they got to talk about everything in the end}

2. Public display [6k]

Avenger!Bucky x Avenger!Reader

{personal comment: So angsty, didn’t expect that but it was a pleasant surprise. Greatly written}

●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

1. Like I want you [4.4k] @tmpestuous

College!Bucky x College!Reader

Summary: you and bucky have been best friends your entire life and it’s never been anything but platonic. so why do things get so bad when he gets a new girlfriend?

{personal comment: I felt with the reader, it was really poignant, but I enjoyed the writing style and the tension}

2. Like I want you - part ll [5k]

College!Bucky x College!Reader

{personal comment: The tension grew even higher and I loved how it turned out, made me feel all giddy and excited}

●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

1. Not my babe [3.4k] @avecra

Biker!Bucky x reader

Summary: After a nasty break up to a nearly two year relationship, you find yourself dragged to a bar by your best friend, though a familiar blue-eyed biker makes the best of your crappy situation.

{personal comment: Really enjoyed this, I love how the guys were there for her. And Bucky is a sweetheart}

2. You'll never be alone [2.9k]

Biker!Bucky x reader

Summary: Bucky finally takes you out on the date you deserve.

{personal comment: That date is so sweet. Love how perceptive Bucky is}

●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●○●

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA if I asked a coworker who works in a different department to leave my partner's family alone. I work at the same place as my partner's cousin's ex fiancee. He is the definition of creepy. To get one reason why I think he's creepy let me tell you that my partner's cousin is either 22 or 23. He's 34 or 35. There is a 12 year age difference, and they got together when she was around 18. The family thought it was okay because, "She has been in worse relationships before." And he's autistic, so a few family members say that he's mentally her age anyways. Which is ablest, I know. But, they broke up before Thanksgiving Dinner due to him telling her to not talk to him for weeks. (But he can text her, she's not allowed to text him. It was very confusing.) And he thought he could show up to dinner unannounced after telling her to not talk to him back. She tossed him out to walk home alone. Before they broke up though, he had a habit of cheating on her with mainly coworkers. He told her that she wasn't enough for him. And blamed her for his cheating whenever she went out with friends or family. That's another reason why I think he's creepy. He's also creepy for explicitly talking about the sexual activities he has done with her around family. Piss, feet, only fans, threesomes, everything. Everyone knows what they did because he doesn't keep it to himself. I also think I'm letting my emotions get the best of me, because he also doesn't keep his mouth shut over how he finds my partner attractive. And making requests for my partner to dress up as sexy characters like Rogue the Bat from Sonic. My partner, who is 21. Younger than their cousin. The person he has known when they were a minor. He also at one point dragged me into their relationship drama by accusing her of using to me and my partner to stalk him at work. (To be honest though, she had a habit of stalking him at work to catch him cheating. To the point where a cop was called to stop her, she got dropped off at a mental health place because she spat at the cop. I sort of understand why he accused me of that. But it still pisses me off that he would drag me into this while barely knowing me at the time. All of that because I asked for my partner to come get me ibuprofen on my lunch, and he happened to cross paths with us at work.) Anyways, point aside. He keeps trying to talk to the cousin, and she keeps flip flopping between rationally knowing that she shouldn't and saying that she deserves him. Even though within a month of breaking up, he asked out 5 COWORKERS to dinner. He is actively treating her like a side piece. But it's obvious she's gonna try getting back with him the moment he can't get anyone to sleep with him. I don't want him in her life again and by proxy my partner's. My partner is scared of him, and I feel protective. Would I be the asshole to tell him to please make up his mind and stay out of the cousin's life. I feel like it would be unprofessional to bring up family drama into work. He has a higher position than I do, and is friends with my bosses. I could risk my first job. But I hate how scared he makes partner.

What are these acronyms?

[dogwatch05]

Religion

Humans are Weird. Religion. There's so many. Now personally I am Christian and I don't know a lot about other religions, but I'm always open to learn about other cultures and beliefs if only to understand others better and to satisfy my own curiosity. But what if Aliens had never heard of Christianity before? Unlikely, I know, considering that Christianity is one of the most popular religions, but bear with me.

Aliens may not have religion, or they may have at one point and abandoned it once they became true spacefaring races. I present to you the Christian trying to explain to their alien friend(?).

I am not infallible, so if you have questions or think I got something wrong, please reach out to me.

Post writing note here (all my author's notes are written before the story is done): Man I don't like Rjoll and I'm the one who wrote him.

I would also like to add that while Rjoll did not become a Christian, he did develop a certain respect for Humans in general after hearing Christina's speech.

************************************************************************

Rjoll was a stellar xenohistorian. He prided himself on his ability to recall any fact requested of him about any race in the galaxy. But Humans had to come along and ruin that. With so many factions, tribes, countries, and realistic historical-fiction galore, Rjoll had his work cut out for him to become passably literate on Human history. Not to mention sifting the fiction from the reality. This is why Rjoll had done something unprecedented in his career. He requested a native of his subject of study. The Human had arrived yesterday and Rjoll was determined to use every second of the month that he had her.

As Rjoll navigated the labyrinth of a ship they were living on, he thought of how best to introduce himself. And what if the Human didn't like him? What if he made a fool of himself. What if the Human was a fool themselves and could barely do Pre-Calculus?

What was happening to him? He'd never had these doubts about himself before. He'd always prided himself on his self-assurance and his ability to deal with those intellectually inferior to himself. Having to depend on someone, especially such a new, primitive species like the humans, was something so new to him that he didn't know how to react.

Before he knew it, he was at the human's door. Sighing, he resigned himself to the humiliation he knew was coming and knocked.

"Enter!" came the call from inside the room. Rjoll was stunned. She should have stopped what she was doing and greeted him at the door to perform the standard greeting ritual of inviting someone into your living space. No species he'd ever interacted with had foregone this practice.

Uncomfortable, Rjoll opened the door and peeked inside. The human was siting on their bed with hands folded in their lap and eyes closed. Glancing around, Rjoll took note of the human's room.

Sparsely decorated, the room consisted of a single occupant sized bed, a bedside table with a drawer and lamp, a chest to hold personal items and uniforms, a desk and chair, and a wooden ornament hung above the headboard of the bed. On the desk was a notebook and pencil with a leatherbound book decorated with golden gilded pages and the same wooden symbol in gold on the cover.

The human muttered something under their breath and glanced at the ceiling before standing up and approaching Rjoll.

"Hello sir, my name is Christina. How do you do?"

"Uh...I am very well. Xenohistorian Rjoll at your service. I am under the impression that you are the human assigned by the Terran-Xeno Relations department to assist me in my research. Is this to be held true?" Rjoll was caught off guard by Christina's off-hand and informal introduction but he congratulated himself for recovering so well and redirecting the conversation in an appropriate direction.

Christina smiled at Rjoll. "Yes, I am to be your primary source on human history. I'm sure that you've read my file sent to you by the agency," (Rjoll had not, in fact, read that file)," but in case you haven't had the chance, I am a world historian back on Earth. If you require access to documents, I can give you supervised access to the human internet for research purposes only."

Rjoll was pleased that the human could apparently be professional and asked if they had a seat that he could use. Might as well be nice to the human so that he could get as much information out of her as possible.

Christina nodded and brought over the chair from her desk and sat on the bed facing Rjoll. "Well, lets get started then," she said," What would you like to know first?"

Glancing around the spartan room again, Rjoll focused on the wooden ornament. "Lets start with you. Who are you, what do you do, what's that symbol on your wall."

"Well," Christina started, "I've already introduced my self but I can do that again. I am Christina Carpenter. A civilian historian currently on government contract with the TXR department for the duration of your research currently set for one month. I served briefly in the United Earth Space Exploration Corp. Like the United Earth Space Fleet, but civilian, not military, and focused on exploration, not defending our space. As for that symbol on my wall, how familiar are you with human religion?"

Rjoll grumbled and mumbled, "Not very" before mentally slapping himself and speaking up. "I am not familiar with the majority of human related topics. Please explain everything to me as if I were a student, but without speaking down to me if you please. I can always get a more respectful human if you decide to not show me the proper respect."

Christina closed and rolled her eyes, then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and began speaking. "Alright. That symbol on my wall is The Cross. It is the symbol that represents Christianity, one of the most popular faiths on Earth with roughly 2.4 billion of the 7 billion humans on Earth being Christian. A monotheistic religion with the God being of three parts: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost/Spirit. The holy text of this religion is called the Bible. Literally translating to Holy Book. There are sixty-six books within the Bible split into the Old and New Testament. The key beliefs of Christianity are: there is one God, we are all sinners, His son died for our sins that we would be forgiven, His son rose from the dead, and the Bible is the word of God as given to humanity.

We believe that God is a loving and good God, often referred to as our Heavenly Father because Christians believe that we are all God's children. Christianity is a religion that focus mainly on forgiveness, redemption, and relationship. We als-"

Rjoll cut Christina off. "Sounds like a weak religion then if you focus on forgiveness. What do you do if someone insults your religion? Turn the other cheek? Where's the honor in that. Weakness."

Christina smirked. Fine, she thought. Let's do it that way then.

"Actually, yes we are to turn the other cheek and grant forgiveness, mercy, and grace. But do you know how God's child, The Son, part of the Holy Trinity, died? Would you like to know?"

Rjoll nodded, convinced that nothing this human said would be able to change his mind.

Christina's smirk fell. Poor, poor Rjoll. He doesn't know what he is getting into.

"Jesus, the son of God, had 12 disciples who are also known as apostles. They were his students who followed him wherever he went. Jesus traveled and performed miracles and taught about God and the new kingdom to come. Well the Jews, what Jesus was, did not like that he was performing miracles and claiming to be 'The Son of Man'. Particularly the Sanhedrin. At this time the Romans had occupied the lands of the Jews, and the Romans were not merciful masters. Judas, one of Jesus's apostles, was paid 30 silver pieces to betray Jesus and identify him to Roman officials who had been convinced to arrest him by the Sanhedrin. A trial was held for Jesus and he was found innocent of breaking any Roman law by the Romans. The leader of the Romans, Pilate, still sentenced Jesus to death because of pressure from Jesus's own people.

Jesus was whipped until skin separated from bone, had a crown of thorns shoved on his head, and forced to carry his own roughly hewn cross through town to the place where his death would take place.

And do you know what we did Rjoll? We nailed the Son of God to a tree (common alternative name for the cross) and left him like that for six hours.

And still he did his work. He forgave a thief of his sins while they were being crucified together. He took care of his mother's future while he was being crucified, and when Romans mocked him, he asked his Father to forgive them 'for they know not what they do'.

So yes, Christianity is a religion that focuses on forgiveness for that is what we are called to do, but don't forget that the reason we can do this is because we were first forgiven by our God who 'gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life'. The Son who was tortured and nailed to a tree through his wrists and ankles; who was left there for six hours before he surrendered his spirit.

So yes, we forgive and we find not weakness but honor in forgiveness because we strive to be like our God.

Humans, like many, are capable of terrible things. Many have asked if we are who we are because of our nature or how we are raised, and none have come to a definitive answer. And so many turn to religion and ask: If he can forgive, why can't we?"

[simplydnp]

genuinely wondering why phil was considered the "ugly one" out of dan and phil. he's so hot? like there was a time where by some fans phil was literally seen as second best always... has that changed completely? i see more phillies than dannies these days which used to be absolutely the other way round if i remember correctly... like maybe it's just due to the fact that the fans grew up and delevoped some brain cells and/or phil having a glow up. what do you think abt this?

caveat: attraction is subjective and this is not a definitive guide as to what counts as hotness, nor is hotness the epitome of existence or something that people 'need' in order to exist, but instead this serves as an exploration into the culture surrounding perception of appearance as it relates to dan and phil, with care to note that 'conventional' beauty standards are highly correlated with white features and are problematic for many reasons but especially the racist aspect. i do not endorse the 'conventional' standard as the only acceptable one, but it would be remiss to ignore the fact that it plays a role in this conversation, especially in 2010s culture.

this is an interesting question for me because i don't Get all the layers of attraction just in general. so much of it makes very little sense, despite how hard i've tried to understand it. and what i've found out is that it's not supposed to make sense, it's something that just is and. well. my brain doesn't like that 😂 i've 'learned' what 'conventional' beauty standards are and thus can somewhat identify 'objectively' attractive people/qualities, but i'm absolutely just three possums in a trenchcoat on good days 🤣 so my best approximation is as follows:

- phil *pulled* back in the day online

- he stopped playing into it as much and because he wasn't exuding it as much, people stopped seeing it

- combine this with the less traditionally masculine energy he conveyed, alongside moving moreso away from the fully 'emo' look

- i think his fashion sense/choices played into this as well, came across very much like 'guy in tshirt' --which is fine, but unless your features really meet societal beauty standards at the time, it's not 'selling' you in the 'hot' department

- as well, contrasted with dan who had more of the 'societal beauty standard' look, people were less likely to see him in that role, especially because he seemed quite happy not being there (i'd argue some of it was a confidence thing too, especially on a day to day--the outfits video in gamingmas kind of confirmed that for me. he Knew he rocked that plaid suit, cause he did, but i don't think he felt that about his every day attire)

- people love to sort people into boxes and did as much with dnp, especially in making dnp 'opposites' (despite this not actually being true)

- truly think the fringe staying as long as it did didn't help, especially when, self-admittedly, it got a little blocky near the end.

- i think quiff really unlocked something in him. it really suited him, and he felt quite confident about it, as he had every right to. this, combined with a fashion upgrade in him paying a little more attention to it and developing his own personal style, people started to notice. (also dan hyping him up publicly about it made us talk about it more too)

- further style enhancements, more quiff experience led to him experimenting a little more, which let him find things he really liked

- i also think he's learned how to pose better/isnt 'being intentionally awkward' in pictures as much

- his ykw i want a change and idc what you all think attitude in going back to brown, and then into messy--he really Knows he's attractive now and how to dress himself to bring that out (even if he doesnt feel like it all the time)

there has definitely been a shift--i think the fandom has gotten smaller, and a lot of their 'mainstream' audience were dannies back in the heyday bc of the 'societal beauty standards'. so combine many of those people leaving, at a similar timeline to phil figuring his 'look' out, his audience getting older (and the lesbians being Very fond of him), and his consistency in uploading the last few years, i think it all swirls into this current existence where there's a lot of phillies out there and they're loud and proud about it (as they should be), especially cause a lot of them have Always Known but it wasn't the 'popular' take at the time.

i am but a hapless dannie and any phillies who would like to share their two cents/drag me for being wrong pls do so

[boldlyexplorational]

Episode 13 "The conscience of the King"

What. an. Episode. A lot to unpack here. As a theater kid, I'm overjoyed. Kirk is also a theater kid apparently, shame how things escalated quickly from there.

I'm obsessed with the fact that the Enterprise has a little theater where they can have entertainment for the crew. And they set up screen rooms for the ones who couldn't fit in the audience. I wonder how they decided who should be present for the live performance? Rank? A lottery?

The scene where Uhura plays and sings was amazing. I was intrigued while watching SNW by how she was made to be such a musical character, but now I totally understand why they did that. And I love it! My headcanon is that she asked Spock to teach her how to play that lyre instrument of his (gotta learn the name eventually), and they have little lessons/jam session together.

Shout out to the costume department, who always comes up with some pretty fire looks and some weird stuff too.

Now for the serious part of the episode: it was so intense. The performances from the actors absolutely stellar. The moral and personal dilemma is very engaging.

The twist with Kirk who went from seducer to seduced and betrayed. I really wasn't expecting that she was the assassin so I was shocked. I'm not a big fan of the "lady going crazy" trope, so that's probably the only thing I wasn't super into, but it fits very well with the Shakespearean theme of the episode, so it's more of a matter of personal taste.

I'm also not sure that this whole "human becoming machines" landed exactly right. But I do think it's interesting in relation to the fact that live theater is, especially in the technological far future, one of the few things that still requires actual human presence and contact to really make sense. I really liked that.

This little peek into Kirk's backstory is fascinating in how very, very little it is. This outgoing, personable man is actually very secretive and secluded in his emotional and personal world. And, what a surprise, Spock is the one who takes the burden of Jim's turmoil and need for clarity and closure.

Spock is so jealous. No actually he is uneasy because Jim is not performing his role (hehe) right in their dynamic. And he knows he has to keep Kirk in check. Also he's hella jealous.

Pretty interesting to see how Spock and McCoy act as the two sides of the argument that can be made for the case. Please boyfriends don't fight.

Rating: 10/10

It has to be the highest score for me, not only because of how good the episode objectivly is, but also for all the theater references I appreciated so much.

Bonus: Ides of march mention!

[troublesomeknight]

You know, since it seems people liked my last post about this, I guess I'll do another one about how the Thunder Saga departs from the books.

Now in my last post I mentioned that Elpenor cornered Odysseus while he was in the underworld and asked him to go back to Circe's island and give him a proper burial. So they actually go back and do just that and while they're there, it's Circe who tells Odysseus about Scylla, but also about Charybdis.

Basically she tells him that the only way he was going to get home from here is to pass between them, but the problem is if ship gets too close to Charybdis' whirlpool then it'll get sucked in and destroyed, but if they sail too close to Scylla's cave she will grab at least six of his crew and eat them. She advises to stick closer to Scylla because it's better to lose six people than the whole ship.

Now, here's a thing. Book Odysseus actually objects strongly to this. He understands the alternative is worse, but he's like "Can't we just fight her instead so no one has to die?"

And she's like "No, that's a terrible idea. You won't be able to reach her to fight her. She'll just kill more of your crew if you try."

But Odysseus doesn't entirely listen to this advise. He resolves to try anyway, but once they actually do reach Scylla's cave, he realizes Circe was right and they really can't reach her despite her being able to reach them just fine. So they just gun it past her instead.

As for the sirens, I'm pretty sure most people already know it didn't go like it did in the musical at all, but yeah. They don't kill the sirens, they just sail past them with Odysseus being the only one who can hear them while tied to the mast and all that.

Even though he neglected to warn the crew about Scylla before hand in the book too, this does not start a mutiny, but what does almost start one is when he tries to just sail past Helios's island rather than stopping. Because the crew is tired and Eurylochus insists they should stop there for a bit to recuperate after all that crazy shit they had to deal with plus losing six more people and of course the crew takes his side, so Odysseus reluctantly agrees.

But only on the condition that they all swear an oath that they won't harm Helios's cattle under any circumstances. They agree, so they stop on Helios's island. But then they get stuck there for a whole entire month and the food supplies start to run low again.

At this point Odysseus realizes there will be trouble and leaves for like an hour to go pray to the gods/make sacrifices to try and figure out why they haven't been getting any wind and whether he can convince the gods to let them leave the island before his crew does something stupid.

Unfortunately, while he's gone, Eurylochus decides to convince the rest of the crew that they should just eat the cows.

It'll be fine. They'll just build Helios a temple back in Ithaca once they get home. Surely he'll accept that as an apology, right?

No. No he won't.

In fact Helios goes straight to Zeus and threatens to take the sun into the Underworld if he doesn't punish the mortals who killed his precious cows right this very second. Zeus tells him to calm down and wait until they get back on the ship to leave first, then he'll punish them.

Odysseus comes back to discover the on-going barbecue and is understandably pissed at his crew breaking their oath and dooming them all, but basically no one is listening to him at this point. But finally they have wind, so they decide to leave, having made sacrifices hoping that will stave off the gods' anger for a while. But of course it doesn't.

Zeus does not show up in person like in the musical. He doesn't try to hit Odysseus with some kind of sadistic choice deal. He just hits them with a storm as soon as they're out to sea and destroys the ship with a lightning bolt, killing everyone aboard except Odysseus.

And that's how the events from Thunder Saga happened in the Odyssey. You're welcome.

[askthisfishprince]

✨Official Disclaimer/FAQ Master Post✨

I'm going to be pinning this one, just in case anyone has questions or hopefully make some things easier to find! Will also add things as I need to.

Questions Regarding Timelines or “Canon”

I don't have an exact timeline in my head for this blog. In my imagination, Eridan and the other trolls are just alive again and in the present, and all the previous storylines still exist within it. The difference is that it takes place after the comic, so everyone is an adult just going along for the ride lol I guess that's what I'm going for 🤷‍♀️

I apologize if I stray away from the "canon"... I try to stay as true to the characters and their dynamics as I can. But sometimes it's just fun to be a bit silly and go off book for the sake of adding some humor. Also….it is an ask blog of a character that died pretty early on and did not get much in the “character development” department lol So again, I do my best to write him as “canon” to his true attitude and behavior as I can. But it can get very hard to give nuance to a guy who overall was pretty shitty, didn’t have much dialogue in the first place while also giving him a fake timeline that takes place a couple years down the line and allow him to have a crumb of self improvement without it coming off as too ooc. So if you see behavior that you don't think is accurate to him…..i promise I do my best…….i have google docs and PowerPoints on this guy lol so I promise the brain rot runs deep

Why I Haven’t Answered Your Question

If you notice that I have not answered your question there are multiple factors.

I couldn’t come up with decent enough dialogue that I felt was good enough to respond with. I am extremely stubborn

I work a full time job and just couldn’t find the time to :(

It was a very strange question and I have no idea what to say lol usually sexual, creepy, violent etc

I have gotten multiple of the same question and I am currently working on a reply.

I waited too long and I feel too bad to respond now ❤️

I can tell if you are spamming me with the same question even if you are anonymous lol And I'm sorry but I won't answer those lol

My inbox is actually insane at times and I genuinely can’t get to everyone :(

I promise I read every single question and I appreciate all of them!! Even the creepy ones.

But I am one person running this blog on my own time with a full time job with only so much time during the day 😔 I also have rampant adhd that can make it very hard to complete certain things

“Will I be making more content of Eridan and *insert character*”

I try to avoid having strict shipping content on here. I don't want this blog to become limited in my responses because I inadvertently turned it into a shipping blog. I do enjoy dropping hints, but for the most part, I prefer to keep things open so that I don't unintentionally limit myself. I also don't want fans who ship other things to feel like they can't ask questions about different characters or scenarios.

I do not have any “headcannons” that I am against or a ride or die for…but….please do not send me any Cronus and Eridan shipping questions. It is very yucky to me. I outright ignore the ministrife….i pretend to not see it 🥰

Am I An Eridan “Defender”?

No lmao

I’m not gonna write down my whole pathetic analysis on him. But I’m not gonna be here at my old age defending a fictional fish guy who boasted about the aspects of eugenics and harass people who disagree?? What is this?? 2013? lol

If you hate him and think he is awful. That is 100000% A-okay! You are allowed to! And I understand lmao

If you ever want to actually talk about Eridan openly, and discuss him as a character or anything. Just dm me! :)

Also just a reminder to clarify that my writing for Eridan does not necessarily reflect my personal feelings. If you ask “Eridan” about certain characters and my response seems mean or nasty, please note that it doesn't mean I dislike the ship or character. Eridan is not particularly friendly, even towards people he likes, so I try not to insert too much of my own feelings into his responses.

(Erisol, EriRox, eridan and literally everybody lmao….except maybe Karkat…..thats his bro…)

Tags

All of my Eridan responses will always be tagged under my url “askthisfishprince”

Any questions directed at me that I post responses for will be under

“NotEridanAsks”

How To View The Post Properly

Whenever I make a response, I try to keep things as clear as possible! Any text in the description or in the tags that does NOT have (()) around it, means thats Eridan talking.

Anything besides that is ✨me✨ lol

Always check the tags for extra dialogue! :) and also always check for “read more” because sometimes I add extra silly doodles lol

Also sometimes I give my two cents as to why I did something a certain way in the tags. So if you care to hear me Yap, check the tags.

Also if you ever want to send an ask to me, either state in the ask that its for op or just put (()) around it! :)

[come-away-with-me87]

Modern Hearts Chapter 4

Chapter 3 here

******

The rest of the weekend went by quickly; primarily due to the fact that you slept for the majority of it.  The time difference between America and Japan really took its toll on you, and you were simply exhausted.  Sunday evening rolled around, and you were starting to get nervous, yet excited for your first day at your new job.  You pulled out your laptop, and did a Google search on U.A. High School to familiarize yourself more with it.  Their site explained what their school was about, stating it had four different departments; the hero department, the general studies department, the support department, and management department.

The website also had various pictures on it from all of the different courses.  One of the pictures featured a man standing in front of his students; you could only see his side profile.  He looked tall, had medium-length black hair, wore a black shirt, black pants, and black boots, along with a utility belt and some sort of scarf.  You couldn't help but stare at this picture for longer than necessary as there was a sense of familiarity with this man, you just couldn't put your finger on it.  Oh well, you thought.  You continued perusing the website, until you noticed the time: it was 10:00pm.  It would be best if you got to bed.

You got ready for bed, and fell asleep almost the instant your head hit the pillow.  That night, you dreamt of that black-haired man.  He was doing anything out of the ordinary, and his face was contorted, but he was just...there, standing next to you holding your hand.  Your dream finally ended when your alarm blared at 6:00am.  Huh, that was weird, why did you dream of that man?  You just chalked it up to looking at the picture for longer than the others; it couldn't have meant anything else.  

You hopped in the shower, got out and put your robe on, and made yourself some eggs and toast for breakfast.  At some point in between sleeping over the weekend, you did make your way to the grocery store to get the basics for your cabinets and refrigerator, which you were grateful for at that moment.  After you got done eating, you blow dried your hair, put some makeup on, and decided on what to wear for your first day.  Looking through your wardrobe, you opted for a raspberry colored blouse, a pencil skirt, and low black heels.  You decided to wear your hair down as opposed to putting it up in a bun; you didn't want to look too much like a librarian.

Once 7:45am rolled around, you left your dorm and went down the stairs to meet up with Toshinori, who was already standing there waiting for you at the bottom of the stairs.  "Good morning!" you exclaimed.  "Good morning to you, young Y/N!  Shall we get going?"  It was a short, five-minute walk to the high school from Heights Alliance, which was a nice perk since you didn't have a vehicle here in Japan.  Toshinori and you talked about what you did over the weekend.  You fully admitted that, other than going to the grocery store at some point, you mostly slept the weekend away due to the time difference.  "That's completely understandable.  Hopefully you got a good night's rest last night as you will be meeting a lot of people today!"  "Yes I did, I feel nice and awake this morning," you replied to him.

You two made it to U.A. High School; it looked just like it did in the pictures on its website.  "Wow," you said out loud, "I can't believe I'm going to be working here."  Toshinori smiled down at you, "I hope you like it.  Everyone is pretty nice, and the students...well, you'll see.  They all have their own unique Quirks as well as personalities."  You two made your way inside, where Toshinori took you right to Principal Nezu's office to fill out your new hire paperwork.  Upon entering Nezu's office, you were greeted by the creature that you had the virtual interview with.  Oh my god, he was so tiny and cute!  You just wanted to pick him up and squish him.  But no, you obviously weren't going to do that; he was your boss.

Nezu got up from his chair upon seeing you, and you two bowed to one another.  "Welcome to your first day at U.A. High, Y/N!  We're so happy to have you here.  Please, sit, and we will get started on your paperwork.  And All Might, thank you for tending to Y/N, it means more than you know."  Toshinori smiled and said, "just happy to help, sir."  In the meantime, you filled out all of your paperwork while Nezu and Toshinori talked about the agenda for the day.  "Well, Y/N, first thing on the agenda today will be for you to sit in at the faculty meeting.  You won't need to attend these often, this will just be a good opportunity to meet the teachers."  Nezu looked down at this watch, "which actually starts in five minutes.  Let's go, shall we?"

******

To be continued...

[stackslip]

Just wanted to say I love your fma 2003 posts. While I do think the original story is more cohesive and stuff, I think that the stuff they did with the 03 show is really interesting and provides a lot of cool angles on the character. It's a completely different story after a certain point with its own merit, and I think that it gives a lot of development to the characters in fascinating ways. I feel like seeing it added depth to my appreciation of the story. There's juicy bits in there that I wish were in the original and I'm just glad they were explored and that I'm not the only one who loves it. :))

sorry i took so late to respond lol

i think the og IS a lot more cohesive and planned out, and more consistent in quality! it's just that i don't think it's much to write home about either. it's a very solid fun shounen and as long as you don't think too deep about its implications, it's definitely a lot better written than 90% of mainstream shounen. and i can see the appeal in that, i genuinely do. i don't think 03 is to everyone's taste, even outside of people for whom og fma is comfort food, for whom even a slight deviation feels Wrong because that's their emotional support anime or whatever. like, i'm a fucking dbz fan always and forever you know? i don't have room to say "why do people enjoy mangahood better, it's so much less mature than 03" bc i still get pumped and emo from super saiyan transformations. i do wish these fans at least would understand WHY one might have frustrations with the themes of the story and what it does with very serious subjects lol

i do think that 03 is its own story but i don't think it's its own story "from a certain point". yes the early anime follows a lot of the manga's story, albeit rearranging it differently. but i'd argue that it's different in essence from the very start. its tone it starkly different from the manga, which is and remains a Cool Mystery Action Shounen. fma 03 from its very first episode leans more into brooding and psychological horror territory, even outside of the extra gore. even the subtle changes it makes early in the story aren't just to change/"improve" or adapt the manga's story, but to set up what they do when 03 REALLY departs from the manga's storyline. ed and al's characters are, i'd argue, leagues away from their og counterparts by ep 10--the flashback and making them go through all that trauma at age 12 really sets up that 15 year old ed isn't a confident shitlord like he is in the og, but a deeply insecure and guilt ridden teenager forced to grow up too fast and hiding his insecurities behind a mask of confidence. al is still kind and polite, but also a lot more ruthless and even more dependent on his brother than the og one is--the sensory deprivation and dysmorphia from the armour is cutting him off from other humans than his brother, and a lot of his own doubts and anguish at his situation begin eating at him to the point that when barry throws out the "you're an artificial person" accusation, al's brain immediately latches onto it because he's been wondering if he's even human for years.

i do think 03 has pits and valleys in terms of quality--but honestly i'm fine with it (bar a few genuinely infuriating decisions such as the transmisogynist serial killer trope in ep 8), it's a 2000s anime that was insanely ambitious and butting against the author and funding, some episodes visibly have a shoestring budget and while it remains thematically consistent you can very clearly see moments/places where the production committe threw in "hey uhhhhhh put in more kimblee he's popular" or "we're not giving you more episodes sorry. wrap it all up in three". do i wish a more consistent version of the show existed, meticulously planned out and with all the time and money in the world they needed existed? yes. would that version have been perfect? not necessarily tbh!

but really, 03 has a number of strong decisions and genuinely genius twists on the og that make it very hard for me to come back to the fma manga without feeling deeply underwhelmed. i like greedling so, so much--i just don't like him enough to not feel really bitter about how lust is treated in the manga. i genuinely love the scene where ed swears he'll get al's body's back at the gate, 10/10 shounen scene--but also, there's the scene ed happily tells al that after digging up their mom's body it turns out the transmutation they did had nothing to do with their mom, and every time i'm like "this is so stupid and i wish they'd kept the failed transmutation homonculi". the absolute heights of fma as a manga never ever manage to hit nearly as strongly to me as 03's does, because og fma will always feel just..... lacking in ambition and in depth, where imo in some aspects fma 03 still hasn't been outdone. where can i find something like the 03's homonculi? how many narratives are there that celebrate a character like scar instead of playing the trope of the Well Meaning Extremist Who Kicks A Puppy? this is a real question btw send them to me immediately i need them.

[scheodingers-muppet]

TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT (Stranger Things Version)

i have no clue why it took me this long, sorry guys

Fortnight: Jopper. “I was supposed to be sent away but they forgot to come and get me” “What about your quiet treason?” Joyce dating Bob. The references to spouses, “turned good neighbors”

Tortured Poets Department: Jancy. First part is from Jon’s pov. “you left your typewriter at my apartment” is such a Nancy line. “you’re in self-sabotage mode…but i’ve seen this episode and still love the show” Nancy self-sabotages a good bit, like with Steve or by fighting with Jonathan, etc. Second verse is Nancy. “You smoked than ate seven bars of chocolate” “I’ve read this one, where you come undone. I chose this cyclone with you” Both of them have seen each other at *lows,* spiraling and just doing bad, but they stick together and love each other

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys: Mileven. Mike and his Wheeler Self Destruct Button (ie closing himself off) “he saw forever so he smashed it up” forever not even as like, them being together forever but even the fear that she’s always going to be connected to the upside down. “once i fix me, he’s gonna miss me” reminds me of El and Max at the mall

Down Bad: El. “just to do experiments on” “everything comes out teenage petulance” she is soooo teen girl. this one is mostly vibes, honestly

So Long, London: Mileven, from El's POV. "I saw in my mind fairy lights through the mist" "Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away" "Wet through my clothes, weary bones caught the chill" "I didn't opt in to be your odd man out" El being excluded in season 3. "How much sad did you think I had in me? How much tragedy?" "You swore that you loved me but where were the clues?"

But Daddy I Love Him: Steddie. The imagery of people seeing the singer (Steve) as socially above the love interest due to him being "crazy" and "chaotic." The town being against him, like in season 4. "I'll tell you something about my good name. It's mine alone to disgrace"

Fresh Out The Slammer: Jancy. "Fresh out the slammer, I know who my first call will be to" "Splintered back in winter," (Fall but) "Silent dinners" and Nancy breaking down over Barb in season 2, which is part of what led to her and Steve splitting up. "He didn't understand me" but Jonathan did

Florida!!!: the Bylers leaving Hawkins. “Little did you know your homes really only a town you’re just a guest in” Will and Jon were never really accepted, outside of a few people. “You pack you’re life away just to wait out the shitstorm back in Texas” Hawkins in this case, and Flordia would be California

Guilty As Sin?: beginning of Jancy, from Nancy’s pov. “this cage was once just fine” her relationship with Steve. the whole song is about wanting someone else while in a relationship.

Who’s Afraid Of Little Old Me?: El. “my bare hands paved their path” “crash the party like a record scratch” “i was tame, i was gentle til the circus life made me mean” the circus life being the rainbow room. “they say they didn’t do it to hurt me, but what if they did?” “you wouldn’t last an hour in the asylum where they raised me” “I am what I am cause you trained me”

I Can Fix Him: Steddie, from Steve’s pov. "They shake their heads saying 'God help *her*'" the entire town hates Eddie. "His hand, so calloused from his pistol, softly traces hearts on my face" Eddie's hands would be literally calloused, from the guitar, but also it's a good metaphor for him having to be tough due to his circumstances, yet still being soft and gentle with the person he loves.

loml: Jopper, from Joyce's pov before they had Hopper back. "Who's going to stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames?" "Thought I better safe than starry-eyed" "I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all" "Should've let it stay buried" "you're the loss of my life"

I Can Do It With A Broken Heart: Nancy and El. "I'm a real tough kid, I can handle my shit" El has the more breakup-oriented side of things, but Nancy's broken heart stems from losing Barb. The second verse hits for that. "I keep finding *his* things in drawers, crucial evidence I didn't imagine the whole thing" "all the pieces of me shattered while the crowds were chanting 'more!'" works for both.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived: Max about Billy. Hear me out. "You tried to buy some pills from a friend of friends of mine" if Billy was still alive i just KNOW he would try to buy from Eddie. "I just want to know if rusting my sparking summer was your goal" Billy was awful to Max. "Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?" "In 50 years will all this be declassified, and you'll confess why you did it" "You deserve prison but you won't get time" "You are what you did. I'll forget you but I'll never forgive" I think it's safe to say Max has very complex emotions about Billy, still loving him for what he could have been, but still being really hurt and effected but his actions that cause a weird grief that I think this song conveys rather well

The Alchemy: Lumax, from Max's pov. This is gonna get kinda cheesy, stick with me. "The hospital was a drag, worst sleep I ever had" "Haven't come around in so long, but I'm coming back so strong" Max has been distant with Lucas but we finally see her starting to warm back up before Vecna gets her. The sports metaphors also fit. Wrong sport, obviously but ya know. "The sign on your heart says it's still reserved for me"

Clara Bow: Nancy and Karen. I think Karen was once a lot like Nancy. (i have not seen anything about the musical so I have no clue if that's canon but) and I think she sees a lot of herself in Nancy. The constant comparison to the women that came before you and you being the next great thing. Knowing someone will come after you, too. "Only when your girlish glow flickers just so do they let you know it's hell on earth to be heavenly"

The Black Dog: Byler, from Will's pov. "I move through the world with my heartbroken. My longings stay unspoken" "You said I needed a brave man then proceeded to play him until I believed it too" Mike was the one who spearheaded saving Will, even when he was scared. "Remember how my rain-soaked body was shaking"

imgonnagetyouback: Steddie. Why? I decided. The tension of "I hate you but I want you" and not being able to decide which one is stronger is so them

The Albatross: El. "She's the albatross, she is here to destroy you" "Locked me up in towers but I'd visit in your dreams" "I'm the albatross, I swept in at the rescue"

Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus: The Byers about Mike. "Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness...and I just watched it happen" Will about Mike, watching him get with El. "If you want to break my cold, cold heart, just say 'I love you the way that you were'" Mike confessing to Will would rock his world, and vice versa, but they've both been changed so much. "You said some things that I can't unabsorb" the “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls” “too impaired by my youth to know what to do”

How Did It End?: joyce after hopper “died.” “lost the game of chance, what are the chances?” “guess who we ran into at the shops, walking in circles like she was lost” “my beloved ghost and me”

So High School: it could be stancy, but i like it being jopper. a lot of it can be applied to any of the couples during their good moments, but i think since joyce and hopper are *out* of high school and actually look back on their flirting in high school as nostalgic, it adds to it

I Hate It Here: karen. HEAR ME OUT. i think karen used to be *just* like nancy, with big dreams and ambition, used to be dedicated to her grades while still having a good social life, etc. and i think she misses that. “tell me something awful, like you’re a poet trapped inside the body of a finance guy” about ted, who used to be romantic when they were teens. “i was a debutant in another life but now i seem too scared to go outside” “no mid-sized city hopes” “only the gentle survived; i dreamt about it in the dark the night i felt like i would die”

thanK you aIMee: either el about the rainbow room or eddie about jason if he didn’t die and made it big

I Look in People’s Windows: jonathan. there’s the obvious joke, but genuinely. we don’t necessarily see him look for someone in specific, but i imagine this is how he felt after his dad left

The Prophecy: steve. both in terms of him finding love and breaking out of the jerk-popular-guy role/getting the upside down closed forever. mainly in the bridge for the latter.

Cassandra: el and joyce. verse one is season one joyce. “that’s where i was when i got the call” with will going missing. “when the truth comes out it’s quiet” the imagery of not being believed and being treated bad by the town. second verse is el, about the rainbow room. “in my tower weaving nightmares, twisting my smiles into snarls” “what doesn’t kill you makes aware but what happens when it becomes who you are?” bridge is both. “bloods thick but nothing like a payroll. bet they never spared a prayer for my soul” about the people working the rainbow room and the government keeping everything quiet.

Peter: byler, from wills perspective. “in closets like cedar preserved from when we were just kids. was it something i did?” “promises, ocean deep but never to keep” “a natural scene stealer” “life was always easier on you than it was on me” the BRIDGE

The Bolter: robin. i can’t really explain why but it is

Robin: nancy about holly

The Manuscript: joyce. once again, can’t fully explain it. but it is.