#I'm just dumping thoughts

[fluideli123]

Something something Deadpool and Wolverine AU where they're both in the circus like the Greatest Showmen or maybe...magical mystical AU with them both being shunned but crossing each other on a job (Logan trying to get his loved ones back and Wade is just on a job trying to keep the world in order for a higher up)

[collophora]

Do yourself a favor and go read the entire fanfic work of @fanfoolishness

(In order: Under sun and shade, Blind Side, and Breathless (patching up is one of my fav too, I just had no cool sketch idea for it)

[kedreeva]

Okay if you haven't yet, and you have Netflix/Paramount+, consider giving "School Spirits" a chance.

It looks like a silly little cheesy teenage ghosts show, I put it on for background noise, and then got totally engrossed in the mystery. It's VERY well written, very well filmed, the mystery was GREAT and the payoff at the end is also great.

One of the things majorly lacking in shows I've recently tried to watch is that they try to do a twist/reveal at the end that comes out of nowhere. They don't want you to guess what they're doing. This show doesn't do that. This show wants you to guess. They give you seven different mysteries and enough clues to guess (most of) what is going on, so that when you get the final puzzle piece to any given mystery, it feels GREAT.

The story premise is this: a teenager in hs wakes up as a ghost in the hs, and doesn't remember how she died, and with the help of the other ghosts, tries to solve the mystery of her own death.

Simple premise. BEAUTIFULLY executed. Not all of the questions that arise get answered, but the main one (what she doesn't remember) gets solved by the end of the season, leaving the "why/how and what comes next" to be carried to the next season. It does a cliffhanger RIGHT. But now I desperately want to see the second season (which I believe has been approved, so it's a matter of waiting).

So pretty please, if you're looking for something to do and a great, engaging lil mystery to watch, consider! School Spirits!!

[kheyys-worms]

I have the silliest thought upon seeing the new playful land merch...

[radiance1]

Danny: Your mother!

Vlad: My mother is dead, Daniel.

Danny:

Vlad: She shoved me into a closet while saying that we were playing hiding and seek, and me, the oblivious boy I was then, obliged and was excited, not at all questioning that she knew where I was hidden.

Danny: Vlad-

Vlad: Then I watched on helplessly through a crack in the closet door as she was brutally stabbed to death right before my very eyes, terror running through my veins and fear gripping my mouth to keep it closed. I couldn't turn away, as I had a front row seat to each and every scream that they tore from her as blood slowly melted into the carpet.

Danny: Dude-

Vlad: Then I saw the life drain from her eyes and leave nothing behind but an empty husk that once was and the killer standing on top of her body. Before they left, I remember staring at her for an unknown amount of time before the police came and escorted me outside.

Vlad: Sometimes I wonder what difference it would have made if I stepped out of that closet.

Danny:

Vlad:

Danny:

Vlad: Anywho, enough about that. Would you like some cupcakes Daniel?

Danny, disturbed: Uh.... sure....?

Vlad: Great, vanilla or chocolate? Or perhaps lemon with some buttercream?

Danny: Lemon with buttercream please.

Vlad, going to his kitchen: Wonderful, wait one moment.

Danny is currently questioning how the hell a simple your mother joke forced him into a lore dump of his mother's death. On the bright side, at least he'll get some cupcakes out of it?

Dick: So, is your godfather always like this?

No matter what anyone says, Danny did NOT scream because he genuinely forgot that Dick was there, nor would he ever admit to being scared, because he wasn't scared.

[buttercupshands]

Mha sketch dump!

feat. LoV sleeping and other things

So there's that World Hero vote going now, BUT there's also basically a personal Top 5 thing too

I thought about my top 5 for a bit and ended up with this

But as it was I didn't like that we don't exactly have a way to make multiple characters have same place like that character sorter. But my top 3 would've shared 1st place

And also it gave me some inspiration so I sketched Izuku and later Tomura. And here started the sketch wave, bc choosing AFOmura for the Tomura pic is... A choice and so there are two Tomura's on the sketch, with AFOmura getting the 2nd amd Tomura 1st

I got a bit frustrated with how I drew them so I decided to try to redraw some stuff while keeping with mha style as close as I could

I was a bit... Surprised? To see my own progress as the last time I did a thing like this it wasn't that good

Trying to simplify the style instead bc I was getting sleepy didn't help

[statementlives]

okay but everyone in the OIAR is. weird. sam is apparently struggling with longlasting subconscious effects of a magnus institute encounter. alice is trying to convince everyone bones and sunlight aren't necessary for some sarcastic reason. colin is one computer error away from losing his whole paranoid sanity. gwen decides to deal with witnessing attempting murder by blackmailing her boss. celia has inter-dimensional knowledge and may or may not be part of a cult. lena uses reverse therapy as a hiring process and liaises with supernatural creatures. there is just. so. much. weirdness. to unpack here.

[secriden]

love sea episode 2 rewatch thoughts:

in hindsight, this opening should've clued us in that this episode was going to be horny as fuck.

ok so if episode 1 was about establishing mahasamut, i think the purpose of episode 2 is really to give us a much more nuanced introduction to tongrak. what's fascinating is that the show chooses to impart this insight to us through a rather unusual medium: sex (and, specifically, tongrak's attitude about sex).

we open with kinky kinky beach sex and it tells us that tongrak is impulsive, hedonistic, and tends to give into the emotions of the moment (something that, as the series develops, he does with increasingly self-sabotaging results; eg. when he lashes out at mahasamut after the 1st run in with prin or when he runs off to appease jak when he gets fearful in episode 9).

it also tells us that tongrak is very comfortable with his physical wants and needs. sure, mahasamut kinda flusters him because he awakens desires that are more intense than he's is used to, but tongrak's still grounded enough in his sense of self that he can roll with it pretty quickly and becomes an active, willing, even enthusiastic participant. (it's not going to be his physical desire that drives a wedge between them; its going to be the emotional connection that ends up being terrifying to tongrak.)

this episode also lays a ton of groundwork to set up why and how intensely mahasamut and tongrak are drawn to each other.

a lot of it, early on, is purely physical.

mahasamut and tongrak clock that they're compatible in their (D/s) kink immediately and they embrace this with gleeful abandonment. other people have made this point a lot more clearly than i could ever hope to (see @williamrikers excellent analysis of mutrak's kink dynamic), so i won't belabour the point, but i would like to point out how thoroughly the show wants the audience to know that these two are a perfect match physically and sexually (specifically with their particular kinks) and that they are incredibly comfortable with that.

(an aside: one thing i adore about peat's portrayal of tongrak's submissiveness in the beach scene is the way he starts out being the initiator in the kiss - in the gif above, it's tongrak that grabs mahasamut and yanks him into the kiss at first - but once its clear that mahasamut is on board, tongrak is almost constantly angled up, head tipped back, responding to mahasamut's cues but making no attempt to direct whats happening. there's so much surrender in the pliant way peat holds himself as they kiss and the way he goes from pulling mahasamut into the kiss to just clinging to his torso as he lets mahasamut take control. even when he reaches for mahasamut's dick, the second mahasamut pins him down and gives him an instruction, tongrak makes no attempt to redirect and just goes with what mahasamut wants. there's just such great detail in this portrayal of surrender.)

but what makes this encounter different (from the many, many other ones they've both had) is going to be how neither of them were able to keep this connection as purely physical for very long. (this is what episode 3 is for, though, so lets put a pin in that thought.)

back to insights into tongrak's character: we also get an escalation/confirmation about how tongrak views sex (and relationships) as purely transactional. tongrak's entire backstory is grounded in the idea that 'everybody has a price' because that's what his parents showed him. to tongrak, every human interaction is about finding the right things to give (usually money in his case) to get what he wants and this has allowed him to rationalise that feelings and emotions (both his own/the other person's) don't matter.

tongrak firmly believes that as long as he's offering something of sufficient (monetary) value, he's perfectly within rights to demand what he wants without consulting mahasamut's feelings, wants, or thoughts about the matter. in fact, he thinks of mahasamut as kind of an object for his sexual gratification and/or convenience. this is why he feels no remorse about kicking mahasamut out after they have sex even though mahasamut clearly wants to cuddle/come down from the physical high together. the next morning, it never pings to him that he should be guilty about how he treated mahasamut.

(look at his face. he's such an entitled diva. i love him so much.)

not only is this attitude - in reality - a very inaccurate way to view human beings (because as a species we are creatures very much led by our emotions), but it is the source of tongrak's own dissatisfaction and unhappiness. he never acknowledges any of his own emotional needs and so cannot manage or address them in a meaningful or healthy way.

so to summarise tongrak understands and is comfortable with his physical desires but does not know how to even acknowledge his emotional ones whilst impulsively being led by them in the heat of the moment: already we can see that this is a recipe for disaster and tells an unspoken story of pain and trauma.

(i also want to mention how well mahasamut continues to respond to tongrak's specific brand of caustic entitlement. he doesn't bother making a big deal about tongrak throwing money at him, but he also never names a price for his 'services' either. he blatantly refers to tongrak as his "owner" but also makes it clear that it's not tongrak's money that's keeping him around, but rather mahasamut's own desire for tongrak. it's like he'll act in tongrak's play but he won't quite stick to the script either. its so, so effective because he doesn't trigger tongrak's fight or flight response but he's still undermining and proving tongrak's assumptions wrong at every turn. this is what allows mahasamut to worm his way behind tongrak's walls whilst simultaneously chipping away at them.)

one last little bit of (this time non-sex-adjacent) insight into tongrak: he has a great capacity for compassion. (which will, eventually, turn into love.)

mahasamut, at this point, is mostly just an incredible lay to tongrak. but already he shows care and concern for mahasamut that's separate from what he can offer tongrak. he's concerned at a (relatively minor) hint that mahasamut has been mistreated in the past and then again concerned that mahasamut will suffer the repercussions of any hit to his reputation. [note: this is informed by a backstory regarding homophobia on the island that's from Khom/Connor's story in Love Sand, but even without that insight we can see tongrak's concern is for mahasamut.] (again, this is something the show is setting up to callback to later when tongrak gets offended on mahasamut's behalf when he thinks the waiter made fun of mahasamut.)

these little glimpses give us such a contrasting perspective on tongrak compared to episode 1, where he was mostly just a rich, entitled, and fairly unlikable character. we're being shown that what we've seen so far is really a mask as tongrak's true character slowly starts bleeding through as he has more interactions with mahasamut.

and then the episode closes on heartbreak: You're aware aren't you? Love is just a figment of our imagination.

tongrak's expression right before he says this is filled with resignation and disappointment. he hates that he has to say it but he feels its his duty to burst mahasamut's bubble. he genuinely believes this and so to him he's just doing mahasamut a favour by telling him a Truth about life. for us, this is the final crack in the mask and we see just how lost and fragile and hurt tongrak truly is.

(and the way peat sells this part - the cold almost clinical look in his eyes when he says the line. the tiny pout of his lips like tongrak can't help but feel sad about it, even though he accepts it as reality. the cold, flat tone peat uses to deliver the line when tongrak's usually quite expressive and uses lots of inflections and intonations in his speech. ugh <3)

but this is also really important because this is why we, the audience, start to care about tongrak. mame takes us on this journey, sets us up to wonder why tongrak's the main character when he starts out kinda of awful and then shifts the ground out from under us by showing us his soft, wounded underbelly. we can't help but want him to be loved, now, and this is why we become invested in 'tongrak mahasamut'.

[crystallizsch]

Trouble? You're only in trouble if you get caught. So don't let me catch you ~

uhhhhh say hi to jamil and yuusha's kid jas(mine) pt 2 (also here and here are like my only two other posts of her)

HFDDF OKAY SO - i actually had these unfinished sketches from months ago of jas as a nrc student and scarabia housewarden

this sneaky little bastard (affectionate) had never left my cranium she was just sitting idly by

im sobbing i hate jas so much (lie i love her)

jamil and yuusha still aren't supposed to have a kid so i just imagine this to be an alternate timeline for them 🤧🤧🤧

soooo info dump time ---

━━━━━━✦ scarabia housewarden nrc jas

jas has a vice-housewarden who is her childhood best friend (figuring out if i want them to be twst rajah or abu)

also thinking about if i want yuusha to be a staff member in nrc with grim or just dead during this time (why? just because)

no further info tbh, scarabia housewarden jas is just vibing

━━━━━━✦ child jas stuffs

i'm SO indecisive about her design as a toddler/preteen lowkey 😭

she was very sweet as a toddler but somewhere along the line she just became more carefree and chaotic

jas is a mama's girl but is more alike with her father than she cares to admit

octavinelle trio and heartslabyul duo + grim are like the honorary uncles (jas's favorites are floyd, ace, and grim bc they sometimes enable her with shenanigans)

even though jas has favorite uncles, najma is the favorite favorite. i imagine she's just the cool aunt

if mama yuu is "shrimpy" then jas is a "tiger prawn" (bc rajah)

jas LOVES doing people's hair including her own; would rather do them by hand rather than by magic

jamil showed jas how to breakdance once and it became ingrained in her personality ever since

(there's probably still more about her that i'm forgetting but this is it for now)

━━━━━━✦ bonus future jamiyuu stuff because i miss them

jamil took yuusha's last name surprise surprise (if they get married)

i imagine after nrc they'd be travelling together actually, not necessarily settling down

(i'm REALLY not 100% on them settling down and having a kid but i still love jas a lot so im so conflicted) (that's why aus exist 😔✨)

(and if hypothetically they do settle down i think yuusha being staff in nrc with grim + maybe jamil who travels for work (or being a house husband??? maybe they alternate roles) can be adorable ideas)

━━━━━━✦ (i also had this thing that i never posted about that one trope of a fankid finding themselves in nrc bc of portal/time/mirror shenanigans)

(jamil found both of them asleep somewhere and refuses to wake them up)

also some bonus tidbits about this scenario with them:

💜: Is she a family member of yours? How'd she get here?

🐍: I have never seen that child in my life before now. And there's no way I could have missed news about a new relative of mine.

💜: You know how ridiculous it sounds if she's related to me. I'm not from here. She even looks more like you!

🐍: Jas has the same color of eyes as you. Didn't you tell me she mistook you for her mother?

💜: ...Yeah, but I don't like what you're implying.

🐍: Well, I'm not exactly happy with this either.

they're just both in denial of the implication of this child existing and neither of them is saying it out loud.

and the angst/wholesomeness(???) of jamil asking jas's full name and hearing that she has her mother's last name instead of his

eventually they grew attached (unfortunately) until somehow they send jas home to her original timeline

and then they finally have a real conversation about what all that was about

anyways thank you for reading if you've made it this far;;; end tweet

[kaisollisto]

(Based off of the reality of having a metal ring in your back as a constant reminder of your fate and how that affects you as a person set in the Switzerland arc)

“Does it hurt?” 

Ava’s pressed face down into the pillow sleep curling around her limbs. She hums, she can’t remember what she says, she’s exhausted. Her arms are tangled beneath her pillow. She holds her fingers tightly between each other, her bones ache from the pressure but her hands no longer shake. Ava hasn’t experienced this before, a fear that haunts her at night. (She finds she cannot stop dreaming about dying. It’s stifling in the cover of night trying to figure out where she is.) 

She slowly opens her eyes and squints in the darkness. Beatrice is facing her a furrow in her brow that Ava knows she’s doing unconsciously. Ava’s lip quirks a smidgen, Beatrice looks funny. It’s a bit silly to her, Beatrice no doubt working out a solution to an unknown problem that Ava has yet to see in the middle of the night. In her sleepy state she wants to laugh at the imaginary cogs churning in Beatrice’s head. 

Beatrice scooches closer and Ava panics, her skin can taste the dust of Bea’s forearm. She hoists herself up on her elbows, turning to face Beatrice. “Wha?” Ava’s shaking off bits of sleep from her mouth when Beatrice repeats herself. 

“Does the Halo hurt?” 

She doesn’t know if she wants to answer that. Ava peers over Beatrice squinting at the harsh light of the digital clock on Beatrice’s side. Ava loves it, it reminds her of the early 2000’s and the aesthetic of waking up to an alarm to go somewhere. The clock blinks an innocent 1:43 Am, and Ava debates on letting her head thump back down. 

She turns her body on her side, she can feel the halo shifting in her back and it makes her want to throw up. The sides of the halo press against her shoulder blades and Ava resists the urge to yank it out. She grits her teeth and settles ignoring the skin of her back pulling tight to accommodate for the ring. Beatrice is still expecting an answer and Ava can’t lie to her, she pulls the covers of the sheet up to her chest hoping to bide more time for an answer. 

"Everything hurts Bea," Ava smiles, "getting my ass handed to me is hard work."

Beatrice frowns displeased but looks at her through her lashes, it's unguarded, the stress and worries of the world stay out of their room in the dead of night. Her lashes are so pretty and Ava wants to curse the soft glow of the moon. There’s just enough moonlight to illuminate her eyes but overshadow her freckles. Ava swallows down the taste of defeat, she can’t win, she thinks. 

Her gaze is soft, Beatrice is looking at her and it’s different yet the same. The same feeling in her chest constricting her lungs, the same soft gaze of Beatrice. Beatrice who likes what she sees in Ava when Ava can barely see where she begins. She doesn’t like to dwell on it, the truth of the matter being what belongs to Ava.

If she closes her eyes she can pretend just a little longer. She can give herself the hope of the future and what comes after all this. She can put down the fighting and the artifact and live. Ava doesn't want to think about it anymore, at least not tonight when Beatrice is here with her. 

Beatrice is soft. She knows it from hours and hours of training. She's felt it when Beatrice corrects her form, in the way she talks. She speaks from a place of care like she has turned the harsh words in her brain over and over to soften the syllables spoken to Ava. And Ava doesn't linger on it, the meaning behind it, (Ava didn't think she'd make it this far, finding a person who cares quite like Bea does.)

And Ava's got it bad, she knows she's fucked because Beatrice doesn’t say anything about her language and Ava can't not tell her the truth. She looks down, her hand fiddling with the bed sheet underneath them. 

"It doesn't hurt," if she thinks about it she can feel the fibers of the cotton between the pads of her fingers. "But it's very uncomfortable." She doesn't want to find the response in Beatrice's eyes, content to hear it from her voice. The soft British lilting accent that holds her just as soft as a touch. 

She waits, she can picture Bea’s mannerisms with her eyes closed but maybe she should check just to be sure. Ava peers up at Beatrice and she’s suddenly closer. Her eyes really are pretty, there’s a depth to them that Ava wants to spend an ungodly amount of time studying.

“Can I help?”

[silvermeww]

okay, when was someone going to tell me that

oh, idk, steven started at 19, burgh has a younger sister, clay actually isn't born american, skyla's whole fam thing and ELESA IS 15???? (even younger than skyla like wtf???)

(also the 'alder' at the bottom is supposed to be drayden lol)

and that's not all

say hello to:

viola being 18??? 'black whirlwind' korrina, RAMOS MEETING AZ'S FLOETTE AS A KID, genderfluid and apparently also age-fluid olympia, CLEMONT?? AND HIS WHOLE THING DOWN TO BEING 12 OF ALL AGES???

(you know what, marlon being 30 definitely makes sense with the hippie vibes)

wikstrom SAYING that he only wears that suit in pokemon battles but i've never seen his casual wear, malva being pr for flare lol, drasna selling dragon merch + great family lore if you want to know, siebold having to third-wheel lysandre and sycamore while eating (move aside malva, you're not the only elite 4 dealing with this) and 20?? YEARS OLD?? DIANTHA????????????

(way too many men in kalos are getting ladies, c'mon)

ethan being into history is such a neat detail hmmm, idk much of the frontier brains ngl, and we've finally got the region for looker and it's... hoenn??? you know what, makes sense with his chaotic vibes so i'll take it (throws away unova taped to a rock behind my back). also he's abolsutely cheating we all see that he's just relying on knowing us as protags, should've known smh

(um i think someone said that 'caitlin' should've been anabel but idk)

oh and the last one is charon, if we care about how much of a loser he really is. forget about birch and the poochyena, this guy is the lowest heh. imagine being charon (please don't).

(when the protags of johto are the same age as clemont lol) (yeah i know there are years between those events just let me have this)

and last but not least:

aaron 🤝 valerie: wanting to be pokemon (and ig gotta toss in shauntal with the ao3 writer gift heh, don't know if they would commission her or stay away), bertha's description???? i love flint just saying, cynthia 👀👀 is absolutely doing something illegal 👀👀, roark is WHAT??? (child labour laws in sinnoh must be lax ngl), maylene as well???? fantina watching scary movies is something i'll have to incorporate into my worldview and bryon?? are you okay??

so yeah. credit goes to @/KuroBlitz96 on the twitter/x for having this up, i'm just here to project sheer surprise at this massive dump of ages... my thoughts on pokemon have completely turned on its head once more lol (this is fine)

[moonfromearth]

🎁 300 Followers Celebratory CC Free Sim Dump!! 🎁

I can't believe the blog has made it to over 300 followers!! 😱 Thank you all so much for following and being so incredibly supportive. It really means the world to me. 🥰

I know I haven't been around very much but I promise that this is the beginning of me posting more again! So stay tuned for the return of the Horse Ranch series and my upcoming For Rent series that will probably be getting teased more soon... 😏

With that out of the way, here are the sims!

The theme for this was chosen via poll and I had so much fun seeing what everyone picked! I don't know why I was so surprised that "families" won because I wasn't sure what I expected to win 😆

All four of these families are cc free (if it says cc in the gallery I swear there's no cc! I haven't figured out the culprit but it still says they have cc in my gallery so idk 🤷‍♀️) and all have set careers, clubs, skills, and dynamics! Hopefully they all turned out good 😅

Enjoy! 😉

Full Sim Dump [Google Drive]

[Profile photos, brief descriptions, and individual household download links are all under the cut!]

Household 1 - The Li-Suwan Family

After quitting her job after the birth of their first child, Ying was hoping to go back into the work force, but with two new babies and her mother around, that's near impossible! Meanwhile, Min is in her rebellious phase, feeling like the whole world is against her, except for her grandmother. Erik is struggling to make friends and Kenny is the golden child but feels his crown slipping a way with the new babies in the house.

Li-Suwan Family Download Link [Google Drive]

Household 2 - The Hawley Family

Husbands Grant and Will have completely devotd themselves to the raising of their three kids, but with their oldests attending college classes their parenting roles are beginning to dwindle. Kamryn has given her all to school while Kayson enjoys a more laid back experience, frequenting the campus parties. Youngest, Hallie, dreams of being an actress but for now enjoys her childhood with family dog.

Hawley Family Download Link [Google Drive]

Household 3 - The Whitaker-Perez Family

Sloane and Karla have been waiting forever to adopt a child, and finally after all their years of waiting young Zane has entered their home! An energetic, rambunctious kid, Zane isn't quite sure what to make of his new mothers, one a quirky school teacher and the other a serious and professional doctor, but he's hoping that they'll all get used to their new family dynamic… However long that could take.

Whitaker-Perez Family Download Link [Google Drive]

Household 4 - The Barretts

Jayda Barrett is planning on going places. She's climbing up the corporate ladder, slowly but surely, with big dreams of becoming a huge executive or CEO, a position that brings in the big simoleons. Jayda is a single mom to an imaginative and horse loving toddler, Myla, who roams the house going on grand adventures with their cat, Carrot, already developing big dreams of her own.

Barrett Household Download Link [Google Drive]

[ravinoforre]

Michael and Leaf Pokemon but they've suddenly been isekai'd to Sylvarant oops

The template @frayed-symphony, @ciryze and I collectively put together.

...also uh 👉👈

there's this

[whiskeyswifty]

One of my favorite things about TTPD is definitely the thread of what makes an artistic genius a genius that runs through it. Specifically, the very concept of genius as it pertains to Taylor swift and how she herself has evolved that definition within her own field, how she mocks it and interrogates it on this album. But also the way it conflates with how we dub her a genius these days; artistically, strategically, philosophically (depending on your mileage). The crux of the issue ultimately is that historically, geniuses are often characterized as men who are lonely and flawed to the point of unsociable. It is in fact their genius that tortures them and isolates them and subsumes them and makes them flawed. And then in turn, the only men who can create great works of genius must also possess those traits because they are decided markers of genius, and so on and so forth. Women geniuses, the few that earn that moniker, in turn are often marked by caveats tacked onto any praise or recognition of their genius work. (It’s all non-cis-men “geniuses” really but for the sake of this discussion, we’re talking specifically about women v. Men because Taylor is a cis woman in a predominantly cis male controlled space) In Taylor’s case, it’s fearless deserved AOTY because it’s impressive….. for a teenage girl writing about teenage girl things, instead of simply saying the album itself being a great work of genius deserving of the award regardless of her age and it’s subject matter. Another being instead of simply saying she is skilled at distilling the human experience, she is deemed adept at distilling the girl experience, the girlhood of her weepy, exuberant little girl audiences. Always a qualifier, always a subset and an othering of female genius. It’s genius…. Within the confines of the handicap of being a woman. 

If you trace back her relationship to this confine, at first, she did try to fit into this genius mold sculpted by men. Young and girlish as she was, she still peddled the idea that she too was churning out these genius songs from a sort of tortured and lonely isolation, albeit scribbled in gel pen ink with kicking feet and yearning sighs, but in isolation all the same. I say peddled not because she isn’t a fabulous solo songwriter but she wasn’t often in total isolation as per the (male) genius handbook, and there in lies the very thing her genius begins to push back on, and the genius presentation of women that often clashes with the defined genius mold of men. She’s incredibly social. Vivacious and thrives being around friends and family, and her line of work traffics in that vivaciousness as a pop star, smiling and dancing and giggling on stage for thousands. She enjoys collaboration and throwing parties and meeting new people professionally and personally. She seeks out interactions with her own fans, to varying degrees over the years but still her hand is always reaching out across the barricade. How much of this is purely a product of a public persona and how much is her innate personal qualities is a moot argument, because the fact remains the same that this is the persona we are presented with, who is the antithesis of the male genius. And it’s not to say that she isn’t lonely or flawed or tortured about it. 

TTPD specifically interrogates that idea both through the lens of observing a guy who fancies himself a genius in that very male way, but also her own representation of genius in the world and how she repudiates the male genius mold foisted upon her. Mocking the stereotypical misanthropic traits of this male “genius” she encountered on songs like the title track, but also mocking the way he (and us by extension) try to classify her as a genius with all the trappings of one. Going as far as to refer to herself as an idiot in contrast, not intellectually perhaps but in terms of her comprehension of the world and her place in it, she doesn’t feel like a genius, not the way the man she’s speaking to seems to cartoonishly categorize them anyway. She doesn’t want to hole up in the Chelsea hotel with a typewriter wallowing in the burden of her genius because she doesn’t feel burdened by it that way, but rather her genius makes her curious and compelled to continue living boldly and blindly. If his (and the world’s) idea of genius is that willfully lonely tortured poet, then she’s much happier to cast herself as a modern idiot. She continues to push back as the album progresses, wherein she doesn’t claim she doesn’t get lonely or she isn’t flawed, but simply that she doesn’t define herself that way or even let those feelings steer her. Broken Heart is a quite literal example where she endures one of the biggest heartbreaks known to humankind and touts her ability to continue to perform her job due to the fortitude of her compartmentalization, not letting it decide how she will live her life. The Prophecy, where she bangs her fists against the forces that insist that she must remain in the lonely tortured poet mold in exchange for this genius, be they arcane or the small mindedness of modern world around her. She becomes animalistic, feral as she howls at the moon even, refusing to be shackled. Which brings us to Who’s Afraid, the most violent push back against the male genius you could say. She does not retreat to the folklore cabin in the woods as she once did when she is lonely and flawed and tortured, but instead lashes out and monstrously displays her emotion in the faces of those who scorned her, promises to never retreat and to instead haunt them, and perhaps all of us, forever. A Frankenstein’s monster of herself, where she is both doctor and creation. A story whose comparison is apt for its subject matter, but also in its creation that gets to the core of how she redefined genius. 

Mary Shelley, a woman, wrote Frankenstein, a seminal work of literary genius, and while the book is about a genius tortured in isolation by his genius creations, she didn’t write it in lonely tortured isolation herself. She came up with it in a house full of friends where they played a game to see who could come up with the best ghost story, for fun. The impetus of its creation was to share it with others and emotionally connect with them. The manuscript closes out TTPD with a harrowing but frank recounting of a transformationally damaging relationship in her life where the song itself confronts how she hid the scope of the damage from others, and even to a degree herself, behind the genius works she created about that relationship. Ironically, some of which are the single works that had the big wigs and critics and greek chorus of the music world finally cement her genius. The lemonade out of lemons she could have said and been done with it. But it wasn’t the declaration of genius that those works afforded her that brought her closure and peace on the matter, as the Manuscript dictates. It was the way the work of artistic genius was received and emotionally resonated and connected with people that allowed her to emotionally connect to it herself over the years and create more art from it until she finally understood the experience fully. Understood what the agony of it all had been for back in her early twenties, and thereby understood what the genius is all for now. If being a woman is seen as a handicap by her genius peers or by those who decide genius in others, merely a hysterical woman or a weepy little girl, perhaps it also could be a huge reason for why she’s able to redefine it, due to her access and ability to embrace those hysterical weepy emotions as only women are allowed to do in modern society writ large.

And so Taylor reshapes the identifying image of our genius as a bitter, tortured, stoic man in his cabin into a smiling face of a woman overwhelmed by a thousand emotions, clasped hands reaching out over barricades. Or one of eyes searching and recognizing herself in the faces of 80,000 people in an audience. Even seeking artistic collaboration with her friends that often results in sharing ghost stories of their own kind out of a desire to connect with each other. As sad and heartbroken and lonely she may feel, she will never be alone and the great mistake of the tortured and isolated male genius is thinking that he must be. If you believe that there is some divine purpose that bestows artistic genius upon a person, what Taylor Swift discovered and redefines and insists upon is that it is not a lifelong curse of loneliness but a gift of boundless and eternal human connection. 

[juniperleafdelivery]

[beetlebabber]

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I may have yanked the pose on the bottom left from this fanart here bc it made me feel things