#also don’t get me started on the trump era of it all

[o-wild-west-wind]

While I’m still a bit bummed that they didn’t go with a more book-aligned POC Fiyero for the Wicked movie, I’ve been thinking (heheh) about how his being white highlights the really interesting foil relationship between him and Glinda (and, in many ways, the audience yourself).

At its core, Wicked is a cautionary tale about propaganda, (literal) scapegoating, and what it means to uphold the status quo. The audience is watching through Glinda’s eyes—it is through her, arguably the most beautifully tragic character of the show, that we learn how lonely life becomes when you forfeit your values in favor of systemic power and likability (“No One Mourns the Wicked” is, in many ways, about HER).

Now, this is where Fiyero’s whiteness can get interesting—if you consider him and Glinda to share roughly equal footing at the beginning in terms of privilege/how much they have to lose (applying our real-world lens of race and power here, where whiteness is the apex), his storyline essentially represents what could have happened if Glinda had made the brave (and arguably wise and loving, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down 👀) choice to go with Elphaba and fight the good fight (this is also why I feel like a queer reading of G&E’s relationship is almost implicit to the story, but I digress).

As the POC/marginalized allegory, Elphaba has much less of a real choice in her curtain-pulled-back turning point. But Fiyero and Glinda—both representing privilege—get to choose. So in Act II, we see the consequences of both the choice to stay (Glinda) and to go (Fiyero). In Fiyero’s case, his ultimate rejection of his own power, privilege, and even beauty leads to immense physical loss—including his own body—but that is then compared to the loss of love, community, and identity that we see Glinda left with by the end. And this brings us to the question that the audience is left grappling with: in an unjust system where loss is inevitable (a.k.a. our own world, as the Wizard himself represents), which of these things are YOU more willing to give up?

It’s important that Glinda is an empathetic character because, in reality, most people are going to be Glindas (obvi this is nuanced among us Elphabas of marginalized identities, but I’d still argue that there’s some level of Glinda in us all)—and it’s important to be rattled by the end of the show when you realize that she is the one who has the sad ending. But it’s also so important that Fiyero is empathetic (which I’m SO glad this movie leaned into)—because he’s ultimately who Glinda—and thus we, as the audience—should have been.

And especially given the state of US politics right now…this is just all more relevant than ever.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

There’s no sugarcoating it: The 2024 election was terrible news for science, the environment, and the role of expertise and evidence in public policymaking. A lot of important things we care about and have worked hard to create and protect are going to be broken, some beyond repair. Destructive things we worked hard to prevent are going to happen — including some that we won’t be able to undo.

While nothing exactly like the second Trump administration has happened before, some elements of what we’re likely to see mirror the era of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And several scientists affected by Harper’s repressive policies tell me that by working together and planning strategically, we will be able to stop some of this.

During Harper’s time in office, from 2006-2015, Canadian government scientists were prevented from sharing their expertise in government policymaking. The government also banned them from speaking to journalists or the public, often referred to as “muzzling.” The Harper administration destroyed libraries and stopped some new hiring of experts in key areas.

The intent was simple: The administration had ideological policy goals, and they weren’t interested in letting facts, evidence or reality get in the way of achieving them.

The second Trump administration will almost certainly do this — and worse. They already took a stab at it the first time, when government experts who warned the public about harmful policy choices faced serious professional retaliation and taxpayer-funded sources of key information were suppressed, hidden, or even deleted.

What can we do about it?

I spoke with several colleagues who experienced working under the Harper administration, as well as several experts in the role of evidence-based public policymaking. They offered some clear advice.

Step One: They Can’t Delete What They Don’t Exclusively Control

For scientists working at government agencies, they suggest making copies of everything so it can be stored somewhere else — and to do that as soon as possible, certainly well before the next administration starts.

Step Two: Prepare to Speak Out (or Blow the Whistle)

Once the new administration takes place, one of the first things they’re likely to do will be to institute their own muzzling policy.

With this in mind, several colleagues pointed out the importance of getting information about what’s happening to the public. Investigative journalism sites like ProPublica are already actively seeking sources from government agency employees and have provided detailed information on how to safely and anonymously  communicate with them. Research those options now, so you have the tools in your back pocket.

Step Three: Collaborate (Sometimes Quietly)

There’s another way to make sure important work still happens and gets communicated, several colleagues told me: Government scientists can work as part of teams that include external scientists. Working with collaborators on research projects means that even if you aren’t allowed to comment on a result or project, someone else can share it.

Step Four: Reveal How the Sauce Is Made

Several experts pointed out that agency-level regulatory decisions and reports, and changes to internal policies about how to communicate them with the public, rarely make headlines. This means that far too much of this will happen in the shadows. At the same time, we all have a duty to make sure that everyone knows that — despite some occasional bureaucratic annoyances — we are safer, healthier, and more prosperous when key decisions are made by people who know what they’re talking about evaluating the best available evidence, rather than by uninformed idealogues. 

Step Five: Embrace Bureaucracy

And what if you see potential harm coming down the pike? Some experts advise using all the resources at your disposal to slow their implementation. Large bureaucracies like government agencies have their advantages in this regard.

Step Six: As Painful As This Is, We Can Get Through It

While the “muzzling” of scientific expertise under the Harper administration has effects that are still being felt a decade later, it did not and will not last forever. Neither will this.

[nikethestatue]

In my opinion people hate acofas for three reasons: 1. Feyre deciding to start trying for a baby with Rhys. They can’t stand that she became a young mother and that hatred continues to this day. 2. Elriel moments. Elucien was officially dead in the water and elriel was sailing. 3. Characters, especially Rhys, being mean to their favs. Whether it’s Tamlin or Nesta.

I know the fandom changed a lot in 2021 and that was the beginning of the end, but I also think you can trace a lot it back to 2018. I noticed people started getting more “anti” Feysand (because of Rhys’s “meanness” and for the pregnancy decision). Which continues to this day, people think Rhys was too mean in ACOSF and people belittle Feyre and hate that she had a baby in ACOSF, and they call her horrible misogynistic things. Obviously some people didn’t like elriel then and they hate them now. People started to feel sympathy for Tamlin then and they stan him now. People started to be “team Nesta” or “team Feyre” and I know you love Nesta but I think there is now a type of “Nesta stan” now that… we all know about and avoid lol. So I think these factions have roots in the ACOFAS era. It’s just x100 now. In my mind, the fandom falls into two categories. Category 1 is feysand lovers, elriel lovers, people who look at the text closely and have high reading comprehension, people who love most or all the main characters, dislike ACOSF, like ACOFAS, favorite book is ACOMAF.. and category 2 is gwynriel lovers, Nesta stans, people who yap a lot on tik tok, come up with crack theories they believe aren’t crack, people who read too much into certain phrases, people who hate the main characters except like 2, Azriel stans, favorite book is ACOSF, hate ACOFAS. I know not everyone falls into these categories but I think ACOFAS was the start of this divide.

All this to say I think the hate for ACOFAS is based on pretty petty, and sometimes harmful, reasons. I don’t really think it’s based on “there was no plot.” I think they didn’t like the direction acotar was going in that everyone didn’t girlboss their way into the sunset, and there remained conflicts between characters and feysand was starting the next chapter of their immortal lives. I love ACOFAS and it’s a red flag to me if someone hates it.

I think I would agree with this. I think the fraction of Feyre vs Nesta became pretty apparent after ACOFAS.

Overall, I've come to realize that Elriel and Feysand stans are more cerebral in their reactions and their arguments. Gwynriel and Nessian are intensely emotional, where 'feelings' trump any rationality and common sense, and forget canon. And Eluciens only care about Lucien, so everything else is irrelevant. That's why 94% of all debates end up with Gwynriels blocking the other person, because emotions take over and it's as if they can't deal with the argument.

To me, the whole 'don't read ACOFAS it has nothing to offer!' call to action from GAs is very telling. I, or any Elriel, would NEVER and have NEVER told a new reader not to read ACOSF or Azriel's bonus. We don't care. We have enough evidence that we don't need to hide a whole book because the book is 'inconvenient' towards our ship.

Elriels also don't prosthelytize on every platform and preach the Gospel of Elriel. We don't care. We don't descend in droves on every newbie and start screaming 'BUT DID YOU READ THE BONUS CHAPTER!?!?!" Elriel is endgame regardless of how many faithful adherents it has. We just enjoy the pairing because it's a good pairing. And it's canon.

[professor-in-progress]

Engineering is Inherently Political

Okay, yea, seemingly loaded statement but hear me out.

In our current political climate (particularly in the Trump/post-Trump era ugh), the popular sentiment is that scientists and other academics are inherently political. So much of science gets politicized; climate change, abortion, gender “issues”, flat earth (!!), insert any scientific topic even if it isn’t very controversial and you can find some political discourse about it somewhere. However, if you were to ask people if they think that engineering is political, I would bet that 9/10 people would say no. The popular perception of engineering is that it’s objective and non-political. Engineering, generally, isn’t very controversial.

I argue that these sentiments should switch.

At its base level, engineering is the application of science and math to solve problems. Tack on the fact that most people don’t really know what engineering is (hell, I couldn’t even really describe it until starting my PhD and studying that concept specifically). Not controversial, right? We all want to solve the world’s problems and make the world a better place and engineers fill that role! But the best way to solve any problem is a subjective issue; no two people will fully agree on the best way to approach or solve a problem.

Why do we associate science and scientists with controversy but engineers with objectivity? Scientists study what is. It’s a scientist’s job to understand our world. Physicists understand how the laws of the universe work, biologists explore everything in our world that lives, doctors study the human body and how it works, environmental scientists study the Earth and its health, I could go on. My point is that scientists discover and tell us what is. Why do we politicize and fear monger about smart people telling us what they discover about the world?

Engineering, however, has a reputation for being logical, objective, result oriented. Which I get, honestly. It’s appealing to believe that the people responsible for designing and building our world are objective and, for the most part, they are. But this is a much more nuanced topic once you think deeper about it.

For example, take my discipline, aerospace engineering. On the surface, how to design a plane or a rocket isn’t subjective. Everyone has the same goal, get people and things from place to place without killing them (yea I bastardized my discipline a bit but that’s basically all it boils down to). Let’s think a little deeper about the implications though. Let’s say you work for a spacecraft manufacturer and let’s hypothetically call it SpaceX. Your rocket is so powerful that during takeoff it destroys the launch pad. That’s an expensive problem so you’re put on the team of engineers dedicated to solving this problem. The team decides that the most effective and least expensive solution is to spray water onto the rocket and launchpad during takeoff. This solution works great! The launchpad stays intact throughout the launch and the company saves money. However, that water doesn’t disappear after launch, and now it’s contaminated with chemicals used in and on the rocket. Now contaminated water flows into the local environment affecting not just the wildlife but also the water supply of the local community. Who is responsible for solving that issue? Do we now need a team of environmental or chemical engineers to solve this new problem caused by the aerospace engineers?

Yes, engineers solve problems, but they also cause problems.

Every action has its reaction. Each solution has its repercussions.

As engineers we possess some of the most dangerous information in the world and are armed with the weapon to utilize it, our minds. Aerospace engineers know how to make missiles, chemical engineers know how to make bombs, computer scientists know how to control entire technological ecosystems. It’s very easy for an engineer to hurt people, and many do. I’m not exempt from this. I used to work for a military contractor, and I still feel pretty guilty about the implications of the problems that I solved. It is an engineer’s responsibility to act and use their knowledge ethically.

Ethical pleas aside, let’s get back to the topic at hand.

Engineering is inherently political. The goal of modern engineering is to avert catastrophe, tackle societal problems, and increase prosperity. If you disagree don’t argue with me, argue with the National Academy of Engineering. It is an engineer’s responsibility to use their knowledge to uplift the world and solve societal problems, that sounds pretty political to me!

An engineer doesn’t solve a problem in a vacuum. Each problem exists within the context of the situation that caused it as well as the society surrounding that situation. An engineer must consider the societal implications of their solutions and designs and aim to uplift that society through their design and solution to the problem. You can’t engineer within a social society without considering the social implications of both the problem and the solution. Additionally, the social implications of those engineering decisions affect different people in different ways. It’s imperative to be aware and mindful of the social inequality between demographics of people affected by both the solution and the problem. For example, our SpaceX company could be polluting the water supply of a poor community that doesn’t have the resources to solve the problem nor the power or influence to confront our multi-billion-dollar company. Now, a multi-billion-dollar company is advancing society and making billions of dollars at the cost of thousands of lives that already struggle due to their social standing in the world. Now the issue has layers that add further social implications that those without money are consistently prone to the whims of those with money. Which, unfortunately, is a step of ethical thought that many engineers don’t tend to take.

Engineers control our world. Engineers decide which problems to solve and how best to solve them. Engineers control who is impacted by those solutions. Engineers have the power to either protect and lift up the marginalized or continue to marginalize them. Those who control the engineers control the world. This is political. This is a social issue.

Now look me in the eyes and tell me that engineering isn’t inherently political.

[strideofpride]

On that note, can you imagine how INSANE the media circus would be if it did come out publicly that Chuck and Blair illegally backdated their marriage certificate and the case against them was actually re-opened? Especially in 2023, at a time when anti-billionaire “eat the rich” sentiment has become very mainstream, and true crime is one of the most popular and profitable genres of entertainment?

Like, the events of season six happen so fast that we don’t really get to appreciate just how wild they are from the outside looking in. Imagine if Michael Bloomberg or pre-presidency Donald Trump died in a car crash, and their then-teenage progeny took over their real estate empires. Everyone just gets used to the idea of a little boy real estate mogul, I guess, and a few years pass, and then - surprise! They were faking their death all along!! Yes there was a funeral, yes they were legally declared dead, but who cares! They’re back baby, and ready to go back to being the same shitbags they were before!

Except, a mere handful of months later, they’re dead again - this time having gone careening off the side of one of their company’s most famous buildings (imagine if Donald Trump died falling off of Trump Tower lmaoooo). Did they fake it again? Was it foul play? By the time rumors start to swirl of the alleged involvement of their recently deposed nepotism baby, the cops close the case and rule it an accident. Their heir, still barely an adult, retakes the reigns of leadership - newly married, a detail no one realizes is suspicious because they likely have no idea that the spouse was at the scene of the crime.

Years pass. YouTubers and online conspiracy theorists periodically bring up the case, but the public at large once again more or less accepts the public narrative. Another piece of shit real-estate mogul gets elected president, and the attitude of the general public towards the uber wealthy turns increasingly hostile. Then there’s 2020, and 2021, and 2022, and- And then. “Billionaire boy and family linked to father’s mysterious death after discovery of faked marriage license”.

Even though we, the audience, knows Chuck didn’t actually kill his father, do you think in a world where this was an actual case involving actual public figures anyone would believe that? The coverup is so ridiculously suspicious that the general public almost definitely assumes they really did do the crime.

And consider the players in this case - a terrible billionaire who died a deliciously ironic death, his somehow worse son who in a post-#MeToo world is already a PR nightmare waiting to happen, and the ex-princess of Monaco (?!) who just so happens to already be tabloid fodder. If they get especially unlucky, Dan (a pretty famous novelist, at least according to the reboot), Serena (a 2000s era “it girl” and semi-celebrity), and Nate (an ex-NYC mayoral candidate, media mogul, and in universe Kennedy equivalent) might just find themselves implicated too - or at least forced to testify - given they were at the very much in public wedding where any rando could have snapped a picture.

There is just soooo much fucked up entertainment value in a case like this I can’t imagine it being anything less than a public fucking spectacle, and not the kind Chuck or Blair could just shake off. I genuinely do not know how they could absolve themselves in the court of public opinion if it actually went to trial, even if they managed to prevail legally.

Oh my god. Okay well, first of all, I really want the fake Serial podcast that unpacks all of this lol. Someone should make that lmao.

"little boy real estate mogul" took me out lololololol

also like...faking your death is a crime right??? how was Bart just able to re-enter society so easily??? did they ever say???

i'd also like to point out that it's actually much vaguer whether or not Chuck killed his father. They cut away during their fight and then next thing you see is Bart hanging onto the edge. Chuck himself says that he isn't sure whether or not he pushed him or Bart fell over. but also Chuck and Blair both just stood there and did nothing to help Bart before he fell, which is involuntary manslaughter I believe

But seriously though, you're so right anon that all of this was made for true crime. In 2030, someone makes a "Jinx" style doc about Chuck I bet

[qqueenofhades]

as a young person who is also very fed up with online leftists, it’s so frustrating because i do understand where a lot of my peers are coming from. i was born in 99 and i feel like american politics has just been nightmare after nightmare throughout my life. we weren’t quite old enough to understand what obama was up against during his presidency, and when we did finally start tuning into politics, it was during the trump era of clownery and everything has just felt so much more panicked and urgent (a lot of which is manufactured, i’m aware) since. i understand people being sick of things taking so long to change, i am too, i just don’t know how they think not voting or claiming both sides suck (which diminishes how dangerous the gop is) is going to put us in a better position. they may think it sucks right now under biden but it sucked a lot more under trump and would suck even worse if the gop took the presidency in 2024

Like... yes, to an extent, I understand. You guys came of age right when things really went off the rails with Obama Derangement Syndrome, everything got a lot worse and a lot scarier overnight, and it felt like the current system was so laughably inadequate for the problems at hand that of course it needed huge and immediate changes. Which, like! I'm not disagreeing! I wake up every day and I see something else terrible and/or stupid has happened and I occasionally just wish for the meteor too! But I am also a grownup who recognizes that that's not going to actually fix anything, and that life beyond echo-chamber leftist Twitter exists. So yes, we all have the "just give in and blow it up" moments. But that's... not actually a political strategy, certainly not a humane one, and it continues to baffle and infuriate me that that's just Online Leftist staple rhetoric.

I know that it can be difficult for people of any age, but particularly young people, to conceptualize anything outside of their own lived experiences/personal memories, and yes, you have the misfortune of coming of age in a particularly bad political moment. Again, nobody's denying this! But if someone's response to that is to insist that only they know anything "true," history and/or culture and/or the besetting problems of America for its entire 250-year existence either aren't real or could have been solved by the Democrats already if they just Tried Hard Enough, then those of us who know better are under no obligation to take this BS seriously. It gets even worse when these people start acting like they're the only authority to ever be trusted, everyone else is wrong and/or evil, and their twisted immature ideal of "revolution!" is the only way forward.

Humans, and human society, politics, culture, history, etc., are complicated. The world does not exist in a neat black-and-white, zero-sum moral vacuum where one choice is totally right and the other is totally wrong. Attempts to impose the Most Correct Ideology, of whatever stripe, have always ended terribly and done a lot of avoidable damage. But "things got really bad in four years and Biden hasn't fixed that + every other problem in America since its founding, therefore he and the Democrats are actually worse than Trump!" is just straight-up clown magical thinking, and it offers absolutely nothing useful for anyone, especially those who sanctimoniously claim to want to fix it. So, yeah.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’m still really enjoying the project I’m on at WillowTree and I hope we’re able to extend it further down the road.

I’ve been thinking about a way to fix my completely broken layout of Stream for Mac table view cells. For some reason the same layout I used on iOS isn’t working on macOS? Are the layout engines that different between UIKit and AppKit? No idea. But I do hope my new idea fixes it once and for all.

Then I need to get back to adding async await functionality to my feed adding code. This whole time it’s been synchronous because you really can’t mess with the UI during the initial get of the site data. When you select the feed you’d like to add everything becomes asynchronous, just like feed updating is.

This little change is the fire step in moving all of Stream’s asynchronous code to async await. I still need a much deeper understanding of how it works and why I need it. The code isn’t broken as is today but if Apple requires using async await at some point in the future, it will break.

Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, amirite? 😁

Chris Quinn • cleveland.com

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

It’s extremely difficult to write about Donald Trump as an equal to Joe Biden. Trump is a narcissist, rapist, twice impeached, criminal former President with desire to be a forever Dictator of the United States of America. He wants to end democracy as we know it. He’s only in it for his own gratification, to be cruel, and as a means to enrich himself.

Joe Biden is a leader who believes in helping people and he supports the Constitution. He’s been an effective leader.

Look, no President is perfect. President Biden is no exception to that rule. I’m a liberal and don’t agree with everything he’s done, but he has done great work for the people of the United States.

Vote for democracy. Vote for Joe Biden for President.

Craig Hockenberry • Iconfactory

This post will explain the technology behind Project Tapestry and how we tested it as a prototype. We’ll keep this discussion at a fairly basic level: if you’re a web or app developer, you’ll have no problems following along.

I just love everything Iconfactory does. Yes, I’m a software developer, yes Tapestry will somewhat compete with Stream, but I don’t care. I love this idea and I’m a little green with envy I didn’t think about it. 😃

This is the way to open up your app and make it more easily extensible internally in the process. There are lots and lots of great JavaScript developers out there.

I backed it as soon as I heard about it and I’m really looking forward to the final product.

Matthew Haughey

I’d like a hosted, centralized web app that is akin to early-era Blogger.com that lets me save new posts into a system, then it’s up to me where the output goes.

By blog began life as a Blogger blog. I published this site from 2001 to 2010. It generated static HTML and would FTP the generated HTML to my site. I loved it and it was extremely easy to move my site when I changed hosting providers. I just zipped up the directory and expanded it in its new home, updated Blogger to point to the new location, and went back to posting.

Today I publish this site using Micro.blog. It also generates static HTML but it’s all hosted on Micro.blog’s hardware. If I ever leave it’ll be easy to move.

I have been considering a move to a completely hand written blog. 😃

Of course once I started thinking about doing that I thought up some tools I’d like to write to help me out. 😂

Max Tani • Semafor

The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

This is a piece from January but it is interesting. Like blogging I believe it’s safe to say the idea behind Podcasting was never about monetizing, it was about freedom of expression. But, in the end, you can’t and shouldn’t, stop folks from monetizing it. That’s part of the freedom.

Reliance on a single centralized source of podcasts is a mistake. Apple has been so gracious in sharing their feed directory with the world for nothing it’s difficult to call it a mistake. The fact that it exists isn’t a mistake. The fact that so many podcasting apps and podcasters rely on it is.

There are now many podcast networks, from Indie to BigCo, and some apps and networks have their own directories but Apple is still the dominant player.

Oh, not to mention they have their own player that ships with their OS’es. That’s where the hit to podcast download numbers originated. Apple’s podcasting backend and their distribution front end in the form of the Podcasts app.

Hurubie Meko and Michael Wilson • New York Times

A magnitude-4.8 earthquake sent tremors from Philadelphia to Boston and jolted buildings in New York City. An apparent aftershock was widely felt around 6 p.m.

It’s strange to hear about a quake on the east coast. It was a topic of conversation at work yesterday in our weather Slack channel, of all places.

East coasters aren’t used to this. Here they’re accustomed to cold and snow and hurricanes, not earthquakes.

ROB BESCHIZZA • Boing Boing

Amazon is to end the AI-powered “Just Walk Out” checkout option in its Amazon Fresh stores. It turns out that “AI” means “Actually, Indians” and it isn’t working out.

So now we know what AI actually means! What a complete failing on the part of Amazon. It would’ve been so much better to have failed using AI than to move the jobs of cashiers to India where a bunch of overworked, underpaid, Indians are doing the same job.

Just hire some real people to manage the store.

Matt Birchler • birchtree

You probably got to this post because you Googled some question about what exactly “the fediverse” is, what “ActivityPub” actually means, or what would happen if you turned on federation on your Threads account today.

I still hear about folks struggling to understand how to sign up for Mastodon. The Join Mastodon site should just present the user with a signup form and host everyone on mastodon.social or a new instance and let folks decide what to do next. Most will probably be perfectly happy to stay on that instance forever. 👍🏼

Zack Sharf • Variety

Christian Bale Transforms Into Frankenstein’s Monster in First Look at Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Bride’

I’m diggin the look of Bales monster. Sign me up for the finished product.

Anthony Bonkoski

Ref-counting is garbage collection.

But is it really? I can see the point but it’s a tough sale for this old curmudgeon. 😂

I wrote a tiny sample to explain reference counted objects to a co-worker years back — 13 years at the time of this writing. It still illustrates the point fairly well, I think.

Today C++ developers get a lot of great reference counting and other newer memory management techniques through the stl.

Sarah K. Burris • Raw Story

Judge Cannon ‘basically inviting’ Jack Smith to ask for her removal in new filing

This judge seems to be incompetent or in the bag for Trump.

Look, the dude took too secret documents home with him. Probably not a big deal if he’d returned them when he was asked to. But no, not his Orangeness, he hold onto them, claiming they’re his through the magical process of declaring them his through mind control or some crap.

The trial is all about that. Not the Presidential Records Act.

[puthyflapps]

A tmz article about what...

Aaron Rodgers

[stanfordsweater]

happy wincest wednesday to you and yours!! if you had to point to one single canon scene that exemplifies why wincest is so powerful and engaging and worth thinking about as much as we all clearly think about it, which scene would you pick?

AWWW YESSSS, DO I EVER

okay so of course i could take the easy route and point to any scene in the first 3-4 seasons, because i have at least one moment in every episode from that era. HOWEVER. there is one that i believe trumps them all, and that moment is [pause for drumroll]

i don’t think this will be a controversial choice 😅 still, there’s a reason that this scene is at the top of a lot of people’s lists, and that’s because of what a great job it does to bring together a ton of threads from the previous episodes and lay them all plain, while also giving us one of dean’s Iconic Moments of Vulnerability™️ AND being a great example of how to write conflicting character motivations between two people who love each other. sam and dean are both heartbroken in this scene, but they’re both sticking to what they want.

one thing i find really interesting about it is how sam, the optimist, starts talking about “getting back to real life” to cheer dean up, as a way to get them both battle-ready and distract them from the possibility of dying in the next few hours. what’s always really drawn me to sam and dean is the way that their intrinsic motivations get in the way of them having a smooth relationship-- that conflict is catnip to me, and it’s something we get a TON of in season one. sam brings up what comes next because he’s genuinely trying to calm dean, but in doing so he brings up his worst nightmare because he doesn’t know!!! he doesn’t know!!! we don’t even explicitly know that sam leaving for stanford was dean’s worst night of his life until dark side of the moon, although he makes it pretty obvious in this scene. then we have dean revealing the only thing he wants for himself, which is having his family together. (and i find it really interesting how sam’s silhouette cleaves the sentence in half, placing “you, and me” separately from “and dad.”) you can see on sam’s face how much he wants dean to let himself have one thing when he asks him what it is, but dean’s only wish here is sam’s worst nightmare-- to be trapped in this life forever, stuck following john’s orders, and seeing them die violent and bloody.

i also love how this scene carries on sam’s theme of committing himself to dean while still chafing against him (”you’re my brother, and i’d die for you, but some things i need to keep to myself.” “dean, that guy was probably gonna die anyway.” “i’d do anything for you, but things will never be the way they were before.”) it’s laying the groundwork for the next [checks calendar] LITERALLY 14 SEASONS. this theme just keeps coming up, and every time it does it comes in a different form. it’s so clear even just from this scene how much sam would do for dean and how little he can conceive of a life together-- flash forward to season nine and you have sam who can only conceive of a life with dean and can’t handle the things they’ll do for each other. mmmmm.

THEN we have sam’s face after dean’s done flaying himself open, and that mix of love and pity and misery is fodder for thousands of fics. the way dean’s eye twitches right before he says “could be.” the weird undercurrent of desperation that shouldn’t be present in a conversation between two brothers about living with their father forever. the way dean can’t even look at sam while he’s explaining himself. sam’s rock solid response, knowing what it will do to dean and knowing it needs to be said. U G H

fantastic. 10/10. i wish i had been on livejournal the night this episode dropped. i hope everyone involved got a million dollars for this.

[dekusleftsock]

This is just a quick train of thought post but I still wanna share it

Either way I’ve seen this phenomenon where people hate the mha fandom because of how shippy it is. People want to act like bc this shonen then that means romance hardly exists. But you’ve got to understand how fandom EVOLVES!

I’ve not been in this fandom for long. Maybe since October of 2021. But I HAVE been in other fandoms before. Fnaf, undertale, and Minecraft come to mind first. (The old and new mc fandom btw, yes I watched dsmp. I don’t like the creators now but the fandom taught me how to analyze storytelling so ??? Idk how to feel about the fandom with my fondness lmao) And after a bit of research, pre-existing knowledge I have of the internet as a whole, and a TON of thinking and mulling it over in my head, I’ve come to my personal conclusion of why THIS FANDOM SPECIFICALLY gets so much hate and is so “shippy”.

The actual reason the fandom itself is so focused on ships and characters is because horikoshi writes characters well. Simple as that. It’s a character driven show, and compared to other shonens that’s a bit out of character for a show of the “genre”.

Anyway, let’s give a bit of background to the general internet. Up until about I wanna say, 2018? The internet was really really bad. The main social platforms running the show were YouTube, instagram, Reddit, and Twitter. Tiktok wasn’t exactly a thing, it was musically or however it’s spelled. 4chan was also still relatively popular as was tumblr. Tumblr is an interesting character during this time but I’ll get into that.

The general ideas of the internet were all relatively “right leaning” and cringe culture was still VERY rampant. This is because when the internet and, more specifically, the gaming community was being born the alt right communities that were pretty small migrated to the internet. This made a trade off: in exchange for organizational power they now had more reach. That’s why nazis and bigots have always been so common on the internet. It’s also why a lot of our amab siblings, children, uncles, etc in their teen years were so far gone into the alt right pipeline. It directly targets young white boys who like video games. YT created a lot of parasocial relationships by letting those people get the platforms they did. (I recommend watching “the alt right play book” by innuendo studios, they voice this better than I did)

The anime community, parts of the art community, 4chan/Reddit, and political spaces online were filled to the brim with nazis due to this phenomena.

And here’s comes tiktok. A platform who just gave themself a brand new face and name ready to start the trend of shorter videos instead of images or longer videos. At first, we still have the remnants of the alt right with the furry vs gamer war specifically, and then comes vsco girls. And you know what’s so weird about this trend? They TRIED to memeify it, they TRIED to shame women into not getting metal straws, into not dressing in the certain style. But it was a turning point in the entire worlds political spectrum. More specifically, gen y and gen z.

This was the start of a “new era” on the internet. And TikTok’s algorithm is probably the best one I’ve ever fucking seen! It was able to completely cut people off from different ideas and parts of the platform, while simultaneously sharing content that would make people argue. This, was tiktok 2020. BLM happened as a trend (blm has been around for a lot longer than tiktok, it was just a trend on the platform itself), trumps rallies happened. For the first time organization on a platform fucking worked. It was what the alt right WANTED to do, but never could.

Now, why am I saying all of this? Because tiktok opened the gate to fandom. For the first time since I’ve been on the app, (and I was on in 2018) fandom has started to pop up more. Toh and some anime communities have gotten more popular there.

But given this context, it starts to make sense why people HATE that it’s so shippy. Tumblr was the weird kid of the internet for a long time, and as that’s shifted to being 4chan, I’ve got to say that shipping and the mha fandom (along with other more known “toxic” fandoms) has gotten to a point where it’s more socially acceptable. And since a show like stranger things can now have a fandom, I can solidly say that fandom has become more mainstream because TIKTOK is mainstream.

So, yeah, people hate fandom and more specifically the mha fandom because of nazis. Cringe culture still exists and it’s kinda hard to not think a fandom that’s already been painted as terrible is actually, not all that bad. It’s like literally every other fandom. Stranger things has the same problems we do, death note has the same problems we do. Mha is not an exception.

[pleuvoire]

blade being the rare kamen rider to have two openings, i like them equally musically (maybe elements wins out a bit but aaahh it’s so hard to choose) but round zero definitely wins for me lyrically because while elements is a more straightforward inspirational shounen song (“forge the courage in your heart into a shining blade” “the wind is telling you strength is inside you” “if you can harness even your fear you’ll evolve”), round zero is like… downright ominous? in a way that i think really evokes the eventual tragedy of the show and when you go line by line it really jumps out at you. like let’s go through it

“you all on your own, your existence will change the world someday” which sounds inspirational on its surface but with context seems to point to the whole joker thing (especially since it just says existence/presence/存在 and not actions or something…. getting major world-destroyer-hajime vibes) and the wording also emphasizes the concept of solitude ;__;

“what’s out there somewhere, is it hope or despair?” self-explanatorily ominous

“round zero is beginning” THAT’S IT THAT’S THE SHOW. THE BATTLE ROYALE OF THE EARTH’S DESTINY IS STARTING BABY

“the sin of not knowing, and the trap of knowing too much” idk yet how this specifically relates to the plot of blade but it’s also ominous and such a striking lyric. although i’m thinking of king form.... :x

“make your move, before you become unable” a warning, alludes to an inevitable or at least encroaching end

“the card flipped over by the wind laugh as though it’s foretelling” MAN. [thinking about the ending] MAAAAAANNNN

“there’s no way you won’t be lost, even so search for tomorrow” are you seeing this. all “this is gonna suck but you have to do it anyway”

“a dazzling destiny leads to an era on the verge of ruin” foreshadowing the apocalyptic stakes of blade again, and the heavy feeling of fate in kenzaki and hajime’s story

so really the only unambiguously inspirational/optimistic lines in the op are the final “the trump card is inside you, forge it into a blade of courage” which very closely parallel the lyrics of elements, so i don’t even really view them as “of” the song itself but mostly there to supply a parallel to the other opening. unless you want to view it as the volta of the song as in a sonnet, where it caps off all that ominousness with “time to face the bad shit, you got this!” either way, an absolutely lyrically fascinating opening

[enigmaticxbee]

✖️✖️✖️ 11x04 The Lost Art of the Forehead Sweat

The one where... Reggie Something was erased from the X-Files. Maybe.

Best: Scully: I want to remember how it was. I want to remember how it all was. I wish we could just end things here, with Mulder and Scully smiling at each other on the couch of their Unremarkable House over a Sasquatch footprint shaped Goop-O ABC 🥰

Worst: The Trump era-ness of this episode is a LOT. I really enjoyed parts of it, but I had to just tune out other parts to avoid anxiety inducing truthiness flashbacks.

✔️ Flashlights

❌ Woods/Desert

❌ Slideshow

❌ Autopsy

✔️ Evidence Disappears

❌ Scully Misses It

❌ Mulder Ditch

✔️ Sunflower Seeds

✔️ Voiceover (Scully, Reggie narration)

❌ Catch Phrase

❌ Scully is a Medical Doctor

❌ Mulder is Spooky

❌ Scuuullllaaaaayy! Muullllderrrr!

❌ Fox/Dana

✔️ Inappropriate Touching (that I am here for)

✔️ Casual Scully (date night!)

✔️ Casual Mulder (Squatchin suit)

✔️ Trench Coats

❌ Bad Tie Watch

❌ Glasses Watch

✔️ Taking! It! Personally!: Mulder

50 States: DC x108 (44/50)

Investigate: Together & Apart

Solve Rate: 70%

❌ Bechdel Test: Unless you count Mrs Peacock screaming in the flashback there were no other women who spoke in this episode. C’mon Darin Morgan!

MSR: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

Goriness: 👽👽

Creepiness: 👽

Humor: 👽👽👽👽👽

Rewatch Thoughts:

William check-in: No mention

Break-up check-in: I guess they’re officially dating again!

Scully’s been calling him all day - maybe to confirm that dinner date?

Squatchin! Love that for him. And that Scully’s like sure, do your thing Mulder.

That moment when someone starts telling you a story for the millionth time and all your “oh yeah, I remember”s and “yeah, yeah you told me”s won’t stop that story train.

Scully just wants to go on her dinner date! Her casual date night outfit is cute too

Also Mulder in his piles of tapes perfectly captures that feeling when you know you put the thing you’re looking for away in a perfectly logical safe place and you can’t find it anywhere and you tear your home apart in search of it

Mulder’s head and voice on his little boy body in this flashback cracks me up

Scullz 😂

Scully chilling with her feet up on Mulder’s desk 😍

Scully poking fun at Mulder’s super secret rendezvous signal

Mulder waggling his eyes at Scully about a stakeout date. Scully: Well this is romantic. Mulder: Isn’t it! I think he’s sincere, hanging out with her, investigating X-Files, what could be better!

There are some great vintage posters and things in the background in the memorabilia shop.

It’s not parallel universes!

Mulder: Who is “they”?

The a-cappella theme song! The flashbacks inserting Reggie into scenes from the original run - Unusual Suspects! The Pilot! Tooms! Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose! Teso Dos Bichos 😂 Home! Small Potatoes - so fun.

Mulder: I’m Fox freaking Mulder, you punks!

Mulder: The world has become too crazy for even my conspiratorial powers. Scully: Maybe you’ve just lost your taste for it, especially after all this “birther” stuff. Seriously, conspiracy theories used to be fun. Now they’re everywhere, with real world consequences, it’s depressing.

The sculpture park is cool looking but I can’t with gobbledygooky-ness of the monologuing - but who knows that’s probably part of the point!

Foxy 🥰

It’s a Darin Morgan episode so Scully is the voice of reason and figures it all out.

The cubicle farm of government agencies montage 😂

Spotnitz Sanatorium

Their final case together, so silly, so good. Especially Mulder flinging himself to the ground in a hissy fit in disappointment over getting All the Answers.

Reggie: But maybe the point wasn’t to find the truth, but to find each other. And no matter where we go in our lives, we will always have the memories of our time together, and no one can take those away or alter them in such a way to make us doubt that they actually happened.

Mulder finally finds his lost episode! I don’t know that I’ve had a real Mandela Effect experience (although I too would have said it was the Berenstein Bears rather the Berenstain Bears) but there is a movie my sister and I loved when we were little that we can’t remember the name of and no one else has ever heard of and it sounds like a fever dream when I try describe the plot 😅

Scully’s little grin of anticipation at her spoonful of Goop-O ABC.

Let’s just leave them here in this nostalgic moment shall we.

[whatiwillsay]

hey, i haven’t been on tumblr in months even though i started following you back in the beginning of 2021 i think it was. recently i’ve been doing a lot more reading about gaylor and the rumored relationships she’s had with women and i was wondering what relationships you think are most likely to have happened? i know that’s probably been asked many times before but i’m quite torn over some of them. i think swiftgron and kaylor (when they were seen out and about all the time, not late stage kaylor) is likely and perhaps tayliz and tily too but i don’t think any of her rumored wlw relationships were like monogamous girlfriends situations.

relationships i think happened in at LEAST a hookup fashion from most likely to least likely (but still think they happened):

julianne hough x taylor- got this confirmed to me by an insider and julianne is out as queer and they did all that funny stuff at katy perry’s birthday

lily donaldson x taylor- got this confirmed by an insider and tons of good stuff over at @tilynation - i think it occurred during a time toe was still new and not 100% monogamous and she saw both of them for a while. lily is basically almost out (almost) likely also hooked up w rihanna and they were inseparable in late 2016 and tho some of the blonde london angel stuff works for joe it 6000% works for lily as well

swiftgron- the clues are there and dianna is gay as fuck @swiftgronmasterpost for everything and ofc my swiftgron tag

kaylor- joshlie is real confirmed by insiders but i think karlie possibly cheated on josh with taylor in one of those messy codependent homoerotic situations the wildest dreams mv and now i’m your daisy is some good clues but i don’t think they were monogamous gfs since i have a joshlie confirmation i trust

bitches and models- i have an insider confirmation that taylor had a slutty gay puberty and hooked up with some nameless models and such, taylor basically confirms this in the man sort of lol

zoe kravitz- tbh this could go in the next category but it’s so hot i want it to have happened taylor’s obsession with cheating and infidelity in the folkmore era maybe has something to do with zoe’s divorce that just happened? do i believe it? idk but i WANT to believe!!

ships that i don’t think happened:

tayliz- there’s some good content but they stayed close too long through too many other insider confirmed ships such as houghlor and gyllenswift plus liz is like besties with a loud and proud trump supporter + fully has a bunch of legit boyfriends that check out to me and were around when she was working with taylor. could they have drunk bestie made out? absolutely hell they probably did. monogamous gfs? no not in my opinion.

taymily- no gross do not want it would have been statutory rape and it was debunked on the be there in 5 patreon by an insider that knew them. emily is now a republican prosecutor in fucking indiana or some shit it didn’t happen unless maybe taylor had a crush.

i can do another post on guys that i think we’re real if y’all want just lmk taylor is just bi- dated women and men, some secret some pr some legit all and ofc…

huge grain of salt on all of this it’s just gossip and speculation. insiders could be wrong and gossip could be false. i trust my industry friends but it’s fully possible they are misinformed so grain of salt always!! 🥰 check my of interest tag also for more thoughts on all of this and go stream what i will say podcast wherever you get your pods for deeper thoughts on all of this! what i will say patreon #tea series for more info on the insider confirmations!

[ponett]

hi i watched the new my little pony movie and it was... pretty good! it was very cute, i like the new cast a lot, there were some nice heartfelt moments that had some surprising depth, all the locations were really pretty to look at, the poppy musical numbers were fun, the character animation is really lively. it's a solid little fantasy adventure flick for kids. i do have mixed feelings about the story though. here are some casual-ish thoughts. (i posted some of this on twitter last night but i have even more thoughts now. i'm sorry. i'm so sorry)

spoilers below the cut

okay so, i liked it a lot when it was just letting the new characters play off each other, but unfortunately my fears came true and almost the entire movie is laser focused on the oversimplified extremely on-the-nose trump era racism allegory plot. i do have to cut it some slack for their good intentions, and this is a 90 minute animated movie for 5-year-olds, so there's only so much they can do. it did also have a bit more nuance than i expected at points. (it's more nuanced than zootopia, for what it's worth. not that that's hard.) and hell, friendship is magic also screwed up its attempts at similar topics, and y'all know how much i still love that show. so it's not like i hate this movie. but it has such an oversimplified "we should all be friends!" take on real issues, and it frustrates me that it completely dominates the film, being the main focus of almost every single scene

there's some interesting stuff where they show how those in power are stoking peoples' fears to maintain their own power. like the big factory in the earth pony town is essentially an arms manufacturer capitalizing on the fear of outsiders, the cops mainly exist to uphold the laws segregating the ponies, the pegasus royal family pretends they still have the ability to fly and this lie seems to be the only reason they're in power (the queen literally gets arrested the second the truth comes out lol). but then they all just kind of... see the error of their ways shortly after meeting other types of pony, and there are no repercussions? not saying this toy commercial cartoon for little girls needs to fuckin kill the bad guys or throw them in jail or whatever, but we don't even get like a "they made them turn the arms factory into something else" type resolution, and no one even really acknowledges that these characters did anything wrong. no one is considered an oppressor, the movie takes for granted that these people in power who derive their power from bigotry were just misguided, and that they'll totally change their beliefs as soon as they're presented with new information. society is fundamentally unjust, but none of the individuals maintaining that unjust status quo are at fault for doing so

i also don't know if it's a good or bad thing that there's no explanation for why the ponies hate each other now. like on the one hand at least there's no historical backstory that inadvertently justifies the prejudices (like zootopia and its story about how the predators used to eat the prey). but on the other hand... how the hell did they get from g4 to here in the intervening centuries? at my most uncharitable it feels like this whole story about how equestria used to be this land where everyone got along and now everyone is divided is a heavy-handed metaphor for The Sudden Division Of America In The Trump Era as it's perceived by a lot of liberals. history didn't logically lead us to this point, no one is really at fault, everyone just arbitrarily started hating each other at some point and we just all need to put that aside and get along again. it's almost the FiM episode about how the cowboys and the natives should just learn to share all over again. (again: i will admit this is an uncharitable read of the film)

(sidebar with BIG SPOILERS: the very end also really bugged me, but that's more just a personal taste thing. in the leadup to g5 i was excited to see them make an earth pony the protagonist. i thought that was a nice change of pace after nine seasons of twilight. but then in the end of the movie, after sunny delivers the moral, she's magically turned into an alicorn... like oh we're just doing that again huh. okay. it also doesn't really gel with this story where the different types of pony are being used for a racism/xenophobia allegory)

i feel a little bad hyper-focusing on the way the allegory falls apart like this, but like. the allegory is the entire fucking movie lol. they are constantly talking about it in every scene, the first song mentions "building a wall," the main antagonist (who may or may not be intended to evoke trump???) manipulates the earth ponies' prejudices to make them all go full fascist, etc. it is not subtle. of course, this story isn't ALL bad - the adventures along the way were fun, i was relieved when everyone realized that the macguffin wouldn't magically make everyone get along again (although realizing this DOES make the macguffin restore everyone's magic which seems to mostly fix everything, so... lol), and a message about looking past stereotypes and misinformation to befriend people who are different from you definitely isn't a bad one for a kids' film. and obviously a story with this target demographic is ALWAYS going to have to simplify reality a bit. it's just extremely obvious that they wanted to go for a nuanced topical political story that would surprise the parents in the audience and maybe teach kids a thing or two, and it turned out messy

but again, i liked the characters. it was nice to look at. it was cute. i'll gladly watch a new show with these characters. i hope the inevitable show focuses less on this political allegory though lol

anyway there's a shot of fluttershy and rainbow dash in the opening scene so 10/10

[lingerlikeastolenkiss]

the archer theory about taylor swift coming out.

well, i've seen some people talking about this song and i had to listen to it again, since it's one of my favorite songs on lover and it also has to do with the theories and the meaning this song has to me.

i don't want to apply this to anyone so feel free to SKIP and NOT READ if you don't agree that this is a LGBTQIA+ song.

pure my own interpretation but you don't have to come to me if you don't like, she has a lot of songs and some of them are free for interpretations and they have different meanings to different people.

the first line it's:

“combat, i'm ready for combat / i say i don't want that but what if i do?”

this line to me has the deepest meaning and it comes along with the one in you are in love “and you will understand now why they lost their minds and fought the wars” and in ivy “this is the goddamn fight of my life and you started it” and both songs are before and after the archer which makes the archer in the middle.

the combat she's (maybe) referring to it's about coming out being (still) the american dream and the woman everyone looks up to when it comes to pop music, she says she don't want it but what if she does? what if she want to fight for it, fight for who she is and who she wants people to see that she really is? it's a combat because you can't come out if you're not ready to start a war against the world.

“cause cruelty wins in the movies / i've got a hundred thrown-out speeches i almost said to you”

cruelty here, to me, it's about how cruel it is to not have the story of your life in the big screen, like, we grow up seeing the bad stories about LGBTQIA+ couples and it's always about how they didn't end up together or how bad they are treated. the “speeches i almost said to you" looks like something she was ready to say to us, her fans, and she didn't had the chance or she wasn't really ready.

“easy they come, easy they go / i jump from the train, i ride off alone / i never grow up it's getting so old, help me hold on to you”

when i first saw the miss americana documentary, i highlighted that part where she is trying to convince her father and the rest of the team that it was a good idea/good move to speak up about the politics and the situation of the trump thing. and it was very hard for me to watch because it was clearly a bunch of old men that grew up and still have in mind their conservatory concepts that goes against what taylor wanted to tell her whole life, they were just trying to silence her and she decided to do it anyway because she is a grown woman and she never spoke up about those things before the reputation era.

the easy they come and easy they go line goes for the fans, they are always in and out and sometimes some of them never want to come back and stay because in the first bad thing that happens to her it pulls them away. she jumps from the train and ride off alone, the train maybe is about her life that never stops and she takes a break from it, the media, the relationships, the image she has in front of the whole world and she ride alone because there's no one in the world that could understand her more than herself. she never grow up when it comes to being more mature when it comes to some things and having the capacity to speak her truth, she's asking us to let her hold on to us when things go harder and when everyone else has left her.

“i've been the archer, i've been the prey / who could ever leave me darling, but who could stay?”

i fucking love this line so much because when you are a LGBTQIA+ kid growing up, you always has to fight against being the bad person and the good person, you grow up seeing in the news that you will die young and that there's people out there that will try to tell you that loving someone of the same sex is the wrong thing to do. being the archer and also the prey is like haunting yourself until you realize who you really are, you have that idea internalized in you, the homophobic jokes you grew up listening and you're also the target and it's like both sides of a coin. who could ever leave her for being a (bi, pan, lesbian) woman? who could ever stay if she's a (bi pan, lesbian) woman? it's like “who could stay in the darkest of the darkest times here with me because it looks like i am lost and i don't know where to go”

“dark side, i search for your dark side / but what if i'm alright, right, right, right here?”

the dark side is not the bad side like people point out, the dark side of someone is like when the moon is half shown and half hidden, and you can only see the part that's out for the light. here the dark side of taylor is the one she haven't showed to us, and to me this line is not about a potential lover but about herself. and this song feels like a mirror, so to me, she's talking to herself and trying to find her dark side in front of her own image. the sequence “alright, right” it's like the dark side saying “i am here and it's good”.

“and i cut off my nose just to spite my face / then i hate my reflection for years and years”

this fucking line is the deepest for me, because it's like, she cut a part of herself to looks like someone who she wasn't made to be, it reminds me of having to hide your true side in despite of being hurt or left aside. how many LGBTQIA+ kids and teenagers has to hide from their parents? we change our way to see the world, we lie to everyone about our love interestings, we hide in the closet and we don't face ourselves because this is not who we are and then we spent the rest of our life hating our reflection because we don't recognize this person but everybody loves this version we created, it's easy, it's very easy to love a straight person but it's the hardest thing to let a queer kid feel loved. it's very easy to not tell a straight person how to be but it's the hardest thing teach a queer kid how to love themselves.

“i wake in the night, i pace like a ghost / the room is on fire, invisible smoke / and all of my heroes die all alone / help me hold on to you”

she's s ghost to the people who live with her so she's not seen, everything is burning and there's an invisible smoke that's where she fades in, and all of her heroes, probably the queer ones that are dying everyday all alone and the ones who died were left alone in their final days. again she's asking if she can count on us to keep going if things go hard.

“i see right through me / they see right through me / can you see right through me?”

seeing through someone means that you see their true version, like if you're looking at their soul and they're so open that you can read anything. it's understanding someone and knowing someone inside and out. just like the lover mv where she's inside the fish tank, it's a metaphor for a thing that can be seen by everyone just like a mirror. and the delicate mv where she's not seen until she enters the bar and sees a person. she can see through herself and people are seeing through her but not in the way she wants to be seen and then she asks (for the fans?) if we can see right through her. could we fight the wars with her? be the shoulder for her to lean on? stay even when she's about to face the fight the biggest war of her life?

“all the king's horses, all the king's men / couldn't put me together again / cause all of my enemies started out friends”

king's horses and king's men also align with the chorus and the universe of being the prey in a world of men. also it can also be the world of a society that lives inside a bubble and cannot accept diversity. not even the men, (her father, team, men she dated?) could put her together again after all that she have been through, and it matches with the “i cut off my nose just to spite my face”. all of her enemies once were friends which implies that she can't trust anyone and as the song goes as (in my vision) a LGBTQIA+ letter to her fans, she's saying that there's no one that could handle this secret and she already tried to tell them but it ended wrong.

that's it. to me this song has a deep meaning and i couldn't put everything i wanted to in this post. also i just want taylor to know that there's a lot of sapphic connotations in her songs and i will always stay.

[destinyc1020]

Why I’m Hanging Up My Tomdaya Coat....

Welp!!!

Today is July 1st..... 👀   

So, I am officially hanging up my Tomdaya Coat.  

You all are going to need a chair for this one, because I can already feel that this is going to be a long one.... 👀

I have some confusing, mixed emotions while writing this, but I’m just going to be honest and say how I truly feel.  

Why I’m hanging up my Tomdaya Coat.....

I’m hanging up my Tomdaya coat because I feel like I’ve been patient in waiting to get more “clarity” on whether or not Tom and Z are seriously dating each other again, but I just don’t feel like I can truly say with 100% certainty that they are indeed dating each other again at the current moment.  

I know that there have been covid restrictions and everything, and I know that we’re NOT in a “normal” situation right now at all (I get it), but I just feel like btwn April and July, I would see more “proof” by now that they are dating each other again, and I feel like it would be more obvious....just like it was during the Tomdaya 1.0 era when they were dating each other.  

Granted, we’ve had some pretty INTERESTING signs going on in “TomdayaLand” (not to be confused with the blog lol) since August.....And that cannot be denied....  

Tom & Z suddenly resuming social media activity with each other after Z’s Emmy nod announcement 👀

Tom and N splitting up not too long after TZ reconnected 👀

N unfollowing accounts that post Z 

Tom religiously liking Z’s posts prior to Atlanta

Zendaya liking posts from Nikki, Sam, and Paddy, when she hasn’t liked Tom’s family posts in AGES

Harry showing Z love and support again on social media

Harry liking those Tom/Zendaya Oscar/Emmy fan-made edits 

Z liking Tati’s post while she was in Berlin filming Uncharted w/Tom, even though she hadn’t liked a post of Tati’s since April 2019 👀

Tom talking sweetly about Z and even mentioning her unprompted in Cherry interviews

Z chiming in on Tom’s Esquire magazine interview

Tom bringing up Z and the crotch tagging incident when asked about being “linked with female co-stars”....and also linking that in with stating that when you’re dating in the public eye, what’s happening isn’t just happening btwn the two of you, it’s also happening in front of the world

Tom & Z spending Thanksgiving w/each other again (like old times)

Tom following Hunter when she visited in Atlanta

Hunter following Tom

Sam Levinson following Tom 

Z following Tom’s stunt double on set

Tom posting Z’s pic of him hugging Harry

Tom, Z, Jacob all hanging out at Tom’s house 

Tom showing Darnell love on social media again lol

The Spider-Man cast hanging close w/each other and having movie nights while in Atlanta

Tom & Z spending time together and even spotted out ALONE (sans chaperone!) at night

Tom & Z obviously rekindling a solid, close friendship with each other again

Z posting a sweet Happy Birthday story for Tom on his birthday 

Like, ALL of these signs are very PROMISING positive signs. And they are signs that I would look at as being a clear sign that two people have definitely rekindled SOMETHING with each other.  And tbh, if we were talking about any other ex celebrity couple, if I were to see these signs, I would DEFINITELY think that the two people have rekindled their dating relationship again....not just a “friendship”.   Just being honest!

With that said however.... Since I haven’t seen my two signs (yet), and I haven’t seen anything yet that TRUMPS my two signs, I still cannot say with 100% certainty that TZ are dating each other again. 

Then, there are things that make me feel as though Tom & Z might just be good friends (at least, for now): 

Tom stating in that French interview that he and Zendaya are friends “with no ambiguity”

The fact that Tom didn’t stop in LA to visit Z before leaving for London (yea, she was going to be SUPER busy that week with Euphoria starting  to film and everything, but if they both knew that the length of time btwn not seeing each other was going to be a few more months, I feel like the “OLD TOM” would have definitely visited before going back to London)

Tom hasn’t been back to the US (let alone LA) since the filming of SM3 ended. 👀   

But at the same time, there are also some other things that don’t add up to me either.... 

The “Happy Valentines Day” balloons in Z’s house a MONTH after Vday (I doubt they were just balloons some company gave her....why keep deflated balloons like that?) 

Tom unfollowing all those models, and hasn’t even liked a model post in AGES  👀

Tom doesn’t really appear “single” to me

Neither Tom nor Z have really been spotted with anyone “new” as far as a romantic prospect since they both left each other in Atlanta...  👀   I know people ship HunterDaya, but when looking at the big picture of everything that has happened with Hunter/Z/Tom, things really just don’t add up to me....Either that, or Z is mad bold to invite a new prospect to Atlanta where her EX bf is lol... 😂 And then Hunter seems too cool/chill with Tom (and vice versa) imo to be “new” romantic partners.  JMHO

Sooo it’s just soo confusing!!!!  😩

Therefore....I will officially be hanging up my Tomdaya Coat as of today. 

What “Hanging up my Tomdaya Coat” Means....  I feel like I need to explain what I mean by “hanging up my Tomdaya coat” lol...  I DON’T mean that I have “given up” on Tom & Zendaya, or that I hate them now, or that I’m no longer fans of them both, or that I even dislike the thought of them being together or romantically-involved with each other. 

All it means is that I officially GIVE UP the hope of waiting and wishing for “something to happen” in order to confirm that they are dating each other again.  In other words, I’m no longer anticipating/watching/waiting-and-seeing  for “something to happen” on the Tomdaya front. 

I am perfectly fine with the thought that they have rekindled a solid friendship w/each other again, and that they are on good terms!  This in itself really is enough for me!  😊

While my wish for the both Tom and Zendaya has always been to see them date each other again under more “normal” circumstances, less fear, less hiding, and less damage control, I honestly really do trust Tom and Zendaya and their judgement.   While I definitely feel like SOMETHING went down btwn them while they were in Atlanta together (nooobody can convince me otherwise lol 😂 ), I feel like ULTIMATELY, WHATEVER they decided in Atlanta was mutual, and was the best decision that they felt was right for them, since they know each other way better than we do. 😊  I TRUST and accept whatever decision they made in other words. 🥰        All I’ve ever wanted was for them to be happy, and to be honest, they do seem very happy right now! So, whatever their decision was, I assume it was one that they both felt was the best one for them.😊❤️  With that said..... Here’s where the “confusing”, “mixed emotions” come in....  What’s confusing is that my GUT is telling me something TOTALLY DIFFERENT lol.  Like, my GUT is actually telling me that they are more than “JUST friends”. 👀  And they have such a close strong bond w/each other, that when I try to imagine them each dating other people, I feel like it would be kind of weird for the two of them.... Like, they would put on a happy front, but deep down, it would be kind of weird for them to see the other with someone else.  That’s what my gut is telling me. 

I also wonder about their next future significant others, and whether they would be cool with their “close friendship”.  It’s pretty obvious that they still communicate w/each  other on the regular.   👀  And we all know how Tom’s ex felt about his “friendship” with Zendaya.....and he and Z weren’t even on the best of terms at that time! 👀 🥴 

Sooo....there are just a lot of things swirling around in my gut that give me a “vibe” btwn the two of them. There’s definitely a lot of love there btwn the two of them.   BUT!!!! I have to ignore my gut and just go with what I’m actually SEEING.  🤷  And right now, what I’m seeing is two people who have a very close friendship, but who haven’t seen each other since the end of March. 👀  Even with Z’s busy schedule, I just feel like two people who have rekindled a serious relationship would have found a way to see each other by now.  Maybe that’s a wrong assumption...Idk....  But I just look at Bennifer lol.  They’ve obviously rekindled something! And it’s pretty obvious too.  I just feel like it would be more obvious with Tomdaya....like it was back in the Tomdaya 1.0 era. There was no doubt in my mind.  But right now, I honestly do wonder if maybe they just decided to be good friends at the end of it all?   So, bottom line.... I have officially hung up my coat!  I still love Tom & Z, and I still wish them nothing but happiness...whether that’s with each other, OR with other people...I honestly don’t care!  😃    In the end, I’ve always just wanted them to be happy.....  🥰  

With that said...if new info comes out, or more tea/receipts come out in the future that point to them as dating, then I will put my coat right back on lol!!!  🤣😂

Anyway...Sorry for this looong dissertation, but I felt like I should just explain why I’m hanging up my coat, and explain what I really mean.