#also for added wholesomeness this is one of his best friends since college. they celebrated a joint birthday

[septembersghost]

One of your guys x. com/DiscussingFilm/status/1701342411492864241?s=20

a barbie cake?! delightful and allowed at ANY AGE! this is adorable

[oneweekoneband]

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages.  (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time. 

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. 

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift,  she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

[rendezvousroger]

Sonder (Ben Hardy x Reader)

Summary: The reader meets Ben while she’s at a coffee shop during a rainy day. 

A/N: So an anon sent me a message about Lana Del Rey’s song “Love” and how she pictured meeting Ben Hardy at a coffee shop and it got me very inspired to write this because I love coffee and Ben. 

You loved days like these. Where rain would pour down the sky soft enough for you to count the raindrops by the sound of them hitting the pavement. 

You took one last look at yourself in the mirror and smiled at your outfit. You loved dressing up for no special occasion, it helped you feel confident. 

There were no plans with your friends for the afternoon so you decided on going to your favorite coffee shop for your usual drink and to get some inspiration for your writing. 

Once you had your vanilla latte with a pump of caramel, you sat down and began to write on your journal.

Your favorite thing about this coffee shop was probably the fact that it was never filled with people, it was so quiet you could perfectly listen to the songs they played from their playlist called “Vintage Music for Coffee”. 

You started writing down about your dreams of getting out of London and exploring the rest of Europe. You were just waiting to finish college to travel somewhere else and meet new people, you were tired of the same superficial ones you already knew. 

You were so focused on writing your dreams out that you didn’t notice someone walk into the coffee shop and sit at the table right in front of you.

People are so interesting. Isn’t it amazing how every single person in the world has their own dreams, goals, fears, memories? That’s one of the many reasons why my favorite word is “sonder”, which means: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

You stopped writing for a moment to check your surroundings, to look at the people at the coffee shop. It’s something you loved to do. You loved observing people do wholesome little things, like how they smile when they get their coffee order, how couples walk into the coffee shop holding hands, how their faces light up when the person they were waiting for finally shows up. It also always inspired you to write.

There weren’t really many people at the coffee shop so your eyes immediately landed on the blonde guy sitting at the table in front of you. He had a coffee mug in front of him and his eyes were glued to his phone, he looked as if whatever he was looking at on his phone was pretty important. You carefully watched him  bite his lips and run his hands through his hair. 

Your heart skipped a beat when his gaze met yours and you instantly looked down at your journal and felt yourself start to blush. You felt embarrassed since he basically caught you staring at him as if you were a stalker, and the fact that he was very cute didn’t help you brush off the embarrassment. 

You heard a giggle escape his lips which made you look at him. He was staring at you with a smile on his face, so you smiled back at him and felt your cheeks heat up again, but this time you didn’t break the eye contact since something about him made you think you’ve seen him before. 

Your thoughts were cut off by him pointing at the chair next to you as if asking for permission to join you. You nodded at him and he smiled.

You watched him grab his phone and coffee and make his way towards you, your heart beating faster every second.

“Hey.” His voice was deeper than you expected.

“Hey.” You said as he sat down.

“Is it alright if I join you?” He asked. 

His eyes were green and something about his stare made your heart flutter. You could’ve sworn you had seen him before but you couldn’t remember when or where.

“Yeah totally.” You smiled and took a sip of your coffee.

It was driving you insane not knowing where you’ve seen him before since you were sure you knew his face from somewhere. College? Work? A friend of a friend? 

“I’m sorry, but have we met before?” You couldn’t help but ask him.

“I don’t think so,” He laughed, “I think I would remember your face.”

And with those words, your cheeks matched your red sweater again. 

“I swear I’ve seen you before.” You ran your hands through your hair and watch his smile grow wider.

“Maybe you’ve seen me in a movie?” He said and stared deeply at you, waiting for your answer.

A movie. Your eyes widened once you recognized his face from the Bohemian Rhapsody movie and he laughed at your realization. 

“Oh my god!” you said a little too loud and covered your mouth with your hands, “You were in the Bohemian Rhapsody movie right? The drummer?”

“That’s me, I’m Ben.” His smile didn’t fade away but you could see him blush a little.

“I knew I had seen you before!” You marveled.

“I’m not really that used to people recognizing me still.” He said and looked down at his coffee for a second. 

You could tell by his body language and the way he blushed once you knew who he was, that he wasn’t a stuck up celebrity at all.

“Well,” you said, “you were amazing in the film, I think you’ll have to get used to the attention.”

“Thank you.” He smiled and bit his lip. 

“I can’t believe I’m having a coffee with an actor.” You giggled and closed your journal.

“I’m no big deal.” He said.

“I think you are.” 

He looked at you, making you bite your lips. He was extremely good-looking, his bright green eyes making his gaze intense and his lips looked rosy and plump. 

“You’re really nice,” Ben said, “what’s your name?”

“Y/N.” You said while playing with your hair, you were pretty nervous but you tried your best to now show it.

“It’s nice to meet you Y/N.” 

“Right back at you,” you replied, “and what are you doing here if I may ask? Not many people know about this coffee shop.”

“Oh I do,” he said, “I used to come here early in the mornings but I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been around here at all so I figured a small visit would make me feel back at home.”

“Really? I come here all the time, but never in the mornings.” 

“Not a morning person?”

“I have classes too early so I just make coffee myself to get a little more sleep.” 

“More sleep is always a good idea,” Ben stared at your journal, “are you studying journalism?”

“Oh no,” you covered your journal, “I’m studying business.”

“Amazing.” He gasped.

“Yeah,” you giggled, “writing is just a hobby I have.”

“What do you write about?” He asked.

You didn’t know what to tell him, he looked genuinely interested on what you were about to say and since you never really shared your writing with anyone, it made you nervous to talk about it. 

“Just thoughts I have.” You murmured. 

“That’s really good.” He nodded and there was a short moment of silence before you decided to talk.

“You know,” you began, “I was writing about people, how each person in the world has their own dreams and fears and how it amazes me. That’s why you caught me staring at you. I was looking around to get inspired.”

Ben stayed quiet for a moment, just carefully staring at you while you talked. He looked at you as if every word you were saying came straight from a poem. 

“Whenever I come here I like to come up with little scenarios about each person’s life and it helps me come up with characters for stories.” 

You finished and looked down at your journal, gently touching the paper.

“Woah,” Ben said in awe, “what would be mine?”

“Huh?” You looked at him in confusion, he was smiling like a little kid.

“My scenario, what would you’ve written about me.”

“Oh well,” you smiled, “your eyes were glued to your phone when I first looked at you, so I’m guessing you were working on something important and now that I know who you are, I would say you were looking at something for your next film.” 

“You’re good at this,” he said, “but if you didn’t know who I was, if I wasn’t an actor and just a stranger?”

“Hmm.” You stared at him carefully, taking in every detail of his face and appreciating how beautiful he truly was.

“Someone who was probably waiting for his date to show up, you ordered black coffee because you felt tired from a hard day at work and wanted to be truly awake for when you’re special someone arrived. You’re wearing an orange jacket because it makes your green eyes stand out and you know it’s one of your best features so you want your date to like you, to fall in love with you because you’re a hopeless romantic who craves a loving relationship even though your friends think you can get any girl you want to bed and you only care about partying and getting drunk.” You said and smiled at his shocked expression.

“You’re amazing.” He whispered and you tried to hide your smile by biting your lip.

“It’s fun to do it.” 

“You know,” he started, “I am a hopeless romantic actually.”

“What?” You said and watched him run his fingers through his hair.

“Don’t tell anyone.” He whispered and playfully winked at you.

“I won’t, because so am I.” You winked back at him.

Ben smiled and grabbed his phone.

“Care to give me your phone number?” He said as he handed you his phone.

You took his phone and added your phone number.

“Sonder?” He asked once you gave him his phone back and he saw you saved your name like that and not by your actual name. 

“Look the word up when you have time.” You replied.

“I’m not as good as you at coming up with scenarios by looking at people,” Ben said, “but I’d like to think you would like to go on a coffee date with me sometime soon.”

“You’re good at this,” you smirked, “because I would love to.”

-----------------------------------

- I would love to write about Ben’s POV during the date or to continue this somehow, so if you would also like it and have any ideas please let me know! I'm also taking requests for any BoRhap guy and Queen member so feel free to drop them on my ask! sending love, L. -

[tsfanart]

Reunion (Logicality, Five Years)

TW: Drinking

--

"But seriously, who invented this notion of a high school reunion anyway?"

"I don't know, man. Some evil scientists or something. You'll get through it. I'm sorry again!"

Logan hung up the phone with Virgil and looked in the mirror as he tightened his tie. If he wasn't already dreading this event, the news that his best friend had to bail at the last minute certainly did him in. Virgil was the only person who could get him through these kinds of things...at least since the breakup, anyway.

As he finished getting ready and got into his car, he couldn't help but wonder how that would go. Was Patton even going to be there? They hadn't had the least bit of contact since graduation. But Logan didn't know if there was anyone else to even talk to.

Finally he reached Marco's mansion, and parked outside. Already he could hear loud music going on inside, and he groaned internally.

"Hey look, Logan's here, everyone!" A very drunk Remy was the first sight that Logan encountered as he entered the noisy party. He shook himself off of his inebriated acquaintance, and with a polite nod towards the rest of the latter's friends, he wandered off in search of people he at least used to talk to.

Finally he came across the debate team hanging around in the kitchen, and he forced a smile and came up to his old friends. Mike looked up and ushered him over.

"Hey, Logan! Good to see ya. Can I get you anything to drink?"

"No, I'm fine," Logan insisted. "Thanks though. How are you?"

"Oh, I'm great! Chris and I are in law school and Megan's working at the New York Times. Emily's still in her last year at Stanford."

"What about you, Logan?" Megan spoke up. "We've barely seen you these past four years."

"Yeah, where'd you go to school again?"

Logan shifted uncomfortably. They just had to ask that. "Ohio State," he mumbled.

Chris' face changed. "Oh yeah, right. Well, what do you do now?"

"So what's the New York Times like, Megan?" Logan asked hurriedly, avoiding Chris' follow-up question entirely. But the others got the message; Emily's smirk made that clear enough. Logan's face burned.

"Dude, it's great! It's everything I could have imagined, really."

"Well, cool! I'm glad to hear it," Logan said sincerely. "So have you guys seen anyone else we know yet?"

"Oh yeah, I think the starving artists are over in the living room," Mike said with a sneer.

Logan cocked his head. "You mean...the drama kids?"

Mike nodded. "Yeah, they're just all complaining."

"Ugh, who cares?" Megan rolled her eyes. "It's like, of course you're not doing anything with your life, what did you expect?"

"Well, I don't think it's all their fault," Logan offered.

"How could it not be their fault?" Chris asked incredulously. "If you go into theatre, you're gonna be staying with your parents for the rest of your life."

Logan peered into the living room. Sure enough, Roman and his posse were sitting on the couch with their drinks and laughing.

"Well, for what it's worth, they don't seem too unhappy," he said cautiously. But immediately he knew it was a mistake--the debate team may have worked well as a team, but it had been an unspoken rule throughout high school that the five of them always agreed with one another.

"Eh, that's just the beer talking," Emily said with a wave of her hand. She shoved Logan away from the doorway. "Trust me, they're not worth getting involved with."

Logan's shoulders sagged, but in an attempt to brighten the mood, he said, "Well, I had the honor of seeing Remy the second I walked in here, so that was an adventure."

Chris cracked up. "Oh man, I'm sure that was a sight! Talk about someone who hasn't grown up at all since high school."

Logan blushed a little again. "Yeah. I mean, he was friendly, at least."

"And also the biggest deadbeat Gainesville Prep has ever seen," Megan added pointedly.

The five former debaters stood around awkwardly for the next minute or so before Logan finally excused himself. "Well, I'll see you guys around!"

"Yeah, see ya!" Emily gave what appeared to be a friendly wave, but Logan could hear them all laughing as he left the kitchen.

He wandered around more for the next twenty minutes looking for more people, but no one else was even open to a conversation. Finally accepting defeat, he headed back towards the main entrance and went to grab his coat.

But on the way there, he ran into Marco. "Oh hey, Logan! Glad you could make it...gone so soon?"

The host's genuine friendliness gave Logan a twinge of guilt, but he said, "Yeah, I've got a lot to do tomorrow so I should probably head out."

"Aw, that's too bad! I know Patton was looking for you. Hang on, let me see if I can find him!"

Logan froze. So Patton was here after all. After the obnoxiously judgmental ego crushers that were his former debate teammates, he didn't feel up to dealing with the headache that was his childish, overly optimistic, perpetually silly, non-intellectual--

"Logan!"

The solemn college grad looked up, and to his surprise, relief flooded over him. Patton still looked like a high schooler, and he was terribly underdressed, but frankly his mere sobriety was a huge breath of fresh air for Logan. Suddenly all the fights and annoyance and frustration didn't matter so much anymore. Patton was...well, Patton was safe.

For the first time that night, Logan grinned fully. He opened his arms wide. "Hey, Patton! Good to see you!" The two hugged tightly for several moments before separating and moving to sit on the bench next to the coat rack.

"So, what are you up to these days?" Logan asked cheerfully.

"I get to teach gymnastics to kids every day. It's so much fun! You should see them, they're all adorable. What about you?"

Logan took a deep breath and looked around quickly. He'd been avoiding the matter all night, but somehow he finally felt safe enough to say it.

"Oh, I'm just working at Rite-Aid in the mornings," he said with a shrug. "Nothing too exciting."

"Aw, well that sounds relaxing! You get to have time off, at least." Patton said cheerfully.

Logan looked up. He studied Patton's face, but for the first time that night found no signs of judgment.

"Yeah, I guess so. So, what is children's gymnastics like, anyway?"

Patton brightened up. "Oh, it's so much fun! The kids there are all so nice to each other. You wouldn't even believe it. Like, one time this little girl finally did a chin-up for the first time after trying for, like, a week, and the next day her two best friends came in with a card they made for her to celebrate."

A smile spread across Logan's face. "That's...honestly the most adorable thing I've heard all night. Maybe even all year."

Well, what's working at Rite-Aid like? I'm sure you must have some interesting stories yourself."

Logan thought for a moment. "Well, I wish I could say that my days are filled with such a level of wholesomeness...but I'm sure there are a few stories about annoying customers that I could tell you!"

Patton laughed, and before long, the two were busy trading anecdotes, not only from their jobs but also from all of college. Pretty soon several hours had passed, and the party was winding down.

Logan looked around as he noticed all the people leaving the lobby, and he glanced at his watch. "Oh wow, it's almost one in the morning. We should probably get going." He stood up.

"Oh, alright. See you later!" Patton got up, too, and outstretched his arms for a goodbye hug.

Logan went in for the hug, and smiled. Things wouldn't be the same again, but for just a little bit, he knew that this safe, nonjudgmental friend was still there when he needed him.

And that was enough.