#and I'm expected to talk baby

[digiweed]

Acceptance and respect of everyone sounds great but the problem with leftist groups irl especially anarchist lead groups of is it will eventually lead to you a place where it's considered "not cool" or "not okay" to say "magic isn't real" as to not offend the Wiccan. And then they expect to like. End capitalism.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I know you don't like discussing the muses but i love your takes and perspectives and i had to ask you about this. after listening to ttpd, did you have the impression that she really loved matty more than any of her exes/previous relationships?. And listening to the whole album as a whole would you call it the ''matty album'' or do you think there are more prominent themes in there than their period together?. (hope this doesn't bother you, feel free to delete if you don't feel like answering it)

hey anon! You're right, I don't really like to get into the muses as I don't really think there's anything to add to the conversation at this point, and ultimately I don't think it matters.

That being said, and with the caveat that I am not Taylor and I do not know Taylor so I cannot speak to her thoughts and can only make relatively educated guesses based on being an avid consumer of her work and a student of the human condition (lol), no I do not think Taylor loved Matty more than anyone else. I think there was maybe a brief period in the thick of things where she *thought* she did because she was not thinking clearly and was in full-on denial, but to me the message that is loud and clear in the album (and more or less explicitly stated in the epilogue) is that it was not any kind of real love affair. It was certainly infatuation and lust and the promise of something more, and there may have been some love as well, but he was in no way the love of her life by any measure.

I would call it a "Matty album" insofar as they're about events in which he was present, sure. But I feel it much more as a Taylor album, if that makes sense, even though I know that's a cop out because every album is to a degree. I can't explain it well, but I don't see TTPD as a Matty (or Joe) album in the way that I would maybe say Red is a "Jake" album or 1989 may be a "Harry" album or even Lover being a "Joe" album whatever, because even if they don't figure in all the songs, that kind of heartbreak permeates so much of the material.

The thing about TTPD and the Matty situation is that the Matty situation is really a Joe situation (which in some ways is actually partially a Jake situation). I always say I hate treating Taylor like a character so I hate speaking about her and her work in this way, but you don't get the Matty situation without the Joe situation precipitating it. It's @taylortruther's now-infamous donut vs. hole analogy. The reason Taylor makes the choices she does with Matty is directly tied to what happened with Joe that made her feel she needed to. Which is not to say Taylor isn't responsible for her own actions or doesn't have agency in her own life, but I mean it in that the situation in which she found herself with Joe, and the pain it caused, is what made the alternative so comforting and perhaps even necessary in her mind. It's why it makes it so hard to "paternity test" the album, because the stories are inherently intertwined and you don't get the former without the latter.

The major "theme" of the album to me is the loss of a very specific, very personal dream, and the way in which she lost it, and the way in which grieving that loss drove her to make the choices she did. We're all talking very delicately about it because it's a sensitive topic, but it's late on Friday and few people are going to see this, so I'm going to say it: it's the give you my wild, give you a child of it all. The yearning she expresses both overtly and sub-textually for having a family in the album is palpable in a very iykyk kind of way, and it's the realization that those plans are not going to come to fruition in the way she had once imagined that drives a lot of the pain she experiences, and makes her jump at the chance to find that again with someone else.

I started a draft post about the theme of womanhood and motherhood on TTPD three months ago that I never finished because I ran out of time and ran out of steam, but it was the most striking thing to me on the album, not because I didn't know that she wanted those things because that's been obvious for years (definitely since Lover, and again, peace put it all on the table), but because the vulnerability she expressed about it on the album is incredibly moving, and it's so generous of her to trust listeners with those feelings and experiences.

Again, it's the thirtysomething of it all.

She is in relationship A which she at one point believes is forever, one which she at one point believes is going to lead to marriage and children. She is so committed to that dream that she either ignores or tries to fix serious issues that may otherwise lead others to think the two people in the relationship are incompatible, both because she loves the person deeply and because she feels that this is meant to be the way she achieves that dream. She gives it her everything, and it still dies a slow, painful, onerous death, and she feels like it may take her along with it. The dream of getting married and presumably having a family gets taken off the table: how we don't know and will likely never know because that is private between the parties involved. All that matters in the context of the album is that those plans never come to fruition and never would.

Then you have relationship B, an old flame who knows just enough buttons to push both to trigger and to flatter. A person who she presumably trusts with very sensitive, personal information as her life slowly crumbles, and this person is telling her all the things she wants to hear because he knows about what is happening in relationship A because she's told him. Person in relationship B doesn't get an "in" with her and sell her this dream unless what happens in relationship A precedes it. It's not a grand love affair for the ages, it's not a mutual decision on building their own dream together. It's Person B learning about what is happening with Person A and saying "I can do that!" even if he can't or doesn't. The dream he sells her is a rental car; it's not his own, he's just borrowing it from someone else and selling it back to her.

And the reason she falls for it is because it is what she aches for the most in her personal life, and she is grappling with it disintegrating, so she (unfortunately for her) falls for the easy way out, and in turn sells herself a story about how this must be fated, and this must be meant to be, because this person wants all the same things she does and she didn't even have to bargain for it! Well, yes, because she fed him the dream in the first place. (Like a mark falling for a sleeper cell spy.) It's too good to be true because it isn't true. IMO Person B doesn't come running out of the gate with the marriage/baby/dream life promises unless he knows that is what she most desires. But what's left unsaid out of all of it is that: those dreams were her dreams because they were her dreams with Person A. It was a whole life they had together, and a whole life they had planned for in some fashion, and a whole life that has to be dismantled in the aftermath.

So all this to say, yes, on the surface, Matty is a "main character" on the album, but truly he's a side character to Taylor as the narrator and person experiencing it and Joe as the ghost bit-player-who-haunts-every-scene. (Again, I hate referring to real people as characters, it gives me the absolute ick, but in this case it's the only way to answer the question.) I jokingly call it the Matty album for shorthand or when I want to say something out of pocket, but really, it's a disservice to the album to say that because it's not a muse album as in it's about the romance (like, say, Red often is), it's about a soul-crushing heartbreak that goes beyond it. The romance is the symptom, not the cause.

The loss of youth is tied in with all this: she's not 22 anymore. She isn't even 32 anymore. She had a very specific idea of what her life was going to look like at this point and had planned for that life, and it goes up in smoke. But again, to bring the womanhood into it all: there is, unfortunately, a deadline for these things. You're with someone for over half a decade you think is going to be your life partner and father of your children and and then he's not. You spent half a decade building this relationship for it to crumble, but now you're in your mid-30s and you don't necessarily have another half-decade to build that trust and faith in someone else before being ready to start a family. And maybe you're scared that anyone else who may become your partner will need that much time to build that trust and faith, because that's kind of all you've ever know in relationships. But lo and behold, someone comes into your life you once had feelings for and maybe now do again and is offering you everything you want and thought you'd have by this point in your life right now. It feels like an elixir that as we find out is actually poison.

That youth is not just the chance for motherhood, but it's also the hopes and idealism and belief in the future that often gradually erodes as we age. But for Taylor as well, it's also tied into the trauma of what she went through particularly in 2016, which kicks off a lot of things on the album as well (her retreat, her relationship with Joe, the pivoting in her career, etc.). That event caused a pretty clear before/after in her life (like a few other events, I suspect), and another major theme in the album is her finally grappling with the full weight of that. They're all different branches of the same tree of the story of TTPD and her life.

I could talk about this stuff forever, but I'm going to stop here because it's long enough and I should save stuff for one of the dozens of drafts I have half-baked lol. But this is just something I needed to get off my chest perhaps.

[d1sc01nf3rn0]

I'm seeing a lot of people with neurodivergency, specially under the autism spectrum say that "Laios is annoying, never shuts up, is insensitive, and I can't stand him"; and the irony is not lost on me lmao.

[shannonsketches]

An underrated detail I really like about super's manga in describing Vegeta's growth without saying anything is that he stands much closer to everyone. Not just the Z-fighters, but anyone he considers an ally. Throughout Z he's kind of famous for standing on the outside of the group and facing away from everyone, usually with his chin down and his arms crossed (very cold, very standoffish, very guarded, 10/10). In super even when his arms are crossed, his body language is more open. He tends to be Part of the group, he generally faces everyone else, he contributes to casual conversation, and he's much more comfortable overall -- not just with the people that he knows well by now, but with everyone.

I like to read it as Vegeta trusting himself again, after his extremely high fall off his pedestal, and having rebuilt his confidence. Not the performative confidence that he has to prove to anyone else, but the genuine confidence he had way back in the Saiyan saga, when he had very little reason to be anything but. Except now he can also afford to be gentle, because instead of his company consisting of those who would pick his bones if he failed, he has had several very intense moments of proof that failing is not a death sentence here. There is always someone coming to help -- whether it's a fighter on the front lines stepping in to buy him a few more minutes, or a support player with a backup plan -- there's someone coming to help.

He's been repeatedly exposed to compassion as something other than a strategy. He's learned how to feel valuable as both a fighter and a support, himself, and it's made him more confident and comfortable in every other aspect of his life.

[screwpinecaprice]

Got a freeform connverse ko-fi request, baby!

I mean, the request was them doing something cute as a couple, but almost same thing.

Thank you for the tip and request, Alphasun! 😁

[cheriafreya]

Penacony's 2.0-2.2 patches: genuinely HSR's peak, full of unforgettable moments. I still get chills watching the cutscenes and some of them still make me cry like the first day.

Penacony's 2.3, 2.6 and 2.7 patches:

[nyan-bynary]

Do you ever think about how serious young satoru looks and acts and talks and how even in his teenage years he holds himself like how he thinks an adult would, and then you see him as an adult being silly and filling every awkward silence with his voice and sprawling in exaggerated ways and you realize, this isn't what he's like normally,,, he does it so the kids don't feel like they have to act all serious and grown up, so they can have at least some of their childhood in comfort, so they can feel safe being themselves around him even if it means them calling him an idiot sometimes, he ALLOWS himself to be perceived like that for their sake

[banditblvd]

Trying out this whole "animation" thing, it's kind of a small niche community though so idk

[rxj-the-punk]

Never in my wildest dreams did i imagine Team Star in normal clothes being the best part of the DLC, but here we are.

[ihamtmus]

I SAW MY NEPHEW FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY 😍😍🥹🥹😭🥹😭😍😍💗💗🥹💖🥹🥰😍💖🥰💕

[ahopefulbromantic]

Me crawling out of my "twelve tests and exams in two weeks" finals hole:

[sjweminem]

hoffman would have been cured of his anguishes and disorders if somebody would have held him firmly in their lap and called him a sweet little girl while he blushed and squirmed. i worked in a hospital so i know what i'm talking about

[richarlisonny]

[yukimiyum]

nothing pisses me off more than grown ass adults who act like children and expect to be treated with kid gloves

[prettyholic7]

I never realised how lucky I was that most of the media that I love has pretty big fandoms, because now I'm obsessed with this one comic that is practically unheard-of outside of ex-Yugoslavia. Want to look at fanart? Make it, cuz there's none! Fanfiction? Write it!! This obsession made me more productive than I ever was - in the last four days, I wrote a fanfic, made a playlist, drew fanart and did art trades so I can get fanart from other people. And I spent an ungodly amount of time on the internet looking for specific issues to buy second-hand.

[vanderspeiglemd]

I will not respond to the bad take I will not respond to the bad take I will no-

But here's the thing, in no narrative sense does it work out how utterly stupid they make Harry. Disabled caricature rainman thing yeah believe me I get that but truly think about it, how the fuck do you get a scientist on his planet, entrusted to travel lightyears on an extremely important mission but also doesn't know a single thing? His people came here for thousands of years but he knows nothing about humans? He doesn't know their emotions could influence him? He doesn't know very basic things? This assumption is such lazy ass writing, I didn't want to create a solid backstory so I hand wave any question as uh he's stupid haha.

And I'll keep harping on it but creative choices don't exist in a vacuum, being culturally uneducated or emotionally stunted does not make you a fucking child. Narratively, even if you take away that it entirely retcons s1, Harry basically being 'born' the second he landed on earth is nonsense, he had a life, personality, expertise before he came here. His former life would be built on by his experiences and lend to his learning on earth not completely erased so he's just somehow a cruel, oblivious stereotype.