#and just marjorie in general i am in love with her

[astridthevalkyrie]

i have a confession. i love the nursery nurse on tiktok. i watch those videos like they're my lifeline. i am obsessed with marjoreece.

[aghostnamedcalamity]

Alright, hey there! I’ve seen people proposing all manner of animals to this kid and got curious myself,

What’d Benjamin think of crows? I mean, we have already established he has an uncanny penchant for pigeons, which are still birds. Also, don’t mind the creature’s demoniacal look here: that’s just the effect Marjorie has on fauna in general.

Hello there! You are correct, crows are just another form of pigeon to Benjamin so he loves them! He’s good with almost any bird, but his favorite are pigeons: they’re an easily accessible bird in the city and very easy to grab if you’re a child. But if you want to hand him a crow, go for it!

I usually try to draw Benji interacting in some way but am currently a bit sick and low on the creative juices so please take this little doodle of your lovely OC as compensation instead:

Hope I did her justice! Thanks for the Q ! ✨

[folkwhore1998]

I had a feeling so peculiar, that this pain would be for...evermore

Evermore!!!

Amazing! How lucky are we to live in a world where we get to experience evermore. Imagine being bored in quarantine and being able to just create an incredible work of art.

(in my opinion) We did not get an evermore long pond studio sessions because of the editing on folklore versus evermore. folklore had some vocal editing that didn't capture her voice the way evermore does. go listen to august on folklore and then august on LPSS. numerous songs on folklore have that editing style, but nothing on evermore does.

Evermore is so beautiful and one of my favorite aesthetics. Evermore is a late November-December vibe. I wonder how many songs Taylor actually made during quarantine. Do you think that evermore are the vault tracks from folklore? (As in the songs that just did not quite make it onto folklore)

I actually had a very hard time ranking these songs. I didn't really think I was going to have as hard of a time as I did. I have a pretty consistent ranking of the albums in general and evermore is pretty high up there, but maybe it should move up on the ladder because these songs are just so beautiful.

happiness is an incredibly emotional song that people seem to skip all of the time. In my personal experience, when I've been in long term relationships, I almost become disconnected with the version of who I was prior. When I've broken up these long term relationships, I've have to leave it all behind to rediscover the happiness we held before them. When I've felt so much pain from loss, I can get so blinded by the fact at one point in my life, a person or situation may have been good for me, in a black and white thinking sense. happiness has honestly helped me process hurt and loss, and has helped me to lean into the idea not everything has to be black and white. No one talks about it enough.

I really need to address the performance of evermore on the eras tour. Literal chills. It was one the best live performances she has ever done. I need a live version released on Spotify BIBLICALLY. I wish it would have made the cut for the eras tour movie.

evermore (the song) was one i kind of looked over for awhile. I honestly could not put my finger on what it was for me. After hearing Taylor Swift perform it live at the eras tour... my entire brain chemistry changed. I'm not even being dramatic. It was breathtaking and I cannot believe how quiet the crowd was in all of the videos i have come across. I love that there is a collective agreement that everyone was fucking stunned at how incredible it was.

Here are my rankings of evermore:

marjorie

coney island

happiness

right where you left me

evermore if it is taylor only

tis the damn season

champagne problems

tolerate it

long story short

it's time to go

willow

evermore if it is with bon iver and taylor

gold rush

ivy

dorethea

closure

no body no crime

cowboy like me

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

CHILLS.

I am so surprised that this marjorie made it onto the setlist, but I am so happy it did.

So eloquent- actually the first time I am seeing this.

Check out some of these awesome small businesses on Etsy!

Here is a cutting board with Taylor's chai cookie recipe: Chai cookies just have such an evermore vibe. I gotta get my hands on one of these!

Here is the link to a cowboy like me necklace: Forever is the sweetest con.

@taylornation @taylorswift

[gentlelass]

-❤️ “If not for you, I’ll do it for me.”🔪 -

My Lackaoc Marjorie Ford as Ryoba Aishi from Yan Sim, as she was inspired from her among a myriad of morally questionable characters. The ‘sweet-but-psycho’ trope.

The quote above is from me, it’s just something I can very well picture both characters stating - as Ryoba’d do anything, and with a smile, to get Jokichi all for herself, and Marjorie generally just puts herself above and before anyone and anything else, no matter the cost of it: ‘the star of the scene, rather than a mere moon in the sun’s backlight’. But unlike Ryoba she is narcissistic, yet not cold and detached, on the contrary, Margo’s blood is too warm, with a violent passion born out of love she doesn’t know how to properly process: Margo doesn’t just seek to be *noticed* by an audience, she craves to feel ADORED by it. She will actively try to win your affections, if only to further fuel her own ego, until the very end. Hence the bloody love letter.

For the record, I am aware there has been some fussing about Yandere Dev and his morality, but I personally just never get involved with online drama and couldn’t care less for it. I just like the character of Ryoba thus will be using it regardless of its creator, and if you have something against it, please just scroll and don’t try to attack me, because I won’t be bothered to even answer. Thank you.

[counttwinkula]

hi i have been obsessed with your “the monster’s body is a cultural body etc” post since i saw it like a month ago. do you have any book recs where i can read more about this, like, forever. (I’m aware of your podcast I’m checking it out too) <3

i'm glad you liked it, it's an honor to introduce the people of tumblr to cohen's seven theses

first and foremost i would recommend The Monster Theory Reader, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, which includes several seminal essays including:

"The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud

"The Uncanny Valley" by Masahiro Mori

"Approaching Abjection" by Julia Kristeva

"Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection" by Barbara Creed

"The Monster and the Homosexual" by Harry M. Benshoff

i would also recommend the book in which Cohen first published his seven theses, Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen

(i must admit that i haven't gotten around to reading either of these books in full yet)

aside from the essays mentioned above, here are some foundational texts for monster theory but not specifically about monster theory:

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim

Mythography: The Study of Myths and Rituals by William Doty

Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety by Marjorie Garber

monster theory/horror criticism texts i've read:

Monsters in the Closet by Harry M. Benshoff

Skin Shows by Jack Halberstam

Murder Most Queer by Jordan Schildcrout

It Came from the Closet, ed. Joe Vallese

Horror by Brigid Cherry

Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol Clover

Dark Places by Barry Curtis

The Dread of Difference, ed. Barry Keith Grant

The Monster Show by David J. Skal (SEE NOTE BELOW)

Darkly: Black History and America's Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor

The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens

and some others i own but haven't read yet:

Dark Carnivals by W. Scott Poole

Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History by Colleen E. Boyd and Coll Thrush

Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator by Heather O. Petrocelli

Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture by Annalee Newitz (just started this, already love it)

Theatre and the Macabre, ed. Meredith Conti and Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.

and i can't neglect to mention The Monster in Theatre History: This Thing of Darkness by Michael Chemers

before i say anything further i want to give one warning. my particular interest is on monstrosity and queerness (probably evident based on some of my recommendations). monster theory and horror criticism have generally been rooted in psychoanalytic theory, particularly as it has been interpreted through a feminist lens. unfortunately, this leads to a lot of arguments and interpretations that are sex essentialist and fail to address gender with the necessary nuance. this is particularly true in Men, Women, and Chain Saws and The Dread of Difference.

(Vested Interests is… complicated. it's not monster theory exactly but cohen cites it. garber is generally better than the others mentioned here in her consideration of trans people but her work can still be uncomfortable.)

i have a lot of reservations about recommending The Monster Show. i loved reading it and i think skal has great analysis. somehow, however, in the middle of his discussion of how marginalized people have been historically monsterized in american culture, he has the audacity to cite The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond, the ur-text of TERF ideology, and skal uses this text to monsterize trans women. it's disgusting and reprehensible, and if the rest of the book wasn't so strong i wouldn't recommend it

the best medicine i have are texts by trans people. It Came from the Closet is an anthology with several essays by trans people, i adore it. i am forever obsessed with Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein, which isn't exactly monster theory, but i would say it's monster theory adjacent and i wish everyone would read it

and if you haven't, you must read "My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage" by Susan Stryker. (see i even put a link to that one. drop everything and read it now)

alright if you're still with me i have a couple other things to put out there:

the docuseries Queer for Fear, available on Shudder, is incredible and i'm obsessed with it

she seems to be inactive these days but @draculasdaughter has a lot of posts quoting texts and articles on monster theory/horror criticism that i highly recommend

i've only seen the jacob geller videos on this list but i mean to watch this youtube playlist of video essays about horror, fear, and dread

and i also keep a #monster theory tag on my blog that has various posts on the subject, some funny and some earnest

[sephirthoughts]

2 and 5 for the ask meme please

yayyy inbox games!!! dee is getting so tagged in one of these

2. an excerpt of my writing that makes me laugh

i happen to think i am very funny, but only a few things i've written have made me actually laugh aloud. among them are pretty much every interaction between tom and fred in the fic i wrote in my friend's universe. actually the whole fic is pretty good even if you don't know the original universe. 😂 the scene i excerpted is basically a normal office situation but these two idiots are trying to keep their co-worker from leaving work early

Today, the two materialized in front of his desk, yet again. This time to ask for his draft picks for the office fantasy foosball league. They even came armed with an elaborate, full-color bracket, drawn on a huge piece of white paper, pinned to a corkboard. All the available players were represented by sticky-notes with their names on them. “I’ve never heard of the office having a fantasy foosball league,” he said doubtfully. “Actually, I never heard of there being a pro-foosball team.” “Well, it’s definitely real and not something we made up,” Fred assured him. “Look at the big board!” Felix was looking at it. He couldn’t not look at it. It was currently blocking his path to the exit. But…they’d clearly worked very hard on it, so he may as well humor them. He’d just pick some players at random and then get out of here. “Ok, I guess I’ll take Peter Venkman and…Egon Spengler?” Felix gave them a look. “Are you guys serious?” “It’s a coincidence,” Fred said deadpan. “Yeah, lot of people named Peter and Egon in the world, don’t think about it.” Tom urged. “We gotta give everyone in the office a chance to play, so make it snappy.” “This one says Marty McFly.” “Ooh, fantasy…foosball?” Marjorie said, pausing as she passed by. “Is that a real thing?” “Beat it, Marjorie! This doesn’t concern you!” Tom said, trying to block the board, by standing in front of it with his arms spread. Marjorie planted her hands on her hips and stood her ground. “I just heard you say you were giving everyone in the office a chance to play! Are you excluding me because I’m a woman?” “No, it’s because you’re an accounting nerd, nerd!” Fred fired back. “No nerds allowed!” “What about Felix?” she retorted. “He’s a programmer. He’s like, a thousand times nerdier than me! Look at him, he’s probably still a virgin!” “Aw…come on,” Felix said, to which no one paid any attention.

5. an excerpt of my writing with a description i'm proud of

oh man this is harder. i don't think my descriptions are my strong suit. i'm proud of this one, though! i think it's pretty good! it's from a fic i wrote for Death Stranding and i just now realized is four years old

Towers of ice rose like jagged teeth from the black ocean, where they creaked and cracked with each swell and lull of its surface. The waves broke and dispersed into foam across the slate-colored sand, drawing back to rise and fall and break again, performing the steps of their endless dance with the serene forbearance of infinity. At the shoreline, an old man stood, gazing out over the timeless sea. Though years had stripped the mane from his hoary head, gnarled his hands and mottled his skin, he stood unbowed, his thin, bony shoulders thrown back and his bald head held high. For he had lived a life upon which he could indeed look back with well-earned pride. He had lived honestly and simply. Kept his own by the labor of his hands, and shared generously with others from what bounty nature bestowed. He had given much and taken little, loved and lost and suffered the slings and arrows of fortune without bitterness of heart. Though he had done no great deed of heroism, nor fought valiantly in any war, he would take his place among his fathers unashamed.

[swiftiephobe]

OKAY SO.

i didn't have any friendship bracelets because honestly i could not be fucked making them and they generally just aren't really my thing. so i wasn't on the hunt to trade but two nice girls offered me bracelets (one girl spotted my arm lyric and gave me a speak now one and another girl gave me a dbtc one as we were leaving the stadium) which was very sweet of them!

i'm very VERY glad i didn't watch heaps of livestreams or the tour movie because while i was definitely familiar with most of the show i still felt like there were little details that surprised me!!

i may have gotten teary at the opening. it truly cannot be overstated just HOW emotional of a moment that is.

the bracelets during yntcd are so so gorgeous!

i had gone through 500 emotions by the time the lover set had ended and i knew i was in for an exhausting (in a good way) night

fearless really is THAT album like even if it's not high up on your ranking i really don't think you can be a swiftie without appreciating that album and everything it represents and what it did for her career

i had NO IDEA the intro for willow would be like that and it took me so off guard

her champagne problems speech was so!! ahh!!! i felt like the lover + fearless sets were fairly "rehearsed" in their crowd interaction (not that that's a bad thing!!) but in the evermore set she really started to open up and pour out her emotions.

i was surprised that she talked about the flashlights for marjorie because i assumed that was just something the crowd did every night and she would be used to it by now but she seemed genuinely touched by it tonight!

i also didn't know she talked to the crowd after the champagne problems applause so that was a really nice surprise!

the don't blame me/lwymmd transition was mindblowing as predicted

i simply cannot imagine a version of this tour without long love in it

i will NOT be hearing a single bad word about the red set going forwards. yes it's all the hits and none of the deep cuts but they are HITS for a reason!! i simply cannot make the hits not hit!

TELL HIM HE'S DREAMING

the folklore set is an interesting one. i was predicting it to be my fave as a certified folklore girlie and it was amazing BUT i felt like having it placed directly after atw10 put it in a spot where i was feeling VERY drained and i really had to work to pick myself up to get back into it.

everything after this felt very rapid fire like 1989 was just a barrage of major hits!!!! incredible just how many hits that album produced

the SYDNEY chant was a lot of fun

she sang should've said no (thereby declaring debut rights) and i screamed. then she sang you're not sorry one of my fave fearless songs and i screamed. then she mashed up new years day and peace and i screamed.

idk if i imagined this but while singing peace when she sang "would it ever be enough" it looked like she shook her head and it had me :(

the midnights set had my fave visuals of the whole show methinks

no "karma is the guy on the chiefs" for us tonight but i'm sure it was felt in spirit ❤️

thanks for reading my word vomit on all my thoughts about my show (i will probably have more tomorrow) i think i am going to sleep now

[rockyrose13]

Okay so we all know that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are dating now. I’m gonna say this real quick but, I love Taylor, I always have and it has never mattered too me who she is dating, while I do like to know and obviously I have opinions on it, it’s her life and I ultimately have no say in who she dates nor do I really care, as long as she is happy. Obviously it’s not like that for everyone else, so with these new things, here’s my thoughts.

As a swiftie who’s been here for a while, I’ve seen my fair share of Taylor’s boyfriends which includes how swifties react to them. No matter what they always share their opinions, show everything, find a flaw or obsess and all those relationships? They ended. That’s one thing that was good about Taylor and Joe, they kept it so out of touch with us and they lasted 6 years. However, this relationship just started and already there are rumors, opinions, EVERYTHING. I’m just trying to think, why does this matter? By now we should know not to do this, but no, over and over it’s like clockwork.

Height Difference

Right off into it, everyone is talking about the height difference. Taylor is tall, 5’10/5’11 and like 6’2 in heals. We all know she has/had an insecurity about her height in the past. Either way, Travis is 6’5, pretty tall ik. All of the people I’ve seen are talking about the height difference, and I’ve seen some fucked up things already. Some people have been pointing out how her with a taller man is how it is supposed to be, others have been saying inappropriate things like that she is calling him daddy, I’ve even seen some saying that she’s the reason all her past relationships have failed (bc she’s tall) and that this one would HAVE to make it bc for once the man is the tall one and the women is short.

Successful/Unsuccessful

One thing nobody can seem to get over is both of them being pretty well known. Now to start, obviously football fans better know Travis and swifties better know Taylor than the other would, but both are successful. Even so people are sharing their opinions (both sides). It seems swifties think Taylor is putting him on the map and “enlightening” us. Football fans are saying that this is annoying and Taylor is just another girl, another person that wants to be known for dating a football player, that she’s using him or dating him for the attention and the hype. Others things Travis might be using her for the same reasons. Personally, I think it’s good for them to be both successful and not in the same industry at all. I mean, they can both relate to some things as well as there’s no added competition between each other because they are in different industries.

The obsession with finding theories

Generally, theories are fun to have, this on the other hand? It’s a bit fucked up. The major one is that this was Taylor’s entire plan, she would get popular just to date him and it started in 2006? She was 16! So was he, why are we even talking about this? I’ve seen another one about how it’s fate because 87 + 13 = 100, like it was all planned out by them, that one is less concerning but it’s a bit odd. I think one thing that’s beyond concerning, connecting when Marjorie was born and when Travis was born, because they share a birthday so he and Taylor are destined to be together. Great, so I share a birthday with Taylor, am I destined to be with a relative of hers? The last major thing that is just concerning in general, that Travis and Taylor have been dating for a while, that they were dating when Taylor and Joe were and Travis and Kayla were, so I guess we’re just condoning cheating now? Why is this even a theory? It’s cruel and stupid and it makes no sense for what we’re even trying to say.

Those are just some of the opinions I have on this, but what mainly worries me is Taylor seems happy with him and based on the past, I have a bad feeling about this. It’s not about Travis but swifties, people that are involving themselves in this and I just don’t know how it’ll end because of all this.

[senditcolton]

🐝 - your turn to give a status check on the mikko side of our mikko/jt threesome mind meld creation 😘

& if I’m allowed to do 2 - I would love to see where your creative brain is at with your evermore series! I am so excited to see everything you come up with and absolutely love the idea of a series to that album, written by you specifically! 🫶🏼

- @comphy-and-cozy

you can absolutely ask for two @comphy-and-cozy 🤍

🔥Unnamed Depravity🔥 I have the entire smut planned out but right now it’s literally just the ‘stage directions’ – this happens then this happens then this, etc. But it is 1.6k of just that so the actualy fic is going to be an adventure. I can share two quotes of breathless praise from JT. “Fuck, I can see why you wanted to keep her to yourself.” “You’re going to be the death of me.”

🍂Evermore Fic Series🍂 Like above, I have the general plot of every fic in this series planned out. So, it’s really a question of which you’d like to hear more about: The aftermath of a divorce, the pain and the relief of it all, with Brady Skjei (Happiness)? Casey Cizikas scaling up your fire escape to confess his love to you in the middle of winter (Evermore)? An immortal meeting the reincarnation of her ex – the magical version of right person, wrong time – with JT Compher (Right Were You Left Me)? Tyson Jost being the only one that knows how to comfort you after the loss of a loved one (Marjorie)? The story of two very different New Year’s Eve parties with Anthony Beauvillier (Champagne Problems)?

[leonornaves]

An open love and appreciation letter-post to Taylor Swift:

i know no one is probably going to see this, let alone taylor swift herself, but to be honest i needed you to know the great deal in which taylor has mpacted my life. so here it goes...

dear taylor swift,

your music has impacted me in ways i have never thought someone could.

besides the typical 'shake it off' and 'blank space' discovery in like 2015 i really didn't know much about you and your music. that is until i was 12. when i was 12 years old (around 2018) my dad was diagnosed with leukemia and i found myself numb, really numb. up until that point, i had never had any big issues with my parents... i was happy.

so you can imagine my shock to have my world turned. with that numbness came a necessity to hear/read words from someone who was exactly in the same head space as me, a child of a parent who had a life threatening disease but i could find words that made me feel.

honestly i don't think i was really looking because i didn't want to feel, i didn't want to think about my dad being the same weight as me or the fact that my mom and i were so close to losing him that she started "getting me ready for the worst".

that was until late 2019 almost 2020, when i (re)discovered you taylor. i was suddenly sucked into obssessing over one of the best lyricis and songwriter of my generation. obssesed with analyzing and re analyzing your lyrics and finding more hidden meanings on them (although that came more with folklore and evermore).

your song 'soon you'll get better' (ft. the chicks) is in my opinion your saddest one ever. of course atw and other songs like marjorie and many, many songs are incredibly sad but there is something about the rawness in your voice even when i listening to it that alwyas makes me cry even now!! singing it was not a talented 30 year old famous lady with 2 cats (soon to be 3) and hundreds of awards but a girl, girl so afraid to lose her mother to a horrible and terrifying cancer and what exactly it would entail in her life.

that song, those lyrics... were exactly the words i needed to hear. after that i started to myself feel and take the time to be with my dad who was so close to death that i was starting to wonder what life without him would be like. so close that i, at the time 12, was starting to feel jealous of all the people who got to spend time with my dad because that was time i would never have with him.

during the pandemic, he got so much better and i know how lucky i am to be able to say that. i hope your mom got better too. thank you for making me feel! im now 17, and terified of what i would've been like if i hadn't really taken time with my dad during those days when it felt like the end and he had died. i wouldn't have felt anything. would i still be numb? i don't know. thank you for that.

nowadays my problems are different, i have so many fights with my mom it's toxic at this point, and after those all i want to do is put on my folklore cd and cry. cry for all the bad words said between us. cry for allthat i could be experiencing if my mom would let me grow up. cry for my teenage years. cry for everything.

honestly, i think this letter has become sort of messy. but in the end i hope you, taylor swift, know how much your appreciated and how much your music has saved my from my own life and thoughts. thank you so much for writing something that trully makes me feel like you're there for me, even if a thousands miles away and on tour.

also thank you for finally coming to my country!! my godfather got me tickets ( he survived the great war lol) and i will be on the pit bawling my eyes out to every song, yes even the happy ones, beacuse i just can't believe i will be in the same space as you. thank you for saving me!!

this is super cringy and im crying so much while writing this.

thank you again, love from a forever and always fan <3

@taylorswift @taylornation

[menotthatkindoforc]

Sleepover!!!

your tumblr crushes

talk about your favorite ship/fictional characters

rant about anything bad dog grooming

okay idk if we define tumblr crushes like we did back in the day which was like, your most interacted with blogs which currently is actually none of my mutuals according to tumblr (sorry idk how that math works) otherwise um jeez idk. i think you're all pretty cute and tbh if i've ever directly interacted with you more than once you're in my list of crushes because i am easy well you're very familiar with one of the characters i consider to be my favorite from any of the things i'm into and in fact the way you write her is one of the things that made me so interested in your works early on (and still!) but other than Marjory i've always liked Vi from league of legends and when arcane pulled in the best parts of her lore and character she shot up in my list Xellos from Slayers is also one of my old time favorite fictional characters and fun fact I used to use that name for some stuff when i started having gender issues with my deadname and got detached from it. he has purple hair and that is one of my favorite things about his design. im a simple creature. UM also GARROSH HELLSCREAM and more problematically his father GROMMASH HELLSCREAM (needs to be typed in caps for effect) because grom is a fucking dilf fun fact i specifically got the physical disc rather than the digital version of the warlords of draenor WoW expansion because the box was textured and therefore i could touch grom's titties also i love Amethyst from SU :) OH. BAD DOG GROOMING. well, i personally don't like to judge other people's grooms UNLESS they act like they know what they're doing and they clearly really don't. inviting me to judge u then. BUT i will talk about things i dont like in dog grooming!! SHAVING DOUBLE COATED DOGS. ESPECIALLY AT HOME. STOP. NOTHING MAKES ME MORE UPSET THAN THOSE PICS U SEE OF A HUSKY THAT HAS BEEN SHAVED EVERYWHERE EXCEPT THE NECK UP and shaving legs on double coated dogs in general!! STOP!! and blend the fucking head in to the body length!!!! i don't like to shave double coated dogs. no one does!! we all try very very hard to avoid it but some owners are dead set on it or have already been doing it for years. but there is a right and wrong way to do it! and you should never ever shave the legs down unless the owner specifically requests that because it looks terrible and i hate it sm unless you mean grooming bad dogs which is actually something i sometimes enjoy depending on the cause of the badness. i've always been the recommended person for really anxious dogs that have given other groomers problems 'cause i'm patient af and way to chill with (small to medium) dogs biting me (the typical gnawy bites or little snaps. not the i am going to fucking kill you bites). outright aggressive dogs are something i'm willing to work with depending on how much the owner does to help (i.e. meds and work on their end) though im much much more wary of this with large dogs. admittedly german shepherds and rottweilers both make me a bit uneasy (to groom. not in general. i have met some really really sweet dogs of these breeds but certain things stick with you) because i've seen some very poorly trained and bred dogs and these are both breeds i've had very close calls with in terms of almost getting the shit bit out of me. also they are both big and very good at biting. also very iffy with huskies despite owning one just because so many huskies are SO SO bad. mine is.. moderately bad.

[it-might-go-on-forever]

I did something fun

As a fun experiment I organized the Taylor Swift albums on my Apple Music by number of plays per song to compare against the set list for the Eras tour (highlighted are songs from night 1)

Notice that my most played songs per each album are almost never the singles? I love Taylor for including the deep cuts because she’s performing my most played song on almost every album! I literally never dreamed she’d play Marjorie live.

Before people start looking at my stats… Fearless and Red aren’t technically correct because I deleted the OG albums once the TV’s came out so the # of listens from the OG — AREN’T ACCOUNTED FOR. I’ve also cropped the photos just to her set list selections so like obviously I have the entire speak now album but she only did one song and it’s my most played song, so it’s cropped there.

All fun and games until I remember I never got a presale code, therefor I do not currently have tickets and I am checking daily for someone who’s not greedy to reasonably price their resale tickets so I can go…… or someone rich buy me tickets please. I was at 1989 and Rep tour so I’m still still upset that Ticketmaster didn’t give me a verified fan code, I thought I’d get general sale tickets at least.

Whatever show I end up getting to go to I hope our secret song is either Out of the Woods or Breathe or The Way I Love You

@taylorswift @taylornation

[ksfoxwald]

2022 in Books

My reading stats for this year are so weird because I started reading a lot of children's chapter books and graphic novels. According to Storygraph I've read 292 books this year, and I know I didn't include everything.

Since it's hard to really compare all the things I've read, I've made 3 different top ten lists based on the sorts of things I read this year.

Top Five Books 1. The Wolf Among the Wild Hunt by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor 2. Gryphon Ranger: Crossline Plains by Roz Gibson 3. Flames of Hope by Tui T. Sutherland 4. I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom 5. By the Silver Wind by Jess Owen

Top Graphic Novels 1. Magical Boy by The Kao 2. Dog Man by Dav Pilkey 3. Wingbearer by Marjorie M. Liu 4. Manu! by Kelly Fernandez 5. Space Story by Fiona Ostby

Top Chapter Books Series 1. The Babysitters Club by Ann M. Martin 2. Animorphs by KA Applegate 3. Horse Country by Yamile Saied Mendez 4. Unicorn Academy by Julie Sykes 5. Secrets of Droon by Tony Abbott

Additional commentary below the Read More, but I'm not the author of any of these books and I don't owe you a Real Summary.

Top Five Books 1. The Wolf Among the Wild Hunt by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor -I'm not usually into spooky stuff, but I am into platonic ride-or-die friendships between people who are convinced they're monsters 2. Gryphon Ranger: Crossline Plains by Roz Gibson -The past couple years have been a revelation in discovery that actually a lot of people feel that gryphons are the best mythical creature and that Redwall was great but Adult talking animals with swords is even better. It seems it is my fate to become a furry. 3. Flames of Hope by Tui T. Sutherland -I still do love dragons, and this was a very satisfying season finale for Wings of Fire. Tui has done several variations on subverting the Chosen One and it's a unique and interesting take each time. 4. I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom -Everything that is wrong with Internet Queer Culture and how to fix it. Well, sort of. It's a good read for recentering oneself, I think. 5. By the Silver Wind by Jess Owen -Speaking of gryphons, I'm not sure how long it took me to finish this series, but I am slowly working my way through the canon of Gryphon fantasy.

Top Graphic Novels 1. Magical Boy by The Kao -A trans boy finds out that he's inherited his mother's magical girl powers - including her outfit! A loving parody of the magical girl genre that also expresses how frustrating it is for queer and trans folks. 2. Dog Man by Dav Pilkey -Come for the poop jokes, stay for the generational trauma and moral philosophy. Dav Pilkey is a genius and I will die on this hill. 3. Wingbearer by Marjorie M. Liu -No this one isn't about gryphons, they just show up briefly. It's just so pretty... 4. Manu! by Kelly Fernandez -What if a magical school was a girl's Catholic school? And one of the kids may or may not be a demon, but is definitely an adorable chaos queerling? 5. Space Story by Fiona Ostby -three timelines - one of a woman on a space station waiting for her family, one of her wife and child building a ship to join her, and one of how the two of them met. Slow and sweet and hopeful in the face of a bleak future and a really good use of multiple timelines.

Top Chapter Books Series 1. The Babysitters Club by Ann M. Martin -I would have hated these as a tween, but as an adult they're bomb. I'm only like 20 in but they're a masterclass in character development and episodic storytelling. 2. Animorphs by KA Applegate -I never actually finished the series as a kid, and was hoping to do so this year, but that will probably take until January. Anyway it's way more intense than I remember. 3. Horse Country by Yamile Saied Mendez -Just another horse girl series, but this one stars girls of color who are flawed and interesting characters. 4. Unicorn Academy by Julie Sykes -It's trash. Absolute trash. Girls in a boarding school who get paired with a unicorn and need to unlock their magical talent with Power of Friendship while going on somewhat contrived G-rated adventures. Absolute garbage writing and worldbuilding. But it's my kind of trash and I fucking love it. 5. Secrets of Droon by Tony Abbott -Another masterclass in episodic storytelling, and how to balance standalone adventures with longform plot. Early volumes are a bit twee but the stakes get raised as the series goes on. I want to co-author this but with kids of color exploring a fantasyland that is less colonialist.

[bellamysgriffin]

On what you said about the lyrics on Midnights not being relatable to you, I personally like when I can’t relate to a song. Of course sometimes I do like to feel “seen” by a song but other times I don’t want to want to hear my life in a song, sometimes I want to escape into music

i understand that my use of the word relatable implied that it needs to be directly applicable to my life and my experiences, but that's not exactly what i'm trying to say. let's use a taylor swift song as an example.

the song marjorie is a song that personally, i do not relate to, and yet i think it is a gorgeous, stunning, deeply moving song. the bridge does not consist of generalities, but rather specific images and instances of her relationship with her grandmother. so why does it work? because its central theme is speaking to a deeply universal experience -- one that i don't share, but am interested in and moved by all the same. it's about the experience of being too young to understand how little time you have with someone you love (i.e. your grandmother) and wishing you could have that time back now that you know how valuable it is. it's about grief.

similarly, invisible string makes reference after reference to her personal life and includes references to her stardom. i don't personally relate to that song either. but i also don't need to know the "now i send their babies presents" line is about joe jonas to appreciate it. it's about another universal theme: the way in which all the pieces of your life, without you even realizing, might just lead you to the person you're meant to be with.

my issue is not that i can't personally relate. there's only a handful of taylor swift songs that i feel connected to by my personal life experience. my issue is that her celebrity is now essential to understanding a large part of her music.

that's not to say she can't write about her life. one of my favorite albums of hers is speak now. and much of that album is about her personal life, as well as very public things that happened to her. but you don't have to know back to december is about taylor lautner to like it. you don't have to know innocent is about kanye west, last kiss is about joe jonas or dear john is about john mayer. all of these songs hold up on their own without having to know a single thing about taylor swift's life. i don't think that's true anymore with this specific album.

[cksmart-world]

SMART BOMB

The Completely Unnecessary News Analysis

By Christopher Smart

March 12, 2024

MIAMI BEACH: F-OFF YOU DEBAUCHING SPRING BREAKERS

Warning: All you college skankers, frat boys and sorority girls who want fun in the sun on spring break, stay away from Miami Beach! That's an order! Denizens of the seaside paradise are done with all-night street parties, stages full of half-naked female college students and not least, nudity on the beach. “This isn't working anymore. And it's not us, it's you,” says a YouTube video produced by the municipality — part of its campaign to keep spring-breakers at bay. “You just want to get drunk in public and ignore the laws.” Well, Wilson, spring break has become something of an American tradition, even a right of passage for some college students. If it's worth doin', it's worth overdoin'. Of course, there are other locales along the Florida coast and Texas gulf where partiers can let it all hang out — and these days practically anything goes, including students making sex tapes at sex parties. Yikes! Where's Marjorie Taylor Greene when you need her. Miami Beach restaurants, shops and hotels will miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars generated during the two-week annual ritual. But enough is too much. Several stampedes tore the place apart last year, now Miami Beach leaders are breaking up with spring break: Go go get ripped and shake your bootie somewhere else. And don't come back!

REPUBLICANS: WOMEN GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN

Not everyone had the guts to watch Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Boyd Britt deliver the rebuttal to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address. Lucky them, they may have escaped a case of PTSD — post-traumatic shit-show delirium. Or maybe it was a parody of “I Love Lucy” on LSD. ”Even Britt's GOP colleagues were baffled by her comments that veered from dramatic to breathy to smiley sweet as she highlighted the kitchen as the place women make decisions as she stirred up something very cheesy. It looked like one of those cooking shows, retorted one female colleague. If the GOP brain trust was looking to capture the suburban women vote they may have burned the casserole. Republican pollster Christine Matthews put it this way: “[I]t sends the message that Republicans are literally trying to send women back to the kitchen,” The 42-year-old mom and kitchen whiz hit all the GOP's usual talking points, adding that sex assault is the worst thing that can happen to a woman, forgetting, apparently, the man she endorsed for president, Donald Trump, was found liable for sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll. “What the hell am I watching,” screeched one Tump staffer to The Guardian newspaper. No, it wasn't a Saturday Night Live skit — but it soon would be.

PENTAGON REPORT: UFO COVER-UP, WHAT UFO COVER-UP?

Hey Wilson, you know those glowing footprints you and guys in the band see after some of your late-night gigs? Well, according to a new report from the Pentagon, they aren't from space aliens. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) of the Department of Defense (We are not making this up.) found no evidence that extraterrestrial intelligence has visited Earth, reports The Washington Post, or that they have recovered crashed alien spacecraft and are hiding them from the public. The report has done nothing to quell conspiracy theories that the AARO has a pile of evidence on UFOs — now called “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAPs — including civilian and military witness accounts. Skeptics say the government created elaborate systems to cover-up the evidence but has a secret repository of downed alien spacecraft and corpses. That brings up a serious question, Wilson: What does an alien corpse look like and does the AARO have more than one species. Do these alien corpses have two arms and two legs? Are they like ants or humanoids. Do they look like Klingons, E.T. or SpongeBob SquarePants? And what about Body Snatchers? Could Taylor Swift's body have been snatched by aliens, like Donald Sutherland. No conspiracy? Hah.

Post script — That's going to do it for another crazy week here at Smart Bomb where we keep track of Taylor Swift so you don't have to. Well, OK, that's not exactly accurate because Taylor Swift is everywhere and you're going to keep track of her whether you like it or not. Get this, Weber State, BYU and Harvard offer classes in Taylor Swift. No Wilson, we're not sure what people do in Taylor Swift class. Maybe they listen to her songs and then... we give up. News Flash — Salt Lake City made national headlines when the Weathered Waves bar posted its “No Zionists Allowed” policy. It was, of course, a reaction to the war in Gaza where 30,000 Palestinian have been killed from Israeli bombing and now they are starving to death due to blockades. A majority of them are women and children. The Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services received a raft of complaints that Weathered Waves was discriminating — but what are the identifying features of a Zionist. It's like saying no Republicans allowed, but they don't wear bright red letters on their foreheads that say GOP, although that's not a bad idea. Not to worry, DABS has asked our intrepid attorney general, Sean Reyes, to look into it. That ought to make you feel better 'cause he's so f-ing great. Well, not exactly.

Alright Wilson, it's the perfect time to recognize those dedicated UFO watchers who track the government's efforts to coverup the aliens that keep orbiting our planet. But why the aliens just don't come down and introduce themselves is a mystery. Earth has stuff they might really enjoy, like sushi and gelato and spring break videos. So, hit it Wilson:

Woke up this morning with light in my eyes And then realized it was still dark outside It was a light coming down from the sky I don't know who or why Must be those strangers that come every night Whose saucers shaped lights put people up tight Leave blue green footprints that glow in the dark I hope they get home all right Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along I won't do anything wrong Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along For a ride Woke up this morning, I was feeling quite weird Had flies in my beard, my toothpaste was smeared Over my window, they'd written my name Said, "So long, we'll see you again" Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along I won't do anything wrong Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along For a ride Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along I won't do anything wrong Hey Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along For a ride

(Mr. Spaceman — The Byrds)

[tracinginwardinvestigation]

Note #43: Perry Mason’s The Case of the Lucky Legs: Battle over the authoritative narrative

(This post contain full spoilers of the novel)

I just finished Perry Mason’s The Case of the Lucky Legs recently, and it has been a fun read! Overall, the culprit, Bradbury, is fairly easy to guess early on just by examining meta-clues. For one, he is a 50-years-old “sugar daddy” who wants to help a young, beautiful girl half his age because he is in love with her; that alone is discriminatory enough. And two, in one of the early scenes, he forgets to bring a crucial evidence to Mason. In a clue-puzzle story where the implicit rules often forbid coincidence or chance from having a place in mystery, the fact that a character forgets about something is significant, which proves to be true when Bradbury’s forgetful moment becomes one of the clues Mason uses to prove that Bradbury is the culprit. Nevertheless, for being an easy culprit to figure out, he makes for a formidable opponent against Mason with his cunning capacity to establish narrative on the go.

In detective fiction, detective figures’ most distinct role is that they are often the only character that can theorize the true narrative of the crime: who committed it, why it happened, and how it unfolded. Generally, this process of discovery tends to operate under the assumption that the crime’s true narrative is usually left untouched by the culprit, only waiting to be discovered. However, this is not the case in Lucky Legs. Throughout the course of the novel, just as Mason is trying to discover the real narrative behind the death of Frank Patton, Bradbury is also trying to create a new falsified narrative by making additional false clues post-crime to hide his involvement. This active involvement is hinted at by how often Bradbury refers to himself as “a fighter”: he is not a passive culprit who is just waiting for the detective to find him; he can fight back. Thus, not only does Mason have to follow the traditional detective role in discovering the true narrative of the crime, but he also has to fight against Bradbury’s ongoing narrative in the present as well. What is usually a one-sided conflict turns into a duel where both of them are trying to establish their own narratives while feeding each other false clues.

This kind of conflict also leads to a change in the typical revelation scene of a detective story where the detective reveals the truth to a third party. Instead of having Mason spill out the revelation in an explanatory manner to the third party consisting of Riker, Johnson, and Detective Sergeant O'Malley, Chapter XVIII forces Perry Mason to have a final confrontation with Bradbury where he has to prove his version of the narrative is more credible than Bradbury’s version. As someone who enjoys reading debates between characters, this chapter makes for a fun read! In the end, the confrontation between the two fighters is resolved not with an action-packed chase scene, but with simply a logical trap that Mason lays for Bradbury: “I warned you, Bradbury, … not to lie about that telephone call to Marjorie Clune. I told you that it would be a confession of guilt" (Chapter XVIII). Where Bradbury fails, however, is that he is not a storyteller, only a bad bluffer. Once Bradbury is unable to dig out of his own lies, his falsified narrative falls apart and the victory is handed to Mason, who manages to provide a consistent narrative. As Mason says to counter Bradbury’s recurring imagery: “I, too, am a fighter”; the detective figure is capable of not just discovering true narrative, but also resisting against false narrative. To put it in another way, the process of discovering the truth requires the detective figure to prove the credibility of his interpretation AND defend it from other interpretations.

Hmmm, I wonder how to dig deeper into this idea of battling for authoritative narrative… I do find it interesting that the presence of the third party is vital for the revelation scene, not just in this novel but also in detective fiction in general. Is the concept of getting recognized in public or by a neutral party that makes a narrative authoritative? What could have happened if Mason perished before he could tell the truth? Would Bradbury’s full-of-hole narrative take over as authoritative because he is the only one left to tell the truth, something along the line “dead man tells no tale”? What is the bigger idea at stake here? If I want to look deeper, I think I should reread Danganronpa, a series that is well known for taking this debate idea to an extreme.