#but so few people are interested in me
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Ghouls night out
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#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#wei wuxian#lan wangji#Scopophobia#Don't be mean Lan Wangji - the dead girl aesthetic is a curated one. Support women's rights to look dead!#I have been waiting for this scene for ages...the ghost girl entourage is such a good look for WWX.#And by gods does the audio drama actually do something interesting with one of them.#Namely that we actually get to see WWX talk with them and learn about who they were and what they left behind.#I love necromancer characters but it's way too common for them to be like âGo! Ghost no.145!â like they're a pokemon#and not...you know...someone who had a whole life that they left behind.#I love me a necromancer who has an awareness to whose soul/body they are using. It adds a lot of flavour!#MDZS is a little hit or miss with this. I think the fans do a lot of the work with making Mo Xuanyu a bigger character.#Yi City has this in spades. Even though we don't individually get character backstories#We get many painful reminders about how these 'corpses' were people.#We also get a few lines about how WWX used whatever corpses he could get his hands on (including grandparents - Woof!)#MDZS often (but not always) likes to remind us that every sacrifice and every ghost was a person.#It is so close to nailing the landing regarding the deconstruction of the necromancer character.#Anyhow. You may have noticed the uptick in quality in the last two comics. Rule of three means next one is going to be a treat B*)#See you all very soon!
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find another role, carry on the show
#EDIT IT DIDNT SAVE MY TAGS. hey so this post got a thousand notes huh. interesting. surely nothing will change#i'll leave all the old tags. for my thought process. and its kinda funny#take a bow stupid idiot (throws a tomato at them)#in stars and time#isat#siffrin#siffrin no middle names no last name ŕ´Śŕľŕ´Śŕ´ż ËÍĚęłËÍĚ )â§#... or is it. Smiles#i'd like to draw mira for her birthday but um (hasnt open artfight website in a few days) im scared.#also i have NICE ASKS TO ANSWER.... But im scared. give me a minute#Uawaaaaagh i drew this bc i was trying to animate a little bit but it just . Didnt look good. im not good ag 2d animation#tch. ill keep trying cause there ar e way too many songs that and now about isat because i have brain worms. i need amvs.#IM SCARED TO POST THINGS THAT ARE SPOILERY BECAUSE I WANT MY FRIENDS TO PLAY ISAT. BUT.#isat spoilers#in stars and time spoilers#sasasap#sasasa:p#WHAT IS THE PROLOGUES TAG.#tshirt that says 'i <3 killing the image in the mirror and taking its place' on the fromt#and a list of megan thee stallions tour dates on the back. ăé稟ăäżşăăŻăšăżăź#Im kind of tempted to edit this to be the versiom with the eyes. or maybe twt can have that. or. well#all of my friends are on twt (trombone slide sfx) so maybe thats where i should worry about spoilers.#ill see if i want to slap an eyepatch on them in the morning#Im one of those people who was like idgaf about twohats (lets it simmer for a week) Oh my god. Oh my god. Ohmy god#EDIT. i swapped it out for the Eyes version it should be fine as long as its tagged formspoilers right...#ill post eyepatch vers on twt partly bc spoilers but also ppl over there can be .. annoying ..... ....#i fear i would get 800 You Forgot The Eyepatch replies. PLEASE JUST SEE MY VISION.#[BANGING MY HANDS ON THE GLASS] HIS HAND. LIKE IN THE PROLOGUE. WHEN THEYE. HANDS. HELD[EXPLOSION
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[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]
Hitting a lil' too close to home?
#junie art post#ink sans#error sans#utmv#errorink#implied. but yea not the focus#this has been turning around in my mind for quite some time. im glad to finish it lmao idk if my ramblings make sense even.#so like listen. do you ever think about how similar the function of the utmv is to the dark worlds in deltarune.#in a meta narrative to fandom sense? idk the word#we are making exaggerated expanded worlds of the ordinary tools and entertainment of the real world and make it into something more#isnt that very very interesting?#and we explore every sort of possibility in that creation. both good and bad#and when all is said and done. every possibility found and the entertainment and secrets has all run out#we put it away. abandon and leave it behind#what is left? what happens to the world and characters we have created? can it sustain without us?#what of the ones left in the dark?#idk if yall saw me a few months ago but i reblogged comyet's old post of ink begging us not to leave him alone and to keep creating#yea that never left me#and seeing exactly THAT SCENARIO in deltarune made my brain iTCH#imagine an ink in King's position.... wait isnt that just underverse#mmmmmmm. darkner ink.....#also error is here too. not just for errorink or that i can't separate these two to save my life#but error is also one of the few people to be able to GET IT?? he can hear the creators too. ink cant#but hes pretty much programmed himself to avoid having a mental break down to this via reboot memory loss.#and ink has his own internal coping mechanism (hooray for short term memory loss)#these two idiots will do anything but confront truths lmfao#ahhh my favorite idiots. never change#mmmmm#deltarune
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the most difficult thing about growing as a person socially, as in getting out of your shell and noticing that you are, is that there will still be times when it doesnât feel like youâve grown at all! times when you canât really connect with anyone around you, times when you fail to enter into an existing conversation, times when you say the wrong thing (or nothing at all when in hindsight you probably shouldâve). but thatâs also kind of the best thing, because thatâs the thing that helps you realize that sometimes, itâs not you or your lack of skills or any shortcoming. sometimes certain environments just arenât for you and certain people arenât your people, and thatâs okay. thatâs human. itâs okay to not feel the progress you have made all the time.
#and that goes for every type of growth#backstory of this post:#after I came back after a few months of doing my international internship I felt so much more confident#it was easier making friends and walking up to people#i took more chances#and generally just heard it a lot from those around me who kept telling me how much iâd changed#this was further supported by my first office job that went pretty well#but then came my grad internship. and while i love the work and have met some great people I noticed it was difficult again#there was one office lunch where no one spoke to me at all! it was my first week and I didnât know what to say#if i should even say anything#we were all sitting at the same table#not one person even glanced my way#it made me doubt myself; i was doing so well before#was that even real? why canât I just speak up? this is not the way to connect with people#especially in my first week!#but you know what#i was still doing well. i just had to factor in the fact that these were all middle aged people talking about reality shows i didnât watch#and bikes i knew nothing about#as well as people who knew i was the new intern yet didnât speak to me at all even though Iâd introduced myself to them all individually#and even so#people I couldnât really talk to about MY interests outside of work either#my point being:#itâs okay to not feel a connection with everyone you meet#itâs okay to fall back into old habits even though youâve developed new ones#it will never unravel the process youâve made and the connections youâve built#youâre doing fine#after this internship I will surround myself with people who reaffirm that belief#growth in the self#self love#positivity
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hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
#the owl house#toh spoilers#the collector#for the future spoilers#theories that have haunted me since may 2022#and this isnt even TOUCHING on luz snake symbolism and a snake being the one to send the prince home at the end#i dont think luz is going to kill him ofc but. interesting to note.#there are a couple other bits I didnât include just bc#so many images#was definitely thinking about darius calling hunter little prince but ultimately not really relevant in this case#also the fact that one of the other people he meets on the asteroids is a man whoâs obsessed with owning the stars -> other collectors mayb?#if anything I think king would probably match up to the pilot best#used to be more like the collector but heâs had to grow up a lot faster in the last few episodes
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tell ren to turn his location onđđ
I saw one of the posts of how ren does get jealous of pets being loved over him and alll that so now I have the thought of the one meme of âah yes, me, my partner and their [enter normal pet size] foot [pet]â
I donât have anything else, it did pop into my head though and I thought Iâd share with the class.
ââĽâ ItsNotVivy on Twitter actually made that exact meme with Ren a looong time ago!!
#đ â answered.#đ â 14 days with queue.#thegoofyest#In Viv we trust đ They were one of the very first people to take an interest in 14DWY!! /gen#Dare I say..... One of the founding fathers lmaooooo#Also!! Viv (along with a few other twitter artists) were one of the main reasons why I started this Tumblr in da first place! ^^#14DWY didn't have much of a following until they started makin memes and art on Twitter#Then all of a sudden I had all these people wanting to know more about the game; and da next thing I knew; I had over 50 asks overnight lol#So I owe a lot of 14DWY's success to ItsNotVivy; hmimprvmntbsmnt; dreosuger; Diachuu; glade_o; Meowastrophe; noullyart; etc.#And it's also the reason why I wanna show my appreciation towards them all by giving them Easter Eggs in the game#I also kind feel like it's the very least I can do to show my appreciation ghjsgjh ;v; Same with da 14DWY staff on Discord#It's the only place where I ask for help regarding managing the 14DWY socials (everywhere else is just me); and they go through hell n back#âto keep the server a fun and lively place for everyone#I owe so much to them as well; which is why some of da mods already have their own lil Easter Eggs in the game#I also like to think they're canon employees at the Corland Bay library gsdjgjg Except Jesse; that mf would set everything on fire /silly#Also not me getting mushy in the tags????????? What is happening to me.... Where is my mysterious and aloof persona...... /j#I'll shuddup now before I start crying (/pos) over the founding fathers on Tumblr as well lmao
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the notion that queer men can be flamboyantly theatrical, perform in drag, even occasionally refer to themselves with female pronouns, and nevertheless willfully uphold and enforce patriarchal norms, would have been a well worn complaint in any given 1970s lesbian collective, and yet
#the show is not remotely subtle about how Lestat occupies the role of patriarch in his family#so this quarterly discourse has forced me to realise how few people understand the concept of intersectionality#or perhaps selectively don't when that conflicts with their projection of what the show represents to them or what they want it to be#one of the worst things about this discourse is that it makes a lot of actual interesting discussion incredibly difficult to approach#like what Lestat's somewhat antiquated gender performance suggests about his notion of time and immortality#or how Louis and Lestat falling back on patriarchal notions adds to the motif of the vampires recreating the same cycles that oppress them#or the intrigue and fascination Lestat's gender performance may have for Louis#maybe one day I will have the strength to try anyhow#Lestat de Lioncourt#Interview with the Vampire#Jagged Jottings
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It really is like. you don't realize until you ask other fat ppl, how common it is for a thinner person to use you as a Fat Sounding Board for their feelings about THEIR own weight.
#listening to someone Half your size use you as a conduit to say they hate how fat they feel#is a serious twilight zone level experience. are there cameras???? is someone filming this?????#me. the person LEAST interested in hearing it. ME. I'M the sounding board??? ME???????????????#sergle.txt#you don't really think of it as a Thing until a bunch of other ppl describe an identical conversation to ones you've had lmao#they are like so eager to talk about it. unprovoked usually but also if they see an opening#my weight fluctuated a few times recently bc of mental illness / the woes of high dose bupropion and people were ELATED#to start dieting conversations with me after noticing any changes.
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Something I think is cute is that - yâknow how Raphâs eyes are more on the yellow side?
Well, you know who also has slightly yellowed eyes? Donnie.
While Raphâs are more yellow, I think itâs cute that this is something that they share and I donât see it pointed out too often?
Itâs also something they both share with Draxum and Splinterâs current form (though again, these two have much more yellow sclera than the boys do.)
But yeah, I like that thereâs this little detail that ties Raph and Donnie together, even if itâs small.
#rottmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rottmnt raph#rottmnt donnie#rise donnie#rise raph#there are a few screenshots that look like Donnieâs eyes were colored more white like Leo and Mikey#but the vast majority has his eyes and teeth yellowed a little#not quite to Raphâs level but enough to be noticeable especially when you contrast it to Mikey Leo and April#I see a lot of art on here not giving Donnie his yellowed sclera and it makes me sad a little#bc Mikey and Leo have soooo many things tying them together design wise (mainly their shells)-#so its nice to keep the things tying Raph and Donnie together as well (their sclera + how THEIR shells are both basically just green)#(+ how even when Donnie makes his battleshells he keeps them one color - just like Raphâs shell)#Iâm looking too hard into this but Brains and Brawn is a Good Duo#you could also - considering the showâs theme of giving the less âhumanâ characters more yellowed sclera- consider this design decision-#-a way to show that Mikey and Leo are species of turtles more acclimated to humans since their breeds are very often pets (esp Leo)#whereas Raph and Donnie are species that are more commonly just left in the wild#idk I just think itâs an interesting design decision tbh#esp considering you can see this human acclimation from the very start with the boys as well#with how readily Mikey and Leo interact with Splinter#whereas Raph bites and Donnie is completely disinterested#i like when their species has an effect on their characters tbh#like how Leo being the Face Man makes perfect sense since Red Eared Sliders are the most popular pet turtle BECAUSE theyâre pretty-#-and better with people than most other species#Mikey too being so gung-ho about people makes sense for these same reasons#as ornate box turtles as well are very popular pet turtles#idk theyâre just fun I love these guys#also- I love when people give Raph a huge tail itâs so cute
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The TTPD Deep Dive (Part ?)
Itâs no secret that I have a lot of Thoughts about The Tortured Poets Department and it has lived rent-free in my head since it came out earlier this year. Iâm absolutely blown away by how underneath the chaos, itâs actually an exceptionally cohesive story and is probably the closest to a concept album Taylor has ever done.
There are so many themes that have stood out to me over the last five months, and thereâs one in particular that I think not only drives the entire album, but ties into previous albums to help deepen understanding of it.
This is it, my fangirl magnum opus, my months of posts consolidated into one place. This is also my disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of the album, and my summary of the story it tells, and I donât pretend to have any special insight or authority. Iâm not saying Iâm correct at all, do not take any of this as fact, itâs just what it sounds like to me, and these are my silly not-so-little thoughts about it.
(Under a cut because itâs way too long and involves discussion many may not care for or be sick of.)
Come one, come all, it's happening again (I'm thinking too hard about Taylor music)
The overarching theme in TTPD to me is: Grief. If youâre looking at TTPD as a story being told (instead of just as someoneâs real life), the inciting incident of TTPD is loss, and the grief from that loss is what drives the narratorâs actions and the fallout, as well as unpacks those complicated feelings and how they apply to the her life in general. By the end of the standard album, itâs also about recovering from that pain, moving on from it and learning from it.
The loss specifically is the loss of the dream of having a family (with oneâs partner). One thing that is abundantly clear both on the top line and under the surface in TTPD is how Taylor (as a person and as narrator) longed not only to for marriage but specifically parenthood, and the fear and then realization of losing that chance absolutely wrecked herâ which is why the next loverâs (the conman's) wooing worked so well, because it preyed on that yearning. Yet that loss also dovetails into the grief of many things: of youth, of idealism, of relationships, of ideas, even of self, which causes almost a deconstruction of a belief system to piece oneâs life back together by the end.
THE CONTEXT
TTPD weaves in the topics of marriage and motherhood both explicitly and in the subtext, in various forms and scenarios. The cheating husband in âFortnight.â The wedding ring line in âTTPDâ the song. âHe saw forever so he smashed it upâ in âMy Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.â All of âSo Long, London.â Running away with her wild boy in âBut Daddy I Love Him,â fantasizing about weddings and joking about babies. The imaginary rings in âFresh Out The Slammer.â The cheating husband (again) and the friends who smell like weed or âlittle babiesâ in âFlorida!!!â âYou and I go from one kiss to getting married,â âTalking rings and talking cradles,â and âour field of dreams engulfed in fireâ in âloml.â (And arguably: âI wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.â) âHe said heâd love me all his life, but that life was too short,â in âI Can Do It With A Broken Heart.â They may not sound like much on their own, but they paint a picture about how the topics pervaded her thoughts and her writing, and in many cases express her desires, and her pain.
Itâs something that goes back several albums when you pick up on context clues. You get the first hints on Reputation with âNew Yearâs Day,â and âyou and me forevermore.â Then Lover is very forward with it: âLoverâ is basically wedding vows, âPaper Ringsâ is very engagement-coded, âI Think He Knowsâ is cheeky but low-key âyou better put a ring on it,â âItâs Nice To Have A Friendâ has wedding/marriage imagery in the last verse. As a self-professed diaristic writer, itâs the type of stuff one presumably doesnât put out there unless those conversations have already happened, and she was very excited about it at the time it was released.
Then the pandemic happens and folklore comes out, and while there is still happy love there (âinvisible stringâ), there are also the first indications that something has happened to put a halt to whatever future she once dreamed of (âhoax,â âthe lakesâ) and that sheâs trying to reassure herself and him that it can still happen even if sheâs scared it might not (âpeaceâ). Notably, as far as I can remember itâs the first time Taylor explicitly brings up the idea of family (with her partner) with âyou know that Iâd give you my wild, give you a child,â which stood out at the time because itâs so incredibly vulnerable, but itâs even more poignant when you really take in that the whole song is like a confession of her deepest worries, and this is her vowing to give him these things that she holds most sacred if heâll let her. These are what she cherishes most dearly and wants to return in kind: her youth and commitment (my wild), the family she craves (a child), unconditional support (swing for the fences/sit in the trenches) and understanding/compassion (silence that only comes when two people know each other).
Evermore follows an even darker path, and suddenly the album explores relationships that end and grappling with loss. There are toxic relationships (âtolerate itâ), dangerous marriages (âno body, no crime,â âivyâ), failing/broken relationships (âConey Island,â âchampagne problems,â âhappiness,â ââtis the damn seasonâ), as well as grief (âMarjorie,â âevermoreâ). Even some of the happy songs have uncertainty in them: in âwillowâ sheâs begging for him to take her lead, like sheâs still trying to decipher him and ask him to commit; in âcowboy like me,â still a beautiful love song, sheâs thinking, âthis wasnât supposed to work and we were supposed to bail on each other but we fell in love insteadâ; âevermoreâ is about the depths of severe depression (and more) with the love story being the one saving grace in her darkest hour. And itâs also notable that after all the âfictionâ writing, shortly after this album she writes âRenegadeâ where sheâs telling the subject: Iâm ready to start the next phase of our life now, why arenât you? Is it me you donât want after all? Itâs like thereâs something telling her that this stall might not just be a stall.
Midnights is a jumble (in a good, but in hindsight, also sad way) with the âsleepless nightsâ concept, but it seems pretty clear now that the themes and events and relationships she was revisiting tied into a lot of what she was feeling in her present life. I wrote the cliff notes version awhile back, but sheâs questioning so much of her life thatâs reflected in past events and relationships. Am I actually always the problem? How did we lose sight of each other and what we had? We only seem to work when we block out everyone and everything else. Can we ever go back to when things were good? Why are you neglecting me? I once thought I was going to lose everything but you saved me in the nick of time, can that happen again? I chased my career, but did I give up my chance at having a family in the process? Nobody knows what I really suffer from behind closed doors and Iâm all alone.
And so on, which in retrospect now that we have TTPD, is very much what she was grappling with in private while writing and releasing the album. The inspiration behind the songs may have been different events and muses, but regardless of their origins they all end up feeling too familiar, like she's seen this film before (ahem). Weâre seeing her view of commitment change too, or rather how she writes about it: sheâs not making the outright declarations of it like on Lover, or even the implied ones on folklore, nor is she talking of the dark side of it like evermore. For the most part itâs a return to the early days of some relationships, before things got hard, or the end of them when there was nothing left, and also pushing away the discussion of it altogether by the outside world. âSweet Nothingâ is a sweet slice of life, but even at that, itâs the peace of the home in conflict with the pressure of the outside world. Now that we have âYouâre Losing Me,â which was written at the same time as the rest of the album, we can probably deduce that she was going back to the start because something happened that made her doubt the future.
THE SETUP
So much of Midnights directly ties into TTPD, and I said in the post I linked that itâs like Midnights is asking the questions that TTPD answers. But thereâs one song in particular on Midnights that sticks out to me as being key in the broadest sense to understanding the state of mind that led to the events of TTPD, and thatâs âBigger Than The Whole Sky,â because the way it expresses grief is reflected in the theme of mourning a life built and the dreams along with it that are never realized in TTPD. There are several instances in TTPD that are basically variations of: âevery single thing to come has turned into ashes,â and thatâs what makes her snap, and leaves her vulnerable to someone who promises her those things when sheâs bereaved at losing them in the first place. (In other words: âthe deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling.â) The song tells a story about how that loss of hope colours oneâs entire mindset, and in some ways is a bridge to TTPD to understand what such a low point feels like.
I think that that grief, and most importantly losing hope for an imagined future in its wake, is fundamental to understanding TTPD on so many levels: both the decline with one partner that kept her hanging on then led her such a dark path, and why she fell for the conman's apparent bullshitting because it offered an express pass to what she was losing with her partner. And I also feel like it plays a part into the ruminating sheâs doing all over Midnights, trying to make sense of where she finds herself when sheâs writing the album, which directly leads to âYouâre Losing Me.â Loss permeates so many of the stories on Midnights: of lovers, of innocence, of youth, of faith, of control, of lifeâs work, etc. âBTTWSâ is just one of the ways in which it is expressed so fully, capturing that deep depression and subsequent extinction of faith in something that once felt assured and very much wanted. (Which is also mentioned in her writing process in the âDepressionâ playlist on Apple Music.)
If you understand why that feeling of loss in general across so many parts of life is so important to Midnights, then it illuminates so much about the ânarrativeâ in TTPD too. If on Midnights sheâs wrestling with the seeds of grief and loss (on multiple fronts), TTPD is her reckoning with it in its full form. âSo Long, Londonâ is the song that is the most explicit about it: How much sad did you think I had in me? How much tragedy? Just how low did you think Iâd go before Iâd have to go be free? You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. Itâs the sequel to âYouâre Losing Me.â Itâs, the air is thick with loss and indecision, I know my pain is such an imposition, Iâm getting tired even for a phoenix, all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, Iâve got nothing left to believe unless youâre choosing me, my heart wonât start anymore, but from the other side of the break.
This is highly speculative, but if you follow the thread about the topic and the relationship as told from Rep through TTPD, in broad strokes it goes: young love with a serious connection (Rep) -> growing up and making life plans (Lover) -> something happens that delays those plans or makes them grind to a halt (folklore) -> serious doubts arise and cause a loss of faith in their future (evermore) -> struggling with the loss of that future and trying to make sense of the problems in a last ditch attempt to save the relationship (Midnights) -> fallout from that grief after the blowup of the relationship (TTPD). Understanding that progression of events (through the music) explains not only the storytelling side of TTPD (e.g. the jump from the partner to the conman) but also how the experiences/muses blend in the music, and how the music that on the surface is about the short-term relationship is really driven by the destruction of the long-term one.
Following the music, itâs IMO implied that Taylor (the narrator) was holding out for marriage and family with her partner, for years, and it seems like it was at one point a shared dream until something happened to pump the brakes, and seemingly on her partnerâs end. And extrapolating further, given how the sorrow expressed in former albums bleeds into TTPD, it sounds like a plan that had been concrete in some form before it had fallen apart, and losing something that once felt so tangible is what drives her in her grief to find any kind of respite from the pain. Which is why the situation with the conman becomes so appealing as the one with the partner splinters further and further.
(If everything youâve once touched is sick with sadness and you donât want to be sad anymore, what are you left to do?)
THE STORY
So (one part of) the story kind of sounds like this from the standard album: the relationship with her partner as well as his mental health slowly deteriorate and he withdraws emotionally (âLondon,â âFresh Out The Slammerâ) and physically (again, âLondon,â and âGuilty As Sin?â) and takes his resentment out on her (âLondonâ and arguably âMy Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toysâ even though I don't want to get into muse speculation here). As she sinks deeper into her own depression as a result, the weight of the failing relationship starts feeling like a cageâ or a noose (âLondon,â âGuiltyâ), but coming to terms with the loss of their life together and the future theyâd dreamed of was killing her (again, âLondon,â but also âI Can Do It With A Broken Heartâ).
Enter the conman who she reconnects with at the very point where this is coming to a head (knowing that IRL she reconnected with him around the time Midnights was being worked on) , and if you read between the lines, she confides some deeply personal things to him (âDown Badâ and âhostile takes oversâ/âencounters closer and closer,â âSmallest Manâ and the entire sleeper cell spy imagery which is one of my favourite things and I could write a whole essay about the meaning of it, âlomlâ and âA con man sells a fool a get-love-quick schemeâ). Then after sheâs confided these secrets to him, he insinuates himself back into her life (âGuilty,â âDown Bad,â âSmallest Manâ) and sells her a dream that HE can give her all these things she hopes for (again, âDown Bad,â âSmallest Man,â âloml,â song âTTPD,â âBroken Heartâ).
But the thing is, he only knows these are the things she wants because sheâs revealed it to him, and presumably, told him that was what she was losing by staying with her partner. And instead of the normal response of, âthat is really sad that your partner is not supporting you and you deserve to be treated better,â to a friend in growing distress, it seems like it was, âwell I can give you all those things!!!! Right now!!!! Trust me!!!!â And worked on her until she believed it, and jumped at the chance at a precarious time in her life. And one thing I want to underscore is: Taylor has agency in the situation always, itâs not like sheâs been kidnapped and brainwashed. (In fact, she implores on songs like âBut Daddyâ that SHE is in charge of her own choices, good or bad.) She chose to rekindle the friendship and then relationship, and she chose to eventually leave her long term relationship for another man, and she reiterates on the album that she owns this all. But itâs also: nothing exists in a vacuum, and she makes choices based on emotions and information she has at the time, which is why it gives so much whiplash.
THE ALBUM
When you look at it as, the situation with the conman only happens because of what happened with the partner first and that the appeal of the conman and the fantasy he sells her is a direct reaction to that, it makes the âswirlinessâ of the music make so much more sense. And for much of it, even many of the âconmanâ songs on the surface are really âpartnerâ songs underneath.
Fortnight
A suburban gothic allegory about a broken marriage with a distant husband with a wandering eye, which makes the rekindled romance with the neighbor so appealing. Sheâs miserable caged in her stifling house because sheâs been abandoned by her spouse, so the reappearance of this past love reignites the passion thatâs dead at home.
TTPD
âSo tell me, who else is gonna know me?â âI chose this cyclone with you.â Iâm gonna kill myself if you ever leave. Everyone knows weâre crazy. Sheâs laying it out there that sheâs already in a dangerous state of mind, and sheâs actively putting herself in more danger by pursuing the conman. âAt dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and thatâs the closest Iâve come to my heart exploding,â spells this whole thing out so clearly: whether itâs an actual event (likely) or a metaphor for the promise he makes to her, the reason why it makes her heart explode is because itâs the thing sheâs been waiting for forever with no movement, and here this person comes in and slips it on her finger in an instant like itâs nothing. (And eventually, as weâll come to know, it is absolutely nothing to him.) You mean it could have been this easy this whole time?! (Well, no. Not until a certain other suitor makes his appearance later.) It feels like sheâs finally getting everything she wanted in the blink of an eye! How lucky! How convenient! What was that about the get-love-quick scheme you say? (Unsaid: the reason why this feels so urgent is because thereâs a sense that time is running out in so many aspects of her life and not just the obvious. Which reappears later on.)
Down Bad
âDid you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?â sets the scene for this euphoric experience in the moment that starts to feel violating once the dust settles (which is then followed up in âSmallest Manâ and the spy mission on her). The bridge spells out how he weaselled his way into her life, preyed upon (intentionally or not) her emotional state, sold her a dream and then vanished, without the benefit of hindsight yet we see later in the album.
The alien abduction metaphor is pretty brilliant, because it shows both how she was desperate to escape the place she found herself in, and how much it screwed her brain to then be left stranded when the affair was over. â[I loved your] hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer,â is so evocative because it details how the situation came to be: his overtures under the guise of friendship blurred lines until he made her an offer that she eventually couldnât refuse (hostile takeovers) as he infiltrated her life more and more intimately. The sad thing is that the song has parallels to how her relationship with the partner started too in earlier albums, in that they ran away to live in their own bubble (or planet) only for him to metaphorically abandon her as the years went on. (Oven, meet microwave.)
My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys
Being continually emotionally broken down by a person who knows heâs hurting you but still acts the way he does. (The original voice memo version makes this even clearer and itâs rather heartbreaking.) âHe saw forever so he smashed it up,â speaks to the loss of a future the person became scared of, and the original lyrics (âhe saw forever so he blew it upâ) somehow cut even deeper to me because it feels so much more intentional.
Also in the original version, âhe was my best friend and that was the worst part,â also speaks not only to the loss of an entire partnership in the wake of this hurt, but also to the feelings of betrayal that the person you trust so deeply has the ability to hurt you in this way too, and how itâs a one-two punch of not only losing the relationship but also your closest confidant. (Itâs like the sequel to âRenegadeâ and the missiles firing to me.) Again, there are shades of both/many situations in the song, pointing to an unfortunate pattern in some ways. The situation in âMy Boyâ is part of why she was so low, and why the âget love quick schemeâ was so appealing later on. And it dovetails nicely intoâŚ
So Long, London
The most explicitly âpartnerâ song that puts a coda on âYouâre Losing Me,â and is Track 5 because itâs the emotional underpinning of how she got to where she was, and drives the events of the rest of the album. It spells everything out: He withdrew, she tried to fix it for both of them, eventually even that stopped working, he was oblivious to or minimized how badly she was suffering and his (in)actions couldnât reassure her, he wouldnât move forward on their future plans and stewed in his own struggles, she was spiralling out of control trying to hang on and ultimately felt like she was going to die if she didnât leave.
But Daddy I Love Him
Like a direct reaction to âSo Long, Londonâ in that she breaks free from the death of one relationship and throws herself with reckless abandon to the next, fuck the haters. How dare you judge me, when the relationship you think I should have stayed in was killing me? (Dutiful daughter all the plans were laid. All you want is gray for me.) Fuck all of you, Iâm going to choose whoever I want! (So what if I have a baby with HIM, huh?! I tried doing it the proper way and look where that got me so now we're back to square one) Itâs again her imagining how wonderful and freeing this âwild boyâ is going to be for her, and how wrong sheâll prove everyone. THIS TIME she definitely got it right. So what if she has to run away! So what if she scandalizes the whole town! They donât know what she really wants or needs anyway! Sheâs the only one of her (hee-hee-hee) and sheâs the only who gets to decides how this goes. (Because: she longs for control in a situation sheâll eventually realize she has little of it in, which weâll find out is a recurring theme in her life.)
Fresh Out The Slammer
Also spells out what happened with the partner in the first verse and the pre-choruses, which is what makes the conman so appealing as the imagined jailbreak. The bitter loneliness vs. the sultry passion she builds up in her head as she awaits her release from prison is key to understanding the two sides of the story in the album. Thereâs this whole outlaw imagery (which is also carried through in âI Can Fix Himâ), but itâs contrasted in the end with her and her reunited lover sitting on park swings like children with âimaginary ringsâ â because âAin't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake.â Whatâs at stake is lasting love and the promises that come with it (marriage/family) that are precious and time-sensitive. The imaginary rings are both a nod to the youthful dreams of her and her new/old lover, but also has a double meaning to me because those promises arenât built on anything together; they're made up, intangible. (Theyâre no more concrete than the plans that went up in smoke with the partner.) Like with most of the conman situation, itâs all a fantasy in her head that has yet to happen, and as we find out later in the album, reality ends up leaving much to be desired.
Florida!!!
Broadly speaking, itâs running away from your problems and wanting to disappear from your life. (But again: the life sheâs disappearing from is the cheating husband she may or may not be feeding to the swamp-- another miserable marriage.) What kind of flies under the radar though is the âI donât want to exist,â line, which points to her dire state of mind that led her to fleeing to that metaphorical timeshare down in Destin. In many ways about cheating death.
Guilty As Sin
Yes itâs the âmasturbation song,â but again the nuance is that sheâs left to pleasure herself because her partner has abandoned her emotionally and even physically, i.e. âmy boredomâs bone deep.â To be blunt: they arenât even intimate anymore, so she starts fantasizing about the guy she used to have chemistry with whoâs reentered her life and is making moves on her. And realizing that sheâs now finding release in another man (albeit imaginary) breaks her even as it reinvigorates her because she finally understands that the relationship sheâs in is effectively dead. (âAm I allowed to cry?â)
Whoâs Afraid of Little Old Me
This isnât about relationships, but about society and its reaction to them in a general sense. But again, sheâs left to stew in all this anger and hurt as sheâs been abandoned at home, then abandoned by public opinion, and the public attack on her is part of the origin as well as the end of that story. The trauma inflicted upon her detailed in the song is the reason why she felt trapped in the first place, which led to the decisions sheâs made and habits sheâs leaned on ever since.
I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)
This is one of the few songs that is the most completely conman-coded, and shows when the delusion finally breaks at the end of the song. She spends the whole song being like, âno really, I alone can make him better! Youâll see! I know heâs gross, but heâs mine! Itâll be fine I swear! You donât know anything! Uuuuuum hmm wait actually what the fuckââ
Loml
Oof. THE song. Again the surface reading is about the âconmanâ who comes in and sells her the lie, but the pain is because all the dreams she writes about are HER dreams and implied that they were the dreams she built with her partner that the conman sold back to her. I could do a deeper dive on this but most of the song is applicable to both relationships, which not only shows the âswirlinessâ of her writing, but also how they both ultimately did the same thing to her in different shades.
The bridge and the last chorus are kind of fundamental to understanding it all, and her ending it with âyouâre the loss of my lifeâ is about, among other things, how falling for this trap blew up the life she built and dreamed of for good. (I could talk about this one forever.) âYou shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradlesâ to âOur field of dreams engulfed in fireâ is a hell of a line and progression, and again, indicative of what the real driving force behind the whole album is. The shit-talking is because he took her dreams (of marriage and children) and hyped it back up to her tenfold whether in a moment of his own delusion or for more nefarious reasons â much like how the man prior kept promising these things but never followed through, which left her vulnerable to someone who appeared to offer them enthusiastically. The field of dreams isnât just the one with the conman, itâs the one with the longterm relationship sheâd built the dream with in the first place, because the conmanâs actions are part of the reason the LTR went up in smoke. (Not the reason for the rift, but the consequence of the final break.) And THAT is why itâs the loss of her life, so completely.
When she says âI wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,â IMO itâs not just the fake future that the conman lures her into, but also (and perhaps mainly) the once-real one she had with her partner and the loss of which that made her susceptible to falling for the con in the first place. Thereâs honestly so much between the lines in this song that covers every theme and speaks to the grief of seeing the life she imagined slip away, slowly by the first man then annihilated by the second.
I Can Do It With a Broken Heart
The juxtaposition of âHe said heâd love me all his life, but that life was too shortâ and âHe said heâd love me for all time, but that time was quite shortâ sums it up to me (and parallels âlomlâ), because they are two different situations, but they cut her just the same. In the first, âthat lifeâ IMO was the life theyâd built with the dreams that went along with it and it was too short because he never followed through, and in the second, the âtimeâ was quite short because it was the frenzy of the whirlwind romance that fizzled as quickly as it began. The life that was too short led to the time that was quite short.
The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived
This is definitely THE conman song. The rage, the shame, the violation, itâs all in there. But the key to it is the bridge and the espionage imagery woven through it. A honeypot scheme is when spies target a mark and seduce them to gain their trust and their privileged information for their homeland. So her likening him to a sleeper cell spy who set her up just to mine her deepest secrets and use them against her is a heavy, loaded statement. And implied: that valuable information she unknowingly held were her longings of marriage and family (the aforementioned shit-talking about rings and cradles she never got to have), and more importantly, those dreams preceded him reentering her life and then beginning his mission on her.
The insinuation then is: she confesses these are her deepest wishes which are now seemingly unattainable in her current situation (e.g. with her partner) -> he convinces her HE will give them to her and make the dreams she pines for come true -> she falls for him and blows up her life to make it happen -> he gets what he wants (thrill of the chase/sex/the idea of her/whatever his intent was) -> he abandons her when he gets what he wants, or rather it isnât what he wants or can handle -> sheâs left a) all alone b) with dreams unfulfilled c) with no answers d) feeling used at having her most sacred wishes used against her.
Again, the song is unquestionably about the way the conman absolutely destroyed her, but he was able to do that because there was this thing she wanted more than anything, that was dying in her previous relationship, that he was able to prey upon to seduce her, then discarded her and her dreams as soon as it was inconvenient for him while absolutely hollowing her inside out. (And again: the devastating thing is that this also applies to other relationships sheâs written about, in different ways.)
The Alchemy
Not about either the partner or the conman directly, but it (loosely) touches on her finding herself after the whole oven-to-microwave experience and opening herself up to life and love again. #GoodForHer
Clara Bow
This isnât about the romantic relationships on the surface, but it is about how damaging the entertainment industry and public life are on women, and how women are only valued for their beauty as commodities until they can be discarded and destroyed in the process. Which I think plays into the circumstances that led her to make the decisions that she did years ago, and why she makes the ones she does now. (But also, being valued for physical traits and appeal for the male gaze brings us toâŚ)
The Manuscript
The âoriginal sinâ that kicks off all of this. Again, at first light this isnât about the partner or the conman, but the person it is about is the reason why she has made all the decisions she has ever since in relationships (and thatâs Mr. Plaid Shirt Days from âAll Too Wellâ). The realization that her first serious adult relationship is what cemented these patterns, and this view of herself and her worthiness in relationships, is profoundly sad. An older man who valued her for being so mature for her age and implying that the mature activities ahem associated with that were the performance benchmarks in her ability to carry a relationship, only to leave her, was earth shattering. She placed her faith in this person, but then the way he treated her changed her view of love and of herself.
She took his innuendo about âpushing strollersâ as a sign of potential commitment, whereas he ultimately meant it as foreplay, and she was too young and naive to know the difference. So not only did she learn from that that this man (and men) didnât view commitment and family the way she did and that it was something to be toyed with, but she also learned that her value to them among other things was sex. Imagine being an idealistic 20 year old and your boyfriend ten years your senior tells you, âif the sex is anywhere near as good as our dates have been, weâre going to be making babies before you know it,â (e.g. this is relationship is serious) and then he dumps you: does that imply that the sex was not in fact that good? (E.g. that youâre not worthy after all?)
No, obviously from this side of life, itâs because he was a commitment-phobic playboy, even if he did love her, but she couldnât have known that at 20 and instead internalized that shame. But, it did send her on a path of how she approached sex and love and relationships for over a decade afterwards. And her coming to the realization that that first act of (perhaps unintentional) manipulation is what informed her actions thereafter helped her break the pattern. Her worth to men is not just sex, she has value and her hopes and dreams have value, she doesnât have to change into a different person to please anyone, because if that is what they want, they wonât ever want her anyway.
Itâs been described here on Tumblr by people more eloquent and astute than I as a song that encapsulates the album as this: one did it slow (partner), one did it fast (conman), and one did it first (first love)â and that is haunting. After years of men minimizing her dreams and desires, if not outright using them against her, sheâs finally at the point where she can let it all go and move on for good. (Thereâs a whole other tangent about consent and shame and manipulation, but thatâs an entirely different kind of discussion. But it is so devastatingly contrasted with âyou said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die.â)
THE SUMMATION
This is just my interpretation of it, but in going through the standard album, it feels pretty clear how cohesive the album is about a story of love and loss and grief, then reckoning with what caused it all in the first place that set a person on this path. Itâs a formative experience at a young age that was traumatic and led to certain coping mechanisms and a shaping of oneâs self-perception, as well as the reaction to external pressures that try to dictate behaviours and influence how one feels one deserves out of love which makes it harder to know when one absolutely deserves more and better. And leaves one struggling to cope with loss when there isnât anything else to hold onto. Then in light of oneâs life blowing up, learning to find oneself in the aftermath all over again.
On another tangent that is somewhat related to the theme of loss, the way she writes about the two main muses on the standard album also ties into how the situations converged to create absolute carnage on her emotional and mental well-being. With one situation, sheâs talking about a concrete life that crumbles under the weight of their struggles; with the other, the entire thing is a fantasy that she builds up in her head, and when it comes to fruition it falls far, far short.
If you look at the âmicrowaveâ (conman) relationship, you realize that almost everything she writes about it happens before it actually becomes reality, and itâs mostly her imagining how great itâll be, but with few exceptions, when she writes about what actually occurred, it doesnât even come close to living up to her expectations. âFortnightâ is an imagined future where she escapes to Florida and his touch finally starts her stalled engine (ahem). âTTPDâ is perhaps the most positive retelling of their time together, but even that implies he was better off stoned and when he sobered up he succumbed to his demons all over again, and more importantly she conveys how she also is in extreme distress, barely concealed by the veneer of being infatuated with him. (E.g. saying to that sheâll kill herself if he ever leaves her â the implication is that she is absolutely serious about it when she âfelt seen.â) And that the warning bells are going off in her head, but she feels like this person is the only one she can be with (because theyâre equally fucked up and the chaos he brings into her life makes her feel alive when she felt so close to death).
âDown Badâ is the most explicit about being in love, but sheâs also left completely confused and disoriented by him disappearing, wondering if any of it was real and the seeds of violation creep into her consciousness (âdid you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?â âWaking up in blood.â). âBut Daddyâ is her imagining she can tell everyone to fuck off for telling her what to do with her life. âFresh Out The Slammerâ is her fantasizing about this man while feeling trapped in her relationship â but never in the song is she actually reunited with him; sheâs using him as the projection of all the things sheâll make right after being wronged by her partner. âGuilty As Sin?â Is very obviously about her fantasizing about sleeping with him, but again itâs such a minefield for her because it hasnât happened yet; theyâve only just reconnected. âI Can Fix Himâ is the only song other than âTTPDâ that shows them actually together, and itâs the one where she keeps saying, essentially, âI know heâs gross but I can rehabilitate him into an upstanding person, trust me,â until the mic drop at the end of the song where it finally hits her that no, she canât, because this is who he is, not the person sheâs built him up to be.
âLomlâ is when it all comes crashing down, and the song emphasizes everything he did and told her, e.g. that sheâs the love of his life, but she doesnât return the sentiment in the song about their time together. Because now that itâs past tense, she knows it wasnât actually love. (And says as much in the album epilogue poem.) âBroken Heartâ is her reeling in the aftermath, but again, itâs âhe said,â not âI loved.â And then thereâs âThe Smallest Man,â where she eviscerates him: he also pursued an idea of her but didnât care much for the real her in front of him (who else is gonna know me?), he love bombed her only to hurt her (crushing her dreams), he was constantly stoned (and not just in the funny munchies kind of way), and he wasnât even a good lover (despite the fantasy sheâd created before). That last point is especially striking because she spent albums singing about the importance of and pleasure in (sexual) intimacy in the relationship with her partner (sometimes to both their own detriment) and how it was at times the only way they could connect, but in this case, the idea she hyped up and acted on in her head about this lover never panned out in practice. She spells it out in the epilogue: it wasnât a love affair, it was a mutual manic phase.
In contrast, thereâs a lot more tangible action in the âovenâ (partner) parts of the album, showing how hard she tried to make the relationship work in real life instead of just in her head. All of âSo Long, Londonâ is her detailing how she tried to break through to him and support him, even when he rejected it and pushed her away, thinking she could carry them both until they ultimately sank, but she did it because she âloved this place for so long.â (The place? Not just the city, but the home and perhaps most importantly, him.) In âSlammerâ she stayed with him even as things disintegrated for âone hour of sunshine.â (E.g. holding onto the rarer good times even as they were fewer and further between, hoping things would eventually turn around.) And like in âLondon,â she held on despite people in her life pleading with her that it was hurting her. (Which is also echoed in âSlammer.â) In âGuiltyâ her boredom is âbone deepâ because the passion that once drove their relationship (and papered over their problems) has finally gone out too, so thereâs nothing left to hold onto, leading to her fantasizing about the new suitor, which makes her realize her relationship has passed the point of no return. âLomlâ is about the conman on the surface, but the undercurrent of all the things she says about him is that he was co-opting the dreams that she was clinging onto for dear life in the previous relationship, which is why the con is so painful; the field of dreams he sets ablaze isnât just the fake painting he sold to her, but the original artifact (her life with her partner) too.
All the physical and emotional labour she puts into the relationship with her partner ends up reflected in the fantasizing she does in the one with the conman, which is why it is so confusing in the moment and so lethal when he leaves her without any answers. She wants to get married and start a family with her partner which keeps getting stalled; the conman mock-proposes which makes her think heâs immediately serious (âTTPD,â âlomlâ). She feels caged by having to hide with her partner and shrink herself; the conman promises heâll stand by her side publicly and let her shine (âSmallest Manâ). She sinks into a deep depression in her loneliness as the relationship with her partner careens off a cliff; the conman convinces her theyâre meant for each other in a them-against-the-world way (âDown Badâ). The intimacy (in all senses of the word) in her relationship with her partner fizzles; the conman stokes the fire by sending her secret messages and reigniting passion (âGuiltyâ). She spent years trying to help her partner to no avail; the conman makes her think she has the power to reform him (âlomlâ). She feels misunderstood by her partner; the conman acts like heâs the (only) one who truly gets her (âTTPD,â âlomlâ).
In short: thereâs nothing that the conman does or says that isnât a direct response to what her partner did first, and itâs even worse because the conman knew how much her partnerâs actions hurt her and he used that privileged information to paint a picture of what he could give her, but in doing so in some ways aimed at her heart with even deadlier accuracy. (Iâve likened it to him borrowing someone elseâs life for his own joyride, until he crashes the rental car and flees the scene.) Itâs why in the aftermath, the difference in emotions are so different: she feels nothing but rage and violation towards the conman for getting in her head and using her, whereas her feelings towards her partner are more complicated. Thereâs anger (at her lost youth and being taken for granted), but thereâs also sorrow (at their lost life and future), disappointment (that he never could step up the way heâd promised or sheâd needed), even compassion (towards his struggles) and a tiny measure of appreciation (for the good times they did share).
When you look at the bigger picture, the story the album paints is just so painfully normal. You have two people (Taylor and her partner) who once loved each other deeply, and despite warning signs early on telling them they have fundamentally different needs and ways of living their lives they fight like hell to make it work (the epilogue) until those warning signs become grenades that destroy their home (âMy Boy,â âLondon,â âSlammer,â arguably âlomlâ). Having already been through at least one rough patch/break/breakup that she felt almost destroyed her (harkening back to Midnights on âYouâre Losing Me,â âThe Great Warâ and âHits Differentâ), the final and fatal downward spiral of the relationship (âYLM,â âLondonâ) and the grief over losing that future sends her into a tailspin, just at the time where a flame from the past (the conman) reenters her life and tells her all the things sheâs been longing to hear and feel (âTTPD,â âDown Bad,â âGuilty,â âlomlâ) and, crucially, missing from the relationship that was once her entire life.
So in her panic, she falls prey to the (empty) promises of the past lover (âloml,â âSmallest Manâ) and decides heâs actually what will save her from the free fall, because the alternative (that she will end up in a situation she doesnât think she can survive) is too painful to bear. When she finally acts on these circumstances (leaves her partner/runs to the conman), she snaps, acting on pure emotion and adrenaline (âBut Daddyâ), but before she knows it, the new lover abandons her, and sheâs left to reckon with the fallout of the episode and process everything that has happened (âDown Bad,â âlomlâ) â with the conman, with her partner, with the choices made in her adult life personally and professionally which leads her back to the moment she feels set her down that road at the start.
The TL;DR of this unintentionally long essay is that the reason the conman affair was so serious was precisely because it was meant to fulfill the promise of what was her life with her partner. To me, a large part of the story is that she projected that life onto the conman (or he projected her life back to her for his own purposes) because she wasnât ready to deal with that massive grief and the life raft he offered felt like the only alternative to an even darker end. Whether the conman actually believed what he told her, or he went along with it or encouraged it because it served his purpose, weâll never know, just like weâll never know the finer details of what went on (nor should we). But no matter what, the album is just an extreme deep dive into all the ways grief can consume us, and whether itâs a long, drawn-out death or a sudden, inexplicable one, it can turn a personâs life into such a trainwreck that they act in ways unfathomable to even them, let alone the people around them. It can also unleash repressed trauma and mental illness that can crater your sense of self. And when those situations are compounded? It makes for a nearly impossible type of breakdown to unpack. (Which is why you might need a 31 song album to process it.)
#What if i told you Iâm back lol#Time for me to finally just post the thing after itâs been sitting in my drafts for so long so I can rid myself of it lol#Writing letters addressed to the fire#the tortured poets department#Consider this a treat before Eras comes back for its swan song leg idk#Would you believe that as long as this is#i deleted quite a few chunks of it from the original draft i sent to a friend(s) in the interest of ~propriety~#Because they were a little too rambly and umâ ~speculative~/personal/etc and we are flying too close to the sun#And i tried to be as tactful and more or less stick to things we can point to in the music and such#So hope people catch my drift lmao but also iykyk i guess#I have so many other themes I want to talk about but I never have any time#I have so much more i want to say and yet#wavesoutbeingtossed: The Anthology#Also if things get weird i will turn off reblogs/delete the post tbd#This is not an invitation to get into muse ranting or debate in my inbox and I ask that you please respect my boundaries :)#Midnights#lover#folklore#evermore
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the buddy-buddy act ends now
#ritsu: i am a horrible person and i hate you this is my evil arc#shigeo: *hugs his hurting little brother*#ritsu: *breaks into tears* not fair#GDHEHXGSGDH god God i love ritsu okay#i love the kageyama brothers they mean everything#and ritsu- loving ritsu has just been SO interesting and enlightening even these past months#I'm squatting in his brain#his tendency to catastrophize#his powerful sense of self-importance that coexists with brutal self criticism#his prickly aloof nature and enormous capacity for empathy that he consciously extends to very few#he's a judgy b-tch but only in his head#people adore him but he's not interested#he's Driven by fear and he's brave to the point of lunacy#the LEVELS of gaslighting he did on himself to convert that fear into adoration#protectiveness#anything#Anything else that makes sense#the way he snapped under the weight So Fast when presented with an out eager to test what kind of wicked creature he is under the layers of#paint and consolation prizes#his high morals that he's itching to see crumbled#his 'I've obtained loss' that speaks to me. his 'I just wanted to see what its like being a fool'#his 'i realised what i really wanted: to learn that devotion towards living a fun life and shedding sweat and tears and blood for it.'#g a h#kageyama ritsu#ritsu kageyama#mp100#mob psycho 100#mob psycho 100 fanart#kageyama brothers#this piece fought me every step of the way Jeeesussss but i love it. it was very experimental in the direction i want to keep exploring
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i love you second hand books that have various annotations from previous owners
#so interesting to see what kind of things people like to annotate#have a frankenstein copy that a friend gave me a couple years ago bc she ended up w two and she got it secondhand and there are a few#different handwritings :)))#diary
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MDZS Disco Elysium AU part 2 - Psyche Skills
Part 1 - Part 3
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#disco elysium#MDZS disco elysium au#jiang cheng#jiang yanli#yu ziyuan#While it's more in vogue to draw a character's skill roster tailored to them -#One of the more subtle details I love in DE is how some of the skill portraits parallel character portraits of people hbd associates with.#Theres somethine rather poetic to be said about how other people shape out thoughts and sometimes act as a 'voice' in our head.#How we are in part a collection of impressions other people left behind on us.#I am a huge Skillhead (Those are my friends! My party members! They love me! They have their own agendas and alliances!)#so of course a healthy portion of this AU is dedicated to them <3#the Int skills go basically unchanged from DE. Psy as well (with changes to a few quirks in voice).#Fys skills though...well...wwx is in a different body! Those voices belong to Someone Else.#Esp electrochem (MXY in this AU also partied to near death. WWX is withdrawing and craving substances he's never even heard of before)#While I personally don't fully subscribe to Volition Jean I *do* see Volition Jiang Cheng. The voice of your Not Brother keeping you afloat#All three of these parallels make me unbelievably sad. They are also both purple. Art is like that sometimes.#Empathy Jiang Yanli...oh man do I have a lot of thoughts about her. Disco fans Who Know....you can probably see what I'm cooking.#Authority is a really interesting skill in DE because *yes* its about power and intimidation - but it's also about finesse and respect#Titus Hardie and YZY both abuse *and* finesse how they establish their authority - in a way that leaves quite an impression.#2 more mdzs disco posts that I *need* to create and then I'm off to working on raffles <3
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I see so so many videos and comments and discussion from people including artists expressing grievance and cringing in one way or another at modern and performance art, and all I can think is damn. That sort of art is really goddamn effective when it gets this much publicity and attention from people trying to cope because it gets under their skin so easily and not realizing the irony
At this point there's no modern or performance art I don't respect (other than ones that cause harm to animals đ) just for being able to so effortlessly get reactions out of people. Like the "who's afraid of yellow, red and blue" paintings that to most people look like solid boring colors, 'how in the world is that art?' and all that, and yet, fittingly for its name, it gets vandalized (and is also impossible to restore because no one can replicate the intricate technique of the author). Some things never change. Godspeed modern and performance artists
#I used to not get much of modern or performance art and there's still a lot I dont but with each video I see dissing it I love it more#I never stop thinking about this one yt short of some guy going âthis is art?? wouldnt you want some REAL art?â#and then they show off their dem0n slayer standees or something lmao. girl. honestly effective advertising though but makes me laugh#There is so much fucking awesome and interesting modern and performance art out there that really does commentate on the world effectively#when this is how people react by default then of COURSE it does. It's so easy to get a strong reaction#like the one performance art piece of the woman who just stood there and laid out a bunch of tools for people to use with no instruction#and gradually people got more brave and abused the hell out of her. only a few used the tools to do anything nice but still she stood there#the only performance art that everyone should disapprove of is the one that harms animals#two women I think made this piece that was a curtain made out of small live animals and crustaceans. that shit can go#and yet every video trying to disapprove of modern art showcases pieces that look interesting to me and not that#like its so easy to point at that and go âguys this is not art!â like yeah. it isnt. but only that#blabber
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kabumisu doodles (´â˝ď˝)
#i tried typing text for the last comic but decided not to bother here#instead i spent a few hours lettering everything badly myself and hurt my wrist#anyway. love these two#kabumisu#kabru#mithrun#dunmeshi#delicious in dungeon#kabru's social butterfly-ness is so interesting to me...#i went on a huge ramble in the tags here before deleting it all LOL#um tl;dr. i think he's unique and i love that he loves people. sometimes he takes advantage of this/has ulterior motives but#it's refreshing to see a character who's genuinely interested in others' lives mostly bc that's the kind of person he is!#naturally inquisitive and extroverted đ brings him joy
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there are many things about hazel's povs that have an intensely de-racialized vibe to them (read: divorced from the black girl experience) but I think any black person will tell you that the most obvious sign is the complete lack of attention paid to her hair
like firstly:
she's from the 1930s her hair was definitely getting permed and straightened (it was not acceptable to just wear your natural hair out back then. optics + cultural assimilation/you'll be hard pressed to find photos of black american girls with unstraightened hair in that time period unless they're from like..... harlem)
I do believe that marie was straightening it for her For A Time but then she became more neglectful and stopped so hazel had to do it herself. I'm almost positive that hazel wouldn't have even been permitted to set foot in her school building without straightening it because that's just how much of an expectation it was
ok she comes back from the dead. what's she doing to her hair now bc it's not just gonna be cutesy effortless curls falling over her shoulder no matter what the length is
how does she feel about living in a time period where natural black hair is more accepted (read: more, absolutely not fully)
there are no black people around her At All. in fact she's around a lot of white people on the argo (+nico) so that would probably be giving her some intense feelings of double consciousness (look this term up if you don't know what it means) and that would inform how she feels about her hair
theoretically she ought to be wearing her hair in braids for simplicity's sake but I think it's more likely that she would cling to what she knows (perming/straightening) because it's not easy for a 14 year old girl (PSA hazel is 14.5 in hoo not 13 btw đ) to go from assimilating to deeply-ingrained white hair beauty standards to just proudly wearing a distinctly black hairstyle all by herself
mind you black women and girls can do whatever they want with their hair and straightening/perming it does not always/have to come from a place of self-hatred or whatever but in this particular case back then straightening one's hair was political And a survival tactic. it was as normal as brushing your teeth. it was enforced through dominant cultural messagings about the Absolute Necessity of conforming to white conventions of beauty. if you don't understand then think of it similarly to how you'd think of 1930s women needing to be perpetually dolled up and modestly dressed in order to be considered "good women" and anyways I'm just saying that this would be a lot to unpack for a 14 year old girl so hazel's probably just continuing to do this impractical thing (straightening her hair all the time) like 60% out of habit and 20% out of shame and 20% she doesn't know what else to do
something something about a missed potential character arc regarding all of this and in general there's so little mind paid to race in hazel's povs which is just ridiculous to me because a black girl from the jim crow era should have at least a few feelings about where she fits into modern society even if that society is camp jupiter. rick demonstrates his capacity to talk about how his characters feel about their race most notably in the kane chronicles so I don't think was too much to ask for. see this quote from an early son of neptune chapter:
^ like....... hazel's feelings of out-of-place-ness are There in the text and important to take note of when understanding her character (note that she's been there for like a year already and she still feels like she doesn't belong) but the emphasis is always put on her Being from a different time or Being undead and is never put on her out-of-place-ness regarding her race as a black girl from segregation times who is literally so out-of-place in this weird post-racial camp jupiter society. it feels like such an obvious thing to consider so its glaring absence really bugs me when I reread her povs and it bugs me when her hair is never talked about by extension because It Matters
you might be thinking "well she had a lot going on and she's not a superficial person maybe she just didn't care what was going on with her hair" and my response is simply that Black girls don't get to "not care" about their hair it is not the same thing as a white person going to school with bedhead it's not the same thing At All (if you aren't black then chances are you've never actually seen what untouched black hair looks like in the morning), especially when it's been beaten into your head for your entire life that your hair is ugly and you have to "do something to it" for it to be acceptable (and again...... she's from the 1930s so that feeling is magnified like 50x over). remember that perpetually dolled up modest 1930s woman I mentioned previously. picture her time traveling to camp jupiter of all places in 2010 and struggling to drop all of her makeup/hairstyling routines and internalized misogyny and conceptualizations of what women are "supposed" to be. this is the kind of fascinating character exploration that we really missed out on with hazel (and tbh regardless of her race she was never believably written as someone from the 1930s. I don't think rick even really tried to be honest)
you might also be wondering "how was rick supposed to know/attempt to portray any of that" and then my second answer is that If you're going to write a character who is not the same race as you then you should do some research and we have the internet now so research has never been easier đ this would be especially important to do if that person is a poc from the jim crow era I think! (he could have at least googled black hair 1930s)
anyways what I choose to believe (this is pure fanfiction) is that during hazel's first year at camp jupiter (remember that she was there for about a year before son started) nico would have helped her figure something out after observing her distress over her hair c: like they both secretly watched youtube videos on black hairstyles circa 2010 and then they got attacked by monsters for using a laptop (neither of them know how to use a laptop but he's trying his best for her) but then after killing them he helped her do her hair as something she likes that is easy to maintain <3 (I could also see reyna doing this because she surely knows a thing or two from her spa days)
#the descriptions of her hair are very few and when they do occur they're pretty nonsensical/I can tell how reserved rick is being#unfortunately there's a lot of room for plausible deniability because demigod phenotypes don't need to make sense#she has natural cinnamon toast hair and gold eyes so it's just like (throws up my hands) Whatever#but is plausible deniability more interesting! I don't think so!!!!#whatever#one of my favorite things to think about is hazel potentially seeing other black people at camp jupiter#and having really confusing feelings about that because her death is 100% a secret she can't tell them where she comes from#like can you imagine#I love hazel to the end of the world but unfortunately I think she's the most thoughtlessly written main character of pjo#you can't give your character THAT crazy of a backstory and then fall so flat on exploring it man#but I see her potential so she is very gorjus to me#hazel levesque#nico di angelo#pjo hoo toa#underworld siblings#percy jackson and the olympians#the son of neptune#rr crit#<- tagging that just in case but also I am being pretty critical of rick here so I guess it's justified#heroes of olympus
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