#finally back to posting and writing!

[strangelittlestories]

After the occupation, the princess was confined to the palace.

Once a month she'd be taken on a walk around the city, heavily guarded of course, to show the people that she still lived. It also served, of course, as a reminder of what they stood to lose if they made trouble. The princess did her best go wave and smile and give the people what encouragement she could.

The rest of the time, her life was spent in musty rooms and dusty towers. She filled most of her time scouring the castle for materials which she would sew into more and more elaborate outfits, which she would show off on the days when she was allowed outside.

Indeed, the public loved their princess and her dresses so much they'd often sketch or paint them along the route and pass the images on so that all could see the princess at least was well.

This pleased the occupiers for two reasons. First: it kept the princess out of trouble. Second: it gave them a reason to sneer and they did love a good sneer.

"What a vain creature she is!" They would remark.

"Doesn't even care we murdered her brothers so long as she gets enough satin to make her little dresses!" They squawked.

This was unfair, of course, for to call her creations "little dresses" was to call Queen Murderfun the Needlessly Genocidal "a tad piquey". Her dresses were gravity-defying wonders lace and pearl. They were thunderstorms captured in velvet and waterfalls summoned in silk. She was a wizard with silk.

Still, she bore their mockery with a tight smile and careful deference.

"Please, good sirs, my home, my people and my city now belong to you. Let me keep, at least, this one last joy."

And they sneered and they crowed most unpleasantly, but they let her keep her sewing room.

Of course, they would have known their mockery to be doubly unfair had they realised the true purpose of the princess's elaborate designs. For hidden in the intricate embroiderings across her gowns, jackets and fans, the princess had encoded secret (and very detailed) messages. When she would go on her monthly walk, the city's loyalists would line the route, sketching down the patterns to decode later.

Thus did the princess transmit all the occupiers' secrets (unearthed while supposedly 'searching the castle for old fabrics') to the city and thus did she build her resistance.

On the day the revolution finally came, she girded herself in armour of thick spider silk and whale bone. She cut a fine figure with a lacy handkerchief in her top pocket and a razor sharp knitting needle keeping her hair up.

As she waltzed through the castle to open the door for her army, the Usurper King tried to stop her and she simply unfolded her handkerchief and showed it to him.

Upon seeing the impossible arcane pattern emblazoned across it, he fell to the floor with blood streaming from his eyes.

She always had been a wizard with silk.

---

Thank you for reading. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so at https://ko-fi.com/strangelittlestories

[arhvste]

“this is killing me.” kuroo mumbled as he tossed his phone to his side. “just trust me bro,” his best friend-turned roommate bokuto grinned. “this works everytime for me i swear!”

kuroo sighed before grabbing phone again to refresh his instagram story views once more. several people had already viewed the post-gym mirror selfie he’d taken in attempts to garner attention from one particular follower of his; you. “maybe it’s too cringe…” he muttered while over analysing the photo that had already gained a couple of likes within the twenty minutes it had already been up for. “nah.” bokuto reassured him and pat his friend on the shoulder. “you look sexy.” kuroo stared back at the two-toned haired boy. “… thanks bro.”

this isn’t something kuroo would typically post but times were tough and he was desperate. he’d seen you around campus but luck was not on his side when it came to scheduling and the two of you barely had class time together. yet the little class time you did share, kuroo hung onto it tightly and would let scenes of these weekly one hour classes replay in his head more often than he’d like to admit.

“i feel like a modern jay gatsby,” the ex volleyball captain huffed. “my selfie is the equivalent of the wild parties he’d throw in hopes to get daisy’s attention except i don’t want to post every night, i’ve already made myself cringe with this one post.” bokuto stared back at his friend blankly. “yeah… whatever that means.” kuroo frowned back “it’s a classic, you should know what i mean!”

how much longer was he going to have to wait? bokuto had promised him quick results with this method and so far he’d felt deceived and lied to. if talking to you when he got the chance wasn’t enough to get a conversation going outside the classroom, then social media seemed like the next best attempt to start interacting more.

what were you doing? why weren’t you viewing his story? could you even see his story? did he accidentally block you?

these questions ran through his mind as he quickly rushed to check to make sure he hadn’t for some reason blocked you from seeing his story. he half wished he did because then at least he’d know what on earth was taking you so damn long to see the photo he was increasingly starting to hate more the longer it was posted.

“this is stupid.” he stated as he faced bokuto who had zero concerns in his method in gaining someone’s attention. “it works you just have to wait, trust me.”

kuroo frowned as the little red hearts of others who weren’t you fluttered from the bottom corner of the photo. “look!” his best friend grinned as he leaned over kuroo’s shoulder and pointed to the screen of his phone. “you’re getting likes on it!”

“what’s the point if they’re not likes from the person i posted this for in the first place.” kuroo grumbled back in response. he couldn’t believe he’d been subjected to such an attempt to gain some attention from you. it was ridiculous.

it had been about forty five minutes since he’d posted it and he was slowly losing his mind. sure, the post was going to be up for twenty four hours (if he didn’t give into the voices in his head telling him to delete it) so forty five minutes was nothing, but the minutes were beginning to feel like hours and he was dying inside. why weren’t you viewing it already and what could possibly be keeping you off your phone right now?

“this is stupid.” he decided as notifications from his old team mates started to flash up on his screen. the last thing he needed was lev replying with ‘looksmaxing’ to a post that was secretly dedicated to you. “no, it’s barely been up!” bokuto whined. “you look hot so you should get some replies anyway what’s the big deal?”

pinching the bridge of his nose, kuroo huffed. “the big deal is the person i posted this for hasn’t replied!” what was the point in making sure to go to the gym during a rest day just to take this photo if he wasn’t going to at least make his existence more known to you? he’d even worked his legs enough to the point of managing to achieve the sweaty but sexy look. the muscles in his legs were dying, but his dignity sure as hell wouldn’t.

the college student opened up his phone with the intention to end the mental war inside his head once and for all by deleting the post altogether. bokuto watched his friend in defeat but his eyes flashed. “yes they did!” he yelled and pointed to the screen as your name flashed at the top of his screen.

kuroo’s heart jumped at the sight of your profile picture he’d made a daily routine of staring at and the now blue dot indicating a message from your profile in his inbox. to think he was going to delete this post just a second too, what were the chances?

psyching himself up, kuroo took a few quiet deep breathes before letting the time next to your message pass for a few minutes. he wasn’t an instagram warrior by any means, but he knew enough about general rules in order to not look desperate online.

bokuto watched over his friends shoulders as the two stared in anticipation awaiting the message kuroo had been dying for. this was it. leg day two times in a row was gruelling and he’d regret it for the next few days but it would have been worth it. the countless messages from his old teammates mocking his attempts at a thirst trap could be looked past now that you had finally given into the bait he’d so carefully laid. this is what he’d been waiting for. days of preparing and deciding how to gain your attention had finally paid off and he was about to reap the rewards he’d sown.

clicking the message with baited breath, his heart raced as bokuto’s grip of his shoulder tightened. finally.

‘the label on your shirt is sticking out, make sure to cut it’

“a wins a win.” bokuto filled the silence between the pair as kuroo stared at his phone with a blank expression. “… a wins a win…”

[koipudding]

being with kaiser means having to dissect your own heart while stitching up his.

chewing on him jn the tags and etc. don’t mind me

he’d be pretty mean at first. he’s gauging your reactions; would you run if you saw everything that haunted him? how he haunts himself? Kaiser does nothing but spit and snarl at you, like a stray cat that’s only been kicked to the curb.

but you don’t leave him alone. not like every other one-night stand he’s had—no, you’ve made him breakfast—a traditional german faire—and brushed and put oil in his hair (his favorite scent too; you tell him it’s been your favorite for a few years. something in him softens).

It’s so domestic he almost vomits after that, but on his first night away from your apartment, he can’t sleep. Practice is shit and he’s not performing well, to the point where he initiates a facetime call (kaiser hates initiating. it feels like begging for your attention, when yours should be solely on him anyway.) and you pick up instantly.

the time difference makes something shatter in him. You’re just waking up… hair messy and eyes bleary. You can hardly speak or hold up the phone…

“Mihya…? You okay?” you’re slumped in bed, wearing his sweater. He might combust (when did Michael become so attached to you? He doesn’t know, but he whispers your name like a prayer, like you’re his guiding light).

“I’m better now, dear. Let me tell you what that idiot of a striker did at practice—“ he rambled on, and watches you nod along. You him and agree with him, and a weight falls off of his shoulders. Kaiser can love you. Perhaps he already does…

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

posting this with absolutely no context

[sleepy-steve]

pt 3 of steve "dies but doesn't stay dead" harrington and eddie "ferryman of the river styx" munson // 2.5k // pt 1, pt 2 ♡

—

july 1985

Eddie’s not obsessed with Steve Harrington. He’s not. There’s just not much to think about between guiding souls to the boat. Not much in the way of entertainment in the Underworld. And Steve’s appearances—twice in as many years—were the most interesting things to happen to Eddie since his own death. And his returns to the living world are worth space in Eddie’s mind. At least that’s what he tells himself, to justify how much time he spends thinking about the guy.

Still not entirely convinced of the answer he was given by his superiors about souls that sometimes return to the living world, Eddie finds himself constantly thinking about the possibilities. So Eddie seeks out the last soul that held his position. The previous ferryman of his boat is more than happy to answer his questions. Turns out Eddie would eventually retire—after a 500 year tenure—so that’s something to look forward to. The older man tells Eddie that yes, some souls died and then returned to the living world, but what Steve was experiencing was something different. A curse. To die and never stay dead, it took its toll on the spirit. Chips away at it. Weakens the soul. Eddie thinks it sounds a bit dramatic, but still holds some apprehension as he wonders when Steve might return. Steve’s voice echoing in his mind long after he’s disappeared: I’ll see you next time.

This time it’s only eight months.

The spot that Eddie fixates on constantly between carting souls onward could be lit on fire by the intensity of his gaze. He stares and stares, part of him believing that if he stares long enough, he can force Steve to return through sheer force of will. The other part of him is ashamed for wanting that at all. What kind of guy wanted another guy—a good guy, a friend, even—to die again? How selfish was that? It’s just when Eddie is running down another thought spiral like this when Steve Harrington appears again.

Groaning, holding his head, Steve sits up slowly. Groggily. Eddie takes in just what he’s looking at. Steve looks the same, but different. The same in that his hair is still somehow perfect, his eyes are still hazel, and his face is once again bashed to hell and back. (Eddie wonders if he even remembers what Steve looks like without bruises on his face.) Different in that his hair is a bit longer, he looks so confused about where he is, and the outfit…

“Harrington?” Eddie ventures cautiously. “You alright, man?”

“Robin?” Steve asks, still dazed as he blinks repeatedly.

Who? “Uh, no, dude. Eddie, remember?”

Steve’s eyes focus on Eddie, who gives him a little two-finger wave, hoping that his face doesn’t give away just how concerned he is right now. The previous two times, Steve was never confused about where he was. Knew exactly what was going on. This time though…

“Oh, no…” Steve drops his head into his hands as he groans his… disappointment? Eddie tries hard not to take that personally. Watching as Steve continues to mumble curses and grievances under his breath, Eddie waits awkwardly on his boat.

“…Steve?” He finally offers. “You good?”

“Ugh, yeah, I mean…” Steve grumbles. “I know I’ll be fine. Just Robin, and the kids… I don’t know if they’re safe.” Eddie’s unbeating heart aches at how earnest Steve is about ensuring his friends’ safety. “And now I’m not there to make sure.”

Eddie nods sympathetically. “But… you’ll go back, right?” Steve glances up. It’s the first time Eddie’s verbally conceded to Steve’s ability to return to the living world. “I mean, you have every other time.”

“Yeah.” Steve nods distantly. “Yeah, I assume so.”

The guy looks so disappointed, so… distressed by his being here. It’s so unlike him. Steve has always been very casual about his deaths. There must be some real stakes at hand this time. More than monsters, which is crazy to think about.

“You, uh…” Eddie falters when Steve looks up at him, big hazel eyes shining. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

A little smile pulls at the corner of Steve’s mouth, and Eddie settles himself over the edge of the boat, crossing his arms. Steve slowly pulls himself closer, sitting right on the edge of the river, as close as he can get, and tells Eddie the whole story. Everything from Dustin Henderson—a middle schooler sounding oddly like he was Steve’s best friend—arriving at his workplace with a weird recording, to his coworker Robin Buckley translating it, to roping in Erica Sinclair—and god, Steve regretted that so much—to the elevator, to them finally getting caught.

Nodding along and only asking a few questions to clarify the story or who Steve was talking about, Eddie found himself wondering what the hell Steve Harrington’s life actually was. This didn’t even have anything to do with the monsters Steve had mentioned in his previous visits. A whole secret base of foreign soldiers hidden under a mall? It’s unbelievable. Were it not for how seriously Steve was telling the story, the fear in his eyes, the concern for his friends, Eddie would say he was making it up.

“…and they kept asking, y'know? Who do you work for? And they just wouldn’t believe me.” Steve sniffs, resting his chin on his bare knees, arms wrapped around his legs. “Last thing I remember is getting punched in the face.” He glances up at Eddie with a sad half-smile. “Again.”

“How does this keep happening to you, man?” Eddie asks, concern bleeding through his words.

“I blame Dustin.” Steve tilts his head to the side, joke falling flat. “Or maybe I’m just. Really, really unlucky.”

Eddie takes in Steve’s injuries. The horrifically bruised and swollen eye. The split lip. The dried blood under his nose. It wasn’t as bad as last time, but Eddie didn’t know how many injuries were hidden under that blue shirt. The previous ferryman’s words echo in his mind. A curse.

“Nah.” Eddie says. “I blame Dustin, too.” The kid sounded nice enough, maybe too smart for his own good, but Eddie hadn’t met him, so he didn’t feel too guilty about it. Steve gave him a look that said he knew exactly what Eddie was doing. “I’m sure they’re gonna be fine, Steve.”

“Hope so. Just don’t want them to go after Robin if I’m dead up there.”

Ah yes, Robin. Steve had spoken so highly of her. How smart she was. Brave, for joining them. Funny, though Steve didn’t want to admit it since most of her jokes were targeted at him. She sounded cool, but something about how he spoke about her made Eddie weirdly sad. Part of him wonders if, in another world, the three of them would have been friends.

“You think they will?”

“Hopefully I’ll get back before they do,” Steve says with a sigh. “Time works different here, anyway.”

Eddie frowns. “It does?”

“Yeah, it’s never as long up there. Much shorter.” Steve shrugs. “Probably a good thing.”

Brows pulled together, Eddie thinks back to the previous times Steve had visited. He was only around for thirty minutes tops. Less the first time, probably. What would that have translated to in the real world? Half that time? A few minutes? 

Silence settles over them, Steve staring into the middle distance with a look of worry etched into his face between the lacerations and bruises. Eddie fixates on the cut over his lip, swollen and red. When Steve notices him staring, Eddie clears his throat and quickly looks down, then back up.

“So, what’s up with the outfit, man?” The subject change is clunky at best, but Eddie’s curiosity was getting the better of him. And it was better than the staring.

Steve finally laughs. His good eye crinkles with it, the smile wide on his face. “I told you man, it’s an ice cream shop!”

“But why are you a sailor?” Eddie matches his grin.

“It’s called Scoops Ahoy, the whole thing is like, nautical themed.”

Eddie raises a brow. “Nautical?”

“Nautical,” Steve confirms with a nod. There’s a beat of silence before both of them dissolve into giggles. “You should see the stupid hat they make us wear.”

“Wish I could.” Eddie sighs, his laughter tapering off. His brain moves faster than he can stop it, and suddenly it’s presenting him with a scenario. Eddie waltzing into the ice cream parlor, with its weird little nautical theme, leaning over the counter and getting into Steve’s face as he asks for a free sample. Steve might blush, and say that usually they’d charge for that, but for Eddie it’s free. He might adjust the hat, which Eddie pictures as a little white thing, classic sailor costume, with a blue stripe. Eddie might say that he can think of a way to pay Steve for it, taking hold of that little red tie and pulling Steve closer over the counter.

“You picturing it?” Steve asks, head tilted and a bemused look on his face.

Eddie jolts out of his fantasy, feeling hot in his cheeks. “Mhm, yep, I’m picturing. Looks pretty stupid.”

Steve snorts in response. “It is.” He sighs. “But, y’know. S’not all bad. I met Robin there.”

Robin again. Eddie identifies a feeling rising up in his chest and forces it back down, pointedly not giving it any attention. “Yeah, she, uh. She sounds… pretty cool.”

“She is.” Steve smiles, looking down at the grass.

“You… like her?” Eddie tries. He’s torn between his desire to know more and his desire to never talk about her ever again.

“Hm?” Steve’s head snaps up. “Oh, uh, I mean. She’s… in… band.” He trails off, looking unsure.

“She’s in band?” Eddie clarifies with a raised brow. “Ah, so, not your type?” Hopefully. Eddie shoves that thought down and compartmentalises it into a neat little box alongside his weird feeling to deal with later.

Steve sighs. “I don’t know, man. She’s cool, and funny, and smart. Maybe too smart for me. I guess I’m trying to, y’know, let go of all that—stupid high school shit.” He waves his hand as he says it.

Eddie’s surprised by this response. He thought Steve would say he was into cheerleaders or something like that. “That’s… cool, man.” He pauses and takes in a low breath before continuing. “You should ask her out.” He says it before he can convince himself it’s a bad idea.

“You think?” Steve looks up at him and genuinely seems unsure. Seems to want Eddie’s honest opinion.

“Yeah. I don’t think she’d go through all this and follow you into danger if she didn’t like you as well.” Eddie swallows the thing inside him that’s clawing up his throat and begging him to stop talking. “Tell her how you feel.”

“Thanks, man,” Steve says, like he’s thanking Eddie for more than just his advice. “You’re a good friend.”

A pang hits Eddie right in his chest and he smiles despite it. “We aim to please, down here, Stevie. All Inclusive Underworld Service.” He tilts his head exaggeratedly and holds his arms out, leaning heavily into his joke.

“I mean it, Eddie,” Steve continues earnestly. “It’s… nice, y’know? Having you here when I die. Familiar face. Makes me feel like it’s all gonna be okay.”

Eddie softens at his words, letting his arms slowly fall to his sides. “It is, Steve.” Eddie leans one the edge of the boat again, arms folding under his chest. “I’m glad we’re friends.” And he does mean it, despite the other feelings fighting for attention inside him.

Steve grins back at him, wide and genuinely happy amongst the cuts and bruises on his face. A few moments pass and Eddie briefly wonders how much time they have left. How much time before Steve disappears before his eyes again and leaves for an unknown amount of time. Once again torn between his want for Steve to stop getting himself hurt and killed, and his extremely selfish desire for Steve to stay with him, Eddie silently argues with himself.

“Can I ask you something?” Steve’s question once again draws Eddie out of his own mind.

Eddie shrugs. “Sure, man.”

“How did you… die?” Steve looks unsure as he asks. “Is it okay if I ask that?” He quickly adds.

“Uh, yeah.” Eddie feels himself draw in a little, retreating into himself. “I mean. Kind of a shitty story. But it’s, y’know. Whatever.” His hands flick and wave around with his words. “Um, I was doing this job with my dad and it just. Went bad.”

“You don’t have to tell me if…” Steve trails off, eyes going unfocused, pausing for a moment before he looks up again. “Damn it!”

Eddie feels disappointment crawl across his chest, knowing before he asks. “What?”

“I’m going back. I can hear Robin on the other side.” Steve sighs, seeming genuinely upset. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Oh, it’s—it’s fine.” It doesn’t feel fine. Eddie hopes it doesn’t show on his face.

Steve gives him a half smile. “Tell me next time?”

Not wanting to get his hopes up, Eddie tries to force his expression into one of mild admonishment. “Don’t let there be a next time, Steve.”

His half smile turns to a full grin. “I’ll try not to.” Steve slowly pulls himself up, brushing dry grass off his blue shorts.

“Steve, wait.” It comes out before Eddie can stop himself. “Could you… do something? For me?” The words come out stilted, and even as he’s speaking, he wonders why he’s even asking.

“Sure, man. Anything.” Steve looks at him wide-eyed and attentive.

“Just, uh.” Eddie cringes at himself, forcing the words out before he can change his mind. “Could you, maybe, check on my uncle? See how he’s going? I just—I wanna know that he’s okay.”

A beat of silence sits between them before Steve responds. He sounds so determined. Like Eddie was entrusting him with something precious and important. “Of course, Eddie. I will.” 

Relief washes over him at Steve’s words. Eddie lets out a breath as the tightness in his chest fades. “Wayne Munson. He lives over at the Forest Hills trailer park.”

“Wayne Munson, Forest Hills” Steve repeats dutifully, giving a single nod. “Got it.”

“Thanks, man,” Eddie says with sincerity, looking up at Steve from the boat. “Means a lot to me.”

Steve looks at him for a moment, like he has something on his mind, but then jolts out of it. “Sorry, I gotta go now.”

“Yeah.” They continue looking at each other, somehow feeling closer now that Steve is standing, and Eddie feels the odd urge to reach out to him. Unsure what to do with that, he pushes that urge down into another compartment alongside the others to deal with later.

“Thank you, Eddie. Seriously.” Steve smiles at him, bright and sincere through the bruises and lacerations on his face.

“Anytime,” Eddie says, slightly breathlessly. And then Steve is gone, leaving Eddie with an unfamiliar emptiness inside him.

Why does Eddie suddenly miss this man he barely knows? This awful feeling inside him that begs for attention and demands that Steve return reaches through Eddie’s chest and rattles against his ribcage. A strange sadness resting within him, waiting to be dissected.

Hours later, when he’s still feeling weird and sad, a realisation hits him. Eddie didn’t even ask Steve to get in the boat.

[emo-batboy]

A Wild Battinson (Social Media AU)

Part 43 (Masterlist)

(Part 44)

Me, to myself: I just think the series was better when I posted several times a week because the pacing felt more natural, and it translates better when people binge it.

Also Me, holding two jobs and a bat: If you try to post once a day again, I will disconnect your head from your shoulders—

@bruciemilf guess who’s back

Anyways, folks! :D So I'm thinking of a new upload schedule where I spend a bit preparing the next ten or so parts then post it all in two weeks? I think that would be fun (and much better for my creative process.)

I’ll be posting the next part very soon :) But it's going to be drastically different from what I've done before. Let’s see if anyone can guess why.

Yada yada don’t die LOVE Y’ALL

[x-i-l-verify]

Something that I've noticed ever since the Smiling Critters were introduced is that they can so easily be paired off into complementary duos, ones that are specifically designed to teach children fundamental lessons about life and self-care from two different angles. It's really interesting to me.

Like obviously you have Dogday and Catnap, with their sun/moon, dog/cat dichotomy, that stress how important it is to have fun and get things done during the day, but also that it's important to wind down, relax, and get a good night's sleep.

-

Bubba Bubbaphant and Craftycorn were introduced as a duo in the Smiling Critter show's intro, and their dichotomy is quite obvious. They are basically the right and left sides of the brain personified. Bubba is the left side of the brain, logical, analytical, focused on math and science. Craftycorn is the right side of the brain, creative and imaginative, focused on the arts and self-expression. They represent learning and academia in all its forms, the different ways people engage with and understand the world.

-

Hoppy Hopscotch and Kickin' Chicken form the sportsmanship duo. They are both portrayed as enjoying sports and the outdoors, but in different ways that highlight the different ways sports can be played and enjoyed and also what it entails to be successful at them. Hoppy Hopscotch may be loud and impatient, but she is also a team player, shown in her willingness to slow down her fast pace to make sure none of her friends are left behind. Kickin' Chicken, on the other hand, is laid-back, relaxed, and chill, the described "cool kid" of the group, but he's also described as having a ton of perseverance, more of a "slow and steady wins the race" type of person.

-

This leaves Bobby Bearhug and Picky Piggy as the last pair. Fittingly, these two are all about how to meet the fundamental needs of yourself and others. Bobby teaches children how to nourish themselves emotionally through showing and receiving care from others, while Picky teaches them how good food is important to nourish the body and soul. Depriving oneself of either of these things only makes oneself and therefore everyone around one miserable, because those fundamental needs are no longer being met.

-

Like fr, this is some pretty genius marketing right here. You have enough characters that every kid will have their favorite, but not so many that any would get lost in the shuffle, because the lessons each one of them would teach would be integral to the group as a whole. It really makes me that much sadder we saw basically nothing of the Smiling Critters during the game itself, because Mob Games struck gold with this concept, only to ultimately do nothing with it. :/

But I guess that's what fandom is for, eh?

[slayerdurge]

completely sold on the idea that gortash made stillmaker for durge and i really really love that although he put bhaal's symbol on it he also blatantly made it bane's signature color. classic gortash audacity. cheeky bastard.

[hplonesomeart]

Depiction of local T.V getting assaulted by rambunctious children

People say he’s good with handling kids…but I’d like to challenge that notion a little bit >:3

[sweetieviktor]

viktor x librarian! reader (headcanons + tiny scenarios) part 2

summary: even before your relationship, heimerdinger already knew you and viktor liked each other. now, he wants to help to bring you two together.

content warning: fluff!! and a bit of language towards the end :D (it was written with s1 viktor in mind!)

author notes: im here again with the viktor and librarian! reader hcs, but it was so cute and i couldn't turn down the anon who sended me the request!! i really liked to write this (i mean.... you can see how much i liked, its pretty big lol) and i hope you like it too! (i recommend you read the part 1 before this, bcs you wont might understand some stuff since its on the first. well, here's the link for part 1!)

» being a librarian near piltover’s academy means that every time a student needed some book or document you might have, they would come to you. even professors.

you’ve seen the doors opening, but you didn’t see anyone standing there. you thought that maybe it was the wind, but soon you heard a voice coming from behind the reception desk. “hey, down there!” looking down, you recognized the owner of the voice, professor cecil b. heimerdinger.

“oh, i’m sorry, didn’t see you in there!’’, you rubbed the back of your neck, nervous, afraid considering that you had one of the most important people of piltover inside the library you work in. “well, how could i help you?”, you offered him a polite smile and he offered one of his, fur twitching up around the corners of his mouth.

“oh, you see, maybe you do have some old stuff, like-”

» after this, whenever he needed something, he would find himself already walking to your library. he often recommended the establishment for his students and pupils, making it a spot for study dates and scientific discussions. now, it was even harder to take breaks, the place was more crowded than it ever was. oh, you just wanted to hear what heimerdinger was wanting to say, about what had been happening at the academy or, even better, at the council, but, obviously, only the non-confidential stuff.

when your lunch break hit, you were finally able to come meet the professor, a normal occurrence every week. you could see his small figure waving and smiling, seated and already waiting for you at the cafeteria he likes. “hi, friend! i’ve ordered the usual for us,” he said while adjusting himself on his seat, “my assistant and one of my students are working together on... something. it's revolutionary, i could say, but very dangerous. i’ve already advertised them about it but they insist on doing it anyway,” he sighed, tidying the ends of his furry moustache, “and my assistant, specifically, wants to know if you have some old materials that could possibly help them.”

“oh, of course! it’s always a pleasure to help piltover’s geniuses.”

» next week, he showed up with the said assistant, viktor, and it was love at first sight. he was gorgeous and intelligent too. oh, dear janna, he was the perfect kind of guy. you eyes didn't catch how he was less confident than how normally he is, or the way he smiled at you, of course you didn’t, it was the first time you’ve met each other, but professor knew you both well enough to know something was going on. and he was correct when he said viktor would come in there often, because, indeed, he did. way too often for someone who was meant to be just a customer.

» sometimes, heimerdinger would stay in the library, pretending to read some book, only to observe how you and viktor interacted around one another. it was crystal clear how you liked each other, but were rather afraid to confess your feelings, so the yordle made it his personal mission to help you two to get together.

» and when you first sorted and stored some books for viktor based on what he was reading these past days, it was when it hit him that he might be liking you. and later, once he reached the academy again, jayce and heimerdinger already were waiting for him in the lab, both of them noticing how tense he was as soon as he opened the door.

“viktor, my boy, what happened?” the yordle said, making up space on the couch so his assistant could sit by his side. which he did, leaving the books on the table and his cane near himself, often rotating it around its own axis, just so he could occupy his mind with something that wasn't you.

“it's nothing, professor,” but he knew viktor was lying. the way he played with his cane, or how he wasn't looking at their eyes, it all made him seem more and more suspicious.

jayce came closer, sitting at the edge of his rotating chair, touching viktor's shoulder lightly, “hey, if something is happening, you can count on us,” his eyes full of empathy, looking at his friend, “whatever it may be.”

soon, it clicked for heimerdinger. his assistant just came back from the library, he had books on his hands and was visibly shaken. of course! how could he forget about the librarian? “i might have a theory why he is like this, jayce,” he chuckled, leaving viktor flustered and jayce confused. he met jayce's curious gaze, his own smile bringing a smirk to his pupil's face.

“and what would be that theory?”, jayce asked, thinking about all the possibilities of what had happened to get viktor like that.

“he is in love, boy.”

jayce smirk grew to a smile, then this smile turned itself into a full laugh, shaking his whole body, rubbing his hand over his face, trying to recompose himself. “i can't believe it!”, he was trying to hold his laugh, while viktor looked at him, completely serious.

“then don't,” viktor said, giving his friend a death stare.

jayce took a deep breath, never wanting to see this look again on viktor's face, adjusting his posture and continuing, “tell me, who is the lucky one?”

“i don't want to say it.”

“please?”

“fine! ehhh... do you remember the libra-”

“HA! I KNEW IT WAS THEM!”, jayce shouted, throwing his hands in the air, celebrating.

» from this day on, jayce and heimerdinger often gave viktor advices on how to win over your heart (because they had a lot of love experiences before, obviously). one day, heimerdinger suggested for him to bring over some coffee and pastries for you while you were working, he even recommended the ones he knew you liked, the usual you ordered in the cafeteria on your lunch breaks with him.

» so your not-a-date happened. people were talking loudly on the streets, but not a single client in. the natural light coming from across the windows giving the whole place even more of a cozy feeling, the light breeze was getting colder but the coffee he brought for you was keeping you warm. there was soft music playing in the background – most clients liked it since it helped them to focus, or so they said –, but you couldn't concentrate since he was looking at you, stealing glances from in-between pages, admiring you while you pretended to read, just like him. little did he know your heart was already on his hands.

» after a particular day, where you finally confessed to one another, exchanging your firsts “i love you's”, you both started to be spotted together a lot, usually at library or, like now, at piltover’s academy, bringing your boyfriend resources useful for him and for jayce too.

you knocked on the lab's door, receiving an answer from the other side, a muffled “come in” from someone you assumed was jayce. you then opened the said door, greeting jayce quickly while you walked towards a desk, leaving everything upon it.

heimerdinger was near viktor's workbench, helping him solve an equation, both totally focused on their tasks. when the tiny creature noticed you, he immediately came to you, “oh, friend, you're here! what brought you in there?”

“i've invited them,” viktor said, putting his goggles over his forehead, reaching for his cane and standing up, leaning on it. “i wished my, ehhh, partner knew my work place. besides, they also got me the books we needed, right?”, you nodded your head, gesturing to the desk where the books were placed on.

heimerdinger looked at them, then to viktor, to you and back at him, “oh... so, now you're partners?”, heimerdinger raised his brows, tilting his head to the side, “well, i knew it would happen sometime. i mean, ever since i’ve seen you both together, i knew you would be together,” he smiled, his fur turning up, “oh, friend, one day, me and jayce realized why he was acting so weird around us, just after one of his visits to the library, it was because-”, heimerdinger was talking excitedly, gesturing with big motions until viktor cut him.

“oh, please, professor. stop it,” viktor said, walking up to you and standing by your side. redness was spreading over his cheeks and ears, “there's no need to share any of this.”

“but you were-”

“professor,” you called, looking at him with apologetic eyes, “sorry to interrupt you but my break is going to an end in-”, you looked at the lab's clock, “fifteen minutes, i must go now.” you've met heimerdinger and jayce with a goodbye, then, getting closer to viktor, tidying his hair and adjusting his goggles over it so it won't fall over his golden eyes again, “see you later, vik. i would like to hear about any stories you might want to tell me,” you kissed his cheek, happy on how he blushed even more after the little display of affection, walking away and leaving the lab.

“you are in love!”, jayce said in between a laugh, pointing towards viktor.

“fuck you.”

“language, boy!”

[setmeatopthepyre]

tidbity (<- typo but I'm keeping it) tuesday

tagged by the wonderful @bidisasterevankinard & @ambernotember on various weekdays

here's some more of the fic I've been poking at for a prompt fill. had a bit of a writing break because I was busy celebrating my birthday week but I'm hoping to finish this soon(ish)!

part of bucktommy knight au aka medieval au aka sweetmeats aka what can ail thee, knight-at-arms? | -> follows this

-

Evan taps his sword to Tommy's in the way he’s done at the start of every sparring bout so far, a way that reminds Tommy, again, of friendly matches at the royal courts, and he is, again, left wondering what lord Evan has sworn his service to. Tommy had not recognized the smith’s mark on his blade when he’d disarmed him earlier, and the young knight bore no visible coat of arms as he traveled. Surely somewhere in his belongings he would have some mark, some seal, to prove his identity, his loyalty, if needed, but he does not wear it openly. It is a mystery that some part of Tommy wants to solve, if only to explain the strange familiarity to some of the man’s ways. If only to soothe the way Tommy’s skin itches when he thinks of the courts in his past.

He is, for a moment, so lost again in wondering that he nearly misses the way Evan lets his long legs bend at the knees, sinking down into position. Arms come forward and down across the barrel of his torso, hands down near his right hip, sword point aimed unerringly at Tommy’s heart. His eyes look sharper still. His back is straight, his chin tilts up defiantly.

Even like this, cheeks ruddy above the unbleached, sweat-stained linen of his gambeson, he is beautiful.

Tommy steps back, lets himself study a new nick on his blade for a breath or two to gather his thoughts. Then, too, relaxes into position, keeping his sword pointed down, keeping himself an open target. Daring Evan to strike at him.

They share a nod, an unspoken beginning to their bout, and Evan begins to circle. Tommy moves along lazily, only so much as to keep them facing one another. He ignores the twitches of Evan’s blade and the purposeful glances, all the little feints meant to trick him into action, and just lets him move. Lets him search for a hint of weakness, for an opening besides the one Tommy is so purposefully maintaining.

Tommy has had years to learn patience. Evan, though a more formidable fighter than Tommy would care to admit, clearly has not.

It is no surprise when the young knight lunges forward, tired legs still nimble in their quick one-two step that puts him within striking distance. His arms come up in one smooth sweep, wrists crossing by his head, the point of his blade still true to its mark for one fraction of a second, two, then a graceful arc of shining steel aimed for Tommy’s throat.

It is a strike any master would be proud of and it is clear that the young knight has regained some of his stamina during their short break between bouts. It is a beautiful show of technique. It is clearly meant to prove something.

Tommy lets instinct take over, brings his sword up to parry and lets the momentum of steel meeting steel carry him forward and to the side, blade ducking under Evan’s. He’s close now, within grappling range, and he lets his pommel swing forward and over, stopping only a moment before the heavy steel end of the hilt would have buried itself in Evan’s teeth.

Evan does not recover in time and stumbles backward like a newborn fawn still learning its legs, very nearly fumbling the sword in his own grasp. He struggles to find his footing on the loose earth below and, without thinking, Tommy moves to grab at his sleeve, to keep him from humiliating himself in the dirt, though he is not sure the lordling does not deserve the fall.

That is when the young knight regains the grip on his blade and at the same time tries to find his balance by thrusting that same arm out in front of him.

A strange, silent moment passes. Something hot and wet spills down Tommy’s face. Evan lands on his back in the dirt, eyes wide, sword bloodied.

The sensation itself comes a moment later, a sharp bright pain across his cheek, his brow. It starts crisp and clear as ice on a winter morning, then sweat mixes with the blood and burns like frostbite. Tommy’s breath hisses between his teeth. On the ground, Evan has abandoned his sword and is clambering to his feet, face panic-stricken.

Tommy resists the urge to rip off his gloves and feel for the wound, takes a moment to sheathe his sword instead and mentally makes note to clean the blade later, to not let sweat turn to rust. A drip, drip, drip in the loose sand below tells him he is bleeding freely, though he would know the same from the way his left eye is beginning to sting.

“Shit, shit, I am- I did not realize- I did not think you could-” Evan babbles, and the leather of his gloves is warm against Tommy’s cheek as he maneuvers his head to get a better look. Tommy lets himself be moved, watches the wide wildness in Evan’s eyes settle into determination, watches Evan pull the glove of his right hand off with his teeth and then bring his bared hand up to Tommy’s brow. He makes to pull back, then, thinking of the sweat and dirt on his fingertips, but Evan hushes him. “It’s- I’m not- Keep still.”

-

no pressure tags for @sugarpenchant @beanarie @geddyqueer @emphasisonthehomo @frogsinflannel @trombonechurchill @leashybebes @rcmclachlan @queermccoy @epiphainie @apollabarnes @iphyslitterator @agentpeggycartering

[actuallyjustabiscuit]

Fuck it

I think I just need to say it

This whole scene to me…

Didn’t come off as flirting

Ok, I promise I’m not doing this to put down any FunnyGummy shippers.

The ship is fine. I like it

But just hear me out on this take, because there’s a specific reason I’m making it.

And to do that, I gotta do a quick analysis on their interactions.

So here’s the deal, it feels weird to call Pomni’s behavior towards Gummigoo in ep 4, namely all her clumsy stuttering and stumbling, as anything resembling infatuation.

The reason she’s failing to play it cool is because she’s suddenly reunited with someone who, not a couple days ago, was previously blown up right in front of her.

Like, I’m pretty sure she was struggling not to just immediately go “holy shit, you’re alive!?” as soon as she realized who was standing on the other side of the counter.

Let’s try walking in Pomni’s shoes for a bit. Imagine seeing someone you just befriended…suddenly get killed…in a pretty violent fashion…and then pop back up again with absolutely no warning.

You’d think the first thing you’d talk about upon reuniting would be something related to that.

But nah, they just waltz in wanting some breakfast like the average customer in this little fast food simulation game that you are being forced to play in.

Now, let’s go back to ep 2

Gummigoo had accidentally stumbled onto the other side of Caine’s curtain, making him question his entire existence. Leaving Pomni the only one available to explain and to effectively shatter his worldview by revealing that he, and everyone he knows, is an NPC. And his reaction to all of this was naturally negative. He goes from panicking at the discovery to being completely dismal over the loss of the reality he knew.

To say the poor guy was going through it would be an understatement.

Gummigoo was pretty much in a hopeless state. Being burdened with eye opening knowledge is a very lonely experience. Especially when it seems you’re the only one to be made aware of it. It’s not hard to see why Pomni took the time to help him. She was forced to suddenly comprehend a different reality just the other day.

“Feeling like your nothing is kinda normal.” is a wild way to try to relate to someone, but she decided to take a seat next to him because it’s probably the most normal thing she’s heard since she’s been there.

And what’s important to note about their conversation under the map is that with every attempt that Pomni initially makes to help him feel less alone, Gummigoo’s quick to brush it off because none of it is enough to diminish the fact that he’s not a real person, and therefore does not get to exist as a real person. Believing that his friends care about him the same way he does for them is pretty much cold comfort when their roles have been literally coded for them.

Even when she offered him a way out of his situation, he wasn’t immediately keen on taking it. His question, “how does this benefit you at all?” is the kind of question someone asks when they place no real value on themselves as a person. He was so quick to accept that he is nothing, because from his understanding that’s what he would essentially be reduced to once the adventure is over. This is what fills him with dread, knowing his life ends when his purpose as a character is complete. And it’s only when Pomni finally gives him a new role, being her friend, that he begins to respond positively.

He goes from a fake bandit to a real friend, giving his existence some validity.

The show has been doing a great job at establishing that Pomni is the kind of earnest person to lend a helping hand. But, considering how she failed to help someone the day prior, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was placing a lot of responsibility on herself to make sure this guy at least gets a chance to not feel like nothing. Helping him benefits her beyond feeling less alone in this strange new life, it was also a chance to redeem herself.

This time she wasn’t going to abandon someone who needed her.

And then he was fucking obliterated.

Once again, Pomni failed at helping someone. And not just a stranger, this time it was someone she called a friend. On top of that, she didn’t just failed, she practically led this lamb to slaughter. She didn’t know the outcome of course, but it was still her idea to take him to the Circus.

It was her insistence on bringing him along that got him killed

So now she’s talking to someone who may or may not be the same person because he sure damn well looks like him.

And if he didn’t really die, then perhaps she didn’t really screw up again, at least that’s what she’s hoping for

However, this isn’t the Gummigoo that got stranded under the map with her and needed consoling from his existential crisis.

This is just a guy who’s still waiting on his Sausage Bacon Jaffle Combo, and is super weirded out that the cashier girl is crawling around trying to get his attention.

And you can see all the hope in Pomni’s eyes die at that realization.

Additionally, her saying “I…don’t know” feels like it goes beyond the surface level “we met before…but you don’t remember me, so maybe not…”

Because, really, Pomni actually doesn’t know Gummigoo.

She never got the chance to know him. Sure she knows what he is, but who Gummigoo was as a person was what they both were going to find out together.

But this Gummigoo doesn’t have the baggage of knowing the truth, which is what ultimately led him to feel like nothing, and in turn needing the validation that he doesn’t have to be nothing. Here, he’s just a simple customer.

This isn’t her friend. And Pomni has to accept that it’s best that he doesn’t remember her. He doesn’t think he’s nothing, and that’s all that matters.

Alright, so why am I really going over all of this?

Why bother making a whole post analyzing these two just to pedantically point out that their interactions have been purely platonic?

Well to tell you the truth, it’s cuz I’m a little fed up with all of it.

I don’t mean people making assumptions that these two characters have feelings for each other.

Im talking more about the trend of when a girl is shown acting all nervous around a guy, people automatically conclude that she has a thing for him.

But when it’s two characters of the same gender acting the exact same way, you get some annoying commentary about how it’s for reasons unrelated to romance and how they “just don’t see it”

“It’s like people can’t just be friends anymore”

Does that phrase annoy you as much as it does me?

Now, thanks to Gooseworx, we are all in a collective understanding that none of the characters will actually get together romantically. So we are free to ship who we please, with the caveat that we are not to act superior over what will or will not be canon. And this is a good rule.

I’m too old to be making arguments against a ship because at the end of the day these weird little guys are public domain and you can imagine them being together in any way you please because they’re just characters.

So me saying that people viewing Pomni’s behavior towards Gummigoo in ep 4 as inherently smitten are misconstruing their relationship just sounds like I’m putting someone’s beloved ship down for no real reason other than just being weirdly contrarian about it.

And you’d be right to think that way.

But when you get people in this day and age who are so quick to label these interactions as romantic and then have trouble extending the same imagination towards a ship like ragapom, it starts to get a bit grating. That the awkward and nervous interactions between two women can be dismissed as platonic and anything more is just delusion.

Like, even people who sincerely ship them tend to make jokes about how delusional we are to do so. You don’t see that in people who ship FunnyGummy. And that’s a little depressing to me.

Now, I’m not saying you have to ship Pomni and Ragatha romantically. I’m not here to dictate anyone’s tastes or say anyone’s reasons for shipping are less valid than others.

I guess it just irks me that we don’t extend this platonic view just as readily towards straight pairings.

Like, I honestly feel that Pomni and Gummigoo’s relationship is appreciated less because of all the shipping.

Their story is so much richer than just another “love that could never be”. It’s the tragedy of losing a friendship only moments after its inception. Of having to come to terms that someone you wanted to be closer with, is better off living their life separate from yours. You wanted to be a positive influence on them, but it didn’t work out as planned, leaving you both to suffer as a result. And all you can do is wish them well as they leave you behind.

A lot of people like to see this pairing as a tragic romance because their circumstances give them prime shipping material. That her having feelings for him would make their separation feel bittersweet.

But Pomni not being in love with Gummigoo doesn’t invalidate the heartbreak of her having to say goodbye to him.

And it shouldn’t. Because he was her friend, for the brief special moment she knew him. And in the end, she did get to do something for him.

She got to wish him a pleasant day.

[charmwasjess]

Whatever you do, don’t think about how happy Sifo-Dyas must have been that last time with Dooku on Serenno. He’d been fired as a Seeker, lost his seat on the Jedi Council, had the worst rounds of visions of his life, and finally, finally, someone is listening to him, someone believes him, someone gets it.

He’s back with his best friend who promised to help him save the galaxy, like the two of them were made to do together. Like they always knew they were going to do.

[hero-of-the-wolf]

Deep Shadows Analysis

all pictures belong to @/linkeduniverse

“I grew up in these woods.” The first sentence ever spoken in LU and a very strong opening. Time is in the lead here. It makes sense; not only is he their de facto leader, but he knows this terrain best. Warriors speaks next, continuing where Time left off. He says that they’re lost. This sets up the dynamic these two have and their role in the chain of command, for lack of a better word, very nicely. The last panel of the first page has Time reacting to something the audience can’t see yet, enticing them to continue reading.

He then gets absolutely bodied by this moblin. These guys are a HUGE pain to fight in Ocarina of Time, they really do come out of nowhere to hit you like a heckin freight train and that power and alarm is captured wonderfully here.

The monster gets snagged by Twilight’s clawshot and we get this really lovely reveal of all the other Links standing ready to fight, emphasizing how none of them are alone anymore. They’re a team! This is also the first time we see all of them together in the comic (minus Time, who is still on the ground rip)

Legend’s got his bow drawn, and he's the first one to attack. His arrows embed into the moblin’s forearm while Hyrule sneaks around to slash at its thigh. It manages to increase the slack on the chain, freeing up its movement enough to counterattack, but the traveler leans back out of the way. By this point Wild and Warriors have circled around to flank the monster.

But Sky? He rushes to the old man’s side, who concerningly still hasn’t gotten up, to check on him. Sky is consistently one of the first to react whenever someone gets hurt or needs help during battle and I love that this trait of his (probably from his training as a knight on Skyloft) is already established within the very first few pages of the comic!

Time waves him off, and together they watch as Warriors stabs the moblin in the back… only for it to turn around, wretching the captain’s sword out of his hands, and smack the side of his face (right on the eye it looks like!) so hard he goes down for the rest of the fight. Ouch. This is definitely not the normal difficulty level for a monster like this.

Legend, power gloves equipped, works with Twilight to tighten the clawshot’s chain and limit the moblin’s movement again. Wind takes the opportunity to CUT THE MOBLIN’S HAND OFF. Which is. INSANE. But to be expected from the Hero of Winds. Also Four’s got his bow drawn here, but afaik he never actually uses it in this battle.

Then Wild, in a quintessential showcase of Breath of the Wild’s combat, scales the moblin’s back (using Warriors’ still embedded sword as a foothold!!) and pulls out his own sword to attack. But the moblin is faster here and grabs him by the arm and tosses him away. His arm might be broken, given the way the champion clutches it for the rest of the battle. Four is at his side, unused bow still in hand. It is of note that Sky is nearby as well.

Then Hyrule!!! Using the iconic Down Thrust move from his second adventure (Adventure of Link) and probably also his jump spell, falls out of the heavens like a stooping falcon and stabs the moblin right in the back of the neck, finally felling it. Teamwork!

Hyrule stumbles back and Wind is quick to wrap an arm around the traveler and cheer. Hyrule is bashful here, but not uncomfortable. My favorite underrated duo <3 (also they’re nearly the same height here????? what????)

Warriors finally wakes up. (His poor eye, man 😭) I love all of their smiles as the adrenaline from the fight starts to come down, the relief in this panel is palpable.

Then Twilight, as worried about Time’s wellfare as he ever is, is shaken from the moment as he turns his attention to the old man. He’s finally back on his feet, though based on his posture here it doesn’t seem like it’s been for long. Legend has a hand outstretched, it looks like he wants to help steady the other hero or otherwise check on him, but Time waves him off.

Time worries about the strength of the moblin. He did not participate in this fight, but he just had a front row seat to just how hard it was to bring this monster down and how injured they all got in the process: Warriors’ eye, Wild’s arm, his own side… that’s a good third of their team significantly wounded enough that none of them were able to rejoin the fight. Against a moblin that Time had been able to take down all on his own previously. He’s right to worry. Twilight is still quietly worried too, in the background.

Legend cracks a joke to relieve the tension, prompting Time to praise their efforts. Then he continues his previous train of thought, musing about how Not Normal the entire encounter was, and we get a really cool visual representation of a voice over as we see Warriors retrieve his weapon and clean off the blood, subtly hinting at its later significance.

We get a name drop of our antagonist (side note: I think it’s interesting that it’s Four who calls it by name, “the Shadow”, when he’s also the one who’s previously had experience with a Shadow in his own adventure) and the significance of the blood is explicitly pointed out. Twilight then calls attention to their wounded, setting up his role in the group as the heart <3

With the threat gone the fairies of the forest return and heal both Wars’ and Wild’s injuries and attempt to heal Time as well, but he waves off their concern (after they’ve assumably already healed his side), establishing a lovely little rule of thirds and emphasizing his reluctance of having others worry and fret over him (“Don’t fuss over me”), which is very ironic considering what happens later on….

It seems that he shooes them away from his face specifically, seeming to imply to me that the fairies were interested in the old wound that claimed his eye. Obviously there's not much that can be done about that now, but it’s still interesting to note 🤔

Warriors finishes Legend’s sentence next (which Legend notably doesn’t seem to mind), we get some more emphasis on the blood, and the boys are off!

We end on the second ever shot of all of the heroes together, Time included this time (ha), and the words “seems we are on the right path to understand the cause of our meeting,” which is assumably still Warriors talking. I’m not sure if there’s significance or not in how they’re all standing here, but it’s incredibly epic all the same.

This first little arc is such an excellent and clever way to set up the basic premise of the entire story and to introduce all of our main players here, and I continue to be ceaselessly amazed by Jojo’s keen attention to detail. All within 20 pages of gorgeous art!

[clovariia]

we can FINALLY post our pieces for the @tohgrimoire zine!!! i wrote a fic about luz and her family visiting her father's grave. it's a tragic but healing time for all of them.

thank you so much to @astrolavas for drawing the devastating spot art and the zine's writing mod @taruchinator for helping with beta reading!!! all the zine contributors and mods were so sweet and encouraging. i'm so grateful that i got to be a part of this project! thank you to everyone for all the support!!!!!! 🦉💕

🔗 https://archiveofourown.org/works/58919038

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The TTPD Deep Dive (Part ?)

It’s 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. I’m absolutely blown away by how underneath the chaos, it’s 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 there’s 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 don’t pretend to have any special insight or authority. I’m not saying I’m correct at all, do not take any of this as fact, it’s just what it sounds like to me, and these are my silly not-so-little thoughts about it.

(Under a cut because it’s 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 you’re looking at TTPD as a story being told (instead of just as someone’s real life), the inciting incident of TTPD is loss, and the grief from that loss is what drives the narrator’s 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, it’s 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 one’s 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 her— which is why the next lover’s (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 one’s 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 “Fortnight.” The wedding ring line in “TTPD” the song. “He saw forever so he smashed it up” in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” All of “So Long, London.” Running away with her wild boy in “But Daddy I Love Him,” fantasizing about weddings and joking about babies. The imaginary rings in “Fresh Out The Slammer.” The cheating husband (again) and the friends who smell like weed or “little babies” in “Florida!!!” “You and I go from one kiss to getting married,” “Talking rings and talking cradles,” and “our field of dreams engulfed in fire” in “loml.” (And arguably: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.”) “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short,” in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” 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.

It’s something that goes back several albums when you pick up on context clues. You get the first hints on Reputation with “New Year’s Day,” and “you and me forevermore.” Then Lover is very forward with it: “Lover” is basically wedding vows, “Paper Rings” is very engagement-coded, “I Think He Knows” is cheeky but low-key “you better put a ring on it,” “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” has wedding/marriage imagery in the last verse. As a self-professed diaristic writer, it’s the type of stuff one presumably doesn’t 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 (“invisible string”), there are also the first indications that something has happened to put a halt to whatever future she once dreamed of (“hoax,” “the lakes”) and that she’s trying to reassure herself and him that it can still happen even if she’s scared it might not (“peace”). Notably, as far as I can remember it’s the first time Taylor explicitly brings up the idea of family (with her partner) with “you know that I’d give you my wild, give you a child,” which stood out at the time because it’s so incredibly vulnerable, but it’s 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 he’ll 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 (“tolerate it”), dangerous marriages (“no body, no crime,” “ivy”), failing/broken relationships (“Coney Island,” “champagne problems,” “happiness,” “‘tis the damn season”), as well as grief (“Marjorie,” “evermore”). Even some of the happy songs have uncertainty in them: in “willow” she’s begging for him to take her lead, like she’s still trying to decipher him and ask him to commit; in “cowboy like me,” still a beautiful love song, she’s thinking, “this wasn’t supposed to work and we were supposed to bail on each other but we fell in love instead”; “evermore” is about the depths of severe depression (and more) with the love story being the one saving grace in her darkest hour. And it’s also notable that after all the “fiction” writing, shortly after this album she writes “Renegade” where she’s telling the subject: I’m ready to start the next phase of our life now, why aren’t you? Is it me you don’t want after all? It’s like there’s 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 “sleepless nights” 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 she’s questioning so much of her life that’s 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 I’m 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). We’re seeing her view of commitment change too, or rather how she writes about it: she’s 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 it’s 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. “Sweet Nothing” is a sweet slice of life, but even at that, it’s the peace of the home in conflict with the pressure of the outside world. Now that we have “You’re Losing Me,” 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 it’s like Midnights is asking the questions that TTPD answers. But there’s 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 that’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” 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: “every single thing to come has turned into ashes,” and that’s what makes her snap, and leaves her vulnerable to someone who promises her those things when she’s bereaved at losing them in the first place. (In other words: “the deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling.”) The song tells a story about how that loss of hope colours one’s 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 she’s doing all over Midnights, trying to make sense of where she finds herself when she’s writing the album, which directly leads to “You’re Losing Me.” Loss permeates so many of the stories on Midnights: of lovers, of innocence, of youth, of faith, of control, of life’s work, etc. “BTTWS” 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 “Depression” 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 “narrative” in TTPD too. If on Midnights she’s wrestling with the seeds of grief and loss (on multiple fronts), TTPD is her reckoning with it in its full form. “So Long, London” 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 I’d go before I’d 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. It’s the sequel to “You’re Losing Me.” It’s, the air is thick with loss and indecision, I know my pain is such an imposition, I’m getting tired even for a phoenix, all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, I’ve got nothing left to believe unless you’re choosing me, my heart won’t 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, it’s 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 partner’s 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 you’ve once touched is sick with sadness and you don’t 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 (“London,” “Fresh Out The Slammer”) and physically (again, “London,” and “Guilty As Sin?”) and takes his resentment out on her (“London” and arguably “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” 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 cage— or a noose (“London,” “Guilty”), but coming to terms with the loss of their life together and the future they’d dreamed of was killing her (again, “London,” but also “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”).

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 (“Down Bad” and “hostile takes overs”/“encounters closer and closer,” “Smallest Man” 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, “loml” and “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme”). Then after she’s confided these secrets to him, he insinuates himself back into her life (“Guilty,” “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man”) and sells her a dream that HE can give her all these things she hopes for (again, “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man,” “loml,” song “TTPD,” “Broken Heart”).

But the thing is, he only knows these are the things she wants because she’s 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, “that is really sad that your partner is not supporting you and you deserve to be treated better,” to a friend in growing distress, it seems like it was, “well I can give you all those things!!!! Right now!!!! Trust me!!!!” 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, it’s not like she’s been kidnapped and brainwashed. (In fact, she implores on songs like “But Daddy” 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 it’s 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 “swirliness” of the music make so much more sense. And for much of it, even many of the “conman” songs on the surface are really “partner” 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. She’s miserable caged in her stifling house because she’s been abandoned by her spouse, so the reappearance of this past love reignites the passion that’s dead at home.

TTPD

“So tell me, who else is gonna know me?” “I chose this cyclone with you.” I’m gonna kill myself if you ever leave. Everyone knows we’re crazy. She’s laying it out there that she’s already in a dangerous state of mind, and she’s actively putting herself in more danger by pursuing the conman. “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding,” spells this whole thing out so clearly: whether it’s an actual event (likely) or a metaphor for the promise he makes to her, the reason why it makes her heart explode is because it’s the thing she’s been waiting for forever with no movement, and here this person comes in and slips it on her finger in an instant like it’s nothing. (And eventually, as we’ll 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 she’s 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 there’s 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

“Did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” 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 “Smallest Man” 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. “[I loved your] hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer,” 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 couldn’t 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 he’s hurting you but still acts the way he does. (The original voice memo version makes this even clearer and it’s rather heartbreaking.) “He saw forever so he smashed it up,” speaks to the loss of a future the person became scared of, and the original lyrics (“he saw forever so he blew it up”) somehow cut even deeper to me because it feels so much more intentional.

Also in the original version, “he was my best friend and that was the worst part,” 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 it’s a one-two punch of not only losing the relationship but also your closest confidant. (It’s like the sequel to “Renegade” 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 “My Boy” is part of why she was so low, and why the “get love quick scheme” was so appealing later on. And it dovetails nicely into…

So Long, London

The most explicitly “partner” song that puts a coda on “You’re Losing Me,” and is Track 5 because it’s 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 couldn’t reassure her, he wouldn’t 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 didn’t leave.

But Daddy I Love Him

Like a direct reaction to “So Long, London” 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, I’m 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) It’s again her imagining how wonderful and freeing this “wild boy” is going to be for her, and how wrong she’ll 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 don’t know what she really wants or needs anyway! She’s the only one of her (hee-hee-hee) and she’s the only who gets to decides how this goes. (Because: she longs for control in a situation she’ll eventually realize she has little of it in, which we’ll 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. There’s this whole outlaw imagery (which is also carried through in “I Can Fix Him”), but it’s contrasted in the end with her and her reunited lover sitting on park swings like children with “imaginary rings” — because “Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake.” What’s 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 aren’t built on anything together; they're made up, intangible. (They’re no more concrete than the plans that went up in smoke with the partner.) Like with most of the conman situation, it’s 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, it’s running away from your problems and wanting to disappear from your life. (But again: the life she’s 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 “I don’t want to exist,” 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 it’s the “masturbation song,” but again the nuance is that she’s left to pleasure herself because her partner has abandoned her emotionally and even physically, i.e. “my boredom’s bone deep.” To be blunt: they aren’t even intimate anymore, so she starts fantasizing about the guy she used to have chemistry with who’s reentered her life and is making moves on her. And realizing that she’s now finding release in another man (albeit imaginary) breaks her even as it reinvigorates her because she finally understands that the relationship she’s in is effectively dead. (“Am I allowed to cry?”)

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

This isn’t about relationships, but about society and its reaction to them in a general sense. But again, she’s left to stew in all this anger and hurt as she’s 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 she’s made and habits she’s 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, “no really, I alone can make him better! You’ll see! I know he’s gross, but he’s mine! It’ll be fine I swear! You don’t know anything! Uuuuuum hmm wait actually what the fuck—“

Loml

Oof. THE song. Again the surface reading is about the “conman” 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 “swirliness” 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 “you’re the loss of my life” 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.) “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles” to “Our field of dreams engulfed in fire” 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 — 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 isn’t just the one with the conman, it’s the one with the longterm relationship she’d built the dream with in the first place, because the conman’s 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 it’s the loss of her life, so completely.

When she says “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” IMO it’s 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. There’s 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 “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short” and “He said he’d love me for all time, but that time was quite short” sums it up to me (and parallels “loml”), because they are two different situations, but they cut her just the same. In the first, “that life” IMO was the life they’d built with the dreams that went along with it and it was too short because he never followed through, and in the second, the “time” 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, it’s 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 isn’t what he wants or can handle -> she’s 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 she’s 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 isn’t 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 to…)

The Manuscript

The “original sin” that kicks off all of this. Again, at first light this isn’t 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 that’s Mr. Plaid Shirt Days from “All Too Well”). 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 “pushing strollers” 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) didn’t 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, “if the sex is anywhere near as good as our dates have been, we’re going to be making babies before you know it,” (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 you’re not worthy after all?)

No, obviously from this side of life, it’s because he was a commitment-phobic playboy, even if he did love her, but she couldn’t 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 doesn’t have to change into a different person to please anyone, because if that is what they want, they won’t ever want her anyway.

It’s 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)— and that is haunting. After years of men minimizing her dreams and desires, if not outright using them against her, she’s finally at the point where she can let it all go and move on for good. (There’s a whole other tangent about consent and shame and manipulation, but that’s an entirely different kind of discussion. But it is so devastatingly contrasted with “you said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die.”)

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. It’s a formative experience at a young age that was traumatic and led to certain coping mechanisms and a shaping of one’s 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 isn’t anything else to hold onto. Then in light of one’s 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, she’s 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 “microwave” (conman) relationship, you realize that almost everything she writes about it happens before it actually becomes reality, and it’s mostly her imagining how great it’ll be, but with few exceptions, when she writes about what actually occurred, it doesn’t even come close to living up to her expectations. “Fortnight” is an imagined future where she escapes to Florida and his touch finally starts her stalled engine (ahem). “TTPD” 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 she’ll kill herself if he ever leaves her — the implication is that she is absolutely serious about it when she “felt seen.”) 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 they’re equally fucked up and the chaos he brings into her life makes her feel alive when she felt so close to death).

“Down Bad” is the most explicit about being in love, but she’s 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 (“did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” “Waking up in blood.”). “But Daddy” is her imagining she can tell everyone to fuck off for telling her what to do with her life. “Fresh Out The Slammer” is her fantasizing about this man while feeling trapped in her relationship — but never in the song is she actually reunited with him; she’s using him as the projection of all the things she’ll make right after being wronged by her partner. “Guilty As Sin?” Is very obviously about her fantasizing about sleeping with him, but again it’s such a minefield for her because it hasn’t happened yet; they’ve only just reconnected. “I Can Fix Him” is the only song other than “TTPD” that shows them actually together, and it’s the one where she keeps saying, essentially, “I know he’s gross but I can rehabilitate him into an upstanding person, trust me,” until the mic drop at the end of the song where it finally hits her that no, she can’t, because this is who he is, not the person she’s built him up to be.

“Loml” is when it all comes crashing down, and the song emphasizes everything he did and told her, e.g. that she’s the love of his life, but she doesn’t return the sentiment in the song about their time together. Because now that it’s past tense, she knows it wasn’t actually love. (And says as much in the album epilogue poem.) “Broken Heart” is her reeling in the aftermath, but again, it’s “he said,” not “I loved.” And then there’s “The Smallest Man,” where she eviscerates him: he also pursued an idea of her but didn’t 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 wasn’t even a good lover (despite the fantasy she’d 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 wasn’t a love affair, it was a mutual manic phase.

In contrast, there’s a lot more tangible action in the “oven” (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 “So Long, London” 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 “loved this place for so long.” (The place? Not just the city, but the home and perhaps most importantly, him.) In “Slammer” she stayed with him even as things disintegrated for “one hour of sunshine.” (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 “London,” she held on despite people in her life pleading with her that it was hurting her. (Which is also echoed in “Slammer.”) In “Guilty” her boredom is “bone deep” because the passion that once drove their relationship (and papered over their problems) has finally gone out too, so there’s 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. “Loml” 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 isn’t 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 he’s immediately serious (“TTPD,” “loml”). She feels caged by having to hide with her partner and shrink herself; the conman promises he’ll stand by her side publicly and let her shine (“Smallest Man”). She sinks into a deep depression in her loneliness as the relationship with her partner careens off a cliff; the conman convinces her they’re meant for each other in a them-against-the-world way (“Down Bad”). 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 (“Guilty”). She spent years trying to help her partner to no avail; the conman makes her think she has the power to reform him (“loml”). She feels misunderstood by her partner; the conman acts like he’s the (only) one who truly gets her (“TTPD,” “loml”).

In short: there’s nothing that the conman does or says that isn’t a direct response to what her partner did first, and it’s even worse because the conman knew how much her partner’s 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. (I’ve likened it to him borrowing someone else’s life for his own joyride, until he crashes the rental car and flees the scene.) It’s 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. There’s anger (at her lost youth and being taken for granted), but there’s also sorrow (at their lost life and future), disappointment (that he never could step up the way he’d promised or she’d 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 (“My Boy,” “London,” “Slammer,” arguably “loml”). Having already been through at least one rough patch/break/breakup that she felt almost destroyed her (harkening back to Midnights on “You’re Losing Me,” “The Great War” and “Hits Different”), the final and fatal downward spiral of the relationship (“YLM,” “London”) 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 she’s been longing to hear and feel (“TTPD,” “Down Bad,” “Guilty,” “loml”) 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 (“loml,” “Smallest Man”) and decides he’s actually what will save her from the free fall, because the alternative (that she will end up in a situation she doesn’t 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 (“But Daddy”), but before she knows it, the new lover abandons her, and she’s left to reckon with the fallout of the episode and process everything that has happened (“Down Bad,” “loml”) — 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 wasn’t 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, we’ll never know, just like we’ll 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 it’s a long, drawn-out death or a sudden, inexplicable one, it can turn a person’s 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.)