You know, it's rather interesting to me that Taylor Swift's parasocial relationship with her fans is honestly more akin to a YouTuber than a writer's. When I scroll through her tag on tumblr/Twitter, it's far more regarding the connection to her personal life/relationship developments than the actual metaphors/fictional story she might be telling. Everything comes back to how her songs reflect back on her relationships with Joe/Matty/Travis/Jake/insert ex-boyfriend here. And what fascinates me about it is that even though she complains about it, she leans into that very perception because it strengthens the parasocial bond.
The marketing for TTPD so clearly being about Joe Alwyn and the songs to Matty Healy. The marketing/video for Red TV so CLEARLY being about Jake Gyllenhaal, with so many of the new lines in All Too Well specifically being digs at him (I'll get older but your lovers stay my age, casting an actor that looks like him for the video, specific lines in I Bet You Think About Me). The fact that songs like Getaway Car and Bejeweled and Gorgeous and London Boy and Lavender Haze being picked apart at time of release and long after for signs of relationships crumbling. The way she uses surprise songs in relation to her relationship development with Joe/Matty/Travis. The damn TTPD "stages of grief" playlists where she deliberately undid/changed the meanings of old songs just to keep her audience speculating on her love life.
It's not sexist to point out that her wielding her love life is a marketing tool and that the strongest connection to her audience isn't the strength of her writing/the composition of her music- it's her deliberate crafting of a connection between her music and her personal life, leaving the audience invested in her music as an extension of Taylor the Person/Girlfriend rather than Taylor the Artist.
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The usual story:
Magic companion: Let's go on an adventure kid!
Kid protagonist: Heck yeah!
The magic world: *whimsy and fun*
The Boy and the Heron:
demonic stinky Grey Heron: I'm here to take you on an adventure, and possibly tear out and eat your heart if I feel like it
Mahito, home-making his own bow and arrow: Leave me the fuck alone I'll kill you monster
The world in the tower: *whimsically mysterious and also fucked up and lowkey Cosmic Horror*
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Bugsnax fandom open discussion: which bugsnax would you like to see become a marketable plushie, obviously excluding the ones that are already plushies (Bunger, Strabby, Kweeble, Cinnasnail)
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I’m sorry to have an influencer moment on here but I’m not lying when I say that these Tomato Cheddar Toasts from NYT cooking are hands down one of the best meals I have ever cooked for myself in my entire life (and I’ve been cooking daily for like 12 years lol) and they take like five minutes, most of which is spent waiting for the bread to toast. The recipe is paywalled so I’ll just say you take cheddar cheese and shred it on the tiniest side of your box grater/microplane, then mix together a 1:1 ratio of mayo and cheddar. Then when the bread is piping hot from being toasted you spread it on there (like a tbsp or two per bread) and the heat causes them to melt together into this insane creamy tangy spread. Then top with tomatoes and salt.
I have been eating tomato toasts almost every day this summer and I thought I had my formula down pat, but then I tried these and it changed my world. Genuinely a contender for last meal on earth if I had to choose. I have eaten it with every single meal since I got back from my backpacking trip except one bc I was invited to a potluck. I know my username might make you think I’m just overzealous but please for the love of god if you eat dairy and gluten and love tomatoes (and have access to some good ones) I am begging you to try this. On the left is the recipe pic and on the right is one of the ones I made. and like it doesn’t matter if no one tries this I just want this in my tomato tag to commemorate this unbelievable toast because I’m in a new era of my life for real
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Thinking about IDW Optimus again and the fandom's aversion to even acknowledging he exists bc he's a cop or whatever and like. Most of the time people literally just replace him in fic with some white bread knockoff archivist/librarian, not even bothering to keep in IDW OP's personality (which just bolsters my theory that the problem isn't him being a cop the problem is that he's too multifaceted but I digress).
And it's annoying because you could totally write IDW Optimus as not a cop while still keeping his canon personality. You just have to realize that the reason IDW OP became a cop in the first place is because his formative experiences when he was young shaped him to basically have two priorities: 1. To help people and 2. To do it by being on the ground actively doing something about the bad things happening to people.
IDW OP would not be a fucking librarian or archivist because even though those are noble pursuits that can help people and change the world, and Optimus is educated/smart enough for the profession, he wouldn't be satisfied just teaching people or spreading information about activism or social-historical studies or whatever. He's a mech of action: he needs to be doing things right now, in front of him, to people he sees/interacts with in his own eyes, improving society with concrete actions rather than indirect action or abstract inspiration.
So basically the alternate job ideas I can think of for IDW Optimus are something like being a firefighter (or any first responder really) or even whatever the equivalent would be to international charity organizations, those ones that send volunteers across the world to do stuff like build housing/infrastructure or distribute food or whatnot. I mean I can't imagine that the equivalents to these things would be exactly the same in IDW Cybertron, so you'd have to get a little creative with it, but these are just some ideas of jobs that would fit IDW Optimus' personality while still filling the niche of "not a cop" for people who are just that opposed to it.
Though I think the revulsion against coptimus is annoying in general tbh because IDW is already a continuity that rejects the idea of easily defined good/evil people or groups. It feels like people really want Optimus to be a good person in a very sanitized and academically approved way, so he has to be nice and squeaky clean but also like, a perfect leftist who knows theory and holds the most progressive opinions on every single issue....
There is no room for the idea that good people join bad institutions, there's no room for the idea that the reason people think cops are good guys who help people is bc of the government propaganda everything is saturated with. Hell there's even later issues of the Optimus Prime series by John Barber where Optimus like, MULTIPLE FUCKING TIMES, is shown in flashbacks grappling with the fact that he as a cop/Zeta's regime that he works for might not actually be improving society like they say they are, and dealing with the fact that he feels more like a lesser evil compared to the Decepticons (perhaps not "lesser" at all).
It's like there's this idea in fandom of like, fictional media and opinions on media having to strictly adhere to progressive ideals at all times. So people just go "cops bad, this character is a cop, therefore they suck" without being willing to engage with the idea of like. IDW OP is born wanting to fight injustice and protect people -> a good way to protect people is to fight the people who are hurting them and committing crimes -> surely following the law is a reliable moral code to guide him in this -> becomes a cop because he's been indoctrinated into a society (much like our own) where he was told that the state/the law exist to protect the people and being a cop means you get to fight bad guys that hurt people. There's really so many interesting concepts there that could be (and CANONICALLY IS) explored about how good, well-intentioned people can be led to harmful actions simply because they have been fed the idea that the things they're doing are good/helpful/noble. Which is especially important for a character like Optimus, I think, who has a cultural icon status as The Irrefutable and Perfect Good, so it's really important actually to use IDW Optimus as an example of how even the most noble people you know have held problematic beliefs or done bad things at some point in their life. You know, because no one is born perfect and ideologically pure, and in fact society is constructed in exactly a manner to make people drink the kool-aid and believe that the systems designed to hurt them/others are just a normal, if flawed, society.
I mean the writing in IDW literally has Optimus deal directly and indirectly with the harm he's done as a cop and how people don't/didn't trust him because of that. I don't know what the fuck else this fandom wants if the source material literally saying "OP realizes that cops suck and he hurt people and earned their disdain by doing the things he did" doesn't stop them from going EW cop bastard sucks and is the worst Optimus. Like the narrative barely stops short of outright saying ACAB and Optimus himself would agree with this sentiment.
At that point, the collective fandom beef with IDW OP isn't because he's a cop and the narrative didn't do enough to condemn that. The problem is literally just that people don't read and don't care
TLDR: Consider the fact that good people can do bad things sometimes especially when living from birth in a corrupt society that thoroughly disguises its vices/oppressive structures as completely normal parts of existence
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obsessed with the fact that apparently in the DC universe in addition to The Statue of Liberty in NYC Gotham was like... hm. we deserve a big lady too... except... she’s gonna have a fugkin. SWORD... because she’s COOLER... and she shows MIDRIFF....
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Oh but can you IMAGINE what it woulda been like if Christina Hendricks and Manny Montana did just ONE. ONE delicious promo interview together, sitting side by side, talking about the show, their characters, their dynamics together, brio. Just... The off screen chemistry? The... Well I guess tension... I mean CAN YOU IMAGINE?
I know, I know, there were (probably) some behind the scenes issues and everything but.... I mean, the chemistry was undeniable throughout and I just wish we got to see how they interacted and their dynamics outside the show. The frenzy it would send the fandom into. FRENZY.
The fact that we only have two behind the scenes photos of them out of character and literally nothing else will forever be our cross to bear as a fandom, anon.
Like Christina Manny bts pics you will always be famous.
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PSA: Just a heads up that an article in Collider that was published today had Michael Sheen quoted as saying this:
The article was subsequently picked up by Gizmodo, who apparently edited the quote (likely without Michael’s permission) to say this:
To sum up: Gizmodo deliberately edited the quote from “the being that he loves being with the most” to “the being he most likes being with“ (and I think we can say “homophobic fuckery” is the reason why, and I have many more thoughts to share on what is happening with the marketing of GO 2, which I will go into on another post).
Gizmodo’s version has already been picked up by several other news outlets, but if you share this article, be sure to share the Collider article and DO NOT share the Gizmodo one and give their inaccurate/misleading bullshit any further publicity. Thank you.
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