#like don’t get me wrong I like all the albums I mentioned and folklore and evermore are soooo close to my heart but this next album is just

[sadgirlautumn]

Crazy how it’s not April 19th already 😔

[thepladinsheart]

Byler, El and the folklore love triangle.

Taylor Swift’s 7th studio album, “folklore” (along with the sister album “evermore”) has written between the lines a love triangle between one teenage boy, James and two teenage girls, Betty and Augustine.

Taylor herself has said, “Betty and James end up together but he {James} put her {Betty} through it.” 

However, the way byler and El tie into this is slightly different. 

The way the folklore love triangle works is like this, James and Betty were together and had some sort of falling out. Then, James went away for a summer and cheated on Betty with Augustine. But, after that summer, James basically ends up ghosting Augustine because he realizes that he really messed up with Betty and needs to make things right. So, he shows up to a party she was having and the kiss and makeup and start dating again and “end up together.”

Now that you know what the folklore love triangle is, I can tell you how Byler and El fits into all of this. 

How I think this works is Mike is James, Will is Betty and El is Augustine. And here is why.

James is obviously Mike because he is the one stuck between the two “girls”. The “girls” in this situation being Will and El. he can’t choose whether to be unhappy in his relationship or pursue the person he wants but hurt the girl he is with and put a target on his back. 

Will being Betty just makes the most sense. Will has been there from the very start. Even though Mike and Will obviously never canonically dated, they’ve been best friends since kindergarten. Also, Mike and Will have had SEVERAL falling outs and the one that always crawls back to Will is Mike, begging him forgiveness. 

 Now time to talk about El. Please don't get me wrong, I LOVE El. Please do not think that I am one of those bylers that hate El. I don’t. However, El is Augustine. She has simply not been there as long as Will has been. She is basically just a distraction for Mike in a romantic sense. Hear me out, Mike is using El as a shield to hide behind. So he can hide from his internalized homophobia. I am NOT saying that he thinks of El as an object. But it’s more on head, he’s thinking that he can’t possibly have feelings for Will because he has a girlfriend. And if he has a girlfriend, he can't be picked on. He can’t be a target. 

TIME FOR LYRIC ANALYSIS!!! 

Cardigan 

Cardigan is the song that tells Betty’s side of the story from her perspective. Which in this form is Will's side of the story from his perspective. 

“I knew you.” 

Like I’ve said many many times Will has been there from the very beginning. Like, he was the first friend Mike ever had. 

“A friend to all is a friend to none. Chase two girls, lose the one.” 

I’m sure one of the many reasons Mike doesn’t want to break up with El and confess his feelings to Will (atleast right now in the canon) is because he could and probably will lose both of them. Because if he breaks up with El, that’s already enough grounds for losing her not to mention the whole part about being in love with her brother. Mike could also loose Will because he could reject Mike for the sake of saving El’s feelings.

“And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed, you put me on an said I was your favorite.” 

Mike has always been the first one to notice when anything with Will is off, the first one to find him when he’s wandered off while in an episode. He has been “the only one who cares about Will” from the start. 

“I knew you. Leaving like a father, running like water.” 

We all know that Mike runs from all of his problems and won’t stop running until he falls off the face of the Earth. But Will doesn't know why he’s running from him. 

“But I knew you’d linger like a tattooed kiss. I knew you’d haunt all of my what if’s.” 

Will knows better than anyone that the feeling of Mike lingers. It stays and it won’t go anyway and it’s bittersweet. 

“I knew you'd miss me once the thrill expired and you'd be standing in front of my front porch light.” 

Whether Will liked it or not, he knew that Mike would be coming back sooner rather than later. And he wanted that way. He didn’t want to push Mike away. It would be impossible to push away the person that he has called his best friend all his life and the boy that has been with his sister for years. 

August

This song reprents Augustine perpective of the whole situation which would equalivlate to El.

“‘Cause you were never mine.”

I don’t think that El is stupid, she has to know or have somewhat of a feeling.  But also, I feel like she knows that Mike would be better off with Will. And, honestly, I think she’ll be better with someone else who actually listens to what she needs. I do not think that El and Mike are good for eachother is a romantic way. They aren't loving eachother they way both of them need it.

“I remember thinking I had you.” 

I think that in retrospect, it’s funny to El all of the things she tolerated from Mike. And I think when Mike and El break up she will realize that they simply weren't right for each other in a romantic sense. Platonic with a capital P. 

“So much for summer love and saying us” 

I genuinely think that when El and Mike broke up in season 3, they should’ve stayed broken up. They would have still been friends and still talked to each other. But if they would have broken up it would have been the best for both of them. It would have saved both of their feelings. 

Betty

This song is James apology to Betty after dissapering and cheating on her. This would equal Mike.

“Betty, one time I was riding on my skateboard when I passed your house. It's like I couldn't breathe.” 

I know for damn sure that Mike Wheeler could not go near that house after Will moved out. I feel like it would make him sick to his stomach when he looked at it. 

“The worst thing that I ever did was what I did to you.”

I know that Mike regrets the shit he did in Season 3. The fights, the blatant ignoring of Will to focus on El and his relationship that’s falling apart in front his eyes.

“Slept next to her but, I dreamt of you all summer long.” 

I think that Mike really started to realize that he likes Will around the end of season 2 and season 3. Which is also around the same time he starts getting more defensive towards Will. That's when it all starts going downhill. Because he is starting to realize this feeling and with El breaking up with him, he is losing things to hide behind. 

“The only thing I wanna do is make it up to you.” 

We all know that if season 2 Mike saw seasons 3 or 4 Mike, he would beat his ass. But I still think that there is a little part of Mike that still really cares about Will like season 2 Mike did.

This is a rework of something i did a really long time ago so if it seems familiar and you've been around my blog a while that's why!

people who wanted to be tagged:

@hollarious2

@artsyna

@wallywise

@lebylershipper

@ash-the-wise

@tender-emotional-music

@willbyerswatch

@hearteyes-wheeler

@paloma-ascends-into-hellfire

also! if you want to be on the normal tag list (aka you get tagged everytime i post an essay / longer post abput byler you will get tagged), please comment and let me know!

also watch out for something related to byler and folklore soon (wink wink)

[maylorscardigan]

Reputation & TS11.

do you think Taylor will announce or drop Reputation in a few days? Do you think we will see TS 11 soon? I’m curious what your thoughts are with these because there’s been a lot of speculation with it lately. I don’t think she would do 1989 TV dirty like that. Please… thoughts.

*mumbles under breath*

NO.

I do not think we are getting Reputation as an announcement or as a drop this weekend. 1989TV is quite literally her most successful album debut of her career. She is NOT going to disrespect that album by doing that. 1989 TV / SV is her baby. It’s the album that changed her entire career.

So no.

Besides - anyone who truly knows anything about Reputation knows that she is not going to make it obvious. That’s the entire point of Reputation. It’s like the Reputation fans who thought she wasn’t actually going to release 1989 TV and just drop Reputation instead. There are so so so many things that would have gone wrong with that.

SNTV got a short period because when you look at it… while it didn’t have a long Era like Red TV or Fearless TV… it got A LOT. It got a night dedicated to it with the guest appearances and the music video etc. Red and Fearless were released outside of the Eras tour so they got a longer stretch. That being said - she is giving 1989 TV longer.

When she announced 1989 TV she performed “New Years Day” from Reputation and that in itself could be an Easter Egg. If she was going to stick to the 112 day thing then she could announce Reputation on New Years Day and release it for February 16th, 2024. This would give it 46 days of promotion before a release.

Is it possible she just drops Reputation on New Years? No. It’s a Monday. Not to mention a holiday. Logistics nightmare if you ask me.

I am to laugh my ass off if the next album announced is Debut, closing with Reputation towards the end of the tour. Why? It’s exactly something that Taylor would do. Reputation Taylor at least. But I won’t get into my theories as to why I think Debut could be coming next.

As for TS 11…. I don’t see it coming before Eras wraps. The entire concert if designed around her first 10 albums. A LOT would need to be cut and redone to fit a new album into the concert. Not to mention all the work that has already gone into it with the movie and all that. She has a year left of touring with 2024. Two re-records to still get released. She is finishing off the Eras tour with those released then anything going forward will be TS11 and beyond. Releasing TS 11 during Eras would be such a bad business decision. New Albums deserve their own time. Just like Midnights had separate from the tour.

I think fans have become extremely greedy. She dropped two albums in a year with folklore and evermore because there was literally a pandemic going on and she had nothing else to do. Fans want all the re-records on top of each other. They want a new album - all while a world tour is going on. Like… come on guys. She is Taylor Swift, yes. She’s a bit of a super hero. I get it. But she’s still human all the same. Stop demanding so much from her all the time.

Since 2020, we have gotten:

• folklore

• evermore

• fearless tv

• red tv

• midnights

• speak now tv

• 1989 tv.

That is SIX albums. And fans just want more and more and more and more. Other artists… they’ve released one… maybe two if you’re really lucky. Some of released none and are working on one now. You also complain that the sound between 1989 tv and Midnights is too similar but you want TS 11 and Reputation like right now yet if it sounds similar you’ll complain about that… give it a rest and be THANKFUL fans for getting 6 albums in under 3.5 years AND a massive world tour with a three and a half hour show.

Disagree? Cool.

But the vultures need to back off.

((Note: when I say you in the post I do not mean the anonymous directly. I’m speaking about fans in general))

[incorrect-pipravi]

More PipRavi headcanons cuz why not!

I imagine their first kiss was intiated by Pip because I think Ravi didn’t want to ruin his friendship with her.

I think it was at one of their houses. They were just sitting on the bed talking about Sal and The Andie Bell case.

“I can’t express how grateful I’m, Sarge. You gave my brother the justice he deserved and I’m forever in debt to you.”

Pip would reply “Give yourself some credit, Agent Ravi! After all, you were my partner.” there would be this moment of silence and Pip would pull Ravi and press their mouths together.

He would start kissing her back and she’d pull back and be like “I thought you’d never do it!”

“I wasn’t sure you liked me back, Sarge.”

Pip would laugh and be like “You’re way too smart to be that dense.”

He’d laugh and be like “I guess I am.”

And then they’d kiss again and they get walked on by one of their parents (probably Victor) who would definitely be like “Oh, finally! I’m glad you guys figured it out because everyone could see it but you two!”

Pip is a demisexual queen and Ravi is a bisexual/pansexual king and don’t ask me why they just give me those vibes!

Ravi’s first crush was SRK (a famous Indian actor) and he was so confused because in all of the movies he’d seen the guy is supposed to love the girl so he tells Sal and Sal tells him that sometimes people love someone of the same gender and there’s nothing wrong with him.

He comes out to Pip a few months into their relationship while watching a movie (the movie is Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge btw trust me I was with them).

“You know, he was my first crush!”

At first, Ravi is nervous because what if Pip does not want to date a guy who is attracted to other guys too, but Pip’s answer would be a faux pouty “That’s not fair! How am I supposed to compete with Bolloywood’s biggest romance star?!”

And then Pip would actually get serious and tell him that it’s totally okay he needn’t to worry at all.

“Before you, I’ve never been attracted to anyone. I thought there was something wrong with me, too. And then I told Cara and after a very deep internet scroll, I settled on the term demisexual.”

Ravi would definitely smirk/grin and reply something like “So what I’m hearing is that I’m so sexy, I awakened something in you?” and Pip would roll her eyes and be like “I knew it’d get to your head.”

Ravi loves rainy weather because it reminds him of the first time Pip said “I love you.”

Ravi is definitely the cook between the two and he loves making Pip meals.

Especially breakfast in the bed.

Pip loves cradling her fingers in Ravi’s hair whenever they’re cuddling.

Ravi teases Pip about her height by putting her things on the top shelves (in honor of me going crazy over Zain’s and Emma’s height difference pt.2).

He would eventually give them to her, but of course it’s after a little cute angry Pip scolding!

Ravi has a scar on his chest due to a clumsy childhood accident that Pip jokes is hot!

“Yes, Pip. I know how very sexy and hot I am.”

Ravi knows how to play violin. I’d like to believe Sal taught him when they were young.

Pip loves writing poetry, but she keeps it a secret because it’s embarrassing (she has written many poems about Ravi).

Ravi finds them one day and he is brought to tears by how beautiful they’re.

“They’re actually inspired by you.” and here comes more tears and laughter and hugs.

Ravi would be like “I’m just so lucky to have you.”

Ravi has a good singing voice and he sometimes sings to Pip to soothe her back to sleep whenever she has nightmares.

I mentioned that Ravi is a swiftie but I forgot to mention that Pip starts liking Taylor’s music because of him.

And yes they go to the eras tour together. They’d even dress up in outfits inspired by their favorite albums/eras.

Pip would probably wear a simple dress with the cardigan because her favorite album is folklore/evermore and it’s not up to debate!

Ravi would probably put rhinestones around his eyes to imitate the lover album cover and wear some pastel colored outfit (most likely some knitted sweater and cargo pants).

Pip would so love the song “sweet nothing” because it reminds her of Ravi.

Forehead kisses from Ravi are Pip’s favorite while Ravi prefers the kisses Pip presses to the corner of his mouth and his cheeks.

They’re not the ones for big PDA but they do subtle ones like hand holding or a hand on each other’s thigh under the table or some such thing.

Ravi loves playing footsies with Pip when they’re having dinner with either of their parents because her blush is so cute.

Pip loves listening to audio books while Ravi prefers reading.

Pip claims that she is not the jealous type of gf but she definitely is! Like she trusts Ravi and she’s secure about their love but she just hates it when someone is friendly/flirty with him.

I think her jealousy stims from her insecurity that she doesn’t deserve him.

He always assures her that he feels like the luckiest person alive to have her and that she’s literally perfect to him.

I think Ravi is more protective than jealous, but he knows that his girl can protect herself after all she is Pippa freaking Fitz-Amobi.

He still tries to protect her despite that (like the time he yelled at Max).

Ravi’s biggest insecurity is probably his body because he’s not very muscular or strong.

Pip always assures him that he’s perfect by leaving kisses on his chest.

“Brains beat brawn any day of the week!” (Actual quote from the book btw)

The first time Ravi visits Pip in Cambridge, she takes him on a tour around campus and all of her classmates are very shocked because they didn’t think THE Pippa Fitz-Amobi is capable of being chatty and bubbly!

“Who are you and what have you done with my classmate Pippa??”

[kiddbegins]

ohhh but how are you feeling about 1989 tv and the vault!! 💙 any thoughts on listening to taylor in firehouse 51? who would be a swiftie, who would begrudgingly listen, who learns to appreciate her music after you give them a powerpoint presentation LOL

I like it a lot!! I’m admittedly not like a giant 1989 fan, but the songs I do like I vibe with. And tbh, I think these might be my favorite set of vault tracks? Like I like all of them 100%, each other set of vaults there’s one or more im not big on (sadly bc I’m a speak now stan but I can’t get behind foolish one)

Also god taylor swift at 51,,, in my mind I can twist any fictional character into a swiftie in one way or another. I will never find myself saying ‘this person would hate Taylor swift’ because her array of music I just think everyone would have at least one album they love.

That being said

Taylor swift lovers:

Gabby (of course - she’d be a fearless or red stan)

Shay (SHE WOULD HAVE LOVED LOVER YOU BITCH)

Stella (reputation stan probably)

Matt (I don’t know why but he radiates 1989 and reputation lover to me)

Violet (would absolutely fuck with 1989)

Gallo (that’s a speak now lover if I ever saw one)

Ritter (him and Violet fuuuuuck with 1989)

Capp (idk what album but he just gives yk)

Tbh hear me out, Kelly as a folklore or evermore stan,,, a stretch but idk

Also also hear me out, otis biggest 1989 stan in the building

Taylor swift dealers:

Everyone else lmao, the rest of them either weren’t fans until they met the others, or have a few songs they like here and there / an album they don’t mind hearing.

Most likely to not like her before: Sylvie (solely based on her dislike of Justin Bieber), Herrmann/Mouch (bc they’re older men and we know how men view her,, even tho I love them we’ve seen how Herrmann talks about women especially early in the show - still love him don’t get me wrong), and if we’re bringing temporary members into it, chili would say she doesn’t like her but stream her music

Boden would have no idea who she was until she’s brought up in the firehouse, and tbh actually maybe Herrmann and mouch are here instead but 1. Cindy would be a debut/fearless stan so maybe not Herrmann and 2. Mouch is glued to the tv and that girl is everywhere so,, not that possible

Honorable mentions from other shows that you didn’t ask for:

Will Halstead biggest lover lover 🥹

Jay and Hailey reputation lovers

Kim (and Adam) stream red daily

Connor listens to folklore and evermore

[tayfabe75]

don’t delete the snippet you posted for tortured poets…. Please it was fantastic. Hoping Matty will not get thrashed again when the songs are released

Wait, which snippet? This? Why would I delete it? Unless Taylor revealed something, herself (unlikely), then all I've been seeing is a bunch of wild assumptions about what the album is or isn't, based on almost nothing beyond song titles. Like, I can't browse Twitter without seeing people coming to definitive conclusions about this or that song based on… a title, mixed with gossip and rumors. Don't get me wrong, it's been highly interesting researching Clara Bow or the folkloric significance of 'The Bolter', but I have yet to see any concrete evidence about what the album is or isn't about.

What Taylor has said about the album is that she wrote it two years ago, like right after turning in Midnights, right? (It's my opinion that Midnights is already mostly about Matty) And she also said:

"Songwriting is something that actually gets me through my life. I've never had an album where I needed songwriting more than I needed it for this album."

Two years before this statement, we have her working alongside Matty at ELS and likely seeing him in more of a daily capacity, right? And she worked on it throughout the US leg of her tour, which was basically prime Matty time. Not to mention, she had already written songs like 'The 1' or 'Cardigan' (the latter being one of the very few times she ever confirmed a direct muse with her own mouth). Imagine finally getting the man you pined for all those years… and your fans driving him off and creating a whole misinformation campaign around him to do so. Maybe you might need songwriting to cope with that, no?

I am going to go ahead and admit that I don't personally view Taylor as someone who does "takedowns", though I get why she has that… reputation. Like anyone, I can only speculate on what the songs will be about, but I will wager one guess: if we DO happen to get a "takedown", I don't think it will be about Matty. More likely it will be about certain collective behavior that helped drive him away. Think 'Peace', but more heartbroken in that her success manifested her worst fears… (and if I had to take a stab at which song that might be, I'd guess: "I Can Do It with a Broken Heart")

I predict the album will be very different than anyone is expecting (including myself!) Either way, never been more excited for an album before (and my favorite band took thirteen years to release their newest album! lol)

[many-fandoms-13]

Lover is underloved and I hate it It has a special place in my heart because it was my first era and it has all my favorite things pastels, glitter, unicorns, love, sunsets, etc. I understand why a lot of people hate it because I would agree that ME! And you need to calm down weren’t they the greatest lead single choices but they were at the same time let me explain. I read somewhere that artists pick the “worst” songs to be the lead singles to save the “best” ones for the album so said the album would do better on the charts and stuff and in my opinion I think ME! And you need to calm down and really encapsulate the lover era meaning to a T because of ME! Is about self-love and you need to calm down is about queer love and The Lover album is mostly about all the different types of love familiar love with soon you’ll get better, significant other love with lover, paper rings, false god, etc. The ME and You Need to calm down music videos also encapsulate the aesthetic of the lover era to a T with all the bright happy cheerfulness and the pastels and sparkles and neon etc. I think another reason why people hate Lover is that the era was very short-lived thanks (not really) to Covid and Loverfest being canceled and it felt like it ended without any real closure like a canceled tv show to just quickly switch to the folklore era which I can somewhat get it because maybe Taylor wanted to move away from it and replace it. After all, it made her sad because she had all these plans for it that just fell threw but she could have at least put it to a proper ending and maybe released a deluxe version with all of the girls you loved before and need and the rumored afterglow ft Ariana Grande. Something that saddens me is that Taylor was so happy during that era and everyone just puts shit on it for no reason and now Taylor barely acknowledges it. Another reason why I think Lover gets shitted on is that it was overshadowed by the greatness of folklore which I can somewhat get because we can all agree that Folklore is a brilliantly amazing album but Lover is amazing on its own and we shouldn’t be comparing all the albums because they’re all great in their own way. I wanted to add on to this post. i think another reason that people hate this album is because it’s “to happy” because if you ask a lot of Swifties what their favorite album is many of them would say folklore or evermore or red or speak now which all have a very similar theme that they’re all super sad and full of break up songs even though I hate the stereotype type that all Taylor writes is break up songs and not to long ago my sister was listening to a Lorde song and she mentioned how a lot of Lorde fan didn’t like the album that song was from because it was “to happy” because I guess Lorde is very similar to Taylor in that she writes more sad songs I don’t know I don’t listen to Lorde which got me thinking kind of how that feels very similar to how Lover was received by fans and why Taylor wrote Death by a thousand cuts and that thing she said in the tiny desk performance about how she felt that she wouldn’t be able to write break up songs because she was so happy and in love so I just thought of that as like another reason why People don’t like a lover and like what's wrong with Taylor being happy and in love cause don’t we want our mother to be happy even though we all kind of hate Joe now after hearing you’re losing me at least the man made Taylor happy for maybe a few years and she wrote this beautiful album because of him

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

Oh my gosh, now that you’re putting me on the spot and asking me to actually organize my thoughts instead of the stream of consciousness that are my tag novels, I don’t know if I can actually make it coherent 😂

Warning: Long Post Ahead with a lot of extraneous detail about my own fandom history because I talk too much about things

(Also I’m going to divide my answer into sections because it’s way too long and old habits die hard lol.)

Her-as-Narrator

Firstly talking about separating her-Taylor from her-narrator I think at a certain point becomes necessary, or at least it is to me. I’ve mentioned it before, but I wasn’t an online fan until, like, this past March when tour started. I enjoyed Taylor’s music and owned a couple of her albums in the Debut-1989 period, fell in love with “Lover” which made me realize I was a bonafide fan and then absolutely became In It For Life with Folklore. Like… I could write essays about Folkore and what it means to me. It like opened up a whole new world to me, the same way it did the first time I heard albums from my other favourite bands (like The Lumineers etc.).

Which is to say, until recently, I enjoyed Taylor’s music on its own without any significant knowledge of the lore that went into them. (I didn’t even know she was dating anyone until the speculation about a possible engagement being hinted at in “Paper Rings” when the album came out if that tells you anything.) I knew of her relationships with JG, JM, Harry, etc. Because I spent years following Hollywood gossip, so I knew of the general history/ick as in “gross why is a 19 year old dating a 32 year skeeve” kind of way, but I didn’t know of the History™️. Or that all of her music was so deeply autobiographical and intertwined. (I mean, I knew, yes, she was inspired by her life, but figured she took creative liberties which I still believe may be true just because I know many musicians in my own life but that’s a whole other discussion.)

It’s been fascinating taking a deep dive into all the History™️ and I do agree with many of the discussions here that understanding that colours in the lines between the songs, and how her discography refers to and builds upon itself to create this giant contiguous story. But along with that, also blurs lines between Taylor the Author and Taylor the Person. They are one and the same, obviously, but at least to me, it makes it easier to view the discussion about Narrator/Subject vs specific people, only because as Taylor has said herself, these songs take on a life of their own once they’re out there, and even for her they change meaning and context throughout her life. (All Too Well being an example of an extremely difficult song for her to sing a decade ago being a fan favourite she relishes in now.)

It reminds me of when I was in high school and in English class one year, we had a module where our teacher assigned us songs to analyze as poetry, and I happened to pick “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell one day from the pile, and it just absolutely blew my mind and I couldn’t believe no one else was as riveted by this piece as I was. (Actually going back further, I remember in sixth grade, we had a student teacher for a semester and we did something similar with Alanis Morissette’s “Hand in My Pocket” which also absolutely blew my mind, so apparently I’ve been thinking too hard about lyrics most of my life.) But the key thing is that I wasn’t thinking of it as, what or who specifically is this singer singing about, it was, what does the song mean, what are the links between these other themes, how would you interpret this. So I think that as much as I’m fascinated by Taylor’s work and her life, part of me still has that instinct to approach the music as narrator/subject, though I admit that that is harder to do precisely because Taylor is so open and vulnerable and for better or for worse, so much of her life is public knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m right up there with everyone in screaming about how JM is a predator and JG was (probably) a pretentious douchebag and being sad for her after her breakup with Joe etc. And I absolutely am right there with everyone else when listening to a song and going, “omg THE TEA!!!” But, the thing is that her music deals with such universal themes (unfortunately in the case of the predatory things…) that I think that it’s easy to give yourself “permission” to see them as almost anonymous characters vs. A factual retelling, if that makes sense. So while we absolutely know who she’s singing about in WCS for instance, it’s also easy to see it as the cautionary tale of a young woman agonizing over the predatory actions of an older man, because it’s a tale as old as time. Just like how I knew nothing about Joni Mitchell besides the fact that she was from the same area as my parents that day in English class, but I knew I loved this song the second I read the lyrics.

The Girl in the Dress

When it comes to the line about the dress in Dear John for instance, I almost feel like I have no choice but to take that step back and think of her as Narrator, because that’s where that line between Taylor’s personal experiences and a story in a song become jagged edges. Because it’s kind of uncomfortable to speculate about what really happened between her and JM (though I know we all have our own ideas and theorize anyway because we’re human and I’m as guilty of that as anyone), but as a piece of art, it’s an image that speaks volumes. I don’t want to attribute feelings of shame, pain, implied abuse (or other) to a real person who hasn’t explicitly voiced that truth herself about a situation, but the girl in the dress in the song is so rich in storytelling that 30 years from now when another high school English class is analyzing songs from a pile, they’re going to have a field day with it without trying to pinpoint which boyfriend of Taylor Swift’s did what when.

And the reason why that line always hits me is that it says so much, especially coming right off of, “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” The dress is obviously shorthand for her youth, that the very thing that (probably) attracted the man to her — her naïveté, her inexperience in the adult world, her sunny demeanour, her girlishness — are the very reasons she shouldn’t have been “messed” with. (Hahahahahaha don’t think about the contrast of seeing the guy in his suit and his necktie in “I Can See You” and doing the Very Adult Things with him there vs. Her withdrawing into the “girl in the dress” in Dear John.) It’s clear she does not see them as equals, and even in her youth, she feels that a serious boundary was crossed. (Which dovetails so painfully into the discussion on here when Speak Now TV came out last week about how the album is about her being hurtled into adulthood before she was really ready and desperately craving the safety of her girlhood in the wake of some very painful situations.)

But it’s also darker, because the image I’ve always had as I heard that line was of a girl leaving a situation that has scarred her. It’s probably easy to dismiss it as, “the girl is crying on the way home from a breaking up with the man” or something relatively benign, but that’s too simplistic when you look at what’s between the lines in the song as a whole, and especially in that chorus. And again, coming off the heels of “too young to be messed with.” It implies a girl experiencing some sort of trauma, grief, pain, shame, you name it, in the wake of an experience she deeply regrets — and experiencing the fallout completely alone. If this song were a movie, it’d be the scene where she’d jump into the back of a cab on a rainy night and heave-cry into her lap.

The whole song is about how everyone around her warned her it was wrong, but her naïveté (and burgeoning sexuality) coloured her rational brain and the love-bombing (giving love before later taking it away) effectively isolated her from her circle. She kept up appearances around her loved ones (kept being the girl in the dress they all knew and love) to hide what was really going on, even though they knew she wasn’t herself. But this was part of the chess game, giving her all to a man who could discard her as easily as he’d paint her sky blue.

(The “messed with” is a whole thing in its own right. Because obviously it ties into the chess game, tests, etc., as in, playing mind games with her to keep her guessing. But it also has… other connotations which are much darker and insidious.)

The chorus in particular is a lament for the person she used to be: I was too young, you knew I was too young, you knew better when I didn’t, but you still did this to me, and I am grieving for the person I used to be before I knew you. I cried the whole way home because I can never really go home again.

And when it finishes with, “You should’ve known/ Don’t you think I was too young? You should’ve known,” that basically is the prologue to “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve.” (Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.)

The song isn’t about losing a man. It’s about losing herself.

(Sidebar: I think a lot of the darker themes get missed because musically, despite the electric guitars, it’s kind of a slow, classic country waltz and the cheeky “Dear John” double entendre of the title making reference to WWII pop culture as well as the explicit reference to the man in question. It’s easy to overlook the grooming of teenagers when you’re swaying to 1-2-3-4-5-6.)

(Sidebar 2: There’s probably a whole other essay to be written about the “dress” in her discography, but the one that jumps out to me is in Holy Ground when she says she’s, “spinning like a girl in a brand new dress.” Again, the dress represents her carefreeness, the blank slate, the excitement of the world before her. Contrast the dress

Pain/Pleasure

OK this one is a little less coherent in my brain, but when it comes down to it, I think that the experiences described in “Speak Now” and specifically in “Dear John” paint a lot of Taylor/the narrator’s views of relationships going forward. Jumping into Real Taylor for a minute, we seem to know that the relationships she had before JM were basically puppy love in the sense that they were mainly with her peers on the same maturity level and life experiences. So when she says she was “too young,” it doesn’t mean she may or may not have had other experiences of love (or lust/intimacy/desire) before that, but they seemed to have been for all intents and purposes age-appropriate between two people at the same stage in their lives, which is evident in much of her music up to that point. This is the Debut/Fearless era, you belong with me, I don’t know how it can get better than this, first kisses and first loves. Even her angry or sad songs at the time are endearingly childish — which is not dismissing her songwriting talent at all. But they’re the experiences of someone going through the normal trials and tribulations of teenagedom and young adulthood in a safe space.

But Speak Now is where the themes get darker; being haunted by someone, feeling shame and regret (which is now particularly evident on the vault tracks), feeling unmoored at what’s happened, desperately trying to return to the safe space but realizing it doesn’t exist anymore and not knowing where to find that safety anymore.

And yet again jumping into Real Taylor for a moment, it’s clear that the JM experience completely altered her notion of what relationships and love could be. This being her first adult relationship seems to colour how she thinks (or at least writes) about love and lust and relationships going forward. As everyone has so eloquently stated in much better and more succinct ways than I can, it seems to tell her that love is “treacherous,” doomed to fail, often based on playing each other and trying to maintain the upper hand, etc. This is all over Red and even 1989 to an extent.

So many of her songs from that point forward are about the dichotomy between being infatuated with someone and waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Dear John” starts that off (you paint me a blue sky and go back and turn it to rain), but then Red really runs with it. E.g. Treacherous (I’ll do anything you say if you say it with your hands/I’d be smart to walk away, but you’re quicksand; this hope is treacherous, this daydream’s dangerous), Red the song (lol the entire thing — every line is about how the good was euphoric and the bad was devastating but she couldn’t help herself because she couldn’t help herself), We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (the constant breaking up/coming back together), Come Back Be Here (This is falling in love in the cruelest way, This is falling for you when you are worlds away — the whole song is about falling for someone who keeps withdrawing from you), Better Man (again the whole song is about staying with someone despite knowing they treat you wrong until you finally break) etc. The thesis of Red seems to be, love will break you but the pleasure (the attention, the affection, yes the sex on the good days) is the reward for the pain (the alienation, the disappointment, the mind games, the disinterest on the bad days).

(Even The Last Time is very “I will hurt myself for you to notice me and love me like you used to” coded which is a whole other discussion in light of “You’re Losing Me”…)

The theme does continue on following albums like 1989: Style (we go crashing down but we come back every time), All You Had To Do Was Stay (people like ou always want back the love they gave away/people like me want to believe you when you say you’ve changed), Wildest Dreams (the whole song is basically wanting to sleep with someone in spite of knowing they’ll leave you), This Love (I know this is considered a love song, but it’s quite a sad song — it’s literally, this love is good/this love is bad/this love is alive back from the dead — it’s inherently broken but can’t be left alone) etc. So much of the album is about falling into patterns you know are bad for you but giving in because you’re blinded by desire.

I’m sure there are other songs that can be used as an example in later albums too, but the post-Speak Now to at least 1989 seems centred on the futility of romantic relationships but taking the crumbs anyway. When you look at the songs in bulk like this, it’s kind of sad. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with sexual relationships or casual hookups or lust or desire, but the contrast between the Debut/Fearless Taylor who dreamed of dancing and dresses and kissing in the rain and finding her Romeo and Red/1989 Taylor who believed love will take from her and all she can hope to receive is rare moments of affection and failing that, some nights of passion, is striking. Sure, part of that is just growing up and growing out of the fairytale constructs she’s grown up with, but Speak Now is definitely where that line is drawn.

Which brings us to Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve and “the god’s honest truth is that the pain was heaven,” which plays into all this. Because the sad thing is that those rare moments of affection probably sent her flying (especially if you consider Real Taylor who is an admitted people pleaser who thrives on praise). And as the lows got lower, the brief flashes of pleasure mean even more and provide instant gratification. The pain was heaven because she did want to explore her sensuality and femininity and adulthood (I mean, I Can See You is a song that exists lol), and presumably this felt like an avenue to do that, but she couldn’t have predicted the toll it would take on her. Because again, she was a young woman navigating these desires without a safety net, and he (presumably) took advantage of that to fulfill his own. The highs may have felt exhilarating, especially when the lows were crushing. Which comes back to the point of your orignal post about equating Him being an addiction, except in this case, it’s every Him.

Which leads into a whole other hypothetical essay about the role guilt and shame play in a lot of her music. I joked a few days ago that it’s the Catholic guilt vibes of it all, feeling inherently dirty for feeling lustful and giving in to those feelings. (I mean, I use “Catholic guilt” loosely here. Insert your denomination of choice as appropriate lol.) Despite some references to church/God/religion in her music, she hasn’t been especially religious/pious in her writing, but whatever the nature of those feelings, there is definitely a sense of shame both for exploring her sexuality and for not seeing whatever trauma this was coming.

About Love

So I don’t have much to say about this because I guess I said this in the Pain/Pleasure answer, but I think it’s just obvious from all this that that singular experience in Dear John caused a fundamental shift in her world view. She’s sung about heartbreak prior to that, but they usually fall into the angry girl betrayed (Picture to Burn, Forever and Always, Should’ve Said No, You’re Not Sorry, Better Than Revenge, etc.) or sad girl vibes (White Horse, Tim McGraw, You All Over Me, Teardrops on my Guitar, Last Kiss, etc.). In most of those cases, the heartbreak affects her, but she’s often either wistful about the relationship or certain that one day she will find that love again with someone else who will treat her right.

On the surface, Dear John may seem like one of her trademark angry rebukes, but like I said before, to me it feels more like a lament for her former self as she begins to grapple with how the experience marked her. It’s kind of striking looking at the track list for Red afterwards and realizing that there are few purely happy love songs like there were before. Even some of the more upbeat ones like Treacherous, Holy Ground or State of Grace are all based on the principle of, “this will never work but I want the high while it lasts.” Which is also part of growing up and adult relationships so it’s not purely a trauma response lol. 1989 is more of the same with even catchier hooks, but she leans even deeper into that in some ways, trying to own the narrative with being like, if men are going to do this, I’m going to have my fun with it. Blank Space may be satire, but all satire is rooted in truth, and the truth of it is her learning to “love ‘em and leave ‘em” for lack of a better term. (Which later shows up on other songs like “I used to switch out these Kens and skip town like an asshole outlaw…” most recently but could be applied to so many others.)

Reputation is where it starts to shift again, but it’s interesting that some of the love songs on it (e.g. Call It What You Want, Delicate) begin toying with the idea of herself being somehow unlovable, in the sense that she is Too Much and that her partner loves her in spite of herself instead of because of it. Sure, that’s owing to the theme of “reputation” on the album and about the contrast of the way the outside world sees her and the way it really is behind closed doors. The bravado of 1989 starts to crack, though it’s still very much present on Rep (e.g. Getaway Car, Ready For It), and we have a couple of songs that fall into more traditional expressions of love (Dancing with our Hands Tied, my fave New Year’s Day). Whereas the previous few albums seem to dive into the idea of the power imbalances in relationships, of the push-and-pull of something that was built to fail, rep is the first time since probably Fearless where she feels like she’s on equal footing with a partner in some respects, where something suddenly feels completely different from the others, because seemingly for the first time in her adult life, she’s able to write about something other than mind games in love (or lust). Which only continues through Lover, where by that point we’re almost full circle, back to talking about rings and church bells and forever.

This is not to say there aren’t other sides to it of course; there are still darker elements in Lover, from the worries of jealousy in the title track, to the tension of miscommunication in False God and relying on sex to fix problems when words won’t, to the fear that who she is will inherently cause her lover to leave in The Archer or even Cruel Summer, etc. But that’s a whole other thing and maybe it’s wrong but those are almost “normal” problems compared to the very problematic ones of Dear John/WCS/Speak Now etc.

If I had to sum it up, it’s that Speak Now through at least Rep is dealing with the fallout of “Dear John”: the forced push into adulthood, the processing of grief and trauma, rebuilding her sense of self and her place in relation to others. Her reaction to the mind games of “Dear John” is to continue to choose relationships that repeat those patterns of inherent instability or unavailability, knowing it won’t work but going through anyhow for whatever reason, whether it’s the thrill of the chase or the affection when it’s good or more lustful reasons, whatever — it doesn’t matter. It’s the pull between wanting to be loved but not feeling worthy of it, so she chooses situations that are doomed to fail because they have an expiration date, whether it’s age, distance, careers, personalities, whatever. She is not the exception and she will never learn her lesson. And it isn’t until Reputation where her castle crumbled overnight (again) and she was forced to step back and reconnect with herself that those themes change in her writing.

—

I have no idea if any of this made sense, and I’m too scared to proofread it because it’s so scary long, but I hope that answered your question 😂 Don’t threaten me with a good time, which in this case is deep dive analysis of works of fiction or otherwise 🙃

Starting to think too hard about “I could see you being my addiction” and now I feel unwell 😵‍💫

[afro-elf]

fine, i’ll elaborate on my thoughts about tylor sift but they will be disorganized

disclaimer: i know a few people will read this and be like “op is a hozier fan can she really talk about the cultural obsession with mediocre white art?” and the answer is yes because a) i’m black and i have an english degree so can do whatever i fucking want, b) hozier is a better artist than taylor objectively, like his mediocre tracks would be considered her great ones, and c) the comparison of taylor to hozier is part of the problem Genuinely because i don’t even think white people like half the music they listen to, they just don’t wanna be left behind, we’ll get into this later. i’m sorry to everyone who is tired of hearing about him but hozier will be returning later in this post jsfglsjlgldsjlfd

second note: read this

i don’t just dislike taylor because she’s white. i don’t dislike taylor because she’s a woman. i don’t dislike her because she writes mean and petty lyrics about past relationships and people who wronged her. i don’t dislike taylor because her public circle of friends is almost exclusively blonde white celebrities with their own laundry lists of issues that includes ryan reynolds and blake lively who are poster children for white privilege and pseudo-excellence if i’ve ever seen them. i dislike taylor because the amalgamation of all of those things is so exemplary of a huge problem i have with the music industry in general but also like american society

fuck it, numbered list!

1. taylor swift consistently releases the same mediocre album but in different colors. every album is the same lyrically and tonally. her body of work rarely goes very far above “good for taylor swift”. folklore as both title and musical aesthetic is irrelevant to the actual content of the album, which is just every taylor swift album except set to folk pop and with a bit more cussing, congrats for baby’s first swear. i’ve seen folklore compared to much better bodies of work and even propped up by stans as album of the year, a distinction that rina sawayama and chloe x halle will be battling it out for if there is any justice in the world at all. the fact that she is allowed to do this and still be considered great when this is something that even white male artists are butchered critically for... astounds me. like we all know how well received all of coldplay’s similar sounding albums are.... Come on. 

2. i don’t think taylor or her work is particularly feminist and yet for some reason every time she frowns an army of white women brings her kleenex. i’m not saying taylor’s anger has always been unjustified, but her feminism to me has always felt like “i can do whatever a man can do” feminism, which is utterly fucking useless to me as a black woman. it’s only useful to her because as a wealthy, white, straight, cis white woman her ONLY obstacle in life is her gender. and if she just didn’t have that tricky little bitch then maybe people would take her seriously. like, just think about her music video for the man... what was the thesis of that? what was the point of that? with all of her privileges she’d just be gaining a single extra privilege. she’s a blonde blue eyed thin white girl, the world kisses her feet. i have no interest in proving myself any better or any worse than white men, they are not the standard for how a person should be treated, they’re cautionary tales, and white women are too. i think taylor capitalizes off of white woman victimhood, and it’s all over her writing style. even when she’s trying to be empowered, like in mad woman for example, there is this tone to it of victimization, poking the bear, unleashing the beast if you will. she invokes the imagery of salem witches and even more boldly chooses a noose to write about in the song which is..... surely going to be a white tumblr staple for many gifsets to come but holy shit is it hollow. she also tends to come back to teenage memories in her music and she’s thirty. i don’t think about being seventeen unless i’m being held at gunpoint but she seems to think about it All The Time. and part of this is to keep herself young, at least in her music, which only further ingrains this image of fragile teeny bopper taylor into the mind of the listener, fueling her victim image. this imagery and language means nothing because the world always rallies around taylor. even when she was the butt of jokes for not being beyonce (which she is not and never can be) and writing about her exes (which she does), she was largely supported by the industry and by critics. look at how many fucking awards she has!

3. folk and indie and alternative music is in a moment of transition, where musicians of color are getting the chance to really speak about how they’ve been treated in these overwhelmingly white circles and create their own standards and their own voices. and for taylor swift to swoop in with aaron dessner and jack antonoff fantano and almost reassert that mid-2010s indie sound as The Sound of folk pop in the popular consciousness.... it makes me violent! it! makes! me! violent! 

4. back to hozier! finally, i wanna talk about white standom, fandom, bandom, and womandom. i often see these very superficial comparisons between hozier and taylor (and hozier and florence and hozier and stevie nicks and hozier and whatever other white woman in fashion) and they frustrate me for more than one reason. i know that hozier has met taylor and said she’s cool, which is nice of him and he’s a nice man, but i’m not a nice man so i’m going to just say it: none of the people who have made those posts have listened to more than four hozier songs and it shows. the reason why this matters is because these posts catch on and create an image and preconception of hozier’s music that is divorced from reality and divorced from his influences and most importantly divorced from the deliberate and reverent blackness of his musical style. hozier has his white male privilege in the industry for sure but he’s not as towering of a giant as taylor and taylor’s music is an unsalted chicken, plain oatmeal, white paint drying on a white wall, a stick of unflavored gum. her music is so white it told me that its dad is a cop. i am, as a black hozier fan, exhausted with having to share space with white women who don’t know why hozier’s music kicks me in my lungs sometimes and think that taylor mentioning a tree ONCE in her 3 minute acoustic guitar slog about whatever suburb is the same when it simply is not. i swear some of you are pretending to love taylor because your friends love her and you don’t wanna be left out of the hot new musical discourse but she’s only the hot new musical discourse CONSTANTLY because she’s a white woman, she’s almost the Perfect white woman. like if someone asked me to describe a white woman, it would be taylor swift. her position at the top of the musical pyramid among people who eclipse her musically, vocally, and lyrically is only allowed because she’s The Perfect White Woman. she’s an ideal. white girls relate to her immediately because of it and now we have this unshakable mob of unbearable white women who think that the world has wronged someone who literally wrote fanfiction about the rich oil heiress white woman who owned her rhode island mansion before her aklghlghdhlgs it drives me fucking NUTS 

anyway that’s all. if you made it this far, listen to adia victoria, kaia kater, samantha crain, valerie june, kelsey lu, corinne bailey rae, brittany howard, kimya dawson, japanese breakfast, cold specks, left at london, rhiannon giddens, aisha badru, shea diamond, nadine shah, xenia rubinos, karen o, mirel wagner.... Anyone

[princessofgayskull]

Hi sunflower, what's your thoughts on T Swift's Betty being a catradora song???

Me, taking a break from spop to focus on my mental health and setting better boundaries:

Me, reading this ask:

This ask woke me up from like a deep, sleeping beauty type slumber, not joking. I don’t get asked to talk about Taylor Swift often, despite being a fan of hers since I was nine years old (I’m 22 now *wink*) and we are about to find out why. But I pride myself on taking any fiction piece of media I interact with and connecting it somehow to Taylor Swift. I can do so to varying degrees of success (usually depends on the ships and romance of the world) but there are so many songs of Taylor’s that have just fit Catradora so well for me, both in and out of canon. 

Some of my favorite examples: out of the woods (AND IT KEPT ME UP AT NIGHT WHEN NOELLE SAID THIS WAS HER TAYLOR SWIFT SONG FOR CATRADORA LIKE GAH CASUAL TS LISTENERS WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND) bad blood, lwymd, don’t blame, dancing with our hands tied, the archer, breathe, you’re not sorry, the way I loved you, forever & always, should’ve said no, safe & sound- I could go on.

But I won’t because I wanna stay on topic and talk about betty. Now I have a number of songs from the folklore/evermore series that are for me catradora songs (we’ll get to that in a minute) but this one is… challenging. Because I could be like “yes, because [insert casual reason here]” or “no, because [insert casual reason here]” but I can’t because Taylor feeds her children well and there’s several aspects of this song I feel like should be considered.

This biggest one to be considered, for me, is the love triangle aspect. Folklore features at length the betty/james/Augustine love triangle, each of them having one main song on the album from their POV. Betty's is cardigan, augustine’s is august, and james’ is betty. (also I’m going to throw out the gender component for a second; I know taylor says that Betty is about a guy’s apology and I totally vibe with her reasons why she wanted to write a song about a boy apologizing BECAUSE HOW GREAT WOULD THAT BE?) The love triangle makes the application of Catradora iffy at best. Because it’s like, who would be who? I am going to go out on a limb and assume that you’re seeing Catra as James? I think that personality wise, Adora as Betty and Catra as James is not a stone’s throw away from fitting actually really well. Adora’s canon journey is one of coming to realize “I know what I want and I know that it’s okay to want it” and a big part of Catra’s arc is her being like “Well shit… there goes my plans. Kind of feeling like a dumbass rn” especially in s4/s5. 

(That s4/s5 distinction is important; I’ll show why in a second) 

But for me, there’s no augustine. Or one that’s obvious anyway. I never imagined that either Catra or Adora dated or even had any inclinations with anyone else during the five season run- that’s just my personal opinion, people are completely welcome to feel free to disagree. I don’t think Catra acted even out of distraction with Scorpia or DT, and I think Adora was so focused on being She Ra that when she wasn’t thinking about failing/abandoning Catra when she alloted time to do so, she was thinking about the crushing weight of her responsibilities. So you know, not that much time to get back out there. So I rule out what causes James to apologize in the first place- cheating.

Side note about James cheating- I’m pretty sure Taylor confirmed this, in the long pond studio sessions doc, when she’s telling Jack Antonoff (MY BOY JACK) and Aaron Dessner ( GRAMMY AWARD WINNING KING) that James “was a fool!” And James did sleep with Augustine as confirmed in august, but cardigan makes it seem like he was definitely dating Betty before the summer. Maybe Taylor took inspiration from friends and they “were on break.” I also believe that the kiss in the Heart is the first kiss, that Catra and Adora were never ‘together’ together before Adora found the sword and defected (again, that’s just an opinion, but Adora just looks so wonderfully gobsmacked), so…

We can rule out cheating, and I think we can accomplish this and still reserve the essential meaning of the song of “I did something wrong, I see that now, I apologize for doing it, and I still love you” by widening the lens of what the “did something wrong” was (or “did something bad” you know *wink*). In that wider lens really you could fit either Catra or Adora into the song, but I’m still going to assume Catra is the James in this scenario based on how much of her redemption arc is formed around her refusal to say sorry and then eventually doing so. Of course there is no standing your porchlight but rather standing while wrestling a bunch of murderous clones…. Hmm….

But there are some stupid friends! I wholeheartedly believe Catra is James because of the dissing of Betty’s friends. That’s what Catra does to Bow, Glimmer and the rebellion et al., for most of the show and by the end of s4 she has no friends for Adora to even mock (terrible and cruel of me, I know, but it’s true). Also I know people are like “he called her friends stupid and then expected betty to take him back?” but I scream sing the line “WILL YOU KISS ME ON THE PORCH IN FRONT OF ALL YOUR STUPID FRIENDS?” every time. It brings me serotonin. 

Along those lines we can ask “Who’s Inez?” in this situation. When I think gossip no one from the show really comes to mind, well, expect for Double Trouble. But Double Trouble doesn’t ever speak to Adora about Catra. This happens vice-versa, and in Betty, James reveals that Inez told Betty he cheated on her. 

I want to say something controversial… Glimmer comes to mind when I think “who’s the Inez?” And this is based off of two things: 1) Inez’s closeness to Betty, and 2) Inez drags James out to dry, rightfully so. And when I think of that I think of Glimmer screaming “Do one good thing in your life!” directly in Catra’s face. James gives Inez a bad wrap in Betty. Not cool James. 

Of course there’s the pivotal, “would you tell me to go fuck myself?/ or lead me to the garden?” To me this a fun way of showing there’s vulnerability to what James is doing, so automatically I’m led to is the scene where Catra asks Adora to stay, or each time in s5 when Catra risks, basically an identity crisis to let Adora in how she really feels, but there’s always the potential that Adora could spurn her by not returning her feelings or rejecting her outright. 

I think the best argument that can be made for “is betty a catradora song” can really be encapsulated by the lyric(s): “the worst thing that I ever did is what I did to you” and “the only thing I wanna do is make it up to you.” That is what about the song SCREAMS Catra to me. And yeah, it could be argued that Adora hurt Catra pretty brutally (Shadow Weaver makes that point EVEN THOUGH SHE HAD NO RIGHT TO) that she messed up by abandoning Catra- but Adora feels guilt for... literally breathing. Adora is the quintessential embodiment of “pick your battles, no that’s too many battles, put some back,” but Catra picked one battle first and foremost (yes, she had a few others but this was the one) and that was Adora. Everything that motivated her was surrounded around a narrative of surpassing Adora for a multitude of reasons, and because of that she pretty much hurts Adora every chance she gets after Promise. Adora is really Catra’s first casualty, it makes sense that she has to be her first apology. And I think that after being vibed checked back to back by DT and Glimmer and realizing “oh hey fuck, I’m still in love with her” and then almost dying just to not die because Adora saves her, I think much of Catra’s motivation shifts to “how to do I get Adora to want to stay?” 

That’s my logic for how Betty could be a catradora song in canon. Now not all of my Taylor associations are with canon catradora, many of them do belong to uws catradora, because it’s a lot easier to apply the more modern details of Taylor’s songs to a modern au. The song Breathe is big that way. (it’s in Upper West Side, it’s the song Adora listens to and cries to after that first ride, I just never mentioned that it was taylor because my conditioned reaction to bringing up taylor is to have my head bit off with someone’s semi incorrect and slightly sexist opinion that I never, ever ask for) And this ask got me thinking about what it would look like if I applied not Catradora to Betty, but Betty to Catradora. What would it look like if Catra skateboarded and wore black lipstick, Adora wore a cardigan and they had homeroom together until Catra really messed up? What would it look like if they were seventeen when they admitted their feelings for each other instead of 21? What would it look like if they spent a summer fighting but dreaming of each other? What would their love story look like if Catra and Adora were in that town where Taylor envisioned this “same event that affected three people in different ways?”

I think it’d look something like this. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31141973/chapters/76952048

what do you guys think?

quick but INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT thank you to @gimme-tea-bitch for helping me with this, being my beta, and listening to me talk about folklore/evermore.

[harryskalechips]

Illicit affairs

A/N Hellooooo! I haven’t written in a while but enjoy this little sad piece inspired by Taylor Swift! Thank you for all the love! I hope you guys are doing well! Feel free to leave a kind message in my inbox ❤️

Y/N was a new intern at Colombia records when she met Harry Styles. Their relationship takes a turn however, when they start an affair.

Tw: Cheating

Thank you @harrysleftchelseaboot for letting me participate in your writing challenge! For any writers out there who want to give it a go make sure to check it out! I would love to read some new work. 

Prompts:

“Be a good girl and spread your legs for me.”

“I’d punch you, but that would ruin that pretty little face of yours.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Leave.”

Note: I do not condone cheating whatsoever! Please mind that this story is fictional! As much as it makes me sad to paint Harry as a cheater, it’s part of this storyline I thought of as I listened to Taylor’s album, Folklore.

Word count: 5k / Masterlist

Y/N never knew she was going to be in this type of predicament. Falling asleep every night in a man’s arms, only to wake up alone in her cold sheets at dawn. For some odd reason, his vanilla scent smothered her atmosphere every time, leaving her in a subspace-like condition. She found her thoughts easily shifting to him or feeling the need to touch him. She’s whipped but sadly also clingy. 

Does she have an excuse to feel this way? She was only 21 when she began working as an intern at this man’s record label. He was her first serious relationship and although he was married -there always seemed to be a weird tension between them.

It all started when she was assigned to follow Rob Stringer through his meetings in 2017...nonetheless she met Mr. Harry Styles. One of the members of the biggest boy band, One Direction. She knew exactly who he was, especially since he was sexualized by the media too often at an early stage of his career. She knew his first solo album was a hit and that in her job description, she had to be present at every interview he had. She also knew that the ring on his finger was a symbol of love for his wife that he married a year ago. 

Months on end, she barely spoke to him. She was shy -feeling as if her personality would bore Mr.Styles. One night however as the team went out to celebrate his last show for live on tour, he himself invited her. 

They were at a club in New York -A very private one to be exact when Harry found himself too interested in the quiet intern. To be honest, his life at home (when he was there) wasn’t what he planned for. His wife was too busy, only fighting him whenever he stepped foot inside. She barely had any more interests in his music or his life -and suddenly, it felt like two strangers living in that mansion. It wasn’t an excuse for him to keep glancing at the girl as she danced with her co-workers nor was it an excuse for him to buy her a drink. Funny enough, he always thought of himself as a hopeless romantic since he was waiting for that particular someone to love him back once again and save his marriage. But before he could stop himself, he was already walking towards the girls dancing on the floor and getting to know them.

After that night at the club, Y/N felt different towards Mr. Styles. Of course, she was still intimidated but she now knew him on a more personal level, leading her to call him Harry instead. That night as they sat in one the booth upstairs, she listened to his jokes and stories and it made her start to have a little crush on him. But hey, he was married and she would never want to ruin a relationship. 

As her days became busier at Columbia -sorting papers and running for Coffee, She always glanced at the elevator hoping Harry Styles would come out and was in need of a conversation with Rob in person. She knew he probably called her boss though the phone but her brain was rummaging for ideas why he would start appearing in her life once again. That was until one day she heard Gina and Louise in the staff room during break talking about Harry coming in tomorrow. Boy, did her heart began to beat fast. Maybe, it was manifestation but she was a bit too excited to see him again as it’s been a couple of months since she last saw him. 

~

“Y/N,” Rob calls out for her as he plays with a pen in his hand. “Meet me in the main conference room in five minutes. I need you to note down my meeting today.” He gives her a small smile and quickly walks off. She knew full well that this meeting was about Harry Styles. 

As she sat beside Rob at the long table, she realized that the whole table was filled with people from publicity and other departments. Right in front of her was the man she’s been thinking of, beside him was his manager. It’s not like she was deeply infatuated with him but she did love thinking about his pretty eyes. 

Matter of fact, as she first glanced at him, her eyes already met his. He was smiling and staying quiet as the meeting immediately began but his fingers played with his pen as he watched her. She was too focused on the shittier details of what they were discussing. He wanted to tell her so badly that she didn’t need to write some things down but he was having fun watching her bite her lip in stress. He wasn’t smooth though. Since she was already feeling his gaze burning through her. 

As the meeting went on, Harry became a bit more serious about why he came into the office. They were in the talks of his new second album and now, they had to plan publicity and tour. Some of the staff even asked how his trip to Japan was and although he was so excited to share his fantastic experiences, it was sad to mention how his wife didn’t even bother coming along. 

“Are you not going to say hi to me?” Harry teases Y/N as they’re the last ones to leave the conference room after their long meeting. She had to clean up the table while he chose to sit in his chair, pretending to do important things on his phone. When he waved bye to everyone as they left the room, he pointed at his phone, explaining he needed a few minutes to send “important emails” -he just wanted to catch up with his new friend, Y/N.

“Hi.” She tries her best to act normal and unaffected by his presence. “Sorry, I couldn’t say hi earlier. When Rob said five minutes, I didn’t know the meeting was already taking place.” Harry laughs at her apology since he wasn’t petty at all for her lack of greeting today. 

“I was just teasing. How are you?”

“I’ve been good.” She smiles back at him as she tosses the last remainder of paper cups in the bin. “I think the last time I saw you was last year. Where have you been?”

“Why did you miss me?” He raises his brow as he spins his chair a bit. He gives her a smirk as he watches her lean herself on the table. 

“Just a bit. I loved watching your interviews.” She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms against her chest. “At first I wanted to sleep through them but now I rather go through those back and forth instead of, filling random sheets out for Rob.”

“Heyy, I think I’m pretty interesting during interviews.”

“Oh no! Don’t get me wrong you are! It’s just you have such a raspy voice and you talk so slow! You can literally put me to bed anytime.”

“Am I talking slowly right now?”

“Just a bit. I haven’t seen you in a while. I kind of forgot!” She laughs. “ What else did you do other than Japan? Spent some time with your wife?” Y/N wasn’t going to lie… bringing up his wife kind of made her uncomfortable but she knew this was a good way to get to know him in a friendly way. 

Harry couldn’t help but give out a humourless scoff as he rests his head back on the chair. His eyes, however, meet her’s again. She couldn’t help but watch his adam’s apple bob up and down. 

“Marriage is hard you know. If I’m being honest with you, I haven’t spoken to her in a week. She’s been on vacation, travelling in Europe I think with her best friends.”

“She’s a model, right? She must have a lot of free time. I’m sure she can make space for you.” Harry slaps his knee in sarcastic humour as he shakes his head at Y/N’s innocent idea of who his wife truly is now. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s more complex than I thought. I haven’t really been in a relationship at least a long term one.”

“Are you free tonight?” Harry asks her out of the blue.

“Yes.” 

“Can I come over? We don’t need to do anything but I would love to hang out with you and I don’t know... forget I have all these responsibilities.”

“Sure.” What Y/N didn’t know that this night would forever change her relationship with Harry.

~

It was late in the night as Harry sat on Y/N’s couch talking to her about everything. His life, his career, his marriage. Usually, it wasn’t easy for him to open up so quickly to a stranger but for some odd feeling, his gut was telling him that he could trust this pretty girl beside him. It’s like he knew she was trustworthy and non-judgemental. 

Ever since he first noticed her during his meetings, he found himself involuntarily glancing at her. That was until he grew some balls and invited her to his after-party. Maybe, He did find her pretty and a bit too hot but even if his marriage is going through the rocks, he did not want to cheat. He didn’t want to be that type of guy. Yet during his time in Japan, he found himself thinking of what would happen if he was single right now? Would he actually make a move on her?

“What are you thinking of?” The same woman calls him out as she takes a swing of the wine bottle into her mouth. 

Yes, the found themselves enjoying Harry’s expensive red wine so now they’re passing the bottle. 

“You.” He was a bit tipsy and so was she but they were still sober enough to choose their words properly. 

“Me? Why me? Why not that hot model you call your wife.”

“She left my mind before I even met you.”

“Yet you’re still with her. Why?”

“I don’t know.” He looks at her as he takes a sip of wine. 

“Okay, so why are you thinking of me? Are you happy you have a new friend?” Her cheeks were very red at his confession but she was trying to make herself believe it was because of the alcohol. 

“I’m happy that I finally got to know the girl who sat quietly in the corner during my interviews.” He smirks at her as he watches her try to hide a smile. 

“I was intimidated by you!” 

“Why was that, love?” Y/N was not expecting him to call her that. She places the almost empty wine bottle on her coffee table and sits back in her same position as she’s wrapped in the same blanket Harry is.  

“You’re Harry Styles. Every woman is head over heels for you and Every man wants to be you.”

“Are you head over heels for me?” Harry squints his eyes as he says the first thing that comes out of his mouth. It wasn’t his intention to flirt with her but they both knew they had overpowering chemistry. The only thing holding them back is well… Harry’s marriage. 

“No.” She bluffs. He continues to look at her. “Fine, a bit but you’re married so I know how to control myself.” 

“What happens If I can’t?” his tone drops as he mumbles to himself. “I’m sorry what?” Y/N chokes as she looks at him. 

“I know I’m married fuck.” He sits up and rubs his face in frustration. “It’s just I never wanted a girl so bad after my marriage. I shouldn’t! I should be happily married but for some shit reason, I can’t get my mind off of you.”

“Harry, there’s consequences about what we’re talking about right now.” Y/N sits up as well as she watches him. Does it still count as cheating if his wife is barely in his life anymore? 

“I know. I’m sorry. I know you aren’t that type of girl. I would never disrespect you like this. I should leave.” He begins to stand up immediately. Y/N says nothing as she follows him to the front door of her apartment. 

“Thank you for coming, Harry.” She opens the door to let him out. He simply nods as he walks past her through the door. As she watches him walk down her hallway, she closes the door. How was she feeling? Well, she was trying her best to not feel regret but instead relief. She leans her body on the wooden surface, trying to make herself feel happy that nothing happened between them -Yet her heart was beating too fast for a guy she had just met.

The loud pounding on her door, however, makes her head shut up. She immediately opens it to find no one other than the curly-haired man who had just left her apartment a minute ago.

He immediately grasps her face into his hands as he kisses her eagerly, making her shut the door behind him. His body quickly pushing her’s against the wall, as his lips attack her jaw down to her neck. Her hands resting on his shoulders as she leans her head back to give him more area to leave his soft licks and kisses. 

“Shit Y/N. You’re making me go crazy.” 

“Harry.” She moans as he rubs himself against her centre. He whispers a command to her, making her jump and wrap her legs around his waist and he carries her to the first surface in his line of sight, which is her dining table. It was a dark wood wooden table that was meant only for eating purposes.

He helps her take off the sweater she was wearing as she throws it behind it her without a care. With her hand, she guides his mouth back to hers, making them both moan as this sexual tension is finally being relieved. Her nipples became hard in an instant as they felt the cold temperature. 

“Where’s your bedroom?” He pulls away as he’s unbuttoning his shirt. His mouth was open a little bit from their heated makeout and his lips were juicy pink after kissing her. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. 

“You want to fuck me right here?” Y/N blurts. She wasn’t the type to have sex with a new partner for the first time on her dining table but her room was a mess and she was a bit shy letting him in there. 

“Are you that eager baby?” A smirk plays on his lips as he tosses his shirt. “Well If you’re that needy, why won’t you take off my pants?” Y/N’s cheeks turn red as she reaches forward to unbuckle his jeans. “You know, how fucking long I’ve been jerking off with my right hand?” Harry asks as his hand runs through her soft hair, letting his thumb rub against her pink plump lips. 

“For a long time, Daddy?” She murmurs against the pad of his thumb as she lets his thumb enter her wet mouth. 

“Look at you, you’re a little devil.” Harry pushes his pants off until they reach mid-thigh. He quickly helps her out of her tights, pulling them off her almost instantly that she had to hold onto him. “Should I get a condom?” He pants as his hands involuntarily run themselves against her soft thighs.

“I’m on the pill and I’m clean.”

“I’m clean too.” He looks down at her closed legs as he pumps himself a bit. “I promise.” Y/N nods as her hands guide his body back closer towards her.

 “Be a good girl and spread your legs for me.” He whispers as he watches her show him her wet needy sex. “Fuck, you look so good right now.” He leans in to kiss her more. His mouth going south as they reach her breast. His mouth sucks on her nipple as the other grabs and rolls her the other one.

“Fuck stop teasing me. I need you.”

“Beg for me, Y/N. I know you want to.”

“Harry please!” She feels his hand directing his wet cock to her centre. Teasing her and playfully slapping her entrance. “Daddy!” His eyes immediately stop looking down as he grabs her hair, making her look at him. 

“You okay with this love? Do you like it rough?” Y/N nods her head as she stares into his eyes. 

“I need you to use your words, baby.”

“Yes, I want it rough.” 

“What did you call me earlier?” A cheeky smile forms on his face as he watches this little girl about to crumble in his hand. 

“Daddy.”

“You’re going to keep calling me that or what?”

“Only if you want me-” Harry inserts himself in her, making her choke on her sentence. 

“What do you call me?” He leans a bit further downs so their bodies rub against each other as his arm supports her back while the other hand chokes her neck. 

“Daddy! Fuck, I call you daddy!” 

“I know I’ve been deprived of some good sex but you feel so fucking tight! Do guys not know how to fuck you?”

“Only you can.” Harry pulls his hand away from her neck and instead grasps her face so she can watch their centres connecting. 

“You like that view? Is it turning you on? You’re fucking clenching me, baby!”

“Harder, daddy.” Her arm wraps around his shoulder as he pulls away and turns around, making her bend on the table.

“You want it harder baby? I’m going to fuck you so hard, you’ll never be able to sit at this table without remembering how I fucked you so good.”

~ The day after their first time sleeping with each other scared Y/N. As much as she tried to avoid letting Harry see her messy room, they ended up in there anyway. They participated in a couple more rounds and a deep conversation too until they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms. 

What Y/N was scared of was how Harry would react when he woke up in her sheets. Of course, they weren’t too drunk last night but the alcohol did give them a confidence boost. Now it’s the day time and they have to deal with this new boundary they had just crossed. 

“Good morning.” A raspy voice speaks up as she sets her head on her hand. Her elbow putting all its pressure on her pillow while she watches the man who’s laying on his stomach smile at her.

“Hi.” She gives a soft smile back. Harry immediately notices the hickeys on her neck, making him not guilty but a bit more proud.

“I marked you.” Y/N’s eyes widen as she sits up and wraps her hands around her neck. “Why you don’t like them?” Harry fixes his position too so he can rest his back against the headrest. He rubs his eyes for a few seconds before helping her straddle his waist. “What’s wrong, Baby?”

“You’re married.” Her finger mindlessly traces one of the sparrows on his chest. 

“I know.”

“You think she’ll get mad?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she cares.”

~ Y/N and Harry’s affair went on for months that they even reached his tour and new album reveal. Although they never said the three most important words, Y/N already knew it was there.

What she loved the most these past months with Harry was their privacy.  The secret hookups in changing rooms, the knowing glances in a room full of strangers, and their affectionate touches when they had to pass things to one another in front of her boss. 

She knows he’s married and there was no doubt, they fought about his relationship status. But Harry explained that divorces in Hollywood were more complex than for a regular couple. And while Y/N pretended to understand, she truly didn’t. She didn’t understand why he had to keep up this act of being in a happy relationship when he can simply leave his wife -not for her benefit but for his own happiness. Still, every time this fight occurred, they chose to sweep it under the rug. Maybe it was because she wasn’t ready to lose him. He had always been so persistent on his reasoning why he’s been delaying that action. She was scared that he would leave her during another fight only to run back to his wife. What she didn’t know was that she may be a bit too right, after all, he wasn’t ready to admit that his marriage was over. 

“Hi, Baby!” Y/N opens her door to find her “boyfriend” with a bouquet of flowers. 

“Hi!” She wraps her arms around him in a hug as she lets him enter her apartment that they know too well. If she had to be truly honest... despite having so much alone time with Harry, she’s never been on a date with him but you know -that’s something she had to let go when she decided to get involved with a famous married man. Yet it still didn’t stop her heart from feeling envious when she would be in the restaurant with her friends watching a random couple have dinner together.

Harry takes his hood off and hands her the flowers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t text you this past couple of days. You know that woman who lives with me.” He sighs and gives her a kiss on the lips before continuing on, “We were having lunch together and she noticed I wasn’t wearing my ring anymore so we fought.”

“So you’re wearing it.” Y/N places the flowers on the table and crosses her arms.

“I have too.”

“No, you don’t Harry. She’s only wearing her’s for show. You’ve been cheating on her for seven months!” Y/N snaps at him. She hated it when he wore his ring. It was just a real sign that maybe he was lying to her during the times, he said he was over their marriage and he was going to leave her when things become less complicated.

“Baby, hey stop yelling.” He walks towards her so he can wrap his arms around her. “I’m sorry. You know I care so much about you. Please don’t cry.”

“I can’t stand that you’re married to another woman. Please leave her Harry.” Y/N pulls away as she holds onto his shoulders, begging him. “Please.”

“I’ll try.” He breathes out.

“You’ll try?” She pulls away immediately looking at him. “What do you mean? Have you not been trying to do that these past few months!” He rubs his face in frustration. 

“It’s hard Y/N. I told you countless times.” “I know it’s hard but what’s stopping you from doing it! You told me that you don’t want to lose me but for some odd reason, it seems like you don’t want to lose her!”

“She was my first love Goddammit!” He finally yells back at her. 

And that's the thing about illicit affairs

And clandestine meetings and stolen stares

They show their truth one single time

But they lie and they lie and they lie

A million little times

 They both found themselves caught off guard as the silence screamed in their ears. How could this safe space where they spent their nights rolling in the sheets feel so… indifferent? “Harry please be 100 percent honest with me.” Y/N backs away slowly as she reaches a few feet apart from Harry. “Do you want to leave her?” 

Silence.

“You told me you did? Did you change your mind?” Her eyes widen as she watches the man in front of her absolutely speechless. “I’d punch you, but that would ruin that pretty little face of yours.” She lets out a sarcastic laugh. 

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”  He stares at the ground with his hands in his jeans. “Of course, I want to leave her! It’s just-”

“Leave.”

“What Baby no!” He quickly looks up and tries to make his way towards her. 

“Harry, stop. What we have is over! I’m not going to let you use me until your stupid sick marriage fixes itself!”

“Y/N that wasn’t my intention I swear! You know what marriage means to me! I can’t simply-”

“Fuck what you think of marriage! You don’t want to leave her but you rather continuously hide me while you go to awards with her -While you go on fucking dates with her!”

“It’s for publicity-”

“I don’t care!” She screams. “I realized that this isn’t working out and we should stop!” The pressure in her chest was making her hyperventilate. “We should have stopped months ago!”

“Fuck I don’t want to lose you, please. You’re the only thing that’s been making me so happy.” He reaches out to take her hands but she simply pulls away.

“Harry! Listen to yourself! You’re married! I’m starting to think you have a fear of having a failed marriage like your mom and dad! But please for the love of God, don’t drag me around because I won’t let you!” Harry’s faces change into anger as he gives her a cold look.

 “Well don’t drag my parents’ marriage into this! I told you that because I trusted you not so you can use it against me!”

“That’s not what I was trying to do!” Y/N pleads. “You won’t lever her Harry! You won’t!” 

“How do you think people will react!” He gestures with his hands. “ After three years of marriage, Harry Styles is getting divorced!” He mimics a random news reporter.

“So-” “I’m not going to let myself be categorized under Hollywood’s failed marriages!” “It was already failing before you met me! Can’t you see I just want you to be happy!”

“I am happy when you’re with me!”

“Well, I’m not!”

“You don’t mean that.” Harry scoffs as he runs his hand through his hair in frustration. 

“How can I not? I’m hearing stories every day about your fights at home. This isn’t even a relationship Harry! It’s an affair! An illicit one! And I-I’m a secret!”

“I don’t want to share you with the public! They will judge us and they’re going to ruin you as they ruined me!” He rambles on. “I’ve been stalked and judged for things I didn’t know matter!” 

“I would rather go through that with you -than to watch you from far away and only have you with me when we’re here inside this apartment.” She points at the floor. 

“I can’t Y/N. I can’t let that happen and I won’t.”

“Then this is over then.” She quickly wipes her tears as she notices Harry doing the same. The yelling seemed to die down as they finally realized that this problem they tried to ignore wasn’t going anywhere.

“You know… for some reason, you taught me a lot of things.” Harry clears his throat as he wipes his wet palms on his pants. “Despite only letting you have one half of me. You somehow took over my whole mind. God, I would love to fight for you Y/N.” He looks at her as he feels tears forming in his again. “I do - I truly would.” A pause happens before he continues, “ For you, I ‘d ruin myself a million times but I would never let you do the same.” He emphasizes to her. “ I don’t want to let you go but I know I should because even if I go get that divorce, I’d still want to keep you as my secret -and that’s not what you want.” 

“I-” Y/N stops herself. She wanted to tell him that she loves him but she knew it wouldn’t help them at all. “I’ll still see you for a while. After my internship though, I’ll be gone.”

“Do you think we’ll stay in touch.”

“I don’t think we should.” She blurts it out as her eyes glance at the fresh bouquet sitting on her table. 

“Alright. I guess that’s it.” Harry sniffles a bit before walking to the door. “I’ll see you.”

“Goodbye.”

And Y/N thought she wouldn’t have to see him again after her internship. Although her heart was broken, she found herself counting the days until she can find a new job. After their unexpected ending, she no longer found herself lonely in the mornings but during the nights too. 

The days he came by the office were more difficult than she thought. She would still feel his gaze on her during their meetings but he no longer greeted her nor gave her any attention. He would walk right past her desk when he visited the office but he would act as if he never knew her in the first place - Not a glance or a wave. 

And that was fine with Y/N, at least she tried her best to think it was. Until her meeting with Rob a week before Harry’s album release. 

~

“Y/N, I would love to offer you a job here at the company. I  will give you a position in Marketing for Harry Styles.” Rob hands her a manila folder across the table. “ You know a few months ago, he spoke about your hard work and how much potential you have and he’s right. This would look great on your resume and the pay will be better here than if you were to start off at another company.” 

Days of thinking and non-stop anxiety flooded Y/N’s mind. She knew her plan was to cut all ties with the pop star but the career that had just been handed to her had so much potential. Potentiality can help her with her student loans and give her a more comfortable life. She would be stupid if she passed the offer because of him. So with no more hesitation, she took her phone and called Rob.

“I’ll take the job offer.”

Part two here!!

[cocobittiebites]

need and want

Today is just a draft clearing day ig. Yeah I don’t know where I was going with this but I do know that no matter all odds I will choose the situation where I can get the most pain. In all honestly I really tried to make y/n gender neutral but there are some feminine things if you squint. Bit of OOC Hisoka tbh.

This was inspired VERY loosely by the 1 by Taylor Swift from her album folklore.

Hisoka x gn!reader

TW: cursing, toxic relationship, angst, hurt/no comfort, toxic!y/n, I’m a sucker for unrequited love so there you go, Hisoka is his own warning ig, mentions off passed abuse, mentioning of Hisoka’s and y/n’s childhood

Hisoka alway thought of you as his. Ever since you two were children, it was you two against the world. Even before he learned nen and was able to take down opponents far past his experience level, you empowered him during moments he now finds too trivial to remember.

In his collection of toys you were like a childhood stuffed animal that could never be parted with. As he watches you run around the room trying to scour through an old jewelry box for God-knows-what. He doesn’t seem to care and he doesn’t know why he’s even here. 

He knows, yet he won’t admit it. It's because you begged him to come and if anything is consistent in Hisoka’s life it's that he can’t really deny you anything. As much as it pains him to acknowledge, you really are the only friend he has. Sure he’s been spending a suspicious amount of time with Illumi Zoldykc, but it wasn't because of friendship.

And he doesn’t really need friendship anymore, it's not suited to him. However, you were suited to him and he could never part with such an interesting toy. 

Toy

Yeah, that's what he’ll keep saying to himself. He’ll scream it as loud as he can until it becomes true. 

“Hisoka Morow!” you yell, “Pay attention! Have you seen my veil?” 

His face contorts into an amused smirk as he points coyly to your veil sitting elegantly on the vanity. 

“It’s over there my love~” 

You roll your eyes at the nickname, “I won’t be your love after today,” you tease in good nature. A smile spread across your face showing a rare unbridled giddiness. “Damn who would’ve thought,” you stare at yourself in the mirror then turning back to your friend, “that I would ever get married.”

“Not me,” Hisoka responds almost unthinkingly. His mind hesitates, but he doesn’t show it. Though you’ve known him since the two of you were children the magician will always be a cipher that gets more complicated as you figure it out. 

“You may be happy now but think about it Y/N,” you turn to look at him, a dark expression marks his normal nonchalant demeanor, “in two years you’ll grow bored of him and you will have no choice but to run back to the only person you need.” 

It’s funny how only a few words can change the energy around you. All down to his aura you could feel that he was serious. 

Still as you’ve been friends with the magician since before either of you could remember, you knew how to deal with him. 

“Just because you get bored of people easily doesn’t mean I will.”

“Now really Y/N you know what I mean~” 

“No I don’t know what you mean!” you cried out, slamming your hand on the vanity, “Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I’m like you. I’m not as broken as you are-“

Lifting his eyebrow coyly he laughs out, “Broken? Is that how it is my dear~”

“Yes,” you’re standing tall now with unwavering bravado, thinking about how to make your next words really hurt, “As much as you pretend that you have moved on from such a trivial events, everything you do seems to be about him-“

His eyes darken and bloodlust oozes from where he is standing, long gone was the playful attitude of your friend. “You know nothi-“

“Oh yes I do,” you exclaim condescending. “I know that you crave violence because that’s the only physical contact he’s ever given you. That you want to dominate every opponent because no more will you ever feel weak to anyone.” 

“Truth is you are still that boy from across the street that needed my help. How long do you think you would’ve survived if I hadn’t saved you that day, after he beat you within an inch of your life. Hell you wouldn’t have learned nen if it wasn’t for me.

You may have needed me but I have never needed you. You are the one who doesn’t want me to get married because it shows that I’m not reliant on you. I may not have moved on completely from all the shit I’ve been through, but at least I put myself back together. Why would I ever need someone who is too weak to put themselves back together.”

It was in his silence that a wave of guilt washed over you. So profound that you felt both your hearts shatter and though you were in that room together, it was only your minds keeping you company. 

This wasn’t how this conversation was supposed to go. 

He was supposed to prevent you from tying the knot, so he could maybe buy himself some time to finally confess to you. To tell you that through all the people he’s encountered he couldn’t help but compare them to you. Even Illumi Zoldyck wasn’t quite as amusing as you. 

Love

You were the closest thing to love for him

Even then, he should’ve accounted for your viperous tongue of yours. Once provoked, your words can sting as strong as the most potent poisons. 

You were wrong. You are like him. You are just as cruel and uncaring as he is, if not more. While for him it was towards everyone but you, you were kind to everyone but him. 

Casual cruelness disguised as honestly.

You were right in some regard, however. Hisoka wanted you. The thing about wanting though is that it made you weak. 

But still he quickly leaves your wedding, on what should be the happiest day of your life. Hisoka is not one to regret much, but as he leaves he thinks and ponders on the what if.

[path-of-my-childhood]

How Aaron Dessner and Taylor Swift Stripped Down Her Sound on ‘Folklore’

By: Jon Blistein for Rolling Stone Date: July 24th 2020

At the beginning of March, the National’s Aaron Dessner traveled back to the United States from Paris, where he’d been living with his family, to shack up at Sonic Ranch Studio in Tornillo, Texas to work on the next Big Red Machine album with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. Those plans - obviously - soon shifted, as the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic set in. Dessner and his family were able to relocate to their home in upstate New York as lockdown orders went into effect, and the musician soon settled into a groove of homeschooling his kids and able to focus fully on music in a way he hadn’t in a while, due to the National’s regularly rigorous touring schedule.

In the middle of what Dessner describes as one of the most productive moments of his career, Taylor Swift called. A longtime and avowed fan of the National, Swift asked if Dessner wanted to try collaborating on a few songs remotely. He said of course, and asked if she was looking for anything in particular. He noted that he had plenty of material at the ready, but acknowledged he’d been in a more experimental mood, due to the Big Red Machine sessions; not to mention, Dessner added, he’d never really ventured into the pop world Swift has dominated for well over a decade. She told him to send everything he had.

“I think she was interested in the emotions that she feels in some of the music that I’ve made,” Dessner tells Rolling Stone.” So I just sent her a folder of things I’d done recently and was excited about. Hours after, she sent back a fully written version of ‘Cardigan.’ It was like a lightning bolt struck the house.”

Over the next few months, Dessner and Swift crafted the bulk of Swift’s eighth studio album, Folklore. Dessner spoke with Rolling Stone about working with Swift, their instant chemistry, how the album developed under a thick cloud of secrecy and more.

When Taylor first reached out, did she have a specific vision in mind for the album? She was a bit cryptic. I didn’t know that we were actually working on a record for quite a while. It just seemed that she was seeking me out to collaborate. And then we were both feeling very inspired by it. Once there were six or seven songs that we had written over a couple of weeks, she said, “Hey can we talk?” Then she said, ‘This is what I’m imagining,’ and started to tell me about the concept of Folklore. Then she mentioned that she’d written some songs at an earlier stage with Jack [Antonoff], and they felt like they really fit together with what we were doing. It was a very inspiring, exhilarating collaborative process that was almost entirely remote. Very sort of warp speed, but also something about it felt like we were going toe-to-toe and in a good pocket.

After “Cardigan,” how did these songs develop and do you think she pushed you in any new directions as a songwriter? When you’re working with someone new, it takes a second to understand their instincts and range. It’s not really conscious. She wrote “Cardigan,” and then “Seven,” then “Peace.” They kind of set a road map, because “Cardigan” was this kind of experimental ballad, the closest thing to a pop song on the record, but it’s not really. It’s this emotional thing, but it has some strange sounds in it. “Seven” is this kind of nostalgic, emotional folk song. Even before she sang to it, I felt this nostalgia, wistful feeling in it, and I think that’s what she gravitated towards. And “Peace,” that just showed me the incredible versatility that she had. That song is just three harmonized bass lines and a pulse. I love to play bass like that - play one line then harmonize another, and another, which is a behavior I stole from Justin Vernon, because he’s done that on other things we’ve done together. And actually, that’s his pulse, he sent me that pulse and said, “Do something with this.” But when she wrote that song, which kind of reminds me of a Joni Mitchell song over a harmonized bassline and a pulse, that was kind of like, “Woah, anything can happen here.” That’s not easy to do. 

So, in the morning I would wake up and try to be productive. “Mad Woman” is one I wrote shortly after that, in terms of sound world, felt very related to “Cardigan” and “Seven.” I do have a way of playing piano where it’s very melodic and emotional, but then often it’s great if whoever’s singing doesn’t sing exactly what’s in the piano melody, but maybe it’s connected in some way. There was just some chemistry happening with her and how she was relating to those ideas.

“Epiphany” was something she had an idea for, and then I imagined these glacial, Icelandic sounds with distended chords and this almost classical feeling. That was another one where we wrote it and conceived it together. She just has a very instinctive and sharp musical mind, and she was able to compose so closely to what I was presenting. What I was doing was clicking for her. It was exhilarating for us, and it was surreal - we were shocked by it, to be honest [Laughs]. I think the warmth, humanity and raw energy of her vocals, and her writing on this record, from the very first voice memos - it was all there.

Do you think that chemistry might’ve had something to do with her being a National fan, and you being a fan of her music? We met Taylor at Saturday Night Live in 2014, or whenever that was that we played and Lena Dunham was hosting. We got to meet her, and that was our first brush with a bona fide pop star. But then she came to see us play in Brooklyn last summer and was there in a crazy rainstorm, like torrential downpour, and watched the whole show and stayed for a long time afterwards, talking to me and my brother. She was incredibly charming and humble. That’s the nice thing about her, and a lot of people I’ve met that have that kind of celebrity. It’s great when you can just tune it out and be normal people and chat, and that’s how that felt. So, we knew that she was a big fan, and we really got into the 1989 album. Our Icelandic collaborator, Ragnar Kjartansson, is a crazy Swiftie. So we’ve kind of lived vicariously through him. I’ve always been astonished by how masterful she is in her craft. I’ve always listened to her albums and put them in this rarefied category, like, “How did she do that? How does anybody do that? How do you make ‘Blank Space?’” There was an element that was intimidating at first, where it just took me a second to be like… Not because I think her music is better than what we’ve done, but it’s just a different world.

Were there particular songs, albums or artists the two of you discussed as reference points for this album? “Betty,” which is a song she wrote with William Bowery, she was interested in sort of early Bob Dylan, like Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, I think. “Epiphany,” early on, felt like some weird Kate Bush-meets-Peter Gabriel thing. I think we talked a little about those things, but not a lot. Actually, I think she really trusted me as far as my instincts to where the music would ultimately go, and also the mixing process.  We really wanted to keep her voice as human, and kind of the opposite of plastic, as possible. That was a bit of a battle. Because everything in pop music tends to be very carved out, a smiley face, and as pushed as possible so that it translates to the radio or wherever you hear it. That can also happen with a National song - like if you changed how these things are mixed, they wouldn’t feel like the same song. And she was really trusting and heard it herself. She would make those calls herself, also.

You mentioned William Bowery - who is he? He’s a songwriter, and actually because of social distancing, I’ve never met him. He actually wrote the original idea for “Exile,” and then Taylor took it and ran with it. I don’t actually know to be totally honest.

We’ve been trying to track him down, he doesn’t have much of an internet presence. Yeah, I don’t fully know him, other than he wrote “Betty” and “Exile” with her. But you know she’s a very collaborative person, so it was probably some songwriter.

So it’s not an alias for anyone? No, no, no. I mean, I don’t know - she didn’t tell me there was a “Cardigan” video until literally it came out, and I wrote the song with her [laughs]. So I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure he’s an actual songwriter. She enjoys little mysteries.

With the National, you and your brother write the music, Matt Berninger adds the lyrics, and then you fuse it - was it a similar process on Folklore? Taylor is very collaborative in that sense that, whenever she sent a voice memo, she would send all the lyrics and then ask me what I thought. And sometimes we would debate certain lines, although generally she’s obviously a strong writer. So she would ask me if I liked one line, and she would give me alternate lines and I would give her my opinion. And then when she was actually tracking vocals, I would sometimes suggest things or miss things, but she definitely has a lot of respect for the collaborative process and wants whoever she’s writing with to feel deeply included in that process. It was nice, and was a back and forth, for sure. And she would sometimes have ideas about the production if she didn’t like something, especially. She would, in a tactful way, bring that up. I appreciated that, too, since I wanted to try to turn over every leaf, take risks and sometimes get it wrong. That always takes a second, to get over and then you start again.

You mentioned earlier that once you had six, seven songs, she was able to describe a concept behind the album. I’m curious what that conversation was like. She would always explain what each song was about to me, even before she articulated the Folklore concept. And I could tell early on that they were these narrative songs, often told from a different… not in the first person. So there are different characters in the songs that appear in others. You may have a character in “Betty” that’s also related to one in “Cardigan,” for example. And I think that was, in her mind, very, very important. It doesn’t seem like, for this record at least, that she was inspired to write something until she really knew what it was about. And I think I’m used to a more - at least lately - impressionistic and experimental world of making stuff without really knowing what it is. But this was more direct, in that sense. That was really helpful, to know what it was about and it would guide some of the choices we were making.

Every time she would send something, she would narrate a little bit, like how it fit, or what it was about. And then when she told me about Folklore as a concept, it made so much sense. Like “The Last Great American Dynasty,” for example, this kind of narrative song that then becomes personal at the end - it flips and she enters the song. These are kind of these folkloric, almost mythical tales that are woven in of childhood, lost love, and different sentiments across the record. It was binding it all together and I think it’s personal, but also through the guise of other people, friends and loved ones.

You were working in secret - how did that affect the process? Was that a difficult burden? It was. I was humbled and honored and grateful for the opportunity and for the crazy sort of alchemy we were having. But it was hard not to be able to talk openly with my usual collaborators, even my brother at first. I didn’t know if I could really tell him, because we normally… Ultimately, he helped me quite a bit, he orchestrated songs. But we always help each other. But eventually, we figured out how to do it. Towards the end of the process, I said to Taylor, ‘I really feel that I need to try a few experiment and try to elevate a few moments on the record because we have time, and we’ve really done a ton of work here, and it all sounds great, but I think we can go even further.’ And then she said, ‘Well what does that mean?’ And I explained how that would work, and the way that we work. Our process is very community-oriented, and we have long-time collaborators that we have a good understanding with. So I was able to say, to my friends, ‘This is a song I’m working on, I can’t send it to you with the vocals, and I can’t tell you what it is, but I can explain what I’m imagining.’ And the same with my brother, he knows my music so well that that was very easy for him to just take things that we were working on, add to that, and do his kind of work. So it was all remote and everyone was in their corner and we were shipping things around. It was incredibly fast because of that, because you didn’t have eight people needing to come to the studio. You had eight people working simultaneously - one in France and one in L.A. and one in Brooklyn. This is how it went, and it was fun. We got there.

When were you able to tell everyone who contributed that this was the Taylor Swift record, what was their reaction? You can imagine. I think they realized it was something big because [of] the confidentiality, and they were like, ‘It could only be a few things.’ I couldn’t tell them until, basically, when she announced it. Just in the moments after she announced it, I basically told everyone. I was like, ‘By the way…’ And they were thrilled. Everyone’s thrilled. Nobody seemed mad, everyone was thrilled and honored. Even Justin Vernon had not heard anything else except “Exile,” even though the pulse of that song “Peace,” he gave that song to me. It was important to have it be a surprise, and you know how it can be with someone in her position, with all the speculation, and she’s always under a lot of pressure like that. So it was really important to the creative freedom she was feeling that this remained a secret, so she could just do what we were doing.

Being such longtime friends and collaborators with Justin, what was it like hearing “Exile” for the first time? His voice and Taylor’s together? He’s so versatile and has such a crazy range, and puts so much emotion… Every time he sings when I’m in his presence, my head just kind of hits the back of the wall. That’s the same on this song. William Bowery and Taylor wrote that song together, got it to a certain point, then I sort of interpreted it and developed a recording of it, and then Taylor tracked both the male and female parts. And then we sent it to Justin and he re-did obviously the male parts and changed a few things and also added his own: He wrote the “step right out” part of the bridge, and Taylor re-sang to that. You feel like, in a weird way, you’re watching two of the greatest songwriters and vocalists of our generation collaborating. I was facilitating it and making it happen, and playing all the music. But it was definitely a “Wow.” I was just a fan at that point, seeing it happen.

Are there any moments that really stick out to you as particularly pivotal in shaping the sound of this record? The initial response. When we first connected, and I sent a folder of music and Taylor wrote “Cardigan,” and she said, “This is abnormal. Why do you have all these songs that are so emotional and so moving to me? This feels fated.” And then she just dove into it and embraced this emotional current. And I hope that’s what people take out of it: The humanity in her writing and melodies. It’s a different side to her. She could have been every bit as successful just making these kinds of songs, but it’s so great that she’s also made everything that she’s ever made, and this is a really interesting shift, and an emotional one. It also opens other doors, because now it’s kind of like she can go wherever she wants, creatively. The pressure to make a certain kind of… bop - or whatever you want to call it - is not there really anymore. And I think that’s really liberating, and I hope her fans and the world are excited by that because I am. It’s really special.

[mellowasinyellow]

100daysofwriting - Day 1

So I thought for the first day I might just briefly outline all of the WIPs I have actually made a start on and that might help me to decide where I want to focus some energy. I have some for Katniss/Peeta in THG fandom and some for Natasha/Clint in the MCU.

Everlark

folklore series - so I started this series of fics inspired by songs from Taylor Swift's album folklore because honestly those songs just immediately bring to mind so many scenarios that made me think of Katniss and Peeta. I made a start on chapters based on peace, my tears ricochet, invisible string, this is me trying, and mad woman. I also have a bit of an outline for continuing the story that was started in 'the 1'.

I've had this one WIP ongoing since about 2015(?) which is a bit of a monster that has grown beyond me but basically it involves Katniss and Gale being raised in the Capitol in relative poverty after their fathers are conscripted into the peacekeepers because of traitorous activity. Mrs Everdeen is still from 12 but was moved to the Captiol to be married (this part is sketchy) and she still had a little childhood romance with Mr Mellark. Peeta gets reaped and Mrs Everdeen reacts to this as he looks like his father. Katniss gets a crush on him as she watches him prepare for the games. She hates herself for it but finds herself checking up on how he is doing even during non-mandatory viewing.

Arranged Marriage - I feel like this is such a cliche for thg fandom, but I just imagined my own way that the pairings happen but I'm so bad at writing slow burn so this will probably never materialise, but if you want a semi-decent thought out pairing/arranged marriage system I would be happy to lend you mine.

Miscarriage fic - I will never post this, but it's in my WIP folder. It's full of nasty feelings that feel a little better when they are written about.

Modern AU Pandemic Quarantine! - ofc, this is essential. Katniss and Peeta end up as the only people not to move home from their dorm for the quarantine. Slow burn that I can't fucking write should ensue.

Canon Pandemic Quarantine AU - pandemic a few years after the end of the war forces Katniss to admit she wants Peeta as more than a friend with whom she hunts, bakes, rebuilds the district. Cue sexy pandemic times and a resentful Haymitch that keeps accidentally breaking the rules.

Divorced but co-parenting Everlark - obviously finding their way back together

Another classic of their children being reaped and dying - I don't know why I write things this depressing. They just tend to come out in one big rush and then I never address them again.

Real weird teen pregnancy modern day AU - don't know where it's going or why...

Modern day AU dead Prim - Peeta and Katniss just met each other through mutual friends and are kind of flirting. Peeta is a bit infatuated. Katniss stops going to mutual friend parties and he finds out it's because her sister died. Instead of staying away he gets tangled up in her grief and does all sorts of practical things while Katniss wallows. Also it's E rated but not that much fun... can't entirely explain where this one came from either...

Single Parent AU where Finnick and Annie play match maker. Probably my fave Everlark in the works but it's another one that has grown so big for the 20 minutes I can dedicate to it each week.

Clintasha

Red Room Take Down - Nat and Clint are retired and living a quiet family life with their child. SHIELD appears asking for Nat's help in taking down the red room and dealing with the fall out, specifically what to do with the girls that they get out. Nat is torn but chooses to go. Chaos ensues with the 'rescued' girls. I need to actually develop some OCs a little if I ever want this to be good but tbh the pending Black Widow movie is kind of holding me back on this one too because I hope we find out more about the red room.

So I have a weird habit of writing from Lila Barton's POV. I can't explain it. I have AoU and like to pretend it never happened but anyway I have a WIP about Lila detailing the collapse of her parents' marriage after Clint retires and he and Laura actually have to spend time together without Natasha. She then goes on to describe the custody settlement and her utter joy that Auntie Nat sleepovers with them at her dad's place. She feels utterly betrayed when she finds out they are getting engaged.

Fluffy AU - Clint and Natasha in an established relationship with a son born between infinity war and endgame. Natasha still sacrifices on Vormir, but Steve gets her back no bother and it's so nice and happy and fluffy and Clint and Natasha are together and they have a son who has both parents back and Steve gets to make all this happen and he is so happy too and they have a barbecue and go swimming in a lake and clint/natasha have private time, and their kid wants to be captain america, and did I mention how HAPPY everyone is?

Another fic similar to the above just about everyone being so HAPPY. Endgame reverses the snap and instead of weird farm family coming back Clint and Natasha get their daughter back and it's just a cute moment about her reappearance and their race back to the spot she disintegrated from. (Steve/Bucky go to Vormir and Steve is sacrificed, but that fucker CHOSE to leave).

This is another one that has just grown bigger than my brain. it's based off the idea that Natasha helped with coordinating fosterings during the blip time. Clint loses his mind when he loses his family and crashes in BedStuy but finds a neighbour girl (Kate Bishop) who is fending for herself in post-apocalyptic Brooklyn. He helps her out and tries to get children's services involved but it has collapsed. Finds out Natasha is the one getting everything in order. He gets in touch. She's at the end of her tether and asks why he can't keep looking after her. In the end he does and she ends up getting involved and all three get overly attached to each other. I haven't got as far as the events of endgame and idk what's going to happen. It might be tragic.

Pregnant Natasha but nobody knows what is wrong with her because they don't even suspect her being pregnant is possible. Just a real vivid description of the early unpleasant pregnancy symptoms.

Another absolute monster - Sort of canon compliant to begin with aside from before the farm family disappear. Clint and Laura are in the middle of separating and tensions are running quite high at the farm. Snap happens. Nat and Clint accidentally run into each other while both a bit low during the blip and get drunk and share home truths. Begin working together from HQ and both get a little less sad. He convinces her she doesn't have to be responsible for the world's fate every moment of every day. Clint has a break down at Morgan's 1st birthday and realises that things will have to change. Nat has this realisation later. They begin sleeping together. Accidental pregnancy. More feelings come out between them. They enter a more conventional relationship and have baby. Baby is really hard work (colic) and they struggle with comparisons and feelings of inadequacy. Pepper helps them to identify the colic and improves everything greatly. Happy times with baby while also running the avengers. Opportunity to reverse snap. Some good scenes between Nat and Tony. A big conversation between Nat and Clint about what it will mean. Steve and Nat end up going to Vormir together. Nat is obviously about to commit suicide. Steve over powers her and gives her a pep talk about the situation she is running away from and how to deal with it. He self-sacrifices. Clint goes back to farm fam and Natasha goes back to BedStuy with baby. Clint has to tell Laura and then the kids about the last 5 years and their new siblings. Nate is super into it. Cooper is a bit aloof and cynical. Lila is confused. Laura is quietly seething. Clint helps put the farm back together about 5 years of neglect and the kids meet baby. Family gets happier. Laura and Nat eventually meet again and it's civil/friendly.

My own version of what happened in Budapest.

The Call - inspired by a post here on tumblr. Nat calls Clint as she bleeds out. Just needs a beta reader and then I would consider publishing.

AoU reimagined but with Clintasha - I'm not sure where this one is going it's like a massive spider web right now with lots of ideas shooting off, but basically it is inspired by this post and just involves a lot of hoodwinking the other avengers.

Accidental Baby Acquisition - Natasha becomes Yelena's child's legal guardian after Yelena gets taken out. Natasha and Yelena are estranged at this point and Natasha things the whole thing is a trap and brings Clint along. He is surprisingly good with the baby so she ropes him in to teach her. The three of them end up bonding.

5 times there's only 1 bed + 1 time they choose to sleep in the same bed.

non-superhero AU Clint and Nat both think they have adopted a stay cat but actually the cat has owners and just likes strokes and eats a lot so has many 'families'. They get into an argument over which of them the cat belongs to only to find out the cat has owners and they are moving away. They decide to adopt a cat between them as both are not hope that much and the shelter refused them as single people. Slow burn ensues, which I am shit at writing.

[brockadoodles]

illicit affairs - a. matthews

AN: So this was actually the first folklore series fic I wrote, back when the album came out. I just never posted it because honestly I was scared to get mean, shitty anons for writing it. Because on my old blog, I always got rude shit about him. But like, so many people have asked for me to write for Auston and I wanted to so, fuck that, I’m posting it. Special shoutout to @broadstbroskis and @woah-were-halfway-there for hyping me up into posting it. And of course, miss @hockeyboysiguess who has known about it the entire time. 

Word Count: 1886

Warnings: ANGST, literally no happiness, also cheating sorry, and mentions of drinking.

And that's the thing about illicit affairs And clandestine meetings and longing stares It's born from just one single glance But it dies and it dies and it dies A million little times

It had started off innocent, a way to fill a space in your heart while he was away, it was never supposed to become anything more. You should have known it was wrong, you should have known you were demolishing your relationship that never really had any problems in the first place. You could lie to yourself, blame it on the insecurities, blame it on the loneliness, but you could never blame him. 

Auston wasn’t around all of the time, the nature of his job sending him away multiple times a week for months out of the year. He loved you, and by all accounts, he did everything right. He spent as much time on the phone with you as he could, being there in every way he could when he wasn’t physically in Toronto. By all accounts, he was the perfect partner. 

You pushed away from the loneliness, the inner workings of your mind reassuring you things were fine. That you were happy, but happy people don’t emotionally invest in someone who isn’t their partner. They don’t do what you did. 

Auston was with his team in California, a two-week-long trip that had you feeling more empty and alone than you had ever felt. You did everything you could to busy yourself, counting down the hours until he would call, hoping that the sound of his voice would bring you back to the happiness you once knew with him, but it didn’t. When he called, all you could focus on was the photo on your nightstand with him, one of you on his back after a night out, drunk smiles on both of your faces. You didn’t even recognize the person looking back at you in the dark frame. You didn’t even hear anything Auston said that night. All you felt was empty.

It was November when it started. A night out that led to the final nail in the coffin of your relationship. You saw him from across the bar, instantly recognizing the boy you once knew. He was everything that Auston wasn’t, and you found yourself nostalgic about the friendship you once had. He was shorter than Auston, smaller. His hair was light and Auston’s was dark. His blue eyes didn’t look at you with love like Auston’s, they looked at you with a lust behind them that made you feel wanted in a way that Auston couldn’t. Your heart wasn’t with Auston anymore, and all it took was a slap of nostalgia to pull you back from a relationship that at one point you thought you would sink without. 

He came over, gliding up to you with ease. Conversation and drinks flowing freely. The gin was getting to your head, but your judgement had been clouded by more than just a shitty mixed gin and tonic. 

His hand came gliding up your jeans, his fingers delicately along the rips of the black jeans, Auston’s favorite pair of jeans on you. You were relishing in the feeling, tuning out the noise of the bar, focussing on the guy in front of you, the guy that was everything that was wrong. Your phone was lighting up with texts from your boyfriend that you didn’t care to open. 

“Are you seeing anyone?” The words slipped from his lips, fingers sliding further up your thigh. The question should have been enough to snap you out of it, to remind yourself that what you were doing was wrong. But it didn’t, because you didn’t care about your boyfriend who was currently miles away, sending you what were likely sweet goodnight messages. Instead, you took the hammer to your relationship and took someone else into your bed.     

You should have known better with each text, flirtation, and appreciation evident in every word. You should have known better when texts became calls that had you sharing the most intimate details of your life. Never reveal that you had a home, one you shared with someone who had been your partner for the last three years. One who went away thinking nothing was ever wrong between you. 

Calls evolved into dates, where you’d dress up in your most beautiful clothing, a spritz of the perfume Auston always said he loved. Dates became going home with him, hands roaming, stolen kisses in the elevator up to the home you shared with Auston. 

You should have known better every time you put the photos of you and Auston in the drawer, never to be seen as another man sank into you each night you were otherwise alone. Each time you claimed it was the last, trying to convince yourself that once Auston was back you would stop. But you never did.    

You were throwing things around in the closet, looking for something specific when you found it, the item that caused everything you were haphazardly doing to come crashing to the surface. The small black box that should have been the beginning of a life with someone else. 

You held the small, velvet box in your hands, tears blurring your vision as you opened it. The ring was everything you would have ever wanted. A simple, yet beautiful diamond staring back at you. The ring glistened, a shiny reminder of everything you had done the last six months, every time you emotionally and physically left your own relationship, telling yourself it didn’t mean anything. Telling yourself Auston was away, and you were lonely. The most heartbreaking thing about it was that he trusted you, he fully trusted you, and you took that trust and threw it as far as you could, at the time not caring about the consequences.

Tears blurred your vision as the reality of your mistakes set in. Auston loved you, wholeheartedly. He did all of the things that people do when they’re in love. He took you home, he brought you into his family, he wanted a life with you. He knew you, only to be disadvantaged by a career that prevented him from being around all the time. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and you wrecked him anyway. The worst part was that he had no idea about any of it. He didn’t know that you had slept with someone else. He didn’t know that you had been doing it behind his back for months. He didn’t know about the late phone calls, the secret meetings, who you brought into your bed while he was away. He didn’t know that your heart had left long before that.  

You choked back a sob, carefully putting the ring back where you found it, knowing full well you had to tell him. You couldn’t marry him, not after what you had done in the last six months. 

When he came home and tried to kiss you in greeting, you pulled back. You pushed his body back from you, eyes diverting away from his as you spoke.

“I found the ring.” You whispered. 

“Shit, I mean that’s not how I wanted to give it to you, but-”

“I can’t marry you, Auston. I’ve been with someone else.” You couldn’t look at him, you couldn’t look at his face twist and his eyes fall. You couldn’t look at the personification of his heart shattering right in front of you even though it was your hand crushing it. 

“Has he been here?” Auston pinched the bridge of his nose, his own tears starting to form clouds in his eyes, hoping more than anything that the answer was no. 

“Yes.” All he saw was red as you said it. 

“What do you do with these while he’s here fucking you in our bed?” He spoke, his voice dull and full of disappointment, grabbing the photo of the two of you from the bedside table, the one you carefully tucked away each time. You couldn’t stop the sobs coming from your body, pleading with Auston that you were sorry. That it didn’t mean anything, that you never wanted to hurt him, even though your words meant nothing at this point. 

He threw the picture frame at the wall, glass shattering all over the floor, a final representation of the now nearly four-year relationship that you threw away one night at a bar six months ago. His eyes were red, tears flowing freely. 

“How long?” He asked, covering his eyes with one hand trying to steady his own breathing. You made no move to answer him, instead of looking down at the ground. Shame and guilt filling your heart, Auston was nothing but good to you, and you threw it back in his face repeatedly, for months. 

“How fucking long? He repeated, growing frustrated with your lack of an answer. 

“November.” You whispered, fresh tears falling down your cheeks. Auston looked at you, then walked into the closet, throwing things around before coming back with what you assumed was the ring in his hand. He tossed the box onto the bed in front of you, looking at you like you’d never seen him look at anyone before. 

“Here, you can have this. Fucking pawn it for all I care.” His voice was cold, a tenor you had never heard him use with anyone, let alone you, and you couldn’t even blame him for it, all you could blame was yourself. 

He didn’t say anything to you as you packed a bag. He didn’t say anything as you cleaned up the shattered picture frame from the bedroom floor. Auston didn’t have anything left to say to you at all, his own mind was still trying to work out how he had missed it. How he could have been better to you so that you didn’t need to look for comfort from someone else. He didn’t say anything when you left that night, or when you came back a week later to move out the rest of your stuff, letting you walk out and take your mistakes with you. 

He didn’t stay in that room anymore, instead, he slept in the guest room. When the season ended, he caught the first flight back to Arizona and didn’t look back. He spent four years looking back for you, and now he had to learn how to live with his own broken heart and the mess that you made. 

You only saw Auston once after that, at a bar, nearly six months after. The guy you had cheated on him with had been long gone, and you had spent those six months trying to understand what you had done. You were trying to piece yourself back together with a guilty conscience and a hole in your chest that had you feeling lonelier than you ever thought you were capable of feeling. 

You made eye contact and watched his face fall, turning quickly away from you back to whoever it was that he was with. You downed the rest of your drink and closed your tab, walking out and closing the chapter on the illicit affair you had for good, a drunken promise made to yourself in an attempt to never be as lost as you were again. 

[willowistic22]

Famous!newsies

Ok so here are my famous!newsies headcanons from an a modern au i thought of if newsies were celebrities/famous yknow bcs I couldn’t get this idea out of my head and idk what to do with it other than making a headcanon list nabsnzbsvsnsbz anyways hope yall validate me after not posting any original content for like…. awhile now hehe

btw it got longer than expected. And I mean r e a l l y long. So if yall wanna read this better sit down and buckle up! 

Jack

He’s an artist on youtube

Like a modern day bob ross ig??

If yall know zhc on youtube just imagine that but not so rich (I don’t watch zhc btw but i do know that he does custom art on iphones and stuff and that is definitely not jack kelly)

Anyways Jack simply goes by Jack Kelly.

So jack does art challenges. Like does the weirdest requests from his fans left in his comment section and stuff

Or maybe challenging himself to make art from a specific theme or a specific media

Sometimes he vlogs too but his art videos are what his fans like the most

His merch is amazing because he designed the pattern/drawing/whatever yknow. It’s printed/sewed/whatever on the clothing and it’s good quality. It’s pretty lowkey for a youtuber’s merch bcs jack doesn’t like those merch that just smacks his logo on a hoodie

Davey

He’s a fantasy, YA, romance writer (he mixes it wisely ok?)

And goes by David Jacobs

Listen he’s a hopeless romantic and i’m pretty sure yall agree too

He wanted to stick to YA romance. The classic high school lovers yknow

But he wanted to challenge himself since he’s been writing about high school lovers since he was in high school

Thus the fantasy genre came in mind

So yeah he likes creating love in his own universe

Whether it’d be different worlds, universe, species, time periods, whatever.

He wanted to direct the movies based on his books, but he’s actually lowkey terrible at leading on his own. But he did stick to being the script writer and co-director (look idk how it works in the film industry i’m just making shit up)

Crutchie

He’s a solo jazz singer

Crutchie gives off Michael Buble and Jason Mraz vibes tho

And maybe a bit of frank sinatra? Yknow ‘cause he sings jazz

Also he riffs thank you very much :)

He goes by Crutchie Morris to everyone

He usually plays the acoustic guitar or piano on stage

Ok but he’s like really good with the piano

Makes the best jokes on stage too. Some are just sarcastic comments.

Crutchie asking through the microphone : “Oh, straight?”

A fan he’s talking to from the crowd : “Uhh… no, gay”

Crutchie : “no not you, the vodka”

Everyone at the concert : *laughs*

Crutchie, jokingly : “Oh, you’re drinking vodka! Straight? No gay”

(yes that was indeed inspired by that one video of Harry Styles and a fan in one of his concerts yall can’t stop me)

Kathrine

She’s a crime mystery writer

Think like the modern day Agatha Christie

Okok but she goes by Kathrine Plumber on her books :D

She chooses that genre bcs she’s a huge fan of Agatha Christie

Her favorite book from Agatha is Murder on the Orient Express

Oh and her books are sometime very gruesome alkjsfhakjsfb

Nobody check her browsing history, she’ll look like a murderer

Ok but I feel like she also has a youtube channel about books and stuff and sometimes like to vlog

She also has a writing tips series on her channel where she shares tips on some of the frequently asked questions about writing or her fans leave a specific question in the comment section and thought she could expand more to it in a full length video

Also she likes to vlog while she’s in a book convention

Her books are also turned into movies and she has done a great job directing it

Race

Yall would be lying to me if you don’t think this kid would end up being a twitch streamer and youtuber (like vlogging yknow. I feel like his gaming stuff would strictly be on twitch)

And ik it’s widely agreed by everyone in the fandom that he’s a dancer of some sort so yeah he’s also simultaneously a dancer

I don’t think I need to explain any further bcs it’s just so in character

He goes by Racetrack Higgins

Ok so he likes to vlog on his youtube channel

Sometimes does stupid challenges

Maybe he’d drag Albert to do a challenge which he always says no

“I’ll just be your cameraman dude, dw”

Race : *angery*

Since Al and Smalls are the skateboard peeps™ race is the rollerblade dude™ bcs I say so

He has three cats named Racecat Higgins, Spot Clawlon, and Romeow (i’ve mentioned it before and I will mention it again hehe) and his fans loves them endlessly

Albert

You don’t think this kid would also end up being a twitch streamer and youtuber like his bestie up there?? Lmao you thought wrong (again, gaming is strictly on his twitch)

He just goes by Albert DaSilva on the internet

And yes he’s also a dancer because I say so

On his Youtube channel he also vlogs

Half of his vlogs starts with him riding his skateboard

“Hey, guys! Welcome back to another vlog-” *falls off his skateboard for not paying attention to a curb*

It happens way more often than he’d like to admit let’s be real. His fans make a compilation of it and memes on reddit

Always wear a snapback

Snapbacks are an important element to him so his merch store is really boosting his snapbacks

And just for the wormsie discord server he has one with the word ranga on it after it being born from a stupid inside joke he, race, and both of their fanbases combined share (@ my wormsie fam thank me later)

Oh yeah, his youtube besties are Race and Smalls just so we’re clear here :) (I’ll get to Smalls in a bit)

So I always headcanon Albert having two big dobermans. So his fans always want to see a doggy update because Zara and Zoey are everything to them.

Doggo vlogs are fun. It’s usually Albert taking the two good girls to Central Park for playtime or teaching them new tricks

Spot

He’s a solo rock singer

Is an amazing singer like wow none of the newsies expected him to have that sort of pipes to reach high notes

And he does it amazingly with no sweat

Also his instrument is the electric guitar to go with his amazing singing ajsfhasjfhajhf

Anyways he goes by Spot Conlon still

And his songs are very lyrical. Like very.

A lot of metaphors. No one knows what most of his songs means.

So basically Taylor Swift songs if it switched genres to rock. And not even like songs from speak now or red. But like if evermore and folklore songs were to turn into rock songs with a little bit of reputation vibes sprinkled on top. And his concerts has the reputation era vibes but make it spot conlon (hey non swiftie fans reading this i’m so sorry i’m pretty sure yall don’t understand wtf i’m talking abt)

That is also the only way i know to describe his vibe i’m sorry but i don’t really listen to a lot of rock alkjhfasjk

Anyways it’s a known fact that he wears tank tops daily that it becomes his signature look. And also an inside joke among his fanbase

Now just picture the merch booth from one of his shows and there’s like endless tank top designs for his fans to pick and choose

He’s also crowned to be the King of Brooklyn bcs of obvious reasons

But the joke is he’s a pretty tough hardcore guy that’s a cat person

Sarah

She’s a badass female solo singer

Mostly does pop but the badass type of pop

Yes, she does go by Sarah Jacobs

Fans were really surprised Davey and Sarah are related

Because one is a hopeless romantic while the other is a total badass

Anyways she gives off Little mix, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, and Selena Gomez vibes

That is literally the only way I can describe it

She’s very lyrical, with a lot of metaphors

When she dances on stage, she d a n c e s

All while holding a mic to sing. And she hits all those high notes like it’s no ones business (a literal queen i tell you)

She and Spot are besties and has been known to have done a few collabs together

Their fans were hesitant about their collabs since their genre is pretty different from the other but they make it work and it slAPS

And among all her boppy songs with full choreography and backup singers, she always have a few songs she sings while only being accompanied by piano or guitar (Either electric or acoustic) which she plays on her own

Finch

He’s an indie pop artist with his trusted acoustic guitar by his side

Just think of music by Wallows and Lewis Capaldi were to be blended in together and Conan Gray for the cherry on top

But it has a little bit of Ed sheeran, Lorde, and Lauv vibes to it too

His concerts are simple but his songs are mostly very boppy so his fans still have fun either way

And it’s usually in small venues but there are times where he had a concert in a huge stadium

He goes by FINCH (yeah all caps btw)

Finches are a very on brand thing for him obviously

Has been known to collab with Crutchie and they actually make a very good team

Somehow was able to combined both genres to produce a few boppy songs

Ok ok but Finch and Crutchie have made a collaborative album (and maybe they went on tour????)

Specs 

He’s a history fiction writer

Yes this is inspired by the fact that he’s 100% a history nerd (no one change my mind i love this headcanon aight)

And he explores a lot of different histories from different parts of the world

He actually helps a lot of students understand history even further for school through his novels

Anyways he goes by Specs because I say so

No one knows why that’s his pseudonym and Specs isn’t interested in explaining either. No one other than the newsies need to know it was born from a stupid nickname the newsies gave him :)

His research mostly comes from history books because of his genre which wouldn’t be a problem since he has loads and will voluntarily buy more if needed

Also yeah he makes a great director for the movies taken from his books

Mush

He’s a chef on youtube

Goes by Mush Meyers

So think if Gordon Ramsey and his youtube channel but make it mush

Yeah that’s it really

Ok but Mush is a jolly and friendly person

Other than just food vlogging he does cooking challenges and cooking tips too

Sometimes he does the cooking challenges with a friend (mostly henry but i’ll get to him later on in the list)

But he also vlogs his life

Which isn’t really often but he likes to sometimes

He’s that big of a foodie he has a food blog too

And also a seafood restaurant so that’s cool :D

Henry

Like Mush, he’s a chef on youtube

Goes by Henry on the internet and in general

Ajkfhajfjska I’m thinking about how ppl would address him as Chef Henry kajhfkjlashfjklasfjklsf

He mostly does the same thing like Mush actually

Food vlogging and cooking challenges (they do it together so) sometimes cooking tips

But Henry vlogs his life a lot

And instead of a food instagram he has a food blog

He has a sandwich restaurant

Yeah it is inspired by his pastrami on rye with a sour pickle line from KONY get mad about it why don’t ya (well if i’m not mistaken henry was the one that said it but idk i have horrible memory) 

Blink

He’s a youtuber

Ok so I have a specific headcanon that Blink majored in psychology but didn’t end up being a psychologist

So instead he becomes a psychologist on youtube

Who often vlogs jhgasjlfhs

The guy looks like he could cut you but his sense of humor once you get him talking is just *chef’s kiss* amazing

Which is why he also has a podcast because he’s also secretly great at talking

He just thinks mental health is very important, okay?

Romeo

He’s an actor

Mostly on Broadway but has worked with Hollywood before

He’s usually a supporting character but has been known to understudy for main characters

Ok ik these bullet points are getting shorter and shorter but these are mostly bcs some of these stuff are pretty self explanatory since it’s very in character

Like are you telling me a kid named Romeo isn’t gonna be in some way very dramatic and end up turning that personality trait into his career?? Plus he’s very good at that?

Yeah you’re lying to me

Also he’s a pretty frequent vlogger on youtube

Look he’s a fun guy, what did you expect?

Just goes by Romeo on youtube

Elmer

He’s an actor

Has done his fair share in Broadway and Hollywood but started in Broadway

He can dance but thinks he’s pretty average in it yknow

Which his fans has no idea what he’s talking about because on stage he can do flips and turns like it’s no ones business yknow

But he can sing really good and takes pride in it

Elmer would play characters that is really far off from his own personality that fans couldn’t believe that Elmer played that character

He has done his fair share in main characters and supporting characters on Broadway

In Hollywood he usually does indie and rom-com movies

Buttons

He’s a fashion youtuber and basically an influencer 

Let’s be real this boy is a fashion icon

He’s not really a model but more like a fashion influencer and also kind of a fashion designer

His clothing line is very *chefs kiss* amazing

He designed it all and sometimes likes to design for his friends as well

He also does fashion tips on his youtube channel

His instagram game is god tier level (along with Tommy Boy and Sniper I’ll get to them in a bit) 

But yeah he also vlogs

And goes by Buttons Davenport

Jojo

He’s an actor

Mostly on Broadway but has done a few movies in Hollywood

He radiates main character energy and he does become the main character most of the time (on hollywood at least)

On Broadway he mostly enjoys being apart of the ensemble because this boy loves dancing

But he does play a few supporting characters

He has released one or two albums too because his singing is top tier

But isn’t interested in doing a lot of live concerts with his albums

Since no one has the time to say Josephino Jorgelino De La Guerra he turned it into Jojo De La Guerra (so much for ‘a special nickname only for friends and family’)

Mike and Ike

They’re a pop boy band and bcs of my lack of creativity it’s called Mike and Ike

At the start of their career :

“My name goes first because I’m older than you!” - Mike

“You’re only older than me by 13 minutes, holy shit!” - Ike

But Ike slowly accepts the fact that it’ll be like this yknow

Anyways they’re pretty great singers

They have one direction and new hope club vibes

Tho unlike one direction they can dance (i love the boys alright but i really think it’s funny that they can’t dancelkhjjlh)

They like to switch from the guitar (electric and/or acoustic) to the piano

The amount of times their name is confused by the candy is too many 

But they like it like that lol

Anyways i’ve mentioned a headcanon where Mike has tattoos (not like from head to toe but it’s fairly noticeable to everyone) and Ike has piercings

So the only way their fans tell them apart is by that

But there are times where Mike has his tattoos covered or Ike took his piercings off in public alone. A fan mistakens them for the other twin but they still respond to the other name because they don’t feel like there’s a need to correct them since they’re mostly known by Mike and Ike anyways. When the fan posts it on instagram and tags the twin they thought it was the twin that was tagged would comment “wrong twin but nice pic you two”

Happens wayyyyy too many times. Their fans are officially scared to approach one of the two in public alone without their differentiating indicators on which is which

And yes it is widely known that they argue a lot when it comes to writing songs

Nothing out of the ordinary sibling squabble yknow but it’s a lot

But they do end up finding a solution to the topic of their argument and make a good team at the end of the day

Hotshot

He’s an actor

On Broadway, he’s one of those actor’s that is mostly good in just the acting and singing

He can’t dance to save his life sjdfghaf

So Jeremy Jordan yknow asj;oghajshf

No not really. He can dance a little bit

So he’s mostly the main character

But he’s widely known for his works in Hollywood

He does a lot of drama. Think stuff like Elite and Designated Survivor. Yeah those kinds of heavy drama (well idk i think those two are pretty heavy)

He wants to release his own music because he’s a pretty good singer but he can’t write songs to save his life either jgnjafjasf

And all the demo songs he was suggested by producers isn’t his cup of tea

So he’s no singer ladies and gents ://

The name Hotshot is used to name his social media platforms. He always adds a description in his bio’s that Hotshot is a nickname his friends and family use so his fans and the media refer to him with his name

I headcanon Hotshot’s real name is Tyler or some sort. No don’t ask me what’s his last name is because idk either lol

Sniper

She’s a model, beauty and fashion youtuber (I’m pretty sure those are two different things tho idk i don’t watch youtube religiously anymore), and just an influencer in general

Instagram game on p o i n t

I know most beauty youtubers go by their names but uhh… i don’t think i’ve ever thought of a first name for Sniper but I really think she really would just go by Sniper Wah on the internet (Idk she seems like an Ashley in my head but feel free to recommend headcanon names to me)

Anyways she’s very fashionable

Tommy Boy (i’ll get to him just wait aight?) and Buttons are her fashion besties

The three of them pretty much appear in each other’s Youtube video not Tommy’s tho bcs he doesn’t have one lol

Sniper’s brand are huge sun hats

I have no idea how or why but that girl has sun hats vibes I can’t explain any further I’m sorry

Doesn’t have a clothing line but does have a make up brand of her own. She calls it Sniper. Yeah that’s it akjfhjf

Smalls

She’s a twitch streamer and youtuber like race and albert

They’re a youtube trio everyone loves it

And yes she does go by Smalls

Oh and she also dances like her two stupid besties thanks for asking

Bubblegum is her brand (idk how to explain she just has the vibe)

She is skateboard chick

I’m imagining a video collab of her and Al on a skatepark doing stupid challenges

It’s her most viewed video

Tommy Boy

Ok ok he’s a model, influencer, and dancer

So think a male version of Gigi Hadid that dances

No he doesn’t have a youtube channel but frequently has made an appearance on Buttons’ and Sniper’s videos

Yes his instagram feed is also very amazing

He goes by Tommy Boy

People genuinely thinking ‘Boy’ is actually his last name and kinda think it’s strange but doesn’t complain

Tommy literally didn’t think people would think it was his last name. But they did anyways

Les

Let’s just get straight to the point : he’s a famous tiktoker 

And yes, ppl are surprised at the fact that him, Davey, and Sarah are related to each other 

To the people that made it through this entire list. Congratulations and thank you for your validation. Have a wonderful evening and stay hydrated 

i will write at least one oneshot out of this au i promise!!