#love u and ur big brain augustine

[missmeinyourbones]

oh oh okay atsumu then for the chocolate thing!! and suddenly every household chore he has becomes a shirtless one. shirtless folding laundry, shirtless mopping the floor, shirtless doing the dishes…and he folds first bcs he’s really just turned himself on thinking about what’ll happen when you give in

AFAB reader, highly suggestive, minors DNI

"and where did you get these?"

atsumu was a bit too proud himself when he came home with the surprise in hand. plopping it on the table and beckoning you over, he carefully watches as you examine the box with suspicion. 

simple black and decorated with gold lettering, it looks normal. like an average box of chocolates, one he’d get you on valentines day or as a sweet surprise after a bad week. but when he cracks it open and removes all plastic protectant, you know somethings different. 

"online," atsumu merely shrugs, focused on reading the backing of the box as he removes the contents. 

you snort in annoyance, "that's comforting."

“don't worry about it," he beams at your grumpy facade. 

there are only four chocolates inside of the box, each with an imbedded slit in the middle, implying they be broken in half and shared with someone else.

"they're safe,” he assures you, “you know i'd never give you somethin' that wasn't."

though his sweetness shines through, you roll your eyes at the entire situation. 

its not that you’re against the idea of some silly aphrodisiac, whether it works or not. but today was your designated cleaning day, and if this was atsumu’s cheap way of getting out of his share of chores, then he has another thing coming. 

"not today," you decline his eager offer. "we have things to do."

the pout that pulls at his lips is almost immediate. "baby, c'mon. it'll be fun."

he pokes your side and chuckles when you flinch at the sudden prod. he bites his tongue before it can say something smart about how you don’t even need the chocolate to be sensitive. 

"you said you'd help me clean," you remind him through gritted teeth, though your fingers still dance along the spine of the box. 

"and i will,” he childishly insists. “i can be horny and clean at the same time. usually am when yer around, anyways."

his comment receives a halfhearted smack to the chest.

"stupid," you note out loud, more so to the package before you rather than to the man beside you. "it's probably all psychological," you mutter beneath a sigh. 

atsumu’s eyes narrow in thought, "psychological...?"

"tell me you know what psychological means."

"course i do, but how?"

he watches your eyes flicker between the box and the chocolates, as if you’re teetering on the edge of decision. what he recognizes to be a nervous hand comes up and picks at your lower lip. 

"like when you tell a kid not to eat a piece of candy, it makes them want it more," you explain. 

atsumu nods along, "so yer the candy in this scenario."

"and you're the kid," you confirm.

a grin flashes across his face and you’ve known him long enough to know that it’s one of no good. 

"so if it's just psychological," he borderline challenges, removing one from he wrapper and splitting it between his fingers, holding a half out in front of you, "eat one and do yer chores."

you eye the candy in his hand with suspicion, before plucking it from his hold and weighing it in your palm. "it’s not me i’m worried about," you remind him. 

atsumu perks up a bit too quickly at your implied response. "i’ll do my chores too, swear." his hand is raised like he’s promising and reciting a boy-scout’s oath. 

and with that, the chocolates are pressed and dissolved on your tongues, and (much to atsumu’s dismay) the long list of chores to be done begins. 

he’s fine, for a little bit. sure, sweeping the kitchen floor sucks, but it doesn't suck any more than it usually does. and you’re there, too. laughing at a few of his jokes and looking all pretty for him as you wash the dishes piling up in the sink. 

and suddenly, it’s hot. was it always this hot in here? the thermostat reads a comfortable room temp, but he finds himself cracking a window anyways. and when he looks back to you, expecting to see you also feeling the candy’s effects, he’s met with disappointment. minding your own business in between soapy hands and half-clean glassware, you look focused. 

he watches your eyebrows furrow in concentration. listens intently to your tiny grunts of extra pressure applied to certain stubborn spots on the dishes. they remind him a bit too much of the noises you make when he sucks too harshly on that spot by your throat, or even the ones you make when he takes a crooked finger and presses it gently to your—

"feel anything?"

he’s borderline gawking when your innocent question pulls him from his dirty thoughts. broom idlely in hand like a moron, his jaw practically touches the floor as he drools over you doing absolutely nothing. 

he clears his throat, reminding himself to breathe. "nope, you?"

you smile at his usual determination. "nope."

the chores continue. except now atsumu is sweating. it takes few minutes for his shirt to be thrown aside with an excuse the chores making him break a sweat. 

the two of you now fold laundry together, clean linens laid out across the couch, and it’s normal. it’s quiet and domestic, or it would be, if atsumu could stop himself from silently admiring your skin.

your neckline exposed through your loose fitting shirt, he hones in on how your throat bobs when you mindlessly swallow. how your neck strectches and twists with every turn of your head. how your skin, shamefully untouched and barren, is just waiting for him to do something about it. swallow his pride and claim it as his own. and fuck, he can feel himself hardening by the second.  

"still not feeling anything?" he winces behind a tough face.

fully aware of his dwindling resolve, you decide to shrug, "not really."

his last straw wears thin when you reach down to grab the laundry basket tossed aside on the floor, giving him the perfect opportunity to watch your shirt rise with the action, your ass on full display for him. your back arched purposefully elegant. 

you think he whimpers from behind you.

"baby, yer killin' me," crawls from his throat as if he’s in pain (which he would debate, he is). his insatiable hands reaching for you hips, itching to feel any part of you that you’d let him. 

his heart flutters when you sweetly smile up at him and his selfish, grabby hands. 

"so do something about it," you innocently insist. 

atsumu nearly combusts at the five words. "really?" he gawks, still needing your approval, "can i?"

you nod permission, and atsumu’s hand immediately makes itself comfortable beneath your sweatpants and between your thighs. he easily, eagerly takes a single finger and allows it to swipe between your folds. he’s borderline cumming in his pants when he finds that it slips with ease, thanks to your built up slick. 

"fuck, baby," the feeling has him instantly tensing up his thighs. he repeats the action with an added finger, collecting more slick before removing his hand and proudly showing you the mess you’ve webbed between his fingers.

"so,” he teases through a shaky breath as he admires your work, “psychological, huh?"

your head falls back in both anticipation and embarrassment. 

"you have the maturity of an elementary schooler," you mumble towards the ceiling.

"then our analogy still stands—” atsumu growls against your stomach, shirt now riding up and skin vibrating with need as his lips press against it. 

his fingers work your pants down by your ankles as his mouth hungrily works it’s way up your thighs, "—because somethin' tells me yer about to taste like candy."

[mercyisms]

did u ever write the post abt violence and hatred being the most viable forms of intimacy in tlt bc like Ur Absolutely Right but i would love to read a fleshed-out take on that

i did not!! but let me try and collect some of my thoughts on this for you now. and i'll also try to be relatively succinct (god help me.)

i think what is so effective and brilliant about tlt is that it's dramatizing relationships with empire and the corrosive force of imperialism, but it dramatizes this, first and foremost, through its characters interpersonal relationships rather than centring itself on, say, a big geopolitical map.

one of the key ways it does this is through cavalierhood, which is the foundational relationship of the empire. it's john's relationship with his very first resurrection, with his "Adam," Alecto. it's the structure he has all of his lyctors enter into. it's a basis of relationships in every last of the nine houses. and, per mercymorn, it's a method of relations that is inherently zero-sum. ("You let us think we’d cracked it … You let us think it had to be a one-way energy transfer.")

on a macro-level, the empire is a zero-sum game. it's john demanding, explicitly or implicitly, that everyone sacrifice everything they have to him: to his thousand-year war machine, to his godhood. but it's also a method of relationships that has poisoned everyone from G1deon to Gideon. because all of them are engaged in the structure of cavalierhood. (and/or the societies that are powered by cavalierhood, to fold the general population of the nine houses into things.)

this is where the Old Lyctors become so fascinating to me, because they (under john's direction and approval) created cavalierhood (as the empire receives it; they didn't know what Alecto really was!) and then live through the rest of the empire. they are both the inciting moment and sort of the long transformation of what john's empire does to a person.

and it's also so clear that the creation of (imperfect) cavalierhood is a point of no return for that generation. it is the thing that irrevocably changes the way they can relate to each other, themselves, the empire itself. what was sold to them as an ascension was, in fact, a sort of moral/emotional fall (ha ha ha). a survey of these immensely fucked up wizard-shits under the cut:

(this is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but insert something here about how the lyctors are changed by being asked to literally commit murder. fancy, necromancy murder, but it's pretty functionally murder. something here about how that's a necessary step in being able to be the sort of agent of mass war and genocide that a lyctor is. or something about how this is a dramatization of how to be at the top of [or in any comfortable position in] any form of empire requires you to accept--or repress!-- that you are benefiting from/complicit with death/exploitation etc etc. all the basics.)

(cavalierhood is just tricking, in canaan house, a vulnerable half of your population to go along with it. and go along with it enthusiastically. alfred and cristabel throw themselves into cavalierhood with a passion; this doesn't make it any easier for augustine and mercymorn to live with.)

okay. Okay. but enough of this very 101 capitalism/imperialism. let's look at what some of those irrevocable changes are. let's look at how absolutely fucking terrible all the Old Lyctors are at relating to people after being imperial supersoldier wizards for millennia. (i'll also note that i have dmed @cristabel-oct extensively about this and may be filching some points from that esteemed brain.)

GIDEON (1) & PYRRHA

"I WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOU..."

per wake's letter, gideon and pyrrha, even as they embroil themselves in a explicitly traitorous love affair, are really enacting imperial logic. it governs their intimacy.

pyrrha is besotted by wake because she is "so utterly willing to burn for what they believed in," which i believe refers to gideon & the same logic that drew her into cavalierhood appears to be animating her affection towards wake

VERY intriguing to me that this letter suggests pyrrha & gideon kissed before her consumption & that the act itself was explicitly made into one sort of laced with passion/lust. cavalierhood is fetishized in every lyctor (and many present gen!) relationships, it's skewed into an act of love, whether it's cristabel and alfred's self-sacrificing martyrdom; or loveday and cytherea's (also martyrdom, but with a different flavour because that was more of a mutual agreement); to now pyrrha & gideon, who give it a different flavour.

which i bang on about bc it appears to be the only form of love they can go for, after that point. violence and intimacy are fused for them. love is enmeshed with the risk of death. pyrrha says "i want to kiss you before i am killed." & it's maybe the most telling that they can only find, or find their most perfect/appealing romantic other in their literal enemy.

CYTHEREA & GIDEON (2)

Cytherea's understanding of romance is also enmeshed with cavalierhood and Loveday's sacrifice.

@cristabel-oct has definitely written more eloquently about all of this, but Cytherea-as-Dulcinea's entire relationship with Gideon at Canaan house is laced with a predatory, fetishistic undertone. She admires Gideon for her butchness, for the ways she'll make a perfect cavalier (“I meant it,” she said earnestly. “You were wonderful. You would have made that little nun such a cavalier—I almost wish you’d been mine.”) by the way, it seems, that gideon resembles loveday, even if only loosely.

I think the most salient point here is that Cytherea, though she seeks to prevent further cavalierhood and take a stab at the empire itself, by the time she gets to Canaan house she's too irrevocably changed by imperial relations (which, notably, she was born into). especially on the level of the interpersonal. she discounts the humanity and ability of those who are infantile in years in comparison to her, but her love/lust is also fully warped by the loss of loveday, the memory of loveday, which over the years has eroded into an idealized and fetishized outline. she can reach for it, she can play pretend at it, but she can't enact it in a way that isn't laced with a predatory (and thus violent) impulse.

AUGUSTINE & MERCYMORN

aka my personal brainrot of choice.

why did i save my manifesto until the end? i have no idea. i think i'm a bit afraid i will just become an unhinged gargling sound, so read on at your own peril.

so augustine and mercymorn! augustine and mercymorn!

augustine and mercymorn who genuinely hate each other, but are also, i believe, genuinely attracted to each other. like: it didn't have to be a threesome. both times, it didn't have to be a threesome.

I mean, Augustine is the most repressed, I think, character in the Mithraeum. And he's up against Harrow, who has literally lobotomized parts of herself: "Augustine the First was the closest thing you had ever experienced to human plex. On the outside, he was perfectly painted... Yet there was nothing inside him but an equally easy contempt. It was as though ten thousand years had built up a shell and left a space at the centre. Nothing seemed to touch Augustine. He was effervescent and charming... But there was never any real emotion, or reaction, or opinion—his mouth said one thing, and his face could contort itself into any number of silly expressions, but those eyes were devoid of substance."

And yet the one point on which he's constantly animated? Mercymorn. The person who can still pull real emotion out of him? Mercymorn. The one relationship that gives him some life? Mercymorn.

Mercymorn is, I think, a touch more complex to wrangle. Augustine seems a touch more self-aware that he genuinely cares for Mercymorn than the other way around, but I think the connection undoubtedly one that moves in two directions.

Which is maybe kind of my whole point!! Cytherea is pantomiming a new cavalier relationship, but Augustine and Mercymorn (Pyrrha/Gideon/Wake) have found the space where something lateral and approaching mutuality can exist in this empire: in violence. That's the only place where one's intimacy, however nasty or cruel or downright bloody, is also able to be enacted with a form of equality.

I think so much of it is spelled out in "Oh, we’ll still hate each other, my dear, we have hated each other too long and too passionately to stop … but my bones will rest easy next to your bones."

The too passionately is as a key as my bones will rest easy next to your bones. It has been a passion. It's been a passion in the only way they know how to enact. It's been a passion because they've repressed so much of their ability to love (be it familial or romantic) when they repressed the entirety of Alfred and Cristabel, and so this is, really, the only register they have left.

But what kind of drives me to jump into a potential blackhole about Augustine and Mercymorn in particular is that this nasty, hateful relationship almost loops around again and becomes redemptive.

“The Nine Houses are gone,” echoed Mercy. “It is over … it is done. We always planned for a mass evacuation … but I had my moment … and I took it. I took it, Augustine. And now I will die, and face the River.” “No,” said Augustine. “Augustine, you promised me that after we did it we would go somewhere and drop into the nearest sun—”

(Augustine, you promised me does something feral to my brain but:)

A millennia of being imperial agents sours all of the remaining lyctors, and they all turn on John in their own ways. but Mercymorn is much closer to Cytherea, is perhaps a more well-planned out re-do of Cytherea's Canaan House schemes (my post on those here), in terms of her fantasies. She wants to kill John, kill the empire, avenge Cristabel, and then kill herself. She wants to, as Augustine will point out, replicate the suicide pact that cemented these relationships all the way back at the start of the empire.

What Augustine wants to hold her too, instead, is breaking that pattern. Is some sort of atonement.

“Bad luck,” said Augustine. “It’s done—as you chose to stain your hands so mine could be clean, you’re going to have to put up with the fact that you picked the wrong man to enter into a suicide pact with. I hate ’em. Cristabel might have undone all my good work with Alfred, but here comes the reckoning. We’re going to go round up the ships—everyone who’s left—sue for peace as best we can—get the Edenites on side. And then we’ll find a place to fulfil the old promise … Somewhere out there exists a home not paid for with blood; it won’t be for us, but it will be for those who have been spared. Babies always get born. Houses always get built. And flowers will die on necromancy’s grave.”

Augustine. Evil anti-imperial king. lmao. But he, you know, he gets it. Augustine is the only one with a sense of how to get out of this entire way of relations: and it's to destroy the empire, yes, but to do so in a manner that still allows those who are innocent-enough to rebuild. A home not paid for with blood! A place where they can have another go. Try and find a new, different way of relations. And he would hold Mercy to this. He insists on doing it with her. He insists on an action that might not wash them clean, but would be a valiant effort, would be, given their options, the right thing. He insists on making her better.

So you know!! There is a redemptive force in this intimacy too. Or a desire to harness it towards redemption, even if they don't believe they can be absolved. There is, perhaps, a way out of, or something more to, this strange blend of lust and anger and hatred they've been engaged in for a lifetime... alas!! They don't even get to make a go at it.

IN CONCLUSION

I hope this rambling tour through the old lyctors kind of illustrates what I'm getting at when I say violence is the only viable form of intimacy. I don't necessarily believe that, you know, good or moral or even healthy relationships need to be entirely mutual (esp not in fiction), but I think what the book is doing is showing... the rot of the empire and its structures through the way these interpersonal relationships and governed and corrupted, through the way that the only satisfying form of equality is... in violence, in constant and vicious struggle.

like, if you love in terms of the empire (cavalierhood) a la cytherea, you end up with something exploitative, demanding, and/or fetishistic. and if you try to seek something else without unpacking empire, while still very much being its agent (perhaps even it’s number 1 through 3 agents! ahem: gideon, pyrrha, augustine, mercymorn), your only space to set more equal terms is in a space of explicit violence. etc.

and this extends to the new generation of necromancers and cavaliers too! harrow and her contemporaries! they inherit a structure that is poisoned. i think there are endless good pieces on how perfect cavalierhood is not a happy ending for harrow and gideon, how even cam and palamedes (who have a very amicable relationship) are entrenched in a deep imbalance that has a very steep and unfair emotional price. (i think, too, about how jody is so stunned and dismissive by the lack of extreme and rigid hierarchy in as yet unsent.) that's cavalierhood and so that's empire. that's its logic, baby.

as of the end of htn, none of the characters have unpacked imperialism. (think about how at the end of gtn palamedes is baffled that a lyctor could 'hate' the emperor; harrow also loves john throughout htn.) and so what's so compelling abt tlt is that... the work of unpacking imperialism is rendered extremely juicy and compelling, is rendered one of the crucial conflicts that the main relationship must overcome to have a, I think, satisfying ending. i think there's a reason gideon/harrow are the most explicitly power imbalanced at the start of the series. it's a journey of how they get out of there; which, because of this very clever construction, requires them to reckon with imperialism itself.

so, in sum: in many ways, the imbalance and the violence is just cavalierhood. but since cavalierhood is the foundational sediment of this universe, it's empire. and like what a gift. not to get too idk into it, but i think [gestures hands nebulously] we talk a big game about art helping us understand complex methods of relationships and i really do think that muir has set up a world where thinking through these relationships and through cavalierhood is a really satisfying way to try and, in parallel, think through how imperialism works in our real world and a launching point for imagining alternatives (however otherworldly), if you like.

i am sure this was only mildly coherent, but!! those are some of my thoughts on violence and intimacy in tlt. i hope that somewhat satisfies and thank you so much for asking and prompting me to put some of this on the page!!

[catburgled-a]

* romance headcanons.

name: augustine valentine.

nickname: auggie , gus.

gender: cisfemale - she / her pronouns usually but isn’t actually fussed either way.

romantic orientation: demiromantic.

preferred pet names: babyyyyyy

relationship status: single.

opinion on true love: i can’t say that she believes in true love in the sense that there’s only one perfect person out there for you who you’re ‘ meant ’ to be with forever , but she does believe in the all-consuming , life altering kind of love because she’s had that before & it scares the crap out of her. this is why she is so good at ignoring her feelings at all costs because she’s scared of feeling trapped & scared of giving so much of herself to another person cause fuck vulnerability. 

opinion on love at first sight: nope. doesn’t exist. she believes you can 100% be drawn to someone immediately but it’s more likely sexual chemistry than any actual love. she has never once just looked at a person for the first time & thought ‘ wow i’m going to give them every part of me ’. like no , that’s stupid. it’s naive. it’s not real. she thinks that’s how people get into toxic situations because they never stop to actually get to know the person & just force it to work anyway. & for auggie in particular she has to know parts of you before she can develop any sort of romantic feelings. 

how ‘romantic’ are they?: depends on what the other thinks is romantic. she might not be the petals everywhere , bouquet buying , grand gesture type of lover but she is the physically affectionate , hold your hand in public , kiss you in the rain , kiss you to shut you up kind. she’s a very passionate person in all aspects of her life & she certainly acts on that especially in love. not to mention that once you’ve got her , she’s so devoted. like she can be an asshole but at the end of the day she would kill for the one she loves. 

ideal physical traits: ???????? honestly she doesn’t really have a set physical type her brain just looks at people & is like yep , that one. she has a huge range of variety in her past but i guess if anything , she leans a bit toward femininity , but at the same time she also loves scars & tattoos lol & like everyone else in the world she likes ‘em tall.

ideal personality traits: at the end of the day , in her mind , what she wants is somebody she can actually get along with so that would be someone lighthearted , fun , open-minded , someone who’s gonna cause a little trouble with her & match her passion. 

unattractive physical traits: when dudes are too muscly it’s like she’s not trying to fuck the hulk , thanks. 

unattractive personality traits: controlling , clingy ,  overbearing , overly serious , boring , anyone who is flat & uninspired.

ideal date: girl does not go on dates but side note take her to an all you can eat or a theme park or the literally just to a bar to get drunk together & fuck in the bathroom stall 🤷

do they have a type?: sexually she’s generally drawn to people with similar personalities to herself , which is actually terrible because of her many , many flaws so it can be a toxic combination at times. the one time she did take the dive & date someone with a similar personality , yeah it was messy af. two wrongs don’t make a right you might say. but i think she subconsciously finds herself more romantically drawn to the softer type. which is actually more of what she needs. someone who’s capable of being a little softer which then allows her to be. someone who can hold her accountable for her unhealthy behaviour patterns. someone who will support her where & when she needs it & not restrict her from the shady things she does , u kno ?

average relationship length: oof it depends. she's definitely not someone who goes out of her way to date , actually more accurately she avoids it entirely. one night stands are more her gig or the occasional no strings attached scenario. however the proper relationships she has actually had ranged between a few months to a couple years maximum. 

preferred non-sexual intimacy: loves having her hair played with and vice versa. napping together. playing with each others hands. 

commitment level: NOT GREAT LBR. it’s very hard to get her to commit but once you got her pal , you really got her. 

opinion of public affection: literally lives for it. i wouldn’t say to the degree of full on making out in a crowd of people but she’s gonna smack ur ass , she’s gonna do things to rile you up , sorry can’t stop her. 

past relationships?: she’s had three. two of which were in high school. 

first was a girl who was her best friend when she was roughly 15 which i have also touched on a little bit here. she literally never talks about it , especially after she moved schools & graduated high school. once she went back home to visit she found out that girl’s boyfriend ended up murdering her & auggie to this day still feels responsible. 

then there was a boy at her boarding school. at 16 she first met him at a party when they later slept together. it evolved into a friends with benefits type of situation. he played guitar & wanted to be a musician. he was beautiful & soft , with lots of feelings & with that came mental issues. auggie took care of him as best she could & supported him unconditionally. he was a good person & he was so much better than she ever deserved , like her definition of perfect which says a lot. she loved him so much & he fought soooo hard to force that out of her. like they went through so much to finally get to the point where auggie was like ok i’ll be ur girl & that lasted until graduation when auggie had to go on the run with her dad. which was really hard because she’ll love that boy forever. 

third one was when she was 19ish & settled in las vegas , post-high school , pre-university. this was when she was rolling with a group of professional thieves. the guy that she was partnered up with she also ended up living with just straight off the bat due to circumstance. as her literal partner in crime they worked really well together professionally , but living together while being equally attracted to one another was their first mistake. they were very , very similar in their personalities. temper , assholery & all. auggie cared about him for sure but just not in the way he cared for her. she never really completely loved him & she could act out & be a massive asshole at times because of it. that’s not to say he wasn’t just as big of an asshole , he just had more feeling behind it. it’s not something she’s proud of & she still does love him in a sense , just not in an actual romantic way. they would have been better off as friends. 

moral of the story , auggie’s never stopped caring about anyone she’s ever been in a relationship with.

tagged by: stole it >:^) tagging: steal it >:^)

[legobatjoker]

ik the tiktok thing is j the lil clips from the songs but i have been listening 2 thee rosemary song a lot after u send me the ask abtits a rly good song i think... also i keep getting it stuck in my head nd i keep singing it 2 myself but i keep singing strawberry instead of rosemary which ig does make sense bc u said i wld b rosemary :] !!!

also i did look at the it girls trend on tiktok a bit nd i found a dif version of it (tho it was less assigning ur friends it nd more dressing as the diff girls) w it girls from tswift songs which were (at least w the audio i found) rebekah from the last great american dynasty, dorothea from dorothea, este from no body no crime, august/augustine from august, betty from betty (and cardigan), inez from betty, and sometimes also james from betty, james was included in the og audio at least but sometimes ppl exculde her in some of the ones ive seen w the audio bc shes at the very end FDHJGHRDGH but ya am also a v big fan of the tswift it girls...

WAIT ALSO ALSO bc the august from august/ the last ask in general might not make sense if u dont know this (but also idk if this is like obvious or not bc it might b but i didnt fully get it when i first listened 2 the album but also maybe im dumb so if u knew this already then sorry DSGSDFDG) but like ok so folklore has like this story within it refered to a the teenaged love triangle (at least thts what taylor called it) w the characters of betty, james and august/augustine (she didnt get an offical name in any of the songs but her pov song is august so ppl j called her august nd then taylor called her augustine in a post for the anniversry for folklore, im j gonna call her august from now on) (theres also inez who isnt included in actual love tirange but is still a part of the story as the one who told betty that james chated with august) the whole story is basically told in the song betty, but cardigan is from betty prespective and august is from augusts, and betty(the song) has refences to both songs in it to tie it all together (for cardigan, the lyric "standing in your cardigan / kissing in my car again" obvs mention of a cardigan and reference to the "to kiss in cars" line and for august the "she said "james get in lets drive"" line referncing the "remeber when i pulled up and said "get in the car"?" line in august) cardigan and august are kinda more general than betty which tells the specific story more (tho tht hasnt stopped us misinterpreting it 4 carulia <3) ) nd like obvs (like i j said DFSG) thts not my main thoughts hearing the songs (main thoughts w cardigan nd betty r tht i am gonna make this soo carulia in my silly little brain <3 main thoughts w august is woww tht ""crush"" i had summer break of 2020 when i was still verry much thinking i was alloro was wild huh FGHDG) but i still think its a neat little story tht the songs tell :] evermore has a similar thing w dorothea and tis the damm season, basically tht tis the damm season is from dorotheas perspective and tht dorothea is from the perspective of the ex thats she visiting for the holidays yk (theres are lotss of lyrical paralles between the two songs nd taylor confimed it) and taylor also says that she thinks dorothea and her ex went to the same highschool as james betty and august, i think bc of tht some ppl like 2 say tht they think tht dorotheas ex is inez but either way dorothea nd her ex r part of the universe of the betty/james/august story. thats it i think yah sorry if this makes no sense or if im j explaining the obvious but either way ty 4 indulging me <3 STGFDHFGSDG

ALSO SORRY not done w the wholee tanget i had abt the it girls im sorry but i like ik betty idnt in the audio 4 it but i think she shld b she deserve 2 b one both bc i like betty its a good song nd also bc like heather has her sweater nd betty has her cardigan they wld b matching besties....

DO NOT B SORRY i literally love to hear u tell me these things they r of great interest to me and i love to hear u enthusiastic ab stuff so yuh:!!! :33 anyway omg i need to find that other version of it now and also YEAH tbh i was surprised betty wasnt she deserves itttt…..