#not saying this in a hater way but that storytelling was a mess

[s-cullayy]

The new mean girls certainly was moving images I saw with my eyes

[kyanitedragon]

Genuinely hate? None of them. They're just fictional characters and Ishida writes all of them so well that you gotta appreciate them all in some sense.

Tokage and Torso obviously come closest as the most "hated" characters, as they're pretty realistically-depicted abusers and that's tough to see. And on a similar note would be Tsuneyoshi for running the whole Washuu Clan thing instead of trying to dissolve it — in any form.

Personally, Donato and Tsukiyama make me a little uncomfortable sometimes regarding how dark and fucked up their predation is, but I wouldn't say I hate them.

Jason and Mado are my love-to-hate characters of the series.

Mado is so messed up but he's just so fun. He has so much emotion doing all the bad stuff he does. I love the wording of his cruel taunts. And him excitedly chanting "Jason!" in the anime trying to kill him will never leave my head.

And Jason? Jason's fucked up but he's also got an incredible amount of depth and is the whole reason for not only Kaneki's transformation but also the whole reason he hates Aogiri Tree. Without Jason, the entire rest of the series would not have happened.

And even after these two die, you get so much more depth from them out of their living loved ones: Akira and Naki.

Yoshimura is also a big love-to-hate character for me. First read, you're in Kaneki's POV so chances are you'll love him just like Anteiku does. But once you sit down and really think about it... he kinda really sucks.

I see a lot of people (mostly anime-onlys to be fair) saying that they hate Uta because he "betrayed" Kaneki, but I never saw it that way? To me it's always been clear that he genuinely likes Kaneki and wasn't lying when he called him a "special client". Same goes for Itori and even Nico. I don't think being on Furuta's side and being involved with those plots against him inherently means they dislike Kaneki or want him dead. The Clowns operate in a really grey area; that's their whole point.

Furuta? He's so freaking fun I don't understand how you can't love him. So many of his scenes have me smiling or laughing. I think he's such a brilliantly-written villain. Having a genuinely good goal, but "playing the villain" and doing fucked up things to achieve it because no one else would be willing to? Being willing to be hated, to be the villain, to die, all to try to achieve that goal?

Is Mutsuki awful? Yes. Is he my son? Also yes. His decay arc was so jarring first read, but I've always been so interested in it because of that and wanted him to be redeemed in the end, and I'm so glad Ishida did in fact take that route.

Touka? I am seriously so defensive of her. Even as a joke I won't say "she did nothing wrong" — she did a lot wrong, and I love that, because she's a deep and realistic character with flaws and layers to her — but she did a lot less wrong than her haters tend to think. If you're going to hate her for what she said to Kaneki in the first arc, then you need to be just as hateful at Kaneki for saying just as mean things to her.

Kaneki? He is so flawed and a lot of those flaws I heavily relate to, so he's always been a very special character to me. I don't like how the series doesn't always frame all of his flaws negatively (A big one: his double-standards of willing to kill ghouls but never humans despite how terrible they are, clearly not seeing ghouls and humans Truly Equal) but that's a storytelling issue and not a character issue. Black Reaper Kaneki in particular fills me with so much rage each time I read that arc, but I mean that in a good "I love this series!" way. Kaneki is by far my favorite protagonist of any series.

character you don't like

What are the characters you hate or don't like in Tokyo Ghoul?

ps: and whoever says Furuta, Mutsuki, Touka, Kaneki or Urie, I will give them Mado Punch

[docholligay]

A Young Girl’s Illustrated Primer

Xom thank you for sponsoring this and for being so cool about it! 

I do not like science fiction. People often think I am the world’s premier hater on fantasy, but that isn’t true. Fantasy doesn’t ATTRACT me the way it does many people, and I’m not so enchanted by it that I am willing to give it extra quarter the way I am, say, westerns, horror, or anything starring a butch woman, but I like it just fine as a genre. I get frustrated with bad storytelling or the idea that the world matters so much you can ignore your plot and characters, but that’s all genres. Fantasy is just often a little guilty of the world building one. 

But Science Fiction? That’s the one genre off the top of my head I would flat out say I do not like. I don’t connect with most of what it’s trying to do as a genre, the setting holds no magic for me, and I have no patience whatsoever to the explanation of how things work unless it ends up being incredibly relevant to the story later. And I mean like, a dramatic plot point. Chekov’s gun shit. 

I say this because I think it’s important to understand where I begin here. This book was, in some ways, not set up for success. Which is fine! While I buck at the idea of setting me up to be miserable, I don’t believe even for one second the commissioner intended that. I’m not even sure he knew I hated science fiction. It was given to me with the full belief that there was magic in it. I am happy to try things I might not like, as long as they’re not being given to me to hate, if that makes sense. I wanted to like this book, badly. 

Boy do I wish I had connected  more with this novel. Or like, at all. 

I found it to be, by and large, a total mess broken up by really great moments that made you believe something might be happening that said something larger about the nature of humanity, and then, it didn’t. 

I’m not sure this novel knows what it wants to be in fairness and that’s part of the issue. IN the first 100 pages, it switches stylistic focus at least three times. See at first, I thought this was intensely clever: My whole theory of the business is you think you’re reading a cyberpunk novel, then you think you’re reading a steampunk novel, and then it settles into what I thought the book was going to be, and I was like, “Oh, it’s replicating the primer and how the primer changes for the girl reading it!” 

Ahahahahah you poor fool. 

About 100 pages in, you think it’s going to be that novel, and the novel that I thought it was going to be I was incredibly excited to read. At a certain point, you think it’s going to be a novel about stories, and what they teach us, and the importance of stories for survival. You think it’s about how stories build us, and teach us, and the people we become in the light of them. 

And if I was being fully fair, I won’t even say it’s NOT that, but it’s much less that than I thought it was going to be. I think the problem is it wants to keep being these different novels and so it takes all these turns. It’s about Nell, and about stories, sure, in a way, but it’s also about Hackworth and how he…goes rouge and ends up in a sex cult that provides the heartbeat of the world for a few years? That’s not a joke, that is what happens. There is an undersea sex cult called the Drummers, where you get infected by the urges and whatever, and fuck like madmen, and maybe I’m overstating the importance of the sex thing but I don’t actually think so. There’s a little bit of talk about the Drummers at the very end that seems to imply this part is about how human consciousness, united in one idea and that is far more powerful than any technology, and Hackworth is the first person to bridge that gap, and like, great whatever, but it ends up not meaning much at the end of the day. 

I think it does have interesting things to say about how in the course of being told a story we can learn something real, and the point was well made to me that this could be a stand in for the idea of internet as textbook on the whole. But even the person who told me this was the first to admit that maybe the internet doesn’t work as a textbook anymore. And I think that’s true, and maybe because this book was written in a time when we could believe that the interconnectivity of human beings would invigorate our desire to learn, that hopefulness works. In the moment I am sitting right now, we have the Library at Alexandria spread out in front of us and people can’t be bothered to google for clarity, so. 

But I even think, in full fairness to Stephenson, he has that level of, I wasn’t gonna say cynicism, but I guess it is, in the book itself. Most of what people use the system they have for is for the little racting things, which isn’t super different to what most of us (including me, I’m not getting on anything higher than a shetland pony here) use the LIBRARY AT ALEXANDRIA CROSSINDEXED for. It’s so hilariously staggering to read about such a waste in Sci Fi books and then be like, “oh.” 

The idea of Finkle-McGraw seeing through the hypocrisy of his society and upholding its principles anyway I really…liked? I think? It’s more complicated than that, but I think of myself as someone who knows that the world is an imperfect place, and that none of us can be perfect, but still I believe in the effort. I believe that morality matters, and our efforts to uphold that matter. Even when the system we have is imperfect and sometimes hypocritical. I felt a kinship with him. 

One of the things I really loved in the book was this quote: The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people--and this is true whether or not they are well-educated--is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations--in fact, they expect them and become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward. 

And I actually do think the book carries this particular point through: Fiona and Elizabeth are well-educated, and better appointed than Nell, but neither is as intelligent as she is. They have been given not only the Primer, but the same formal schooling as Nell, and a better beginning and, I don’t know if I would say a BETTER home situation--the Constable is, I think, doing his best and not badly--but certainly a more traditionally structured one. But still, Nell is more intelligent. Fiona and Elizabeth could never BE her, and it’s clear that the primer is not the magic here, a point that I think it makes exceedingly clear. 

I think this is an intentional and positive aim of Stephenson’s. It’s as if the book is to say, “Intelligence has nothing to do with social status, high birth, or any of that shit. Intelligent people are intelligent, full stop, and opportunity is the only difference” and while I think it’s slightly more nuanced than that and the early parts of your life actually can make you more intelligent or less intelligent, that’s a bit of a mouthful for something you say in the content of the narrative rather than plaininly, and so in general I agree with Stephenson that intelligence cannot, in many ways, be taught. 

Nell ends up being princess and leader despite not being born to any of those things. I have a series of feelings about the Chinese girls and their role in the story as a whole, but I have to say there’s something like very much about them having been turned into mice in the story, as something that was treated as useless and vermin, and they rise up to become a major power. I don’t know how I feel about them all being in thrall to Nell, but the idea that they are a major world power after being thrown away feels so right to me and in some ways echoes the same thing the Nell’s ascent itself does. 

I have no idea why Miranda is supposed to mean more to her than Harvey. I mean, I know, because she was the narrator of the Primer, all that time, and the Primer essentially raised her, but Harvey literally, in many ways, died for her. Not only did he die, but he gave up his life, which are not the same thing. And there’s one very sweet scene where you see that the chasm between them is basically impossible to cross, but it feels like an afterthought. 

And maybe that’s the problem, at core. I don’t know if this is Stephenson, or this is this book, but I found it very clinical. There are so many moments that could be deeply, intensely human. But then, they aren’t. It’s something Stephenson very much glides right by as something he’s not terribly concerned with. Which is one of the issues I can sometimes have with sci fi, is I find it fairly unconcerned with the human element of things, and very tied up in concepts and technologies. 

Oh! A major annoyance: The book fucking tells me what Duck, Purple, Peter, and Dinosaur represent. Like, yes, Neal, I was there. I can read. You put it in the text, and I felt a little infantilized to have him turn to me like he’s explaining something to a child and explain shit to me. Either one of two things is going on here: Either you think your reader is an idiot, or you think you didn’t do a very good job expressing this in the narrative. If it’s problem two, that’s on your, pal, and if it’s problem one, why are you writing a high-concept book for them? It’s that “netflix show written for people fucking around on their phones” shit that makes me not watch TV. 

There’s clearly stuff about programming and computer work and all that in Nell’s puzzles and the book in total, and I regret to inform you that this reviewer is far too stupid to get the references, other than being like, ‘This is clearly referencing something” So I’d be interested to see if someone who in many ways has my general story leanings but in fact knows things would have connected more with this novel than I did. 

Also, quick question, what the actual fuck is going on with the end of this book? I even went and looked it up, and I got an actually like, plot summary of the events that occur in the end of the book. I don’t need that. I am there. I was also reading the book. But I don’t understand why any of it is happening. I can’t believe that something so intensely odd could be meaningless, and I am no stranger to the enjoyment of a book that others sometimes find confusing. Normally I don’t struggle with “what does this all mean?” but no matter what I try to get to with this book, I keep ending up going back to “???” 

IN all, I gotta say I was disappointed. I was excited to get a sort of bildungsroman for a young girl, and I feel like I didn’t really get that because the novel also very much wanted to be about Hackworth and Miranda and Judge Fang, but I didn’t find either of those characters compelling enough to care about what they’re doing. I feel like I almost get there with Miranda, but she’s missing some human element that makes me feel things for her rather than mild curiosity. There are bits of this novel that are so good, and I wish it would have followed one stream well, rather than several streams poorly.

[ironwoodprotectionsquad]

Sorry the same 21 year old again, but that my issues with RT trying to make us hater be Atlas military. There a difference between criticizing the military industry complex. Then having a world like Remnant. Remant is filled with monsters that only want to kill you so a kingdom created a army that can be trained faster than huntsmen make sense. Not to mention the Huntsmen system is heavily underdeveloped. There are no real check/balances and no way normal people can protect themselves from abusive ones. Sure you can say Atlas was built off slavery. But why no one in the show calls out how Weiss and Winter used their family resources? Yeah they had a shitty situation, but why is Whitley blame for the Schnees while Winter didn’t do a damn thing about the Faunus problems when she was out of the house for years? Why did a 14/15 year old boy figure out how to use his family resources to help people more than his older sisters?

Hey again! Also forgive me for being a wee bit pissy I had this answer all typed out then my laptop decided to crash and I lost the whole thing so gotta retype it all over again. Yay me /s. I know I probably have lost some stuff in retyping this and I do apologize for this I will try to get everything I originally had back in but....yea you know how that goes.

Eh-hem. Anyways, laptop is up and running again and I have to firmly agree with what you said. While I understand the desire to include a critique of the military in your show, CRWBY failed to establish why we should want to have those same critiques of Remnants military. 

What has been established in the show is that huntsman and huntresses can and often do turn to bounty hunting. We saw that they sometimes where not even up to par to handle the dangers of the world and certain headmasters are only concerned with if they came from their school and only want to maintain the prestige of their school rather then be you know worried about how unprepared some certified huntsmen are. 

Further as you said their is absolutely no oversight over huntsman and huntresses and what they do. Their don’t seem to be very good records of who is where and what they are doing their. Towns fall because they don’t have any sort of protection from people who know how to handle the Grimm and no one seems even a little concerned about that fact. I would not be surprised at all if their was no control over how much a huntsman could demand for their protection or how much extorsion is happening due to any sort of lack of oversight. The only uh “good” huntsman and huntresses we’ve seen are the main characters. The show has done nothing to establish why we should have any faith in the huntsman and huntresses and the systems they run under or lack thereof. 

Meanwhile we see people cheering excitedly during James’s presentation. Our mains happily watching the military assisting them in volume 2 and until they get hack, everyone trusting and relying on the robotic soldiers to assist them and keep them safe. The show portrays to us via organic storytelling that the military is a system that can be trusted to fight grimm and keep people safe and not force people to pay for said protection. We see them freely and happily help people as needed to protect them and not ask for any sort of payment unlike other huntsman and huntresses. 

Okay that argument can be made but how Atlas was built doesn’t necessarily tie into how the Military operates in present day. Besides that, the SDC was built on slavery, and the SDC built itself into the fabric of Atlas and James inherited that mess. So why does the responsibility to fix all of this fall on Whitleys shoulders? Why does the child have to fix everything and hand the solution to all of the mains problems on a silver platter? Why don’t Weiss and Winter offer to use the SDC resources to try and help Atlas after Jacques was arrested? Hell why didn’t they even offer or try and check on Whitley? Why didn’t they care about how their brother was coping? 

The show does nothing to properly establish anything we are supposed to feel about the huntsman, huntresses, and the military and that is a major issue because the show also is trying to shove down our throats these lessons on how bad and untrustworthy said military is without....actually showing that. They makes James do a heel turn into villainy but James isn’t the entire military. We can’t base our opinions on the entire institution on one person especially when that person was turned completely OOC in order to shove that story down our throats. They could have told this story and made the right criticisms about the military in the show but they didn’t and that is a problem.

[traincat]

I feel like I've read a ton, but I'm honestly still pretty new to comics rn. That being said... What is one more day? Ik we don't like it and it happened a while ago, but that's about it [,=

Time for Spider-Man History With Traincat: Highly Controversial Storylines! And that feeling is totally normal with comics with huge canons -- you can read a ton and still have some fairly big blindspots in your understanding of the total picture. That being said, this is kind of a big one, both in terms of Spider-Man history/canon and in terms of how Spider-Man fandom functions. I would say probably no other storyline has had quite as much impact on how the fandom views and interacts with the source material as One More Day/Brand New Day. It's been the Wild West out here ever since it happened. (Which was in 2007, so like, yes, fairly long ago, especially when you look at how Spider-Man canon has evolved since, but in the grand scheme of things, also kind of recent. One More Day is not old enough to rent a car.)

So when people talk about Spider-Man's One More Day, they're usually actually talking about two related arcs: One More Day and Brand New Day. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to be covering both. For the sake of transparency, I am going to admit that I think One More Day, as a self-contained story, is good, actually. This is controversial! I admit that! But I stand by my stupid opinions on this blog, for some reason. I think One More Day when you examine it on its own, by which I mean you ignore the decade and a half worth of canon that came after it, as a Spider-Man story and as a PeterMJ-centric story holds up under scrutiny and that people who don't like it don't like complicated love stories and might actually throw their own mothers under buses. No offense to the OMD haters. Little bit of offense to the OMD haters. Brand New Day, which is the continuation of One More Day, on the other hand -- largely bad. Very largely bad.

But let's backtrack. One More Day is a four issue crossover storyline that takes place directly after Civil War, during which Iron Man and Captain America got divorced and divvied up the superhero community and Spider-Man made some startlingly bad decisions and made a fugitive out of himself and his family in a manner that got Aunt May shot, and Spider-Man: Back in Black (Amazing Spider-Man #539–543) which examines Peter's actions immediately after Aunt May is shot and ends with him humiliating the Kingpin in front of an entire prison. One More Day consists of Amazing Spider-Man #544 -> Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #24 -> Sensational Spider-Man v2 #41 -> Amazing Spider-Man #545. In One More Day, Aunt May is dying, all of Peter's efforts to save her have thus far failed, and, consumed by guilt, he is rapidly running out of time. Approached by Mephisto, a literal demon from hell, Peter is offered a deal: Aunt May will live -- and Peter's identity, which was previously revealed to the world at large during Civil War, will once again be hidden from the memories of all but a select few -- if Peter trades him his marriage to Mary Jane. Peter and Mary Jane struggle with this, but eventually both agree to the deal. The clock strikes twelve, the deal is done, and Peter and Mary Jane's marriage fades into history.

(ASM #545) A reasonably simple premise for a story that caused so many problems -- most, I would argue, not actually the original story's fault. So obviously, this was an unpopular move -- Peter and Mary Jane had for a long time been a fan favorite Marvel couple, and in a fictional universe where most relationships are doomed as soon as they begin, the enduring Spider-Marriage was sacred ground. And then, with a snap of its fingers, it was gone: Peter wakes up in Aunt May's house, no longer married, with Mary Jane out of the picture. (She would not return to the book on any sort of consistent basis for over 50 issues.) In the wake of One More Day began Brand New Day, which is basically what it sounds like: a promised "brand new day" of "exciting" Spider-Man content and a publishing schedule where Amazing Spider-Man came out three times a month. (Which sounds good on paper but I think in practice caused more problems than it created good storylines.) Peter, newly single again, had new love interests! And also Harry Osborn was alive again for some reason! I generally like Harry's post-BND stories so that part's fine with me.

But overall? Brand New Day is a mess. It knows it wants to tread new and exciting ground with Peter -- tell new stories! ensnare new readers! make them fork out for a book three times a month. -- but it doesn't know what those stories should be. Readers who were invested in Peter and Mary Jane's relationship -- a major facet of Spider-Man comics for decades at that point -- felt rightfully betrayed that the marriage could be so easily traded in and that Mary Jane herself, perhaps the second most important figure in Spider-Man comics after Peter, could be tossed aside. From a personal point of view, I think Brand New Day fails in large part because it abandons what has always made Spider-Man such a compelling series, and that's the mix of Peter's personal life with his vigilante life. BND sees Peter with new friends, new jobs, new love interests, etc -- it is very much a brand new day! But it isn't a better day compared to the stories that came before it. I do like some post-BND stories, especially American Son (ASM #595-599) and Grim Hunt (ASM #634-637), but compared to pre-BND where I think the majority of canon is good, it's a very lacking body of work that is hurt by the way it divorced itself from the PeterMJ marriage as Spider-Man's central relationship.

"But Traincat, I thought you said you liked One More Day?" Yeaaaaah. I do. This is why I keep saying I like One More Day on its own merits, and not on the merits of the stories it opened the doors for. I like a good romantic tragedy in fiction, and the way Peter and Mary Jane's final scene in One More Day plays out is beautiful. I like the idea of Peter caught in this impossible situation, being asked to choose between two women he loves more than his own life. A really common criticism I see leveled against One More Day is that Peter should have chosen his relationship with Mary Jane over May's life, which is -- okay, I think it's weird that people keep insisting on this, not in the least because by asking Peter to sacrifice his aunt's life they're essentially demanding he commit a callous, out of character act in order to further his own interests. It's also weird because the thing is, Peter already chose Mary Jane over May -- that's what gets them into this situation. It's literally in the scene where May is shot:

(ASM #538) When the gun goes off, Peter's spider-sense kicks in, and he covers Mary Jane, leaving May in the path of the bullet. He does choose Mary Jane over May, regardless of whether he realized what he was doing. And that's why he can't make that choice a second time. His actions in One More Day do make sense for him as a character, whether or not any individual reader likes them, and Mary Jane's actions make sense, too -- after all, she's the one who ultimately tells Mephisto that they agree to the deal when Peter can't bring himself to voice it.

A lot of people also like to nitpick One More Day by going, well, why could (x) or (y) with life saving powers save Aunt May which is like -- yeah, I guess, but if we're going to ask that about this specific comic book near death setup, you kind of have to do it with every single one, and I'm not going to stake every single moment of comic book drama on whether or not that gold kid from the X-Men was busy at the time. Comics are soap operas in flimsy paper form: serialized longform storytelling that relies heavily on melodrama. Sometimes you have to go with things. Sometimes you sell your marriage to the devil. Stuff happens. That in and of itself doesn't make One More Day a bad story -- and while some people blame the Spider-Marriage's dissolution entirely on One More Day, I think that's a little shortsighted when you look at the history of Spider-Man since the turn of the century. It's clear -- and Marvel themselves have been perhaps a little too open about this -- that Marvel in the past few decades has had trouble with the direction they want to take Spider-Man. They WANTED Spider-Man to appeal to a distinctly youthful audience that they didn't think they were actually reaching -- understandable, considering that Marvel nearly went bankrupt around 2000 and was saved by Ultimate Spider-Man, an out of main continuity series which retold Spider-Man from the beginning and focused heavily on Peter as a teen -- but the problem was Spider-Man in the main continuity was at that point in canon a happily married man who was pushing the dreaded 30 whether or not they wanted to admit that. This is also why Marvel has continually pivoted away from Spider-Man having kids, because they feared that making him a dad would age him too much and make him unrelatable to their coveted audience of Teens. (This is also why almost every new Spider-Man property, especially the live action movies, perpetually stick him back into high school, despite that occupying a very small slice of 616 canon.) So around the year 2000, they started trying things in relation to the Spider-Marriage, which was viewed as a major problem -- after all, what's more adult than being married and liking your wife. First, they had Mary Jane presumed dead. Then, they had Mary Jane and Peter separate. Then, when Mary Jane and Peter had only recently gotten back together, One More Day struck. If One More Day specifically hadn't gone the way it had, it's pretty clear that the Spider-Marriage was going to go one way or another -- it's a little bit of a shame it happened when it did, because OMD is the end of J Michael Straczynski's run, and JMS wrote a really beautiful Peter and MJ relationship. But Marvel as a company and especially editor in chief at the time Joe Quesada viewed Peter and Mary Jane's relationship as a major problem in how they wanted to portray Spider-Man and thought that striking the relationship from the books would allow them more freedom in their portrayal of him as younger and more relatable to their Desired Audience of people who I guess really wanted to see Peter sleep with characters who weren't Mary Jane.

(ASM #546. Younger! Fresher! Less attached! Kissing random women in the club!)

The problem with One More Day has always been in the follow through -- from the content of Brand New Day to the pacing of events to the fact that Marvel withheld key information for such a long time that it allowed misinformation to thrive. After all, what does it MEAN to trade Peter and Mary Jane's marriage to the devil? It altered the events of canon in Peter and the majority of other characters' memories so that the marriage didn't exist, but it left people wondering -- did the relationship as they remembered it existed? How much of Spider-Man canon was altered? And the answers didn't come for over 100 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. One Moment In Time or OMIT (Amazing Spider-Man #638-641), which revealed that while Peter and Mary Jane never got married in the altered canon they did continue their long committed relationship up until just after Civil War, was published in 2010, so essentially readers were hung out to dry without answers for three years. That's a long time to string people along, but not as long as it took Marvel to confirm that the popular fan theory that Mary Jane retained her memories of the original timeline as part of her own deal with Mephisto was also true, which happened this year. I would say, at least from my perspective, a lot of the frustration doesn't come from the individual One More Day storyline so much as how Marvel has continually dragged out the aftermath, using the promise of a Spider-Marriage return to keep fans on the hook. Which is why One More Day continually comes up in discussion of current Spider-Man, because Spencer's run has relied very heavily on imagery from that period with a serious question of whether or not there actually was going to be payoff, something which is still up in the air.

This has been Spider-Man History With Traincat, brought to you by anonymice like you.

[taylorswifthongkong]

Taylor Swift broke all her rules with Folklore — and gave herself a much-needed escape The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency. By Alex Suskind

“He is my co-writer on ‛Betty’ and ‛Exile,’” replies Taylor Swift with deadpan precision. The question Who is William Bowery? was, at the time we spoke, one of 2020’s great mysteries, right up there with the existence of Joe Exotic and the sudden arrival of murder hornets. An unknown writer credited on the year’s biggest album? It must be an alias.

Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore — a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner — delivered.

“The only people who knew were the people I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and a small management team,” Swift, 30, tells EW of the album's hush-hush recording sessions. That gave the intimate Folklore a mystique all its own: the first surprise Taylor Swift album, one that prioritized fantastical tales over personal confessions.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil — and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums — something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness — something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We’ve spent the year quarantined in our houses, trying to stay healthy and avoiding friends and family. Were you surprised by your ability to create and release a full album in the middle of a pandemic?

TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vain, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy?

That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies?

I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

One of the other unique things about Folklore — the parameters around it were completely different from anything you'd done. There was no long roll out, no stadium-sized pop anthems, no aiming for the radio-friendly single. How fearful were you in avoiding what had worked in the past?

I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing?

I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Folklore includes plenty of intimate acoustic echoes to what you've done in the past. But there are also a lot of new sonics here, too — these quiet, powerful, intricately layered harmonics. What was it like to receive the music from Aaron and try to write lyrics on top of it? 

Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

It was weird because I had never made an album and not played it for my girlfriends or told my friends. The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team. So that's the smallest number of people I've ever had know about something. I'm usually playing it for everyone that I'm friends with. So I had a lot of friends texting me things like, "Why didn't you say on our everyday FaceTimes you were making a record?"

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret?

Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that?

Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness?

Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story?

I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House? 

Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

There are a handful of songs on Folklore that feel like pretty clear nods to your personal life over the last year, including your relationships with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. How long did it take to crystallize the feelings you had around both of them into “My Tears Ricochet” or “Mad Woman”?

I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"?

F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right?

Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally? 

I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

That theme continues in the next verse, which is a pretty overt nod to what’s been happening during COVID. As someone who lives in Nashville, how difficult has it been to see folks on Lower Broadway crowding the bars without masks?

I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change?

It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event?

I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor? 

Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room?

I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I wanted to talk about some of the lyrics on Folklore. One of my favorite pieces of wordplay is in “August”: that flip of "sipped away like a bottle of wine/slipped away like a moment in time.” Was there an "aha moment" for you while writing that?

I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first.

It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

"I almost didn't process it as an album," says Taylor Swift of making Folklore. "And it's still hard for me to process as an entity or a commodity, because [it] was just my daydream space."

On the flip side, "Peace" is bit more defined in terms of how one approaches a relationship. There's this really striking line, "The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I can never give you peace?" How did that line come to you?

I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn-of-phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere.

Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

When we last spoke, in April 2019, we were talking about albums we were listening to at the time and you professed your love for the National and I Am Easy to Find. Two months later, you met up with Aaron at their concert, and now, we're here talking about the National again.

Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future.

I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

[path-of-my-childhood]

Taylor Swift Broke All Her Rules With Folklore - And Gave Herself A Much-Needed Escape

By: Alex Suskind for Entertainment Weekly Date: December 8th 2020 (EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year cover)

The pop star, one of EW's 2020 Entertainers of the Year, delves deep into her surprise eighth album, Rebekah Harkness, and a Joe Biden presidency.

“He is my co-writer on ‛Betty’ and ‛Exile,’” replies Taylor Swift with deadpan precision. The question Who is William Bowery? was, at the time we spoke, one of 2020’s great mysteries, right up there with the existence of Joe Exotic and the sudden arrival of murder hornets. An unknown writer credited on the year’s biggest album? It must be an alias.

Is he your brother?

“He’s William Bowery,” says Swift with a smile.

It's early November, after Election Day but before Swift eventually revealed Bowery's true identity to the world (the leading theory, that he was boyfriend Joe Alwyn, proved prescient). But, like all Swiftian riddles, it was fun to puzzle over for months, particularly in this hot mess of a year, when brief distractions are as comforting as a well-worn cardigan. Thankfully, the Bowery... erhm, Alwyn-assisted Folklore - a Swift project filled with muted pianos and whisper-quiet snares, recorded in secret with Jack Antonoff and the National’s Aaron Dessner - delivered.

“The only people who knew were the people I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and a small management team,” Swift, 30, tells EW of the album's hush-hush recording sessions. That gave the intimate Folklore a mystique all its own: the first surprise Taylor Swift album, one that prioritized fantastical tales over personal confessions.

“Early in quarantine, I started watching lots of films,” she explains. “Consuming other people’s storytelling opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines?” That’s how she ended up with three songs about an imagined love triangle (“Cardigan,” “Betty,” “August”), one about a clandestine romance (“Illicit Affairs”), and another chronicling a doomed relationship (“Exile”). Others tell of sumptuous real-life figures like Rebekah Harkness, a divorcee who married the heir to Standard Oil - and whose home Swift purchased 31 years after her death. The result, “The Last Great American Dynasty,” hones in on Harkness’ story, until Swift cleverly injects herself.

And yet, it wouldn’t be a Swift album without a few barbed postmortems over her own history. Notably, “My Tears Ricochet” and “Mad Woman," which touch on her former label head Scott Borchetta selling the masters to Swift’s catalog to her known nemesis Scooter Braun. Mere hours after our interview, the lyrics’ real-life origins took a surprising twist, when news broke that Swift’s music had once again been sold, to another private equity firm, for a reported $300 million. Though Swift ignored repeated requests for comment on the transaction, she did tweet a statement, hitting back at Braun while noting that she had begun re-recording her old albums - something she first promised in 2019 as a way of retaining agency over her creative legacy. (Later, she would tease a snippet of that reimagined work, with a new version of her hit 2008 single "Love Story.")

Like surprise-dropping Folklore, like pissing off the president by endorsing his opponents, like shooing away haters, Swift does what suits her. “I don’t think we often hear about women who did whatever the hell they wanted,” she says of Harkness - something Swift is clearly intent on changing. For her, that means basking in the world of, and favorable response to, Folklore. As she says in our interview, “I have this weird thing where, in order to create the next thing, I attack the previous thing. I don’t love that I do that, but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I still love it.”

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We’ve spent the year quarantined in our houses, trying to stay healthy and avoiding friends and family. Were you surprised by your ability to create and release a full album in the middle of a pandemic? TAYLOR SWIFT: I was. I wasn't expecting to make an album. Early on in quarantine, I started watching lots of films. We would watch a different movie every night. I'm ashamed to say I hadn't seen Pan's Labyrinth before. One night I'd watch that, then I'd watch L.A. Confidential, then we'd watch Rear Window, then we'd watch Jane Eyre. I feel like consuming other people's art and storytelling sort of opened this portal in my imagination and made me feel like, "Well, why have I never done this before? Why have I never created characters and intersecting storylines? And why haven't I ever sort of freed myself up to do that from a narrative standpoint?" There is something a little heavy about knowing when you put out an album, people are going to take it so literally that everything you say could be clickbait. It was really, really freeing to be able to just be inspired by worlds created by the films you watch or books you've read or places you've dreamed of or people that you've wondered about, not just being inspired by your own experience.

In that vein, what's it like to sit down and write something like “Betty,” which is told from the perspective of a 17-year-old boy? That was huge for me. And I think it came from the fact that my co-writer, William Bowery [Joe Alwyn], is male — and he was the one who originally thought of the chorus melody. And hearing him sing it, I thought, "That sounds really cool." Obviously, I don't have a male voice, but I thought, "I could have a male perspective." Patty Griffin wrote this song, “Top of the World.” It's one of my favorite songs of all time, and it's from the perspective of this older man who has lived a life full of regret, and he's kind of taking stock of that regret. So, I thought, "This is something that people I am a huge fan of have done. This would be fun to kind of take this for a spin."

What are your favorite William Bowery conspiracies? I love them all individually and equally. I love all the conspiracy theories around this album. [With] "Betty," Jack Antonoff would text me these articles and think pieces and in-depth Tumblr posts on what this love triangle meant to the person who had listened to it. And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen with this album. I wrote these stories for a specific reason and from a specific place about specific people that I imagined, but I wanted that to all change given who was listening to it. And I wanted it to start out as mine and become other people's. It's been really fun to watch.

One of the other unique things about Folklore — the parameters around it were completely different from anything you'd done. There was no long roll out, no stadium-sized pop anthems, no aiming for the radio-friendly single. How fearful were you in avoiding what had worked in the past? I didn't think about any of that for the very first time. And a lot of this album was kind of distilled down to the purest version of what the story is. Songwriting on this album is exactly the way that I would write if I considered nothing else other than, "What words do I want to write? What stories do I want to tell? What melodies do I want to sing? What production is essential to tell those stories?" It was a very do-it-yourself experience. My management team, we created absolutely everything in advance — every lyric video, every individual album package. And then we called our label a week in advance and said, "Here's what we have.” The photo shoot was me and the photographer walking out into a field. I'd done my hair and makeup and brought some nightgowns. These experiences I was used to having with 100 people on set, commanding alongside other people in a very committee fashion — all of a sudden it was me and a photographer, or me and my DP. It was a new challenge, because I love collaboration. But there's something really fun about knowing what you can do if it's just you doing it.

Did you find it freeing? I did. Every project involves different levels of collaboration, because on other albums there are things that my stylist will think of that I never would've thought of. But if I had all those people on the photo shoot, I would've had to have them quarantine away from their families for weeks on end, and I would've had to ask things of them that I didn't think were fair if I could figure out a way to do it [myself]. I had this idea for the [Folklore album cover] that it would be this girl sleepwalking through the forest in a nightgown in 1830 [laughs]. Very specific. A pioneer woman sleepwalking at night. I made a moodboard and sent it to Beth [Garrabrant], who I had never worked with before, who shoots only on film. We were just carrying bags across a field and putting the bags of film down, and then taking pictures. It was a blast.

Folklore includes plenty of intimate acoustic echoes to what you've done in the past. But there are also a lot of new sonics here, too — these quiet, powerful, intricately layered harmonics. What was it like to receive the music from Aaron and try to write lyrics on top of it? Well, Aaron is one of the most effortlessly prolific creators I've ever worked with. It's really mind-blowing. And every time I've spoken to an artist since this whole process [began], I said, "You need to work with him. It'll change the way you create." He would send me these — he calls them sketches, but it's basically an instrumental track. the second day — the day after I texted him and said, "Hey, would you ever want to work together?" — he sent me this file of probably 30 of these instrumentals and every single one of them was one of the most interesting, exciting things I had ever heard. Music can be beautiful, but it can be lacking that evocative nature. There was something about everything he created that is an immediate image in my head or melody that I came up with. So much so that I'd start writing as soon as I heard a new one. And oftentimes what I would send back would inspire him to make more instrumentals and then send me that one. And then I wrote the song and it started to shape the project, form-fitted and customized to what we wanted to do.

It was weird because I had never made an album and not played it for my girlfriends or told my friends. The only people who knew were the people that I was making it with, my boyfriend, my family, and then my management team. So that's the smallest number of people I've ever had know about something. I'm usually playing it for everyone that I'm friends with. So I had a lot of friends texting me things like, "Why didn't you say on our everyday FaceTimes you were making a record?"

Was it nice to be able to keep it a secret? Well, it felt like it was only my thing. It felt like such an inner world I was escaping to every day that it almost didn't feel like an album. Because I wasn't making a song and finishing it and going, "Oh my God, that is catchy.” I wasn't making these things with any purpose in mind. And so it was almost like having it just be mine was this really sweet, nice, pure part of the world as everything else in the world was burning and crashing and feeling this sickness and sadness. I almost didn't process it as an album. This was just my daydream space.

Does it still feel like that? Yeah, because I love it so much. I have this weird thing that I do when I create something where in order to create the next thing I kind of, in my head, attack the previous thing. I don't love that I do that but it is the thing that has kept me pivoting to another world every time I make an album. But with this one, I just still love it. I'm so proud of it. And so that feels very foreign to me. That doesn't feel like a normal experience that I've had with releasing albums.

When did you first learn about Rebekah Harkness? Oh, I learned about her as soon as I was being walked through [her former Rhode Island] home. I got the house when I was in my early twenties as a place for my family to congregate and be together. I was told about her, I think, by the real estate agent who was walking us through the property. And as soon as I found out about her, I wanted to know everything I could. So I started reading. I found her so interesting. And then as more parallels began to develop between our two lives — being the lady that lives in that house on the hill that everybody gets to gossip about — I was always looking for an opportunity to write about her. And I finally found it.

I love that you break the fourth wall in the song. Did you go in thinking you’d include yourself in the story? I think that in my head, I always wanted to do a country music, standard narrative device, which is: the first verse you sing about someone else, the second verse you sing about someone else who's even closer to you, and then in the third verse, you go, "Surprise! It was me.” You bring it personal for the last verse. And I'd always thought that if I were to tell that story, I would want to include the similarities — our lives or our reputations or our scandals.

How often did you regale friends about the history of Rebekah and Holiday House while hanging out at Holiday House? Anyone who's been there before knows that I do “The Tour,” in quotes, where I show everyone through the house. And I tell them different anecdotes about each room, because I've done that much research on this house and this woman. So in every single room, there's a different anecdote about Rebekah Harkness. If you have a mixed group of people who've been there before and people who haven't, [the people who’ve been there] are like, "Oh, she's going to do the tour. She's got to tell you the story about how the ballerinas used to practice on the lawn.” And they'll go get a drink and skip it because it's the same every time. But for me, I'm telling the story with the same electric enthusiasm, because it's just endlessly entertaining to me that this fabulous woman lived there. She just did whatever she wanted.

There are a handful of songs on Folklore that feel like pretty clear nods to your personal life over the last year, including your relationships with Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun. How long did it take to crystallize the feelings you had around both of them into “My Tears Ricochet” or “Mad Woman”? I found myself being very triggered by any stories, movies, or narratives revolving around divorce, which felt weird because I haven't experienced it directly. There’s no reason it should cause me so much pain, but all of a sudden it felt like something I had been through. I think that happens any time you've been in a 15-year relationship and it ends in a messy, upsetting way. So I wrote “My Tears Ricochet” and I was using a lot of imagery that I had conjured up while comparing a relationship ending to when people end an actual marriage. All of a sudden this person that you trusted more than anyone in the world is the person that can hurt you the worst. Then all of a sudden the things that you have been through together, hurt. All of a sudden, the person who was your best friend is now your biggest nemesis, etc. etc. etc. I think I wrote some of the first lyrics to that song after watching Marriage Story and hearing about when marriages go wrong and end in such a catastrophic way. So these songs are in some ways imaginary, in some ways not, and in some ways both.

How did it feel to drop an F-bomb on "Mad Woman"? F---ing fantastic.

And that’s the first time you ever recorded one on a record, right? Yeah. Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven't done this before, so you can't ever do this. “Well, you've never had an explicit sticker, so you can't ever have an explicit sticker.” But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn't adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I'm really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I'm not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I'm glad they picked up on because they're very intuitive.

Let’s talk about “Epiphany.” The first verse is a nod to your grandfather, Dean, who fought in World War II. What does his story mean to you personally? I wanted to write about him for awhile. He died when I was very young, but my dad would always tell this story that the only thing that his dad would ever say about the war was when somebody would ask him, "Why do you have such a positive outlook on life?" My grandfather would reply, "Well, I'm not supposed to be here. I shouldn't be here." My dad and his brothers always kind of imagined that what he had experienced was really awful and traumatic and that he'd seen a lot of terrible things. So when they did research, they learned that he had fought at the Battles of Guadalcanal, at Cape Gloucester, at Talasea, at Okinawa. He had seen a lot of heavy fire and casualties — all of the things that nightmares are made of. He was one of the first people to sign up for the war. But you know, these are things that you can only imagine that a lot of people in that generation didn't speak about because, a) they didn't want people that they came home to to worry about them, and b) it just was so bad that it was the actual definition of unspeakable.

That theme continues in the next verse, which is a pretty overt nod to what’s been happening during COVID. As someone who lives in Nashville, how difficult has it been to see folks on Lower Broadway crowding the bars without masks? I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives. If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there's going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there's going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see. And that was the connection that I drew. I did a lot of research on my grandfather in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we've got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals. God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn't worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we're seeing that a lot of people don't seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don't care, which is upsetting.

You had the Lover Fest East and West scheduled this year. How hard has it been to both not perform for your fans this year, and see the music industry at large go through such a brutal change? It's confusing. It's hard to watch. I think that maybe me wanting to make as much music as possible during this time was a way for me to feel like I could reach out my hand and touch my fans, even if I couldn't physically reach out or take a picture with them. We've had a lot of different, amazing, fun, sort of underground traditions we've built over the years that involve a lot of human interaction, and so I have no idea what's going to happen with touring; none of us do. And that's a scary thing. You can't look to somebody in the music industry who's been around a long time, or an expert touring manager or promoter and [ask] what's going to happen and have them give you an answer. I think we're all just trying to keep our eyes on the horizon and see what it looks like. So we're just kind of sitting tight and trying to take care of whatever creative spark might exist and trying to figure out how to reach our fans in other ways, because we just can't do that right now.

When you are able to perform again, do you have plans on resurfacing a Lover Fest-type event? I don't know what incarnation it'll take and I really would need to sit down and think about it for a good solid couple of months before I figured out the answer. Because whatever we do, I want it to be something that is thoughtful and will make the fans happy and I hope I can achieve that. I'm going to try really hard to.

In addition to recording an album, you spent this year supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the election. Where were you when it was called in their favor? Well, when the results were coming in, I was actually at the property where we shot the Entertainment Weekly cover. I was hanging out with my photographer friend, Beth, and the wonderful couple that owned the farm where we [were]. And we realized really early into the night that we weren't going to get an accurate picture of the results. Then, a couple of days later, I was on a video shoot, but I was directing, and I was standing there with my face shield and mask on next to my director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto. And I just remember a news alert coming up on my phone that said, "Biden is our next president. He's won the election." And I showed it to Rodrigo and he said, "I'm always going to remember the moment that we learned this." And I looked around, and people's face shields were starting to fog up because a lot of people were really misty-eyed and emotional, and it was not loud. It wasn't popping bottles of champagne. It was this moment of quiet, cautious elation and relief.

Do you ever think about what Folklore would have sounded like if you, Aaron, and Jack had been in the same room? I think about it all the time. I think that a lot of what has happened with the album has to do with us all being in a collective emotional place. Obviously everybody's lives have different complexities and whatnot, but I think most of us were feeling really shaken up and really out of place and confused and in need of something comforting all at the same time. And for me, that thing that was comforting was making music that felt sort of like I was trying to hug my fans through the speakers. That was truly my intent. Just trying to hug them when I can't hug them.

I wanted to talk about some of the lyrics on Folklore. One of my favorite pieces of wordplay is in “August”: that flip of "sipped away like a bottle of wine/slipped away like a moment in time.” Was there an "aha moment" for you while writing that? I was really excited about "August slipped away into a moment of time/August sipped away like a bottle of wine." That was a song where Jack sent me the instrumental and I wrote the song pretty much on the spot; it just was an intuitive thing. And that was actually the first song that I wrote of the "Betty" triangle. So the Betty songs are "August," "Cardigan," and "Betty." "August" was actually the first one, which is strange because it's the song from the other girl's perspective.

Yeah, I assumed you wrote "Cardigan" first. It would be safe to assume that "Cardigan" would be first, but it wasn't. It was very strange how it happened, but it kind of pieced together one song at a time, starting with "August," where I kind of wanted to explore the element of This is from the perspective of a girl who was having her first brush with love. And then all of a sudden she's treated like she's the other girl, because there was another situation that had already been in place, but "August" girl thought she was really falling in love. It kind of explores the idea of the undefined relationship. As humans, we're all encouraged to just be cool and just let it happen, and don't ask what the relationship is — Are we exclusive? But if you are chill about it, especially when you're young, you learn the very hard lesson that if you don't define something, oftentimes they can gaslight you into thinking it was nothing at all, and that it never happened. And how do you mourn the loss of something once it ends, if you're being made to believe that it never happened at all?

On the flip side, "Peace" is bit more defined in terms of how one approaches a relationship. There's this really striking line, "The devil's in the details, but you got a friend in me/Would it be enough if I can never give you peace?" How did that line come to you? I'm really proud of that one too. I heard the track immediately. Aaron sent it to me, and it had this immediate sense of serenity running through it. The first word that popped into my head was peace, but I thought that it would be too on-the-nose to sing about being calm, or to sing about serenity, or to sing about finding peace with someone. Because you have this very conflicted, very dramatic conflict-written lyric paired with this very, very calming sound of the instrumental. But, "The devil's in the details," is one of those phrases that I've written down over the years. That's a common phrase that is used in the English language every day. And I just thought it sounded really cool because of the D, D sound. And I thought, "I'll hang onto those in a list, and then, I'll finally find the right place for them in a story." I think that's how a lot of people feel where it's like, "Yeah, the devil's in the details. Everybody's complex when you look under the hood of the car." But basically saying, "I'm there for you if you want that, if this complexity is what you want."

There's another clever turn of phrase on "This is Me Trying." "I didn't know if you'd care if I came back/I have a lot of regrets about that." That feels like a nod toward your fans, and some of the feelings you had about retreating from the public sphere. Absolutely. I think I was writing from three different characters' perspectives, one who's going through that; I was channeling the emotions I was feeling in 2016, 2017, where I just felt like I was worth absolutely nothing. And then, the second verse is about dealing with addiction and issues with struggling every day. And every second of the day, you're trying not to fall into old patterns, and nobody around you can see that, and no one gives you credit for it. And then, the third verse, I was thinking, what would the National do? What lyric would Matt Berninger write? What chords would the National play? And it's funny because I've since played this song for Aaron, and he's like, "That's not what we would've done at all." He's like, "I love that song, but that's totally different than what we would've done with it."

When we last spoke, in April 2019, we were talking about albums we were listening to at the time and you professed your love for the National and I Am Easy to Find. Two months later, you met up with Aaron at their concert, and now, we're here talking about the National again. Yeah, I was at the show where they were playing through I Am Easy to Find. What I loved about [that album] was they had female vocalists singing from female perspectives, and that triggered and fired something in me where I thought, "I've got to play with different perspectives because that is so intriguing when you hear a female perspective come in from a band where you're used to only hearing a male perspective." It just sparked something in me. And obviously, you mentioning the National is the reason why Folklore came to be. So, thank you for that, Alex.

I'm here for all of your songwriting muse needs in the future. I can't wait to see what comes out of this interview.

*** For more on our Entertainers of the Year and Best & Worst of 2020, order the January issue of Entertainment Weekly or find it on newsstands beginning Dec. 18. (You can also pick up the full set of six covers here.) Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

[jamboreeofsurprises]

idk how to say this in a way that wont come across as whiny and dumb and make it even more apparent how autistic i am but whatever, its my personal blog, it’s meant to be a judge-free zone anyway. its not like im not putting out this thought to change how anyone feels about anything im just ranting.

pixar has been an important special interest of mine for decades (!) as their movies were literally some of the only movies i looked forward to seeing as a kid. i hated going to the theater because of the sensory nightmare of it all but braved it for pixar movies because they tickled my imagination so much. nearly every year had a new pixar movie which was a big event in my life for that year. i think they have struggled a lot since the 2010s especially as an over-focus on sequels happened (largely as a result of corporate disney grip) so don’t assume by any means i’m uncritical of them. as with anything else i like, i’m not about to pretend like it’s golden all the time just because i’m a fan

but i feel like most of my mutuals now immediately want to assume negatively of pixar because theyre mainstream and un-vogue and pretend like the incredibly stagnant, unchanged western animation landscape they were born of didn’t exist and how crucial their defiance towards it was for moving the medium forward. when it came to western animated movies we had disney movies and disney-imitation movies, that is to say, Fairy Tale Musicals and Other Fairy Tale Musicals. which, don’t get me wrong, i love a good fairy tale musical, but pixar were special and not just for beautifully introducing & advancing 3d cg feature animation, but because their angle was telling completely new stories that challenged this whole format. it was absolutely a breath of fresh air. and the movies could be pretty genuinely touching too for both older and younger members of the audience, usually without even having to have melodramatic character deaths or anything. monsters inc. is pure character-motivated drama and the ending made me cry buckets as a kid and still does because the characters are lovable and relatable. you don’t have to throw in a dead parents backstory or whatever for me to sincerely feel that emotion for them.

as we ushered into the 00s and walt disney animation, dreamworks, etc got a load of the critical and commercial success of pixar, their response was to copy the technology but very little of the creativity/heart. dreamworks i have come to realize at least with Shrek were still doing something pretty subversive albeit in a different direction that i think was forward-thinking but by and large, attempts to hop on the wagon of what made Pixar capture the world’s attention were pretty misguided. i think as the 00s progressed more unique animated movies started coming out as things picked up real good around 2009 (you need only glance at the academy nominations that year to realize just how varied and good every entry was) so pixar kinda got left in the dust a bit in the 2010s, and the change of direction didnt help but my god, that doesnt override their significance in the whole pantheon of animation. but i feel like everyone is forgetting that and it makes me feel like im losing my mind that im the only person remembering just how crummy most other american animated movies of the 00s were. dont get me wrong im not saying that anyone who dislikes pixar or is critical of a movie of theirs is doing it to be some Mean Hater™, but i feel that the level of negativity is strangely disproportionate to that of other animation studios which is like ??? is it just because people like them and have for years so now we have to turn that around arbitrarily?

idk i just feel like because other studios have stepped up their game some people discredit pixar entirely and that hurts. the thing that has sucked the most about it is how i don’t even feel allowed to eagerly anticipate anything pixar is going to put out even when i want to because it has to immediately be couched in such harsh judgment and discourse, which /*AGAIN*/ is not me saying they’re infallible and should never be criticized. anything and everything is open to criticism, i have my own apprehensions about some of their movies too. i just feel like the aura of negativity online surrounding each pixar release now leaves me an anxious mess while anticipating/watching the movie instead of going into it with the childlike wonder i want to go in with and could go in with because i feel like ppl are going to think i’m basic or just flat out stupid for liking the thing, no matter how sincerely.

which like, i’m not friggin basic. kanashimi no belladonna is one of my favorite animated movies lol. and so is up (the movie that made me interested in animation & storytelling as artforms), ratatouille, etc ... its almost like some mainstream things are good and popular for a reason?

this rant isnt even telling you anything, i know ive historically been overly sensitive to people being critical/negative about things that mean a lot to me and i need to get the hell over it, i just feel frustrated by everyone’s relentless negativity these days and feel like at this point so much of it’s not even coming from good faith

[wehavethoughts]

Jingle Jangle Review!

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey David E. Talbert (2020) Netflix Original Movie Fantasy, Holiday, Musical, Children’s Movie

Rating: 5/5 Waves

“I think it’s time for a new story.” – Journey

This review CONTAINS spoilers for Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

Summary: Jeronicus Jangle is a genius toymaker who has everything he’s ever wanted until betrayal and tragedy strike and rip away his magic and inspiration. Jingle Jangle follows his journey with his bright, spunky granddaughter to finding his way out of darkness and towards family, love and inspiration.

No content warnings apply for Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

Last year was a mess and 2021 is already on thin ice, but one of the best things to happen to me this season was my girlfriend sitting me down and convincing me to watch Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey. While the trailer looked fun, especially since it was a musical Christmas story featuring a primarily black cast, I hadn’t prioritized watching it. I tend to feel that everything has already been made when it comes to Christmas movies and I don’t want or need another retelling of the same stories. If I need a bump of Christmas spirit around the holidays, I indulge in a classic and move on. Fortunately for me, she wanted to watch it and we needed a Christmas Eve movie.

I loved so much about this movie that I could write tens of thousands of words singing its praises, but I wouldn’t do that to you, so I will narrow my praises to the most important parts of this movie to me. At the top of the list is just how good this movie looks.

Jingle Jangle is one of the most visually appealing movies I’ve ever seen. From the set to the costumes to the choreography, every single shot of this movie was pleasing to the eye. The clothing was sharp and colorful in a way that I expected to get on my nerves, but it ended up stunning. Costume designer Michael Wilkinson described the fashion as “Afro Victorian”. The characters’ hairstyles are another part of the costuming that stood out. They were creative and fun while also adding dimension to the characters’ looks. And let me just take a minute to personally thank the creators of Jingle Jangle for allowing all of these black characters to have natural hair. I have never seen that in a movie and it almost made me cry. Both the clothing and the hairstyles mirrored the characters’ arcs and added depth to the narrative.

The beauty of this movie can mostly be attributed to its fabulous designers, but I also want to point out that everything looked and felt fabulously expensive. I could not find the budget of Jingle Jangle in USD, but with every set piece, CGI shot, song and outfit you could tell that someone who loved this project spent a whole lot of money on it. It is refreshing to see a story like this getting the financial backing to do it properly.

The visuals were so stunning, in fact, that even if the actual story had been terrible, I would still have been happy to just sit and watch it on mute. Fortunately, Jingle Jangle’s story was phenomenal; heartwarming and inspiring with just enough humor to keep it light without feeling overly juvenile. It also had such meaningful emotional themes that I cried at least three times (in a good way).

The emotional core of this movie is the relationship between Jeronicus and his granddaughter Journey. Jeronicus is a grumpy, disillusioned inventor who abandoned his aspirations after achieving his dreams lead to nothing but betrayal and heartache. Journey is a bright, talented child who wants to learn from her brilliant grandfather, but she realizes she has to reignite his belief in himself first. The story centers around belief in the impossible, like most Christmas stories, but instead of asking the audience to believe in something like Santa Claus, Jingle Jangle reminds the audience to believe in themselves and their own abilities. Personally, I’ve never felt more inspired than when a small child belted about how “The square root of impossible is me!” The story digs into how depression can destroy a person’s creativity and inspiration and sometimes what we need is other people believing in us so we can be reminded to believe in ourselves.

My whole deal is reviewing fantasy though, so I feel like I should mention magic. Like most things in the movie it is very pretty to look at. When Jeronicus and Journey use their magic it is glittery, dazzling and very obviously a metaphor for imagination and creativity. Personally, these characters could have probably just have been very smart, but having a visual to see them thinking in new and exciting ways was nice. Math-but-its-glowing as a magic system is not something I’ve seen much of recently, but I know just enough math words to delight in what is coming out of these character’s mouths when they talk about their inventions. This might be a difficult movie for haters of math or people who study it for a living. If hearing characters say things like, “Belief! It collapsed the wave function.” and “Take the circumference of spectacular, divided by the second derivative of sensational…” is a deal breaker for you, then maybe skip this movie.

Also, I should note that this movie is a musical. This came as a surprise to us the first time we watched it, but luckily we love musicals. The first time the music swelled and Jeronicus started singing we were swept away by the magic of the moment, delightfully surprised and in awe of the musical talent. Every single song in this movie is energetic, fun and refreshingly Black. Director David E. Talbert said that he was inspired by southern soul and gospel music as well as Afrobeat and other primarily black genres. The mix of inspiration creates joyful and fresh new songs for the holiday season.

As a whole this movie got my highest rating because the things I love about it outweigh the flaws. That being said, there are a couple pieces of the story that either didn’t make sense or it feels like they did not think all the way through. First of all, the main conflict revolves around the villain Don Juan, a toy matador who has been given sentience through Jeronicus’s miraculous inventions, not wanting to be mass produced. While the story tries to convince us that the conflict revolves around Don Juan’s narcissism, if you think about this plot point too hard you realize that our protagonist plans to mass produce and sell his creations that are clearly alive and intelligent. Obviously the movie doesn’t dig into the ethics of this, since Don Juan is more concerned about not being one-of-a-kind rather than worried that he is going to be bought and sold as a commodity, but it is a concerning angle that implies some very uncomfortable things about this universe.

Another piece that I found falls apart when you think about it too hard is the framing of the story within a story. Jingle Jangle is told a bedtime story being read by a grandmother to her grandchild (similar to the Princess Bride). The first scenes introduce us to a couple of cute kids who ask their grandmother for a Christmas story and in opening the book we get some spectacular CGI and animation to introduce us to Jeronicus’s world. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this method of storytelling, I found it to be unnecessary since the children listening to the story and the grandmother don’t add much as independent characters. Unfortunately, the story seemed to feel the need to justify these characters’ existence and so in a big reveal at the end we discover that the grandmother is Journey, Jeronicus’s granddaughter.

While seeing Journey with her grandchildren is cute, it leads to questions that I personally did not need to have at the end of this otherwise tied up narrative. For example, the children seem to have never heard of Jeronicus Jangle, Don Juan or Buddy 3000 (another important toy character), yet we are meant to believe that Jeronicus’s story happened in the universe that the children live in? Why wouldn’t they know stories about their rich and famous great-great-grandfather? Why had they never heard of Jeronicus Jangle when it is implied that the toys they have grown up with would have been his or his family’s inventions? By making the children related to the people in the story, the writers distracted me from Jeronicus and Journey whose story is much more interesting and heartwarming. Jingle Jangle is a movie that asks me to think and reflect, so I don’t feel bad poking holes in the story, but I don’t love that they left me hanging with all these questions.  

Additionally, there are also some things that I wish the writers hadn’t included in the movie at all. For example, they fridged Jeronicus’s wife almost immediately which was completely unnecessary and I hated to see that in a movie that got so many other things right. Also, having the only obviously Hispanic character (Don Juan Diego) be the villain in such a cartoon-y way left a bad taste in my mouth.

But Jingle Jangle still got my highest rating because as the sum of its parts, it was a fantastic story and I am so glad I got the chance to watch it. My very favorite part of this movie that has stuck with me even weeks after my first viewing is the relationship between Jeronicus and his family. There are sections of this movie where Jeronicus falls into the stereotypical absentee black father trope, but this story allows his character space to talk about what he did wrong, how he is hurting and Jeronicus learns to do better which is so important. I love the current trend in movies where parents apologize to their children because that can be such a healing experience and Jingle Jangle gives us that, but additionally, it makes the parent work for it and prove to their child that they are healing themselves. It offers hope to children struggling through painful situations like this and give parents an example of how they might be able to fix what they broke.

Overall, Jingle Jangle left me with a feeling of joy and contentment while inspiring me to remember what I used to love and rethink my self-imposed limits. The core message of this movie is a reminder that sometimes our lack of belief in our own skills is enough to stop us from achieving our dreams. Jingle Jangle reminds us to believe in our own capacity and lift each other up even when times are difficult. I don’t know if this movie will become a classic in the general consciousness, but it will certainly become a tradition in my family.

~TideMod

[bouncyirwin]

Hi, I am sorry if this is uncomfortable question if it is can ignore it, but I am wondering aren’t you guys who ship Sakura and Kakashi worried about people calling it pedophila or even calling you ? I also like Sakura with Kakashi ( adult Sakura ) and I used to ignore people knowing that nowadays people are messing what pedophila really is, but I know there are people say it’s grooming for an adult to be with a girl after she become an adult and I started feeling anxious about this

Hi nonnie-san, thank you for your ask, I hope you’re being safe and washing your hands frequently!

While that’s a very ugly thing to be called, it doesn’t bother me because I know I’m not actually a ‘pedophile’. And you’re right, it’s very upsetting how much this word gets tossed around, until it truly loses its real meaning.

I don’t ship underage KakaSaku. I don’t read, write or reblog anything that involves underage Sakura, or that implicates grooming/ill meaning from Kakashi towards Sakura. It repulses me, and I have no interest in such disgusting things.

I ship KakaSaku because I find their personalities and looks compatible. Just like I ship Sakura and Itachi, Sakura and Naruto, Sakura and Tobirama. As a storyteller, I like to think of different scenarios of how two characters can get together.

Large age gaps aren’t inherently toxic nor are they paedophilic in nature, yet some people are hell bent on describing them as such. Therefore I liberally utilise my block button, stay away from people who have expressed an intense dislike to KakaSaku and keep to my fandom and to my blog.

It’s not my intention to upset or harm anyone, but if my blog and taste in fictional characters and relationships offends some people, it’s up to them to cater to their online experience by blocking me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong in staying away from the things that upset you—it’s the right thing to do instead of drowning people in hate messages and comments.

I used to be bothered when I’d receive hate and that damned word as a descriptor but now I really don’t care. I’ve shipped KakaSaku since I was 16, and I was accused of pedophilia at 16, so in retrospect jokes on them really. I have time and time again said that I don’t ship nor condone underage KakaSaku. And that they’re two fictional characters I enjoy exploring, and that fiction doesn’t need to reflect reality and should be a safe medium for writers and readers to explore things without engaging in them in the real world.

I don’t worry about hate because I’m part of a wonderfully supportive and loving community. I have formed bonds with this community, and got to know many of them on a personal basis—and I can tell you they’re all great.

Yes, there are people out there who ship KakaSaku for the wrong reasons, I can’t deny the existence of actual pedophiles but I am not one. And neither are the people I engage with. And neither are you sweet anon if you’re so worried about this.

My advice is fuck what haters leave in your inbox, they don’t know you. In all likelihood they’re offended ss fans that can’t stand the thought fo Sakura with anyone else. Only you can be the true judge of your intentions, and if your intentions aren’t malicious you have no need to feel ashamed or afraid.

I promise there’s a lot of positivity to be had too if you join this fandom and interact with us. I’m in a lot of fandoms and I ship a lot of pairings but the KakaSaku fandom is hands down the nicest, most supportive and mature one out there. And none of them would hesitate to flood your inbox with supportive messages if you’re ever the victim of hateful anons. And I for one wouldn’t hesitate to kick some booty for any shipper out there who’s the target of cyber bullying.

It’s up to you. I understand your hesitation, we all deal with those things differently, but we generally keep to ourselves and any hate message we receive are from people literally going out of their way to harass others over a difference in interests. You’ll find those in any fandom, not just here.

Hope this helps, if you have more questions my inbox is open! Take care and happy shipping 💓

[drummergirl231-2]

I apologize in advance if this is a heavy topic, but do you still see many comments/thoughts from people who heavily detest Della? I recall that you mentioned there being many of them back in May when she was still new. I was wondering what your thoughts might be on Della now and how some react to her, following the events of the last episode bomb of S2. For the record, I still admire her, but I'd be lying if my thoughts on her didn't sour a bit after some of the writing choices made.

I feel like those who full-on hate her are going to hate her no matter what she does or how she’s characterized. The very haters who criticized her for not disciplining her kids before “Timephoon!” turned around and started criticizing her for disciplining her kid after “Timephoon!”

Sooner or later though, part of Della’s story arc in learning how to be a mom was going to have to include her learning how to discipline her kids, because that’s part of motherhood. And I can think of no better setup than the one the writers gave her.

1. Louie reeeeally messed up. 

She didn’t ground him for forgetting to take out the trash or something. She grounded him for stealing Gyro’s time tub out of greed, and nearly killing his family and destroying the universe. If that doesn’t call for action, I don’t know what does. Technically, Louie could be incarcerated for what he did.

If a teenager without a license stole a car and caused an accident that nearly killed a dozen people and then stood in front of a judge and said, “But I’m reeeally sorrrry...” the judge wouldn’t sit there and go, “Oh, alright. I’m sure you’ve learned... something,” and let him off the hook. That kid’s butt would be going to juvie! XD

Della was merciful in grounding Louie when she could have reported his crimes and had him locked up in juvenile hall. At least he doesn’t have a criminal record now.

2. No one else was going to discipline Louie.

As far as people’s objection that Della was new in his life and therefore didn’t have a right to discipline him, that’s incredibly childish thinking. And considering no one else was stepping up to discipline Louie when he deserved it more than ever, it was definitely up to Della.

The whole episode, Mrs. Beakley was trying to coach Della on how to be a stricter parent and put her foot down, telling her “Even good kids do dumb things, and we have to make sure those dumb things don’t turn into bad things, like destroying all of existence.”

But after they discovered what Louie did, and after he did almost destroy all of existence, Beakley was like, “Oh, okay.”

What else could fans want of a situation where Della had to learn to discipline her kids? Louie almost destroyed the universe in his quest for selfish gain (it’s nearly villain stuff) and all other parental figures stepped aside and were refusing to do anything about it.

Della had to endure losing two of her sons all over again, and then technically all three of them once she was zapped to the middle ages - stranded and with no way of getting back. It was the Moon all over again. Then as soon as she was back, the very person who told her she needed to be stricter decided not to do anything at all, and Della stood there listening to her family call this stunt, “classic Louie,” and say that they “always,” let these things go. If this was as regular a thing as they were making it sound, Della knew she needed to do something to stop this behavior and teach him that his actions have consequences.

And no one else has more authority to teach him that than someone who had to learn that lesson the hard way.

Here, Louie acted like Della hadn’t learned from her mistakes or like she was a hypocrite. But Della had more than ten years of imprisonment on the Moon to think about what she did and battle self-hatred as she desperately tried to make things right and get home to her family. Just because a parent did something they regret in their youth doesn’t mean they can’t warn their child not to do the same thing, and it certainly doesn’t give the child the right to throw their parent’s deepest regrets back in their face like they don’t regret it at all. 

^I know this moment was the one that was a bit sour for you, because it seemed like after humbly asking to be part of her sons’ lives, she was threatening Louie’s place in the family. But I don’t think it was a threat to boot him out at all. She knows taking the Spear of Selene, whatever her motive, hurt her family. She knew it would hurt them before she left, so we know it wasn’t blind adventure. But again, whatever her motive, her plans to explore space only led to bad things for her family, and now she doesn’t feel like part of the family, as desperately as she’s trying to fit in. She wanted to warn Louie not to make a similar mistake and lose his place in the family by chasing plans - or in his case - schemes.

And despite Louie defending himself and saying how he really was sorry, we know he wasn’t sorry for the time tub scheme itself... only for the unexpected consequences. He hadn’t actually learned that selfish scheming was wrong after what happened. 

So it’s not like he really learned his lesson nearly losing his family. He’d have just gone on to come up with some other scheme to get rich. And technically, he did... but I really think this incident helped prepare his heart to learn the lesson he needed to learn later on.

Also, from a storytelling perspective, if he hadn’t been home when Glomgold showed up, he wouldn’t have conned the bad guys and Scrooge out of their money, become the richest duck in the world, freed the Bombie, learned humility, or taught Scrooge humility.

And for all the Louie stans’ talk of speaking on Louie’s behalf and saying how he feels... they didn’t actually get it right. They were just saying how they felt. Louie didn’t feel like his mom didn’t have a right to discipline him just because she was new in his life. Louie didn’t feel like she was kicking him out of the family (though it may have stirred up some feelings of trying desperately to fit in and not knowing how). Louie didn’t hate his mom or reject her as a parent. 

He just hated getting disciplined - as all people do - and he didn’t know how to handle the surprise of his mom coming back. But we learned in the finale, once Louie had been humbled and grew up a little, that he feels his mom coming back was actually a good surprise.

“Sometimes, a robot boy uses you as a piñata.”“......I think I’m losing the thread, here.”“But sometimes, the mom you thought you lost... comes back. And that’s a surprise, too. So you deal with bad surprises because they may lead to a good one.”

[sometimesrosy]

1. I know you don’t participate in fandom stuff really, but I just had to tell you that I saw your recent, brilliant post about B/E/C and s7 floating around Twitter and lots of people are LOVING it and saying how smart and insightful it is. It made me excited to see that; I’m a big fan of yours! Some are of course also saying they don’t have faith in Jason like you do/that he’s not smart enough as a writer to pull all of that off (that fandom Jason hate, man. I get it, he’s been a bit

urgh in press/Twitter, but that doesn’t mean his work won’t fulfill what it’s been building up for 6 seasons now... maybe he’s a prick, idk, but he clearly puts a lot of pride in his story/art and I don’t think it’ll be another GoT ending as some in fandom are bracing themselves for. I really don’t. Just Just separate his press from his work and focus on the story, and life will be so much easier, lol). They keep saying all you said was so smart/makes so much sense. You’re being ‘stanned’ there.

I love to see it. You’re being ‘stanned’ on there, lol. I love to see it. I feel like you put so much thought and effort into your posts, and you deserve all the love and positivity in the world. The doubters/antis that contact you are so frustrating (love the sizzling sass you respond to them with, btw). You are not up Jason’s butt. You’re literally all about the STORY, the CANNON, what you SEE on screen. It’s like in their heads, they know you’re making sense. But then you can see how fandom

fears/dialogues can just totally dominate good, sound logic. It’s so interesting. Haha, this was a post purely meant to tell you other people are recognizing your brilliance and how exiting it was, but the psychology of shipper/fandom culture got me ruminating. So sorry. 😆 Just so you know...I ‘stan’ you too, Rosy. 😉❤️ Thanks for all your work!

+++

Oh really? Ok. That’s good to know. I’m glad it was positive instead of negative because that’s mean. And I’m glad that they LIKE a positive bellarke post instead of bellarke hate or jason hate or the 100 hate. It’s not surprising that they “don’t have faith in jason,” or think he’s “not smart enough” to pull off the story that... I am showing is already IN the canon by using evidence FROM the canon to show that Jason is telling us.

Not trusting JR is one thing. It comes from his TERRIBLE social media presence. Now no one believes what he says and worse, they think everything he says is evil bad and anti bellarke. Which is not true. He messed up and now his reputation is bad, but if you pay attention to what he says outside of what people say about him, you’d see what he says is NOT always bad. But, I still don’t trust what he says and I take everything with a grain of salt and compare it against the canon. Because the canon IS what matters.

And frankly, I think Jason has proved he IS trustworthy where the story is concerned. He doesn’t always give fans what they want, but that’s actually good. It means he stays true to his story. And if that makes him an egotists, then so be it, but it’s also better for the story. Too many cooks spoil the pot. Allowing fans into the writing room and fanservicing them too much spoils the story.  I get also that people don’t trust hollywood because of Star Wars or GOT or whatever disappointing show. Fair enough. But again, following the story that JR is telling, I’m not getting those hints that he’s going to flip on us. His style of storytelling, while it does use plot twists does not betray the story. As long as you’re following canon and have been paying attention to HIS story and not your story in your head. That is the trick though, since fandom says your OTP is the center of the story and your fave character is the main character-- which is a MISinterpretation of the story. If you erase the story to fit your fanon, the error is yours, not his. Killing your favorite character is not a betrayal of the story, it’s part of HIS story. All the characters he’s killed were part of his story, helped develop the themes or main character development or plot or were a result of their own terrible choices. 

When people think he’s to stupid to do what I point out he’s already doing... well, that’s not actually someone you want to listen to about analysis. That’s people who are speaking from PURE ego. They think they’re smarter and more savvy than JR. When you put yourself above the content you supposedly love, that makes you a jackass. If you love it, you have no need to call it trash or tear it apart, or call the writers bad writers.

As far as I can see, this story is generally well written. Is it perfect? Of course it isn’t. No story is. The characters are great. The stories are full of tension and emotion and meaning. We FEEL for the characters. Yes horrible things happen. That’s the story and not a sign that it’s bad. Yes it repeats stories, that’s a STYLE of storytelling, circular, and not a sign that it’s bad, but instead, when done right, offers a feeling of inevitability and completion that is hard to beat. Is the science bad? Oh yes, it is, but that is not uncommon for the tv genre that doesn’t have an audience of hardcore sf geeks.  You’ve got to let that go, suspend your disbelief and just have fun. If you can’t you’ll never like the genre. 

Would you treat a fanfiction writer the way we treat JR? If you did, it would be horrible. If you go in there and tell the writer that their story is wrong because you want your OTP to do this and this character should die and this character should live and omg they are bad writers how dare? That would make YOU the reader, into a big freaking creep. Let people tell the stories they want to tell. If you don’t like their stories, you vote with your freaking feet. Leave. If you like some of the story and not the rest, you can make peace with that. If your dislike outweighs your like then stop watching. It doesn’t matter that this is a professionally written and produced show not a fanfic. You still don’t own it. The writers don’t actually work for you. They aren’t your servants. They create a product which you then consume or do not consume. 

Anyway. Thanks for the warning. I know you weren’t warning me, but in my experience, whenever someone posts something of mine on twitter, I get a fresh influx of hate as the haters remember I exist and they can’t allow me to exist without telling me how evil and delusional I am for doing lit analysis on a show they want to hate. 

[docmurph12]

Okeydoke, review time!! As promised it isn't a Disney movie. I am really going to have a lot of fun with this one for a couple of reasons.

One, as many of you know I DEFINITELY drink the DC Comics Kool-Aid. I really enjoy this stuff and while I am definitely able to see its flaws, I have really been into what DC has been attempting in terms of building a cinematic universe, and I absolutely love that DC comic people are getting to play along and have some input instead of it being clueless Warner Brothers head shed dweebs entirely running the show. Now, they do yank the reins a bit, WB is known for being reactionary instead of just going with the plan (looking at you, Marvel Studios) but they have been allowing a bit more freedom than usual and it shows for the most part (looking at you Justice League. Thanks a lot Whedon. Asshole.) The actors have really been into the roles they recieve in the DCEU too, and seem to be doing their research and even taking on leadership roles early in their film making careers (looking at you Margot. Keep doing your thing, I love you)

Two (whew already?), this is going to be a challenge BECAUSE I am a fanboy. I'm really going to try to do my best to be objective on this one and look at the whole picture the first time around.

Three, this one has been sort of polarizing. I am really excited to be taking this one on early in my reviewing "career". My understanding on this one going in is as follows: BOP (c'mon I'm not writing it out folks) was well recieved, critically. I understand it to be largely positively reviewed, with a few perfectionists and blowhards having their say (ugh). It did NOT, however take in the bucks, but it did make a small profit. There have been a few takes on this: One, marketing wasn't great. It took a long time for them to put anything out, and when they FINALLY did it was minimal and confusing. Folks also took issue with the title, saying it was too long. WB reacted (c'mon assholes stop it already you are only proving me right) by changing the title. I dont even remember what it was changed to it was that silly and irrelevant. Two, there MAY be some genre fatigue. Marvel just finished the largest and most expansive cinematic work of all time. This was released just after an unbelievable Joker movie. The only character known by folks not already in the know is Joker's sidekick (originally) and there may not be a Joker in this film, and who would it be anyways, Leto or Phoenix? Plus all anyone wants to talk about at the time was Wonder Woman 84, and confusing news about a reboot (or something?) Batman movie and the state of the MCU. Three, this one takes us from the one shot Joker right back to the universe that Whedon and the Warners potentially destroyed (thanks assholes) with a SUPER botched cut of Justice League.

Enough context, I can't wait anymore for this. (Goddamn finally I thought he would never shut up) On with the show!!

First and most obvious. I love Margot Robbie so much. She clearly has nothing but unconditional and complete love for her character. She has clearly done her research and has the absolute best time becoming Harley. I dont care much for the trash rat aesthetic though. That seems to be something David Ayer and his design staff came up with for Suicide Squad, and everyone REALLY bit into it and I REALLY dont like it. If I HAD to say there was a redeeming factor to it it is that it helps to physically illustrate Harley's fucking nutso disorganized mess of a brain. Other than design it actually seems like everyone did their research, and had a great time, and presented deep, complex characters with solid developmental points, even with the hop around style of storytelling, which in and of itself serves as a great method of telling this story, and surprisingly never leaves you lost.

Callback cliches abound in this one. They dont exactly telegraph it in the set up but man the last 30 minutes are FULL of callbacks to things dropped into earlier parts of the film.

For a film so full of LONG shots, some of the action sequences are awfully cutty. It's really distracting and takes away from the fact that these women did so many of their own stunts and fight scenes.

I loved that this film showed a Gotham that was truly dragged through the dirt. It is violent, pulls no punches and really carries the scenery Zach Snyder set up for this shit town in BVS (I'm not typing out BOP, do you really thing I'm writing that one out?)

I like the setups at the end and the connective tissue throughout to the rest of the DCEU. Well executed without drowning you in it and sacrificing the story. I am, however SUPER disappointed in the absence of a Barbara Gordon. I held out hope there might have been a connection in spite of there not being one in the aforementioned "marketing" but there wasn't anything. It was a good team origin story but I dont much care for a Birds of Prey with no mention of Oracle or Batgirl (if you know who I'm talking about you know why it is important).

Not much in the way of an original score. I dont think the story suffers for it though. A story told by post-Joker Harley Quinn isn't necessarily served by an original score. Distortions of things that are familiar to you are a perfect way of punctuating this one. I dig it.

Not much in the way of effects of this one. Pretty lo-fi as far as medium-big budget comic book flick goes. Well executed. I think the only thing that threw me was Sionis' mask. It is supposed to be made of ebony from his father's casket. It jiggles a LOT for something made of ebony. That said I dont remember that detail being made known so I guess it is forgivable, even if it does look sort of silly in the face (lol see what I did?) of being menacing.

Overall Verdict-- I genuinely dont see the OVERALL hate for DC Comics films. I understand the occasional fuck-up, but Marvel has had missteps too, and dont get this level of hate. This should not have been as polarizing as it was. It is a fun movie. It's not horribly made, in fact quite the opposite. It's an all girl team up a la Deadpool. There was enough for fanboys of the film's, of the comics, and it was good even for those not in the know (just ask my wife, she loved it). Fuck the haters, this is a good one. I could see not only me but my wife rewatching this one.

Final Grade--Solid B+. Give me ALL the long single cut fight scenes and this is an easy A.

[traincat]

I’ve been kinda outta the loop on ASM since OMD and have refused to pick it up until marvel undies it, but watching NWH gave me a hankering of nostalgia and I was wondering if Spencer’s run is worth reading? I’ve heard it does away with some of the worst aspects of OMD and Peter is finally a functioning adult again. (I’m skipping Slott’s 10 year bloated mess)

This is a call I feel you have to make for yourself, or possibly you should get the opinion of someone who feels more altogether positive about it as a counterbalance to my take, because I really didn't like it. I think I'm in the minority in that I actually liked it less than Slott's run -- I think Spencer's Peter is much more evenly written than Slott's, but Slott managed occasional moments of in character brilliance from time to time (even a broken clock is right once every fifty issues?) whereas Spencer's take on Peter is consistent, but, in my opinion, consistently boring, which may actually be worse than bad. Peter is in no way back to any pre-BND levels of functioning adult, let alone JMS' stunning characterization. At best it's kind of like your leading man being turned into a big cardboard cutout, like, it's fine, you can prop it up against a wall and it'll stay, but it's not gonna do anything interesting.

The idea that the run does away with anything from OMD is lingering optimism from how the first issue opens riding hard on the idea that the run would end up reversing OMD, which it does not. The spider-marriage remains the carrot that Marvel can dangle over the head of Spider-Man fans; it's not undone, although Peter and Mary Jane are together again after Slott's will they or won't they. The only interesting thing the run does at all with OMD is that it reveals that Mary Jane does, in fact, remember the events of the original timeline and the marriage, aka what Peter does not. (It does reference Mayday Parker at one point but it's a one panel appearance of an attempted avoided future.) It does retcon Sins Past, but, and I can't believe I'm saying this, in the act of doing so it does make decisions that are differently terrible and that I'm somehow more uncomfortable with. It is, I would say, very, very bad at handling Harry Osborn, in a very confusing way, considering Harry is both the big bad of the piece while simultaneously not appearing at all in a solid first half of the run and actually being dead the whole time and also a clone, while Norman gets turned good by a magic gun so he can make Harry die for his sins one more time.

Spencer's run is very dedicated to a couple of things, in my opinion. One is the previous canon he established, so if you really liked his Spectacular Foes of Spider-Man (and I did! For the record I enjoyed it! I am a nuanced hater of this run.) you might like to know that Boomerang features pretty largely as Peter's new roommate. Spencer also bragged a lot that he read every issue of Amazing Spider-Man for this run, so while I don't think characterization is his strong suit, he does have at least a grasp on general Spider-Man canon. He seems very taken with his own storytelling, which -- fine, writers are allowed to do that, but unfortunately a lot of his storytelling screams "man thinks maybe horribly abusive father is actually sympathetic" re: certain decisions involving Norman Osborn. Which is some kind of take.

At the end of the day, whether or not you should try it is up to you, unless you're going to drop a lot of money on it in which case I think maybe you save that. If your interest hinges solely on OMD reversal, I would skip Spencer's run, because it will probably disappoint you in that respect -- it doesn't reverse OMD, it only hinted at it endlessly before Spencer left Marvel for Substack.

I will say that if you like Ben Reilly, I've enjoyed the first few beginning issues of Spider-Man Beyond, although as it goes on I find myself needing the pacing to pick up significantly, and you don't really need to pick up Ben's post-OMD appearances to follow along with it. I'm very excited about JM DeMatteis' new Ben Reilly title which will be out this month.

[thefreshfinds]

Jordan Mizael:

Shooting his shot — Jordan Mizael goes for the win in his latest 6 tracked tape, Prime Example.

Over the last 23 years, he’s seen foul play — even dealt with some cherry-pickers who he confided to as a friend. Yet Jordan didn’t allow those misfortunes to keep him on the bench.

Instead, Jordan came back even harder with the bars & proved to everyone that he’s NOT playing!

On the whole, Prime Example’s melange of topics are nothing but net! Ironic enough the cover even shows a young Michael Jordan cutting down a net.

Whether he’s speaking on his drip (Glow) or reluctance to be open (On the Low) — Jordan’s ever changing flows, punchlines & similes are sure to make your ears do an alley-oop. It’s really strategic & because of this it helps to get the point across. Just check the score-board. A Lil Zan-ster to Jordan? 0 to 1.

“Prime Example shows my different styles. I can give you something to vibe to & feel. Then I can get personable & real. This is what I do.”

A universal language that seemed to speak to him — Jordan’s love for hip-hop began whilst growing up. In the beginning he was writing poetry. And even when his brother would find it around the house, show it to his father & laugh with him about it, Jordan Mizael still kept at it. Shortly after it became a hobby. According to him, it was just a natural thing. Once Jordan turned 13 though, he began to rap on beats & from there it was go time!

Off the rip, it’s a given that Eminem & J.Cole are his inspirations because they are artist who are on his wavelength. “That’s God here rapping” says Jordan about J.Cole. Likewise, Jordan’s music instills the realness he’s carried with him over the years. “The hardest song I worked on was about about my best friend who passed when I was 17. It was a freestyle to “Feel It In The Air.” When I performed it at school — the moment was very heartfelt & the song is really personal.” Even when his sound consist of storytelling & punch-lines — Jordan just wants his music to be felt. If it is, then he feels like he’s gotten the job done. “Be yourself. Be real but have fun with it.” An example of this can be read from a line he’s written that he believes is the best ever, “People hardly workin’ / they sayin they put in work / but the work that they puttin’ in seems to never really work.” Dunkin’ on his haters in Prime Example — Jordan also had some things to say when I asked if New Jersey supports New Jersey. His response? Yes, it can happen but it hasn’t yet. “Too much people want the spotlight.” Jordan adds “In order to get the bag, you have to chase it together.” then he went on to sing the chorus of J.Cole’s song “Light Please” (which I might add is legendary.)

THE BREAK-DOWN

1. 96’: What seems to come in as a triumph track, Jordan goes in without an intermission. Coveting that boom-bap feel we all love — the beat uses a deep echoing bass & faint trumpets in the background but it’s most distinct feature is a ladies war-cry. As a whole, he has some words for the haters. Beyond the surface they’ve been yapping away but deep down, they know he isn’t the one to mess with “I’ll leave your noodle in a pot like I’m making pasta.” 96’ tacks on his polished lyricism and cadence.

2. Glow: Shining ever so bright, Jordan’s choice of production is intimidating. From it’s drum-kit to reverse sound effect — it’s brought to life. The tone explains what it’s like to have a nightmare. In this track, Jordan is bragging about his glow. My favorite line is “This is the hunger games & you food cause I ain’t ever eat like that.” It’s just so genius.

3. On The Low: Sometimes it is best to scheme on the low & that is the main point in this track. His own ultimate weapon — Jordan uses a sing-song approach to explain why he’s getting it on his own. From an experience, he was too open & he’s learned because of it. Now, Jordan isn’t so weary of trusting. On The Low tackles on a futuristic beat with different flows, hi-hats & a drum kit. You better watch who you’re around.

4. KD ft. Primo: Even though the hi-hats have a clear space to work on, it finds itself cornered mid-track with dark piano chords & a laser gun effect! A song that’s merely about their drip — Jordan brings the heat with aggressiveness whilst Primo adds in some humor to lighten the mood a bit “Bout to check out with some white girls/ Swear to god I love them snow days.”

5. Tip Flow: Malicious to the crooks, Jordan backs up his talk some more in this track. Instead of waiting for opportunities, he seizes every moment. Yet every hater wants to seize him. Still, that doesn’t stop Jordan. After all, he always has a new tactic. “I’m the monster at night that’s under your bed/ I tug at your leg/ I drag yo ass down / Have you hugging the ledge /Then you wake up and see your stomach is wet / And when you notice me it’s too late there’s one in your head.”

6. Thing I Like ft. Dupree Suave: This one is strictly for the lady who just got it going on! Using in a sing-song tone, Jordan tells all “I just wanna mack with you / Maybe do a couple thangs / Give you this third leg like you’re walking with a cane. Then leave you walking with a cane.” He doesn’t mind staying lowkey but the same can’t be said about Dupree Sauve’s vocals. They are strong notes! High-key it’s everything we ever needed.

7. Dear Self: Like the world we live in, the piano chord is altered yet stays in a middle tone. “The way I’m opening up, you would think that I’m dissected.” This song was a letter to himself. It embodies the anger he’s felt but instead of hindering in, Jordan builds off the pain & encourages himself to just keep going. He knows that he’s destined to make history.

Prime Example circulates the most on inner feelings. In this day & age, this is what the generation needs.

For the up-comer’s, Jordan wants to let you know that money is not going to bring you happiness. It’s best to find it now. It’ll make things easier.

Moving forward — expect others to @memorizethename beyond the Garden State. Pretty soon he’s going to collab with GX & have 3 gold musical plaques!

Swish, swoosh. Listen to Jordan Mizael & his latest tape Prime Example!

By: Natalee Gilbert

LINK(S):

1. SOUNDCLOUD - https://soundcloud.com/jordangetsairtime/sets/prime-example

2. INSTAGRAM - @memorizethename

[afaimscorner]

Supergirl 3x23

Let’s just say it: This year Arrowverse Season-Finale were not as good as they used to be. I haven’t seen “Flash” and “Arrow” yet, but “Legends” and “Supergirl” were both disappointments, because the writers wanted too much in one episode which led to pacing problems, plotholes and many more problems.

“Legends” still kind of worked, because much about it was actually really good and its “Legends”, you forgive much because you love the show so much. But there were still some smaller things that made me mad and way too much story and that Rip-Stuff- that-if-it-really-was-it-is-an-insult-to-fans. But there was a giant Beebo, so yeah, I everything is forgiven.

But “Supergirl” .... O man, it was just BAD. I think that was the first time in the shows history that an episde was actually just BAD! I kind of saw it coming, because Season 3 had it problems before, but I was hoping for a finale as thrilling as Season 2, instead we got ... a mess of an episode.

If the “Legends”-Finale had enough story for a two-parter “Battles Lost and Won” had enough for at least three episodes and therefore nothing that mattered was treated with enough care. M’rynns death ... no emotion because no time. Mon-El, Alura, und Sam died - Kara did not even shed a single tear even though her long lost mother and the love of her life just died infront of her eyes! Yes, she went back in time, but it was rushed and am I the only one who didn’t really see a difference between Reign dying in that way or that way? How is letting her die better than helping to kill her? How is that holding up the principles of Supergirl?

I didn’t want Sam to die, but where was the heroic Sam-sacrifices-herself-to-save-everyone-els- from-Reign-Moment we were waithing for all season? Killing her for one moment and punching her in the face and forcing her to ... drink water ... was Samsheroic moment? Really?

And then the Legion is back and is barley there, and then Winn and Mon-El leave the show (at least as regulars and for some time) so save a future we did not get to see all season long?! I am sorry, but this team is called “Legion of Superheroes”, and all we ever got to see two members that weren’t Mon-El and there was a mentoning of one or two (if we count Imras sister) more, and that was it?! So the future is totally saved by Mon-El returning, because Winn is replacing Brainy, that means one more person is totally changing everything in a future we won’t get to see, because Chris is not coming back and Mon-El would need to be there, so we are never going to get to see that freaking future which I was waiting for ALL SEASON!!!

Also, James outs himself which should be a big thing, but it isn’t.

J’onn is off to do God knows what, but at least rumor has it that he is back as a regular next year. Well let’s hope so.

I mean, I am not surprised. Jeremy didn’t have so much a sub-plot for the first half of the season and didn’t get that much in the second half. Also, Supercorps/Haters bullyed him, so of course he would want to leave. The same goes for Chris. Maybe it was always planned for Mon-El to only stay for to seasons, but that’s the Maggie-Problem all over again: Why make him such a major character and love of another characters life, when he wasn’t supposed to stay? I guess, we Karamels will always have Season 2 and some scenes in Season 3, but they didn’t even kiss this season and the storytelling was :.... Yes, Kara misses him so much she gets depressed because of it, he is back, but married, Kara is mad and realises he is not worth her troubles, but she still loves him, he still loves her, they are on the verge of getting together again, but then someone else ghost-wrote the last two episodes and they don’t wanna be a couple anymore because of reasons that make no sense (I wrote about this above).

Now here is the thing: The last few eps actually made me beliefe that Mon-El was going to die in the finale. He did but only for a second and Kara did care more about the fact that she was trying to kill Reign than that and was totally okay with him leaving so .... I wish he would have died instead.

Now there was an intruiging ending scene, but if it weren’t for it “Supergirl” would be right next to “Arrow” now on the list of shows I used to like but I now only watch so I don’t get confused in the crossovers.

So yeah, 3x23 was just bad. And I am still not over how bad it was and I am so utterlry uninteresed in Season 4 right now, which it’s sad, because I loved “Supergirl” since Episode 2.

Now all I have left is hope that Lena turns evil very quickly (even though I would prefer her not too) so that the Supercorps finally suffer as much as the rest of us.