#robust verse

[balsa-margarita]

Happy to announce I am back on my bullshit once again! Weeee!

(Sorry, this is not a new series, only a oneshot.)

[not-poignant]

Birthday Spotlight - Crielle ferch Fnwy

[18 April - Aries]

Crielle ferch Fnwy is the matriarch of the An Fnwy estate, a beautiful, evil Machiavellian supervillain who has been manipulating the Seelie Court and her family for tens of thousands of years, while giving the appearance of being a perfectly loving Seelie fae who only cares about truth and justice.

Mother of Gwyn ap Nudd, and aunt of Efnisien ap Wledig, Crielle is actually only rarely seen in stories, but has an explosive impact regardless, due to the trauma she inflicts or causes others to inflict on our main characters.

‘You’re not mine. You may have stolen from our family legacy, you may have parasitised our reputation, you may have even exploited and ruined the things about our appearance that make us – not you – beautiful. But you are not, you have never been mine. If you felt a short, sharp shock when you came into the world, my darling, it was my hands around your throat while your father tried to pull me off you. ‘Imagine, if you will, my dear, reprehensible thing. Imagine the first time you came back to me after we sent you away to play with Efnisien. Oh you were only twelve or thirteen? What a lovely idea that was. And Efnisien had you for hours. I told him to use knives. He liked them so, and he didn���t think he’d be allowed. So precious. And I heard the distant echo of your screams like a faint, familiar melody all throughout my day. A time when they stopped because he gagged you perhaps? Or your voice gave out? Tsk. He is – was – so crude. But still...effective. And do you remember? Oh, my creature, imagine it... ‘You came home hours later, hours after Efnisien. You were broken and cut and bleeding and so, so ruined. And you stumbled into the house, and there I was waiting for you. Breathless, actually. And you stared at me as though I would – what? – tell you that Efnisien had crossed a line, gone too far? Do you remember what I did?’ ‘You smiled at me,’ Gwyn said, his voice rough and rusty.

Game Theory

Game Theory: Introduced as the manipulative, evil, and cruel mother of the King, Crielle starts off with Cinderella stepmother vibes, until you realise that Gwyn's her only son and she can't stand him, favouring his cousin Efnisien instead. A torturer, abuser, schemer, and conniving Machiavellian figure, she ultimately has been puppeting the Seelie Court for thousands of years, and is the cause of Gwyn attaining, and then losing, his Kingship.

It's safe to say that Crielle has never been the Most Valued Player of any story.

The Court of Five Thrones: While Crielle only has a very brief appearance in this story, her presence is felt throughout. We find out more about her feelings towards Gwyn, through journals he discovers in her house after her murder at Augus' hands.

The Drawn Bead: In a story that explores Gwyn's first love, Crielle is there as a forbidding, tormenting figure, ruling Gwyn's life with an invisible, oppressive kind of terror.

The Curse: The only story which features Crielle's perspective, we see her as a child, a teenager, an adult, and learn about her dangerous proclivities, how her family did and didn't deal with them, and the depth of her love for a select few people, a love that she gave to Gwyn right up until the moment he was born.

Fae Tales – Alternative Perspectives: Crielle is only here briefly, but we see more of her dialogue with Gwyn, and more of Augus' perspective about her.

Underline the Black: Crielle here emerges as a cruel villain to Efnisien, in a flipped/reversed narrative where Gwyn is her beloved child, and Efnisien is nothing more than a neglected science experiment. Efnisien's life is at the mercy of Crielle's whims, and she puts him first in Hillview (an institution) to put him out of sight and out of mind, but as soon as he causes too much trouble for her, she won't hesitate to strike him down.

The Spoils of the Spoiled: In which Crielle even in the human world as a human herself proves that she can be just as evil as ever. Ruler of the household, torturer of Gwyn (and later, we learn, Efnisien), and clearly involved in corruption and organised crime, Crielle lives her best life in this story until Gwyn tries to legally emancipate himself from the family.

Falling Falling Stars: In the follow up to The Spoils of the Spoiled, Efnisien - previously thought of as the beloved and protected 'adopted' child of Crielle's - reveals over time the verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse he suffered at her hands through therapy sessions with Dr Gary. Over time, we realise that no one is safe from her influence.

Crielle is very 'classically' beautiful, with blonde hair that has a slight wave in it, that generally falls down to her shoulders. She has azure eyes, a shade of blue almost never found among humans (even when she's human). She wears only enough make-up to accentuate her eyes and perfect lips, and maintains a very 'natural' effect to her beauty. It looks effortless and perfect enough that many who are experienced with beauty routines know she puts a lot of time into her appearance.

Crielle is asexual, sex repulsed, and aromantic.

Crielle is common fae, and while she's affected by the curse that Olphix cast upon the family, I like to think she'd still be pretty awful.

Born into a family in which some members are predisposed to sociopathic behaviour, Crielle was one of the worst and was not encouraged by her parents to be the way she is. Many people assume that she was abused into her evilness, but she wasn't.

To me, the concept or alienness of someone who is as evil as Crielle simply because she was 'born that way' is very fascinating to me.

Incredibly intelligent and perceptive, her few weaknesses are around the (few) people she loves and the way she will indulge them, as well as anything that threatens her reputation.

In Game Theory, when we finally realise that she is at the centre of Gwyn's devotion, standing there watching his humiliation, reacting in disgust to being called 'Mama' in a moment of vulnerability from her own son.

In Falling Falling Stars, Efnisien calls Crielle, and it becomes quickly clear that she holds no love in her heart for Efnisien when she calls him a 'ghost' and reminds him that ghosts are very easy to kill, making it clear she still wants him dead, and only inertia/disinterest is keeping her from following through because she'd already killed him once.

Always really fucking evil and irredeemable.

Frankly dies a lot.

Always a bit of a mad chemist. In Fae Tales she is a literal chemist and inventor of many different poisons. This has carried over even in to her human incarnations where in the Spoils universe she uses her knowledge of science to cultivate, create, or acquire poisons and viruses and bacteria to insert into Gwyn's food. And carries even more strongly into the Underline universe, where she runs one of the most successful synthetic hormone companies in Australia.

Visibly stunning.

Cares a great deal about reputation.

Usually loves Efnisien. Underline is the first series that has flipped the narrative so that Gwyn is beloved and Efnisien is loathed.

Kind of disdains her husband, who has no power over her.

Crielle is a real figure in Welsh mythology, though she was never meant to be an evil figure. Nor is she Gwyn's mother in the mythology. A sign of just how intensely I've bastardised everything for my own purposes.

She is good friends with the Ratcatcher of Hameln.

I wanted Crielle to be an example of how you can't expect that someone perfectly beautiful is a good person. I also really wanted to write a woman villain. I felt like a lot of woman villains at the time that I was seeing or reading were often written as petty or just in ways that made them somehow 'weak.' The appeal of Crielle is that she's an extremely effective villain and the only thing that stops her is her death (with the exception of Falling Falling Stars).

Despite how awful she is, I really love her! I'd write her more, but she's too strong and powerful lmao and she ruins my character's lives too much.

Crielle's colours for me have always been cream, yellow, white and blue. It's hard to imagine her wearing anything else.

‘How perfectly disgusting,’ Crielle purred. ‘A little worm has learned how to use the phone. I thought I had a caterpillar once, that would turn into the most beautiful butterfly, but it turns out the only thing my sister’s loins are good for, are despicable little worms.’ ‘D-Do you hate me now?’ Efnisien whispered. Crielle laughed lightly. ‘Oh, oh, my darling, I don’t hate you.’ A moment of hope, strong and bright, a sudden dawn inside of him. ‘I feel nothing for you. As far as I recall, I killed my nephew, and you are nothing more than a ghost.’

Falling Falling Stars

[letters-to-rosie]

click to read the fic!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The housing crisis considered as an income crisis

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

A paradox: in 1970, everyday Americans found it relatively easy to afford a house, and the average American house cost 5.9x the average American income. In 2024, Americans find it nearly impossible to afford a house, and the average American house costs…5.9x the average American income.

Feels like a puzzler, right? Can it really be true that the average American house is as affordable to the average American earner as it was in 1970? It is true, as you can see from Blair Fix's latest open access research report, "The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage":

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/

Fix also points out that is even more true of rents than it is of house prices. The ratio of rent to average income has actually fallen slightly since 1970. Rents are also, in some mathematical sense, "affordable."

Now, those of you who are well-versed in statistical card-palming will likely have a pretty good idea of the statistical artifact at the root of this paradox: the word "average." If you remember your seventh grade math, you'll recall that "average" has more than one meaning. Sure, there's the most common one: add several values together, then divide the total by the number of values you added. For example, a nonzero number of people have one or zero arms, so the average human has slightly fewer than two arms.

That average is called the "mean." The mean US wage is pretty robust: $73,242/year:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A792RC0Q052SBEA/1000

But the majority of Americans are not earning anything like $73k/year. Since the Reagan years, the number of Americans living in poverty and extreme poverty has climbed and climbed. And while their declining income sure drags down that average, it's dragged way, way, way up by another group of Americans – the ultra-rich.

You see, as Fix writes, back in the Reagan years, America initiated an experiment in redistribution. Reagan enacted policies that moved most of the nation's wealth from the great majority of working people to a tiny minority of people who ended up owning pretty much everything. Throw their income into the mix, and the average American's income is sufficient to finance the average American home, with plenty to spare.

In other words, this isn't an "average human has fewer than two arms" situation, it's more like a "Spiders Georg" situation. Spiders Georg is a Tumblr meme about a guy who eats 10,000 spiders every day and is thus single-handedly responsible for the (false) statistic that the average human eats two spiders a week:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiders_Georg

The American rich – Reagan's progeny – are the Spiders Georg of house prices. By hoarding the great mass of American national wealth, they create a statistical mirage of affordable housing.

Now, that's interesting, but where Fix goes next with this is even more fascinating. If the average price of housing (relative to average income) has stayed fixed since 1970, then it follows that the price of housing isn't being driven up by a problem with supply. Rather, these numbers suggest that America has enough housing, it's just that (most) Americans don't have enough money.

If that's true – and I have a couple of quibbles, which I'll get to in a sec – then the most common prescription for solving American housing (building more of it) is somewhat beside the point. For Fix, using public funds to subsidize cheaper housing is like using public funds to pay for food stamps for working people whose wages are too low to keep them from starving. Sure, we should do that: no one should be without a home and no one should be hungry. But if working people can't afford shelter and food, then we have a wage problem, not a supply problem.

Fix – as ever – has a well-thought through, painstakingly documented "sources and methods" page to back up his conclusions:

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/#sources-and-methods

And while Fix acknowledges that reversing the mass transfer of wealth from working people to their bosses (and their bosses' idle offspring) is a big lift, he rightly wants to keep the question of wages (rather than housing supply) front and center in our debate about why so many of us are finding it hard to keep a a roof over our heads. We need progressive taxation, higher minimum wages, protection from medical and education debt, and hell, why not a job guarantee?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/25/canada-reads/#tcherneva

I love Fix's work, and this report is no exception. He does it all in his spare time. Some nice progressive think tank should give him a grant so he can do (a lot) more of it.

That all said, I do have a quibble with his conclusion about the adequacy of the American housing supply. In California, we have a shortage of 3-4 million homes, a number arrived at through the relatively robust method of adding up the number of California families that would like to have their own homes and subtracting the number of homes available near those families:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage

How to explain the discrepancy? One possibility is that the price of housing is artificially low, because more than 181,000 people are homeless here. Hundreds of thousands of more people are living in overcrowded housing, with multiple families inhabiting spaces intended for just one (or even a single person). If all of those people were competing for housing, the price might rise even higher.

Think of the people who have given up looking for work – because they're not in the workforce, wages go up. If they were competing in the labor market, wages would fall. Maybe all those people would prefer to have a job, but they're missing from the statistics.

That's one theory. Another is that we're getting tripped up on averages again here. California does have some towns with many vacancies, extra supply that is pushing down prices; it's also got many places with far more people who want to live there than there are homes for. It's possible that there's enough supply on average across the states, but – as we've seen – averages are deceptive.

Ultimately, I think both things can be true: we have a wage problem and we have (many, localized) supply problems. Both of these problems deserve our attention, and neither is acceptable in a civilized society.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/24/i-dream-of-gini/#mean-ole-mr-median

[disco-archetypes]

YOU - He's a poet. Hit him with your best verse.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Your *best* verse? You don't even have a *bad* verse in here. Just tumbleweed and liquor stains... wait, no! What are you DOING?!

YOU - "'She broke me. She fucking broke me.'"

TOMMY LE HOMME - "That's brutal, man. But, you know... Time will..."

CONCEPTUALIZATION - No! Stop! He's already mortified.

YOU - "No, Tommy. These are my rhymes. Listen!" (Continue.) "'She *fucked* me 'til I bled.'"

TOMMY LE HOMME - "That's... uhm..."

KIM KITSURAGI - "In the name of *god*, what are you doing?"

YOU - (Continue.) "I will never be the same again. She's always there. Fuck the case. Fuck everything. Total doom."

TOMMY LE HOMME - "Yeah..." He doesn't know what to say, so he just repeats: "Yeah-yeah. I get it. These are *your* rhymes, they're from your life. Doesn't matter if they're robust, they're honest. So... thanks man."

DRAMA - He's not lying. He liked the end.

KIM KITSURAGI - "Yes. And I also thank you -- for stopping. We have a murder investigation to return to. How about we do that?"

[distant--shadow]

Laudna shrouds herself over Imogen's back, their legs intertwined under their shared blanket. 

When they lie so close Laudna can easily believe the warmth she syphons is her own; that the regular, slow and deep breaths that caus her own body to rise along with Imogen are shared and just as beneficial between the two of them. 

If she believes it then it can be magic. 

Magic, she delicately draws the tip of her ichored nail down Imogen's forearm, following a path carved by a lightning strike scar before tangling in the welcoming snare of a knot of green ribbon and red thread. 

She thumbs over the bracelet, aware of how her own is pressed between their arms in one of the many places that their bodies currently meet, aware of how it would leave an imprint on her flesh if it had more fat and elasticity, aware of the feeling of the further fray on Imogen's bracelet verses her own, the worries she has worn into its fabric with her anxious habitual movements. 

(aware that it seems wrong to cast mending without asking.) 

The green of the ribbon is silken, especially in comparison to the unravelling nature of the red twine, a blood-dyed sturdier fiber like threads of muscles tweezered apart, for it must be robust enough to tie skulls to taxidermy, to hang her utilities from her belts, and so it seems fitting, that the ribbon should be silk, be bows of green accentuating softness in all curves and fur. 

Imogen's positioned like one of the things on Laudna's belt; not noosed at giant knuckle but a Ruidian specimen all the same, curled in and alien-in-a-glass-jar fetal - her subconscious laying her prone on their bed roll, her mother's voice in her nightmares, in her dreams

Laudna wonders how far the bracelet frays when she stands in the red storm

how often Imogen counts each braid of it between the pads of her fingertips like a bead for a prayer

if it ever unravels and lays itself out as rope, ties around rock and helps her escape

good thing then, that Laudna’s twine is supportive, that Fearne’s is soft to her touch

if it could tether them there, to her dreams

to where there is the moon

and so is here-

Laudna acknowledges one of the many things she often has to, but would rather she didn't. Subtle as the purple glow from inside of her chest. 

(if everyone didn't know otherwise she could say that the glow was Imogen’s.) 

but they know otherwise. they were there when she woke up, they stood around the experiment-cum-operating table. 

and all of the Hells can see this too

the string of glowing red energy that stretches across the dark natural stone cavern that lends itself as a bedroom. 

ties Imogen to Fearne. 

Laudna parts her hand from Imogen's wrist, reaches out, her bony elbow cushioned by the swell of Imogen's hip. 

Her index finger unfurls, beckons at the god-eating tether as if she could pluck it like a lute string, wonders if the note would change with their distance, grabs at it as if it were a lasso Imogen had cast and that Laudna could grasp and reel Fearne towards them

the mental image of it makes Laudna chortle, her brittle bones surely sooner snapping as a dissonant chord plays-

Imogen stirs

"Honey, did you say somethin'?"  she blearily whispers

"I'm sorry, were you sleeping?" 

"No, I was just thinkin'."

"With your eyes closed?" 

"With ma eyes closed." Imogen turns over her shoulder and kisses Laudna on the end of her permanently broken nose. "What were you laughin' about?"

Laudna's focus darts to where her hand had grasped for unattainable energy. 

"I was thinking about my arms popping out of their sockets after trying to wrangle Fearne." 

Imogen stifles her laugh, her dimples drawing in shadows. 

"There is a lot of her." 

she quiets as from a few feet away, Fearne gently snores.

the scoff Imogen's throat gives is affectionate, a reverberation of rumble travelled between them sympathetic and synchronised.

"mm." Laudna shortly hums. She can't disagree. 

She returns her hand to lay ontop of Imogen's upturned, though it is hard for her eyes to ignore the only source of light in the room, despite her dark vision. 

Imogen's fingers thread between her own, squeeze tentatively. 

Laudna's head is rested over Imogen's shoulder, sunken into the crook of her neck, her soft lilac hair pillowing her castle ruin cheek

their line of sight can't be too dissimilar, surely Imogen can't ignore the spectral tightrope illuminating between them. 

Laudna hadn't done a good job of making it across the one over the river. 

Imogen can most likely feel it even if her eyes are closed. 

The gold of her circlet a juxtaposition of hot flesh meeting cold, a flux permanently balanced between their two body tempratures. 

"You have said before that we're a lot..." 

"We are, but we wouldn't be us if we weren't. It's what makes us right, it's why we work." the hush to Imogen's voice doesn't dampen its affection. 

Laudna props herself up on her left elbow, right arm still draped over Imogen but now her head hovering over the other woman's, their hair a mass of wiry blacks and wavy lilacs covering the pillow

Laudna wonders how the two would look braided, 

of seafoam green-

"And Fearne?" 

Imogen's brow furrows.

Fearne? 

Imogen opens their mental connection to excuse the third woman from their conversation. 

The two of you…

Imogen's cheeks flush, imperceptible to anyone else within their nook or the neighbouring-nook ‘rooms’ (Laudna would know easily how to make a room of them), despite their sleeping, despite Orym’s perception. He can't see in the dark. He can't get to know everything. And Chet-

well he'd probably argue he could smell the blood anyhow.

I am not jealous. I do not envy your posistion. I am glad you have someone-

Laudna, what you talkin’ about? I have you. 

You have both of us, and I really am thankful for that.

[indie-ttrpg-of-the-week]

Wyrdwood wand

this is a wizard game with an alien invasion plotline in it

Touchstones: Wizard School media, Lovecraftian Mythos, Studio Ghibli, Chuubo, Final Fantasy Tactics, Sports Anime

Genre: Wizard School tactics Game

What is this game?:  Wyrdwood Wand is a tactics game heavily inspired by D&D 4e, where players play as young (usually) mages growing up and studying in the prestigious [citation needed] Wyrdwood academy

How's the gameplay?: Wyrdwood Wand is heavily based on D&D 4e, its a crunchy tactics game with really fun and intuitive character creation which splits up characters between their party role, and the nature of their magic, one giving you broad strokes of a role, and the other cementing it's specifics, if you're familiar with how 4e plays you're familiar with how this game plays, and if you're familiar with 5e there's a little bit of a learning curve but it's still a pretty easy to learn game, Wyrdwood also features a fairly robust roleplaying system, that has a clean split between tactical and goofy spells, meaning characters can have silly spell options without having to break their spell bank

What's the setting (If any) like?: Wyrdwood is set in the world of Gliss, a setting with quite a bit of interesting lore and tidbits, but for now all you need to know is that Gliss is currently recovering from a massive war against an alien species known as the Wix, the world got kinda screwed by this invasion, population is small at around 300 million humans, towns are small, and technology hasn't quite reached the height it did before the war, think your stereotypical ghibli setting, but with more aliens and cthulhus. the Wyrdwood verse also has something called "Destiny", a mysterious force protecting humans from deadly blows, this is something that's mostly a gameplay term but it bleeds over into lore sometimes. Oh right I forgot to mention, in this world hats are incredibly important, if you don't wear one, good luck casting spells!

What's the tone?: Wyrdwood's wand is mostly fairly lighthearted, it can touch on topics of warfare and imperialism, but its a silly world full of goblins that can turn any object into a gun, and nigh-immortal reptilian orbs

Session length: Fairly long, 3-4 hours is not uncommon

Number of Players: 3+, 5 is recommended

Malleability: Wyrdwood's mechanics are actually not very tied into its setting, if your setting is primarily consisting of spellcasters you could run it in Wyrdwood probably

Resources: As wyrdwood is a fairly new, obscure, and in development game there's not too many resources, there's a google spreadsheet that works wonders, a few scattered bits of homebrew, and other such things

I REALLY like wyrdwood, its lighthearted and silly aesthetic combined with genuinely fun gameplay and character creation sell you into its world where really weird shit happens casually and where hats are vital for spellcasting.

[khalidistan]

It seems like every year I end up writing an iteration of the same idea. But here I am! Writing it again! If you haven’t seen the tweet that sparked this conversation, I’ve screenshotted the tweet and artwork below. It’ll help inform this discussion. Full piece under the cut.

It would help to check out my essay from 2021 about the emasculation of Abdul Ali from Squid Game, since both pieces share similar references.

Maryam Khalid writes “Orientalist notions of the masculinity of the ‘Eastern’ male as uncivilized also inherently ascribe primitiveness, ineptness and a certain amount of weakness to the barbarized ‘other.’” Those doomed to the mythical Orient are automatically placed lower in masculinity than their white and colonial counterparts.

The reason for this emasculation is to defang them, to ensure they can never attain the same power conferred by white masculinity and to maintain racial purity: “This feminizing divests the male body of its virility and thus compromises its power not only to penetrate and reproduce its own nation (our women), but to contaminate the other's nation (their women) as well” (Puar, 99).

To be South Asian is to be pathologically queer, irrespective of the one’s true sexual orientation. “The Orient becomes a living tableau of queerness” by virtue of being from the Orient (Said, 103). There is already a robust amount of artwork depicting Pavitr with tons of gold jewelry and piercings, which to the West are typically feminine accessories. This essentially reduces Pavitr to a stereotype of South Asian culture.

Fanworks use the bejeweled, indulgent, exotic, and sultry attitude as a short-hand for their perception of South Asia. They are “caricatures stripped from movies like Disney’s Aladdin, the Arcana or people’s sexual fantasies about our men,” as allahrakhi writes in her essay on fandom's reception of Claude von Riegan from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a character similarly mischaracterized by virtue of his brown identity.

Puar describes that the (implied white) nation defines “upright, domesticatable queernesses that mimic and recenter liberal subjecthood, and out-of-control, untetherable queernesses” (47). Nonwhite queerness is “untetherable,” leaving white queerness as “domesticatable.” This inability to engage brown queerness forces brown queer people to assimilate into white queerness.

In fandom’s and society’s mind, there is no such thing as a queer South Asian without them discarding their brown identity and adopting white queer practices, behaviors, and aesthetics. Queer South Asians are “either liberated (and the United States and Europe are often the scene of this liberation) or can only have an irrational, pathological sexuality of queerness” (Puar, 13).

Which brings us to the recent depictions of Pavitr in fanworks, stripping him of his masculinities to render him as a vapid, neutered, and yes, whitewashed queer boy, completely unrecognizable from the source material.

Interestingly, this reduced masculinity co-exists, paradoxically, with the idea that men from the Orient are simultaneously aggressive, belligerent, and violent. Elgin Brunner writes: “Such a framing—the association of the enemy with barbarism, as opposed to the self, which is civilized—includes two, often simultaneous, moves, that is: the ‘hypermasculinization’ of the enemy on the one hand, and his ‘effeminization’ on the other… The very same opponent is, by virtue of being categorized as a cowardly barbarian, rendered effeminate.”

The flip side of the effeminate brown man is the hypermasculine brown man, which can be seen through Miguel, one of Across the Spider-Verse’s antagonists. Both instances of brown masculinity confiscate personhood from characters who would have otherwise offered rich, nuanced, interesting perspectives to the story and to the audience.

It would be myopic of me to not mention the implicit genderings of other nonwhite ethnicities in this discussion. Brown men hold a unique positionality to other nonwhite men in a racial triangulation I’d like to examine further in another essay for the future. Brown men can either be gendered the way that East Asians are (feminine, asexual, neutered, timid, obedient) or the way that Black people are (hypersexual, predatory, dangerous, aggressive). Both misgenderings are in opposition to the “ideal” male gender, which is of course, the white man. This fallacy is why we see Hobie depicted as cruel, mean, and irritated in the exact same artwork from earlier.

Many people in this artist’s quoted replies have accused the artist of being white. I have seen some criticisms of the backlash, that people shouldn’t assume the artist’s ethnicity. I think both opinions miss the point: anyone can be orientalist. Membership within a nonwhite ethnic identity does not absolve the individual of perpetuating orientalist or racist depictions of characters of color.

As Edward Saïd said, “Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis-a-vis the Orient” (Orientalism, 20). That is to say, if you write and depict the Orient and people from the Orient, you have to consider your positionality in relation to the Orient. Naturally, this would mean that white people should always be cognizant of their depictions of Orientals. But East Asians can also orientalize, whether it is other ethnic groups like South Asians; or self-orientalization. Similar can be said for South Asians who self-orientalize.

Khalid writes “Gendered identities do not exist independently of other factors, and must be viewed as intertwined with, for example, race or ethnicity if we are to understand the hierarchical organization of identities.” There is no examination of gender without an accompanying racial context. And Pavitr’s emasculation in fandom certainly requires a critical eye for both race and gender, lest we repeat the same dehumanizing characterizations of him in further fanworks.

Works Consulted:

Brunner, E. M. (2008). Consoling display of strength or emotional overstrain? the gendered framing of the early “War on terrorism” in transatlantic comparison. Global Society, 22(2), 217–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600820801887223

Khalid, M. (2011). Gender, orientalism and representations of the ‘other’ in the War on Terror. Global Change, Peace & Security, 23(1), 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2011.540092

Puar J. K. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press.

Said, E. W. (1994). Orientalism. 25th anniversary edition. With a new preface by the author. New York, Vintage Books.

[justforbooks]

Odyssey by Stephen Fry

The last in Fry’s four-book retelling of the Greek myths is relatable and full of humour

Not long ago, Elon Musk took a break from predicting civil war to offer his followers on X a book recommendation. “Can’t recommend the Iliad enough!” he tweeted. “Best as Penguin audiobook on 1.25 speed.” He accompanied this with a screenshot of the Penguin edition of The Odyssey. Erich Auerbach, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

Still, one way or another, Homer’s great poems have fulfilled the injunction to be news that stays news. Scholars of the original Greek, or partisans of Emily Wilson’s acclaimed recent verse translations, might roll their eyes at the injunction to speed-listen to an audiobook version. But one of the great virtues of myth is that it is robust to being reimagined: The Odyssey gives us Ulysses in one direction, and The Wind in the Willows or Watership Down in another.

And for practically as long as we’ve had the written word, we’ve had simplified retellings of the classical myths suitable for children and tech billionaires. Stephen Fry’s chatty and urbane but slyly erudite prose retellings fit right into this tradition. His Odyssey – which was preceded by Mythos, Heroes and Troy – brings a four-book sequence satisfyingly to a close.

Stylistically, Fry mostly eschews epic grandeur for the immediacy and relatability of modern idiom. The tone is spry rather than stately, and full of humour. Cassandra – wailing fruitlessly in the background all the way from Troy – is largely played for laughs; and when Agamemnon finally makes it home, the King of Men sounds for all the world like a red-trousered bon vivant back from the golf club after a bit too long at the 19th hole:

“Well, well, well! My darling, you grow ever more beautiful. The treasure ships are not far behind. The things you see! […] What’s that you say? A bath? Oh, my dear darling wife, there is only one thing I have been looking forward to more. And that can follow the bath, eh, eh?! Or maybe can be included in the bath, what?”

If he’d listened to Cassandra, he’d know what was included in the bath, but hey-ho.

Nor, though, does Fry altogether ignore the story’s pathos and poetry. There’s moving material about the easy love between father and sons – Odysseus is pierced at having missed out on Telemachus’s childhood – and here and there Fry’s default whimsy gives way to graver passages of writing. “A salt-caked, sun-burned, wind-scoured man lies face-down and naked on a beach. Sandflies skip on the scarred skin of his back.” Penelope, waiting on Ithaca, “strained her eyes towards the bar of haze that separated the blue of the empty sea from the blue of the empty sky”.

It’s not quite, or not only, a children’s book. The language gets fruity here and there – when Odysseus reveals himself to the suitors, he sounds positively Tarantinoesque: “He asked me who the hell I thought I was. I’ll tell you who I think I am. I think I am Odysseus of Ithaca, come back from the dead to revenge myself upon you. You fucking animals.” And the sexual violence is, if downplayed, not entirely absent (though perhaps to avoid muddying the moral clarity of the story for his younger readers, Fry omits Telemachus’s massacre of the maidservants).

There’s a lot of action in the footnotes, where Fry discusses lexicology or pronunciation, digresses on modern parallels, editorialises, or floats pet theories. He notes that Odysseus’s arrival on the Phaeacian coastline on a plank of his shattered raft may be “the first ever description of surfing in all literature”. He muses on why Hera is always “cow-eyed”, and notes that “cows (to us) are rarely imperious in aspect in the way Hera manifestly was, but perhaps this is a failure of observation on our part”. He argues, with reference to Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies and the name of the island Cos, that the lotus eaters are actually munching lettuce. He has Athena accusing Zeus of planning to “usher in an age without treaties, promises, honour or law”, and adds in a glum footnote: “A plan that finally has come into being in every detail it would seem … ”

This is a book with a theory, too. It completes a historic arc that has taken us from gods and titans, through demigod heroes, to the deeds of mortals in whose affairs the gods meddle freely – and it points to an era in which men, in a substantially disenchanted world, will find their own way. The trial of Orestes, in Fry’s account, is something like the thematic heart of the book. In it, Princess Erigone argues for “a new order” where “we are to reconstitute the world according to reason and sense, rather than impulse and bloodlust”, and the wise Athena “is the only god we need”. How’s that working out? Ask Elon Musk, I guess.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[deepdreamnights]

Tribute AMV for Dr. Underfang and Mrs. Natalie Nice/Nautilus.

From TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core, everyone's favorite Buzby-Spurlock animated series.

After all, who doesn't love a good bad guy, especially when they come in pairs?

Process/Tutorial Under the Fold.

This is, of course, a part of my TyrannoMax unreality project, with most of these video clips coming from vidu, taking advantage of their multi-entity consistency feature (more on that later). This is going to be part of a larger villain showcase video, but this section is going to be its own youtube short, so its an video on its own.

The animation here is intentionally less smooth than the original, as I'm going for a 1980s animated series look, and even in the well-animated episodes you were typically getting 12 FPS (animating 'on twos'), with 8 (on threes) being way more common. As I get access to better animation software to rework these (currently just fuddling along with PS) I'm going to start using this to my advantage by selectively dropping blurry intermediate frames.

I went with 12 since most of these clips are, in the meta-lore, from the opening couple of episodes and the opening credits, where most of the money for a series went back in the day.

Underfang's transformation sequence was my testing for several of my techniques for making larger TyrannoMax videos. Among those was selectively dropping some of the warped frames as I mentioned above, though for a few shots I had to wind up re-painting sections.

Multi-entity consistency can keep difficult dinosaur characters stable on their own, but it wasn't up to the task of keeping the time-temple accurate enough for my use, as you can see here with the all-t-rex- and-some-moving-statues, verses the multi-species effort I had planned:

The answer was simple, chroma-key.

Most of the Underfang transformation shots were done this way. The foot-stomp was too good to leave just because he sprouted some extra toes, so that was worth repainting a few frames of in post.

Vidu kind of over-did the texturing on a few shots (and magenta was a poor choice of key-color) so I had to go in and manually purple-ize the background frame by frame for the spin-shot.

This is on top of the normal cropping, scaling, color-correcting, etc that goes into any editing job of this type.

It's like I say: nearly all AI you see is edited, most of it curated, even the stuff that's awful and obvious (never forget: enragement is engagement)

Multi-Entity Consistency:

Vidu's big advantage is reference-to-video. For those who have been following the blog for awhile, R2V is sort of like Midjourney's --cref character reference feature. A lot of video AIs have start-end frame functionality, but being able to give the robot a model sheet and effectively have it run with it is a darn nice feature for narrative.

Unlike the current version of Midjourney's --cref feature, however, you can reference multiple concepts with multiple images.

It is super-helpful when you need to get multiple characters to interact, because without it, they tend to blend into each other conceptually.

I also use it to add locations, mainly to keep them looking appropriately background-painting rather than a 3d background or something that looks like a modded photo like a lot of modern animation does.

The potential here for using this tech as a force multiplier for small animation projects really shines through, and I really hope I'm just one of several attempting to use it for that purpose.

Music:

The song is "The Boys Have a Second Lead Pipe", one of my Suno creations. I was thinking of using Dinowave (Let's Dance To) but I'm saving that for a music video of live-action dinosovians.

Prompting:

You can tell by the screenshot above that my prompts have gotten... robust. Vidu's prompting system seems to understand things better when given tighter reigns (some AIs have the opposite effect), and takes information with time-codes semi-regularly, so my prompts are now more like:

low-angle shot, closeup, of a green tyrannosaurus-mad-scientist wearing a blue shirt and purple tie with white lab coat and a lavender octopus-woman with tentacles growing from her head, wearing a teal blouse, purple skirt, purple-gray pantyhose. they stand close to each other, arms crossed, laughing evilly. POV shot of them looming over the viewer menacingly. The background is a city, in the style of animation background images. 1986 vintage cel-shaded cartoon clip, a dinosaur-anthro wearing a lab coat, shirt and tie reaches into his coat with his right hand and pulls out a laser gun, he takes aim, points the laser gun at the camera and fires. The laser effect is short streaks of white energy with a purple glow. The whole clip has the look and feel of vintage 1986 action adventure cel-animated cartoons. The animation quality is high, with flawless motion and anatomy. animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, studio Ghibli, don bluth. BluRay remaster.

While others approach the scripted with time-code callouts for individual actions.

[spottedsnake]

if i’m being totally honest, i didn’t initially like this part of chapter 39, but it’s really grown on me after some more thought and shrue’s expansion on the idea.

to me it felt like an unnecessary simplification of the complex ethical questions that the podcast asks about the practice of sacrifice and how it fits into the world it’s built. “sacrifice is bad because it doesn’t work” is a less interesting claim to explore than “sacrifice is bad because of the moral implications of having a system that is designed to kill you if you step outside of the preconceived societal boundaries, even though it is significantly beneficial in some aspects of life.”

but looking back on this scene, i don’t really think that’s a fair assessment. what the slag executive is pointing to in this instance is that the practices of sacrifice and sainthood in the silt verses world have created an economic environment based on dangerous and unsustainable shortcuts.

the police force uses the cloak in order to reduce personnel costs without reducing workload. instead of developing more robust energy infrastructure, both the peninsula and the linger straits rely on the saint electric for their energy. even in this same episode there’s a saint of creativity created and used by a university, a place supposed to be where people are taught to think critically for themselves! and there’s a lot more examples of companies and individuals taking shortcuts like this because, well, that’s what they’re incentivized to do.

who is going to spend the time and money to develop better skills and technology when all you have to do is throw a person into the killing machine and you get the same if not better outcome?

if we suppose that the linger straits and the peninsula follow our own world’s pattern of economic and demographic development, they experienced a population boom during a period of technological advancement, decreasing the negative consequences of repeated sacrifices and forced sainthoods. now that their economies have somewhat stabilized, it’s reasonable to assume they had a corresponding drop in birth rate, changing the broad cost-benefit analysis of having an economy that runs on literal flesh and blood.

not to mention that now, the companies are experiencing diminishing and even negative returns. and being that they have tossed out every other tool in the toolbox, they are going to hammer this problem until they force it to be a nail. will a sacrifice for every floor of a building help its stability? maybe not, but it’ll probably be profitable. more sacrifices might help in the short term, but it’s not going to change the fact that capitalism relies on exponential growth, and their society cannot support that. any business that stops their worship to focus on other methods is probably not only angering a now very powerful god, but also severely handicapping themselves in the competitive market. so every corporation keeps throwing more resources and lives into a growing sinkhole, just to try to survive.

“we don’t know how to stop” is a very apt description of the current state of the silt verses economy, and also the problem that shrue and paige are answering. kill your gods; learn what you have lost and what you have abandoned.

[howtomuslim]

Reviving the Legacy of Waqf: A Forgotten Pillar of The Islamic Economy

In Islamic history, the waqf (plural: awqaf) represents a tradition that underpinned the development of Muslim societies. A practice rooted in faith and generosity, waqf was a system of endowments that provided cradle-to-grave support for communities, funding hospitals, schools, mosques, and even public infrastructure. Today, there is a renewed call to revive this practice, after it’s demise during the colonisation of Muslim lands, not only to sustain the Muslim community but to empower it to tackle modern challenges strategically.

The Concept of Waqf: A Gift for Eternity

At its core, waqf refers to the restriction of an asset for perpetual charitable use. Once designated as waqf, ownership of the asset is transferred to Allah, and its benefits are dedicated to the community. Unlike other forms of charity, such as zakat or sadaqah, waqf assets remain preserved, continuously generating benefits for specified causes. For instance, a piece of land could be endowed as a waqf to fund education, with rental income supporting schools indefinitely.

This system offers a unique form of sustainability, ensuring that the initial act of giving continues to yield rewards and benefits long after the donor’s lifetime. As the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, “When a person dies, their deeds come to an end except for three: ongoing charity, beneficial knowledge, and a righteous child who prays for them.” Waqf embodies this concept of ongoing charity.

Historical Significance of Waqf

The origins of waqf trace back to the Prophet’s time. One of the earliest examples is the endowment of a date orchard by a Companion, Abu Talhah, after the Quranic verse, “You will not attain righteousness until you spend from what you love” (3:92). The Prophet advised him to dedicate the orchard as a waqf, benefiting his family and the broader community, even today.

Over the centuries, awqaf played a critical role in Islamic civilisation. Universities like Al-Qarawiyyin and Al-Azhar, renowned as the oldest in the world, were funded through waqf. In the Ottoman era, the system became so robust that it supported individuals from birth to death. Hospitals, schools, mosques, and even coffins were funded through awqaf, showcasing its comprehensive impact.

Ibn Battuta, the famed traveler, marvelled at the diversity of awqaf during his visits to Damascus, where endowments funded everything from animal care to bridal jewellery for underprivileged women. Such was the creativity and scope of waqf that it became a model emulated by Western institutions like Oxford University, which built its endowment structure inspired by Islamic waqf practices.

The Decline During Colonialism

The systematic dismantling of waqf institutions began during colonial rule in the 18th and 19th centuries. Colonial powers recognized the financial independence and societal cohesion that awqaf provided to Muslim communities and sought to centralise control. In India, for instance, the British enacted the Waqf Act of 1861, seizing control of waqf boards and redirecting funds for colonial purposes. Similar strategies were employed in Algeria and other regions, leading to the decline of waqf and its institutions.

This loss of autonomy marked the beginning of a dependency on centralised state systems for services once provided by waqf. The transition undermined the sustainability and empowerment that the decentralised waqf system offered which catered to local needs and provided for those in need despite weak, oppressive or ineffectual governments.

Reviving Waqf in Modern Contexts

Today, organisations like the National Waqf are working to revive this forgotten tradition. The vision is to reintroduce waqf as a means of sustainable financing for community development. Modern waqf structures focus on pooling donations to invest in income-generating assets, such as properties. The returns are then distributed to fund causes like education, healthcare, environmental initiatives, and political advocacy.

For example, a donated property can be rented out, with proceeds reinvested into the waqf and/or used to support community projects. This model ensures that even small contributions can create long-term impact. A single donation grows perpetually, multiplying its benefits over generations.

Strategic Giving for a Better Future

Reviving waqf is not just about sustaining existing institutions; it is about empowering communities. By strategically allocating funds, waqf can address systemic issues like poverty, education inequality, and even political advocacy. For instance, a dedicated waqf could fund legal initiatives to defend marginalised communities or support organisations lobbying for global justice.

A Call to Action

This is a call for Muslims to shift their mindset from short-term charity to long-term sustainability. By investing in waqf, donors ensure their contributions continue to grow, benefiting countless lives and leaving a lasting legacy.

The revival of waqf is not merely a return to tradition; it is a bold step toward empowering Muslim communities to thrive in the modern world. As we rebuild this forgotten pillar of Islamic civilisation, we unlock the potential to create a future that reflects the best of our faith and values.

For more about Islam visit: https://www.howtomuslim.org

Islamic Resources: https://www.howtomuslim.org/catalogue

Why Islam: https://www.howtomuslim.org/why-islam

Who was Prophet Muhammed (PBUH): https://www.howtomuslim.org/prophet-muhammed

[le-trash-prince]

Fic Rec: do me a favor (and break my nose) by Thursday Fire

Fandom: Pit Babe Pairing: KimKenta Length: 7,978 words Rating: Mature

Summary: In which Kim accidentally acquires Kenta, and finds he’s got more on his hands than he anticipates.

trashprince notes: D/s verse in which Kim resolves to take care of Kenta after Tony’s death. This is only a couple of weeks old, but I’ve already lost track of how many times I’ve read it. Mind the tags.

Excerpt:

Kenta makes it three days. Only three days, before the panic sets in and he starts freaking out that he’ll die in Tony’s house, alone and with no one likely to find the body for weeks. Three days before the anxiety becomes so overwhelming that he’s able to convince himself to use his phone. Babe’s order didn’t say he couldn’t use the phone, Kenta tells himself. He just told him to go to Tony’s, and stay there, and he’s done that. He was good, he did what he was told, he hasn’t broken any rules. His phone is on the kitchen counter; Kenta stares at it until he feels as though his insides are liquifying, and then snatches it up and dials with trembling fingers. It rings and rings, a thin tinny noise that still sounds more robust than Kenta feels.  There’s no answer. He rings again. No answer. Rings again, no answer, again and again, until his hands are shaking so much he can hardly dial, fingers slipping all over the screen. And then just when he thinks no one will ever answer it, the ringing stops. “Hi,” Kim says. “Babe’s busy right now, but I can help, if you need it?”

[tearlessrainart]

I have made. a chart. (click through for fullsize to actually read it)

Ironically I did not like The Last Jedi at all, but the fathiers caught my imagination because I will glom on to any fantasy horse-adjacent creature you put in front of me no matter how weirdly utilized or poorly thought out it is. I've been reworking their visual design a little to make them less uncanny valley cgi and make them into something that fills the same aesthetic/cultural niche as a fancy sport horse, but it also bothered me that they were all the same color and not at all designed like a domestic animal even though they pretty clearly are. I get why they didn't spend time and budget on coloring them all uniquely for the approximately five minutes of screentime they had, but it was a waste of potential and also there's no way an animal bred entirely by ostentatious rich people with too much money and time on their hands doesn't have a robust community of color breeders and dubiously ethical halter lines and the general kind of fuckery you see with any animal that's been kept by humans for a while.

I primarily based their genetics on horses, but I also borrowed some from goats and sheep, took the piebald patterns mainly from deer, and made some of it up entirely (though outside the alchemy stuff I tried to keep everything plausible and cohesive). There are also genes horses have that fathiers don't, so it's not a direct 1:1 in either direction. This also isn't a comprehensive list of Every Possible Color Fathiers Come In, but rather all the color genes that can interact with each other in various ways. You can probably create some absolutely batshit-looking animals with this chart as well as very understated, mundane ones.

At some point I'll expand further on the very specific headcanons about ancient Sith and the history of fathiers overall that tie into all this (most of it is rooted in Old Republic era EU stuff since I don't really touch the disney-verse outside of stealing their creatures and I'm mainly in the SWTOR corner of the fandom), but that's one for my lore/oc blog. You can probably extrapolate the important bits just from reading through the chart if it interests you.

[painted-bees]

Hi!! Can I ask what happens at the festival? Do people recognize her music?

By this point, Raf and Magritte had composed a fair few tracks together, for fun. Most of it having been written and recorded during their year on Cortes Island. And so, they put together a setlist of these songs and rehearsed them as a three part band, which included Cortes.

This would be the first time Cortes accompanied them on stage (Raf insisted, just having Cortes involved does a lot to soothe his Anxieties), but Raf and Magritte had played together for shows prior to this...however, it had only ever been for very, very small venues, and under obscure ever-changing band names, without Raf himself ever explicitly having to identify himself to his audience. He had always been...rather covert.

Now, as part of his deal for getting Margie on the stage, his end of the bargain was to allow his name and likeness be used as a way of drawing in more attendees. He figured (and prefered) that he may as well do it as a bandmate to Magritte. And so, it was Stampy Ptarmigans ft. Rafael Ephrem. Just one band from a rather robust lineup of bands that would be playing during the weekend of the festival.

Being on stage, and everything around it, isn't difficult for Raf. One thing he kinda loathes to admit is that a part of him really does miss playing for large crowds. He likes putting on his stage persona and playing to an audience--he gets to be someone who doesn't really exist, playing for people who don't really exist. On stage, with the lights, it's hard to make out individual faces and expressions much of the time, and the people in the audience can be who ever he imagines them to be. It is like his life is a cartoon where he is simply a cartoon character playing to a cartoon audience, and all of it is within the realm of his control. When he was growing up, and as a teenager--being on stage in the middle of a live preformance was when he felt the safest.

But right before, and especially right after, was always the worst...the most uncomfortable. The scariest.

However, compared to what he was use to, rehearsals and the moments leading up to the show were quite different when Magritte and Cortes occupied the space where his parents/managers would have been. A lot of the energy he would have spent worrying about (and preemptively bracing for) the inevitable fallout of a less-than-perfect preformance was instead spent vibing with Cortes and assuring Magritte that they're just here to have a good time and have fun playing their silly little tunes same as they always have, and that folks in the audience are gonna enjoy it. After all, back when they first started meeting for their weekly jam sessions, one of the first tenants they agreed on was that they'd only play music together for as long as it was fun. They wouldn't be here, preparing to walk on stage together, if it wasn't fun to do so.

Thankfully, jitters aside, Magritte was eager and excited as always to just play music...and under such energizing circumstances! The lights, the VOLUME!! It's a lot more than she was use to, and despite her nerves, she couldn't stop smiling--so much that the muscles in her face hurt.

And it was fun. Their set list was an hour long, everything went well, and they had a blast playing. There had been a moment where Magritte skipped an entire verse of a song, and some clever improvisation was required to keep things moving forward in a way that felt pleasing and natural. But after the show, Magritte would cite that moment as her favorite part. Which is...more than a little refreshing from Raf's perspective, since those kinds of mistakes would usually mean a scathing lecture lasting into the earliest hours of the morning, followed by stricter hours of practise during the following weeks/months until the next major show.

But no. After the show, Magritte was on cloud 9, and would ride that high for months. The three of them would be remembered fondly by the audience, exactly the way they had hoped, with Raf's preformance being wholly overshadowed by his other two band members (especially the ""Icelandic"" one with the otherworldly vocals) and Magritte's Stampy Ptarmigans youtube channel enjoyed a healthy influx of enthusiastic new subscribers.

Certainly, there might have been people in the audience who recognized her from youtube and MySpace. But mostly, it was a fresh new audience hearing her work for the first time. And a lot of them decided they didn't want it to be the last time they'd ever hear her music.

All in all, a positive experience..! And certainly not the last of its kind to be enjoyed by our trio♡

[lavendergaaayze]

I've been thinking a lot about The Alchemy lately. One of the many, many things I love about Tay is how many different angles we can view songs from.

I have been toying with the idea that this song is about her preparing for her last beard with the ogre. miss ma'am loves to break records and she can do so with the heteronormative society and a big ol' distraction. there are a lot of meathead references in here too but just like So High School, i don't think it's positive or endearing.

this happens every few lifetimes

with so much death and rebirth in her work, I interpreted this as every bearding situation being a lifetime and now we're starting a new lifetime

these chemicals hit me like white wine

which chemicals? likely, the Forget Him medication from Fortnight MV. this can be the promise of success, this can be entering back into the closet; but essentially there had to have been an BIG incentive or push. and even moreso, it was something Tay really had to swallow but was not her choice--it was prescribed by the ward. and this "Forget Him drug" could bring forth Taylor Swift The Brand. Taylor Swift The Brand comes with a manic high, a hunger for success, a desire to push through whatever she needs to overcome. there's probably lots of spite in there too.

in addition, wine drunk is super different! wine brings a warm carelessness. personally, wine makes me feel like i'm a bad bitch and life isn't that serious.

what if i told you i'm back?

the hospital was a drag

worst sleep that i ever had

they let her out of the hospital, but only when she was medicated. she's "fixed"!

i circled you on the map

a TK reference because so many dummies said he put HER on the map (fucking as if). this is one of her little jabs at him saying, "nah, bro. i put YOU in the spotlight"

(note that these 4 lines feel like a conversation with someone that you're trying to prove something to)

i haven't come around in so long

but i'm coming back so strong

she hasn't had an in-your-face PR relationship for years. so this is her giving herself a little boost. i haven't done this in a while, but i can do this and i can do it even better than before. i feel this especially because it's right before the chorus where she goes:

so when i touch down

call the amateurs and cut 'em from the team

ditch the clowns, get the crown

another jab at her beards and at TK's sad attempts to get others to put him on the map. MH is an amateur, he did not lead Taylor to the success she was looking for. TK had no luck liking baddies instagram pictures to weasel his way into the industry. but who did that? Taylor Alison Swift: The Mastermind. note how she's focused on the crown, not the actual "muse"

Baby, I'm the one to beat

'Cause the sign on your heart

Said it's still reserved for me

i took this as a line to her fans. so many people tune in to the big headlines because we, as a society, have a weakness to be fascinated by/addicted to the drama. especially taylor swift drama! our hearts are still reserved for any juicy tea she might have

honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?

this feels like an act of acceptance and a little defeat. don't forget, taylor is still on those chemicals that hit her like white wine. so she succumbs to the fact that the world's biggest pop star and an award-winning NFL player would definitely make for lots of success. this is why she came back, to come out on top. i've seen others comment on the fact that she uses alchemy instead of chemistry. (they have the same end rhyme and the same syllables so alchemy was very intentional.) they're making gold out of robust situations, they're not sharing energy with one another.

hey, you, what if i told you we're cool?

that child's play back in school

is forgiven under my rule

i haven't come around in so long

but i'm making a comeback to where i belong

this next verse reminds me of the structure of the first verse. the first 3 lines feel like a sense of defending actions to someone else while the last two feel like another act of self-perseverance and having to hype herself up.

he jokes that, "it's heroin, but this time with an 'e'"

i really can't see this as anything other than a jab at the meathead. those illiterate tweets of his surfaced and we all found out he really is an idiot.

this line does confuse the hell out of me otherwise. if anyone has any thoughts i would love to hear!

where's the trophy? he just comes runnin' over to me

i know a lot of people find this endearing saying he chose her over the trophy. but i think it's Taylor asking "where's the trophy?" with her eyes on the prize still. and the dummy loses sight of what they are actually after

she's "high" on those Forget Him drugs throughout this whole song because she finishes the song with the same two lines she opened with.

but, yet, here we are again: swiffers thinking she's being cutesy with some dude but in reality this is about her and her success.

this song all feels like work. i don't know if anyone else played the alchemist game where you start with the most basic materials and have to make all kinds of substances, eventually getting to gold. and, man, was it challenging. just like i can imagine it's challenging to make this dirtbag into a "glamorous gentleman."

anyway! this was way more in depth than i thought it was going to be but i hope this leads to more confidence to post more OC! thanks for the read <3