#speculation publications

[duckprintspress]

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[lee-sanghyeok]

[herejusttosufferalong]

Today’s People magazine article says “girlfriend” this time vs “rumored girlfriend” like the pap photos. This is the hard launch.

I’ve heard from friends in the business that publications have to say “alleged” or “rumored” unless they have the confirmation/OK from the celebrity’s team.

"Rumored Girlfriend" is in the Headline

"...pair has not yet confirmed their relationship..."

Then they proceed with quite an assumption even though they just confirmed his team has not signed off on this article.

This one is crazy. A rumored/unconfirmed gf is now a soulmate???

What a crazy fucking reach to pad your article with so you can hit your required word count.

There is literally nothing he says that would even resemble him alluding to A when talking about a soulmate.

Ohhh, it all makes sense... Writer is fresh out of school/internship with no real accreditation to their name.

This is the type of shit you should expect from someone with the lack of experience listed below.

"She knows both broadcast and print journalism..."

Well I would hope fucking so... Lmfao

This was the most unserious article since the bot article insinuating folks may not know who Luke Newton is but would know his dick rider.

Mmhmm okayyy...

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I know you don't like discussing the muses but i love your takes and perspectives and i had to ask you about this. after listening to ttpd, did you have the impression that she really loved matty more than any of her exes/previous relationships?. And listening to the whole album as a whole would you call it the ''matty album'' or do you think there are more prominent themes in there than their period together?. (hope this doesn't bother you, feel free to delete if you don't feel like answering it)

hey anon! You're right, I don't really like to get into the muses as I don't really think there's anything to add to the conversation at this point, and ultimately I don't think it matters.

That being said, and with the caveat that I am not Taylor and I do not know Taylor so I cannot speak to her thoughts and can only make relatively educated guesses based on being an avid consumer of her work and a student of the human condition (lol), no I do not think Taylor loved Matty more than anyone else. I think there was maybe a brief period in the thick of things where she *thought* she did because she was not thinking clearly and was in full-on denial, but to me the message that is loud and clear in the album (and more or less explicitly stated in the epilogue) is that it was not any kind of real love affair. It was certainly infatuation and lust and the promise of something more, and there may have been some love as well, but he was in no way the love of her life by any measure.

I would call it a "Matty album" insofar as they're about events in which he was present, sure. But I feel it much more as a Taylor album, if that makes sense, even though I know that's a cop out because every album is to a degree. I can't explain it well, but I don't see TTPD as a Matty (or Joe) album in the way that I would maybe say Red is a "Jake" album or 1989 may be a "Harry" album or even Lover being a "Joe" album whatever, because even if they don't figure in all the songs, that kind of heartbreak permeates so much of the material.

The thing about TTPD and the Matty situation is that the Matty situation is really a Joe situation (which in some ways is actually partially a Jake situation). I always say I hate treating Taylor like a character so I hate speaking about her and her work in this way, but you don't get the Matty situation without the Joe situation precipitating it. It's @taylortruther's now-infamous donut vs. hole analogy. The reason Taylor makes the choices she does with Matty is directly tied to what happened with Joe that made her feel she needed to. Which is not to say Taylor isn't responsible for her own actions or doesn't have agency in her own life, but I mean it in that the situation in which she found herself with Joe, and the pain it caused, is what made the alternative so comforting and perhaps even necessary in her mind. It's why it makes it so hard to "paternity test" the album, because the stories are inherently intertwined and you don't get the former without the latter.

The major "theme" of the album to me is the loss of a very specific, very personal dream, and the way in which she lost it, and the way in which grieving that loss drove her to make the choices she did. We're all talking very delicately about it because it's a sensitive topic, but it's late on Friday and few people are going to see this, so I'm going to say it: it's the give you my wild, give you a child of it all. The yearning she expresses both overtly and sub-textually for having a family in the album is palpable in a very iykyk kind of way, and it's the realization that those plans are not going to come to fruition in the way she had once imagined that drives a lot of the pain she experiences, and makes her jump at the chance to find that again with someone else.

I started a draft post about the theme of womanhood and motherhood on TTPD three months ago that I never finished because I ran out of time and ran out of steam, but it was the most striking thing to me on the album, not because I didn't know that she wanted those things because that's been obvious for years (definitely since Lover, and again, peace put it all on the table), but because the vulnerability she expressed about it on the album is incredibly moving, and it's so generous of her to trust listeners with those feelings and experiences.

Again, it's the thirtysomething of it all.

She is in relationship A which she at one point believes is forever, one which she at one point believes is going to lead to marriage and children. She is so committed to that dream that she either ignores or tries to fix serious issues that may otherwise lead others to think the two people in the relationship are incompatible, both because she loves the person deeply and because she feels that this is meant to be the way she achieves that dream. She gives it her everything, and it still dies a slow, painful, onerous death, and she feels like it may take her along with it. The dream of getting married and presumably having a family gets taken off the table: how we don't know and will likely never know because that is private between the parties involved. All that matters in the context of the album is that those plans never come to fruition and never would.

Then you have relationship B, an old flame who knows just enough buttons to push both to trigger and to flatter. A person who she presumably trusts with very sensitive, personal information as her life slowly crumbles, and this person is telling her all the things she wants to hear because he knows about what is happening in relationship A because she's told him. Person in relationship B doesn't get an "in" with her and sell her this dream unless what happens in relationship A precedes it. It's not a grand love affair for the ages, it's not a mutual decision on building their own dream together. It's Person B learning about what is happening with Person A and saying "I can do that!" even if he can't or doesn't. The dream he sells her is a rental car; it's not his own, he's just borrowing it from someone else and selling it back to her.

And the reason she falls for it is because it is what she aches for the most in her personal life, and she is grappling with it disintegrating, so she (unfortunately for her) falls for the easy way out, and in turn sells herself a story about how this must be fated, and this must be meant to be, because this person wants all the same things she does and she didn't even have to bargain for it! Well, yes, because she fed him the dream in the first place. (Like a mark falling for a sleeper cell spy.) It's too good to be true because it isn't true. IMO Person B doesn't come running out of the gate with the marriage/baby/dream life promises unless he knows that is what she most desires. But what's left unsaid out of all of it is that: those dreams were her dreams because they were her dreams with Person A. It was a whole life they had together, and a whole life they had planned for in some fashion, and a whole life that has to be dismantled in the aftermath.

So all this to say, yes, on the surface, Matty is a "main character" on the album, but truly he's a side character to Taylor as the narrator and person experiencing it and Joe as the ghost bit-player-who-haunts-every-scene. (Again, I hate referring to real people as characters, it gives me the absolute ick, but in this case it's the only way to answer the question.) I jokingly call it the Matty album for shorthand or when I want to say something out of pocket, but really, it's a disservice to the album to say that because it's not a muse album as in it's about the romance (like, say, Red often is), it's about a soul-crushing heartbreak that goes beyond it. The romance is the symptom, not the cause.

The loss of youth is tied in with all this: she's not 22 anymore. She isn't even 32 anymore. She had a very specific idea of what her life was going to look like at this point and had planned for that life, and it goes up in smoke. But again, to bring the womanhood into it all: there is, unfortunately, a deadline for these things. You're with someone for over half a decade you think is going to be your life partner and father of your children and and then he's not. You spent half a decade building this relationship for it to crumble, but now you're in your mid-30s and you don't necessarily have another half-decade to build that trust and faith in someone else before being ready to start a family. And maybe you're scared that anyone else who may become your partner will need that much time to build that trust and faith, because that's kind of all you've ever know in relationships. But lo and behold, someone comes into your life you once had feelings for and maybe now do again and is offering you everything you want and thought you'd have by this point in your life right now. It feels like an elixir that as we find out is actually poison.

That youth is not just the chance for motherhood, but it's also the hopes and idealism and belief in the future that often gradually erodes as we age. But for Taylor as well, it's also tied into the trauma of what she went through particularly in 2016, which kicks off a lot of things on the album as well (her retreat, her relationship with Joe, the pivoting in her career, etc.). That event caused a pretty clear before/after in her life (like a few other events, I suspect), and another major theme in the album is her finally grappling with the full weight of that. They're all different branches of the same tree of the story of TTPD and her life.

I could talk about this stuff forever, but I'm going to stop here because it's long enough and I should save stuff for one of the dozens of drafts I have half-baked lol. But this is just something I needed to get off my chest perhaps.

[theneighborhoodwatch]

hi. it's 1 am here but i just had a Thought while rereading some old speculation and i wanted to write it down before i forget: you know how part of the horror of eddie's breakdown/dissociative episode at the end of the homewarming broadcast is eddie realizing for the first time that On Some Level, he is an object? something that cannot move or act on its own, created to be at the mercy of something much larger than him, etc etc. and y'know how the live action bits of that scene are Very similar, visually speaking, to the bug videos, which are all shot from wally's pov, with the unspoken implication being that this is just kind of how wally Exists, if not 24/7 then at least a significant amount of the time?

hear me out: what if wally just, like. doesn't think his neighbors are Real, in the same vein that he conceives of himself as a puppet rather than a person? yknow. they're fun to play with, and he's learned a lot from them, but the "friends" bit... i mean. you can't really make friends with cheap simulacrums of humanity being maneuvered around by the ones who are Actually real. friendship is more of an actor’s role to him than anything else.

what if that's why he's so attached to home; because home is so unlike any other living being in the town that they can Only be explained by being Real on some level, as far as wally is concerned? and most importantly: what's wally going to do when he realizes that his neighbors are, in fact, real? when he realizes that being a puppet and being a person are not mutually exclusive? what does that Do to a man's conscience after he's been diving head first into a series of sunk-cost fallacy interdimensional power plays with no regard for how it would affect them? (bc who worries about how their relationships would affect, like. idk their alexa.) how long would it even take him to accept this reality? how long would it take him to realize that this realness also applies to him?

i realize this is kind of a rehash of an OLD post of mine, but the key difference i'm trying to emphasize here is: that old post assumes that wally thinks of himself as a puppet and everyone else as people, but what i am suggesting Here is what if wally does not see any of home's residents as people, and that so happens to Include himself. the distinction is important, at least to me.

anyways. goodnight.

[amateurvoltaire]

The Deputy of Humanity

In August 1790, Robespierre, then deputy in the National Assembly, received a letter from a young man in Aisne. The subject of the letter was of little consequence in the grand scheme of things: the author was expressing his concern that the free monthly markets for grain and sheep in his village of Blérancourt might be moved to the rival village of Coucy.

The subject of the letter may have been trivial, but its author was not. Louis Antoine Saint-Just, not yet twenty-three, was quickly outgrowing local politics and had his eyes on debuting on the national stage. In around two years’ time, he would become one of Robespierre’s closest allies. But back in 1790, the young man only knew him “like God, through miracles” ("comme Dieu, par des merveilles"). This would be the first contact between the two men.

The letter has been widely translated, quoted, and speculated on. It is very well-written, with the effusive admiration and almost hero worship of the young man practically jumping off the page. Whether Saint-Just was entirely genuine or not is hardly consequential. Robespierre clearly found his admiration touching because he kept the letter until the end of his life.

The fact that Robespierre kept the letter is a sweet gesture that can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways. Perhaps he enjoyed the flattery, or maybe he wanted to keep a memento of the beginning of their friendship with Saint-Just. Maybe he simply forgot to throw it away. In my opinion, it's not very important.

What I find more interesting and revealing about Robespierre's character is that a young lieutenant colonel of the National Guard of the department of Aisne felt empowered to raise his provincial concerns to a deputy who wasn't even representing his constituency. Why would he do that? Setting aside Saint-Just's audacity and desire for recognition, the simple reason is that he knew he would be heard.

Since the days of the Estates General, Robespierre had not only been gaining popularity but was also notorious for standing up for the interests of the common man beyond his own province (later on department). For all the flattery, Saint-Just was right: Robespierre wasn’t only the deputy from Arras; he was “[the deputy] of humanity and the Republic (1)”. He frequently weighed in, as a dissenting voice, on matters of national importance, maintaining a consistent stance that always favoured the underdog. This was nothing new. His entire career in Arras had been built on helping the common man. On a national stage, he vocally continued that work.

He opposed the king's veto power over constitutional laws and emphasized the sovereignty of the nation over monarchical traditions. He also opposed the exclusion of "passive" citizens (2) from the National Guard and advocated for extending voting rights. All this, along with his defense of civic equality for various groups, including actors, Protestants, and Jews, solidified his position as a defender of the people.

Despite facing mockery from royalist publications and some of his peers, he remained steadfast in his dedication to the universal principles of the Revolution, with the most crucial principle being the sovereignty of the people. If the people are sovereign, then their grievances are significant. It's understandable that Saint-Just would reach out to him regarding the issue with the village market. He wasn't the only one.

For what it's worth, Robespierre probably didn’t intervene in the matter, but Blérancourt ultimately did retain its markets.

Translation (3)

Blérancourt, near Noyon, August 19, 1790

You who support the faltering homeland against the torrent of despotism and intrigue, you whom I know only, like God, through miracles; I address you, sir, to ask you to join me in saving my sad country.

The town of Coucy has transferred (so the rumour goes here) the free markets from the village of Blérancourt. Why should the cities swallow up the privileges of the countryside? Then, nothing will remain for the latter but the taille (direct tax) and taxes! Please, support with all your talent a petition that I am sending by the same mail, in which I ask for my inheritance to be joined to the national domains of the district so that my country may retain a privilege without which it must starve.

I do not know you, but you are a great man. You are not just the representative of a province; you are that of humanity and the Republic. Please ensure that my request is not scorned.

I have the honour of being, sir, your humble and obedient servant,

Saint-Just,

elector (4) in the department of Aisne.

Notes

(1) Here Saint-Just doesn't refer to Republic as a form of government, but uses the word as a substitute for nation/country. In 1790 France was a constitutional monarchy.

(2)Passive citizens were those who, for a variety of reasons (mostly tax related), were not allowed to vote. (3) The parts that are in bold, are underlined in the original . As usual, this is my own translation and you can surely find much better ones out there!

(4) Touchy subject...

(BONUS) The letter is Recto-Verso. The small red arrows in the image indicate where the back page starts. I edited the two sides in one image for ease of reading.

Source

I really like Saint-Just but his handwriting is just as bad as mine (yes. I can barely read mine either). The french text of the letter comes from:

Saint-Just, Louis Antoine Léon. Œuvres. Paris: Gallimard, 2014

[extraaa-30]

I'm a go3 ineffable looney tunes sex truther because truly nothing could be more Good Omens than Aziraphale and Crowley spending the entire apocalypse 2.0 failing to do literally anything (except each other)

they shall fuck nasty and break the power grid of London my liege

[weewoo911]

I need Hen & Chim shenanigans to take down Ortiz and get Gerrard out of there. I believe in the power of their goofy hijinks. I was thinking maybe with the Mara stuff that it might be too serious in tone to have silly shenanigans but then I remembered last time they were sneaking around like amateur detectives they were investigating a literal murderer

[raddestrose]

WAIT

SO HE ALWAYS LOVED HIM?

[lastthroes]

this was something noticed by a few others, but i don't think it ever reached tumblr

a certain someone (higuchi yoshito, a tales director) has been vaguely hinting at something at least since vesperia's anniversary, by making a tweet referencing what seemed to be yuri's cameo outfit of asch. at the time, you could also read on his bio「相変わら色々仕込み中。聖なる焔の燃えカスがやらなければいけないこと。」which also referenced asch's position in the story, with luke in opposition being called in the ancient language "the light of the sacred flame"

he updated the bio again and now it reads 「色々仕込み中。生きてゆく意味など超えた場所。」aka "various things are getting ready. a place past the meaning of life", which is also part of the anime ed's lyrics

i disregarded it as something random initially, but after yesterday's events maybe it's no mere coincidence... remaster incoming? something else?

it'd be so nice if abyss got the p3r treatment. won't happen, but a man can dream

[georgeharrisonsmiling]

how would you say lennison's trust with each other shifted over the years?

From what I've seen, the trust WITH each other didn't shift that much over the years. Neither of them were paranoid or afraid of being betrayed or purposely screwed over by the other, unlike the way they both were wary of Paul. Even if George ended up being the most affected by Klein, he didn't hold it against John and always talked enthusiastically about reuniting with him. That type of trust is also probably why John told Paul to stop dropping by his place while he also made George feel welcome during his visits.

Now, the trust IN each other did shift. Mainly because George realized that he couldn't rely on John to be there for him and he had to focus on putting his life in order by himself. Again, it doesn't seem like George held that against John after 1974, John just stopped being the type of friend George went to ask for help. The distance didn't help either. From his side, John seemed to resent that George didn't need him, why would George be his friend then? He still wanted to be that figure that George looked up to but he hadn't made a gesture to back that up in a decade.

I've read interviews of George where he talks about unconditional love and I think that's what he gave to John. He knew most of his faults, didn't agree with everything he was doing and knew he couldn't handle certain things but he loved John regardless and focused on his good qualities. John was not in a position to understand that type of acceptance, so he probably took George's book as proof that George had finally dropped him and lashed out.

[simpingnbitching]

the ultraman hype is getting to me

just watched ultraman: rising and now I really want a fic where kenji and ami and up going on a date somehow (or they just get closer because of all the personal interviews they’ve had) and he’s introduced to chiho and he’s just amazing with her

like, he’s able to handle playtime and potty breaks and whatever else chiho needs and ami is just like ‘how the fuck do you know how to do all this’ and kenji just has no way to respond without revealing emi and his identity as ultraman, so ami now believes that he does have a secret love child

this gets spilled later on to the tabloids and kenji is just drowning in all the confusion, and chiho gets mistaken for the secret love child

the rest of the fic is just kenji and ami dealing with the dating assumptions and kenji trying to explain that he does not have a secret love child let alone that it’s not chiho, and mina’s just teasing him

meanwhile the entire time while his dad is acting like he is shocked that kenji had an entire kid without him knowing

[charswithbatsmybeloved]

I think part of the reason Charles is so hesitant to open up about his dad's abuse of him is that he thinks it doesn't matter what happened to him. He's always so willing to put his own feelings to the side if someone else in his group is struggling openly as well, something that likely also stems from trauma. And with Edwin's willingness to completely brush off crystals struggles in episode 1 and 2 because he feels like they're small issues compared to his escape from hell, I imagine that this becomes a feedback loop between them where Charles may try to open up about his struggles, Edwin tries to empathize with his own lingering trauma from hell and his upbringing, but instead of giving Charles reassurance that he's not alone or perceiving Edwin's stories as supportive of his own sharing, it might come across like Edwin wanting to talk about his own feelings over Charles and Charles might take it as a sign to shut down his own thoughts to give support to his best friend.

I don't know that for sure, obviously, but it makes sense that their personalities are nearly perfect for each other but Charles's trauma bounces off Edwin's reaction to it in just the wrong way.

That combined with Charles reaction to his own father's actions. He may know his father treated him badly, and he didn't deserve it, but people in abusive situations often know they were treated more poorly than they deserve but can't act on those valid feelings without backlash from others or the abuser themself.

The culture of the 80's was not condusive to Charles processing his feelings or reflecting on the abuse he suffers, and that would go doubly if Charles feels like it doesn't matter post-mortem. I wonder if Charles' death is acting as a kind of escape for him, which gives him an excuse not to think about or process the abuse he suffered. Dying so young means he (technically) left the abuse behind, in a way. After all, his father can't get to him now, and he isn't close enough to his family to easily run into them as a ghost. So any lingering fear or anger towards the man, in charles' eyes, is wholly unnecessary because he no longer has to worry about being put in that situation again. And Charles wants to be positive and cheery and supportive of everyone, so continuing to think about something that makes him mad/upset/scared after he's left the situation and doesn't have anything to fear anymore wouldn't be on his to-do list.

[theneighborhoodwatch]

i think there’s something very funny (and exciting) about the fact that i have seen Insanely in-depth arguments for both “the WHRP isn’t real and it’s just wally/the puppets putting up a front to get people to listen to them” and “things like the guestbook doodle aren’t actually from wally and it’s just the WHRP roleplaying as him to get people’s attention.” that’s one hell of a coin toss.

[huntthemouse]

Evolved Mickey

202/365 #hunt the mouse

Also known as the Cavespinner, this evolved Mickey drinks from the glowing amoeba vats inside of cave systems using its proboscis, able to spin up large webs of material from its sac that is digested from its food source, creating shelter from larger predators.

I love speculative biology since it goes in a lot of really weird directions. This was kind of taking the rules from Wayne Barlow's Expedition and applying them to Mickey Mouse. No mouth, no eyes... bioluminescent for some reason...

I am making 365 new versions of Mickey Mouse for the public domain and releasing them under public domain all year long.

You can join the initiative to #hunt the mouse or suggest a theme yourself via my ask box.

[icecreambeach]

another observation from A Study in Scarlet: after the case has concluded, Watson reads in a newspaper (the Echo)...

"If the case has had no other effect, it, at least, brings out in the most striking manner the efficiency of our detective police force, and will serve as a lesson to all foreigners that they will do wisely to settle their feuds at home, and not to carry them on to British soil."

RICH STATEMENT from a country who brought countless """feuds""" to any foreign soil they could reach!!! bold declarations from the colonizers i'd say!!!!!