#thinking about… no i shan’t say

[angemal]

already thought mike ross was the brattiest puppyboy to ever exist and then I find out that on top of everything he has an oral fixation too???

[acebytaemin]

wait let’s pause and rewind back to this bc why does he know this like it’s the alphabet.

[the-chosen-half-of-one]

Is it really your favourite show if you’re not constantly warning your friends every second episode, “Okay, now this one’s kinda bad but—”

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

One day I’m going to finish that essay or whatever it was in my drafts that’s about the themes of womanhood/relationships/thirtysomething stuff and TTPD but since part of this discussion has been revived on the dash but also it’s Saturday so this won’t ruffle as many feathers, I think one thing that sometimes gets lost in the shuffle in the conversation about the muses and stories in the lyrics is just why the recurring theme of the broken dreams pops up all over the album, and why they permeate the discussion of both muses, if not *all* the muses in the album.

Not to project things on Taylor, but it feels pretty clear to me* that the dreams she’s talking about specifically are about having a family, and that is the through line in the album, and why the successive blows devastated her. (*I don’t want to presume that anyone else feels this way and this is just my interpretation etc.)

The suburban gothic allegory in Fortnight depicting a miserable, lonely marriage. The ring on the ring finger in TTPD making her explode with joy because it was a shorthand for lifelong commitment. “He saw forever so he smashed it up” in My Boy. “I’m pissed off you let me give you all that youth for free” and dying on the sacrificial altar in So Long London. Marrying her wild boy in But Daddy. “Get the matches, toss the ashes off the ledge” in Fresh Out the Slammer (as in, she burned her life down). “You shit-talked me under the table talking rings and talking cradles” in loml. “The deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling” in How Did It End. “Promises ocean deep and never to keep” in Peter. The allusion in The Manuscript that the man in question made her think he was in it for the potential of a serious commitment only for her to feel used when he moved on. And there are probably more examples I’m not thinking of off the top of my head here.

But what I’m trying to get at delicately is that from what she’s put down in TTPD, as well as what she’s put down in previous albums (“give you my wild, give you my child,” Paper Rings, Lover, renegade, YLM, etc.) building a life and a family with this person (Joe) was not only something she wanted, but seemingly deliberately planning and working towards. So in the death throes of the relationship, her grief was not just about things like losing someone she once loved, the breakdown of this relationship that was once comforting to her, what she gave up to make their life work, etc. but about this important thing she had dreamed of and what she seemed to feel was on the horizon. What I think I’m trying to say is that it had likely shifted at some point (even just based on the album pipeline) from a hypothetical “one day we’ll have ten kids and teach them how to dream” thing you wonder about with a partner to something that felt a lot more… tangible. (Again trying to be sensitive in my word choice/not project or assume things etc.)

I don’t want to make any accusations or assumptions on main, but I think those kind of life plans feeling within reach not only makes it understandable as to why someone would stay in a relationship whose cracks were turning into fault lines, but on the flip side why giving up on something that felt like it was on their doorstep would be so wholly devastating.

But it’s also why what happened in the two successive relationships *was* so devastating in the songs on the album, and why the Matty thing specifically was so twisted. He’d reentered her life and he’d insinuated himself back into her circle and gained her confidence which in turn led her to confide things in him (the “hostile takeovers” of it all, the whole bridge of The Smallest Man with its honey pot spy mission imagery in which like a mark he sweet talked her into sharing her most vulnerable, compromising “secrets” only to then turn it around to use her and ghost her like a trained operative). And given the way the family thing appears in both presumed storylines, it’s again because Muse #2 used the info gleaned about the life with Muse #1 to sell her a con about an alternate path to what she was mourning so deeply. (And why it’s such an unconscionable act because it’s manipulation, at least going by her own words about her experience of it. It’s as cavalier as the organ donor line in The Manuscript, with the same effect.)

The shittalking about rings and cradles is both of them (if not all of them) because in all cases, they ended up raising her hopes only to not plan on following through. One because he maybe couldn’t commit, one because maybe he was never serious about it. (And the one who did it first who was both 🥴.)

If I had to guess (because I am not Taylor so I will obviously never know any of this for sure besides picking up context clues), the dream was like a carrot dangling in her mind, feeling like this is what the “agony” to quote another one of her songs was for — like, things may be hard, but life is hard, and at least they were building towards *something* she felt they both wanted. And as that dream slipped through her fingers, it created a cascading series of events that crippled her emotionally for a time. So when she mourns that life in her songs, it’s almost like it’s the same dream, just in shifting contexts. The conman selling her dream back to her is comforting at first, but hits doubly hard and leaves her broke when it disappears.

The story throughout the muses on the album isn’t “she jumps to the person who promises her these things,” it’s that it’s a whole life she’s built that crumbles under the weight of reality knocking at the door and a foundation that shifts until it disintegrates. And losing that foundation and the dreams built upon it leaves her searching for answers in the wreckage — and looking elsewhere for clarity for a time. And it’s why it’s so hard to remove one muse from the other (or again, all of them), because that central driving force is used by each of them in different ways to build her up and take her down. And why working through the pain of one situation bleeds into that of another.

It’s hard to delve into this more without crossing boundaries or whatever, but it’s just such a palpable open wound in the album, but also why working through the pain in different contexts on TTPD brings to light all these different kinds of hurt but also the emotions that go along with them.

Anyway. That other essay will write itself at some point idk.

[emotoangel]

I am thinking impure thoughts

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

a lot of people carry around an assumption that a work of art which is “good” in certain ways is going to be received pleasurably (i’m using an extremely broad definition of pleasure here that encompasses things like art-induced moral discomfort or sadness don’t @ me) by, like, people at large. this comes up in two different areas of interest for me: on the one hand, People Having Takes On The Internet; on the other hand, discussions about pedagogy, particularly around writing. i have, i mean, a lot of different thoughts about this - still marveling over the interview with a book critic and harvard philosophy doctoral student i read where she casually espoused the belief that if people were simply taught better what makes art good they would like bad art less, which continues to strike me as one of the stupidest things i’ve ever seen a person i temporarily had a positive opinion of say - but like in pedagogical considerations for example something i had started to wonder about when i left the classroom was like… our writing instruction relied a lot on modeling. like, “notice how this published author does this thing; see how i try to do it also; now you try.” and i think that an unarticulated/unrecognized problem in that sort of modeling is that it kind of assumes the student finds pleasure in say a thorough visual description - that the student agrees “yes this part of what makes the book good.” (an adult can probably choose to learn craft lessons from a book they dislike - but i think that’s a tall order for a seven year old.) but not all of them do, and i picked description specifically because it’s something plenty of adult readers dislike as well - “too much description” is a common goodreads complaint! to me this is viscerally sort of insane because what are you even reading for then? but the answer is that they’re reading for different reasons than i am and i’ve never heard an argument i found compelling in favor of the idea that there are objectively better or worse things to seek from art (an area of life that quite literally doesn’t matter, which is precisely what gives it meaning, IMO). and also a surprising number of people very deep into art generally or of a particular kind seem ignorant of or opposed to the idea that, for example, someone who cares about a medium as an art form is probably going to have different criteria than a person who doesn’t care and just sometimes wants to go to the movies or see a book, and this is actually normal and not a problem to be solved. which i find strange. no real conclusion here except maybe an argument for spending more writing time in elementary school on things like learning what a complete sentence is and how to write one, which is a skill that will prove valuable regardless of personal tastes.

[zorosdimples]

zoro has brown nipples, an aquiline nose, and freckles dusting his face and shoulders that you can only see when you’re looking closely

[woof-verine]

ngllll i was working on an origins!wade getting shared by victor and logan fic months ago and now im having so many thoughts about finishing it 👀the victor/wade era might become real

I need more victor/wade fics soooo badly genuinely … and if I have to write them myself. well. so be it.

[sigurdjarlson]

I always found that sweet how a lot of the time in TLG Med would jump to reassure Khadgar or even apologize after snapping at him

And yet in some ways the cruelest thing Medivh said to Khadgar in my opinion was correcting him when he called Karazhan “Our Tower.” And reminding him he was there at his whim and he could send him away at any time.

And he never did apologize for that one and honestly I don’t really blame Med for that per se? It is his tower and Khadgar can’t tell him who is allowed there. What I mean is going by JUST the power dynamic they have as mentor-apprentice, Khadgar is absolutely out of line there

In some ways could have come off quite spoiled and entitled but the thing is I don’t think that was the case at all.

He’s become so comfortable in Karazhan he’d started thinking of it as his home. Then Medivh has in one conversation reminded him it very much was not his home and he could send him away at anytime if he so wished it

He’d finally found someone who cared about him, respected him and treated him as a person. He found a place where he felt he belonged for once in his life and…

No wonder he was so jealous of Garona for a while after that. He’d been reminded that all of it could be taken from him at any moment and here was someone stealing his Master’s attention.

Just thinking about how that jealousy so obviously comes with feeling like he’s not enough and insecurity about his place in Med’s life.

Just very interesting how I think it could very well have went over Med’s head as not that big of a deal too? One of those things he’d be like huh oh yeah I said that? Meanwhile Khadgar is spiraling about it

He could of also been absolutely aware of how harsh it was because Medivh does lash out like that on occasion (especially towards the end of the book as Sargeras gets harder and harder to fight) he can be a little shit we know this

(Don’t really blame him for that given being possessed by the demon lord Sargeras is probably just a teensy bit tiring /s)

Also seen valid and honestly very possibly canon interpretations where he’s also trying to push Khadgar away cuz he knows what’s coming and what Khadgar is going to have to do.

The more attached to him he is the more difficult it will be for Khadgar to do what needs to be done.

What better way to push someone away then hit them right where it hurts?

And yet even then I think those words hurt Khadgar deeper than he’ll ever know :(

[wouteke]

Matje thibaudium life has never been better.

[redtailfins]

johnny cage is literally everything you could want in a pathetic guy character. he’s an a-list celebrity on his way to becoming washed up. in the old timeline he’s ambiguously divorced from an unknown ex wife and married(?) to a bad bitch named sonya BLADE. if my girl’s last name was blade i would change my last name so fast. in the new timeline he is loudly onscreen divorced in like the fourth cutscene and then starts a homoerotic relationship with a guy who broke into his house to reclaim an ancestral sword johnny bought for 3 million dollars. god takes him to train with monks and he doesn’t even make the tournament. when said guy gets blinded saving johnny’s life he uses a piece of his armour as a makeshift blindfold, leads him around like a guide dog, and gives back his ancestral sword while the yaoi leitmotif plays. he starts making psyop movies to get people used to the idea that other dimensions exist and credits god in all of them. all his fight intros involve him flipping the bird. one of his intro lines to kenshi is a silence of the lambs reference. he has an ass the size of two planets. his real name is john carlton

[steddiesupportgroup]

Hm. For a mountain of reasons it looks like I won’t be watching s5

[seventh-district]

sometimes it’s late at night and you’re cleaning your room and you come across a few old black and white photos of a young girl and you stare at them for a long minute wondering how on earth they got lost in an old Kroger shopping bag with an unopened pack of cigarettes and a receipt dated 2017.

and you look at the girl in the pictures sat on the floor of someone’s home you don’t recognize, smiling and playing with a set of keys and a tiny part of you feels like it recognizes her but you aren’t sure.

and you flip the pictures over hoping to find some sort of annotation that would give you context and all you find is the year 1964 stamped in tiny font along the edge.

and you flip them back over and time stands still as you realize that the recognition you feel is because she looks so much like you once did and next thing you know your hands are sweating and shaking and you have to sit on the floor because you’re crying so hard because it hits you all at once that you’re looking at your mother.

[seveneyesoup]

do you think mina ever watched xena warrior princess. i know i keep making her have watched 90s shows but like

[eye-of-yelough]

ooowwwoughhhhh I’m cooking …! and the food is charred and inedible

uh fauxcest n rape mentions down there👇

[ringneckedpheasant]

another life saved by sub on sub action