#which is. not the case. BUT ALSO because he's the narrator i can have a lil more fun with in in that

[liedownquisition]

Ooh, care to share what are your opinions on the personality distinctions between pre-crisis Dick and Jason?

Okay so, I don't know how coherent my thought process here is going to be so bear with me, but there's a few things I want to acknowledge first and foremost because they play a SIGNIFICANT part in how each character is, well, characterized. I'm also going to try as best as I can to compare them at similar ages but, well, if you know anything about comics and also in light of some of the points I bring up in this post, I think you'll understand why that's so difficult.

Additionally, look. There are like... soooo many comics, yeah? I'm going to focus on characterization specifically in Detective/Batman comics because frankly I don't want to hunt down examples from every comic he's appeared in or have to deal with potentially conflicting characterizations from different titles, there's enough of that in just these two.

The biggest reason I say is that at the time that Robin was originally added to Detective comics (#38), it was still something of an anthology of multiple stories in one book. Batman's adventures took up something like 11-13 pages and were completely self-contained. The Batman comic was started, if I'm not mistaken, after Detective #39, and while it is (almost) completely devoted to Batman, it also contains multiple stories in one issue and each is largely self-contained. Conversely, by the time that Jason is introduced, most storylines bounce back and forth between Detective Comics and Batman, and often last for several issues each. It also takes up more of the Detective comics pages (I wanna say something like at least 16?) and only has 2-3 stories (often, actually, Green Arrow & Black Canary stories, lmao.) (If I'm not mistaken, I believe both Detective Comics and Batman released monthly but two weeks apart from each other, so you'd be able to get your Batman fix every two weeks? Or at least, that's how it was before they started bouncing storylines back and forth, but I have to assume it's something similar given the consistency with which the stories zig-zag.)

This means that generally speaking we spend a lot more time developing characters later on in the comics. Dick, for a long period of his run, I feel has a more implied personality than a displayed one, but what he does is also heavily informed by his role in the comic and his relationship with Bruce. When Jason comes in, his role and relationship is different and that also informs his characterization.

So, I guess, let's start with that.

So, first of all, Dick is never referred to by Bruce in Pre-Crisis with any familial language, nor does he refer to Bruce with any. We often like to use the modern comics' interpretation of their relationship as father and son, especially since DC has pivoted their market onto their superhero "families," and I'm not going to argue that the idea of raising a child from the age of, say, eight or nine up until adulthood is pretty parental. I've made these arguments before, but it's important context to understanding his "personality" that he's not treated like that in the actual writing.

Edit: I stand corrected on the "familial language" point. Unfortunately it looks like some of the issues listed here are ones I'd skipped because the image quality in the archive I was using was bad enough to give me a headache. Still, I don't really think he feels like a "child" in a majority of the cases that aren't literally centered on the idea of him being a child.

Dick was, from the get go, introduced to be Batman's partner, so his joining was a foregone conclusion they didn't waste too long deliberating. He was originally just supposed to be under Bat-Witpro but then Bruce activated turbo mode on his trauma projection beam and the rest is history:

Detective Comics #38

As far as either of them are concerned, they are each other's "best/closest friends," and as far as the narration uses, Dick is Bruce's aide or sometimes protege. It's not until some, what, few hundred comics later I think*? They'll start referencing him as Bruce's ward more often. *In Detective at least. Apparently I wasn't searching through Batman thoroughly enough and missed a few things, per above link.

Batman #3

Batman#359

Detective Comics#43, Batman#3

On a more... practical sense, you could say that Dick is the Watson to Bruce's Sherlock, albeit with an added flair of "training him to also be like Sherlock" kinda deal. This, imo, is reinforced with how often you see Bruce smoking a pipe while the two of them are talking, usually with Dick asking a lot of questions and Bruce answering them pretty authoritatively:

Batman#1

Contrast it to Jason, who literally the very next story after he's taken in by Bruce, starts referring to him as his "new father."

Detective Comics#526 (As a slight aside, another point to the, I suppose arguably "personality" differences here is that Bruce was going to send Dick back to Haly's, but Dick wanted to stay. Meanwhile Jason was the one suggesting he'd go back to Sloan Circus, and was diverted by Bruce's offer. He does also run away and go back to the circus later but we'll get to that)

Detective Comics #527 - I'd originally had two cuts from this issue including the previous one where Jason's saying "Batman's like a father to me now, I have to help him" but I ran out of images and decided if I'm sacrificing one that was the best option. Yes, I could theoretically use an image software to fuse some of these together. it's 3 AM, I'm not doing that.

Now, a not insignificant part of the above is later framed as Jason trying to prove himself so that Bruce will let him join him in his fight, but I'm going to be honest, given that Batman #361 (immediately prior to the above) has Jason enjoying an acrobatic routine with Bruce and then having a slight melancholy flashback about his parents being dead, I'm more inclined to believe that Jason scared of losing another parental figure so soon after losing the last ones, and he's clinging on to Bruce with all of his might because he's a scared child who's recently been uprooted from everything he's ever known.

It's not quite explicit, but as Jason notes that Batman had some clever tricks but that he'd needed Jason's help to win, it feels like Jason's trying to take control of the situation. His parents' deaths at Killer Croc's hands (Which were, tbh, largely Bruce's fault imo. He asked them, average & untrained civilians, to help him snoop around Croc's extortion outfit, and even lashed out at Dick when he suggested it was too dangerous for them. Yes, Bruce has a lot on his mind, but still) were completely out of Jason's hands. He couldn't even try to save them and didn't even find out they were dead until he was trying to warn Batman about a plot against him and overheard Batgirl telling Bruce about it, and, well, gestures above. He can't not want to save what little he does have left.

What all of the above really adds up to is that generally speaking even in his more "childish" moments, Dick is narratively handled as an adult. Yeah, he makes jokes and is dashingly daring, perhaps a bit more impulsive than Batman and occasionally damsel-ified, but he's not exactly that much more of a punster than Batman and his own quips tend to be.

And, I'll be honest, I can't help but wonder if the contrast between "miniature adult" Dick Grayson and "actually a kid" Jason Todd, is part of why he wasn't very well liked by some readers. After all, look at how a lot of people modernly react to more emotional younger characters like, say, Shinji from NGE or Steven from SU. When Dick is shown being emotional, idk, in the earlier comics it feels much more abbreviated and easy to gloss over. This applies to female characters as well, of course, and generally even moreso, but considering Jason's a boy character I felt relating it specifically to other boy characters who have that issue was more appropriate.

(The above gets worse when he's rebooted, because he IS definitely still framed as a child, with more volatile emotions like a child, but a child who "had to grow up too soon," which STILL reads differently from Dick being written effectively as a small adult.)

Anyways, as a result of this difference I'd like to make something clear: Dick Grayson has always been a far more serious character (personality-wise) than the cheery, bright colors of his costume and the concept of him as a circus performer might make him seem. And yes, even the puns, which at the time Bruce also made all the time. Dick, for the most part, is fairly content with his life until he gets older and starts butting heads with Bruce.

I do feel like in some ways it's a bit harder to really nail down a single, clear personality for him especially in the older comics, because there's not a lot of time spent exploring it, per the whole above thing on less pages and self-contained adventures. Honestly, if anyone wants to add on more panels and a more specific description for Dick, including outside these two titles, please feel free because I've been combing through hundreds of comics trying to find some more tangibly descriptive options for specific traits, but frankly the best panels I've found for him aren't until we get closer to, say, Detective #400 and such, which he's in college during and therefore I think is an unfair comparison.

But fundamentally, the core of Dick's personality is this, repeated at the beginning of nearly every issue, he's supposed to be more spur-of-the-moment and courageous (and quippy, but so is Bruce... until he starts sometimes randomly-but-not-always being a sourpuss about puns during Jason's run????). Where both are people of action, Robin lacks the "adult" patience, and making him a child is pretty much there as a means of excusing his impulsiveness. He's of course still incredibly clever, especially after Batman trained him, and is often sent on undercover missions alone.

And, y'know, an independent streak a mile wide. I would definitely say that in the long run he's a lot more mature than Jason, point blank, and he's pretty much got a handle on this whole crime fighter thing right outta the box as soon as he's trained up.

Jason though? Jason is frequently and consistently denied parts of Bruce's life in a way I would argue makes him crave a more dependent (and reliable) relationship:

Batman#363

Batman#395

If I had to really draw a strict line between the two on their biggest difference it's insecurity. Jason is full of it, and even after he becomes Robin he hinges so much on his relationship with Bruce and proving that he's important to Bruce, that he ultimately cripples is other relationships. (See: Rena)

Honestly, it's so weird to see Jason's writing here sometimes, because he'll have very natural misconceptions and feelings of discontent, and then it feels like it gets artificially tied to the fact that Bruce won't let him be Robin.

On the other hand, It feels very much like Jason won't settle for anything less than Bruce's full attention, and I can't say I entirely blame him: he's a kid and Bruce is all he has. With how much of Bruce's life is consistently upended by his role as a crimefighter... who would want to be only part of the life that gets upended? Who wouldn't want to feel more secure by knowing they aren't just being blown off? ... After all, we have a perfect example of this in Bruce's constant abandonment of Vicki Vale, which runs parallel to Jason's own insecurities.

First, third, and fourth are from Detective #530, second one is from Batman #364

Jason is deeply, deeply insecure, and, with the exception of anger issues (arguably), most of the things Jason gets accused of modernly, are actually more accurate for describing Pre-Crisis Jay: recklessness, a need to prove himself, being a bit of a glory-hog... which is all generally attributed to the fact that he's young, and it's forgivable for it... most of the time.

Honestly, I would go so far as to say that, with the exception of the victim-blamey tone they have about it and his motives, you could argue that if enough of the pre-crisis cases were considered canon then you could almost say they're right in ascribing those traits to him.

Batman #368

Detective #535* which, I'll say you could arguably take some of this with a grain of salt. Jason is hypnotized, but does later mention that he was only hypnotized to act certain ways at certain times and was able to decide for himself what to do outside of them.

But I'm going to reiterate: A lot of it feels like a need to have more control in his life, and a constant presence by Bruce's side. He wasn't there when his parents died, and found out by coincidental timing after the fact. I feel like he does tend to display some separation anxiety from Bruce, and is very worried about losing him.

This is a somewhat decent page about that from Detective #534 after he choked out Ivy (who'd previously been choking him out first) to save Batman:

(It was emphasized earlier in this same comic that Ivy had gone to a length that they'd likely need to "take the gloves off" and take extreme measures to stop her)

Despite being really excited to work with Batman, he very quickly learns the drawbacks in ways that cast him with a lot of self-doubt, including the above kidnapping from Manbat, another almost-kidnapping out-of-costume via Chimara, being assaulted because of Crazy Quilt's obsession and hatred for Robin specifically despite having no clue who the villain was and everyone assumes he's the same Robin as there's always been... Consequences Dick didn't struggle with nearly as much or, in some cases, never faced at all.

I definitely probably missed some stuff but at this point I don't think I'm making myself any more clear unless someone asks me about a specific point lmao.

[iscdisc]

2012 Oroku Saki ("The Shredder") Analysis / Also kind of Hamato Yoshi ("Master Splinter") too, but mainly Saki- Lmao || Part 2 !!

Here's Part two of my analysis on Oroku Saki and Hamato Yoshi within the 2012 series ! 👍✨

Are Hamato unreliable narrators within the story? Or the Foot Clan / Oroku?

This is kind of a yes and no thing for me personally. I feel like both sides have had their fair share of spreading misinformation or just not fully understanding certain events that occurred / painting them a particular way upon their recollection of them. My whole take on Hamato Uta and the centuries long Foot Clan / Hamato Clan fued shows this.

We already see this a lot with Shredder throughout the series as well, as he claims over and over again that Yoshi was the one who took Tang Shen's life even though the truth is that it was him all along. Telling himself this so much that he truly ends up believing it by the end of the series. He also blames Splinter for Karai's mutation, even though that was a tragedy of his own making since he's the one that put Karai in that position in the first place, not to mention the fact that he was the one that broke the chain that was suspending Karai over the mutagen vat himself.

However, I feel like we see this with Splinter during his recollection of past events as well.

When he's having his conversation with Karai during, "Vengeance is Mine" in Season 2, we are shown this shot which implies that Saki knowingly and deliberately attacked Yoshi AND Tang Shen during his fit of rage all those years ago. He also proceeds to claim that Saki deliberately burns their house down afterwards.

However, we know this isn't the case at all, since TOTY explicitly shows the chain of events that led to Tang Shen's death and you can see that this wasn't a deliberate action from Saki but rather a horrible circumstance. Both Yoshi and Saki witnessed Tang Shen walk away before they started their battle, so neither of them were expecting her to be there whatsoever. This is further reinforced by their shared shock at her death. We also see throughout their fight that the fire is caused directly from that altercation. Candles that were lit inside were being knocked over by them, which is what actually caused the fire that burned down Yoshi and Tang Shen's home.

I'm not saying Splinter necessarily lied to that the trauma of it all couldn't have caused Splinter to recall things poorly, since it's entirely plausible. It's also EXACTLY what Saki is doing / experiencing throughout the series. Cough cough. 🙃

And although I've already talked about it kind of extensively in the first part of this analysis, I feel like his relationship with Saki is another instance of him recalling things differently than how they actually were / happened. Which is how I want to pivot into talking about Splinter right now, since I'd like to give some attention to his "perception issue".

Hamato Yoshi / Master Splinter and his relationships with those around him:

I want to make it extensively clear that I personally really enjoy 2012 Splinter as a person and a character. I'm not saying that others can't dislike him or be critical of him or pick apart his character, because obviously you can and I would be super hypocritical for saying you can't considering that's what I do on a daily basis ! I'm also a firm believer of someone being critical of a character or a character's writing and that not necessarily meaning that they think the character is dogshit or an awful person necessarily. Sometimes being critical or analytical of something is how we express our love or interest for it (Like me with this entire decade old series- LMAO) ! But I just wanted to put that out there, since I'm not necessarily going to agree with any negativity or hate comments directed at 2012 Splinter as a character. I just blatantly disagree with most of them, and I think it's okay to agree to disagree if you feel that way. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way about my takes on 2012 April and how I'm pretty overly critical of her and don't really think the best of her canonically. 👍✨

With that out of the way, I really really like talking about Splinter's perspective and how different it feels from perspectivea of the people in his life that he specifically claims to love and care about very much ! It was such a perfect opportunity to really delve into his character and how his relationships, specifically his relationship with his brother Saki, plays such a big role in the overarching plot line that is the 2012 series !

From TOTY, we see the two most important relationships that he currently has in his life (Not discounting his daughter Miwa, but she's still an infant at this point so it's not like they've had many deep conversations- Lmao). Two relationships that, from his perspective, are relatively strong and healthy and wouldn't collapse in the near future whatsoever. I think it's safe to assume that prior to the events of TOTY, before all these issues started flaring up, that this was his mindset completely. I feel like this is also reflected in his mannerisms, and how he comes across so airy and carefree when talking to Saki during their conversation about Yokai with their Father. To Saki, he's being condescending and undermining his opinions / experiences yet again, but to Yoshi he's just shooting the shit with him and having a friendly brotherly interaction. Yoshi's disposition only shifts when Saki pushes further about never listening to others and of course when he brings Tang Shen into the equation. Something similar happens with Tang Shen as well. Yoshi's content and happy being with her and their daughter on their late night stroll, and it's not until Tang Shen brings up wanting to move away that Yoshi shifts once again.

Which leads me to wonder why in his eyes things are completely copesthetic until these problems come up? In both these instances, it seems as though Yoshi just expects them to "understand" rather than meeting them in the middle and actually having a conversation about these things. He wants his Brother to understand that he's always been there for him, despite Saki expressing the opposite which stems from lived experience it seems, and he wants his Wife to understand that he has responsibilities to this Clan and that he can't abandon them. Not that this is an excuse, because I absolutely don't think it is, but part of me feels like this is just a reflection of how he was raised by their Father, Hamato Uta. Where Yoshi was constantly forced to "just understand" when he was burdened with something or forced to bear something, like being the next head of the Clan. That he was "meant to understand" when his Father wouldn't give him the time of day because he was a busy man. Etc.

Through this, you can definitely draw a parallel between Yoshi / Splinter and Leo. Always feeling this need to be perfect, to maintain the vision that your Father has for you, to bear the burden of something that you didn't ask for and not expect any grace or understanding from others in return (Something Splinter expressed to Leo in, "New Girl in Town"-). To sacrifice your wants for what is needed of you, like your individualism and freedom to live your life outside of these responsibilities. I feel like this can be tied to Yoshi very well actually, since we don't exactly get a lot of insight on his feelings and opinions about being the next head of the Hamato Clan,, We honestly don't even know if that's something that he really even wanted. Not that it makes the scene any different, but it's interesting to view his exasperation with Tang Shen's asking to leave from that particular lens. How even if he does feel the same way she does and agrees with her completely, he doesn't believe he's allowed to say that. He doesn't feel like he's allowed to have any dreams or wants outside of this Clan, because those in it depend on him. Yoshi also brings up how this Clan is the last of its kind and that being a big reason why it must endure, which also adds a whole other level of stress,,

Like I said earlier, I don't think this excuses his poor management of his relationships with his Brother and his Wife, but I think it does give a little more insight (Or potential insight-) as to why that was. It also speaks volumes to the way Saki is so gentle and open-minded it seems compared to Yoshi, who comes off cold and emotionally unavailable, during this time (Primarily in his interactions with Tang Shen during TOTY-). In this way, I truly feel like Saki and Raph paralleled one another. I wouldn't be surprised if Saki was actually surprisingly in tune with nature and very respectful of the earth and the universe. That he felt much harder than most people, like Raph, which is why he was so emotionally reactive. That he was actually a lot more receptive than we ever got to know.

This moment from Season 2 ("Vengeance is Mine") always stuck out to me with Saki / Shredder for that very reason. When he's pleading with Karai and expressing how he doesn't want to lock her away (Even though he currently is- 💀 Lmao). Up until this point in the series, this had been the gentlest we had ever seen him. Like a part of his old self was really shining through in this moment,,

But circling back to Yoshi / Splinter, part of me wonders if he was somewhat aware of the state that his relationships were in-? Maybe he was already stressed enough that he just couldn't bring himself to address it without falling apart or feeling like the ground is caving underneath him. So to the detriment of his Brother and his Wife, he maintained this almost aloof attitude towards their concerns as a means of holding himself together. Maybe he didn't feel like he was strong enough to face these problems at the time. This issue clearly wasn't resolved by the time we reach the beginning of the events of the series either, since we can still see this very present in Splinter and how he behaves with his Sons. Regardless of my opinions about April's position here during this conversation (Lmao), I think her questioning of Splinter during the Season 1 finale is a great example of this. His tone and body language truly reflects something almost akin to escapism in my opinion. The way Leo had to pester him constantly for him to open up about Karai being his daughter. The way Splinter seemingly shut down after Karai got recaptured after she finally learned the truth and it seemed like she was within reach for the first time in ages, and Leo was constantly talking about how worried he was about their Father's mental well-being. How Splinter also became kind of closed off yet again after Karai's mutation (And if we're being entirely honest, I wouldn't be surprised if Splinter was a little upset with Leo during this time, which also contributed to his lack of communicating with him-) + a majority of Season 3 due to Karai's new situation. Like I brought up earlier about his upbringing, it seems like Splinter has a hard time really communicating about anything emotionally charged and would rather maintain this composed disposition than to actually confront these things and, quite honestly, cry...

He's eluded to having temperamental tendencies in the past (Like when he was trying to verbally express a lesson to Raph about managing anger in, "Turtle Temper"-), and I wouldn't be surprised if this is something that he's learned to suppress over time. Especially with the "guidance" (so to speak) of their Father, since that most likely contradicted with what he wanted for Yoshi if he were meant to be the next head of the Clan. But Yoshi's not a robot and he shouldn't have been treated like one (If any of my theory were to actually hold up-).

Reasons like this are exactly why I feel like this should have been Splinter's whole Character Arc throughout the 2012 series. How building his relationship with Saki once again would be both a literal battle and a mental / emotional battle. Shedding light on how difficult it can be to overcome emotional pain and mending relationships that you had a lot of fault in, even if you didn't mean it,,

This Character Development Arc absolutely should have started with his Sons (And Daughter, but given the events of the show, I think it would be more feasible to start with his Sons- Lmao) first and foremost. I think having some kind of epiphany through them about his relationships with those he cares about should have been the catalyst for him viewing this entire situation with Saki a completely different way. I think giving the Turtles an opportunity to be more openly honest about how they view him as a Father and how they feel he views them as his Sons would have been the best way to go about that. For Splinter to have a moment where he realizes that maybe the people that he loves and cares about in his life don't always know that he does. Maybe it's obvious to him, since it's his perspective and his actions, but it's not always obvious to them and he needs to consider that more. This should definitely cause him to make connections to his past with Tang Shen and Saki,, Realizing that there actually was some truth to Saki claiming that he doesn't care for anyone but himself. Understanding now why Tang Shen worried about whether or not he would've been a good Father to Miwa, especially in relation to his role in the Hamato Clan. This, of course, wasn't something that he wanted or meant to do, but it still happened,, And he has to face that now.

I also love how having this moment with his Sons would helped break some stigma around masculinity and the relationships that Fathers can have with their Sons. They should be allowed to be emotional together. They should be allowed to have meaningful conversations about their relationships,,

I also feel like this would have been a great way to have more of a discussion about Splinter's position as a Father, and the toll losing his first daughter and abruptly gaining four Sons had on him. I don't think anybody could cope with that very well, and I feel like that should have been reflected in his parenting and how he tackled this new family dynamic. That's honestly why I kind of enjoy the fact that Splinter isn't this "perfect Father", because why would he be? That would make no sense- He has as much growing to do as everybody else in the show- LMAO 😔👍

I think it would have been super interesting to see Yoshi and Saki interact with each other very differently throughout the series in small increments. In Season 1, during the finale, we can see Splinter try to converse with Shredder (Saki) rather than immediately jumping into combat. Again, I'm not saying this couldn't have just been a stall tactic on his end, but I like to think that maybe that was his attempt at trying to be more civil despite everything that's happened. Saki's the one hunting him down, not the other way around, you know? I would have liked to see way more interactions with Splinter and Saki where Splinter truly is just trying to talk to him and reach some kind of understanding. Naturally, this wouldn't yield any results since he hasn't done any reflecting about their positions and their past yet, so his approach would be ineffective. But after Splinter realizes the part that he's played in where they both are right now in their lives, I think he would get through to Saki a lot more. Being more willing to apologize. To understand why Saki is so upset, as opposed to before where he behaved as though he didn't understand why Saki was doing this. To admit that he didn't know about his post and Saki's Father, and he how should've tried harder to make him feel seen (Which I want to add that it would have been absolutely chef's kiss for us to see Splinter actively do more research into the Foot Caln and Hamato Clan past before approaching Saki and trying to fix things- It would truly show how much Splinter means what he's saying and that he actually cares-!) . To reaffirm to Saki that he's a human being just as much as he is, and that Saki has a right to exist without being labeled (Referring to his Foot Clan heritage-). Since Saki's predicament truly feels like the epitome of, "They labeled me a monster, so I became one.", you know?

I also think it would have been interesting for Splinter to grow to view his predicament in a positive way-! Like, if what had happened between him and Saki hadn't happened, he never would have been free from becoming the head of the Hamato Clan and he would have had to wear those metaphorical shackles for the rest of his life. In a way, Saki kind of saved him from that timeline, you know? Which obviously would be bittersweet considering the position that Saki is in currently and the fact that Tang Shen is gone now, but you know- 😭 Lmao

And from Saki's side, it would have been interesting to see him slowly give in to these attempts from Splinter to make amends and fix their relationship. Sparing him more and more despite how often he's threatening Splinter. There being a lot of hesitance in some of Saki's actions. During Season 3, when Splinter was mentally absent and reduced at a rat in the most literal sense ("Return to New York", where the second picture comes from-), what if Shredder had felt guilt and sorrow for him-? To see him in such a state was more painful than it was gratifying, you know? Imagine he took care of Splinter in secret during that time, as to avoid having a confusing and complicated conversation with his followers- It's small details like that that I think would have made all the difference.

This also makes me wish this particular moment from S4 went differently for Yoshi and Saki. For Yoshi to want to help his brother now more than ever, seeing how far he's plunged into this darkness. Saki needed someone . He needed help . He needed support and understanding and a real family .

This would've been such a great parallel to Karai as well, since she too needed help and genuine support,,

I just can't help but think about how great it would have been if Saki was allowed to change and heal alongside Yoshi. So they could be Brothers again. So Yoshi's children didn't have to be subjected to this pain and suffering through their situation anymore. They could all learn to be better from this fucked up situation, you know?

Instead of having one child, Saki can have five (As their Uncle, of course-) ! He can share so many things with them, things that he wanted to as a Father (Figure) but never could properly with Karai (Miwa) for the longest time. The Turtles and Karai can see how human Saki truly is, with Karai going through the motions alongside him given she walked his path the most and I'm sure she has her own set of insecurities that come with that. For Raph to feel the most seen by Karai and Saki in particular. To acknowledge just how much Saki's interactions with Yoshi had paralleled (And somewhat continue to parallel-) his own with Leo. For them find better ways of dealing with their emotional "sensitivity" (so to speak) but also not feel ashamed for being so emotionally intuitive either. For Saki to genuinely laugh for the first time in nearly a decade and a half because of Mikey. I bet Saki would have no problem openly gloating about Mikey's raw potential as a ninja / martial artist, perhaps being super eager to be a mentor for him ! For Donnie to have an Uncle that supports his efforts through giving him access to a top tier lab set up and genuinely showing how impressed he is at Donnie's abilities. For Donnie to have yeah another parental figure that shares in love of love / romance- I'm sure Saki would have many fond stories to share about Tang Shen,, For Yoshi and Saki to both encourage Karai and Leo's individuality and to make strong efforts to unteach any thoughts about barring burdens and heading clans (Which would apply to themselves just as much-). For Karai to have her Father and her Uncle in her life again and it not be for negative reasons. For all of them to visit Tang Shen's grave monthly,,

LIKE, HOW CAN YOU NOT WANT THIS FOR THEM?? 🗣️🗣️

Anyway, this is the conclusion of my analysis (For now anyway-) ! Thank you for reading, as always ! 😌👍✨

[sysig]

Silly goofy StanNarrator (Patreon)

[springcatalyst]

i was gonna go on a huge tangent in the post i just rbbed but it ended up being way long so i'm doing it here instead. still going in tags tho

[haggishlyhagging]

In 1847 the stereotypes for male and female writers were very rigid. Critics expected from a male writer strength, passion, and intellect, and from a woman writer they expected tact, refinement, and piety. They depended on these stereotypes so much, in fact, that they really didn't know how to proceed, what to say, or what to look for in a book if they were unsure of the author's sex.

So Jane Eyre created a tremendous sensation, and it was a problem for the Brontës. The name Currer Bell could be that of either a man or a woman and the narrator of Jane Eyre is Jane herself. The book is told as an autobiography. These things suggested that the author might have been a woman. On the other hand, the novel was considered to be excellent, strong, intelligent and, most of all, passionate. And therefore, the critics reasoned, it could not be written by a woman, and if it turned out that it was written by a woman, she had to be unnatural and perverted.

The reason for this is that the Victorians believed that decent women had no sexual feelings whatsoever—that they had sexual anesthesia. Therefore, when Jane says about Rochester that his touch "made her veins run fire, and her heart beat faster than she could count its throbs," the critics assumed this was a man writing about his sexual fantasies. If a woman was the author, then presumably she was writing from her own experience, and that was disgusting. In this case we can clearly see how women were not permitted the authority of their own experience if it happened to contradict the cultural stereotype.

But even more shocking than this to the Victorians was Jane's reply to Rochester, a very famous passage in the novel. He has told her he is going to marry another woman, an heiress, but that she can stay on as a servant. Jane answers him thus:

"I tell you I must go," I retorted, roused to something like passion. "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton, a machine without feeling and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I'm soulless and heartless? You think wrong. I have as much soul as you and full as much heart. And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should've made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionality, nor even of mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed through the grave and we stood at God's feet equal—as we are."

This splendid assertion violated not only the standards of sexual submission, which were believed to be women's duty and their punishment for Eve's crime, but it also went against standards of class submission, and obviously against religion. And this sort of rebellion was not feminine at all.

The reviews of Jane Eyre in 1847 and 1848 show how confused the critics were. Some of them said Currer Bell was a man. Some of them, including Thackeray, said a woman. One man, an American critic named Edgar Percy Whipple, said the Bells were a team, that Currer Bell was a woman who did the dainty parts of the book and brother Acton the rough parts. All kinds of circumstantial evidence were adduced to solve this problem, such as the details of housekeeping. Harriet Martineau said the book had to be the work of a woman or an upholsterer. And Lady Eastlake, who was a reviewer for one of the most prestigious journals, said it couldn't be a woman because no woman would dress her heroines in such outlandish clothes.

Eventually Charlotte Brontë revealed her identity, and then these attacks which had been general became personal. People introduced her as the author of a naughty book; they gossiped that she was Thackeray's mistress. They speculated on the causes of what they called "her alien and sour perspective on women." She felt during her entire short life that she was judged always on the basis of what was becoming in femininity and not as an artist.

-Elaine Showalter, ‘Women Writers and the Female Experience’ in Radical Feminism, Koedt et al (eds.)

[ozzgin]

I love your work! you have such a fun take on yandere's and I would love to see what kind of yandere hcs you could cook up for a host-club / paid to go on dates with you yandere ❤️ double points if you can make it so that the reader is never really one to cross a line or think the yandere really likes them...

If you don't want to do this prompt tho I completely understand ❤️

The idea makes me a little nostalgic as it gives me Ouran vibes. Also reminded me I've never played 'Men of Yoshiwara' past the prologue, which also has male courtesans ready to service you. In any case, it's definitely something I can expand on! :)

Yandere! Host x Reader

You've never considered yourself to be the type frequenting host clubs. Yet the loneliness is becoming noticeable and perhaps it's your lack of experience keeping you out of the dating scene. Mingling with paid professionals could prepare you for a future boyfriend. Except your assigned host has other plans in mind for you.

Content: gender neutral reader, inexperienced reader, obsessive behavior, manipulation

Ah, you definitely don't belong here. He can tell within seconds and he hasn't even reached the table yet. You're nervously readjusting the sleeves of your shirt - do you usually not wear such outfits? - and merely glance around the room for a brief moment before casting your eyes back down in sheepish modesty. Well, not necessarily a sight of unpreceded novelty. Many people are intrigued by the idea of a host club, so even just idle curiosity is enough incentive for one to end up among the charismatic crowd of paid affections. Today it's you who has stumbled into the hungry mouth of the wolf, and he happens to be the one to entertain you away from whatever unpleasantries are currently consuming you.

He gently stretches his slender fingers across your shoulder, a feathery touch light enough as to not startle you. You look up and acknowledge his presence, ready to stand up for introductions. His hold on you is firm, letting you know there is no need to leave the comfort of your sofa. "Now then, this isn't a job interview. You don't need to be so formal." He explains with a chuckle. You nod. Embarrassingly enough, your eyes are glued to his face for longer than what you'd consider polite admiration. A waste of good looks is your immediate thought. Surely someone as stunning as him could've worked as a model or actor. You suspect he isn't as enthusiastic to meet you as his voice leads one to believe, so the ability to pretend certainly isn't missing.

One peek at the table next to you, and the answer quickly presents itself. An older woman is inspecting the menu, surrounded by multiple bottles of champagne whose name even you recognize. You doubt the average acting career could provide this amount of luxury. The corners of your lips curl slightly upwards in a pitiful self awareness. Sadly for this guy, you're not a big spender. Whether he, too, is aware of this disappointing fact is impossible to tell. His handsome features remain cheerfully relaxed. "Tell me about yourself. What brings a darling like you here?" He inquires graciously, resting his chin on the back of his hands as he settles before you with an intent gaze.

You narrate your hardship: whether because of your looks or your awkwardness, something impedes you from having acquired a partner; and so the idea of gaining experience through less orthodox means came to fruition. Your host listens carefully, refilling your glass every now and then with a compassionate frown, lips parted in unspoken sympathy. Of course, he understands. Naturally. Once you're finished, he straightens himself in newfound determination: worry not, he will be your coach in love.

Thus begins the unusual partnership. You hadn't expected the man to readily agree to such a ridiculous request. A handful of visits have made it clear to you he's in high demand, most likely one of the top earners. Why would he waste his precious (and otherwise profitable) time with a humble customer like you? Maybe it's bad form to refuse lower paid offers too often, so he's keeping you for balance. You'll never know. His professionalism betrays no hint of annoyance.

You cannot help but marvel at his masterful lying. It becomes quite clear to you why so many people fall helplessly in love with paid hosts. Everything is executed with the utmost care for detail. The loving caress of the cheek he occasionally initiates, seemingly unprompted. The long, ardent stares into your eyes, as you must practice your eye contact. His hot lips brushing against your fingers while he spoils you with diminutives and sickly sweet words of appreciation.

You frequently have to remind yourself that everything is dictated by a contract. A code of conduct meant to be replicated for you and all other clients coming afterwards. How many other poor souls fawn over this alluring devil? You wouldn't want to burden him with an additional customer who forgets boundaries. You know your place too well.

Admirable manners. Frustratingly so. He wishes you'd just give in already and drop the shy act around him. You've caught his interest from the moment he spotted you in that cluttered, crowded room reeking of overpriced alcohol and solitude. Everything about you signaled blindingly clear: you're someone others can easily take advantage of. To think you would've landed right in his hands, to be molded as he pleases. The little sob story about being inexperienced with men, your clumsy attempts to follow along his flirts. Oh, you're just begging to be defiled. Again, and again and again, until there's nothing left of you. Then he'd caringly patch you back together and start anew. His very own corner of innocence.

The indecent daydreams are cut short when you proudly announce, during one of your dates, that you finally feel confident enough to pursue a genuine partner. You have booked a nice hotel room for this occasion; One last gesture of grandeur to show your gratitude for all the advice and love (even though it wasn't genuine). He's sitting on the edge of the plush mattress, dumbfounded, fiddling with the thick, ornate border of the bed runner. Huh? What the hell are you talking about? He's spent all this time getting to know you. What gets you flustered and bothered, what makes you excited, sad, anxious, angry, bored. He taught you how to come out of your shell. Why, so you can go ahead and waste yourself on some fucking idiot?

"My, aren't you eager. You haven't even had your first kiss." He says with a cheeky smile. "I think I can manage-" you want to say, but he quickly interrupts with a curt: "No one likes an amateur kisser". You're immediately silenced. His voice sounds cold, with a hint of anger in it. "I'm sorry, darling love, it's true." He resumes in an entirely different tonality, dragging his words with an eerie kindness attached to them. He tuts a little, turning towards you and patting his knees. There, there, don't look so deflated. If a simple observation like his hurt you this much, how would you handle the much meaner, downright heartless world out there?

Such is reality. Men are cruel and you had the bad luck to be born with a gentle heart. He delicately guides you to sit in his lap, cupping your burning face between his large hands. He knows this expression too well - you're humiliated. And thus, can he truly allow anyone else out there to see you so vulnerable like this? No, this kind of intimacy is reserved for him. You must understand. He has disciplined you to his liking, and simultaneously learned all the nooks and crannies of your being. It's too late to go back to a simple host and client relationship.

"Why don't you practice with me first, love?" He breaks the silence, placing his lips against your forehead in encouragement. You feel a sudden pressure faintly throbbing underneath you. "T-the kiss?" You ask hesitantly, trying to ignore the sensation and squirming in his tightening hold.

"Everything."

[qiu-yan]

haterisms beneath the cut

this hater poll brought to you by....a series of Bad Mcfucking Takes i had to read with my own eyeballs. seriously did we read the same book or not.

explanations:

"jiang cheng killed wei wuxian": jiang cheng did not kill wei wuxian in any version of the story. in mdzs wei wuxian died from backlash and in cql wei wuxin chose to let go of lan wangji after jiang cheng stabbed the cliff face. you can argue till the cows come home about how responsible jiang cheng is for wei wuxian's demise, but "jiang cheng killed wei wuxian" is just factually incorrect.

"jiang cheng abuses jin ling": jiang cheng does not abuse jin ling. first, the narration goes out of its way to establish that jiang cheng does not hit jin ling, specifically in a setting where hitting children is normalized and expected. in fact, wei wuxian says that jin ling is bratty specifically because he's never been hit. second, jin ling is also clearly comfortable talking back to jiang cheng and needling him in a way jiang cheng definitely was not with his own parents. even when jiang cheng is actively losing it when he captures wei wuxian in qinghe, jin ling remains completely unruffled - which speaks to how much jin ling takes for granted that he is safe with jiang cheng.

"jiang cheng could have easily helped the wen remnants, he just didn't": antis love to act like yunmeng jiang could have easily taken in the wemnants and jiang cheng simply chose not to because he was a hater/super jelly/various synonyms for ontologically evil. which is not the fucking case. learn to read. yunmeng jiang's own position post sunshot was very weak - they were a great sect in name only and were excluded from the alliance tying the three other great sects together - and jiang cheng could not politically afford to protect wei wuxian after wei wuxian alienated lanling jin. that's why jiang cheng says "if you insist on doing this, i can't protect you," and why wei wuxian then tells jiang cheng to let him go. because they both understand this. come on

"jiang cheng forced jiang yanli to marry jin zixuan": jiang yanli as a character makes so many sacrifices for her family and her brothers. her relationship with zixuan is like the one thing she chooses for herself. she loves him!! the tragedy in wei wuxian killing jin zixuan is that yanli genuinely loved zixuan!! ngl i think antis argue this purely to try to exonerate wei wuxian: if jiang yanli didn't love jin zixuan then wei wuxian donutting him isn't a problem anymore, apparently. this is the result of people thinking of jiang yanli as purely a thing for wei wuxian, rather than a human being in her own right.

"jiang cheng should have protected wei wuxian from yu ziyuan": this one is annoying because jiang cheng was also a child. when a child is abused, it is the fault of the abuser, not the fault of another child who is also subject to the whims of the abuser. come on.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Three AI insights for hard-charging, future-oriented smartypantses

MERE HOURS REMAIN for the Kickstarter for the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There’s also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Living in the age of AI hype makes demands on all of us to come up with smartypants prognostications about how AI is about to change everything forever, and wow, it's pretty amazing, huh?

AI pitchmen don't make it easy. They like to pile on the cognitive dissonance and demand that we all somehow resolve it. This is a thing cult leaders do, too – tell blatant and obvious lies to their followers. When a cult follower repeats the lie to others, they are demonstrating their loyalty, both to the leader and to themselves.

Over and over, the claims of AI pitchmen turn out to be blatant lies. This has been the case since at least the age of the Mechanical Turk, the 18th chess-playing automaton that was actually just a chess player crammed into the base of an elaborate puppet that was exhibited as an autonomous, intelligent robot.

The most prominent Mechanical Turk huckster is Elon Musk, who habitually, blatantly and repeatedly lies about AI. He's been promising "full self driving" Telsas in "one to two years" for more than a decade. Periodically, he'll "demonstrate" a car that's in full-self driving mode – which then turns out to be canned, recorded demo:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/

Musk even trotted an autonomous, humanoid robot on-stage at an investor presentation, failing to mention that this mechanical marvel was just a person in a robot suit:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/elon-musk-tesla-robot-optimus-ai

Now, Musk has announced that his junk-science neural interface company, Neuralink, has made the leap to implanting neural interface chips in a human brain. As Joan Westenberg writes, the press have repeated this claim as presumptively true, despite its wild implausibility:

https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/elon-musk-lies

Neuralink, after all, is a company notorious for mutilating primates in pursuit of showy, meaningless demos:

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/

I'm perfectly willing to believe that Musk would risk someone else's life to help him with this nonsense, because he doesn't see other people as real and deserving of compassion or empathy. But he's also profoundly lazy and is accustomed to a world that unquestioningly swallows his most outlandish pronouncements, so Occam's Razor dictates that the most likely explanation here is that he just made it up.

The odds that there's a human being beta-testing Musk's neural interface with the only brain they will ever have aren't zero. But I give it the same odds as the Raelians' claim to have cloned a human being:

https://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/03/cf.opinion.rael/

The human-in-a-robot-suit gambit is everywhere in AI hype. Cruise, GM's disgraced "robot taxi" company, had 1.5 remote operators for every one of the cars on the road. They used AI to replace a single, low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged, specialized technicians. Truly, it was a marvel.

Globalization is key to maintaining the guy-in-a-robot-suit phenomenon. Globalization gives AI pitchmen access to millions of low-waged workers who can pretend to be software programs, allowing us to pretend to have transcended the capitalism's exploitation trap. This is also a very old pattern – just a couple decades after the Mechanical Turk toured Europe, Thomas Jefferson returned from the continent with the dumbwaiter. Jefferson refined and installed these marvels, announcing to his dinner guests that they allowed him to replace his "servants" (that is, his slaves). Dumbwaiters don't replace slaves, of course – they just keep them out of sight:

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/behind-the-dumbwaiter/

So much AI turns out to be low-waged people in a call center in the Global South pretending to be robots that Indian techies have a joke about it: "AI stands for 'absent Indian'":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

A reader wrote to me this week. They're a multi-decade veteran of Amazon who had a fascinating tale about the launch of Amazon Go, the "fully automated" Amazon retail outlets that let you wander around, pick up goods and walk out again, while AI-enabled cameras totted up the goods in your basket and charged your card for them.

According to this reader, the AI cameras didn't work any better than Tesla's full-self driving mode, and had to be backstopped by a minimum of three camera operators in an Indian call center, "so that there could be a quorum system for deciding on a customer's activity – three autopilots good, two autopilots bad."

Amazon got a ton of press from the launch of the Amazon Go stores. A lot of it was very favorable, of course: Mister Market is insatiably horny for firing human beings and replacing them with robots, so any announcement that you've got a human-replacing robot is a surefire way to make Line Go Up. But there was also plenty of critical press about this – pieces that took Amazon to task for replacing human beings with robots.

What was missing from the criticism? Articles that said that Amazon was probably lying about its robots, that it had replaced low-waged clerks in the USA with even-lower-waged camera-jockeys in India.

Which is a shame, because that criticism would have hit Amazon where it hurts, right there in the ole Line Go Up. Amazon's stock price boost off the back of the Amazon Go announcements represented the market's bet that Amazon would evert out of cyberspace and fill all of our physical retail corridors with monopolistic robot stores, moated with IP that prevented other retailers from similarly slashing their wage bills. That unbridgeable moat would guarantee Amazon generations of monopoly rents, which it would share with any shareholders who piled into the stock at that moment.

See the difference? Criticize Amazon for its devastatingly effective automation and you help Amazon sell stock to suckers, which makes Amazon executives richer. Criticize Amazon for lying about its automation, and you clobber the personal net worth of the executives who spun up this lie, because their portfolios are full of Amazon stock:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Amazon Go didn't go. The hundreds of Amazon Go stores we were promised never materialized. There's an embarrassing rump of 25 of these things still around, which will doubtless be quietly shuttered in the years to come. But Amazon Go wasn't a failure. It allowed its architects to pocket massive capital gains on the way to building generational wealth and establishing a new permanent aristocracy of habitual bullshitters dressed up as high-tech wizards.

"Wizard" is the right word for it. The high-tech sector pretends to be science fiction, but it's usually fantasy. For a generation, America's largest tech firms peddled the dream of imminently establishing colonies on distant worlds or even traveling to other solar systems, something that is still so far in our future that it might well never come to pass:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

During the Space Age, we got the same kind of performative bullshit. On The Well David Gans mentioned hearing a promo on SiriusXM for a radio show with "the first AI co-host." To this, Craig L Maudlin replied, "Reminds me of fins on automobiles."

Yup, that's exactly it. An AI radio co-host is to artificial intelligence as a Cadillac Eldorado Biaritz tail-fin is to interstellar rocketry.

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

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/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

[physalian]

How to Make Your Writing Less Stiff 8 | "to-be" and auxiliary verbs

Part 7

Part 6

Part 1

As I go through editing my latest manuscript, I'm faced with the dilemma of when to drop a to-be verb, but also when to keep it and how the differences between the two in any given situation can make just a little... a little *garnish* of a difference.

To-be verbs:

Am, is, are, was, were; a subset of auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs:

To do, to be, to have (simplified)

Auxiliary verbs tend to indicate tense, but we use them more often as crutch verbs, filler verbs, because you can just conjugate the verb itself to the proper tense without the need of the auxiliary verb.

The advice generally goes to remove these, as they count as filler words when followed up by a second verb. Versus the TBV or AXV and an adjective.

He does look / He looks She is cooking / She cooks They were standing / They stood I am fishing / I fish She does cry / She cries We have slept / We slept

vs

He is afraid / He fears She was sorry / She regrets They were happy / They cheered I was confused / I hesitated

The verb+adjective combo can't so easily drop the verb without changing either the tone, the flow, or the actions of the characters, because one is an act of doing, and one is a state of being (for the most part, 'fear' is one of those exceptions in English).

You would have to rearrange the sentence, e.g. "I was confused by this" to "This confused me," to elimiate the TBV. Which, most of the time, does help the narrator feel less passive in the story, but, again, we're here for flavor text, not an MLA formatting guide.

So, sometimes the inclusion of the TBV or AXV adds subtext to the action itself.

"He does look" has slightly more urgency and weight than simply "he looks" because the AXV emphasizes that this is an action the actor might not have taken otherwise, for better or for worse.

In the silence, she stands there huffing, voice wrecked from crying as he heads for the open door. “Don’t you walk away from me.” He turns, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.” vs He does turn, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.”

The latter indicates that this might be hesitation or regret on his part, as opposed to a decisive, quick action, or that this is an action that she, the narrator, didn't expect him to take.

It also helps convey the tone of voice (or at least the general direction of the level of emotion in a voice). This absolutely varies on a case-by-case basis and the context of the action and should not be abused.

One of the juicier verbs for subtext here is "try"

He tries to coach her through how to do it properly. vs He does try to coach her through how to do it properly.

The former is direct and simple. He is attempting (he attempts) to help but through the act of "trying" and not "doing" there's an indication that she isn't getting it.

The latter is a little more hopeless, where he and she both know that whatever she's attempting to learn, she won't succeed, but he's doing it anyway. Maybe because he cares or he feels bad, or, that he wasn't going to help her, but something changed his mind.

Deciding when to use these helps convey the inner thoughts of non-narrating characters without head-hopping, and also shows the biases of the narrator.

Hope this helps!

[howtofightwrite]

Have you read GRRM books? He claims swords needed to be “especially designed for women’s hands” how true is this?

About as true as all of those, “girl guns.” Because, as you know, a woman cannot hold a Glock unless it's pink or sky blue. Which is to say, not even remotely true.

You might get a situation where a child would be unable to operate a weapon designed for adults because the grip is too cumbersome, but even this is going to be something of an outlier. Even years later the Nicholas Cage's line from Lord of War (2005) sticks with me, when describing the AK he narrates, “...so simple a child could use it, and they do.”

Just like basically any other common grip you encounter in your daily life, from screwdrivers to steering-wheels and cell phones, selling smaller, or more colorful ones, is strictly a marketing gimick.

Now, is a legitimate context, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the wielder's sex. If they had the money, the time, and the desire for a perfect grip, they might commission a smith to produce a grip specifically for their hand. Though, the only place I've ever come across this was in competitive fencing. I have seen cases where someone modifies their blade's grip with tape or other materials to better fit their hand, or the addition of a leather (usually shagreen) wrap over their grip, but even that is somewhat unusual. (Shagreen is leather from a shark or ray, and it grips the skin, making it easier to hold, especially when wet.)

Ironically, girl guns do illustrate the one case where have some weight: Weapons as fashion accessories.

I know I've complained about weapons (particularly handguns) as fashion accessories in previous posts, but the truth is that using weapons like this is not new behavior. In the early modern era, one of the ways the rising middle class liked to display their status was with a sidearm. (In this case, referring to a sidesword or, later, a rapier.) I've looked specifically into women carrying sidearms at that point in history, but it really would not surprise me in the least if they did, and if there were, that at least some of those swords were specifically designed to be more delicate and, “feminine,” per their owner's tastes. (Though, to be fair, a more delicate grip on a rapier would be fairly impressive, as the grips tend to be pretty thin.) This is a case where you might want to look into it further, if it really catches your interest, but I've never really run this down before.

If you're still dubious, feel free to wander into nearly any HEMA event, and you'll have a better than average chance of a woman being willing to prove this idea false with a Zweihander, that may in fact be taller than she is. (Historically, Zwiehanders could be over 2 meters long, and chances extremely good that you're shorter than 2 meters.)

I know I'm regurgitating previous posts here, but it really is worth remembering that swords are much lighter than people think. Zweihanders are some of the heaviest battlefield swords from history, and even the heaviest examples weigh less than 9lbs. Women in HEMA can, and do, use them effectively. Swords aren't about being big and heavy, they're about being a (in this case) seven foot long razor blade.

Since we're on the Zweihander specifically (and this may also apply for some of the other greatswords, such as the Scottish Claymore), this is a case where you might have a custom weapon forged for you. However, in this case, that's more about the right blade length, then worrying about the grip being too thick or too thin. Ideally, you want the blade length to match your height (roughly), this is because of the drills with the weapon itself, though you could adjust to a longer blade if that's what you had.

Now, to be clear, the idea of someone, particularly a noble, having a blade custom forged for them specifically isn't strange. That's something that did happen, both at the noble's request, and also as diplomatic gifts from other nations. Examples of the latter resulted in beautiful art pieces that you would never take into battle.

If you had a situation where you couldn't use a sword because the grip was too large (for, whatever reason), there are ways to fix that. In an ideal situation, you could simply pop off the pommel and grip, and then replace the grip with one that was a better fit to your hand. If the tang itself was the problem (this is the metal core of the grip, and is part of the blade, which the pommel attaches to), you might be able to shave (or file) down the tang, and then replace the grip with a new one, fitted to the now smaller tang. I'm not particularly wild about modifying the tang directly, simply because there is a (minor) risk of reducing the structural integrity of the sword in the process. Though, replacing the grip (especially on a sword with a threaded pommel) is very doable, and unless someone, somehow, screws up catastrophically, it should be a pretty trivial modification. (Again, replacing a sword's original grip with a new shagreen grip does make a lot of sense if the owner wants that improved grip.)

But, to the original question, it's not really a thing.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get access to new posts three days early, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’re already a Patron, thank you. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

[glitchinginthegarden]

Woke up with thoughts so here we go:

Johnny’s behavior early in the game makes 100% sense and I support it because it fits his character writing and situation.

I've been seeing a lot of newer cyberpunk players getting onto the "Johnny is an absolute piece of shit" / "why would anyone do anything for this douchebag" soapbox and they're entitled to that opinion BUT...

Coming from the perspective of having completed the game multiple times and done plenty of digging into the ttrpg stuff, it fits. We also have to keep in mind the unreliable narrator factor but that's another thing all together.

In the beginning (after the nightmare night), Johnny is playing the face of cool dude who's suddenly on V's side while actively attempting to manipulate them. This tracks for his character, yes, but also for Night City.

If their positions were swapped, I know for a fact my V would be doing the same exact thing to her unwilling host. Which, when you break it down, is simply an attempt to regain control over a situation where she has none.

I don't blame Johnny in the slightest for that at that point in the plot. It's in human nature to fight tooth and nail for survival. Why would that not extend to someone who's been trapped in soul prison for fifty years too?

He's just "escaped" Mikoshi only to wake up imprisoned (again) in the mind of a complete stranger. Can you blame him for trying to find an angle he can work there?

Because I don't.

Everything tells us yes, Johnny is an asshole who historically has generally only looked out for himself. But not that he's been actively or maliciously intent on causing harm to the people around him. He doesn't behave the way he does for the hell of it, he does it (in my opinion) because in the past, his flavor of manipulation has worked and usually gotten him what he wants.

Which brings me to another thing: I've also seen some comments about how he doesn't tell V certain things depending on how you talk to him. That he withholds more if V is nice than when they're more mean to him. And that also tracks for his character.

Now, I will say that I haven't played a lot of "be mean to Johnny" runs, but if he does drop more info for that, I'm not surprised. Case and point: the oil fields.

Johnny is a person who won't take shit seriously unless he gets a kick in the ass for his behavior. V has to call him on his bullshit to get that sweet approval boost for Don't Fear The Reaper. So, it ultimately it makes sense for him to cough up more information along the line if V isn't being nice about getting it or calls him on being a dodgy fuck. Johnny doesn't fuck with weak people unless he can use them, that's not a secret.

He's playing his cards close to his chest for the most part and it makes sense. He has sparingly few hands to play after 50 years in soul prison. Why would he show his spread to someone who, depending on where you are in the plot, ultimately wants to end him again and scrape him off their brain? He's trying to survive.

He's a disabled man with a grand total of eighty something years of untreated ptsd and people wonder why he's not forthcoming with what he knows? Of course he's not. It's unreasonable to expect that, and especially from a character like his.

The point I'm trying to get to here, I suppose, is that I support Johnny’s wrongs because they're in line with his character and that's part of what makes him so well written. Yes, he's an asshole. Yes, he manipulates and lies and cheats to serve his needs. But, c'mon, look at the whole picture. Look at the setting and the other players on the board, and tell me it doesn't make perfect sense.

[stumpyjoepete]

Thinking a bit more about Megalopolis (see prev post). It's not really the case that the script is as disjointed or schizophrenic as my post makes it out to be. The central plot is pretty simple: an egotistical city planner has an ambitious and futuristic vision for redeveloping the city, and he butts heads with the Mayor and others who oppose him in this. He ultimately succeeds in building his utopian "megalopolis". Everyone is happy, the end.

And yet.

There's this... intense centrifugal force that prevents everything from cohering into a unified whole. It's like a puzzle where all the pieces are cut from the same picture, but upon closer inspection, no two pieces quite fit together. Or like that collection of nonsensical objects. A fork where the tines and the handle are connected by a chain. A watering can with the spout facing the wrong way. A quick glance leaves you confused, and that confusion is only deepened by further contemplation.

I think this is especially clear in the pseudo-intellectualism of the title cards, narration, monologues, and quotations/references:

Laurence Fishburne does this heavy-handed narration at the beginning and end of the movie (and several random points in between). And there are these associated title cards that look like they were made by applying an "Ancient Rome" theme to some PowerPoint slides. "Or will we too fall victim, like old Rome, to the insatiable appetite for power of a few men?" My brother in Christ, you are making a movie where the hero is named Cesar, and the happy ending is when he successfully pulls a Robert Moses. This is not a story about power corrupting or good intentions going awry. What are you doing???

Cesar Catilina interrupts Mayor Cicero's speech (where he is introducing a plan to build a casino) in order to lay out an early plan for "megalopolis", which is an ambitious and long-term alternative to the (short-term) casino plan. He prefaces his megalopolis pitch by reciting the Hamlet soliloquy. What exactly does Coppola think "To Be Or Not To Be" is about? He must thinks it means, "I am a dark and brooding bad-boy intellectual", since it's hard to see how "I'd like to kill myself, but I fear death" fits into an argument about the importance of long-term thinking in urban planning.

Cesar says several negative things about "civilization". "[Imagine] humanity as an old tree with one misguided branch called civilization... going nowhere." (Shot of notebook shows an illustration with 'war' and 'cruelty' offshoots from said branch.) "Emerson said the end of the human race will be that we'll eventually die of civilization." (Note: unsourced, probably fake quote.) "Civilization itself remains the great enemy of mankind." Umm... you're an urban planner! You're doing a high modernism. What exactly does it mean for you to call civilization the enemy? Is "megalopolis" somehow anti-civilization because it looks like a Georgia O'Keefe painting instead of a bunch of straight lines and right angles? Will the "war" and "cruelty" branches wither and die when buildings have labia?

Also, there's this amazing line read that completely inverts the meaning of a fake Marcus Aurelius quote (the quote was attributed to him by Tolstoy but is not actually something he said). "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape... finding yourself in the ranks of the insane." Why did you put in that pause??? Fake Marcus Aurelius is turning in his grave! You're supposed to be fleeing FROM the ranks of the insane! I suppose this isn't really inconsistent with the characterization of Cesar, it's just such a fucking batshit thing to say.

All of the cargo-cult intellectualism listed above could perhaps be excused if the vision that the film is supposedly about had any content whatsoever. Or, alternatively, if the movie was about something more substantive, and the vacuous megalopolis vision took place off-screen in an epilogue, like the "happily ever after" of a children's story. But no! The movie repeatedly interrupts the plot to grab you by the shoulders and scream in your face: "I have a vision! For the future!". And then--now that it has your undivided attention--it shits the bed like a man who has just polished off an entire bag of sugar-free gummy bears and washed them down with a fistful of Ambien:

"Conversation isn't enough. It's the questions that lead it to the next step. But initially, you have to have a conversation. The city itself is immaterial, but they're talking about it for the first time. And it's not just about us talking about it. It's the need to talk about it. It's as urgent to us as air and water."

"Mr. Catalina, you said that as we jump into the future, we should do so unafraid. But what if when we do jump into the future, there is something to be afraid of?" "Well, there's nothing to be afraid of if you love, or have loved. It's an unstoppable force. It's unbreakable. It has no limits. It's within us. It's around us. And it's stretched throughout time. It's nothing you can touch. Yet it guides every decision that we make. But we do have the obligation to each other to ask questions of one another. What can we do? Is this society, is this way we're living, the only one that's available to us? And when we ask these questions, when there's a dialogue about them, that basically is a utopia."

After the revolution, we won't have conflicts anymore; we'll have dialogue instead. We won't have a need for the "jobs" and "sanitation" of "now"; we'll have the "imperishable" "dreams" of "forever". We won't have problems that need solving; we'll all be too busy asking each other questions. Now, if everyone could just shut up and get the hell out of the way and let Cesar implement his vision, then "everyone" will soon be "creating together, learning together, perfecting body and mind." A chorus of children's voices gradually morphing into Laurence Fishburne's, chanting, "One Earth, indivisible, with long life, education and justice for all." It's eschatological anti-politics made entirely from cotton candy. Please, for the love of God, stop making Adam Driver monologue at me! Let's get back to Aubrey Plaza stepping on horny fascist Shia LaBeouf!

The incoherence of Megalopolis's vision is compounded by how anachronistic its depiction of our fallen world is. There are some half-hearted (and ham-fisted) gestures in the Clodio sub-plot towards the dangers of Trumpian populism, but the script was first written in the 80's, and it's extremely obvious that Coppola is writing about New York City in the preceding several decades. The city's finances are in dire straights. (There's literally a "Ford Tells City: Drop Dead" reference!) The city is full of slums, the streets are full of crime, and the elites are all decadent. (For Coppola, decadence means that ladies are doing cocaine and smooching each other in the cluh-ub.) The main character is Neo-Roman Robert Moses, and the conflict of the film is about urban renewal. In case you, like Mr. Coppola, have not been made aware, slum clearance is not a major political issue in 2020's Manhattan.

Two thirds of the way through the movie, a falling Soviet satellite provides a deus ex machina, blowing up the financial district and clearing space for megalopolis to take its place. Ironically, a previous attempt to produce the film came to its abrupt end when two planes flew into some buildings in the financial district. Perhaps you heard about it. The financial backers of the film at the time considered Megalopolis's plot a bit too close to current events for comfort and withdrew their support.

But Coppola's depiction of Manhattan was already decades out of date by then. Moses stepped down in '60. Jacobs' book railing against urban renewal came out in '61. The Power Broker came out in '74. One presumes popular opinion of Robert Moses soured in the following years. The crisis of the city's finances that peaked in '75 was over by '81 when NYC balanced its budget and reentered the bond market. The crime wave of the 70's and 80's had receded by the year 2000. The demand for housing in NYC proper is as high as it ever has been, and it's only getting higher. Megalopolis imagines America as an incoherent mishmash of several decades of mid-century NYC, dressed up in the toga of the late Roman Republic, calling out for (Robert) Moses to part the slums and take us into a promised land that is literally beyond any description, and whose only concrete feature seems to be glowing people-movers.

A Robert Moses with the power to stop time, at that!

Oh, did I forget to mention that part? Cesar discovers he has the power to stop time in the opening scene of the film. I forgot because it's literally irrelevant to the plot. Time stops a few times, and then it starts back up again, and the events of the film just plod inexorably forward. For a movie as temporally dislocated as Metropolis, perhaps that's just as well.

[princeoftheeternalbog]

Would op boys catch you if you fell? Lets find out next time on dragonball- no sorry it just reminded me of that narrator ANYWAYS.

I only did boys because i didnt have much inspi for Nami and Robin so i decided to wait until i do cos I don't wanna half arse stuff.

So anyways I feel like I saw someone do this idea already but it might've been just one character like a law x reader? I'm not sure but I would love to tag them so if you know please tell me ! I will also try to make sure mine is different :p.

Luffy

Depends. Like if he's fighting or eating then probably not but if he thinks you might get hurt then he will 100% attempt to catch you. Key word being attempt. Poor boy probably makes the fall 10x worse, like if you trip on one step you're suddenly falling down the entire flight of stairs with a weight on top of you. He will apologise though so at least there's that.

Zoro

He always catches you. Or prevents the fall in the first place. He tells himself it's so you're not unnecessarily out of commission for a fight but really he's a huge softie. Though he always catches you really ungracefully, llike there’s no princess carrying here, he's holding you upside down by the ankle with one hand fr. He scolds you every time too like- "Why do you never watch where you're going" or "Tie your shoes next time idiot", which you should hear as "I can't stand watching you get hurt". Cutie:(

Sanji

Oh you know he does. He lives for romance and what's more romantic than saving your beloved from certain doom (tripping on a rock). Oh he also does it in the most dramatic way possible, he'd rather throw himself to the ground underneath you then let you hit the floor, he's doing twirls, picking you up with one arm, occasionally will throw you in the air first so he can rearrange what he's holding. Menace tbh, like he's just obsessed with teasing you in any way possible.

Usopp

Another one who tries his best…tries🙁. He's always so dramatic about it too, he literally screams your name like you're in a horror movie and everyone is always like "WHAT'S WRONG?!" and Usopps just "Oh they tripped on a step". He either injures one of you in his attempt to catch you OR you both end up in the most compromising positions just as someone walks past . He goes so red trying to explain the situation while also trying to check if youre okay😭.

Franky

Oh every time and it’s smooth as hell every single time. Says super cheesy lines every time like “OWWWW GUESS YOU FELL FOR ME BABE”, and he gets sparkly eyed every time, he loves romance as a genre and finds it superrrrrrrr(😚) cute when something happens that matches a trope he's read. If he didn't catch you he'd probably panic and constantly apologise but just give him a kiss and he'll forget about it soon enough.

Brook

Catches you every time, really gently and really romantically. Instead of just full on catching you, he'll purposefully slow your momentum to minimise injuries in case his attempt at grabbing you fails because then you'd both fall and he'd rather not. Like if you trip into him then he'll pull you both into a delicate spin type of dancing and you're like huh??? He thinks its a really cute trait to be honest but it also makes him really worried about your safety so he likes to keep one hand on you at all times.

Jinbei

Catches you as often as he can, like he won't sprint across the ship to stop you from falling but as long as you're in his reach you will never hit the ground. And he always catches you really gently like you barely feel the impact so sometimes you won't even notice you've tripped until later when you see the scuff on your shoe or something. He really likes holding your hand to make sure you ‘keep your balance’.

Law

He doesn't want to look soft so he tries to force himself not to catch you for just harmless falls...yeah no that doesn't work. As soon as he sees you losing balance you hear that ever familiar room, shambles and then you're in his arms. If it's later in your relationship then he's a menace, he will use this to tease you, like "Oh. Looks like an angel fell into my arms" with this stupid ass smug smirk. He's just really obsessed with you.

Kidd

Catches you most of the time unless it's gonna be really funny. Also he catches you super awkwardly, like he's so obsessed with you but he never knows where to put his hands because hes not used to giving affection so it's like just in the most ungraceful ways. You are literally being held up by his arm around your thigh or something and you're like what the fuck and he's just stood there 🧍🏻‍♀️.

Killer

Prevents the tripping and catches you if necessary. But if you're too clumsy then he just starts getting huffy and hauls you up into his arms so there's no risk of you falling whatsover...and then you bang your head against the ceiling- He probably feels so bad if you get hurt because of him to be honest, he tries so hard to make you happy yk. Anyways at some point he just starts adding cushion to all the potentially harmful areas on the ship so even if you do fall it doesn't hurt.

[sirfrogsworth]

Even though the frenetic pace stresses me out I seem to keep watching Mr. Beast videos out of curiosity. My brain just wants to figure out why people have chosen him as the most popular YouTuber in existence.

Unrelated to that puzzle, I did notice something else weird.

I had to reduce the volume on my A/V receiver about 10 decibels to bring a Mr. Beast video in line with almost all other content on YouTube.

This is weird because YouTube has a maximum LUFS and if you go beyond your LUFS... you will get deLUF'd.

YouTube will automatically reduce the average volume of your video if you get louder than a standard volume they have chosen.

So how in the world was Mr. Beast getting an extra 10 decibels of volume into his video?

I thought perhaps it was a conspiracy. He is YouTube's big money maker so maybe they were allowing him extra volume and not reducing his LUFS.

So... I tested his LUFS.

YouTube caps the LUFS at -14 (it's a confusing scale that uses negative values) and he seems to mix his videos so he hits EXACTLY that. There are brief moments when he gets an extra 7 decibels of volume but still manages to fall within tolerance over the entire length of the video. But he also makes the volume of everything in the video loud. He takes no advantage of dynamic range. His narration is just as loud as his explosion sound effects.

And if you look at an MKBHD video (which has very good sound and more tolerable volume levels) you can see he mixes things to never quite max out. Even his short maximums don't go more than 4 decibels over the standard of -14.

In any case, it seems there isn't a Mr. Beast LUFS conspiracy, but he certainly juices his volume levels to be as loud as possible without breaking YouTube's rules.

I'm sure he does this for a reason but I'm not entirely sure what that is. Commercials do this to grab your attention, but that works because you go from a lower volume to a higher volume. This is just sustained volume throughout the entire video.

I guess just add it to the list of things that makes him a bit obnoxious.

[gentrychild]

BNHA 407 : AFO is a lying liar who lies

Today is a very sad day because I am about to do something I genuinely dislike: I am about to defend All for One. In order to cope, I shall make fun of him the whole time.

AFO and Yoichi's backstory is finally out, with AFO narrating it, and there are two possibilities: he is either completely lying about it (boring) or he is lying a little about it (very in-character for him) because he is also lying to himself.

Lie number 1: AFO was born evil.

The narrator (AFO, seriously, it's AFO) says things such as "The baby drained the lifeforce of both his mom and his brother.", "It was born an arrogant baby." and such but it really reads at AFO villifying himself to add to his own legend.

That's what babies do. Children, before they're born, kinda have to take their strength from their mother. That's why pregnant people aren't supposed to do anything taxing.

AFO and Yoichi's mother didn't die because baby AFO drained her like a vampire. She died because she was a homeless woman who had access to nothing and had to go in labor alone.

Same thing here: during twin birth, a twin is often bigger than the other (well, probably not to extent of Yoichi and AFO, but you get my point).

Lie number 2: AFO, as a demon baby, is shown killing for no reason, just because he can.

(First slaughter by Baby AFO shown in that chapter.)

There are two things that are strange in this scene (apart from... you know.... a baby murdering people...)

AFO had no reason to go after them because they don't have any quirks to steal.

It makes no sense for someone to attack a group of people with nothing to gain. I doubt that's the kind of behavior you have when you're in survival mode as you're barely surviving in the street.

However, a previous panel points at some context we might be missing.

The same panel that indicates that those guys don't have a quirk to steal also shows that they are wiling to do some "preventive attack" on a bunch of quirked people who might or might not be those who assaulted a protest group (reminder that in this context, that protest group are protesting the rights for quirked people to exist).

I could be wrong but odds are that they did something to be qualified as a threat to All for One and we are missing the additional context.

(Second slaughter by Baby AFO shown in that chapter.)

Now, the poor souls who just got absolutely wrecked by a toddler wearing what I suspect to be a garbage bag have quirks, which makes more sense than the previous scene.

However (and thank you for @aimportantdragoncollector for pointing that out to me), we also have this panel.)

Yoichi is shown with bruises on his face and might be broken teeth.

Probably because those same people AFO is shown killing attacked him.

Lie number 3: AFO never loved Yoichi because he can't love, he just considered that he was his. That's all. Nothing more.

(Just... Just ignore the rats.)

AFO didn't care about Yoichi so much that the very conscious first act of his life might have been to swim a river upstream while dragging his brother above the surface with what must have been the deathgrip of all deathgrip.

AFO didn't care about his brother so much that Yoichi was fed and clothed by an AFO who was malnourished enough for his ribs to show and who wore what's basically an improvised toga.

But he just keeps sacrificing what little he has for someone he doesn't care about one bit, that's just his first possession. Nothing more.

Okay, I am going to be clear: anyone who sees that panel and thinks that it's the proof AFO didn't like his brother... You just outed yourself as an only child.

Siblings punt each other for no reason. (There is a reason why the first recorded murderer was an older sibling.) In this case, the reason was Yoichi throwing a can at him.

AFO: "You're not inviting me to a fun activity? You're leaving me out, in the cold, unable to partake in brother bonding activity? Oh, vault for Little Brother! Vault for Little Brother for one thousand years!"

AFO: "Nevermind, we're reading together. All is well, I guess."

Lie number 3: AFO killed the glowing baby for power, because he could, or because the Glowing Baby didn't deserve it

Still laughing about AFO's flawless reasoning... "Comic books heroes' life suck. Better to be a villain. I already did the whole struggle thing, I want an easy life."

AFO killed the glowing baby because he was jealous. It's as simple as that. The glowing baby was considered the first official quirked individual (even though it's not true), was protected by his family (if I remember correctly, the mother of quirks was his mom) while AFO and Yoichi had no one but each other (EDIT: I was wrong, the Mother of Quirks was Destro's mother. thanks to the people in the tags), and had a ton of people following him (while, for some strange reason, people start running away screaming when AFO shows his quirk... What a mystery...).

The last panel was basically AFO saying "I want to be loved' but not having the frame of reference to even know what love is.

In conclusion...

While AFO is definitely a bad guy and a monster, he didn't begin his existence as one. He just wants people to believe that. Because his pride and his ego can't allow him to admit that he lived a childhood full of horrible trauma where he was a victim abandoned by society (to an even greater extent than the LOV) or he would probably combust out of rage and mortification.

Ergo facto, AFO is a lying liar who lies, especially to himself.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The TTPD Deep Dive (Part ?)

It’s no secret that I have a lot of Thoughts about The Tortured Poets Department and it has lived rent-free in my head since it came out earlier this year. I’m absolutely blown away by how underneath the chaos, it’s actually an exceptionally cohesive story and is probably the closest to a concept album Taylor has ever done.

There are so many themes that have stood out to me over the last five months, and there’s one in particular that I think not only drives the entire album, but ties into previous albums to help deepen understanding of it.

This is it, my fangirl magnum opus, my months of posts consolidated into one place. This is also my disclaimer that this is just my interpretation of the album, and my summary of the story it tells, and I don’t pretend to have any special insight or authority. I’m not saying I’m correct at all, do not take any of this as fact, it’s just what it sounds like to me, and these are my silly not-so-little thoughts about it.

(Under a cut because it’s way too long and involves discussion many may not care for or be sick of.)

Come one, come all, it's happening again (I'm thinking too hard about Taylor music)

The overarching theme in TTPD to me is: Grief. If you’re looking at TTPD as a story being told (instead of just as someone’s real life), the inciting incident of TTPD is loss, and the grief from that loss is what drives the narrator’s actions and the fallout, as well as unpacks those complicated feelings and how they apply to the her life in general. By the end of the standard album, it’s also about recovering from that pain, moving on from it and learning from it.

The loss specifically is the loss of the dream of having a family (with one’s partner). One thing that is abundantly clear both on the top line and under the surface in TTPD is how Taylor (as a person and as narrator) longed not only to for marriage but specifically parenthood, and the fear and then realization of losing that chance absolutely wrecked her— which is why the next lover’s (the conman's) wooing worked so well, because it preyed on that yearning. Yet that loss also dovetails into the grief of many things: of youth, of idealism, of relationships, of ideas, even of self, which causes almost a deconstruction of a belief system to piece one’s life back together by the end.

THE CONTEXT

TTPD weaves in the topics of marriage and motherhood both explicitly and in the subtext, in various forms and scenarios. The cheating husband in “Fortnight.” The wedding ring line in “TTPD” the song. “He saw forever so he smashed it up” in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” All of “So Long, London.” Running away with her wild boy in “But Daddy I Love Him,” fantasizing about weddings and joking about babies. The imaginary rings in “Fresh Out The Slammer.” The cheating husband (again) and the friends who smell like weed or “little babies” in “Florida!!!” “You and I go from one kiss to getting married,” “Talking rings and talking cradles,” and “our field of dreams engulfed in fire” in “loml.” (And arguably: “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all.”) “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short,” in “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.” They may not sound like much on their own, but they paint a picture about how the topics pervaded her thoughts and her writing, and in many cases express her desires, and her pain.

It’s something that goes back several albums when you pick up on context clues. You get the first hints on Reputation with “New Year’s Day,” and “you and me forevermore.” Then Lover is very forward with it: “Lover” is basically wedding vows, “Paper Rings” is very engagement-coded, “I Think He Knows” is cheeky but low-key “you better put a ring on it,” “It’s Nice To Have A Friend” has wedding/marriage imagery in the last verse. As a self-professed diaristic writer, it’s the type of stuff one presumably doesn’t put out there unless those conversations have already happened, and she was very excited about it at the time it was released.

Then the pandemic happens and folklore comes out, and while there is still happy love there (“invisible string”), there are also the first indications that something has happened to put a halt to whatever future she once dreamed of (“hoax,” “the lakes”) and that she’s trying to reassure herself and him that it can still happen even if she’s scared it might not (“peace”). Notably, as far as I can remember it’s the first time Taylor explicitly brings up the idea of family (with her partner) with “you know that I’d give you my wild, give you a child,” which stood out at the time because it’s so incredibly vulnerable, but it’s even more poignant when you really take in that the whole song is like a confession of her deepest worries, and this is her vowing to give him these things that she holds most sacred if he’ll let her. These are what she cherishes most dearly and wants to return in kind: her youth and commitment (my wild), the family she craves (a child), unconditional support (swing for the fences/sit in the trenches) and understanding/compassion (silence that only comes when two people know each other).

Evermore follows an even darker path, and suddenly the album explores relationships that end and grappling with loss. There are toxic relationships (“tolerate it”), dangerous marriages (“no body, no crime,” “ivy”), failing/broken relationships (“Coney Island,” “champagne problems,” “happiness,” “‘tis the damn season”), as well as grief (“Marjorie,” “evermore”). Even some of the happy songs have uncertainty in them: in “willow” she’s begging for him to take her lead, like she’s still trying to decipher him and ask him to commit; in “cowboy like me,” still a beautiful love song, she’s thinking, “this wasn’t supposed to work and we were supposed to bail on each other but we fell in love instead”; “evermore” is about the depths of severe depression (and more) with the love story being the one saving grace in her darkest hour. And it’s also notable that after all the “fiction” writing, shortly after this album she writes “Renegade” where she’s telling the subject: I’m ready to start the next phase of our life now, why aren’t you? Is it me you don’t want after all? It’s like there’s something telling her that this stall might not just be a stall.

Midnights is a jumble (in a good, but in hindsight, also sad way) with the “sleepless nights” concept, but it seems pretty clear now that the themes and events and relationships she was revisiting tied into a lot of what she was feeling in her present life. I wrote the cliff notes version awhile back, but she’s questioning so much of her life that’s reflected in past events and relationships. Am I actually always the problem? How did we lose sight of each other and what we had? We only seem to work when we block out everyone and everything else. Can we ever go back to when things were good? Why are you neglecting me? I once thought I was going to lose everything but you saved me in the nick of time, can that happen again? I chased my career, but did I give up my chance at having a family in the process? Nobody knows what I really suffer from behind closed doors and I’m all alone.

And so on, which in retrospect now that we have TTPD, is very much what she was grappling with in private while writing and releasing the album. The inspiration behind the songs may have been different events and muses, but regardless of their origins they all end up feeling too familiar, like she's seen this film before (ahem). We’re seeing her view of commitment change too, or rather how she writes about it: she’s not making the outright declarations of it like on Lover, or even the implied ones on folklore, nor is she talking of the dark side of it like evermore. For the most part it’s a return to the early days of some relationships, before things got hard, or the end of them when there was nothing left, and also pushing away the discussion of it altogether by the outside world. “Sweet Nothing” is a sweet slice of life, but even at that, it’s the peace of the home in conflict with the pressure of the outside world. Now that we have “You’re Losing Me,” which was written at the same time as the rest of the album, we can probably deduce that she was going back to the start because something happened that made her doubt the future.

THE SETUP

So much of Midnights directly ties into TTPD, and I said in the post I linked that it’s like Midnights is asking the questions that TTPD answers. But there’s one song in particular on Midnights that sticks out to me as being key in the broadest sense to understanding the state of mind that led to the events of TTPD, and that’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky,” because the way it expresses grief is reflected in the theme of mourning a life built and the dreams along with it that are never realized in TTPD. There are several instances in TTPD that are basically variations of: “every single thing to come has turned into ashes,” and that’s what makes her snap, and leaves her vulnerable to someone who promises her those things when she’s bereaved at losing them in the first place. (In other words: “the deflation of our dreaming leaving me bereft and reeling.”) The song tells a story about how that loss of hope colours one’s entire mindset, and in some ways is a bridge to TTPD to understand what such a low point feels like.

I think that that grief, and most importantly losing hope for an imagined future in its wake, is fundamental to understanding TTPD on so many levels: both the decline with one partner that kept her hanging on then led her such a dark path, and why she fell for the conman's apparent bullshitting because it offered an express pass to what she was losing with her partner. And I also feel like it plays a part into the ruminating she’s doing all over Midnights, trying to make sense of where she finds herself when she’s writing the album, which directly leads to “You’re Losing Me.” Loss permeates so many of the stories on Midnights: of lovers, of innocence, of youth, of faith, of control, of life’s work, etc. “BTTWS” is just one of the ways in which it is expressed so fully, capturing that deep depression and subsequent extinction of faith in something that once felt assured and very much wanted. (Which is also mentioned in her writing process in the “Depression” playlist on Apple Music.)

If you understand why that feeling of loss in general across so many parts of life is so important to Midnights, then it illuminates so much about the “narrative” in TTPD too. If on Midnights she’s wrestling with the seeds of grief and loss (on multiple fronts), TTPD is her reckoning with it in its full form. “So Long, London” is the song that is the most explicit about it: How much sad did you think I had in me? How much tragedy? Just how low did you think I’d go before I’d have to go be free? You swore that you loved me, but where were the clues? I died on the altar waiting for the proof. It’s the sequel to “You’re Losing Me.” It’s, the air is thick with loss and indecision, I know my pain is such an imposition, I’m getting tired even for a phoenix, all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, I’ve got nothing left to believe unless you’re choosing me, my heart won’t start anymore, but from the other side of the break.

This is highly speculative, but if you follow the thread about the topic and the relationship as told from Rep through TTPD, in broad strokes it goes: young love with a serious connection (Rep) -> growing up and making life plans (Lover) -> something happens that delays those plans or makes them grind to a halt (folklore) -> serious doubts arise and cause a loss of faith in their future (evermore) -> struggling with the loss of that future and trying to make sense of the problems in a last ditch attempt to save the relationship (Midnights) -> fallout from that grief after the blowup of the relationship (TTPD). Understanding that progression of events (through the music) explains not only the storytelling side of TTPD (e.g. the jump from the partner to the conman) but also how the experiences/muses blend in the music, and how the music that on the surface is about the short-term relationship is really driven by the destruction of the long-term one.

Following the music, it’s IMO implied that Taylor (the narrator) was holding out for marriage and family with her partner, for years, and it seems like it was at one point a shared dream until something happened to pump the brakes, and seemingly on her partner’s end. And extrapolating further, given how the sorrow expressed in former albums bleeds into TTPD, it sounds like a plan that had been concrete in some form before it had fallen apart, and losing something that once felt so tangible is what drives her in her grief to find any kind of respite from the pain. Which is why the situation with the conman becomes so appealing as the one with the partner splinters further and further.

(If everything you’ve once touched is sick with sadness and you don’t want to be sad anymore, what are you left to do?)

THE STORY

So (one part of) the story kind of sounds like this from the standard album: the relationship with her partner as well as his mental health slowly deteriorate and he withdraws emotionally (“London,” “Fresh Out The Slammer”) and physically (again, “London,” and “Guilty As Sin?”) and takes his resentment out on her (“London” and arguably “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” even though I don't want to get into muse speculation here). As she sinks deeper into her own depression as a result, the weight of the failing relationship starts feeling like a cage— or a noose (“London,” “Guilty”), but coming to terms with the loss of their life together and the future they’d dreamed of was killing her (again, “London,” but also “I Can Do It With A Broken Heart”).

Enter the conman who she reconnects with at the very point where this is coming to a head (knowing that IRL she reconnected with him around the time Midnights was being worked on) , and if you read between the lines, she confides some deeply personal things to him (“Down Bad” and “hostile takes overs”/“encounters closer and closer,” “Smallest Man” and the entire sleeper cell spy imagery which is one of my favourite things and I could write a whole essay about the meaning of it, “loml” and “A con man sells a fool a get-love-quick scheme”). Then after she’s confided these secrets to him, he insinuates himself back into her life (“Guilty,” “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man”) and sells her a dream that HE can give her all these things she hopes for (again, “Down Bad,” “Smallest Man,” “loml,” song “TTPD,” “Broken Heart”).

But the thing is, he only knows these are the things she wants because she’s revealed it to him, and presumably, told him that was what she was losing by staying with her partner. And instead of the normal response of, “that is really sad that your partner is not supporting you and you deserve to be treated better,” to a friend in growing distress, it seems like it was, “well I can give you all those things!!!! Right now!!!! Trust me!!!!” And worked on her until she believed it, and jumped at the chance at a precarious time in her life. And one thing I want to underscore is: Taylor has agency in the situation always, it’s not like she’s been kidnapped and brainwashed. (In fact, she implores on songs like “But Daddy” that SHE is in charge of her own choices, good or bad.) She chose to rekindle the friendship and then relationship, and she chose to eventually leave her long term relationship for another man, and she reiterates on the album that she owns this all. But it’s also: nothing exists in a vacuum, and she makes choices based on emotions and information she has at the time, which is why it gives so much whiplash.

THE ALBUM

When you look at it as, the situation with the conman only happens because of what happened with the partner first and that the appeal of the conman and the fantasy he sells her is a direct reaction to that, it makes the “swirliness” of the music make so much more sense. And for much of it, even many of the “conman” songs on the surface are really “partner” songs underneath.

Fortnight

A suburban gothic allegory about a broken marriage with a distant husband with a wandering eye, which makes the rekindled romance with the neighbor so appealing. She’s miserable caged in her stifling house because she’s been abandoned by her spouse, so the reappearance of this past love reignites the passion that’s dead at home.

TTPD

“So tell me, who else is gonna know me?” “I chose this cyclone with you.” I’m gonna kill myself if you ever leave. Everyone knows we’re crazy. She’s laying it out there that she’s already in a dangerous state of mind, and she’s actively putting herself in more danger by pursuing the conman. “At dinner you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one people put wedding rings on, and that’s the closest I’ve come to my heart exploding,” spells this whole thing out so clearly: whether it’s an actual event (likely) or a metaphor for the promise he makes to her, the reason why it makes her heart explode is because it’s the thing she’s been waiting for forever with no movement, and here this person comes in and slips it on her finger in an instant like it’s nothing. (And eventually, as we’ll come to know, it is absolutely nothing to him.) You mean it could have been this easy this whole time?! (Well, no. Not until a certain other suitor makes his appearance later.) It feels like she’s finally getting everything she wanted in the blink of an eye! How lucky! How convenient! What was that about the get-love-quick scheme you say? (Unsaid: the reason why this feels so urgent is because there’s a sense that time is running out in so many aspects of her life and not just the obvious. Which reappears later on.)

Down Bad

“Did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” sets the scene for this euphoric experience in the moment that starts to feel violating once the dust settles (which is then followed up in “Smallest Man” and the spy mission on her). The bridge spells out how he weaselled his way into her life, preyed upon (intentionally or not) her emotional state, sold her a dream and then vanished, without the benefit of hindsight yet we see later in the album.

The alien abduction metaphor is pretty brilliant, because it shows both how she was desperate to escape the place she found herself in, and how much it screwed her brain to then be left stranded when the affair was over. “[I loved your] hostile takeovers, encounters closer and closer,” is so evocative because it details how the situation came to be: his overtures under the guise of friendship blurred lines until he made her an offer that she eventually couldn’t refuse (hostile takeovers) as he infiltrated her life more and more intimately. The sad thing is that the song has parallels to how her relationship with the partner started too in earlier albums, in that they ran away to live in their own bubble (or planet) only for him to metaphorically abandon her as the years went on. (Oven, meet microwave.)

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

Being continually emotionally broken down by a person who knows he’s hurting you but still acts the way he does. (The original voice memo version makes this even clearer and it’s rather heartbreaking.) “He saw forever so he smashed it up,” speaks to the loss of a future the person became scared of, and the original lyrics (“he saw forever so he blew it up”) somehow cut even deeper to me because it feels so much more intentional.

Also in the original version, “he was my best friend and that was the worst part,” also speaks not only to the loss of an entire partnership in the wake of this hurt, but also to the feelings of betrayal that the person you trust so deeply has the ability to hurt you in this way too, and how it’s a one-two punch of not only losing the relationship but also your closest confidant. (It’s like the sequel to “Renegade” and the missiles firing to me.) Again, there are shades of both/many situations in the song, pointing to an unfortunate pattern in some ways. The situation in “My Boy” is part of why she was so low, and why the “get love quick scheme” was so appealing later on. And it dovetails nicely into…

So Long, London

The most explicitly “partner” song that puts a coda on “You’re Losing Me,” and is Track 5 because it’s the emotional underpinning of how she got to where she was, and drives the events of the rest of the album. It spells everything out: He withdrew, she tried to fix it for both of them, eventually even that stopped working, he was oblivious to or minimized how badly she was suffering and his (in)actions couldn’t reassure her, he wouldn’t move forward on their future plans and stewed in his own struggles, she was spiralling out of control trying to hang on and ultimately felt like she was going to die if she didn’t leave.

But Daddy I Love Him

Like a direct reaction to “So Long, London” in that she breaks free from the death of one relationship and throws herself with reckless abandon to the next, fuck the haters. How dare you judge me, when the relationship you think I should have stayed in was killing me? (Dutiful daughter all the plans were laid. All you want is gray for me.) Fuck all of you, I’m going to choose whoever I want! (So what if I have a baby with HIM, huh?! I tried doing it the proper way and look where that got me so now we're back to square one) It’s again her imagining how wonderful and freeing this “wild boy” is going to be for her, and how wrong she’ll prove everyone. THIS TIME she definitely got it right. So what if she has to run away! So what if she scandalizes the whole town! They don’t know what she really wants or needs anyway! She’s the only one of her (hee-hee-hee) and she’s the only who gets to decides how this goes. (Because: she longs for control in a situation she’ll eventually realize she has little of it in, which we’ll find out is a recurring theme in her life.)

Fresh Out The Slammer

Also spells out what happened with the partner in the first verse and the pre-choruses, which is what makes the conman so appealing as the imagined jailbreak. The bitter loneliness vs. the sultry passion she builds up in her head as she awaits her release from prison is key to understanding the two sides of the story in the album. There’s this whole outlaw imagery (which is also carried through in “I Can Fix Him”), but it’s contrasted in the end with her and her reunited lover sitting on park swings like children with “imaginary rings” — because “Ain't no way I'm gonna screw up now that I know what's at stake.” What’s at stake is lasting love and the promises that come with it (marriage/family) that are precious and time-sensitive. The imaginary rings are both a nod to the youthful dreams of her and her new/old lover, but also has a double meaning to me because those promises aren’t built on anything together; they're made up, intangible. (They’re no more concrete than the plans that went up in smoke with the partner.) Like with most of the conman situation, it’s all a fantasy in her head that has yet to happen, and as we find out later in the album, reality ends up leaving much to be desired.

Florida!!!

Broadly speaking, it’s running away from your problems and wanting to disappear from your life. (But again: the life she’s disappearing from is the cheating husband she may or may not be feeding to the swamp-- another miserable marriage.) What kind of flies under the radar though is the “I don’t want to exist,” line, which points to her dire state of mind that led her to fleeing to that metaphorical timeshare down in Destin. In many ways about cheating death.

Guilty As Sin

Yes it’s the “masturbation song,” but again the nuance is that she’s left to pleasure herself because her partner has abandoned her emotionally and even physically, i.e. “my boredom’s bone deep.” To be blunt: they aren’t even intimate anymore, so she starts fantasizing about the guy she used to have chemistry with who’s reentered her life and is making moves on her. And realizing that she’s now finding release in another man (albeit imaginary) breaks her even as it reinvigorates her because she finally understands that the relationship she’s in is effectively dead. (“Am I allowed to cry?”)

Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me

This isn’t about relationships, but about society and its reaction to them in a general sense. But again, she’s left to stew in all this anger and hurt as she’s been abandoned at home, then abandoned by public opinion, and the public attack on her is part of the origin as well as the end of that story. The trauma inflicted upon her detailed in the song is the reason why she felt trapped in the first place, which led to the decisions she’s made and habits she’s leaned on ever since.

I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

This is one of the few songs that is the most completely conman-coded, and shows when the delusion finally breaks at the end of the song. She spends the whole song being like, “no really, I alone can make him better! You’ll see! I know he’s gross, but he’s mine! It’ll be fine I swear! You don’t know anything! Uuuuuum hmm wait actually what the fuck—“

Loml

Oof. THE song. Again the surface reading is about the “conman” who comes in and sells her the lie, but the pain is because all the dreams she writes about are HER dreams and implied that they were the dreams she built with her partner that the conman sold back to her. I could do a deeper dive on this but most of the song is applicable to both relationships, which not only shows the “swirliness” of her writing, but also how they both ultimately did the same thing to her in different shades.

The bridge and the last chorus are kind of fundamental to understanding it all, and her ending it with “you’re the loss of my life” is about, among other things, how falling for this trap blew up the life she built and dreamed of for good. (I could talk about this one forever.) “You shit-talked me under the table, talking rings and talking cradles” to “Our field of dreams engulfed in fire” is a hell of a line and progression, and again, indicative of what the real driving force behind the whole album is. The shit-talking is because he took her dreams (of marriage and children) and hyped it back up to her tenfold whether in a moment of his own delusion or for more nefarious reasons — much like how the man prior kept promising these things but never followed through, which left her vulnerable to someone who appeared to offer them enthusiastically. The field of dreams isn’t just the one with the conman, it’s the one with the longterm relationship she’d built the dream with in the first place, because the conman’s actions are part of the reason the LTR went up in smoke. (Not the reason for the rift, but the consequence of the final break.) And THAT is why it’s the loss of her life, so completely.

When she says “I wish I could un-recall how we almost had it all,” IMO it’s not just the fake future that the conman lures her into, but also (and perhaps mainly) the once-real one she had with her partner and the loss of which that made her susceptible to falling for the con in the first place. There’s honestly so much between the lines in this song that covers every theme and speaks to the grief of seeing the life she imagined slip away, slowly by the first man then annihilated by the second.

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

The juxtaposition of “He said he’d love me all his life, but that life was too short” and “He said he’d love me for all time, but that time was quite short” sums it up to me (and parallels “loml”), because they are two different situations, but they cut her just the same. In the first, “that life” IMO was the life they’d built with the dreams that went along with it and it was too short because he never followed through, and in the second, the “time” was quite short because it was the frenzy of the whirlwind romance that fizzled as quickly as it began. The life that was too short led to the time that was quite short.

The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

This is definitely THE conman song. The rage, the shame, the violation, it’s all in there. But the key to it is the bridge and the espionage imagery woven through it. A honeypot scheme is when spies target a mark and seduce them to gain their trust and their privileged information for their homeland. So her likening him to a sleeper cell spy who set her up just to mine her deepest secrets and use them against her is a heavy, loaded statement. And implied: that valuable information she unknowingly held were her longings of marriage and family (the aforementioned shit-talking about rings and cradles she never got to have), and more importantly, those dreams preceded him reentering her life and then beginning his mission on her.

The insinuation then is: she confesses these are her deepest wishes which are now seemingly unattainable in her current situation (e.g. with her partner) -> he convinces her HE will give them to her and make the dreams she pines for come true -> she falls for him and blows up her life to make it happen -> he gets what he wants (thrill of the chase/sex/the idea of her/whatever his intent was) -> he abandons her when he gets what he wants, or rather it isn’t what he wants or can handle -> she’s left a) all alone b) with dreams unfulfilled c) with no answers d) feeling used at having her most sacred wishes used against her.

Again, the song is unquestionably about the way the conman absolutely destroyed her, but he was able to do that because there was this thing she wanted more than anything, that was dying in her previous relationship, that he was able to prey upon to seduce her, then discarded her and her dreams as soon as it was inconvenient for him while absolutely hollowing her inside out. (And again: the devastating thing is that this also applies to other relationships she’s written about, in different ways.)

The Alchemy

Not about either the partner or the conman directly, but it (loosely) touches on her finding herself after the whole oven-to-microwave experience and opening herself up to life and love again. #GoodForHer

Clara Bow

This isn’t about the romantic relationships on the surface, but it is about how damaging the entertainment industry and public life are on women, and how women are only valued for their beauty as commodities until they can be discarded and destroyed in the process. Which I think plays into the circumstances that led her to make the decisions that she did years ago, and why she makes the ones she does now. (But also, being valued for physical traits and appeal for the male gaze brings us to…)

The Manuscript

The “original sin” that kicks off all of this. Again, at first light this isn’t about the partner or the conman, but the person it is about is the reason why she has made all the decisions she has ever since in relationships (and that’s Mr. Plaid Shirt Days from “All Too Well”). The realization that her first serious adult relationship is what cemented these patterns, and this view of herself and her worthiness in relationships, is profoundly sad. An older man who valued her for being so mature for her age and implying that the mature activities ahem associated with that were the performance benchmarks in her ability to carry a relationship, only to leave her, was earth shattering. She placed her faith in this person, but then the way he treated her changed her view of love and of herself.

She took his innuendo about “pushing strollers” as a sign of potential commitment, whereas he ultimately meant it as foreplay, and she was too young and naive to know the difference. So not only did she learn from that that this man (and men) didn’t view commitment and family the way she did and that it was something to be toyed with, but she also learned that her value to them among other things was sex. Imagine being an idealistic 20 year old and your boyfriend ten years your senior tells you, “if the sex is anywhere near as good as our dates have been, we’re going to be making babies before you know it,” (e.g. this is relationship is serious) and then he dumps you: does that imply that the sex was not in fact that good? (E.g. that you’re not worthy after all?)

No, obviously from this side of life, it’s because he was a commitment-phobic playboy, even if he did love her, but she couldn’t have known that at 20 and instead internalized that shame. But, it did send her on a path of how she approached sex and love and relationships for over a decade afterwards. And her coming to the realization that that first act of (perhaps unintentional) manipulation is what informed her actions thereafter helped her break the pattern. Her worth to men is not just sex, she has value and her hopes and dreams have value, she doesn’t have to change into a different person to please anyone, because if that is what they want, they won’t ever want her anyway.

It’s been described here on Tumblr by people more eloquent and astute than I as a song that encapsulates the album as this: one did it slow (partner), one did it fast (conman), and one did it first (first love)— and that is haunting. After years of men minimizing her dreams and desires, if not outright using them against her, she’s finally at the point where she can let it all go and move on for good. (There’s a whole other tangent about consent and shame and manipulation, but that’s an entirely different kind of discussion. But it is so devastatingly contrasted with “you said if we had been closer in age maybe it would have been fine, and that made me want to die.”)

THE SUMMATION

This is just my interpretation of it, but in going through the standard album, it feels pretty clear how cohesive the album is about a story of love and loss and grief, then reckoning with what caused it all in the first place that set a person on this path. It’s a formative experience at a young age that was traumatic and led to certain coping mechanisms and a shaping of one’s self-perception, as well as the reaction to external pressures that try to dictate behaviours and influence how one feels one deserves out of love which makes it harder to know when one absolutely deserves more and better. And leaves one struggling to cope with loss when there isn’t anything else to hold onto. Then in light of one’s life blowing up, learning to find oneself in the aftermath all over again.

On another tangent that is somewhat related to the theme of loss, the way she writes about the two main muses on the standard album also ties into how the situations converged to create absolute carnage on her emotional and mental well-being. With one situation, she’s talking about a concrete life that crumbles under the weight of their struggles; with the other, the entire thing is a fantasy that she builds up in her head, and when it comes to fruition it falls far, far short.

If you look at the “microwave” (conman) relationship, you realize that almost everything she writes about it happens before it actually becomes reality, and it’s mostly her imagining how great it’ll be, but with few exceptions, when she writes about what actually occurred, it doesn’t even come close to living up to her expectations. “Fortnight” is an imagined future where she escapes to Florida and his touch finally starts her stalled engine (ahem). “TTPD” is perhaps the most positive retelling of their time together, but even that implies he was better off stoned and when he sobered up he succumbed to his demons all over again, and more importantly she conveys how she also is in extreme distress, barely concealed by the veneer of being infatuated with him. (E.g. saying to that she’ll kill herself if he ever leaves her — the implication is that she is absolutely serious about it when she “felt seen.”) And that the warning bells are going off in her head, but she feels like this person is the only one she can be with (because they’re equally fucked up and the chaos he brings into her life makes her feel alive when she felt so close to death).

“Down Bad” is the most explicit about being in love, but she’s also left completely confused and disoriented by him disappearing, wondering if any of it was real and the seeds of violation creep into her consciousness (“did you really beam me up in a cloud of sparkling dust just to do experiments on?” “Waking up in blood.”). “But Daddy” is her imagining she can tell everyone to fuck off for telling her what to do with her life. “Fresh Out The Slammer” is her fantasizing about this man while feeling trapped in her relationship — but never in the song is she actually reunited with him; she’s using him as the projection of all the things she’ll make right after being wronged by her partner. “Guilty As Sin?” Is very obviously about her fantasizing about sleeping with him, but again it’s such a minefield for her because it hasn’t happened yet; they’ve only just reconnected. “I Can Fix Him” is the only song other than “TTPD” that shows them actually together, and it’s the one where she keeps saying, essentially, “I know he’s gross but I can rehabilitate him into an upstanding person, trust me,” until the mic drop at the end of the song where it finally hits her that no, she can’t, because this is who he is, not the person she’s built him up to be.

“Loml” is when it all comes crashing down, and the song emphasizes everything he did and told her, e.g. that she’s the love of his life, but she doesn’t return the sentiment in the song about their time together. Because now that it’s past tense, she knows it wasn’t actually love. (And says as much in the album epilogue poem.) “Broken Heart” is her reeling in the aftermath, but again, it’s “he said,” not “I loved.” And then there’s “The Smallest Man,” where she eviscerates him: he also pursued an idea of her but didn’t care much for the real her in front of him (who else is gonna know me?), he love bombed her only to hurt her (crushing her dreams), he was constantly stoned (and not just in the funny munchies kind of way), and he wasn’t even a good lover (despite the fantasy she’d created before). That last point is especially striking because she spent albums singing about the importance of and pleasure in (sexual) intimacy in the relationship with her partner (sometimes to both their own detriment) and how it was at times the only way they could connect, but in this case, the idea she hyped up and acted on in her head about this lover never panned out in practice. She spells it out in the epilogue: it wasn’t a love affair, it was a mutual manic phase.

In contrast, there’s a lot more tangible action in the “oven” (partner) parts of the album, showing how hard she tried to make the relationship work in real life instead of just in her head. All of “So Long, London” is her detailing how she tried to break through to him and support him, even when he rejected it and pushed her away, thinking she could carry them both until they ultimately sank, but she did it because she “loved this place for so long.” (The place? Not just the city, but the home and perhaps most importantly, him.) In “Slammer” she stayed with him even as things disintegrated for “one hour of sunshine.” (E.g. holding onto the rarer good times even as they were fewer and further between, hoping things would eventually turn around.) And like in “London,” she held on despite people in her life pleading with her that it was hurting her. (Which is also echoed in “Slammer.”) In “Guilty” her boredom is “bone deep” because the passion that once drove their relationship (and papered over their problems) has finally gone out too, so there’s nothing left to hold onto, leading to her fantasizing about the new suitor, which makes her realize her relationship has passed the point of no return. “Loml” is about the conman on the surface, but the undercurrent of all the things she says about him is that he was co-opting the dreams that she was clinging onto for dear life in the previous relationship, which is why the con is so painful; the field of dreams he sets ablaze isn’t just the fake painting he sold to her, but the original artifact (her life with her partner) too.

All the physical and emotional labour she puts into the relationship with her partner ends up reflected in the fantasizing she does in the one with the conman, which is why it is so confusing in the moment and so lethal when he leaves her without any answers. She wants to get married and start a family with her partner which keeps getting stalled; the conman mock-proposes which makes her think he’s immediately serious (“TTPD,” “loml”). She feels caged by having to hide with her partner and shrink herself; the conman promises he’ll stand by her side publicly and let her shine (“Smallest Man”). She sinks into a deep depression in her loneliness as the relationship with her partner careens off a cliff; the conman convinces her they’re meant for each other in a them-against-the-world way (“Down Bad”). The intimacy (in all senses of the word) in her relationship with her partner fizzles; the conman stokes the fire by sending her secret messages and reigniting passion (“Guilty”). She spent years trying to help her partner to no avail; the conman makes her think she has the power to reform him (“loml”). She feels misunderstood by her partner; the conman acts like he’s the (only) one who truly gets her (“TTPD,” “loml”).

In short: there’s nothing that the conman does or says that isn’t a direct response to what her partner did first, and it’s even worse because the conman knew how much her partner’s actions hurt her and he used that privileged information to paint a picture of what he could give her, but in doing so in some ways aimed at her heart with even deadlier accuracy. (I’ve likened it to him borrowing someone else’s life for his own joyride, until he crashes the rental car and flees the scene.) It’s why in the aftermath, the difference in emotions are so different: she feels nothing but rage and violation towards the conman for getting in her head and using her, whereas her feelings towards her partner are more complicated. There’s anger (at her lost youth and being taken for granted), but there’s also sorrow (at their lost life and future), disappointment (that he never could step up the way he’d promised or she’d needed), even compassion (towards his struggles) and a tiny measure of appreciation (for the good times they did share).

When you look at the bigger picture, the story the album paints is just so painfully normal. You have two people (Taylor and her partner) who once loved each other deeply, and despite warning signs early on telling them they have fundamentally different needs and ways of living their lives they fight like hell to make it work (the epilogue) until those warning signs become grenades that destroy their home (“My Boy,” “London,” “Slammer,” arguably “loml”). Having already been through at least one rough patch/break/breakup that she felt almost destroyed her (harkening back to Midnights on “You’re Losing Me,” “The Great War” and “Hits Different”), the final and fatal downward spiral of the relationship (“YLM,” “London”) and the grief over losing that future sends her into a tailspin, just at the time where a flame from the past (the conman) reenters her life and tells her all the things she’s been longing to hear and feel (“TTPD,” “Down Bad,” “Guilty,” “loml”) and, crucially, missing from the relationship that was once her entire life.

So in her panic, she falls prey to the (empty) promises of the past lover (“loml,” “Smallest Man”) and decides he’s actually what will save her from the free fall, because the alternative (that she will end up in a situation she doesn’t think she can survive) is too painful to bear. When she finally acts on these circumstances (leaves her partner/runs to the conman), she snaps, acting on pure emotion and adrenaline (“But Daddy”), but before she knows it, the new lover abandons her, and she’s left to reckon with the fallout of the episode and process everything that has happened (“Down Bad,” “loml”) — with the conman, with her partner, with the choices made in her adult life personally and professionally which leads her back to the moment she feels set her down that road at the start.

The TL;DR of this unintentionally long essay is that the reason the conman affair was so serious was precisely because it was meant to fulfill the promise of what was her life with her partner. To me, a large part of the story is that she projected that life onto the conman (or he projected her life back to her for his own purposes) because she wasn’t ready to deal with that massive grief and the life raft he offered felt like the only alternative to an even darker end. Whether the conman actually believed what he told her, or he went along with it or encouraged it because it served his purpose, we’ll never know, just like we’ll never know the finer details of what went on (nor should we). But no matter what, the album is just an extreme deep dive into all the ways grief can consume us, and whether it’s a long, drawn-out death or a sudden, inexplicable one, it can turn a person’s life into such a trainwreck that they act in ways unfathomable to even them, let alone the people around them. It can also unleash repressed trauma and mental illness that can crater your sense of self. And when those situations are compounded? It makes for a nearly impossible type of breakdown to unpack. (Which is why you might need a 31 song album to process it.)