I loved what you did with the Hacker idea! Thank you so much!
Here is another suggestion, if you are interested.
Vox has those large Sharks in that tank we saw in Episode Two, unsure if you're aware of Vox's Pet land-shark Vark from the old Instergram Hazbin accounts, but it's clear our TV headed Demon loves Sharks.
So what if Vox has a partner who's a Shark Sinner or a Sinner at least with a Shark tail and Fins.
Would he keep them like a Doll/Pet?
Would he just adore them and let them get away with things that the other Vs would get mad about?
I'd love to see your take on this idea, but perfectly fine if this isn't something you wanna tackle.
Thanks!
Fellow Vox Simp 🦈
I imagine he infodumps about sharks to Valentino or Velvette all the time. He’ll spam them with pictures of sharks. Middle of the day? Sharks. Middle of the night? Sharks. Important meeting? Sharks. When he takes a day off (which is practically never) it’s likely spent with his sharks. And it’s adorable.
I imagine he would see a Shark Sinner and endlessly gush over them. He somehow drags them to V tower and hires them to do the taxes on the spot. He thinks it’s hilarious. He doesn’t actually make them do taxes, but they do have to stay at V tower with him. Also, if they tried to steal money or something and Val noticed? Well, we all know Val has a temper and would beat you up for tax evasion and post it as asmr to fall asleep to. Vox would easily stop that from happening.
If he has no romantic interest in you? Depending on his level respect for you, he’ll break out the adoption papers. Immediately. Congrats! You’ve got a new dad. And at least three shark siblings. Same vibes as Loona and Blitzø tbh.
In the case that he treats you more like a pet, you’ll be reprimanded and punished. You get special treatment, but you’re no stranger to his mood swings or his darker side. He doesn’t take you seriously, probably doesn’t care about how you feel. You’re not allowed to do much of anything without his permission. He’s still very sweet and loving, he’s just more… unintentionally condescending at times. He’ll coax a smile out of you with a present or your favorite meal, but he doesn’t hold much respect for you if he takes out the pet adoption papers.
If he takes out normal adoption papers? Congrats! You’ve already been written into his will for if he ever dies again, you’re loaded with cash. You can do no wrong in his book. He’ll protect you from everyone else and you’ll only get in trouble when you mess something up for him, specifically. Anything else you get in trouble for, he’ll bail you out. You get to go shopping and put with friends all the time- he interrogates them first, though. Classic dad energy.
Either way, expect a lot of pictures of you to be posted to his social media and texted to Val and Vel.
I imagine that since he genuinely loves sharks, he’d be way more loving towards a Shark Sinner significant other, probably showering them with compliments. Always giving hugs and kisses, spends so much time with them, it’s adorable. There’s be zero (or very little) manipulation and toxicity, it’s all wholesome vibes and fun.
You’d get the princess treatment, tons of gifts. He comes home with flower all the time, and is always replacing the dead ones. He touches your tail. A lot. Probably asks a bunch of questions about it too.
“How many teeth do you have? Do they grow back? Can you produce teeth on demand??? How does your tail impact your swimming? What do you mean there’s no beach in the pride ring of hell, fuck it, I’ll make one! Science can’t be stopped!”
Somehow he’d end up forgetting what he was asking about, and he’d just end up endlessly complimenting you. Admiring your gills, fins, tail, teeth, eyes, everything.
I think he’d actually be very sweet if he met a Shark Sinner, no matter the case!
I'm still not over Taylor's Fortnight MV... to say it's my favorite visual work she's done would be an understatement. As with all things on this album, she did her research. Her incredible DP - Rodrigo Prieto - who has shot The Man, Cardigan, and Willow MVs. As well as, Brokeback Mountain, The Barbie Movie, Killer of the Flower Moon, etc.
There are so many ways to parse the story of the Fortnight video, but I will mostly focus on Taylor's use of mirroring to make some of the video's larger points.
I am a queer former film student so I wanna note that that's the bias I'll be writing from. If that disinterests you, no worries! This just may not be for you.
Love that we start with silent film era titles. One is black, one is white, perhaps a ying yang visual or simply representing the original album + the anthology. Could also be the light + dark of her two sides represented by Taylor and Post Malone.
The vertical alignment shift in the word Fortnight is interesting because the other time i noticed her doing this was in the closing poem for TTP with, "Some stars never align." Would be cute to have it like a nod to screenplay scene heading: INT. FORT - NIGHT
We start with Taylor, virtually still, but singing. She's handcuffed to an askew bed frame - sans mattress - with bars resembling a prison/cage.
The mirroring she's doing here is reminding us of "real life" Taylor's outfit at the 2024 Grammy's, but with the addition of white gauzy gloves + garter belt (like on tour), it reads more bridal, more bed sheet. That similar clock necklace is set to, best as I can tell, 9pm.
And she's got enough hairpins to... idk... make me spin out? Her make up evokes a little Clara Bow, Greta Garbo, legends of the silver screen, etc.
Taylor stops lip-syncing. Breaking the fourth wall, with direct eye contact, she's forced a "Forget Him" pill and unshackled from her bed prison. Unlike the next instance we get this match shot, it feels like she's telling the audience she knows we're watching and her look has a "this is what I'm forced to do" anger charged to it.
Also, the pill itself seems to break Taylor's reality from here on out. She "forgets him," but perhaps also becomes a different him herself.
She walks over, in her wacky funhouse of a prison room - skewed angles, upside down doors (those who enter from the left walk on the "ceiling" - to an actual mirror. But this mirror looks more like a one-way mirror. Meaning that the subject can see themselves, but so can others they can't see on the other side. Usually so the subject can be observed.
Still appropriate to break the fourth wall as though we are watching her in a way she can't return.
She wipes her face to reveal Post Malone's tattoos under the veneer of her prerfect facade. Once done, she utters the first "I want to kill her." She wants to "kill" Taylor TM?
I'll basically be going forward assuming that Post Malone is established in this mirror shot as a representation of Taylor, perhaps her True Taylor underneath the engineered perfection. This door/portal splits her in two on entry. From one white-clad figure to two black-clad ones. Kind of like the splitting of a prism.
Instead of exiting this upside down asylum, she goes deep into a department - perhaps the Tortured Poets kind. We get an awesome match cut/panning transition where Grammy dress referential Taylor morphs into a Victorian mourning dress. One very similar to the dresses on stage during Folklore during Eras (at the bottom of post). Perhaps also a nod to Emily Dickinson herself.
The way they design the set to make it so her asylum and office are connected feels like a not so subtle call out on how she feels about her chosen industry. Not quite a cheery take on the Lover House for ex. Time also becomes a little bendy, irrelevant when she does this portal walk.
When she enters she sits at a mirrored desk, morphing into Post Malone's silhouette. To the side we have faceless writers, also dressed in black older fashions, that seem to go on for infinity like a mirror trick.
Taylor sits down to start writing, Post Malone is already typing. They're both in black with embellished collars. We see that she has a top sheet with typed words, but under they're blank. Post has a pile next to him, along with his fountain pen, which perhaps are fully done b/c placement on the other side of him. Their desks are also arranged ever so slightly different. So Post-Taylor is a typing machine, Taylor needs to catch up...
But then Post Malone looks up to create this awesome mirrored match cut.
Taylor and Post-Taylor get to work, singing the chorus, camera cutting on their lines in mirror shots respectively.
We see a typewriter jam the same lines from the song, but specifically "I LOVE YOU." Granted, we can't be 100% sure whose typewriter it is, but we see Taylor type "Love You." Perhaps they're mirroring each other in even this task.
Eventually their stories starts leaking blue and orange/gold ether which prisms out to reveal "The Story of Us."
Really great shot of the infinity vanishing point effect from the unidentified crowd, how they're positioned makes them look like they're mirroring all of us watching/sharing our opinions.
This is where I'll stop for Part 1 because it's not ok how late this album has been keeping me up.
But a couple of things to start:
Taylor using very strong, very consistent mirroring techniques to create distinctions from narrator, character, and audience. Even the music is mirrored in the chorus with Post Malone's repetition.
By both wearing the face tattoos under a perfect exterior (the face we know her by), and immediately separating into two characters - one with her face/gender expression as we know it and Post-Taylor who now wears the face tattoos we just saw/is also sporting the face and gender expression we are familiar with him. It's Taylor TM the Brand vs Hidden (in plain sight) Identity Taylor.
Her typewriter emits an orange/golden glow from all of her repeated "I LOVE YOU'S," while his emits blue. Together they're creating the next story vignette: "The Story of Us."
One basic read for this is that Taylor could be owning her male POVs that come up in her songs (Folklore we're looking at you). Another read I have is that Taylor TM is writing the love song framework expected from her as an artist while Post-Taylor injects the devastation, anger, emotion, the heavy blues we often unearth from a song we originally thought was upbeat, romantic, unassuming. And considering these mirrored halves, I think that aligns with her own messages about her music, that people will always going looking for paternity tests - the publicized romance pulled from what we think we know about her. But perhaps the assumed truths of a song could be, and often are, driven by your gendered expectations - "Girl loves boy, sings about that." The hidden in plain sight Taylor subverts what the surface level shows.
The True Taylor is an unrecognizable author. And that writer is producing the meat of the work.
Additionally, I love that she's wearing a dress that feels taken off the Era's stage.
Folklore in particular was a really different writing era for her. She presented the characters and stories as fiction and all the sudden an unknown male collaborator — William Bowery — gets credited on it. I'd love if the message, in part, was hey I'm actually my own male writing partner. Regardless, her other half/POV was able to allow her to write truths so long as they remained unrecognizable.
But she's wearing the mourning dress, looking over at her hidden true half, looking over anxiously. And then begins to write. They're half the story that makes up the whole, one needing the other to tell the story they want to tell. Perhaps it's a call out to Folklore in particular as a solution to being limited by expectations of her signature diaristic-like songs' perspectives. Using it as a way to tell a version of the truth from a POV society or the powers that be in her life would accept it from — not Taylor TM as she is/who she's known to be.
More generally, the "male pov" and the male pronouns, just seem to be called irrelevant smoking guns in the game of knowing the unknowable - what her work, a lot of her work, is referencing specifically. These two writers, as presented, are still both Taylor. Them's the rules here.
Ok, see you in PT. 2!
Story-time in Rivendell with Uncle Glorfindel! Elladan and Elrohir absolutely love going out adventuring early and listening to stories of old when offered the opportunity.
(Hopefully Glorfindel chose something more appropriate than the balrog story, this time.)
This piece is intended to be a panel of a comic that as of yet lives in my head, but it stands on its own (and I'm impatient), so I thought I'd share this as it is now
"Stede cant be transmasc because he has kids and it doesnt work with the story and-"
I dont care Stede is transmasc because i said so and also because its incredibly funny to me to imagine mary getting pregnant and my himbo trans stede just going "wow cant believe i got her pregnant"
Also.
I read a story one time of this trans guy back in the 1700s who had two wives in his life and neither knew he was trans. He just fully claimed he lost his dick in an accident. Youre telling me my theatre kid Stede Bonnet WOULDNT concoct a story about losing his dick in a tragic accident?
Aside from the delicate touch of a redhead and borderline infidelity, did you get Ramona anything for her birthday?
".... Shit."
Kim stares blankly at her phone for a moment, unsure how to proceed. Did she know that? Did she know it was Ramona's birthday? She tried to recall but kept drawing up blanks. Had she not told them her birthday?
Maybe the panic was making her forget.
Kim bites her lip as she pockets her phone, leaving the ask unanswered; she'd give them some vague non-answer and verbal attack another time. Apparently, she has a birthday girl to tend to.
The guilt feels light enough to ignore now anyhow, as she shuts off the water fully and moves towards the door; she tries not to doubt that Ramona will make her forget about it entirely.
But as her hand reaches for the knob, she hears approaching footsteps, and goes still...
alright, confirmation (to a degree xD) has been aquired (thank you to kym, jess, nova and also my best friend who knows nothing about 911 xD) so here goes
UHM, well, so???? I think? one of my icons made in on live tv on FUCKING FOX? (well, less than a quarter of an icon, but I think it still counts) still not 100% certain that I am not making it up or hallucinating right now tbh but ANYWAYS
(in order of appearance a section of the pinboard bts that was posted today, right next to my actual henren vow renewal in lesbian pride colors icon and a section of the original screencap I used that shows it originally had hen’s mum and a flower shrub in the background xD and then underneath an untouched screencap from episode 6x6 when hen looks at the pinboard (yes this is the part I am screaming about the most, ngl) because it shows the pinks a little more, whereas the bts pic shows the oranges more, because printing and photographing obviously made the colors a little funky, but yeah you can actually tell where I fumbled with the colors under her chin and EVEN MORE SO where I absolutely fumbled hen’s lips because the contrast to toni’s face was soooo low skjlhfdaskjhasklashj I am like 99,9% certain here xDDD)
(i just wanna make it perfectly clear that this is literally the best thing that ever happened to me, I feel like I am maybe going to pass out and/or sob until my body runs out of water, I am NOT complaining, I literally just feel like I am losing my whole entire mind ISTG AND I DON’T WANT ANYONE IN ANY WAY APPROACHING CAST OR CREW ABOUT THIS, THIS BETTER NOT BREACH CONTAINMENT)
Random but important questions: do you have dandelions where you live? Do you lightning bugs?
Ooh fun questions, yah there's a bunch of dandelions all around, my city has a lot of trees and anywhere with even a bit of grass those things show up, even on the concrete leading to the grocery store lol and lightning bugs are fireflies right? Those I haven't seen in a while but as a kid I went to our grandpa's small farm very often and those always showed up during summer nights, we played around trying to catch them too
a/n: eee it’s been a while; I hope I didn’t get rusty 🧍♀️
your little girl has been independent ever since she came out of your womb. you’re pretty sure that if it was up to her, she would’ve walked out by herself.
anyway.
she was quickly able to hold her little bottle on her own—satoru couldn’t have been prouder. add to that her very smug look while she was doing it; it’s high school satoru all over again. she is also pretty intelligent for her age; she is able to get through the idea she wants, one way or another.
for example, you remember that one time when she wanted to go out, but wasn’t able to get it through as directly as she wanted. so, since she couldn’t reach the front door on her own yet, she made use of her surroundings.
during that time, satoru was too busy cuddling you and telling you about what his students—kids—did at school.
conveniently for your daughter, however, your husband’s blindfold was put somewhere beside her, and your daughter, relating that he only wears it when he goes out, held it aggressively and started swinging it around, blabbering a bunch of nonsense.
hearing the call of your darling daughter, satoru quickly got there—he says it’s his daddy six sense, you say that your dear d/n simply knows how to get anyone’s attention. that has been proven more than a 100 times in the school.
“what’s up, baby? what can daddy do for you?” he knelt down in front of her, hands hovering over her sides in case she fell back.
“embah!” your daughter huffed and showed him his blindfold.
he tilted his head in confusion, “do you want to wear it?”
she frowned, shaking her head. she also realized that her papa is a big idiot so she opted for him to pick her up which he gladly did. then the little missy started pointing to certain directions.
and satoru obeyed, until they finally reached the front door.
“ohhh,” he then grinned at the little girl, “you wanna go out?”
her frown instantly disappeared and she threw her tiny arms around him, squealing and giving him her version of kisses.
he came to you later that day, boasting about how smart his little baby is, and that’s it probably the work of his genes and yours since the both of you are a “perfect match”.
following that, she was also able to get the hang of walking—more like waddling—fairly quickly.
so yeah, she is independent.
and that’s why her little independent self was trying to walk in the park on her own, refusing to be held by anyone.
you and satoru had no choice but to follow close by but far enough that she wouldn’t get sad.
it was a nice opportunity, your husband said, since you two can hold act all lovey dovey while still keeping an eye on the little princess on the run.
you are holding hands, gently swinging them. meanwhile, satoru has a camera in his other hand, recording his daughter’s every step.
“d/n! baby! look at daddy!”
shaking her head, she squeals and speeds up her waddling. that ushers satoru to start walking faster, dragging you with him, “‘toru, wait!”
“that little devil is not waiting for no one, pretty girl!”
the devil in question looks back only to see her dad’s smirk, and she knows well that it means trouble. her waddling intensifies and she tries widening her steps, but she ends up stumbling and falling to the ground, face first.
“oh no, d/n!” you gasp, quickly rushing to her side and carrying her in your arms, “you okay, baby?”
your husband is swiftly by your side, cradling both you and your daughter. a snort escapes your husband, however. he has to let his opinion known, “that was such a lame fall.”
“satoru!”
“what? it was—“
he is cut off by your daughter’s laughter as she claps her hands. she swings her legs and tries to wiggle out of your grasp to once again return to the wild—also read the park.
she successfully does so, and before going running towards the flowers, she gives you and satoru a kiss on the cheek. satoru takes advantage of your attention being diverted to press a sweet kiss on your other cheek, “our cutie is growing, see?”
“but I don’t want her to grow yet,” you murmur while your hands wrap around his waist. your eyes never leave your daughter who is following a little butterfly.
satoru blinks thoughtfully, before pouting himself, “me neither.”
your thoughts are stopped short by the excited scream of your daughter, “bata!”
“ma, pa, bata!” she runs towards you two, pointing at the blue butterfly resting on the flower.
you grin at her, “yes, d/n, a very pretty butterfly!”
the girl excitedly runs after said butterfly while you feel your husband nudge your shoulder lightly, “you know…”
you side-eye him, knowing that what’s coming next is one of his ‘genius’ ideas. he buries his face in the crook of your neck, “we could always make another one.”
you pinch him gently, and he dramatically yelps as always. your daughter is quickly back from her little expedition with quite the surprise as well.
she raises a flower, that she plucked, to you, and she smiles, “mama! pretty!”
“aww, d/n,” you kneel down, and she takes the freedom to situate the flower in your hair. you lovingly pull her into your embrace and start peppering her cute little face with smooches.
she is busy squealing and laughing while satoru pouts at the two of you. he gives his best puppy eyes to your daughter, “doesn’t daddy get a flower?”
d/n quickly shakes her head, so satoru switches to you, “babe, can I at least some kisses?”
a giggle escapes your lips, “it’s d/n time, ‘toru.”
and satoru gojo is, yet again, left to wallow in his pain of being rejected by his two pretty girls.
but fear not as you can always count on mr. squirrel to keep satoru company—if attacking your husband counts as keeping him company anyway.
Hey, I heard from someone that you don't like being depicted as a deer. Is that true, or do they just have misinformation?
Sorry for asking if it makes you uncomfortable. I just wanna know cause I have, like, no context😅
I think people get that from misunderstanding a tweet I put out a while ago.
I dont hate being portrayed as a deer.
Although, it wasnt something i expected. Pre-hermitcraft gem was almost never drawn as a deer, the antlers were meant to be part of a decorative flower crown, not actually growing out of my skull. So it isn't a depiction that I intended or imagined for myself. When I picture my character she's more of a silly nature elf woman.
Because of that, I do sometimes wish I could separate from the deer a bit. I tweeted a while ago that I didn't want to *always* be a deer. So for the skins I have that don't have antlers, I usually prefer those to be humans or some other more fitting animal. Wizard Gem from Empires is a good example, I really didnt picture her as being a deer, it didnt fit with the character for me. But season 8 hermit gem can totally be a deer. That doesnt mean if you portrayed wizard Gem as a deer I was uncomfy, it just didnt align with how I imagined the character, which is fine.
For season 10 of hermitcraft I plan to ask the audience not to make me a deer. I've had season 8 & 9 gem both be deer now, and I just prefer for my character to be able to change outfits and forms. I think always being portrayed as a deer is putting me in a cottagecore sized box that I never really asked to be trapped in. Season 10 gem won't make sense as a deer anyway, just cause of the theme i'm going with, but to help the fan artists I am commissioning an artist to portray my character close to how I imagine her, with a few animals I think could work in place of the deer.
also if you just haveeee to draw S10 gem as a deer, I still wont be mad, its not that serious I appreciate all the art.