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littledrummeraussie · 1 year

Note

Am I too late? 😂🥰 Hi Angie! I hope youre well! Been a while and I miss yoooou! Gimmie some soft holiday magic with Ashton maybe? 👀🥹

My dear Sky 💜 this one ran away with me, and I really do hope this is everything you dreamed of. To be honest, I plan on revisiting this one later this year because I had so much fun building the characters and their story. 💜

masterlist. | want to be added to my taglist? | Christmas Blurb Fest 2022

just fall in love with me this Christmas. [a fake dating story with Ashton]

warnings: boss!Ashton. personal assistant!reader. fake relationship. just general cuteness and feels and confessions and such.

word count: 4350

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“It’s one more hour and then you’re free to go.”

“Are you kicking me out of your Mom’s house? My own boyfriend?”

Ashton giggled at your offended face, holding onto the plate he was drying, and you were quick to join him, trying to stay as quiet as possible. You flicked some water at him as you finished the dishes, an offer you made to his mother after she so generously welcomed you to her home and let you be part of their Christmas preparation and the holiday itself. To be honest, it wasn’t such big of a surprise – after all, you were dating her really lovely and really handsome son, Ashton.

Fake dating her son, Ashton. Ashton, who was your boss. Your boss, who somehow made his whole family believe that he did go on dates which he was able to fit into his really tight schedule. A tight schedule which usually took up his whole day, and which you were responsible for – after all, you were his personal assistant, so it was perfectly normal for him to talk about you in the most random contexts, right?

Apparently his family thought otherwise.

Ashton approached you after a long Friday night back in November and offered to take you home, saying it was too late and too dark to wait for a cab or an Uber, and that it was the least he could do after you stayed overtime because of his meeting running too long. You were chatting about the upcoming Monday and what you needed to prepare for with the holiday season coming up when he let out a little cough, slowing down at a red light.

“If the holidays have already come up…”

“I did schedule your two-week vacation for December,” you smiled at him, tapping away on your tablet to pull up your notes, ready to jot down any other things he wanted you to add. “You just need to confirm when exactly you want to go home and I’ll buy your ticket as well.”

“What are you doing for Christmas?”

“Uhm… nothing?” you shook your head a little, his question taking you off-guard. “Why?”

“You’re not going home for the holidays?” Ashton looked at you, teeth sinking into his bottom lip, something you were not used to; he was always so confident and put together.

“No, my family is currently not talking to each other, and I really don’t want to deal with that if I can help it,” you explained, shrugging a little. “I would rather spend Christmas on my own and in peace.”

“What would you say if I asked you to come and spend Christmas with my family?” he parked the car in front of your building, finally turning towards you.

“I’m not sure I understand…” you raised an eyebrow at him, looking at him expectantly. “What is going on?”

“I– might have told them that we’re dating and that you’re coming with me?” Ashton said the whole thing in one breath, face twisting into an apologetic grimace. “I’m– sorry?”

“You did what?” you blinked at him, not even questioningly – you just felt confused. Really confused. You were sure your boss just lost his mind.

Ashton let out a loud groan, head banging on the steering wheel as he mumbled a few colourful curses, before falling back against his seat, fingers running through his perfectly styled hair, messing it up in a second. In any other situation this would have been a hilarious sight for you – your extremely talented and influential, well-dressed and well-spoken boss falling apart in his car, all but making a fool out of himself with the dramatic way he acted. But you knew Ashton. You’ve been working with him for more than two years now, first as a junior assistant, then promoted to be his personal assistant once he fired your predecessor. He rarely freaked out over things, especially minor ones. But this seemed like a problem he was not ready for.

“I’m sorry, I–” he sighed, rubbing at his face tiredly. “It was a misunderstanding and now I can’t get out of it.”

“What kind of misunderstanding? Ashton, come on, you’re not helping!”

“I was talking to my Mom and I was telling her about an event we did and then a dinner and then another thing, just… casually dropping your name in the conversation every 2 minutes or so because obviously it’s perfectly normal for me to talk about my PA when we’re working so closely together, but…” he took another deep breath, hanging his head low before glancing over at you again, red splotches appearing on his face from how frustrated he felt. “She didn’t know I fired Melody in January… and that you’re my PA now… and she thought that this new girl I’m suddenly talking about is actually my new girlfriend whom I did not introduce yet.”

“And you did not correct her on that…” you concluded, and Ashton shook his head, staring at the dashboard.

“Nooope. And she asked me if you would be able to join us for the holidays and before I knew it I’d already said yes…”

“Ash–”

“I just… I just wanted them to finally leave me alone!” he massaged his temple, a headache certainly starting to flare up from all the frustration he carried. “Every time I call home they are always, always asking me about my love life and I just– I hated how I always tell them that I don’t have anyone, how I don’t have time to date, and then… and then I panicked and I just said–”

“Ashton!” you raised your voice and that finally made him look at you, eyes big and maybe a little nervous, still chewing on his bottom lip. “I’m in, it’s fine.”

“It is? Yeah?” he perked up at your answer, desperation still lacing his voice. “You would do that?”

“Sure. After all, I’m your PA. It’s my job to sort out your things,” you took a little jab at him, and that made Ashton laugh a little, letting out the breath he was holding back.

“Thank you, Y/N. You really are saving my ass,” Ashton started pulling himself together, like he didn’t just have a nervous breakdown in front of you. “And of course you’ll be compensated for giving up your holiday for my sake.”

“We can talk about details later. I’ll schedule in a dinner for us, because we definitely need to talk about a lot of things…” you were already making a few notes for yourself before smiling at Ashton, opening the car door. “Do you feel like Italian or maybe something Asian-style for our first official date?”

“Really funny, Y/N,” a laugh hid in his voice as he rolled his eyes. “Surprise me?”

“Of course you would say that,” you shook your head, grabbing your things; after all, this was a weekly exchange between the two of you. “Alright, then I’ll see you on Monday if nothing comes up during the weekend.”

“Thank you again, really,” he gave you a little nod as you climbed out of the car, rolling the window down to call after you. “Have a good night, darling!”

You laughed at his attempt and waved him away, promising yourself that you’ll come up with a nickname for him as well so you can tease him in front of his family. If Ashton dragged you into this whole thing, the least you could do was to have some fun while fake dating your boss.

“Are you sure you don’t want to spend the night?” Ashton’s mother fussed with the lapels of his coat, not yet ready to let go of her son.

“We would really love to, but we both have early flights and the hotel is closer to the airport,” Ashton smiled at her, stopping her hands and instead holding them in his own. “It’s still a good hour until we arrive, and honestly, Y/N is not a morning person. Like, at all. And I really don’t want her to miss her flight now that we were able to get a last minute ticket.”

“It was really lovely spending time with you, Mrs. Irwin. Thank you for inviting me, truly, it was a pleasure,” you stepped next to them, letting her hug you as well as Ashton started saying goodbye to the rest of his family. “I really wish we could stay, but we really don’t have any other options.”

“I know, sweetheart. I’m grateful you’ve spent your holiday with us instead of your family, so I understand you want to be with them as well,” Anne Marie gave you another sweet smile, squeezing your hands just like Ashton did with her. “I’m so glad he found you. You complement each other perfectly. I’ve never seen my Ashton this happy, and I wanted to thank you for it.”

“Oh it’s… it’s nothing, really…” you stuttered at her words, suddenly feeling a little awkward; if only she knew that the whole thing was just a well-orchestrated show the two of you put together…

“Please, he looks at you with such adoration. Now I kinda understand why he was so nervous to bring you back home – he’s smitten with you, and there’s no way he would let anyone know that there is someone who has Mr. Big Boss wrapped around their finger,” she continued in a whisper, a twinkle in her eyes, like she was sharing a secret with you.

“Mom, please, don’t scare her away,” Ashton turned back to the two of you, laughing, his arm slipping around your waist. “We should go, darling. We still need to check in and all.”

“Sure, boo. Once again, thank you for everything. These last two weeks were incredible!”

“Please come back soon, both of you,” Anne Marie bid you goodbye one more time before you grabbed your bags and luggage, loading them into the car Ashton rented, then you were on your way back to the city.

Leaving two days earlier wasn’t in your plans, but right in the middle of your stay with Ashton’s family your mother called you up, asking if maybe you would be able to still visit them, even if it was just for a few days. You were ready to tell her that it was a really last minute invitation, and that you were kind of in the middle of something that actually involved your job and your boss, and really, you didn’t want to go and hear the latest family drama. But then that night when you told Ashton about it he was quick to realize that maybe you did want to go and see your family, and he pulled every possible string he could to get you a ticket.

“I’ll change your contact info to Mr. Big Boss,” you giggled, your head resting back against your seat as you looked at Ashton. “Though I kinda like Ashton Bear with the red heart.”

“You’re terrible. Was that really the best name you could come up with?” he groaned, sending you a quick smile as he drove down the road.

“Because Baby Shortcake and the cake emoji were so much better, you’re right,” your eyes rolled at the memory when you were both looking for his phone in your shared bedroom, finding it under the presents you’ve brought, your caller ID flashing across the screen. “How did I even become that?”

“It’s what you ordered for dessert on our third date,” he shrugged, his cheeks flushing pink. “I mean, on our date, when we were discussing everything and all.”

“When we were talking about coffee orders, and I might have confessed that I have a whole chart based on your moods and what kind of coffee you usually drink at that time? Because that was definitely a really good work date, and the absolute best strawberry shortcake I’ve ever had,” you smiled, a twinkle in your eyes. “You should definitely take me back for another dinner or something, I think I deserve it.”

“Only for the strawberry shortcake?” Ashton chuckled, but there was something else laced in his voice, something flirty and maybe hopeful.

“Definitely for the cake. But maybe for something else as well…” you let your answer linger between the two of you, not missing how Ashton tried to hide his smile in his scarf, mumbling a quiet ‘okay’ to you.

After two weeks of sharing the same bed it was a nice change that you were able to have one just for yourself, even though you were still sharing a room with Ashton. He told you to go ahead and take a shower while he sorted out some things, and you happily wrapped the robe around your body once you were done with your nightly routine. By that time Ashton had also come back and went to freshen up after you were finished, settling down next to you on the couch in his own robe. Before any of you could say a word someone knocked on the door and he quickly went to open it, appearing a moment later with a tray and two mugs.

“What’s this?” you smiled as you accepted the steaming cup, looking at your boss over the rim.

“Hot chocolate,” Ashton returned your smile, taking a small sip of his drink, licking the whipped cream off of his top lip. “I’m still in a Christmassy mood.”

“Yeah, me too. And our room definitely helps with that,” you nodded at the small tree in the corner along with the artificial fireplace in front of you, everything settling the mood for a perfect, quiet night you still had together – the very last one. “Though I really liked your Mom’s living room. It was really nice and cozy.”

“Yeah, it was… it was nice. Back at home. Thank you for coming with me once again,” Ashton stumbled through his words a little before looking at his phone, his lips twitching into a thin line before quickly shaking his head.

“You’re okay?” you did not miss his mood changing, and you thought something might have happened which caused it.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m good,” he gave you a forced smile, looking back at his mug, not really drinking it anymore. “Uhm… it’s midnight. You’re officially off duty, and no longer my girlfriend.”

“Oh,” you blinked at him a few times, realizing why his demeanour changed for a second to his usual boss one. “Yeah, of course. Thank you.”

Silence settled over the two of you as you both returned your attention to your hot chocolates, sipping on them quietly. You imagined that this moment would pass without any other thoughts, that once Ashton told you that your agreement has come to an end you would just fall back into your usual roles and act like nothing has happened in the last few weeks. But the truth was that you couldn’t forget about them: the dates you went on, the kisses you’ve shared, the vulnerable, intimate moments you witnessed from each other while you pretended to be lovers.

“You know…” you finally spoke after a few minutes. “I had so much fun during these two weeks with you. It was really lovely and it actually felt like… like something that Christmas with family really should be.”

“I really had so much fun with you too. Can’t remember the last time I felt like this,” Ashton’s mouth pulled into a little smile, nostalgia lacing his voice. “It was the first time that I– that I really wished I could stay a little longer.”

“I’m sorry you needed to leave because of me. You should have told me, I could have found a way to get here and catch my flight in the morning…”

“No, I– I wished that I could stay there… with you,” the confession finally slipped out of Ashton’s mouth, his eyes settling on you. “That you didn’t need to go home, and neither do I. That we would stay and just be together. Just a little longer.”

“I don’t have to go home if you don’t want me to,” you answered in a whisper, almost like you were scared that if you were any louder it would ruin the magic of the moment.

Ashton slowly put his mug down on the table in front of you before scooting closer and taking your cup as well, placing it next to his, eyes still trained on you. His palm curled around your jaw, your own hand sliding over his as he tipped your head forward, nose tracing yours for a moment before you felt his lips slowly press against your lips, soft and tasting so sweet. It was more than just the quick pecks you’ve exchanged in front of his family; a little moan escaped you at the kiss, and Ashton took that as a sign to tease his tongue against your bottom lip, taking your breath away for a second. Your free hand slipped onto his shoulder and up to the nape of his neck, fingers brushing through his curling hair to pull him closer, wanting to get lost in the kiss you’ve shared.

It was long minutes later when he finally pulled back a little, forehead resting against yours as he breathed deeply, the hot puffs of air tickling your skin. You felt a smile tug at the corner of your mouth, eyes still closed, the words softly falling from your lips:

“Hmm, a real kiss?”

“I would like to think they were all real,” Ashton chuckled, heat radiating from his cheeks, but the cheeky smile on his face gave him away.

“That’s why I needed to tell you to kiss me that very first time?” your fingers combed into his hair, tugging on his curls a little while pulling him back again, lips pressing together for another second.

“I’m not a damn fool…” Ashton mumbled against your skin, nuzzling his nose with yours. “Well, not anymore.”

His honesty made you laugh and you buried your face against his neck, stifling your giggles. Ashton wrapped his arms around you, keeping you close to his chest, palm rubbing up and down your back, something that he picked up during your time at his Mom’s house when you were cuddled up on the couch, watching Christmas movies together. You still remembered the first time you were forced to act like lovers and be all touchy with each other, and now it warmed your heart how naturally it came for the two of you.

“I’ve thought that the only reason why I asked you to come with me and pretend to be my girlfriend was simply because you’re my assistant, and you’re used to dealing with my shit,” Ashton sighed against your hair, his voice close to a whisper, and you held your breath as you listened to him. “I’ve told myself that whatever I was feeling during our dinner dates or quick post-work discussions was because it’s been a while since I had someone I could share anything with. Because I needed to pretend we’re together, and I needed to believe I have feelings for you. I told myself I’m not falling for you, that I cannot fall for you. But by the time we have arrived it was already too late…”

You pulled back just enough to look up at him again, foreheads touching, wanting to ask him something, but Ashton continued talking, his eyes sparkling in the colourful lights twinkling in the corner of the room.

“I think… I think I always had feelings for you. Maybe not as strong as now, but they were there. And every time we needed to act like a couple I just froze for a moment because I was fighting so hard to keep my feelings in check. And every time I just felt myself falling even more for you…” a little smile pulled at the corner of his mouth at his own confession, and you ran your fingers down his cheek, softly caressing it. “After those first few times… it was so easy, so comfortable – I liked that feeling with you, being comfortable. I’m not used to that with people.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. And you did remember, every little moment from the past two weeks: all those times when you needed to face a new situation that required the both of you to put your boss–assistant relationship behind yourselves, get out of your comfort zones, and act like the loving couple you pretended to be. It made sense now, how Ashton always hesitated first, but then warmed up to you as time passed by. The long looks, the lingering touches, the unprompted little cuddles, the quiet moments shared in the morning. You could have acted like you always did, just two people having a work relationship. But somehow you always found yourselves close to the other.

“I was telling myself that I’m only feeling this because we’re pretending that we’re in love. That these things will pass soon, especially as we’re coming to the end of our agreement. Funny how I realized what I was really feeling by the time you have decided that you’ll go home to your parents. It made me realize that I might just lose my chance to tell you how I feel.”

“Well, that was… quite the confession,” you let out a little laugh, your own cheeks feeling warm as you cupped Ashton’s face in your hands. “Am I allowed to speak now?”

“Oh, shit, yeah! Of course,” Ashton groaned, trying to hide his blush from you, his dimples appearing as he smiled. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. I know you’re good at motivational speeches,” you teased him, making him roll his eyes before looking back at you. “I liked whatever we had before we started fake dating. I love our work relationship, I love our dynamic. But truth to be told… it was really easy to fall in love with you. I always thought you were… decent and… handsome… definitely great humour. But I quickly told myself that I can either ruin this by having a crush on you, or you know… keep my job. And then you fired Melody…”

“…and you decided to keep your job,” he concluded, his voice sounding a little more quiet.

“I also knew that pursuing a relationship with you would be really difficult, seeing as you didn’t really have any breaks in the last few years. And I wasn’t sure how it could work out… PA by day, girlfriend by night? And anyway, I wasn’t even sure if you would like me like that.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure either… not until recently,” he said, nodding for you to continue.

“When you asked me to go on this trip with you, I– I told myself you were crazy. Then I realized I was also crazy for even just thinking about saying yes to your offer. But I thought it could be a fun way to spend Christmas if I’m not with my family, and it also kinda gave me the chance to pretend that you… that you like me. And I was gone from the moment I saw you at the airport, wearing your glasses and waiting for me with coffee… and it broke my heart that this would be only for two weeks.”

“That’s why you ended up saying yes to visiting your family, even though you didn’t want to do it before?” Ashton asked, brushing a few strands of hair away from your face.

“I had a moment when I felt really close to you, where I believed that this thing between us… it was real,” you confessed, eyes looking down. “And I felt that I might need a few days alone to sort out my feelings before going back to work with you, acting like nothing happened while we were here. Like we didn’t share the bed, we didn’t hold each other, and we definitely didn’t kiss.”

“Well, I don’t want to pretend that these two weeks never happened,” you felt him curl his arms around your waist, pulling you into his lap before tipping your chin up, making you look into his eyes. “It’s the happiest I’ve been for a long time now. And I really want to hold onto this feeling. I really want this to be real, you and me.”

“What about our jobs?” you sighed, fingers tangling into his hair and brushing it back from his forehead. “Cause I want this, I want you, more than anything. But I don’t want to give up on you, not as my boss, and definitely not as Ashton.”

“We’ll just try and work it out when we’re back, okay?” he cupped your cheek, leaning closer to press his lips softly against yours. “We’ll schedule a work dinner at that restaurant you liked and talk about it over a strawberry shortcake.”

“You’re terrible,” you scoffed, pressing a smiley kiss back onto his lips. “Do I have to make the reservation?”

“Hey now, I know I’m bad at scheduling, and that’s why I have you, but I’m taking you on that date myself,” Ashton giggled, mumbling his words between more kisses. “It’s what a real girlfriend deserves.”

“Can I keep your contact info as Ashton Bear? With the heart?” you nudged your nose against his as you kissed, his fingers tightening on your hips. “If you’re my real boyfriend now?”

“Surprise me?” his voice turned into a moan, locking his arms around you, your body pressed against his chest.

“Of course you would say that.”

His giggle filled the air, hearty and full of happiness before picking you up in his lap and taking you to the bedroom. There were a lot of things forgotten that night: setting an alarm for the next day. Your robes and the other bed. Staying on your sides as you fell asleep. You both forgot who you were pretending to be and who you were supposed to be.

That night you were finally just two people who fell in love during Christmas.

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@mymindwide @fuckyeah5sostakemehome @suchalonelysunflower @talkfastromance4 @ashtonsunflower @in-superbloom @wiiildflowerrr @lovelywordsblog @heyitskelseaj @sadistmichael

#ashton irwin #ashton irwin x reader #ashton irwin blurb #ashton irwin fanfic #ashton irwin fluff #fiction time #christmas blurb fest 2022 #afic: just fall in love with me this christmas

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phanfictioncatalogue · 6 months

Text

Strangers AU (2) Masterlist

part one

6:30 Special - dansphlevels

Summary: In a world where you and your soulmate both have constellations of dark blue freckles that glow when you’re together, Dan has been waiting for his whole life for it to finally glow. And when it does, he is stood face to face with a man Phil, who looks back in confusion, his own constellation unlit.

airport meetings (ao3) - pasteldanhowells

Summary: Dan is having a bad start to his morning, and you would think a stranger crashing into him, literally, would make things worse, but actually, it makes Dan's morning somewhat better when Dan sees how attractive the man is.

A Match and a Fuse (ao3) - waveydnp

Summary: Phil is twenty six years old and stuck in a dead end life. He works at Starbucks and may or may not be carrying a torch for his best friend of eight years. He doesn’t know who he is or what he wants–or how to go about figuring it out. That all starts to change when he happens upon the resume of a certain law school grad named Daniel.

Charmed (ao3) - hygge

Summary: Dan doesn’t understand Valentine’s Day. That is until he’s given an anonymous card with someone’s phone number in it. It takes months of talking with this anonymous person to learn who they are, and it ends up being the person that Dan least expects.

Close To You - succubusphan

Summary:Phil takes his friend’s child to baby ballet and meets a handsome dad. It was the first day of the rest of his life.

Golden Boy (ao3) - hygge

Summary: Phil takes a drawing class in university and needs a subject for his drawing final.

Ice Packs And Coffee Cups (ao3) - rainbowchristy

Summary: As part of the emergency staff for London's biggest concert venue, Phil knew how to manage a huge range of problems. When a certain brown-haired boy turns up unconscious, Phil doesn't think much of it, well, until the boy awakens, that is.

I Really Can’t Tell If I’m Dreaming Or Breathing - wavydanrises

Summary: Dan is an events manager at the Queen’s Garden’s, one of the city’s most renowned hotels, and he's organizing a Christmas reception with the cute reception planner called Phil Lester.

Lost (ao3) - BeeAreEff

Summary: phil goes to an amusementpark, no spoilers.

Lungs Filled With Flowers - botanistlester

Summary: Whenever Dan has a bad day, he always knows that Animal Crossing will be there for him no matter what. When he finds a friend code written on his desk, he immediately adds it into his DS, despite not knowing who it could be.

pastry chef attempts to steal phil’s heart (ao3) - sierraadeux

Summary: If anyone asks, Prince Philip’s sneaky morning journeys down to the royal pastry kitchen are for nothing more than the perfect cup of coffee.

Popping Corn With Your Ex-Boyfriend’s Ex-Boyfriend (ao3) - spencerwrites

Summary: Phil goes to the cinema by himself and finds his boyfriend with another boy buying tickets for the same movie he wanted to see. Phil and Dan both dump their boyfriend and go see the movie together instead.

snuggle up close, let me hold your pieces in place, even if just for a night (ao3) - natigail

Summary: It was just one thing after another really.

Broken down bus with a whole class of freshers. Dingy hotel room that was cold as fuck. No one wanting to share a room with Dan.

But then the TA Phil stepped up to the plate and defended Dan. Of course, it meant that the two of them ended up sharing a bed, and then the heater had to break. It's the perfect excuse for sharing body warmth and confessions.

Special Delivery (ao3) - phantasticworks

Summary: Dan Howell receives a package he definitely didn't order, but the man who did order it is... well, he's rather interesting. And the object he's ordered... well, it's odd, to say the least.

strawberries and cigarettes (ao3) - calvinahobbes

Summary: “Hey, mate, spare a light?” the guy says. He stops a couple of feet from Phil and holds out an unlit cigarette.

Swipe Right (ao3) - howellesterfics

Summary: Dan is tired of matching with sexually confused frat boys on Tinder. When he swipes right on Phil, he hopes that this time around things will be different, and well - they certainly are.

Try New Things (ao3) - PoisonedMind

Summary: Phil tries yoga for the first time and it’s an absolutely harrowing experience except for the cute guy at the mat next to him who sucks just as badly as Phil does.

Two Strangers Drinking Champagne In An Airport - dxnhowell

Summary: Dan and Phil in an airport terminal drinking champagne out of plastic cups with a bunch of those airport TV screens in the background with all the flights cancelled.

Up Close And Personal - dxnhowell

Summary: Dan is a famous dinosaur expert who has been studying dinosaurs his whole life, and gets the opportunity to work at Jurassic World (he works exclusively with the raptors). Phil is a very smart guy, like a genius, and he’s close friends with Louise who works at Jurassic World so he gets to go to Jurassic World and gets behind the scenes VIP treatment. There, he meets Dan. Unfortunately for Phil, things go wrong while feeding the raptors and an accident happens.

waffles (ao3) - kae_karo

Summary: phil goes to the 24hr diner with the hopes of seeing his favorite waiter (insp by me seeing a cute waitress at a diner. unfortunately none of the rest actually happened to me lmao)

#phanfiction #phanfictioncatalogue #phanfic #phan #masterlists #au #strangers #strangers masterlist

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shytastemakerthing · 5 months

Note

hello!! if it’s okay can I request a romantic enstars matchup?? Thank u!!

I am a plus sized girl, 162 cm in height!! I am also 18 with she/they pronouns if that matters >_<

My hobbies include collecting porcelain dolls, gaming, photography and art! I enjoy things that are considered creepy, and often find them cute. I am fascinated by the concept of the supernatural, such as ghosts. I enjoy ghost tours and the thought of ghost hunting!!

I adore cats a lot, and own 3 <3 Along with cats, my favourite animal is the moray eel!

I would describe my personality as awkward and shy, almost never going up to a new person first. I tend to wait for people to talk to me, and even then it takes me a while to move on from basic responses. I am a huge gift giver, always buying stuff for my friends when I have the chance, as showing my appreciation through words is near impossible for me.

I have quite the case of separation anxiety, so my partner would need to be someone who is able to reassure me that they’ll always be there, even if I slip up. I’m also very forgetful, so having someone to remind me of things would be great!

AHH I hope that’s enough information!! Thank u again <3333

Hello and thank you for your request! Reading over the info that you have given to me, there was one character that stuck with me instantly and I knew he would be perfect for you! I do hope that you enjoy your match-up!

Tw: None

I match you with...........

Natsume Sakasaki

Just look at him and tell me he doesn't enjoy the creepy things in life (Mayoi and Shu was a near contenders but Natsume was our winner!). He is all about the strange and supernatural. He basically grew up around it, after all. So to know that you, his beloved partner, share the same interests that he does? Oh, this eccentric is thrilled.

Anytime that he happens to move past a shop and he sees any porcelain dolls within, he is quickly going inside of that shop to take a closer look. After deeming that they are certainly dolls that would perfectly match your tastes and styles, he has paid for said dolls and is making his way to you, even if he had just seen you. This was a gist that could not wait until later.

Honestly, he would love it if you ever came to see Switch practicing or even any of their lives. He will always have the best ticket reserved just for you. The thought of knowing that you were there in the crowd, cheering him (and his unit mates) on with that beautiful smile of yours makes him perform just that much better.

Speaking of his unit mates, Sora and Tsumugi absolutely adore you. You're basically an honorary member at this point. Sora wanted to bet you your own Switch uniform but seeing as you aren't actually in the unit and the higher-ups may not approve, he settled for at least getting you some of their own training outfits that they have no use for. Natsume would love to see you wear his.

He knows of the separation anxiety that you get, especially if he has to be away traveling with his unit for extended periods of time. That's when things are the hardest, but it is his constant reassurance, every good morning text, every call throughout the day when he has time just to hear your voice, late night face time calls, that makes it all worth it in the end. It makes the reunions that much better (little do you know that he is trying to work it out to where you can come with the unit when they do away work like this).

If you ever give him anything as a gift, he loves it all. Natsume has created a small stand in the shared room he has while at the academy dedicated just for the things that you give to him.

Overall, once he managed to approach you and the relationship was sealed, he was forever in love with you. Every time he saw your smile, it was as if he was in a trance, your own little spell over him. Even if it was a spell (he knew that it wasn't) he wouldn't care. Being with you is the greatest gift he could ask for.

#matchups #romantic #enstars #ensemble stars #enstars natsume #natsume sakasaki #natsume sakasaki x reader #enstars switch #switch tsumugi aoba #sora harukawa #shy answers #shy writes

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lordmartiya · 1 year

Text

@mlsecretsanta

My Secret Santa to @queerinette , now complete - I had forgotten a couple scenes.

To Marinette one of the advantages of being the class representative was that she had access to the class register, including everyone’s address and birthdate. Especially Lila’s. Finding out she lives on the other side of Place des Vosges from her home helped her not mistaking the Italian being around so often for stalking, and knowing her birthday told her when to find herself something to do and be unable to attend the party she knew Nino would throw her.

Meaning she was caught completely by surprise when he and Alya invited her and Adrien to the theater for that exact day.

“Sorry, I’m helping at the bakery…” Marinette said, before blurting out something else: “Isn’t there Lila’s birthday party that day?”

“No? Wait, it’s Lila’s birthday?” Nino replied.

“Yes… I thought you knew?”

______

Turned out Nino hadn’t known, and he immediately tried to set up a party for her.

“No, thank you.” Lila told him when he started proposing things. “Mom finally managed to get a day off for my birthday, and I’ll spend it with her.”

“Oh. Well, I…”

“Thank for the thought.”

“What do you mean “finally”?” Marinette asked.

“She’s a high-ranking diplomat. Not the ambassador, he’s in Bordeaux since Hawk Moth showed up and the French government holed up there, but high-ranking enough to have insane work hours… But this year she’s free.”

Good for her, nobody deserved to be alone on their birthday.

______

It was Lila’s birthday, and Marinette knew she was spending it with her mother at Disneyland Paris (she had showed off the tickets in class. The place was overpriced, but she supposed someone from outside Paris could appreciate it more than her). That was why she was surprised to recognize her coming in wearing a hoodie to buy a large cake.

“Weren’t you supposed to be at-”

“Zitta o te tranvo.” Lila cut her off, the use of Rome’s dialect rather than French or standard Italian showing how furious she was. Then the Akumatization mask flashed over her eyes, immediately followed by Lila saying what had to be a stream of profanities at the villain until the mask faded. “How much?”

“It’s-”

“If you say it’s free I’m letting myself Akumatized and then I’ll throw you into the Seine.”

“What happened?” Marinette asked.

“How. Much. I. Owe. You?”

“What happened?”

That triggered the Italian girl’s rant. In dialect, but it was close enough to standard Italian Marinette understood that right as she and her mother were leaving the embassy called because Tsurugi Tomoe had suddenly decided to close down a company in Taranto she had a controlling interest into, and that company was large enough the Italian premier had personally called her mother, who happened to be the highest-ranked diplomat in Paris as long as the ambassador was in Bordeaux (turned out Lila had downplayed that, much to Marinette’s surprise), and sent her to make her change her mind. And the immediate arrival of an Akuma, combined with Lila’s refusal to get Akumatized and ruin Taranto’s economy by going after Tomoe (how big was that company?!) and how much the now wasted tickets had cost, only made her more furious, to the point the Akuma wouldn’t leave. Marinette knew what she had to do.

“Mom, I’m going to Disneyland with a classmate!” she called out. There wasn’t any real need for her help at the bakery, after all.

“I don’t need your pity.” Lila spat out.

“It’s not pity, I simply don’t want to waste the tickets.” A lie, and Lila wouldn’t but it… But she could pretend and take the out without wounding her pride.

“Fine. At least that won’t get wasted.”

______

“Why was there a dragon?!” Marinette complained about the surprise under the Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

“That wasn’t a dragon, just a the most extra fairy outside Winx Club.” Lila replied.

She had thankfully calmed down enough to reject the Akuma, giving Marinette the chance to purify it (Lila having left her alone to clean the formerly Akumatized friendship bracelet), and it had been a surprisingly funny day. Especially once Lila’s mother called to tell her daughter the issue had been solved.

As for the birthday girl herself, turned out that once she didnt’t feel the need to lie she was a very funny person to be around, if a bit opinionated.

“And don’t try and distract me, you still have to tell me why you’re convinced Adrien’s perfect.”

And there was that. Lila was convinced that her crush on Adrien was the reason for their feud (and Marinette had to admit to herself it had played a huge part in her initial reaction. And generally on why Lila irritated her so much), and wanted to know why. And was relentless. Enough that Marinette gave up and told her.

“You know what’s weird? That I’ve seen stupider.” Lila commented. “Sure, Adrien’s a nice guy, and I know from direct experience he’s far smarter and tenacious that his naivety makes him look – I hope I get to see Gabriel’s face when he decides he’s had enough of his bullshit – but you fell for him just like that?! And can’t even talk to him without being as cringe as Ladybug with her celebrity crush?”

Marinette cringed at the commentary. But Lila wasn’t finished.

“At least he’s not like his Eton lookalike, the cazzaro that stole his phone that time and acted like a Lazziale and got three Akumas after him. But, seriously, you need to stop acting like in an anime, it’s unhealthy and demeaning, for both of you. Get to know him as a friend first, then think of romantic stuff. Or maybe I should show you how going out with girls is funnier.”

Wait, what? “Are you hitting on me?”

Lila’s reaction was unexpected: her face showed the same fear she only had once, when Onichan was coming after her, and at the same time she was looking around for anyone who may have heard while her breath was getting more elaborate. It was clear what was happening.

“Oh. Of course not, I misheard.” Marinette said, surprising Lila. Though at least she was calming down.

“Yes. Yes you did.” the Italian girl said.

“By the way, do you think we could go out again, as friends?”

“Sure.”

That had been an unexpected day. But she had helped someone in need, it had been surprisingly fun, and it had confirmed what she had once written in her diary, that Lila could be good if helped. And now, she knew how.

______

“Wait… If it had been an initiative from an underling and Tsurugi-san had already solved it before you even arrived, what took you so long?” Lila asked her mother.

“She was on FaceTime detailing all the ways he had failed the company and shamed his family and all his ancestors, especially his father who had worked for the company for twenty years before retiring and paid for his college, before finally firing him. Took her three hours before she could see me.”

Lila facepalmed. If nothing else it explained why the poor daughter was so repressed. Next time she got Akumatized she was raiding the madwoman’s house and breaking something important, if she won there would be no Miraculous Cure to restore it. Or maybe she could steal some company secret and send it to a competitor, the Cure wouldn’t fix that one.

At least something good had come from the day. Sure, she had missed spending the birthday with her mother, but she had found some common ground with Marinette. Maybe, just maybe, they could become friends.

But there was still something weird in what happened. “Any idea why that woman couldn’t spare two minutes to tell you she had fixed it before fixing the guy?” Lila asked. “I know her daughter Kagami” her mother couldn’t help but snicker at what the name sounded like in Italian. Better than Lila laughing herself to tears the first time and then having to spend weeks to apologize. “and by what she says she’s professional enough to not force outsiders to wait for her whims.”

“Maybe she’s secretly evil even for a CEO and ruining your birthday was part of her plan?”

The diplomat and her daughter laughed. Who does that?

______

“You had me scare an entire city and ruin that girl’s birthday and couldn’t even Akumatize her.” Tsurugi Tomoe told Gabriel.

“Weren’t you looking for an excuse to fire him anyway?” Gabriel replied. “Honestly, I don’t see the problem, you always fire incompetent executives that way, and I just helped you do it faster by tricking that guy into trying to close down that-“

“I acted unprofessional. I always inform people that the issue has been solved before detailing the fool’s failures and firing them. And I do so in person. Not on FaceTime.”

“Wasn’t the guy in Japan?”

“Your point?”

“So you would have flown to Japan just to fire him?”

“Of course not. He would have come to me to be fired.”

Gabriel stayed silent – he just didn’t get the woman. Just as she didn’t get why the plan had failed: it took a special kind of stubborness and willpower to resist an Akuma, and Lila Rossi was one of two such people he was aware of alongside Chloé Bourgeois. They needed proper motivation, and he had clearly given her the wrong one. Maybe he could try with her rival… And even if that failed he’d get Marinette Dupain-Cheng. They were obviously eternal enemies.

______

“Just give them their dune buggy!” Lila and Marinette shouted at the villain in the film they were watching with the other girls at the sleepover, much to the surprise of everyone but Alya. She had always known this would happen if they were given the chance.

They were friends now, and they’d stay friends forever.

#miraculousladybug #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #lila rossi #marinette dupain-cheng #miraculous lb #ml ladybug #ladybug #lilarossi #ml secret santa

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whatsk-poppinhomies · 2 years

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❀ Part 5 : Fascination Street

❀ Word Count : 1.2k

●～●～●～●～●●～●～●～●～●●～●～●～●

Before you could finish, Heeseung was tapping your shoulder and when you turned around, Soobin was standing behind you, eyeing Beomgyu with eyes that screamed for him to go away. “Why are you here?” His words were laced with the anger that he felt although it was obvious he was trying to hold it in. “You chose your side, you don’t need to talk to her or me.”

The eyes of the other people waiting in line were wide with excitement, their hands twitching towards their phones, preparing for the fight that they assumed was coming. “Keep it civil, none of us can afford to lose our jobs.” Heeseung whispered, his hand on Soobins shoulder to try to calm him down. “Take it outside if you have to, just don’t do it here.”

“I’m not trying to fight with you, man…” Beomgyu sighed, taking a step back from the counter to try to lower the tension, earning a groan of disappointment from all the other people waiting in line. “I never chose a side either, I’m friends with all of you. That’s why I’m here.”

Jake cleared his throat, nudging Beomgyu and Taehyun and motioning over to the doors where you all looked up and saw Yeonjun walking in with Hyejin. “If you need to go…” Heeseung started, but you shook your head. It wasn’t the time to make a powerful speech because honestly, nobody was going to listen to it and the people in line would only get more annoyed, so you simply smiled to your manager and then to Soobin.

“No, just… Soobin, go back in the theater with Seonni and Cheol, I don’t want her to come out.” You could tell he was reluctant, it was the last thing he wanted to do. Seonni was safe with Cheol, and he didn’t want to leave you alone to deal with Yeonjun and his stupid friends by yourself, and you trying to essentially get rid of him only heightened his worries. “Please…”

“I don’t know why it would be such a big deal for Yeonjun to see her though… Maybe if he does he’ll back off.” Taehyun mentioned, and Beomgyu motioned his head in the blondes direction to indicate that he had a point, but their words only seemed to irritate Soobin more.

They didn’t know the truth and in a sudden burst of annoyance and exhaustion at everything that’s been going on, he opened his mouth, the words flying out before he could even think twice about them. “Because she’s not mine, she’s his!” He hissed, and while you were thankful that he didn’t shout it, you were pissed that he had just outed the biggest secret you’ve been keeping for three years. “Y/N… I’m….” He began, but you pursed your lips, biting back your own anger now as your hands slid down his chest to fall at your sides.

“Please just… go with her…” You whispered to him, exasperated, annoyed and completely done. You could feel the eyes of the three guys standing on the other side of the counter, their shock rolling off of them in waves. “At least pretend to buy a ticket, it’s holding up the line.” You mumbled after Soobin had walked off, his anger with himself palpable as he stormed into the direction of the theater he had come from.

“You… Soobin isn’t…” Beomgyu stammered, his jaw slacked as the other guys continued to stare at you. “And he doesn’t know?!” At this point the people behind Beomgyu and the other two guys were complaining, so you shooed him away with a flick of your wrist, mouthing to him that you’d talk to him later, waiting for him to head over to the popcorn before letting out a loud sigh and putting on a fake smile for the next person who came up.

The line moved quickly and as much as you wanted everyone to be gone, you could see Yeonjun and Hyejin inching closer and closer until they reached the counter. “Hey…” Yeonjun said and you nodded a greeting to him, your fingers hovering over the screen of the register while you waited for him to say something else. “Was that Beomgyu earlier? And Soobin?” He asked, looking around, and you simply nodded, not wanting to speak to him or look at him, even the smallest glimpse of his face and you could see the resemblance to Seonni and it made you sick.

“Just get the tickets Junnie, we’re gonna miss the previews.” Hyejin cooed, her arm tightening around Yeonjuns, and you could see that he was trying to move away. It almost made you laugh but you didn’t want to cause anymore drama either, so you held it in. “I told you I wanted to see that new scary movie… we can sit in the back… you know.”

The insinuation wasn’t even masked, and you fought the urge to grimace at the thought of whatever they were going to do in the seats. “Y/N it’s your break.” Heeseung spoke up from behind you, his hand squeezing your shoulder to get your attention. “I’ll handle the rest of them.”

You nodded, quietly thanking Heeseung for saving you and running out from behind the counter to meet up with Beomgyu, Jake, and Taehyun who were standing near the claw machines. “I’m not going into detail, but I’m letting you know that if you say anything to him, if you slip because I know you have the tendency to, I will personally drop kick you.”

Beomgyu nodded, mimicking the motion of zipping his lips and throwing away the key. “We won’t say anything. Promise. But what the fuck! How did that happen?!” He ran his hands through his hair, the gears turning in his mind as he tried to understand and you shook your head. There was no time to explain everything to him, and Yeonjun was heading over to where the four of you stood. “Shit… shit shit shit, tell us later, I’ll make a groupchat.”

“Dammit…” You hurried off towards the theater room where you knew Cheol, Soobin and Seonni were. You had kept the secret for so long, and now so many people know about it, it was terrifying. You hoped that Beomgyu could keep the secret, you really did, but a part of you felt like you should be ready for anything.

●～●～●～●～●●～●～●～●～●●～●～●～●

❀ Synopsis : You and Yeonjun were the power couple all through school, and everyone thought they always would be until he up and left with no real reason. Soobin was there to pick up the pieces, caring for you and the child that Yeonjun didn’t even know about, becoming the father she loved, and the man you adored. Everything is perfect… Until Yeonjun decides to show up again three years later.

<- / masterlist / ->

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mors-et-virginem · 2 years

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Highlights from a 16 hour shift

-tables being mad at me because we were out of food they wanted

-drunk unstable guy accusing me of being a witch because I spilled ice cubes, started slamming his fists on the bar and trying to get in my face, had to call police, they show up 2 hours later and it’s not even a cop who knew about the incident he just wanted a to go order

-being forced to go outside and listen to an unhinged ramble from the woman who came in with the unstable drunk guy about her sex life before she ran off into the night

-my tables were like I’m so sorry, but didn’t tip me. When the dude was being crazy nobody spoke up for me, nobody did anything while a man twice my size tried to square up with me, not even my coworker, and it took someone from back of house to get him to leave.

-the person who was supposed to relieve me didn’t show up. Found out from back of house they refused to work the shift but just didn’t say anything. My ex/room mate showed up thinking I was getting out at my usual hour to give me a ride. Complained about waiting around for me before he left and told me I was “being rude to him” because he showed up shortly after the incident and I was filled with adrenaline and anxiety; but was still responsible for closing out tickets and helping my staff go home. Even though my manager didn’t want me to work this shift because it would put me into overtime, Nobody would come in so I worked a 16 hour double.

-Tables post crazy dude were less awful by a slight degree. But I was still snapped at because of back of house issues. I was so stressed at this point I started crying and told them I would pay for their meal.

My last to go order were a drunk couple, and the woman just…didn’t like me. Talked to me like I was stupid, slurring at me and snapping her fingers. Was angry that the menu didn’t “read the way it should” (what does that mean???) When I got their order packed, after verifying with the chef that it was correct with my own two eyes she made me unpack it and show her. At least the guy with her seemed to realize she was being a bitch for literally no reason and tipped me nicely.

All this is to say I LITERALLY HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THE SUPPLY CHAIN, THE MENU DESIGN, HOW LATE YOUR FOOD IS (UNLESS I WAS A DUMB ASS THEN YEAH THAT’D BE ON ME), STAFFING, ETC. I’M JUST YOUR SERVER AND IT’D BE REALLY GREAT TO BE TREATED LIKE A FUCKING HUMAN BEING AS I GO THROUGH MY OWN PERSONAL SHIT YOU DON’T SEE ME HOLDING MY TABLES RESPONSIBLE FOR SHIT IN MY PERSONAL LIFE THAT LITERALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU OR STIFF YOU AFTER SITTING BACK WATCHING AN UNSTABLE MAN TWICE YOUR SIZE MENACE YOU AND HONESTLY I REALLY LOVE MY JOB IT’S THE ONLY GOOD THING I HAVE GOING FOR ME RIGHT NOW AND I’M WORKING MYSELF INTO BURNOUT TRYING TO SCRAPE ENOUGH MONEY TO GET OUT OF SHARING SPACE WITH SOMEONE WHO GASLIT, CHEATED AND LIED TO ME SO MAYBE STOP SHITTING ON SERVICE WORKERS.

I’ve never done this before but if anyone wants to buy me a cup of post traumatizing shift coffee I would be so grateful.

Cashapp $hotchipsplz

#personal #text post #restaurant life #server problems #server life #god i need therapy

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ameleah · 2 years

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If you don’t yet know it: I’m an introvert with a slight social phobia, and heavier depression and anxiety. I used to go to a couple conventions to meet with my closest internet friends, and later on, when we lost touch, I considered some to go to with other people that were also interested.

Every time before a convention I looked up if my favourite writer was there to sign books. The one time she was, years ago, I was not able to go - said friends waited in line and got me her autograph. They told me about beautiful angels born in the books of the ones fortunate enough to be her, drawn by the author herself. Even though they got a dedication from her for me, I did not stop checking, every single time a convention was coming up, so that I would be able to experience that as well.

This year I did not buy the tickets again, knowing she would not come, once again.

I used her work in my final exam at school. Presented her biography in my cultural class. I spent who-knows-how-many hours exploring her worlds. I loved every second of it, and I felt so close to this woman. She probably never remembered that she even signed a flyer at a convention for a few people asking .

I may not have explored every nook and cranny, may not have been the most dedicated fan. Not read all of her works, not yet, at least.

But for me, she was the one name I longed to see on the guest list, so that I could finally stand before her and tell her how much I admired her, how much I loved her, maybe even see a drawing bloom on my own copy of her book,

I will not get to do that, ever. I really wish I had been able to meet her even once, to express the gratitude that I had for her and her beautiful mind that she shared with the world.

The First Lady of the Polish Fantasy scene lost her life tragically last night in the fire of her vacation home that she loved to escape into.

I haven’t been able to tell you in person. I was never able to meet you. I hope this can reach you somehow instead.

As you can see, the insignificant flyer that you signed for me those years ago when my friends asked you to was through some harsh times, and only recently found its frame, which will now be its home for as long as I am able to keep it. I cherish it with all of my heart.

[id: a picture of a framed autograph, dedicated: “Dla Amelki, Maja Lidia Kossakowska”]

Rest in peace, my beloved author. Deepest condolences to your loved ones.

I hope you meet your angels and that they are kind to you.

#amy rambles #maja lidia kossakowska #rest in peace #sorry im crying #i am so heartbroken rn #i wish she shared even more of her beautiful mind with us #it was not her time #.

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iwannaban0nym0us · 2 years

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So, I’m back! The trip was really fun and we did a lot of cool outdoors activities (including a snowball fight which was so fun) but y’all get to hear the queer and emotional parts of the story

So, to start off, my grayfriend was supposed to go on this trip with me but got covid a couple days before and therefore couldn’t come. My grayfriend collects snow globes and was planning on buying (at least) one on the trip. I’m really happy because i was able to find one (that’s a frog (which must be gay) none the less) that I bought for them and will give to them in person as a gift next time I see them

Switching gears now; I’m really happy that I was passing most of the trip. I think almost every single one of the strangers and guides and such read me as a guy which was really awesome since I’m transmasc. Oh and also my ticket had my chosen name on it even though my name hasn’t been legally changed yet!!!

Ok, next part of the story—bathrooms, every trans (and particularly nonbinary) person’s worst nightmare when traveling. Before I get into what happened on the trip for context I came out at the very beginning of the school year and am pretty openly trans. I’m transmasc and I present really masculine, despite the fact that I’m not a binary guy. This makes figuring out which bathroom to use really hard. At school it’s much easier since there’s gender neutral bathrooms (however out of the way they may be) while only like 3 places on the trip had that option.

I’m pretty sure that once we got on the bus for the first time every time I used the bathroom I ended up using either a gender neutral bathroom or the men’s room which is still kinda insane for me to believe. What I discovered during the trip is that girls I know even a little bit don’t question me if I go in the women’s room, while guys I know only a little bit give me weird looks in the men’s room but guys I know decently well are chill if I use the men’s room. Whereas when it comes to strangers I didn’t get a single weird look in the men’s room the whole trip while the like 2 times I used the women’s room at the airport I had 2 different people walk in see me and then turn around and look to see if they were in the right restroom. Which I guess means I’m passing but also really sucks because that gesture feels like them saying that I don’t belong there, and if I don’t belong there where do I belong?

Given all of that information you’d probably think it’s an easy decision and I should just use the men’s room, right? Wrong. I don’t have a stp nor do I really want one which means that I can’t use a urinal. The problem with the men’s room is that it’s a toss up if there will be enough stalls for there to be one open for me to use. While in the women’s room I know there’s only stalls and if all the stalls are busy it’s normal to wait in line for them.

I did end up choosing the men’s room most of the time, partly because I went to the bathroom with guy friends and at least at the beginning of the trip I was not confident enough to go into any bathroom alone, and partly because I don’t know if I could of have taken any more of those questioning looks from random women. Surprisingly I think I only ran into the problem of all of the stalls being full like twice and one of those times was at the airport on the first day where I just ended up using the women’s room so idk if that one really counts.

Also it drove me crazy that our bus driver would constantly say things like ‘ladies and gentlemen’, ‘boys and girls’, ‘men and women’ and so on since he basically implied that I don’t exist.

Alright, last point, I think. So my crush who’s a cis guy on the boy’s soccer team and the programing sub-team on the robotics team went on the same trip as me. Before the trip I knew him maybe a bit better than someone who I’m not friends with but like have classes with. The first day or so I was way too nervous to do much more than say hi to him even though he was sitting across the aisle from me on the bus. I told my grayfriend about this and vae tried to hype me up and give me a little bit of their confidence but it didn’t work that day.

Since none of my crushes friends were on the trip he ended up rooming with one of my friends and like through that I slowly started to talk to and hang out with him more. By the end of the trip I think I may be at the point where I could consider him a friend, or at least pretty close to one. Conversations with him don’t feel one sided at all anymore and he’s started initiating conversations with me instead of purely the other way around. Also like we were in the same group for most of the activities on the last like 2 days, including him sitting behind me when we went rafting and doing a trail run together (along with a few other friends).

Also because he spent a lot of time with my guy friends I also spent a bunch of time with (like purely) my guy friends which was super euphoric.

Overall I feel like the trip was a pretty big success for me as a transmasc mspec gay.

#me #personal #gay #trans #transmasc #mspec gay #crush #enby #nonbinary #bathrooms

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xtruss · 3 months

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2023 Person Of The Year: Taylor Swift

— By Sam Lansky | Photographs By Inez And Vinoodh For TIME | Published: December 6, 2023

Taylor Swift is telling me a story, and when Taylor Swift tells you a story, you listen, because you know it’s going to be good—not only because she’s had an extraordinary life, but because she’s an extraordinary storyteller. This one is about a time she got her heart broken, although not in the way you might expect.

She was 17, she says, and she had booked the biggest opportunity of her life so far—a highly coveted slot opening for country superstar Kenny Chesney on tour. “This was going to change my career,” she remembers. “I was so excited.” But a couple weeks later, Swift arrived home to find her mother Andrea sitting on the front steps of their house. “She was weeping,” Swift says. “Her head was in her hands as if there had been a family emergency.” Through sobs, Andrea told her daughter that Chesney’s tour had been sponsored by a beer company. Taylor was too young to join. “I was devastated,” Swift says.

But some months later, at Swift’s 18th birthday party, she saw Chesney’s promoter. He handed her a card from Chesney that read, as Swift recalls, “I’m sorry that you couldn’t come on the tour, so I wanted to make it up to you.” With the note was a check. “It was for more money than I’d ever seen in my life,” Swift says. “I was able to pay my band bonuses. I was able to pay for my tour buses. I was able to fuel my dreams.”

Swift’s accomplishments as an artist—culturally, critically, and commercially—are so legion that to recount them seems almost beside the point. As a pop star, she sits in rarefied company, alongside Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and Madonna; as a songwriter, she has been compared to Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Joni Mitchell. As a businesswoman, she has built an empire worth, by some estimates, over $1 billion. And as a celebrity—who by dint of being a woman is scrutinized for everything from whom she dates to what she wears—she has long commanded constant attention and knows how to use it. (“I don’t give Taylor advice about being famous,” Stevie Nicks tells me. “She doesn’t need it.”) But this year, something shifted. To discuss her movements felt like discussing politics or the weather—a language spoken so widely it needed no context. She became the main character of the world.

If you’re skeptical, consider it: How many conversations did you have about Taylor Swift this year? How many times did you see a photo of her while scrolling on your phone? Were you one of the people who made a pilgrimage to a city where she played? Did you buy a ticket to her concert film? Did you double-tap an Instagram post, or laugh at a tweet, or click on a headline about her? Did you find yourself humming “Cruel Summer” while waiting in line at the grocery store? Did a friend confess that they watched clips of the Eras Tour night after night on TikTok? Or did you?

Her epic career-retrospective tour recounting her artistic “eras,” which played 66 dates across the Americas this year, is projected to become the biggest of all time and the first to gross over a billion dollars; analysts talked about the “Taylor effect,” as politicians from Thailand, Hungary, and Chile implored her to play their countries. Cities, stadiums, and streets were renamed for her. Every time she came to a new place, a mini economic boom took place as hotels and restaurants saw a surge of visitors. In releasing her concert movie, Swift bypassed studios and streamers, instead forging an unusual pact with AMC, giving the theater chain its highest single-day ticket sales in history. There are at least 10 college classes devoted to her, including one at Harvard; the professor, Stephanie Burt, tells TIME she plans to compare Swift’s work to that of the poet William Wordsworth. Friendship bracelets traded by her fans at concerts became a hot accessory, with one line in a song causing as much as a 500% increase in sales at craft stores. When Swift started dating Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chief and two-time Super Bowl champion, his games saw a massive increase in viewership. (Yes, she somehow made one of America’s most popular things—football—even more popular.) And then there’s her critically hailed songbook—a catalog so beloved that as she rereleases it, she’s often breaking chart records she herself set. She’s the last monoculture left in our stratified world.

It’s hard to see history when you’re in the middle of it, harder still to distinguish Swift’s impact on the culture from her celebrity, which emits so much light it can be blinding. But something unusual is happening with Swift, without a contemporary precedent. She deploys the most efficient medium of the day—the pop song—to tell her story. Yet over time, she has harnessed the power of the media, both traditional and new, to create something wholly unique—a narrative world, in which her music is just one piece in an interactive, shape-shifting story. Swift is that story’s architect and hero, protagonist and narrator.

This was the year she perfected her craft—not just with her music, but in her position as the master storyteller of the modern era. The world, in turn, watched, clicked, cried, danced, sang along, swooned, caravanned to stadiums and movie theaters, let her work soundtrack their lives. For Swift, it’s a peak. “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been,” Swift tells me. “Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it, but there’s only one question.” Here, she adopts a booming voice. “Are you not entertained?”

A few months before I sit with Swift in New York, on a summer night in Santa Clara, Calif., which has been temporarily renamed Swiftie Clara in her honor, I am in a stadium with nearly 70,000 other people having a religious experience. The crowd is rapturous and Swift beatific as she gazes out at us, all high on the same drug. Her fans are singularly passionate, not just in the venue but also online, as they analyze clues, hints, and secret messages in everything from her choreography to her costumes—some deliberately planted, others not. (“Taylor Swift fans are the modern-day equivalent of those cults who would consistently have inaccurate rapture predictions like once a month,” as one viral tweet noted.)

Standing in the arena, it’s not hard to understand why this is the biggest thing in the world. “Beatlemania and Thriller have nothing on these shows,” says Swift’s friend and collaborator Phoebe Bridgers. Fans in Argentina pitched tents outside the venue for months to get prime spots, with some quitting their jobs to commit to fandom full time. Across the U.S., others lined up for days, while those who didn’t get in “Taylor-gated” in nearby parking lots so they could pick up the sound. When tickets went on sale last year, Ticketmaster crashed. Although 4.1 million tickets were sold for the 2023 shows—including over 2 million on the first day, a new record—scalpers jacked up prices on the secondary market to more than $22,000. Multiple fans filed lawsuits. The Justice Department moved forward with an investigation. The Senate held a hearing. Given these stakes, Swift had to deliver.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation executives testified at a Senate hearing after demand for tickets overwhelmed the siteAl Drago—Bloomberg/Getty Images

“I knew this tour was harder than anything I’d ever done before by a long shot,” Swift says. Each show spans over 180 minutes, including 40-plus songs from at least nine albums; there are 16 costume changes, pyrotechnics, an optical illusion in which she appears to dive into the stage and swim, and not one but two cottagecore worlds, which feature an abundance of moss.

In the past, Swift jokes, she toured “like a frat guy.” This time, she began training six months ahead of the first show. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she said. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.” Her gym, Dogpound, created a program for her, incorporating strength, conditioning, and weights. “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones,” she says. “I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.” She worked with choreographer Mandy Moore—recommended by her friend Emma Stone, who worked with Moore on La La Land—since, as Swift says, “Learning choreography is not my strong suit.” With the exception of Grammy night—which was “hilarious,” she says—she also stopped drinking. “Doing that show with a hangover,” she says ominously. “I don’t want to know that world.”

Swift’s arrival in a city energized the local economy. When Eras kicked off in Glendale, Ariz., she generated more revenue for its businesses than the 2023 Super Bowl, which was held in the same stadium. Fans flew across the country, stayed in hotels, ate meals out, and splurged on everything from sweatshirts to limited-edition vinyl, with the average Eras attendee reportedly spending nearly $1,300. Swift sees the expense and effort incurred by fans as something she needs to repay: “They had to work really hard to get the tickets,” she says. “I wanted to play a show that was longer than they ever thought it would be, because that makes me feel good leaving the stadium.” The “Taylor effect” was noticed at the highest levels of government. “When the Federal Reserve mentions you as the reason economic growth is up, that’s a big deal,” says Ed Tiryakian, a finance professor at Duke University.

Carrying an economy on your back is a lot for one person. After she plays a run of shows, Swift takes a day to rest and recover. “I do not leave my bed except to get food and take it back to my bed and eat it there,” she says. “It’s a dream scenario. I can barely speak because I’ve been singing for three shows straight. Every time I take a step my feet go crunch, crunch, crunch from dancing in heels.” Maintaining her strength through workouts between shows is key. “I know I’m going on that stage whether I’m sick, injured, heartbroken, uncomfortable, or stressed,” she says. “That’s part of my identity as a human being now. If someone buys a ticket to my show, I’m going to play it unless we have some sort of force majeure.” (A heat wave in Rio de Janeiro caused chaos during Swift’s November run as one fan, Ana Clara Benevides Machado, reportedly collapsed during the show and later died; Swift wrote on Instagram that she had a “shattered heart.” She rescheduled the next show because of unsafe conditions, and spent time with Benevides Machado’s family at her final tour date in Brazil.)

Top: Swift told TIME she started training six months in advance of the Eras Tour, which kicked off in March. Courtesy TAS Rights Management Bottom: Austin, Andrea, and Scott Swift with Taylor at NYU graduation in 2022 where she received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts. Courtesy TAS Rights Management

Swift is many things onstage—vulnerable and triumphant, playful and sad—but the intimacy of her songcraft is front and center. “Her work as a songwriter is what speaks most clearly to me,” says filmmaker Greta Gerwig, whose feminist Barbie was its own testament to the idea that women can be anything. “To write music that is from the deepest part of herself and have it directly speak into the souls of other people.” As Swift whips through the eras, she’s not trying to update her old songs, whether the earnest romance of “You Belong With Me” or the millennial ennui of “22,” so much as she is embracing them anew. She’s modeling radical self-acceptance on the world’s largest stage, giving the audience a space to revisit their own joy or pain, once dismissed or forgotten. I tell Swift that the show made me think of a meme that says, “Do not kill the part of you that is cringe—kill the part of you that cringes.” “Yes!” she exclaims. “Every part of you that you’ve ever been, every phase you’ve ever gone through, was you working it out in that moment with the information you had available to you at the time. There’s a lot that I look back at like, ‘Wow, a couple years ago I might have cringed at this.’ You should celebrate who you are now, where you’re going, and where you’ve been.”

Getting to this place of harmony with her past took work; there’s a dramatic irony, she explains, to the success of the tour. “It’s not lost on me that the two great catalysts for this happening were two horrendous things that happened to me,” Swift says, and this is where the story takes a turn. “The first was getting canceled within an inch of my life and sanity,” she says plainly. “The second was having my life’s work taken away from me by someone who hates me.”

Swift shows me some things she loves in her apartment: a Stevie Nicks Barbie that sits still boxed in her kitchen, sent to her by the artist; the framed note from Paul McCartney that hangs in her bathroom; tiles around the fireplace that Swift found shopping in Paris with her mother. Connections to her family are everywhere, including a striking photo of her grandmother Marjorie, an opera singer and the inspiration for a track on her album evermore. Swift grew up on a Christmas-tree farm in Pennsylvania, with her younger brother Austin; her father Scott was a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch, and Andrea worked in marketing. Her family still works closely with her today. “My dad, my mom, and my brother come up with some of the best ideas in my career,” Swift says. “I always joke that we’re a small family business.”

After moving to Nashville as a teen, she signed with Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Records. Swift’s songwriting ability was evident from the first lyrics of “Tim McGraw,” her debut single: “He said the way my blue eyes shined put those Georgia stars to shame that night—I said, ‘That’s a lie.’” Even for country music these lyrics are literary—conjuring a romantic fantasy, then deflating it a line later. The fairy-tale promise of love and intimacy became a runner in Swift’s work as a songwriter, something she’d repeatedly espouse, then skewer; she was self-aware about the role narrative played in her expectations. She was seen as a gifted pop-country ingenue when, in a now infamous moment, Kanye West interrupted Swift onstage at the 2009 VMAs while she was accepting an award. The incident set in motion a chain of events that would shape the next decade of both artists’ lives.

It was around that time, Swift remembers now, that she began trying to shape-shift. “I realized every record label was actively working to try to replace me,” she says. “I thought instead, I’d replace myself first with a new me. It’s harder to hit a moving target.” Swift wrote songs solo, incorporated diverse sonic influences, and placed more clues about personal relationships in her lyrics and album materials for fans to decode. Her epic ballad “All Too Well,” from 2012’s Red, epitomizes Swift’s superpower as a songwriter, deploying tossed-off details like a forgotten scarf that comes back at the song’s end to stab you in the heart—but it also had a secret message hidden in the liner notes. When an extended version of the song hit No. 1 last year upon its rerelease, it wasn’t only because the song is extraordinary, but because it has its own lore, like Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” if it came with an experiential puzzle for fans to solve. “She’s like a whole room of writers as one person, with that voice and charisma,” Bridgers says. “She’s everything at once.”

Swift knew she had to keep innovating. “By the time an artist is mature enough to psychologically deal with the job, they throw you out at 29, typically,” she says. “In the ’90s and ’00s, it seems like the music industry just said: ‘OK, let’s take a bunch of teenagers, throw them into a fire, and watch what happens. By the time they’ve accumulated enough wisdom to do their job effectively, we’ll find new teenagers.’” She went full-throttle pop for 2014’s 1989, putting her on top of the world—“an imperial phase,” she calls it. She didn’t realize it would also give her much farther to fall. Public sentiment turned—sniping about everything from her perceived overexposure to conspiracy theories about her politics. “I had all the hyenas climb on and take their shots,” she says. West wrote a song with vulgar lyrics about her, and claimed that Swift had consented to it, which Swift denied; West’s then wife, Kim Kardashian, released a video of a conversation between West and Swift that seemed to indicate that Swift had been on board with the song. The scandal was tabloid catnip; it made Swift look like a snake, which is what people called her. She felt it was “a career death,” she says. “Make no mistake—my career was taken away from me.”

It was a bleak moment. “You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar,” she says. “That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” (Kardashian wrote, in a 2020 social media post, that the situation “forced me to defend him.”) Swift’s next album, 2017’s Reputation, featured snake imagery; the video for “Look What You Made Me Do” saw her killing off younger versions of herself. She remembers Reputation being met with uproar and skepticism. “I thought that moment of backlash was going to define me negatively for the rest of my life,” she says. She had also satisfied her record deal with Borchetta, and knew she wanted out. “The molecular chemistry of that old label was that every creative choice I wanted to make was second-guessed,” she says. “I was really overthinking these albums.”

She met with Lucian Grainge, the CEO of Universal Music Group, and Monte Lipman, who runs Universal’s top label Republic Records, to talk about signing a deal that would give her more agency. Today, Grainge is perhaps the most powerful executive in the music industry, but, as I sit with him in his office in Los Angeles, he describes himself as an “old punk” who operates on instinct more than metrics. He told Swift, he says, “We will utilize everything that we’ve got as a company for you.” Swift felt like she’d been given carte blanche: “Lucian and Monte basically said to me, ‘Whatever you turn in, we will be proud to put out. We give you 100% creative freedom and trust.’” It was exactly what she needed to hear most when the chips were down.

Yet the release of Swift’s first album with Republic, 2019’s Lover, coincided with the second big upheaval in her professional life: Borchetta had sold Big Machine—and with it, Swift’s catalog, valued then at a reported $140 million—to Ithaca Holdings, which is owned by music manager Scooter Braun, a former ally of West’s. “With the Scooter thing, my masters were being sold to someone who actively wanted them for nefarious reasons, in my opinion,” Swift says. (“It makes me sad that Taylor had that reaction to the deal,” Braun told Variety in 2021.) The sale meant that the rights to Swift’s first six albums moved to Braun, so whenever someone wanted to license one of those songs, he would be the one to profit. Swift rallied her fans against the deal, but still felt powerless. “I was so knocked on my ass by the sale of my music, and to whom it was sold,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, they got me beat now. This is it. I don’t know what to do.’” She went back to work, using the pandemic lockdown to pare back her sound on critically acclaimed albums folklore and evermore.

Around the same time, she started thinking about rerecording her old albums in an effort to wrest back control. “I’d run into Kelly Clarkson and she would go, ‘Just redo it,’” Swift says. “My dad kept saying it to me too. I’d look at them and go, ‘How can I possibly do that?’ Nobody wants to redo their homework if on the way to school, the wind blows your book report away.” Since Swift wrote her own songs, she retained the musical composition copyright and could rerecord them. She also negotiated to own the master rights for her material when she moved over to Republic in 2018, so she now owns her new material and the rerecorded songs. (Major labels have since made it more difficult for artists to rerecord their music.) She began rerecording subtly different versions of her old albums, tagging them “(Taylor’s Version)” and adding unreleased tracks to redirect listenership to them. She frames the strategy as a coping mechanism. “It’s all in how you deal with loss,” she says. “I respond to extreme pain with defiance.”

Top: Swift performs at Foro Sol in Mexico City on Aug. 24. Hector Vivas—TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management Bottom: After playing Kansas City in July, Swift returned in October to support her boyfriend, Chiefs star Travis Kelce. David Eulitt—Getty Images

Grainge calls the rerecording project “bizarrely brilliant and unique”—something that only an artist at her level could pull off. “It’s got such a narrative—there’s a reason for it.” He shakes his head. “Imagine Picasso painting something that he painted a few years ago, then re-creating it with the colors of today.” Part of the success story, Swift says, is the freedom she received from the label to follow her instincts. “If you look at what I’ve put out since then, it’s more albums in the last few years than I did in the first 15 years of my career,” she says. That prolific output has fueled her ascension. “She could serve two terms as President of the United States and then go to Las Vegas,” Grainge says. “Who else can do that?”

In the grand narrative of Swift’s life, as she rose this year, her foes’ fortunes also seemed to turn. Over the summer, it was reported that several of Braun’s key clients—chief among them Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande—were no longer being managed by his company, while West’s antisemitic and other offensive remarks led to his losing key endorsement deals. Swift knows firsthand that fame is a seesaw. “Nothing is permanent,” she says. “So I’m very careful to be grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level, because I’ve had it taken away from me before. There is one thing I’ve learned: My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making things. Keep making art.” She considers. “But I’ve also learned there’s no point in actively trying to quote unquote defeat your enemies,” she says. “Trash takes itself out every single time.”

The premiere for Swift’s concert film takes place at the Grove, an outdoor mall in Los Angeles, which has been shut down for the event; Swift has packed 13 screens with thousands of fans. She goes, one by one, to each theater thanking sobbing audience members for being there. Like the tour, the film, which was released directly to theaters without a traditional partner, is an event. “We met with all the studios,” she tells me, “and we met with all the streamers, and we sized up how it was perceived and valued, and if they had high hopes and dreams for it. Ultimately I did what I tend to do more and more often these days, which is to bet on myself.” She credits her father with the idea. “He just said, why does there have to be a—for lack of a better word—middleman?”

In the theater excitement ripples through the crowd, a mix of fans and Swift’s friends, as we wait for her. To my left are two dedicated Swifties, sisters who introduce themselves as Madison, 23, and McCall, 20, and who are still reeling from taking a selfie with Swift on the red carpet. Their wrists are covered in friendship bracelets, some of which are deep cuts—such as no it’s BECKY, a reference to a beloved Tumblr meme, and BLEACHELLA STAN, for Swift’s 2016 platinum blond bob—and Madison reveals a tattoo on her forearm that says “Taylor’s Version.” Both tell me their favorite album is Reputation. They are my favorite people I have ever met, and I want to talk to only them for the rest of my life. Madison admires Swift for her vulnerability—“which is insane, when she’s under endless scrutiny”—while McCall cites her consistency, which she calls “a lost art form.” When I ask how McCall feels about Swift’s romantic life, she fields the question elegantly. “It’s a disservice to her to focus on that stuff,” she says. “She’s so good at making her personal experience relate to millions of people. When I listen to her songs, I think about what I’ve been through—not what she’s been through.”

Swift’s private life has long served as both grist for the tabloid mill and inspiration for her own work; she split from her longtime boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn, earlier this year. Most recently, she’s been dating the NFL star Travis Kelce, as has been well documented when she attends his games. “I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in,” she says. “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.” She is sensitive to the attention that’s put on her when she shows up. “I’m just there to support Travis,” she says. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads, and Chads.”

I point out that it’s a net positive for the NFL to have a few Swifties watching. “Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift says playfully. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.” (A game she attended in October was the most-watched Sunday show since the Super Bowl.)

Given her complex history with public interest in her dating life, I say, it seems noteworthy that her relationship with Kelce has played out so publicly. Swift gently pushes back: “This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she says. “We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.” The larger point, for her, is that there’s nothing to hide. “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she says. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”

Swift’s openness is one part of why her fan base leans heavily, though not exclusively, female. The Eras Tour was one critical piece of what Swift calls “a three-part summer of feminine extravaganza”—the other two parts being Gerwig’s box-office bonanza Barbie and Beyoncé’s blockbuster, culture-shifting Renaissance Tour. “To make a fun, entertaining blast of a movie, with that commentary,” she says of Barbie, “I cannot imagine how hard that was, and Greta made it look so easy.” (“I’m just a sucker for a gal who is good with words, and she is the best with them,” Gerwig says about Swift, whom she calls “Bruce Springsteen meets Loretta Lynn meets Bob Dylan.”)

Swift is no less effusive in talking about Beyoncé, who brokered a similar deal with AMC and shows up to Swift’s Los Angeles premiere; the next month, Swift returns the favor by attending Beyoncé’s in London. “She’s the most precious gem of a person—warm and open and funny,” Swift says. “And she’s such a great disrupter of music-industry norms. She taught every artist how to flip the table and challenge archaic business practices.” That her tour and Beyoncé’s were frequently juxtaposed is vexing. “There were so many stadium tours this summer, but the only ones that were compared were me and Beyoncé,” she says. “Clearly it’s very lucrative for the media and stan culture to pit two women against each other, even when those two artists in question refuse to participate in that discussion.”

To Swift, the success of all three feels like an inflection point. “If we have to speak stereotypically about the feminine and the masculine,” she says, “women have been fed the message that what we naturally gravitate toward—” She has a few examples: “Girlhood, feelings, love, breakups, analyzing those feelings, talking about them nonstop, glitter, sequins! We’ve been taught that those things are more frivolous than the things that stereotypically gendered men gravitate toward, right?” Right, I say. “And what has existed since the dawn of time? A patriarchal society. What fuels a patriarchal society? Money, flow of revenue, the economy. So actually, if we’re going to look at this in the most cynical way possible, feminine ideas becoming lucrative means that more female art will get made. It’s extremely heartening.”

Beyoncé joined Swift in Los Angeles on Oct. 11 for the first screening of her Eras Tour filmJohn Shearer—Getty Images for TAS

Amid so much attention, it seems noteworthy that Swift appears more relaxed in the public eye, not less—although I wonder out loud whether it just appears that way. She nods. “Over the years, I’ve learned I don’t have the time or bandwidth to get pressed about things that don’t matter. Yes, if I go out to dinner, there’s going to be a whole chaotic situation outside the restaurant. But I still want to go to dinner with my friends.” She sounds thoughtful. “Life is short. Have adventures. Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back. I’m more trusting now than I was six years ago.”

She’s also having more fun. At her premiere, Swift sits in the same row as me, Madison, and McCall, singing along and dancing in her seat; we keep craning our necks to look at her, sharing thunderstruck looks: Isn’t this surreal? There are moments in the film when the cameras capture the enormous screens behind Swift onstage, and it feels like a house of mirrors, these myriad reflections of Taylor Swift—us watching her watch herself on a screen, which is itself showing Swift’s image on so many screens, the thousands of fans onscreen in the stadium and us in this theater, with Swift in the middle of it—all of us rapt, unable to look away.

Swift and I have been talking for a while now at her apartment, long enough that our coffees have gone cold and her cat Benjamin Button has trundled into the room, then gotten bored and left. She tells me about revisiting Reputation, which is perhaps the most charged era in the tour. “It’s a goth-punk moment of female rage at being gaslit by an entire social structure,” she says, laughing. “I think a lot of people see it and they’re just like, Sick snakes and strobe lights.” The upcoming vault tracks for Reputation will be “fire,” she promises. The rerecordings project feels like a mythical quest to her. “I’m collecting horcruxes,” she says. “I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.”

It strikes me then that for all the talk about eras, it’s also worth thinking about genres—how Swift has moved between them in the stories she’s told. At first, it was a coming-of-age story, one about a young woman finding her way in the world and honing her voice before a fickle public. Then there were romances, great ones—tales of enchantment and desire, heartbreak and disillusionment, relationships that she both excavated for her songs and that the media documented for her with either joy or schadenfreude, depending on the day. There have been dramas with stakes so high and turns so twisty they feel Shakespearean in their scope, betrayals both personal and professional that have shaped her life. Occasionally, these stories have tipped into screwball comedy—like when a crowd in Seattle cheered so loudly it registered as an earthquake, or when, on a tour stop in Brazil, the local archdiocese allowed messages celebrating her to be projected onto the 124-ft. Christ the Redeemer statue. But they have one thing in common: Swift.

She is a maestro of self-determination, of writing her own story. The multihyphenate television creator Shonda Rhimes—no stranger to a plot twist—who has known Swift since she was a teenager, puts it simply: “She controls narrative not only in her work, but in her life,” she says. “It used to feel like people were taking shots at her. Now it feels like she’s providing the narrative—so there aren’t any shots to be taken.”

Here, Swift has told me a story about redemption, about rising and falling only to rise again—a hero’s journey. I do not say to her, in our conversation, that it did not always look that way from the outside—that, for example, when Reputation’s lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” reached No. 1 on the charts, or when the album sold 1.3 million albums in the first week, second only to 1989, she did not look like someone whose career had died. She looked like a superstar who was mining her personal experience as successfully as ever. I am tempted to say this.

But then I think, Who am I to challenge it, if that’s how she felt? The point is: she felt canceled. She felt as if her career had been taken from her. Something in her had been lost, and she was grieving it. Maybe this is the real Taylor Swift effect: That she gives people, many of them women, particularly girls, who have been conditioned to accept dismissal, gaslighting, and mistreatment from a society that treats their emotions as inconsequential, permission to believe that their interior lives matter. That for your heart to break, whether it’s from being kicked off a tour or by the memory of a scarf still sitting in a drawer somewhere or because somebody else controls your life’s work, is a valid wound, and no, you’re not crazy for being upset about it, or for wanting your story to be told.

After all, not to be corny, haven’t we all become selective autobiographers in the digital age as we curate our lives for our own audiences of any size—cutting away from the raw fabric of our lived experience to reveal the shape of the story we most want to tell, whether it’s on our own feeds or the world’s stage? I can’t blame her for being better at it than everyone else. It’s also not like she hasn’t admitted it. She sang it herself, in her song “Mastermind,” off last year’s Midnights, in a bridge so feathery you could almost miss that it marks some of the rawest, most naked songwriting of her career: “No one wanted to play with me as a little kid/ So I’ve been scheming like a criminal ever since/ To make them love me and make it seem effortless/ This is the first time I’ve felt the need to confess/ And I swear I’m only cryptic and Machiavellian because I care.”

She tells me she wrote that song after watching the Paul Thomas Anderson film Phantom Thread, which—spoiler—culminates in the reveal of a vast, layered manipulation. “Remember that last scene?” she says. “I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to have a lyric about being calculated?” She pauses. “It’s something that’s been thrown at me like a dagger, but now I take it as a compliment.”

It is a compliment. After I leave Swift’s house, I can’t stop thinking about how perfectly she crafted this story for me—the one about redemption, how she lost it all and got it back. Storytelling is what she’s always done; that’s why, Chesney tells me, he gave her that gift all those years ago. “She was a writer who had something to say,” he says. “That isn’t something you can fake by writing clichés. You can only live it, then write it as real as possible.”

She must have known that all the references she made had hidden meanings, that I’d see all the tossed-off details for the Easter eggs they were. The way she told me that story about Chesney, she knew there was a lesson, about the power of generosity, and how a crushing defeat can give way to a great and surprising gift. The way she said, “Are you not entertained?”—surely we both knew it was a quote from Gladiator, a movie in which a hero falls from grace, is forced to perform blood sport for the pleasure of spectators, and emerges victorious, having survived humiliation and debasement to soar higher than ever. And the way before I left, she showed me the note from Paul McCartney hanging in her bathroom, which has a Beatles lyric written on it—and not just any Beatles lyric, but this one: “Take these broken wings and learn to fly.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Megan McCluskey •

Styled by Heidi Bivens at Honey Artists; hair by Holli Smith; make-up by Diane Kendal; nails by Maki Sakamoto; production by VLM Productions

On the covers: Jacket, denim shirt and turtleneck by Polo Ralph Lauren; dress by Area; bodysuit by Bardot, tights by Wolford; earrings are artist’s own

On the inside: Jacket, denim shirt and turtleneck by Polo Ralph Lauren; tuxedo jacket, tuxedo shirt, vest and pocket square by Ralph Lauren Collection, jeans by Polo Ralph Lauren; dress by Alaia; rings by Anna Sheffield and Cartier; earrings are artist’s own

#Taylor Swift #Article #2023 Person Of The Year #Sam Lansky #TIME

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