#cause we need more troll lesbians in this house | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

marauders70s · 4 years

Conversation

a collection of dumb hp-p&r text memes

dumbledore, gesturing: could a depressed person make this???

mcgonagall: your hand is literally rotting off

---

harry: sometimes I feel like arguing with you is like arguing with the sun.

hermione: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT I AM SUPER CHILL ALL THE TIME.

---

pansy: you look awful

draco: what up bitch i just ran a 5k

pansy: really?

draco: no i threw up blood in the shower

pansy: that fight with potter really got ya down huh

---

harry: hey ron are you okay

ron, wearing the locket, staring straight ahead at a tree: yeah i'm fine it's just that life is pointless and nothing matters and I'm always tired.

harry: hermione it's your turn

---

sirius, at any minor convenience: everything hurts and i'm dying

---

goyle: I once knew a guy for seven years and never learned his name. best friend i ever had. we still never talk sometimes, because he's dead.

---

oliver: sometimes you gotta do a little work so you can ball a lot.

mcgonagall: that is incorrect

---

james, during house arrest: If I keep my body moving, and my mind occupied at all times, I will avoid falling into a bottomless pit of despair.

lily, from the couch: oops

---

snape, at a christmas dinner: I can still smell her hair at night

dumbledore, pouring a generous amount of mulled wine: Put some alcohol in your mouth to block the words from coming out.

---

ron: hermione, i'm not using your color coded talking planner

hermione: we need to get good grades on our OWLs!

ron: there's nothing that could motivate me to use it

hermione: well, there's nothing we can't do if we work work hard, never sleep, and shirk from all other responsibilities in our lives.

---

harry: Professor, I wanna go home early. Ooh, hold on actually, hang on. Yeah, no, I wanna quit and never come here again.

---

ron: i'm going to tell you all my secrets

hermione: you don't have to do that

ron: I once forgot to brush my teeth for five weeks

ron: I didn't actually break charlie's wand all the way I just hid it and forgot where

ron: I don't know who scrimgeour is and at this point I'm too afraid to ask.

ron: when they have 2 sickles a scoop on salamander eyes i'm not sure where the rest of the salamander goes

ron: when i was a baby fred turned my teddy into a spider and i got so scared my mum took me to a mindhealer and they wrote a textbook about me

ron: i once threw a garden gnome so hard that it hit my sister in the face and began attacking her

hermione, looking up from her book: what did ginny do?

ron: she bit it and it ran off.

hermione: classic

---

severus: no matter what i do nothing bad can happen to me. i'm like a white wizengamot official who pretended they were mind-controlled after the fall of the dark lord

lucius: I resent that

---

sirius: thank merlin my great uncle alphard just died so I am fluuuuusheeeeeed with galleeeeooonsss

remus: I'm going to regret this flatshare

---

seamus: i passed up a gay halloween party to see this troll. Do you know how much fun gay Halloween parties are? Last year I saw three Peverell Brothers make out with three Viktor Krums. It was amazing.

---

luna: We need to remember what's important in life. Friends, unpredictable creatures, and school. Or unpredictable creatures, friends, school. It doesn't matter. But school is third.

---

tom riddle: I totally hear you, but I also don't like what you're saying. So if you say no, I will release a giant snake in the bathroom

---

luna: would you like some -

hermione: no! I am going to run for minister of magic someday, so no, thank you. I mean, not that I haven't - I ate a brownie once at quidditch cup party. It was intense. It was kind of indescribable, actually. I felt like I was floating. Turns out there wasn't any potions in the brownie, it was just an insanely good brownie.

---

sirius: do i look like the kind of person who drinks water

---

neville: flying is the worst. I know it keeps you healthy, but merlin, at what cost?

ron: okay, you don't have to join the pick up game -

neville: no no i want to be included. i'll come

---

james: What I hear when I’m being yelled at is people caring really loudly at me.

sirius: that's not right

---

mcgongall: I think you’ve got several options. They’re all terrible…but you have them.

peter: this career counseling session is getting a bit intense

---

neville: how are you handling the...breakup...

ginny: I’m gonna buy some sweat pants and a Gilderoy Lockhart novel. Might as well lean into it.

---

dumbledore, in the staff room, extremely intoxicated: Who hasn’t had gay thoughts?

---

james: Goodbye, Lily Evans, my head girl partner. Hello, Lily Potter, my fallopian princess.

lily: i should have never married you. or at least made you wear a condom

james: what's a-

---

sprout: I’m a simple lesbian. I like pretty, dark-haired women, and man-killing plants.

---

sirius: A couple more rules: if you ever read a sad book, you have to wear mascara so we can see whether or not you’ve been crying. There’s no noise allowed on Mondays. And no magic after breakfast.

peter: er i'm sorry this was the dorm assigned to me...

---

remus: Hogwarts Library is headed by the most diabolical, ruthless bureaucrat I’ve ever seen. She's like a death eater but instead of avada kedavra and crucio she uses shame and shhhing.

james: she wouldn't let him into the restricted section without a note

remus, choking back tears: I AM A PREFECT

---

pansy: I have never flown the high road. But I tell other people to ‘cause then there’s more room for me on the low road.

---

hermione: If I had a stripper’s name, it would be Equality. for house elves and all beings.

ron: if i had a stripper's name it would be sugar striped candy pole for my -

harry: hermione, DON'T -

---

sir cadogen: You know, in the 1880’s, there were a few years that were pretty rough and tumble here at Hogwarts. This depicts kind of a famous fight between Morpheus Rane, a prefect in Slytherin house, and Wilhemena Batlock, a Hufflepuff seventh year. The original title of this painting was ‘A Lively Fisting.’ But y’know, they had to change it for…obvious reasons.

---

bellatrix, in the afterlife: i regret nothing. the end.

---

harry: I don’t want to be overdramatic, but today felt like a hundred years in hell and the absolute worst day of my life.

tofty: I'm sorry but you WILL have to repeat your history of magic OWL

---

james: Lucky for me, I’ve processed all my feelings. And I’ve gone through the five stages of grief - Denial, anger, picking on Peter, cat adoption, reckless dueling, cat returning to the adoption place, reading all Martin Miggs books in the series (what i was picking on peter for actually), and not giving a flying fuck.

remus: you can't say fuck

james: oh great i'm going to have to start the process all over again.

remus: peter, you'd better run

---

dudley: I’m allergic to magic candy. Every time I eat more than 80 sweeties I barf.

fred: how about...81

---

sirius: I’ll have a glass of your most expensive red wine mixed with a glass of your cheapest white wine served in a dog bowl. Silly straws all around, please.

remus: this is why we can't date in public

---

neville: I’m gonna get drunk and then I’m gonna order a three course meal where each course is made of dessert.

---

arthur: I promised myself I was not going to cry tonight, and I’ve already broken that promise five times. But I will not break it a sixth.

bill: dad maybe you shouldn't give a toast while fleur's family is still here

---

gilderoy: I have no idea what I’m doing, but I know I’m doing it really, really well.

---

pansy: Use him. Abuse him. Lose him. That’s the Parkinson motto.

draco: I thought the Parkinson motto is don't look at me you whore.

pansy: the motto is really more like a chapter book.

---

harry: You’re ridiculous and pureblood rights is nothing.

voldemort: wow

---

tonks: I would like a glass of red wine and I’ll take the cheapest one you have because I can’t tell the difference.

sirius: cheers i'll drink to that

remus: put. the bowl. down.

---

eh, and just one for the road: “I wonder who else was born in Eagleton. Voldemort, probably.” – Leslie Knope

#parks and rec #hp memes #incorrect harry potter

174 notes · View notes

bananaofswifts · 5 years

Link

IT’S A SUNDAY AFTERNOON in Tribeca, and I’m in Taylor Swift’s loft, inside a former printing house that she has restored and fortified into a sanctuary of brick, velvet, and mahogany. The space is warm and cozy and vaguely literary—later, when we pass through her bedroom en route to her garden, 10 percent of my brain will believe her wardrobe might open up to Narnia. Barefoot in a wine-colored floral top and matching flowy pants, Swift is typing passwords into a laptop to show me the video for “You Need to Calm Down,” eight days before she unleashes it on the world. I have a sliver of an idea what to expect. A few weeks earlier, I spent a day at the video shoot, in a dusty field-slash-junkyard north of Los Angeles. Swift had made it a sort of Big Gay Candy Mountain trailer park, a Technicolor happy place. The cast and crew wore heart-shaped sunglasses—living, breathing lovey-eyes emoji—and a mailbox warned, LOVE LETTERS ONLY. Swift and a stream of costars filmed six scenes over about a dozen hours. The singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko, known to her fans as “Lesbian Jesus,” shot arrows at a bull’s-eye. The YouTube comedian-chef Hannah Hart danced alongside Dexter Mayfield, the plus-size male model and self-described “big boy in heels.” The Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon served up icy red snow cones. Swift and her close friend Todrick Hall, of Kinky Boots and RuPaul’s Drag Race, sipped tea with the cast of Queer Eye. The mood was joyous and laid-back. But by the end of the day, I wasn’t sure what the vignettes would add up to. There were shoot days and cameos I wouldn’t observe. For security reasons, the song was never played aloud. (The cast wore ear buds.) Even the hero shot, in which Swift and Hall sauntered arm in arm through the dreamscape at golden hour, was filmed in near-total silence. For weeks afterward, I tried to sleuth out a theory. I started casually. There was a “5” on the bull’s-eye, so I did a quick search to figure out what that number might mean. Immediately I was in over my head. Swift has a thing for symbols. I knew she had been embedding secret messages in liner notes and deploying metaphors as refrains since her self-titled debut in 2006—long before her megafame made her into a symbol of pop supremacy. But I hadn’t understood how coded and byzantine her body of work has become; I hadn’t learned, as Swift’s fans have, to see hidden meanings everywhere. For instance: In the 2017 video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” a headstone in a graveyard scene reads NILS SJOBERG, the pseudonym Swift used as her writing credit on Rihanna’s hit “This Is What You Came For,” a Swedish-sounding nod to that country’s pop wizards. After an excessive amount of ad hoc scholarship—a friend joked that I could have learned Mandarin in the time I spent trying to unpack Swift’s oeuvre—I was no closer to a theory. Pop music has become so layered and meta, but the Taylor Swift Universe stands apart. Apprehending it is like grasping quantum physics. My first indication of what her new album, Lover, would be about came just after midnight on June 1, the beginning of Pride Month, when Swift introduced a petition in support of the federal Equality Act. This legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act to outlaw discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. (It has passed the House, but prospects in Mitch McConnell’s Senate are unclear.) Swift also posted a letter to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, asking him to vote yes. The request, on her personal letterhead (born in 1989. LOVES CATS.), denounced President Trump for not supporting the Equality Act. “I personally reject the president’s stance,” Swift wrote. Back in the kitchen, Swift hits play. ��The first verse is about trolls and cancel culture,” she says. “The second verse is about homophobes and the people picketing outside our concerts. The third verse is about successful women being pitted against each other.” The video is, for erudite Swifties, a rich text. I had followed enough clues to correctly guess some of the other cameos—Ellen DeGeneres, RuPaul, Katy Perry. I felt the satisfaction of a gamer who successfully levels up—achievement unlocked! The video’s final frame sends viewers to Swift’s change.org petition in support of the Equality Act, which has acquired more than 400,000 signatures—including those of Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, and Kirsten Gillibrand—or four times the number required to elicit an official response from the White House. “Maybe a year or two ago, Todrick and I are in the car, and he asked me, What would you do if your son was gay?” We are upstairs in Swift’s secret garden, comfortably ensconced in a human-scale basket that is sort of shaped like a cocoon. Swift has brought up an ornate charcuterie board and is happily slathering triple-cream Brie onto sea-salt crackers. “The fact that he had to ask me … shocked me and made me realize that I had not made my position clear enough or loud enough,” she says. “If my son was gay, he’d be gay. I don’t understand the question.” I have pressed Swift on this topic, and her answers have been direct, not performative or scripted. I do sense that she enjoys talking to me about as much as she’d enjoy a root canal—but she’s unfailingly polite, and when we turn to music, her face will light up and she will add little melodic phrases to her speech, clearly her preferred language. “If he was thinking that, I can’t imagine what my fans in the LGBTQ community might be thinking,” she goes on. “It was kind of devastating to realize that I hadn’t been publicly clear about that.” I understand why she was surprised; she has been sending pro-LGBTQ signals since at least 2011. Many have been subtle, but none insignificant—especially for a young country star coming out of Nashville. In the video for her single “Mean” (from 2010’s Speak Now), we see a boy in a school locker room wearing a lavender sweater and bow tie, surrounded by football players. In “Welcome to New York,” the first track on 1989, she sings, “And you can want who you want. Boys and boys and girls and girls.” Two years later, she donated to a fund for the newly created Stonewall National Monument and presented Ruby Rose with a GLAAD Media Award. Every night of last year’s Reputation tour, she dedicated the song “Dress” to Loie Fuller, the openly gay pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting who captured the imagination of fin-de-siècle Paris. Swift, who has been criticized for keeping her politics to herself, first took an explicit stance a month before the 2018 midterms. On Instagram, she endorsed Democrats for the Tennessee Legislature and called out the Republican running for Senate, Marsha Blackburn. “She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples,” Swift wrote. “She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.” Swift says the post was partly to help young fans understand that if they wanted to vote, they had to register. To tell them, as she puts it, “Hey, just so you know, you can’t just roll up.” Some 65,000 new voters registered in the first 24 hours after her post, according to Vote.org. Trump came to Blackburn’s defense the following day. “She’s a tremendous woman,” he told reporters. “I’m sure Taylor Swift doesn’t know anything about her. Let’s say I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, OK?” In April, spurred by a raft of anti-LGBTQ bills in Tennessee, Swift donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project, which advocates for LGBTQ rights. “Horrendous,” she says of the legislation. “They don’t call it ‘Slate of Hate’ for nothing.” Swift especially liked that the Tennessee Equality Project had organized a petition of faith leaders in opposition. “I loved how smart it was to come at it from a religious perspective.” Meanwhile, the “Calm Down” video provoked a Colorado pastor to call Swift “a sinner in desperate need of a savior” and warn that “God will cut her down.” It also revived heated debate within LGBTQ communities about the politics of allyship and corporatization of Pride. Some critics argued Swift’s pro-LGBTQ imagery and lyrics were overdue and out of the blue—a reaction the new Swift scholar in me found bewildering. Had they not been paying attention? Nor did it strike me as out of character for Swift to leverage her power for a cause. She pulled her catalog from Spotify in 2014 over questions of artist compensation. She stared down Apple in 2015, when the company said it would not pay artists during the launch of its music service. (Apple reversed itself immediately.) As a condition of her record deal with Universal Music Group last year, the company promised that it would distribute proceeds from any sale of its Spotify shares to all of its artists. And this summer, Swift furiously called out Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine Label Group, for selling her master recordings to the music manager Scooter Braun. (When I ask Swift if she tried to get her masters from Big Machine, her whole body slumps with a palpable heaviness. “It was either investing in my past or my and other artists’ future, and I chose the future,” she says of the deal she struck with Universal.) Swift’s blunt testimony during her 2017 sexual-assault case against a radio DJ—months before the #MeToo reckoning blew open—felt deeply political to me and, I imagine, many other women. Swift accused the DJ, David Mueller, of groping her under her skirt at a photo session in 2013. Her camp reported the incident to his employer, who fired him. Mueller denied the allegation, sued Swift for $3 million, and his case was thrown out. Swift countersued for a symbolic $1 and won. In a Colorado courtroom, Swift described the incident: “He stayed latched onto my bare ass cheek” as photos were being snapped. Asked why photos of the front of her skirt didn’t show this, she said, “Because my ass is located at the back of my body.” Asked if she felt bad about the DJ’s losing his job, she said, “I’m not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault. Here we are years later, and I’m being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisions—not mine.” When Time included Swift on the cover of its “Silence Breakers” issue that year, the magazine asked how she felt during the testimony. “I was angry,” she said. “In that moment, I decided to forgo any courtroom formalities and just answer the questions the way it happened…I’m told it was the most amount of times the word ass has ever been said in Colorado Federal Court.” Mueller has since paid Swift the dollar—with a Sacagawea coin. “He was trolling me, implying that I was self-righteous and hell-bent on angry, vengeful feminism. That’s what I’m inferring from him giving me a Sacagawea coin,” Swift says. “Hey, maybe he was trying to do it in honor of a powerful Native American woman. I didn’t ask.” Where is the coin now? “My lawyer has it.” I ask her, why get louder about LGBTQ rights now? “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” she says. “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of. It’s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze. Because my mistakes are very loud. When I make a mistake, it echoes through the canyons of the world. It’s clickbait, and it’s a part of my life story, and it’s a part of my career arc.” I’d argue that no heterosexual woman can listen to “You Need to Calm Down” and hear only a gay anthem. “Calm down” is what controlling men tell women who are angry, contrary, or “hysterical,” or, let’s say, fearing for their physical safety. It is what Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie says to Swift in the beginning of the “ME!” music video, prompting her to scream, “Je suis calme!” I cannot believe it is a coincidence that Swift, a numbers geek with an affinity for dates, dropped the single—whose slow, incessant bass is likely to be bumping in stadiums across the world in 2020 if she goes on tour—on June 14, a certain president’s birthday. It’s enlightening to read 13 years of Taylor Swift coverage—all the big reviews, all the big profiles—in one sitting. You notice things. How quickly Swift went from a “prodigy” (The New Yorker) and a “songwriting savant” (Rolling Stone) to a tabloid fixture, for instance. Or how suspect her ambition is made to seem once she acquires real power. Other plot points simply look different in the light of #MeToo. It is hard to imagine that Swift’s songs about her exes would be reviewed as sensationally today. I wonder if, in 2019, any man would dare grab the microphone out of a young woman’s hands at an awards show. I stared into space for a good long while when I was reminded that Pitchfork did not review Taylor Swift’s 1989 but did review Ryan Adams’s cover album of Taylor Swift’s 1989. I ask Swift if she had always been aware of sexism. “I think about this a lot,” she says. “When I was a teenager, I would hear people talk about sexism in the music industry, and I’d be like, I don’t see it. I don’t understand. Then I realized that was because I was a kid. Men in the industry saw me as a kid. I was a lanky, scrawny, overexcited young girl who reminded them more of their little niece or their daughter than a successful woman in business or a colleague. The second I became a woman, in people’s perception, was when I started seeing it. “It’s fine to infantilize a girl’s success and say, How cute that she’s having some hit songs,” she goes on. “How cute that she’s writing songs. But the second it becomes formidable? As soon as I started playing stadiums—when I started to look like a woman—that wasn’t as cool anymore. It was when I started to have songs from Red come out and cross over, like ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.’ ” Those songs are also more assertive than the ones that came before, I say. “Yeah, the angle was different when I started saying, I knew you were trouble when you walked in. Basically, you emotionally manipulated me and I didn’t love it. That wasn’t fun for me.” I have to wonder if having her songwriting overlooked as her hits were picked apart and scrutinized wasn’t the biggest bummer of all. Swift: “I wanted to say to people, You realize writing songs is an art and a craft and not, like, an easy thing to do? Or to do well? People would act like it was a weapon I was using. Like a cheap dirty trick. Be careful, bro, she’ll write a song about you. Don’t stand near her. First of all, that’s not how it works. Second of all, find me a time when they say that about a male artist: Be careful, girl, he’ll use his experience with you to get—God forbid—inspiration to make art.” Without question the tenor of the Taylor Swift Narrative changed most dramatically in July 2016, when Kim Kardashian West called her a “snake” on Twitter, and released video clips of Swift and Kanye West discussing the lyrics to his song “Famous.” (No need to rehash the details here. Suffice it to say that Swift’s version of events hasn’t changed: She knew about some of the lyrics but not others; specifically, the words that bitch.) The posts sparked several hashtags, including #TaylorSwiftIsASnake and #TaylorSwiftIsCanceled, which quickly escalated into a months-long campaign to “cancel” Swift. To this day Swift doesn’t think people grasp the repercussions of that term. “A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,” she says. “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly.” She adds: “When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, Kill yourself.” I get a sense of the whiplash Swift experienced when I notice that, a few months into this ordeal, while she was writing the songs that an interpolation of a ’90s camp classic, Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.”) Nonetheless, most critics read it as a grenade lobbed in the general direction of Calabasas. One longtime Nashville critic, Brian Mansfield, had a more plausible take: She was writing sarcastically as the “Taylor Swift” portrayed in the media in a bid for privacy. “Yeah, this is the character you created for me, let me just hide behind it,” she says now of the persona she created. “I always used this metaphor when I was younger. I’d say that with every reinvention, I never wanted to tear down my house. ’Cause I built this house. This house being, metaphorically, my body of work, my songwriting, my music, my catalog, my library. I just wanted to redecorate. I think a lot of people, with Reputation, would have perceived that I had torn down the house. Actually, I just built a bunker around it.” In March, the snakes started to morph into butterflies, the vampire color palette into Easter pastels. When a superbloom of wildflowers lured a mesmerizing deluge of Painted Lady butterflies to Los Angeles, Swift marked it with an Instagram post. She attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards that night in a sequin romper and stilettos with shimmery wings attached. Swift announced the single “ME!” a month later, with a large butterfly mural in Nashville. In the music video for the (conspicuously) bubblegum song, a hissing pastel-pink snake explodes into a kaleidoscope of butterflies. One flutters by the window of an apartment, where Swift is arguing in French with Urie. A record player is playing in the background. “It’s an old-timey, 1940s-sounding instrumental version of ‘You Need to Calm Down,’ ’’ Swift says. Later, in the “Calm Down” video, Swift wears a (fake) back tattoo of a snake swarmed by butterflies. We are only two songs in, people. Lover, to be released on August 23, will have a total of 18 songs. “I was compiling ideas for a very long time,” Swift says. “When I started writing, I couldn’t stop.” (We can assume the British actor Joe Alwyn, with whom Swift has been in a relationship for nearly three years, provided some of the inspiration.) Swift thinks Lover might be her favorite album yet. “There are so many ways in which this album feels like a new beginning,” she says. “This album is really a love letter to love, in all of its maddening, passionate, exciting, enchanting, horrific, tragic, wonderful glory.” I have to ask Swift, given how genuinely at peace she seems, if part of her isn’t thankful, if not for the Great Cancellation of 2016, then for the person she now is—knowing who her friends are, knowing what’s what. “When you’re going through loss or embarrassment or shame, it’s a grieving process with so many micro emotions in a day. One of the reasons why I didn’t do interviews for Reputation was that I couldn’t figure out how I felt hour to hour. Sometimes I felt like: All these things taught me something that I never could have learned in a way that didn’t hurt as much. Five minutes later, I’d feel like: That was horrible. Why did that have to happen? What am I supposed to take from this other than mass amounts of humiliation? And then five minutes later I’d think: I think I might be happier than I’ve ever been.” She goes on: “It’s so strange trying to be self-aware when you’ve been cast as this always smiling, always happy ‘America’s sweetheart’ thing, and then having that taken away and realizing that it’s actually a great thing that it was taken away, because that’s extremely limiting.” Swift leans back in the cocoon and smiles: “We’re not going to go straight to gratitude with it. Ever. But we’re going to find positive aspects to it. We’re never going to write a thank-you note.” Though people will take the Perry-Swift burger-and-fries embrace in the “You Need to Calm Down” video as a press release that the two have mended fences, Swift says it’s actually a comment on how the media pits female pop stars against one another. After Perry sent Swift an (actual) olive branch last year, Swift asked her to be in the video: “She wrote back, This makes me so emotional. I’m so up for this. I want us to be that example. But let’s spend some time together. Because I want it to be real. So she came over and we talked for hours. “We decided the metaphor for what happens in the media,” Swift explains, “is they pick two people and it’s like they’re pouring gasoline all over the floor. All that needs to happen is one false move, one false word, one misunderstanding, and a match is lit and dropped. That’s what happened with us. It was: Who’s better? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? The tension is so high that it becomes impossible for you to not think that the other person has something against you.“ Meanwhile, the protesters in the video reference a real-life religious group that pickets outside Swift’s concerts, not the white working class in general, as some have assumed. “So many artists have them at their shows, and it’s such a confounding, confusing, infuriating thing to have outside of joyful concerts,” she tells me. “Obviously I don’t want to mention the actual entity, because they would get excited about that. Giving them press is not on my list of priorities.” At one point, Swift asks if I would like to hear two other songs off the new album. (Duh.) First she plays “Lover,” the title track, coproduced by Jack Antonoff. “This has one of my favorite bridges,” she says. “I love a bridge, and I was really able to go to Bridge City.” It’s a romantic, haunting, waltzy, singer-songwritery nugget: classic Swift. “My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue,” she sings. “All’s well that ends well to end up with you.” Next, Swift cues up a track that “plays with the idea of perception.” She has often wondered how she would be written and spoken about if she were a man, “so I wrote a song called ‘The Man.’ ” It’s a thought experiment of sorts: “If I had made all the same choices, all the same mistakes, all the same accomplishments, how would it read?” Seconds later, Swift’s earpods are pumping a synth-pop earworm into my head: “I’d be a fearless leader. I’d be an alpha type. When everyone believes ya: What’s that like?” Swift wrote the first two singles with Joel Little, best known as one of Lorde’s go-to producers. (“From a pop-songwriting point of view, she’s the pinnacle,” Little says of Swift.) The album is likely to include more marquee names. A portrait of the Dixie Chicks in the background of the “ME!” video almost certainly portends a collaboration. If fans are correctly reading a button affixed to her denim jacket in a recent magazine cover, we can expect one with Drake, too. Lover. “We met at one of her shows,” says McCartney, “and then we had a girls’ night and kind of jumped straight in. In London we’ll go on walks and talk about everything—life and love.” (Swift has no further fashion ambitions at the moment. “I really love my job right now,” she tells me. “My focus is on music.”) Oh, and that “5” on the bullseye? Track five is called “The Archer.” Yet something tells me the most illuminating clue for reading both Lover and Reputationmay be Loie Fuller, the dancer to whom Swift paid homage on tour. As Swift noted on a Jumbotron, Fuller “fought for artists to own their work.” Fuller also used swirling fabric and colored lights to metamorphose onstage, playing a “hide-and-seek illusionist game” with her audience, as one writer has put it. She became a muse to the Symbolists in Paris, where Jean Cocteau wrote that she created “the phantom of an era.” The effect, said the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, was a “dizziness of soul made visible by an artifice.” Fuller’s most famous piece was “Serpentine Dance.” Another was “Butterfly Dance.” Swift has had almost no downtime since late 2017, but what little she does have is divided among New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Rhode Island, where she keeps homes—plus London. In an essay earlier this year, she revealed that her mother, Andrea Swift, is fighting cancer for a second time. “There was a relapse that happened,” Swift says, declining to go into detail. “It’s something that my family is going through.” Later this year, she will star in a film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats as Bombalurina, the flirtatious red cat. “They made us the size of cats by making the furniture bigger,” she says. “You’d be standing there and you could barely reach the seat of a chair. It was phenomenal. It made you feel like a little kid.” But first, she will spend much of the summer holding “secret sessions”—a tradition wherein Swift invites hundreds of fans to her various homes to preview her new music. “They’ve never given me a reason to stop doing it,” she says. “Not a single one.” Speaking of: Inquiring fans will want to know if Swift dropped any more clues about how to decode Lover during this interview. For you I reviewed the audio again, and there were a few things that made my newly acquired Swifty sense tingle. At one point she compared superstardom in the digital age to life in a dollhouse, one where voyeurs “can ‘ship’ you with who they want to ‘ship’ you with, and they can ‘favorite’ friends that you have, and they can know where you are all the time.” The metaphor was precise and vivid and, well, a little too intricately rendered to be off the cuff. (Also, the “ME!” lyric: “Baby doll, when it comes to a lover. I promise that you’ll never find another like me.”) Then there was the balloon—a giant gold balloon in the shape of a numeral seven that happened to float by while we were on her roof, on this, the occasion of her seventh album. “Is it an L’?” I say. “No, because look, the string is hanging from the bottom,” she says. It might seem an obvious symbolic gesture, deployed for this interview, except for how impossible that seems. Swift let me control the timing of nearly everything. Moreover, the gold seven wasn’t floating up from the sidewalk below. It was already high in the sky, drifting slowly toward us from down the street. She would have had to control the wind, or at least to have studied it. Would Taylor Swift really go to such elaborate lengths for her fans? This much I know: Yes, she would.

#taylor swift #vogue #article

853 notes · View notes

johnrossbowie · 3 years

Text

LEAVING TWITTER

I wrote this earlier in the fall, before the election, after dissolving my Twitter account. I wasn’t sure where to put it (“try up your ass!” – someone, I’m sure) and then I remembered I have a tumblr I never use. Anyway, here tis.

How do you shame someone who thinks Trumps’ half-baked policies and quarter-baked messaging put him in the pantheon of great Presidents? How do you shame someone so lacking in introspection that they will call Obama arrogant while praising Trump’s decisiveness and yet at the same time vehemently deny that they’re racist? How do you shame someone for whom that racism is endearing and maybe long overdue?

You don’t. It’s silly to think otherwise.

Twitter is an addiction of mine, and true to form, my dependence on it grew more serious after I quit drinking in 2010. At first it was a chance to mouth off, make jokes both stupid and erudite and occasionally stick my foot in my mouth (I owe New Yorker writer Tad Friend an apology. He knows why, or (God willing) he’s forgotten. Either way. Sorry.) I blew off steam, steam that was accumulating without booze to dampen the flames. Not always constructive venting, but I also met new friends, and connected with people whose work I’ve admired for literal decades and ended up seeing plays with Lin-Manuel Miranda and hanging backstage with Jane Wiedlin after a Go-Go’s show and exchanging sober thoughts with Mike Doughty. When my mom passed in 2018, a lot of people reached out to tell me they were thinking of me. This was nice. For a while, Twitter was a huge help when I needed it.

I used to hate going to parties and really hated dancing and mingling, but a couple of drinks would fix that. Point is, for a while, booze was a huge help, too.

But my engagement with Twitter changed, and I started calling people my ‘friends’ even though I’d never once met them or even heard their voices. These weren’t even penpals, these were people whose jokes or stances I enjoyed, so with Arthurian benevolence I clicked on a little heart icon, liked their tweet, and assumed therefore that we had signed some sort of blood oath.

We had not. I got glib, and cheap, and a little lazy. And then to make matters much worse, Trump came along and extended his reach with the medium.

There was a while there where I thought I could be a sort of voice for the voiceless, and I thought I was doing that. I tried very hard to only contribute things that I felt were not being said – It wasn’t accomplishing anything to notice “Haha Trump looks like he’s bullshitting his way through an oral report” – such things were self-evident. I tried to point out very specific inconsistencies in his policies, like the Muslim ban meant to curb terrorism that still favored the country that brought forth 13 of the 9/11 hijackers. Like his full-throated cries against media bias performed while he suckled at Roger Ailes’ wrinkly teat. Like his fondness for evangelical votes that coincided with a scriptural knowledge that lagged far behind mine, even though I’m a lapsed Episcopalian, and there is no one less religiously observant than a lapsed Episcopalian. But that eventually gave way to unleashing ad hominem attacks against his higher profile supporters, who I felt weren’t being questioned enough, who I felt were in turn being fawned over by theirdim supporters. If you’re one of these guys, and you think I’m talking about you, you’re probably right, but don’t mistake this for an apology. You suck, and you support someone who sucks, and your idolatry is hurting our country and its standing in the world. Fuck you entirely, but that’s not the point. The point is that me screaming into the toilet of Twitter helps no one – it doesn’t help a family stuck at the border because they’re trying to secure a better life for their kids. It doesn’t help a poor teenager who can’t get an abortion because the party of ‘small government’ has squeezed their tiny jurisdiction into her uterus. It doesn’t help the coal miner who’s staking all his hopes on a dying industry and a President’s empty promises to resurrect it. I was born in New York City, and I currently live in Los Angeles. Those are the only two places I’ve ever lived, if you don’t count the 4 years I spent in Ithaca[1]. So, yes, I live in a liberal bubble, and while I’ve driven across the country a couple of times and did a few weeks in a touring band and am as crushed as any heartlander about the demise of Waffle House, you have me dead to rights if you call me a coastal elitist. And with that in mind, I offer few surprises. A guy who grew up in the theater district and was vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage or felt you should own an AR-15? THAT would be newsworthy. I am not newsworthy. I can preach to the choir, I can confirm people’s biases, but I will likely not sway anyone who is eager to dismiss a Native New Yorker who lives in Hollywood. I grew up in the New York of the 1970s, and that part of my identity did shape my politics. My mom’s boss was gay and the Son of Sam posed a realistic threat. As such, gays are job creators[2] and guns are used for homicide much more often than they are used for self-defense[3]. I have found this to be generally true over the years, and there’s even data to back it up.

“But Mr. Bowie,” you might say, though I insist you call me John - “those studies are conducted by elitist institutions and those institutions suck!” And again, I am not going to reason with people who will dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their limited world view as elitist or, God Help Us, fake news. But the studies above are peer-reviewed, convincing, and there are more where those came from.

“But John,” you might say, and I am soothed that we’re one a first name basis - “Can’t you just stay on Twitter for the jokes?” Ugh. A) apparently not and B) the jokes are few and far between, and I am 100% part of that problem.

I have stuff to offer, but Twitter is not the place from which to offer it.

After years of academically understanding that Twitter is not the real world, Super Tuesday 2020 made the abstract pretty fucking concrete. If you had looked at my feed on the Monday beforehand – my feed which is admittedly curated towards the left, but not monolithic (Hi, Rich Lowry!) – you’d have felt that a solid Bernie surge was imminent, but also that your candidate was going surprise her more vocal critics. When the Biden sweep swept, when Bernie was diminished and when Warren was defeated, I realized that Twitter is not only not the real world, it’s almost some sort of Phillip K. Dickian alternate timeline, untethered to anything we’re actually experiencing in our day to day life. This is both good news and bad news – one, we’re not heading towards a utopia of single payer health care and the eradication of American medical debt any time soon, but two, we’re also not being increasingly governed by diaper-clad jungen like Charlie Kirk. Clouds and their linings. Leaving Twitter may look like ceding ground to the assclowns but get this – the ground. Is not. There.

It’s just air.

There are tangible things I can do with my time - volunteer with a local organization called Food On Foot, who provide food and job training for people experiencing homelessness here in my adopted Los Angeles. I can give money to candidates and causes I support, and I can occasionally even drop by social media to boost a project or an issue and then vanish, like a sort of Caucasian Zorro who doesn’t read his mentions. I can also model good behavior for my kids (ages 10 and 13) who don’t need to see their father glued to his phone, arguing about Trumps incompetence with Constitutional scholars who have a misspelled Bible verse in their bio (three s’ in Ecclesiastes, folks).

So farewell Twitter. I’ll miss a lot of you. Perhaps not as badly as I miss Simon Maloy and Roger Ebert and Harris Wittels and others whose deaths created an unfillable void on the platform. But I won’t miss the yelling, and the lionization of poor grammar, and anonymous trolls telling my Jewish friends that they were gonna leave the country “via chimney.” I will not miss people who think Trump is a stable genius calling me a “fucktard.” I will not miss transphobia or cancelling but I will miss hashtag games, particularly my stellar work during #mypunkmusical (Probably should have quit after that surge, I was on fire that night, real blaze of glory stuff I mean, Christ, Sunday in the Park with the Germs? Husker Du I Hear A Waltz? Fiddler on the Roof (keeping an eye out for the cops)? These are Pulitzer contenders.). Twitter makes me feel lousy, even when I’m right, and I’m often right. There’s just no point in barking bumperstickers at each other, and there are people who are speaking truth to power and doing a cleaner job of it – Aaron Rupar, Steven Pasquale, Louise Mensch, Imani Gandy and Ijeoma Oluo to name five solid mostly politically based accounts (Yes, Pasquale is a Broadway tenor. He’s also a tenacious lefty with good points and research and a dreamy voice. You think you’re straight and then you hear him sing anything from Bridges of Madison County and you want him to spoon you.). You’re probably already following those mentioned, but on the off chance you’re not, get to it. You’ll thank me, but you won’t be able to unless you actually have my email.

_______

[1] And Jesus, that’s worse – Ithaca is such a lefty enclave that they had an actual socialist mayor FOR WHOM I VOTED while I was there. And not socialist the way some people think all Democrats are socialist – I mean Ben Nichols actually ran on the socialist ticket and was re-elected twice for a total of six years.

[2] The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, “America’s LGBT Economy” Jan 20th, 2017

[3] The Violence Policy Institute, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self Defense Gun Use, July 2019.

14 notes · View notes

splendidshinobi · 3 years

Text

FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST 2003 LIVE REACT: EPISODES 6-10

back at it again with the white vans

episode 6: the alchemy exam

alrighty then

um mustang calling edward “ed” is EXTREMELY offputting

ohhhhhhh noooooo not shou tucker

FUCK

im wholly unprepared

them all being in central instead of east is low key jarring like my brain isnt computing it

alexander’s intro is basically the same

nina bbyyyyy girl u deserved so much better

ed is such a fucking nerd...chemistry club modern au confirmed

god the more tucker talks the more i wanna beat his face in

al pretending to eat by tossing a potato in his armor i-

aww theyre playing in the snow theyre so pure

wonder how long thatll last

“bigger brother” and “little big brother” and ed doesnt even get mad

ed’s birthday party????????

A MELON? ED YOURE SO RUDE

so 03 had ed’s bday instead of elicia’s...CAUSE THEY GOT ELICIA IN THE WOMB

“it’s here!” “the tea?” “the baby!” hughes is a fuck head

ok so now they’re having elicia replace rush valley baby arc

this was winry’s time to shine in fmab i miss her

if winry isnt here who is gonna birth this baby

oh my god they just realized ed can use alchemy without a circle

no wonder he’s been using circles this whole time

SO ELICIA JUST POPPED OUT????? WHAT

STUFF ALEXANDER IN THE ARMOR AND PRETEND YOURE A TALKING DOG???

“i dont think thats very funny” NO ALPHONSE IT IS NOT

THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE DOING WITH THAT ONE I SWEAR TO GOD IN THIS ESSAY I WILL

damn bradley what up homie

im so thrown off by the way theyre doing the exam omg

seriously what the hell is fuhrer bradley’s purpose right now is he even the fuhrer in this i feel like they wouldve mentioned it

oh lord ed is about to impress everyone with his clappy hands

ok so next episode is nina FUCK

episode 7: night of the chimera’s cry

havoc babeeee

im gonna marry him my himbo king

also can RIZA DO SOMETHING PLZ

“huhhhhhhhh nina” ew tucker that was weirdly gross

wonder why

cant do it cant do it

do we think jean kirstein was modeled after jean havoc slightly looks wise

was that purposeful

ill have to google

serial killer who only targets women? it cant be scar...scar drinks respect women juice

barry or slicer bros maybe? um ok

why did we start with liore if they were just gonna hop right back into the past for a huge chunk of episodes idk

assessment day??? oh noodles

AL WHY DID YOU TELL TUCKER TO MAKE ANOTHER TALKING CHIMERA ALPHONSE NO

THE NOISE I EMITTED IM GONNA TAKE A LAP

im gonna FUCKING SCREAM

ed r u writing to winry??? that’s a bit out of character for u good sir

no tucker put that baby down

im gonna fucking SCREAM

aww he burned nina’s picture thats not sus at all

SHESKA!!!!!

wait does the ironblood alchemist know what tucker did to his wife? thats kinda the vibe im getting

SCARRRRRRRR

looking like a pirate too damn

his voice sounds different is that j michael tatum

apparently not it was dameon clarke in 03 ya learn something new everyday

ew elicia has a lot of hair for a FUCKING NEWBORN

ed really is such a cynic very suspicious of everyone as he should be really

basque grand knowS SOMETHING

oh jesus oh fuck oh god please do not TOUCH THAT BABY

ed and al snuck back in to the house well u know what its for the best

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

im gonna cry again please god no

FUCKING DIE SHIT HOLE

she’s hurting? oh my god

my sweet angel

ew his eyes!!!!!!!

tucker is such a fucking failure...like look at the chimera squad and greed’s theatre troupe being the way they are. ugh it really hits how fucking unfair it is

ed was really about to split them? boy you know better

where is nina going...im hurting

ed really tried to save her in this one

SCAR KILLS NINA IN THE STREETS???????? SIR

thats different

oh snap

oh FUCK

SCAR WHY DID YOU LEAVE HER BODY LIKE THAT

THE WAY SHE WAS ARRANGED ON THE WALL THAT WAS FUCKED UP

AND THEY FOUND HER LIKE THAT???? AT LEAST IN BROTHERHOOD THEY DIDNT HVE TO SEE HER CORPSE ARE YOU SHITTING ME?

that was fucked.

episode 8: the philosopher’s stone

can yall get ed and al away from nina’s fucking MURAL

get out of the car mustang

finally jesus christ

roy mustang talking about healthy coping mechanisms dont make me laugh but alright baby boy go off i guess?

im curious about who this goddamn serial killer is though lets turn to that plot thread

r u kidding me

mustang is making ed and al take over tucker’s research?? thats actually wildly messed up

oh tucker was straight executed that’s a choice i guess

tucker and the philosopher’s stone sounds inaccurate but ok

ed please stop being mean to your brother

03 mustang has got me reaching for a fucking baseball bat on GOD

scar and edward having this conversation right now i literally cannot

WINRY yes bitch

BRADLEY WHAT IN TARNATION

JESUS LORRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDD

alphonse shut your mouthhhhhhhhhhh

im so confused what is bradley up to

“alchemists are not cold blooded murderers?”

i mean

kimblee would beg to differ for one

whos this creepy lady

her voice sounds familiar

barry’s food shop?

the killer is barry ok got it

IS BARRY DISGUISED AS A WOMAN

I KNEW THAT WAS JERRY JEWELL’S VOICE

WELL I KNEW IT SOUNDED FAMILIAR AT LEAST

WINRY GET OUT OF THE FUCKING TRUCk

has PINAKO TAUGHT YOU NOTHING

ok so i VASTLY prefer suit of armor original manga canon barry

this is such an odd plot what in fuck

um OW the meat cleaver

im so confused this fucking plotline

oh hey alphonse nice of you to show up!

is barry still gonna become a suit of armor later on

it makes NO SENSE to introduce him otherwise

everytime i see 03 mustang i wanna beat his ass HONESTLY

literally i will shove my foot up his ass

fullmetal here we go

ed thinks he’s so punk rock

oh great scar’s seen the watch

episode 9: be thou for the people

ed you simp buying winry all this stuff my edwin heart is ascending

SIMP SIMP SIMP

“mr. elric”?? you mean MAJOR ELRIC

to be fair though fuck the military

YOUSWELL??? oh LORD

im gonna need to read a full chronology of this show

alphonse continues to be a precious angel

where’s my boy yoki!!!!!

edward you idiot don’t go flaunting your money

woof woof ed

al looks so offended by ed saying they just met

whereas in brotherhood didnt he totally throw ed under the bus???

a choice to be sure

ah there he is hello yoki

who’s the chick

shes a lesbian

yoki makes me miss my baby girl mei chang

mei where r u

WAS THIS MILITARY DUDE REALLY ABOUT TO CUT DOWN A CHILD??? oh my god

hawkeye getting a promotion yes bby girl

jesus theyre transferring them to east now OKKKKKAY thats not how it happened it the book but ill take it....just doing it the opposite way i guess

who is lyra who is she

cute some military bribery

umm lyra what the fuck did you do

lyra is a homunculus im callin it now

they definitely invented/changed up some homunculi in fact im certain they did and shes one of em. gotta be

i feel like 03 wrote ed as much more insensitive towards others than he really is...just a vibe im getting

i know he was faking for the townspeople’s sake but i still get this vibe from other instances

i mean i cant say its not “canon” because its 03 canon

anyways what a show off

i cant believe theyre going to east...fuery and breda better be there

ok finally some answers on their ages....ed got his license at 12 like normal and nina and youswell were when he was 12...liore was 15,

if they didnt flash the ages on the screen id be lost honestly

at least we’re back up to “present day”

episode 10: the phantom thief

ed saying he doesnt wanna see mustang

same

03 mustang is activating my fight or flight and im choosing fight

ed cheating at cards totally checks out

um who the fuck is this woman

what is she wearing

SERIOUSLY WHAT IS THAT CUTOUT MAAM HOW DO YOUR C**CHY LIPS NOT POKE OUT

idk but this is fem!hisoka

“hey shouldnt we talk first” after getting handcuffed??? christ almighty these innuendos

siren??????? siren is probably also a “fake” homunculus

ugh

ok so the nurse is siren

ya aint slick girly

alphonse control your crush

I REFUSE!!!! ALMEI RIGHTS

why is al’s hair so brown in this flashback anywayssss

oh its spelled psiren ope

like she’s literally a batman villain...

oh my god...............the tiddy grab. my son would never

my son is respectful

is this her homunculus tat or just a random alchemy tat

the added plotlines and original content continue to confuse and astound me every single time....

ok but if psiren really was doing this for the hospital she wouldnt be so flashy about it. like thats how you get caught sweet cheeks

girly stop flirting with this child on god im gonna fucking kick you

now shes a nun????????????????

Shes a fucking troll i hate her

im going to kick alphonse into the sun

oh great now shes a teacher

wow shes a savior. the savior of amestrian venice. greatttttt

ed looking exactly like this emoji on this gondola rn 🧍‍♀️

STOP FLIRTING WITH THE CHILD

GOD THIS IS SO BATMAN VILLAIN ESQUE

alphonse plzzzzzzzzzz she aint your girl

ok so probably not the last we see of this ding dong con artist

ok so its starting to get muddy. im scared the 03 stans are gonna come after me like i do like it and im having fun watching it but some of the plot and characterization choices are just....odd??? idk i gotta keep going though!! im sorry i just stan arakawa and her work in all her glory!!!

#carol watches fma03 #fullmetal alchemist #carol's remaining brain cells #this is fun for me and no one else #whatever i dont care about anyone else on this website anyway #this is my stupid hole

3 notes · View notes

chezforshire · 4 years

Note

I know zero (0) things about homestuck, so this is me inviting you to share about your favorite ship from it, and maybe include that thing where person a picks up person b and pins them against a wall

i was gonna make like a quip or a joke or whatever but i just got floored over the softness of u lettin me have fun w one of my favoured fandoms even tho u know jack shit abt it so yeah thanks

/-/-/-/

Date nights for the Maryam-Lalonde couple usually consisted of going out in amazingly made custom dresses and getting a seat in the fanciest restaurant they felt like going to. Dave once said it was them “showing the people of Earth C that they were the model interspecies lesbian relationship that everyone should strive for”. Rose couldn’t say that she disagreed, but she had her own reasons. She personally saw it as showing off the fact that Kanaya Maryam is one of the most amazing, beautiful, talented woman she’s ever met and everyone else had gotten the short end of the stick because Kanaya chose her of all people. So yeah, she will admit to a bit of showing off.

Those kind of dates were nice. They were able to learn new things about the world they were gifted and even get to interact with the citizens of it. Being lauded as a god was still something she felt uneasy about, but the citizens were kind enough to at least pretend to not have been staring at them the whole time.

But favourite was those where she and Kanaya decide to simply stay at home, wearing too large clothes and curling up into each other and doing whatever they felt like at that moment.

These dates never had a schedule, no rhyme or reason for happening, no plan or forethought put in it. It would just happen. Sometimes it would be a wordless decision, other times one of them would ask for it. (Rose always much more timid when she does because she knew Kanaya loved being outside and was always loathe to ask her to be cooped up in their shared home.) Either way, they would end up in each other’s arms curled up in some corner of the house doing whatever they were in the mood to do for the time.

Tonight was one such date. The pair was curled up by the hallway of their house. They had initially decided to go out and see that new restaurant that served a mix of human and Alternian food. They were dressed to the nines, make-up done flawlessly, hair done-up flattering their face. The last thing left were footwear. But for some reason, they had both just decided that that was too much effort and so had simultaneously sat on the floor and got comfortable.

Rose pulled out her phone from her dress pocket (she loves Kanaya so goddamn much she sew in fucking pockets in her dresses) and started looking for something dumb for them to watch. They settled on a dance movie, apparently Step Up will exist no matter the universe and that’s an oddly comforting thought.

The story was… Well, it was Step Up. You didn’t really watch it for any inkling of a story, you watched it because dancing was pretty and more importantly a woman dancing can cause a gay awakening in anyone. Kanaya was more focused on their fashion during the competition sections, and Rose was content to listen to her talk about it.

It was halfway through the next movie when Kanaya stood up suddenly, bringing Rose with her. She grabs her phone and tosses it away then started gently swaying their bodies to no particular tune.

Rose laughs at her wife and presses her nose to the underside of her jaw. “The hallway isn’t a particularly large space for dancing.” She moves her hands up and rests them on her shoulders. “We are also both, if you would excuse my language, absolutely fucking terrible at dancing.”

She feels Kanaya shake slightly with laughter before feeling a kiss be dropped onto the top of her head. “That is quite true. Would you consent to me doing something else then?”

Rose hums an affirmative. A kiss to her temple was all the warning she had before her wife lifted her up and spun them around twice, her legs instinctually clamping around her waist for support. Kanaya stumbled slightly and caused her to be pressed against the wall for balance. They looked at each other for a second before they burst out laughing.

Rose attempts to wrangle herself in and somehow succeeds. She cups Kanaya’s face and brings her closer for a kiss, not a very successful one seeing as she’s still smiling much too wide and Kanaya was slightly laughing but it was a kiss nonetheless. She leaned away then gently butted her forehead against Kanaya’s, a form of affection trolls considered to be almost as intimate as a kiss.

She could see the jade slowly seeping into her wife’s grey eyes from this close. She admits that it was a little odd not seeing the pure grey in the sea of gold, however she loved seeing the slow progress of color in her eyes and it made her feel like falling in love all over again.

She presses a quick kiss to her nose and gently tangles her fingers in dark hair. “Did you plan on pinning me to the wall of our quaint hallway, or was your plan derailed and you had decided to simply wing it.”

Kanaya hums noncommittally. “I will not deign that inquiry with an answer, instead I would love to propose that we enjoy this current position to the fullest.”

Rose pulls back far enough to give her a raised eyebrow. “Might I know what ‘enjoying this to the fullest’ entails?”

She is only given a wide, innocent smile in response.

Kanaya gives her a soft slow kiss. Lips moving against each other, memorizing the already familiar contours of each other. A quick swipe of her tongue, then she moved to press a kiss onto the corner of her lips. Then her cheek, jaw, the column of her throat, and finally to the juncture where her neck and shoulder meet.

Her breath stutters when she feels the brush of fangs against her skin. She melts further into her wife’s arms, angling her neck for better access. Kanaya sucks on a patch of skin, gently nibbling not quite leaving a mark just yet. “I do so love how small you are, dear.” She murmurs.

Rose pushes her face away from her neck. She quirks an eyebrow at her and she smiles slyly from behind her palm. “You are aware that isn’t quite a compliment?”

“Maybe, however it is quite nice to be able to lift you effortlessly and press you against whatever surface I desire.” She presses a kiss onto her palm. “Very titillating if you ask me.”

Rose snorts but acquiesces, removing her hand from her wife’s face to rest it on her cheek.

“Besides, I am but a weak, gangly troll. You would not wish to have me strain and suffer while attempting to seduce you would you?”

She raises her eyebrows at her, trying so very hard not to break into a wide smile. Years of allowing herself to show emotion has made her control over her expressions rusty.

“You are aware I can float. You don’t need to strain yourself, you can simply wrap your arms around me and I will do the rest.”

“But where would the emotion be?” She whines. “The feeling of my arms shifting to accommodate your weight as I hold you up, doing my best not to tremble as you would, no doubt, try to turn me into a whining mess. The upper hand I would have in pressing you further into the wall to allow myself to let one arm go and rake my nails all over you. The allure of flexing muscle as your legs tighten around my waist to avoid falling and my arms tightening their hold on you.”

Rose couldn’t help it, she burst out laughing. Her wife glares at her but there’s no heat beneath it, just a fondness they would never be rid of.

She feels her start to playfully nip at her neck and she laughs even more. A slight increase in pressure at just the right area has her choking on her laughter then sighing happily.

Kanaya presses a languid kiss to her lips and lets her lips hover over hers. “Do you see the appeal?”

She takes half a moment before answering. “Not yet,” she pulls her closer to her body. “I think I need a demonstration.”

That was all Kanaya needed to hear.

In the end, Rose does see the appeal. Although a repeat performance might be needed for a better opinion.

#rosemary #homestuck #kanaya maryam #rose lalonde #i love these two #so much #Anonymous #chez answers #yellow yelling

19 notes · View notes

merpuccino · 4 years

Text

When We Finally Kiss Goodnight

Title: When We Finally Kiss Goodnight

Prompt: “Let's go ice skating.”

Natasha x Female Reader

Established relationship, Lesbian relationship, Female Reader, SHIELD Agent Reader

Summary: It's been nearly a year since you met Natasha Romanoff near the ice skating rink downtown.

Natasha is awake when the coffee maker starts gurgling. You thought her eyes might pop open at the sound of fresh coffee brewing.

You normally don't drink coffee this late but it's some Christmas blend and you really just like the smell.

On the t.v you're watching figure skaters glide across ice, their expressions focused and elated all at once. You wonder what it must feel like to be there, to be able to move the way they do on ice.

Natasha could do it, you think. You glance over at her as she stretches and yawns on the sofa. You've never seen someone who can nap the way she does. She does those twenty minute cat naps. This afternoon, however, she napped a little the way you do – knocked out for a couple of hours. You’ll probably tease her about being ‘one of us lowly normal humans’ when she wakes... Then again, maybe you shouldn’t say things like that? Sometimes you think she might be a little sensitive about how... unique she is.

You've already set a glass of water on the coffee table for her, knowing that you’re usually pretty dehydrated after a nap.

Natasha's chartreuse eyes are on the figure skaters before she glances over to you. She smiles a little, then spots the glass of water.

“Oh is that for me?” Her voice is a bit rusty from sleep. It sounds cute, honestly, and more than a little hot. You don't know why, but that rusty crack to a woman's voice has always been kind of sexy.

“Yep. Figured you'd need some water after that nap.”

“Yeah,” She sits up slowly, taking the water and adjusting her back against the arm of the sofa. She takes slow sips. You whistle in awe as the figure skater on screen, a slight, Asian girl leaves the ice and spins in the air. Almost like a cat, she lands gracefully on her feet, slipping right back into the rhythm of the song blasting on the speakers.

You're pretty sure Natasha could do that. And then your brow furrows. How come you've never seen her skate? Then again, when exactly do either of you have time for something like ice skating?

The sun is setting – it's only around four in the afternoon but it's late December in New York City. With the short Christmas tree you put up topping a table by the t.v and a lamp on, it feels cozy in here.

This is your apartment – ish. Technically it was going to be Natasha's but then you moved in. You know Natasha has probably eight other places she could stay – Stark nee Avenger's tower for instance, or Clint Barton's place. She likely has at least three safe houses, among other places even you don't know about. But this is the place the two of you share. So far, it's been nice having her as your unofficial roommate.

She's smiling a little at the sight of the girl on tv who is blushing and breathless after her performance. Applause rings out and the announcers discuss the minute mistakes she made that most people watching would never even notice.

Natasha’s feet are propped up on your lap – you aren't sure when they arrived there or if you propped them up while trying to gingerly sit down and not startle her out of sleep. Natasha can be a very light sleeper. They're currently donning warm, knit socks with bright Fair Isle patterns.

Natasha yawns as she eyes the people on screen.

“I need to work out,” she sighs. “I've eaten way too much-”

“Oh don't start that,” you plead. “Don't remind me how much gingerbread I've eaten.”

She looks at you in surprise. “Sorry,” she says a moment later, her lips curling into a smirk. Her eyes clearly say 'You're the one who insists on making gingerbread every year.'

Yes, and every year they get more ridiculous. Last year you had a punk gingerbread people theme. This year they all ended up being superheroes. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that you made the first batch at Stark Tower and invited Rogers and Banner to join in.

The fact that they each made the other as a gingerbread man made it even better. Banner did a great job making Cap's cowl and Rogers nearly used up all the green icing to make a Hulk.

“I'm gonna use this really big gingerbread guy,” Steve said as he began to outline it in green. “Hulk smash!”

The memory makes you smile. All that sugar was worth it just to see a couple of grown men act like little kids. Tony Stark joined in and complained that their Iron Man wasn't accurate. The mental image of Steve Rogers rolling his eyes and saying “It's art, Tony. It's cookie art” causes you to laugh.

“What?” Natasha asks.

“Nothing. Just remembering your uh, teammates decorating gingerbread.”

“They're your teammates too,” she slips up from the sofa, setting her now emptier glass of water down.

Your lip stretches at one corner. “Sure.”

“What? They are.” Natasha heads into the kitchen. “You want cream and sugar?”

“Sure,” you call. “Yes to both.”

“They are your teammates,” she reminds you when she returns with two mugs. She carefully hands you one as she sits down, setting her own mug on the coffee table.

“Maybe,” you say. “But only ‘cause...”

“Cause what?”

You shrug, glancing away from the screen to look at her.

“I don't know...”

“Cause of me?” She asks after taking a sip of her coffee. You consider your own, breathing in the smell before taking a sip.

“Maybe.”

She snorts. “Maybe? Does it bother you? That you're on the team because of me?”

“I don't know... It doesn't bother me.” You shrug. “I just feel like... I'm kind of a temporary member? Or you know... I'm just there on occasion, when needed.”

“I mean, technically we're all just there when we're needed.” She shrugs. “We're hardly active all the time.”

“Yeah, that's true. I mean I guess you guys are more of a 'existential threats' kind of group.”

“What'd you call us? A raid group?” She smirks. Your face flushes. You got Natasha to game with you on occasion, but you're kind of the resident gaming nerd.

“Something like that,” you chuckle.

“I like it.” Natasha reaches out and takes your free hand in hers. It feels nice. Her hand is warm. “Whoo! Your hand is cold!”

“Yeah... I've been sitting here messing around on my phone.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Taking pictures of me while I sleep?”

You lean in to give her a gentle kiss.

“You know it,” you joke.

“Creep.” She laughs, red hair tossing as she turns her head to look at the screen again. Every time you kiss Natasha it makes your heart beat a little faster. It causes other things to happen too but you remind yourself she just woke up from a nap and is probably feeling a little groggy.

“Have you seen yourself in underwear?”

She snorts. “Pervert.”

“Um, yeah. How long have we been living together? Three months?”

Something about saying it out loud sends your stomach into a little dive. You don't know why but you feel like clutching her hand even more tightly. She just shakes her head, looking amused, her eyes on the screen as she takes another sip of her coffee. You take a sip of your own, trying not to squeeze her hand in yours.

“Let's go ice skating,” you blurt. She gives you a puzzled look.

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“Um... the sun is setting,” she laughs.

“Well... I think that skating rink is still open in the evening.” You point out. “We should go while it's still open.”

She tilts her head at you. “You mean the one where we met?”

“Yeah. Where you met me the first time.”

“I'll have to thank Nick for that.”

“Same.” You gently squeeze her hand.

“You sap,” she teases.

“Now you sound like Rogers.”

“He's probably rubbed off on me-” She stops herself immediately and rolls her eyes as you smirk and waggle your eyebrows. “Nice. Very mature.” But she laughs, in spite of your gross joke.

“You really wanna go ice skating?” She asks a moment later and you shrug.

“It's been forever honestly.”

“We used to, when I was a kid,” she says quietly. She rarely ever mentions being a kid and you know why. Natasha grew up in a place called 'the Red Room' – people took her and other little girls and trained them to be weapons. You're pretty sure her childhood was nightmare fuel so you don't press her about it.

“What time is it?” Natasha picks up her phone which is lying on the coffee table and peeks.

“Like... four?”

“Four thirty. Do you think it's open right now?”

“I've seen the one at the park open.”

“Which one?” Natasha is already opening Google Maps. “There are two.”

“Um... I think the one closer to our place. The one near the zoo. Wollman Rink?”

“Let me see...” The light from the phone washes over her face as she slides a finger over it. Her eyes reflect the screen, a little rectangle in a green world. “Yeah, looks like they're open until 11 tonight.” She looks at you again. “Wanna go?”

“Sure,” you shrug. “Let's finish our coffee first. Then we can bundle up. Are you hungry?”

“Not at the moment. But we could grab something after maybe?”

Coffee under your belts and plans made, the two of you set off. Wollman Rink isn't far on foot but it's freezing outside and you're glad you bundled up. Natasha is actually wearing a coat which isn't a total surprise but she tends to tease you and the others about what you consider 'cold.' Granted she is from like, Ukraine, and grew up in Russia. Winters there must be pretty intense compared to what you're used to. You're not even from New York either.

On the way there you see a Greek restaurant you might like to stop at later. You point it out and Natasha shrugs.

“Might be good.”

You offer one glove covered hand and take hers in it. She smirks.

“I like your mittens,” you tease.

“Shut up,” she laughs. “Rogers got them for me along with the hat. I think he just never knows what to get me for Christmas.”

The mittens and hat are both white with pink stripes and designs. The hat has a big white pom pom on it and you smile and shake your head.

“I think he was trolling you.”

“Pretty much,” She smirks. “But I figure, why not? I'll wear it.”

“The Hufflepuff scarf is pretty great too.”

“Oh. That was Clint,” She rolls her eyes. “He gave me this like a year ago actually.”

“Are you a Hufflepuff?”

She tilts her head at you for a moment. “What do you think I am?”

You're silent for a moment as you side step somebody.

“Hm... I mean I could easily see you as Hufflepuff – because you do like to help people.”

“Do I?”

“I think so. But you're also cunning. So I could see Slytherin.”

“I think everybody assumes I'm a Slytherin,” She says. “Or would if they even think about it.”

“I've tested Slytherin before.”

She laughs. “Is there an official test?”

“I mean, there's a test on Pottermore.” You feel your face flush.

“Pottermore?”

“Don't judge me! It's an official website,” You add in explanation after you laugh in embarrassment.

“Nice.”

“But there's other quizzes too.”

“I have taken Harry Potter quizzes – I will go ahead and admit it. Clint actually gave me one of the books to read... Back when I first joined SHIELD.”

“Cool. Sounds like good reading for when you're... about to join SHIELD I guess?”

She smiles.

“When you're leaving an organization that brainwashed you,” she points out.

“Yeah.”

SHIELD is in pieces now – or it was broken open and revealed to be full of HYDRA agents anyway. There are still SHIELD agents, working under Phil Coulson, and you're one of them. But your role these days is largely helping the Avengers.

Ice in the streets crunches under your boots as you walk. Natasha doesn't seem bothered by the cold. You've worn enough under layers to be warm so it's not bothering you yet either. The wind is a little cutting and you draw closer to her as you walk.

When you reach the rink, the two of you wrestle to pay the fee first. Natasha manages to get cash into the hand of the woman at the entrance first and you laugh, cursing her.

“How dare you!”

“You can get dinner,” she's snickering at how upset you are.

Next, you're strapping on a pair of ice skates and stuffing your shoes into the same cubby. Natasha is out first on the ice – the intrepid one this evening. Just as you suspected, she's slightly wobbly at first but takes to it like a duck to water, laughing and gliding along.

“Wait up!” you call, unable to help from smiling. “Jerk!” You shake your fist in mock anger and she snorts.

“Hurry up!”

You step out onto the ice, a little tense at first, but you gradually loosen up as you realize you're not going to fall on your ass in front of everybody. You catch up to her and she offers you her hand.

You take it, even though you're a little suspicious she might troll you, pull you along playfully.

“Let's go slow at first,” you point out.

“You're the one who's always rushing into stuff,” she laughs.

“That is true.”

Natasha is generally more cautious than you. Maybe it's because you're younger but you tend to throw yourself head first into some things.

“How do you say 'ice skating' in Russian?”

She groans. You're always trying to pick up more Russian and you even started using an app to learn.

“Come o-on!” You goad her.

“Kataniye na kon'kakh.”

“Katanya what?”

She snorts and speakers slower. “Kataniye. Na. Kon'kakh. Or if you wanted to say 'I like to ice skate' you could say “Ya lyublyu katat'sya na kon'kakh.”

“Kataniye na kon'kakh,” You murmur to yourself.

“Very good.” She smiles.

“What was the first language you learned beside Russian?”

She thinks for a moment, glancing out over the other people gliding on the ice. Most of them are couples or parents with kids. You watch a ten year old girl squeal as she slides over to her mom. The woman is smiling and holding her arms open to the kid. Nearby her husband and a little boy skate.

“English,” she says finally. “That and I think French? They tried to get us to learn as many as possible.”

You nod. You can speak a couple of languages but you're pretty sure Natasha has you beat. Then again, she is a master spy.

“Sometimes I like to imagine being a figure skater,” You confess, smiling a little.

“Yeah?” She looks at you. “You could still do it.”

You laugh. “Hell no. I mean, it's fun to do. It's a great hobby... But it's not what... It's not my dream.”

“What is your dream?”

You think about it for a few moments.

“I really don't know. I'd like to travel the world, I guess?”

Natasha nods. “You'll definitely do that working for SHIELD.”

“Well I don't mean for work. I mean... just 'cause.”

“Yeah... I don't know. Travel doesn't mean the same for me I guess.” She shrugs. “It's always been for work.”

“Is there anywhere you'd like to go?”

She studies a tree nearby, a fir decorated with baubles and lights.

“Maybe...” She smirks. “The North Pole?”

“Don't be silly.”

“No really. There's a place called The North Pole. In Finland.”

“You're bullshitting me.”

“No, I'm serious!”

“What they have like.. Santa Claus and elves?”

“They have reindeer.” She frowns. “Actually I'd really like to visit Machu Picchu.”

“Yeah. That would be pretty cool.”

“I don't know why, but I like ancient ruins.”

“I grew up watching Indiana Jones movies, so I get it, trust me.”

She laughs. “It's not like I think it would be this great adventure. It would just be interesting.”

“Yeah. Archaeology is pretty cool. I'd like to go surfing in different parts of the world.”

“I didn't know you surfed.”

“Yeah. I mean I haven't done it a lot of times – and I suck at it. But it's fun. I've heard about some really great places for surfing.”

“Yeah? Where?”

You shrug. “Australia.”

“Australia sounds interesting. If it's beaches we're talking though, I like Hawaii.”

“I've never been to Hawaii.”

“I went once, with Barton, a couple years ago.”

“That sounds nice.”

“There are some really beautiful parts of Hawaii.”

There's something pretty special about skating around the very spot you first met Natasha. You remember spotting her coming around the other side of the rink. Her hair was shorter than it is now, but just as bright, swinging loose from her hood as she pushed it back.

You can remember Nick Fury standing next to you saying 'Here she comes.' The way you couldn't take your eyes off her.

You squeeze her hand gently in yours.

“I'd like to go Hawaii with you.”

She smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

You lean in and kiss her. She sputters at first, maybe surprised that you're kissing her in public. But you don't care if anyone sees. She's the most beautiful woman you've ever been with and you're out together, close to New Year's eve, ice skating. Life has never felt more like a movie than it has at this moment.

You want to say those three little words. But when you do use them, it's sparingly, because you're pretty sure Natasha has a hard time hearing and repeating them.

You chance it.

“I love you.”

She smiles, then glances away. She has a flush to her face and something about her reaction makes your heart break.

“Race me?” she says, glancing back at you, her lips in a wily smirk and a gleam in her eye.

“Yeah right. You already know you'll beat me. Hey!” You cry out, a laugh on your lips as she releases your hand and speeds ahead. “Dork!”

“Can't catch me!” She sings back, gracefully sliding around the little family you spotted earlier.

“This is so unfair!” You call after her, trying to catch up. You can't help but laugh as you nearly stumble several times. “How are you this fast?” You shout.

When you finally catch up, she's paused by the side of the rink and is laughing, both of you breathless.

“I thought you said it was years since you last skated!” You gasped.

“No! I said that I went skating when I was a kid.” She grins. “Barton likes to try and challenge me on occasion on everything from air hockey to handstands.” She rolls her eyes.

“Right,” you nod. You've seen those two battle over a pin ball machine and even in the archery range in Stark Tower. (The fact that it has an archery range is still kind of mind blowing and ridiculous, honestly)

“I forget you two are the Wonder Twins.”

She laughs. “The Wonder Twins. I love it when you say that.”

“Oh man, I should have gotten you guys t shirts for Christmas!”

“Well his birthday is coming up in the summer,” she smirks.

“Ahh,” You offer your hand. “Or your Unbirthday.”

Natasha doesn't know when her actual birth date is so she just picked a random day in April simply because she likes spring. You feel proud of the fact that you know that Natasha likes spring. It's one of those things most people don't know about her.

You figure a lot of people just expect her to be all dark and morbid but honestly? Natasha loves Halloween for the same reason she loves Christmas – it's an excuse to have fun and be with other people. This is the side of her that only you and a few other people get to see.

“You know something?” You hold her hands in yours and she groans.

“You're being sappy again,” she teases, but her eyes are alight and her lips are pulling into another smile.

“I am so glad I have you in my life.”

She looks back at you quietly for a few moments.

“Oh yeah?”

You nod. “Cause you're such a dork!” You laugh and start to skate away. “The race isn't over!”

She laughs.

“You're the one who's a dork!”

She begins to chase after you after a moment.

Naturally, Natasha catches up and speeds past you, beating you pretty soundly. The two of you skate for a while longer until you're both complaining about your noses being frozen. Then you decide to stop by the restaurant you saw to pick up dinner.

Back at your place, on the couch, you curl up together and decide to watch Die Hard as you eat your take out.

“Samuel L Jackson will always remind me of Nick Fury,” You note. “Mothafucka.”

“Yeah... I'm pretty sure Ol Sam Jackson is more laid back than Fury.”

“You're probably right.” You scoot closer to her and she smiles. A few moments later, she leans into you.

“I don't care what you and Clint say. Die Hard is not a Christmas movie.”

“Maybe not,” you shrug. “But it's worth watching during Advent all the same.”

“I'm happy to have you in my life too, you know,” she says it quietly but it makes you look at her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She leans in and kisses you.

“Well, I'm glad. Otherwise this would be really awkward.”

She snorts. Then she starts to laugh.

“You are such a dork,” she shakes her head and looks back at the screen.

“Am I your favorite dork?”

“Aside from Clint? Yes.” She smiles.

That, you decide, is more than enough for now.

#ldmkwc #merry kismet writing challenge #sourpatchkidsandacokecan #christmas #ice skating #natasha x reader #marvel cinematic universe #fanfiction #fanfic #lesbian #female reader #shield agent reader #established relationship #natasha romanoff #black widow

20 notes · View notes

yetanotherbuffyblog · 5 years

Text

What a ride, guys

So, uh, that finale…

The end is here, and Buffy and Friends are working things out on how to stop Glory from destroying the world via dimensional rifts and killing Dawn. Buffy refuses to take killing Dawn as an option, despite Giles being quite insistent on it. Anya suggests using the Orb of Dagon from earlier in the season, and also the hammer from the troll.

I’m going to skip a lot of character moments to get to the actual fight, like how Dawn was made out of Buffy because she wasn’t born like a normal person, and how Buffy can’t bear to lose Dawn and talks about quitting after this apocalypse, but we’ll talk about some of it in the notes.

Tara is the one who leads them to where Glory’s working her ritual (around a giant construction tower, I guess?), because the insane people seem to be drawn to it. Once there, Glory recognizes her and Willow uses that distraction to undo the magic Glory did to Tara, which weakens her enough that Buffy can attack, while the rest of the Scoobies go for the minions. The fight seems to be pretty even between Glory and Buffy, until Glory decapitates Buffy… only to reveal that the Buffy she’s been fighting was actually the reprogrammed Buffy Bot. Real!Buffy starts whaling on Glory with the troll hammer.

There’s a lot of fighting, but Buffy actually manages to beat down Glory, and manages to have her change into Ben. She makes Ben swear to make sure Glory leaves them all alone while she goes to check on her sister. Ben agrees to it, which is when Giles rolls up, and is all like, “Yeah, I get it, she’s a good guy, she’s not going to kill you because she’s a good guy. But, uh, let’s be real here: if Glory survives we’re screwed, so…” And Giles STRANGLES BEN TO DEATH! HOLY S***!

So Glory doesn’t bleed Dawn for the ritual, but that creepy demon dude who survived being stabbed? Doc? Yeah, he does because he’s the Jerk of the Week. He manages to repel Spike, but by the time Buffy gets up there he’s already cut Dawn to start her opening portals. Buffy chucks him off the tower for his troubles, but OH NO! Portals have started opening! Dawn argues that the only way that to stop the end of the world is to let herself die. So she offers to jump off the tower.

But Buffy thinks about how Dawn is made from her; the ritual’s kind of vague on how it works, exactly, but she knows that there’s something important about that connection? And Buffy remembers that thing she’s been told: that Death is her gift. So she realizes that Dawn doesn’t have to die, but someone does, and so Buffy throws herself off of the tower, dying, but also closing the portals.

So the world is saved! But Buffy is dead.

Huh.

Notes!

-I am… not thrilled with the idea of the solution to saving the world being suicide. TV Tropes’s recap page for the episode mentions a review of the finale that had a similar, but more extreme, mindset, and TV Tropes’s reaction is like, “You missed the point! Did you want the world to be destroyed?” And no, of course not. But I’m not exactly happy with any plot situation where the only way to solve it is by suicide. I don’t think we should be writing stories that frame suicide as a heroic act. I sort of give this one a half-pass, because we know she won’t stay dead, and I realize this is a completely unrealistic situation, but still. It’s one thing for someone to save the world by putting themselves into a fight they can’t walk away from; it’s another to save the world by literal, unambiguous suicide, and that’s not something I’m okay with.

-Although Buffy did tell Spike that not all of them were going to come out of this alive. And the one who dies is… Buff. That’s some foreshadowing, Joss.

-When they go to the Summers house to get ready, Spike tells Buffy that he knows that she’ll never love him, but she treats him like a real person and that means something to him. Which is a cool character moment, I think.

-Willow having a spell that reverses Glory’s Brain Drain feels a little… too convenient? It’s not so out there, and of course she hasn’t done it before because you have to get within reaching distance of Glory for it to work, but it’s handy that there’s a counterspell for it? Just when they need it!

-Reminder that Anya’s afraid of rabbits! When she and Xander are in the storage room looking for the Dagon Sphere, they happen across a plush rabbit and Anya screams. I’d forgotten that they bothered her.

-They also find the Buffy Bot, which Anya explains is being studied by Willow. Xander wonders if that’s a lesbian thing, but Anya reinforces that Willow’s interest in the Buffy Bot is purely academic.

-Also Xander proposes to Anya? She accepts except that she says that they’ll save it for after this battle. Which is kind of nice.

-Doc’s a pain in the butt. But is he dead? He survived being stabbed, so I don’t know if a fall off a tower would kill him.

-And Spike survived being thrown off the building, but Buffy didn’t. And I get that he’s a vampire so that probably counts for something, as he can only be killed in specific ways, but it felt a bit annoying. Not that I wanted Spike to die, it’s just… y’know.

-This dialogue! Heightened by knowing that Whedon’s a fan of Shakespeare!

Buffy: Hey, everybody knows their jobs. Remember, the ritual starts, we all die. And I'll kill anyone who comes near Dawn.

Spike: Well, not exactly the St. Crispin's Day speech, was it?

Giles: [wryly] "We few, we happy few..."

Spike: We band of buggered.

-Was this a fauxnale? Was the show going to be cancelled and then saved at the last minute? [shrugs] I dunno. You guys tell me.

-At one point Glory gets hit with a wrecking ball. That was cool.

-Tara gets her sanity back! I was worried about that. That being said… are the other crazy people going to get their sanity back now that Glory’s dead? Probably not. So I feel pretty bad for them. But at least Tara’s doing well.

-Also crazy!Tara calls Giles a killer before they get going, which is great ‘cause it foreshadows when he kills Ben.

-Oh hey, yeah, that? That was crazy. We get this line:

Giles: She's a hero, you see. She's not like us. [suffocates Ben]

-And it makes sense! We know that Giles used to be really hardcore, and he’s the one advocating that they kill Dawn to save the world. He’s willing to do these underhanded dirty things, especially if they protect Buffy. He knows that Glory’s going to come back if she’s allowed to survive. I think Buffy knows that too, on some level, but she’s really tired of all this Slayer business and just wants to save her sister more than she wants to kill Glory or Ben, so it’s kind of secondary in her mind. But not Giles! Nope, Glory’s gotta go, and if that means killing Ben, then he’s gonna do it.

-When Glory “kills” the Buffy Bot, she assumes that the Slayer was a robot the entire time. Oh Glory, you moron.

-You know, Glory’s funny because she’s so… emotionally stupid? When Buffy’s beating her down, she basically begins pleading that Buffy just doesn’t understand the pain she’s going through of… not being an almighty deity. That’s it. As if “Oh woe is me, I’m not an evil demon god!” is really a sympathetic position to take here when you’re plotting to murder someone’s sister.

-The beginning of the episode has a flashback of Buffy helping some rando in an alley being attacked by a vampire. It’s a cool moment, with some good dialogue (especially because the vampire doesn’t seem to realize who he’s talking to), but it ends with Buffy agreeing with the would-be victim that she’s “just some girl” and it reinforces the idea that Buffy really just wants out of this game. She never asked to be the Slayer, and she would very much like to just be a normal person.

-One of Glory’s minions calls her “groove-tastic one”? What’s up with that guy?

-What do the minions do now that Glory’s dead? Go sulk, I guess? Find new jobs?

-A freaking dragon flies through the portal?!

#5x22 #Buffy Summers #BtVS #Dawn Summers #Spike #Xander Harris #Rupert Giles #Glorificus #Anya #Willow Rosenberg #Buffy The Vampire Slayer

11 notes · View notes

makistar2018 · 5 years

Link

Taylor Swift on Sexism, Scrutiny, and Standing Up for Herself

AUGUST 8, 2019 By ABBY AGUIRRE Photographed by INEZ AND VINOODH

Cover Look Taylor Swift wears a Louis Vuitton jumpsuit. Rings by Cartier and Bvlgari. To get this look, try: Dream Urban Cover in Classic Ivory, Fit Me Blush in Pink, Tattoostudio Sharpenable Gel Pencil Longwear Eyeliner Makeup in Deep Onyx, The Colossal Mascara, Brow Ultra Slim in Blonde, and Shine Compulsion by Color Sensational Lipstick in Undressed Pink. All by Maybelline New York. Hair, Christiaan; makeup, Fulvia Farolfi. Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman

Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, Vogue, September 2019

I have a sliver of an idea what to expect. A few weeks earlier, I spent a day at the video shoot, in a dusty field-slash-junkyard north of Los Angeles. Swift had made it a sort of Big Gay Candy Mountain trailer park, a Technicolor happy place. The cast and crew wore heart-shaped sunglasses—living, breathing lovey-eyes emoji—and a mailbox warned, LOVE LETTERS ONLY.

Swift and a stream of costars filmed six scenes over about a dozen hours. The singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko, known to her fans as “Lesbian Jesus,” shot arrows at a bull’s-eye. The YouTube comedian-chef Hannah Hart danced alongside Dexter Mayfield, the plus-size male model and self-described “big boy in heels.” The Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon served up icy red snow cones. Swift and her close friend Todrick Hall, of Kinky Boots and RuPaul’s Drag Race, sipped tea with the cast of Queer Eye.

Speak Now “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” Swift says. Celine coat. Dior shoes. Fashion Editor: Tonne Goodman. Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, Vogue, September 2019

The mood was joyous and laid-back. But by the end of the day, I wasn’t sure what the vignettes would add up to. There were shoot days and cameos I wouldn’t observe. For security reasons, the song was never played aloud. (The cast wore ear buds.) Even the hero shot, in which Swift and Hall sauntered arm in arm through the dreamscape at golden hour, was filmed in near-total silence.

For weeks afterward, I tried to sleuth out a theory. I started casually. There was a “5” on the bull’s-eye, so I did a quick search to figure out what that number might mean. Immediately I was in over my head.

Swift has a thing for symbols. I knew she had been embedding secret messages in liner notes and deploying metaphors as refrains since her self-titled debut in 2006—long before her megafame made her into a symbol of pop supremacy. But I hadn’t understood how coded and byzantine her body of work has become; I hadn’t learned, as Swift’s fans have, to see hidden meanings everywhere. For instance: In the 2017 video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” a headstone in a graveyard scene reads NILS SJOBERG, the pseudonym Swift used as her writing credit on Rihanna’s hit “This Is What You Came For,” a Swedish-sounding nod to that country’s pop wizards.

After an excessive amount of ad hoc scholarship—a friend joked that I could have learned Mandarin in the time I spent trying to unpack Swift’s oeuvre—I was no closer to a theory. Pop music has become so layered and meta, but the Taylor Swift Universe stands apart. Apprehending it is like grasping quantum physics.

My first indication of what her new album, Lover, would be about came just after midnight on June 1, the beginning of Pride Month, when Swift introduced a petition in support of the federal Equality Act. This legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act to outlaw discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. (It has passed the House, but prospects in Mitch McConnell’s Senate are unclear.) Swift also posted a letter to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, asking him to vote yes. The request, on her personal letterhead (born in 1989. LOVES CATS.), denounced President Trump for not supporting the Equality Act. “I personally reject the president’s stance,” Swift wrote.

Back in the kitchen, Swift hits play. “The first verse is about trolls and cancel culture,” she says. “The second verse is about homophobes and the people picketing outside our concerts. The third verse is about successful women being pitted against each other.”

The video is, for erudite Swifties, a rich text. I had followed enough clues to correctly guess some of the other cameos—Ellen DeGeneres, RuPaul, Katy Perry. I felt the satisfaction of a gamer who successfully levels up—achievement unlocked!The video’s final frame sends viewers to Swift’s change.org petition in support of the Equality Act, which has acquired more than 400,000 signatures—including those of Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, and Kirsten Gillibrand—or four times the number required to elicit an official response from the White House.

“MAYBE A YEAR OR TWO AGO, Todrick and I are in the car, and he asked me, What would you do if your son was gay?”

We are upstairs in Swift’s secret garden, comfortably ensconced in a human-scale basket that is sort of shaped like a cocoon. Swift has brought up an ornate charcuterie board and is happily slathering triple-cream Brie onto sea-salt crackers. “The fact that he had to ask me . . . shocked me and made me realize that I had not made my position clear enough or loud enough,” she says. “If my son was gay, he’d be gay. I don’t understand the question.”

I have pressed Swift on this topic, and her answers have been direct, not performative or scripted. I do sense that she enjoys talking to me about as much as she’d enjoy a root canal—but she’s unfailingly polite, and when we turn to music, her face will light up and she will add little melodic phrases to her speech, clearly her preferred language.

Balancing Act Later this year, Swift will appear in the film adaptation of Cats—as the flirtatious Bombalurina. Givenchy dress. Bracelets by John Hardy, David Yurman, and Hoorsenbuhs. Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, Vogue, September 2019

“If he was thinking that, I can’t imagine what my fans in the LGBTQ community might be thinking,” she goes on. “It was kind of devastating to realize that I hadn’t been publicly clear about that.”

I understand why she was surprised; she has been sending pro-LGBTQ signals since at least 2011. Many have been subtle, but none insignificant—especially for a young country star coming out of Nashville.

In the video for her single “Mean” (from 2010’s Speak Now), we see a boy in a school locker room wearing a lavender sweater and bow tie, surrounded by football players. In “Welcome to New York,” the first track on 1989, she sings, “And you can want who you want. Boys and boys and girls and girls.” Two years later, she donated to a fund for the newly created Stonewall National Monument and presented Ruby Rose with a GLAAD Media Award. Every night of last year’s Reputation tour, she dedicated the song “Dress” to Loie Fuller, the openly gay pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting who captured the imagination of fin-de-siècle Paris.

Swift, who has been criticized for keeping her politics to herself, first took an explicit stance a month before the 2018 midterms. On Instagram, she endorsed Democrats for the Tennessee Legislature and called out the Republican running for Senate, Marsha Blackburn. “She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples,” Swift wrote. “She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.”

Swift says the post was partly to help young fans understand that if they wanted to vote, they had to register. To tell them, as she puts it, “Hey, just so you know, you can’t just roll up.” Some 65,000 new voters registered in the first 24 hours after her post, according to Vote.org.

Trump came to Blackburn’s defense the following day. “She’s a tremendous woman,” he told reporters. “I’m sure Taylor Swift doesn’t know anything about her. Let’s say I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, OK?”

In April, spurred by a raft of anti-LGBTQ bills in Tennessee, Swift donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project, which advocates for LGBTQ rights. “Horrendous,” she says of the legislation. “They don’t call it ‘Slate of Hate’ for nothing.” Swift especially liked that the Tennessee Equality Project had organized a petition of faith leaders in opposition. “I loved how smart it was to come at it from a religious perspective.”

Meanwhile, the “Calm Down” video provoked a Colorado pastor to call Swift “a sinner in desperate need of a savior” and warn that “God will cut her down.” It also revived heated debate within LGBTQ communities about the politics of allyship and corporatization of Pride. Some critics argued Swift’s pro-LGBTQ imagery and lyrics were overdue and out of the blue—a reaction the new Swift scholar in me found bewildering. Had they not been paying attention?

Nor did it strike me as out of character for Swift to leverage her power for a cause. She pulled her catalog from Spotify in 2014 over questions of artist compensation. She stared down Apple in 2015, when the company said it would not pay artists during the launch of its music service. (Apple reversed itself immediately.) As a condition of her record deal with Universal Music Group last year, the company promised that it would distribute proceeds from any sale of its Spotify shares to all of its artists. And this summer, Swift furiously called out Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine Label Group, for selling her master recordings to the music manager Scooter Braun. (When I ask Swift if she tried to get her masters from Big Machine, her whole body slumps with a palpable heaviness. “It was either investing in my past or my and other artists’ future, and I chose the future,” she says of the deal she struck with Universal.)

Swift’s blunt testimony during her 2017 sexual-assault case against a radio DJ—months before the #MeToo reckoning blew open—felt deeply political to me and, I imagine, many other women. Swift accused the DJ, David Mueller, of groping her under her skirt at a photo session in 2013. Her camp reported the incident to his employer, who fired him. Mueller denied the allegation, sued Swift for $3 million, and his case was thrown out. Swift countersued for a symbolic $1 and won.

Watch Taylor Swift Take Over Go Ask Anna:

youtube

In a Colorado courtroom, Swift described the incident: “He stayed latched onto my bare ass cheek” as photos were being snapped. Asked why photos of the front of her skirt didn’t show this, she said, “Because my ass is located at the back of my body.” Asked if she felt bad about the DJ’s losing his job, she said, “I’m not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault. Here we are years later, and I’m being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisions—not mine.”

When Time included Swift on the cover of its “Silence Breakers” issue that year, the magazine asked how she felt during the testimony. “I was angry,” she said. “In that moment, I decided to forgo any courtroom formalities and just answer the questions the way it happened...I’m told it was the most amount of times the word ass has ever been said in Colorado Federal Court.”

Mueller has since paid Swift the dollar—with a Sacagawea coin. “He was trolling me, implying that I was self-righteous and hell-bent on angry, vengeful feminism. That’s what I’m inferring from him giving me a Sacagawea coin,” Swift says. “Hey, maybe he was trying to do it in honor of a powerful Native American woman. I didn’t ask.” Where is the coin now? “My lawyer has it.”

I ask her, why get louder about LGBTQ rights now? “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” she says. “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of. It’s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze. Because my mistakes are very loud. When I make a mistake, it echoes through the canyons of the world. It’s clickbait, and it’s a part of my life story, and it’s a part of my career arc.”

I’d argue that no heterosexual woman can listen to “You Need to Calm Down” and hear only a gay anthem. “Calm down” is what controlling men tell women who are angry, contrary, or “hysterical,” or, let’s say, fearing for their physical safety. It is what Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie says to Swift in the beginning of the “ME!” music video, prompting her to scream, “Je suis calme!”

I cannot believe it is a coincidence that Swift, a numbers geek with an affinity for dates, dropped the single—whose slow, incessant bass is likely to be bumping in stadiums across the world in 2020 if she goes on tour—on June 14, a certain president’s birthday.

IT'S ENLIGHTENING to read 13 years of Taylor Swift coverage—all the big reviews, all the big profiles—in one sitting. You notice things.

How quickly Swift went from a “prodigy” (The New Yorker) and a “songwriting savant” (Rolling Stone) to a tabloid fixture, for instance. Or how suspect her ambition is made to seem once she acquires real power.

Other plot points simply look different in the light of #MeToo. It is hard to imagine that Swift’s songs about her exes would be reviewed as sensationally today. I wonder if, in 2019, any man would dare grab the microphone out of a young woman’s hands at an awards show. I stared into space for a good long while when I was reminded that Pitchfork did not review Taylor Swift’s 1989 but did review Ryan Adams’s cover album of Taylor Swift’s 1989.

I ask Swift if she had always been aware of sexism. “I think about this a lot,” she says. “When I was a teenager, I would hear people talk about sexism in the music industry, and I’d be like, I don’t see it. I don’t understand. Then I realized that was because I was a kid. Men in the industry saw me as a kid. I was a lanky, scrawny, overexcited young girl who reminded them more of their little niece or their daughter than a successful woman in business or a colleague. The second I became a woman, in people’s perception, was when I started seeing it.

“It’s fine to infantilize a girl’s success and say, How cute that she’s having some hit songs,” she goes on. “How cute that she’s writing songs. But the second it becomes formidable? As soon as I started playing stadiums—when I started to look like a woman—that wasn’t as cool anymore. It was when I started to have songs from Red come out and cross over, like ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.’ ”

Those songs are also more assertive than the ones that came before, I say. “Yeah, the angle was different when I started saying, I knew you were trouble when you walked in. Basically, you emotionally manipulated me and I didn’t love it. That wasn’t fun for me.”

I have to wonder if having her songwriting overlooked as her hits were picked apart and scrutinized wasn’t the biggest bummer of all. Swift: “I wanted to say to people, You realize writing songs is an art and a craft and not, like, an easy thing to do? Or to do well? People would act like it was a weapon I was using. Like a cheap dirty trick. Be careful, bro, she’ll write a song about you. Don’t stand near her. First of all, that’s not how it works. Second of all, find me a time when they say that about a male artist: Be careful, girl, he’ll use his experience with you to get—God forbid—inspiration to make art.”

Without question the tenor of the Taylor Swift Narrative changed most dramatically in July 2016, when Kim Kardashian West called her a “snake” on Twitter, and released video clips of Swift and Kanye West discussing the lyrics to his song “Famous.” (No need to rehash the details here. Suffice it to say that Swift’s version of events hasn’t changed: She knew about some of the lyrics but not others; specifically, the words that bitch.) The posts sparked several hashtags, including #TaylorSwiftIsASnake and #TaylorSwiftIsCanceled, which quickly escalated into a months-long campaign to “cancel” Swift.

To this day Swift doesn’t think people grasp the repercussions of that term. “A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,” she says. “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly.” She adds: “When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, Kill yourself.”

An overhaul was in order. “I realized I needed to restructure my life because it felt completely out of control,” Swift says. “I knew immediately I needed to make music about it because I knew it was the only way I could survive it. It was the only way I could preserve my mental health and also tell the story of what it’s like to go through something so humiliating.”

State of Grace Dior bodysuit and skirt. Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, Vogue, September 2019

I get a sense of the whiplash Swift experienced when I notice that, a few months into this ordeal, while she was writing the songs that would become her album Reputation—and fighting off Mueller’s lawsuit—a portion of the media and internet began demanding to know why she hadn’t un-canceled herself long enough to take a position in the presidential election.

On that: “Unfortunately in the 2016 election you had a political opponent who was weaponizing the idea of the celebrity endorsement. He was going around saying, I’m a man of the people. I’m for you. I care about you. I just knew I wasn’t going to help. Also, you know, the summer before that election, all people were saying was She’s calculated. She’s manipulative. She’s not what she seems. She’s a snake. She’s a liar. These are the same exact insults people were hurling at Hillary. Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability? Look, snakes of a feather flock together. Look, the two lying women. The two nasty women. Literally millions of people were telling me to disappear. So I disappeared. In many senses.”

Swift previewed Reputation in August 2017 with “Look What You Made Me Do.” The single came with a lyric video whose central image was an ouroboros—a snake swallowing its own tail, an ancient symbol for continual renewal. Swift wiped her social-media feeds clean and began posting video snippets of a slithering snake. The song was pure bombast and high camp. (Lest there be any doubt, the chorus was an interpolation of a ’90s camp classic, Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.”) Nonetheless, most critics read it as a grenade lobbed in the general direction of Calabasas.

One longtime Nashville critic, Brian Mansfield, had a more plausible take: She was writing sarcastically as the “Taylor Swift” portrayed in the media in a bid for privacy. “Yeah, this is the character you created for me, let me just hide behind it,” she says now of the persona she created. “I always used this metaphor when I was younger. I’d say that with every reinvention, I never wanted to tear down my house. ’Cause I built this house. This house being, metaphorically, my body of work, my songwriting, my music, my catalog, my library. I just wanted to redecorate. I think a lot of people, with Reputation, would have perceived that I had torn down the house. Actually, I just built a bunker around it.”

IN MARCH, the snakes started to morph into butterflies, the vampire color palette into Easter pastels. When a superbloom of wildflowers lured a mesmerizing deluge of Painted Lady butterflies to Los Angeles, Swift marked it with an Instagram post. She attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards that night in a sequin romper and stilettos with shimmery wings attached.

Swift announced the single “ME!” a month later, with a large butterfly mural in Nashville. In the music video for the (conspicuously) bubblegum song, a hissing pastel-pink snake explodes into a kaleidoscope of butterflies. One flutters by the window of an apartment, where Swift is arguing in French with Urie. A record player is playing in the background. “It’s an old-timey, 1940s-sounding instrumental version of ‘You Need to Calm Down,’ ’’ Swift says. Later, in the “Calm Down” video, Swift wears a (fake) back tattoo of a snake swarmed by butterflies.

We are only two songs in, people. Lover, to be released on August 23, will have a total of 18 songs. “I was compiling ideas for a very long time,” Swift says. “When I started writing, I couldn’t stop.” (We can assume the British actor Joe Alwyn, with whom Swift has been in a relationship for nearly three years, provided some of the inspiration.)

Swift thinks Lover might be her favorite album yet. “There are so many ways in which this album feels like a new beginning,” she says. “This album is really a love letter to love, in all of its maddening, passionate, exciting, enchanting, horrific, tragic, wonderful glory.”

In Focus Swift’s new 18-track album, Lover, will be released August 23. Hermès shirt. Chanel pants. Maximum Henry belt. Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, Vogue, September 2019

I have to ask Swift, given how genuinely at peace she seems, if part of her isn’t thankful, if not for the Great Cancellation of 2016, then for the person she now is—knowing who her friends are, knowing what’s what. “When you’re going through loss or embarrassment or shame, it’s a grieving process with so many micro emotions in a day. One of the reasons why I didn’t do interviews for Reputationwas that I couldn’t figure out how I felt hour to hour. Sometimes I felt like: All these things taught me something that I never could have learned in a way that didn’t hurt as much. Five minutes later, I’d feel like: That was horrible. Why did that have to happen? What am I supposed to take from this other than mass amounts of humiliation? And then five minutes later I’d think: I think I might be happier than I’ve ever been.”

She goes on: “It’s so strange trying to be self-aware when you’ve been cast as this always smiling, always happy ‘America’s sweetheart’ thing, and then having that taken away and realizing that it’s actually a great thing that it was taken away, because that’s extremely limiting.” Swift leans back in the cocoon and smiles: “We’re not going to go straight to gratitude with it. Ever. But we’re going to find positive aspects to it. We’re never going to write a thank-you note.”

Though people will take the Perry-Swift burger-and-fries embrace in the “You Need to Calm Down” video as a press release that the two have mended fences, Swift says it’s actually a comment on how the media pits female pop stars against one another. After Perry sent Swift an (actual) olive branch last year, Swift asked her to be in the video: “She wrote back, This makes me so emotional. I’m so up for this. I want us to be that example. But let’s spend some time together. Because I want it to be real. So she came over and we talked for hours.

“We decided the metaphor for what happens in the media,” Swift explains, “is they pick two people and it’s like they’re pouring gasoline all over the floor. All that needs to happen is one false move, one false word, one misunderstanding, and a match is lit and dropped. That’s what happened with us. It was: Who’s better? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? The tension is so high that it becomes impossible for you to not think that the other person has something against you."

Meanwhile, the protesters in the video reference a real-life religious group that pickets outside Swift’s concerts, not the white working class in general, as some have assumed. “So many artists have them at their shows, and it’s such a confounding, confusing, infuriating thing to have outside of joyful concerts,” she tells me. “Obviously I don’t want to mention the actual entity, because they would get excited about that. Giving them press is not on my list of priorities.”

At one point, Swift asks if I would like to hear two other songs off the new album. (Duh.) First she plays “Lover,” the title track, coproduced by Jack Antonoff. “This has one of my favorite bridges,” she says. “I love a bridge, and I was really able to go to Bridge City.” It’s a romantic, haunting, waltzy, singer-songwritery nugget: classic Swift. “My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue,” she sings. “All’s well that ends well to end up with you.”

Next, Swift cues up a track that “plays with the idea of perception.” She has often wondered how she would be written and spoken about if she were a man, “so I wrote a song called ‘The Man.’ ” It’s a thought experiment of sorts: “If I had made all the same choices, all the same mistakes, all the same accomplishments, how would it read?” Seconds later, Swift’s earpods are pumping a synth-pop earworm into my head: “I’d be a fearless leader. I’d be an alpha type. When everyone believes ya: What’s that like?”

Swift wrote the first two singles with Joel Little, best known as one of Lorde’s go-to producers. (“From a pop-songwriting point of view, she’s the pinnacle,” Little says of Swift.) The album is likely to include more marquee names. A portrait of the Dixie Chicks in the background of the “ME!” video almost certainly portends a collaboration. If fans are correctly reading a button affixed to her denim jacket in a recent magazine cover, we can expect one with Drake, too.

Eyes On Her Designer Stella McCartney on her friendship with Swift: “In London we’ll go on walks and talk about everything—life and love.” Stella McCartney coat. In this story: hair, Christiaan; makeup, Fulvia Farolfi. Photographed by Inez & Vinoodh, Vogue, September 2019

She recently announced a fashion collection with Stella McCartney to coincide with Lover. “We met at one of her shows,” says McCartney, “and then we had a girls’ night and kind of jumped straight in. In London we’ll go on walks and talk about everything—life and love.” (Swift has no further fashion ambitions at the moment. “I really love my job right now,” she tells me. “My focus is on music.”) Oh, and that “5” on the bullseye? Track five is called “The Archer.”

Yet something tells me the most illuminating clue for reading both Lover and Reputation may be Loie Fuller, the dancer to whom Swift paid homage on tour. As Swift noted on a Jumbotron, Fuller “fought for artists to own their work.” Fuller also used swirling fabric and colored lights to metamorphose onstage, playing a “hide-and-seek illusionist game” with her audience, as one writer has put it. She became a muse to the Symbolists in Paris, where Jean Cocteau wrote that she created “the phantom of an era.” The effect, said the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, was a “dizziness of soul made visible by an artifice.” Fuller’s most famous piece was “Serpentine Dance.” Another was “Butterfly Dance.”

SWIFT HAS HAD almost no downtime since late 2017, but what little she does have is divided among New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Rhode Island, where she keeps homes—plus London. In an essay earlier this year, she revealed that her mother, Andrea Swift, is fighting cancer for a second time. “There was a relapse that happened,” Swift says, declining to go into detail. “It’s something that my family is going through.”

Later this year, she will star in a film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Catsas Bombalurina, the flirtatious red cat. “They made us the size of cats by making the furniture bigger,” she says. “You’d be standing there and you could barely reach the seat of a chair. It was phenomenal. It made you feel like a little kid.”

But first, she will spend much of the summer holding “secret sessions”—a tradition wherein Swift invites hundreds of fans to her various homes to preview her new music. “They’ve never given me a reason to stop doing it,” she says. “Not a single one.”

Speaking of: Inquiring fans will want to know if Swift dropped any more clues about how to decode Lover during this interview. For you I reviewed the audio again, and there were a few things that made my newly acquired Swifty sense tingle.

At one point she compared superstardom in the digital age to life in a dollhouse, one where voyeurs “can ‘ship’ you with who they want to ‘ship’ you with, and they can ‘favorite’ friends that you have, and they can know where you are all the time.” The metaphor was precise and vivid and, well, a little too intricately rendered to be off the cuff. (Also, the “ME!” lyric: “Baby doll, when it comes to a lover. I promise that you’ll never find another like me.”)

Then there was the balloon—a giant gold balloon in the shape of a numeral seven that happened to float by while we were on her roof, on this, the occasion of her seventh album. “Is it an L’?” I say. “No, because look, the string is hanging from the bottom,” she says.

It might seem an obvious symbolic gesture, deployed for this interview, except for how impossible that seems. Swift let me control the timing of nearly everything. Moreover, the gold seven wasn’t floating up from the sidewalk below. It was already high in the sky, drifting slowly toward us from down the street. She would have had to control the wind, or at least to have studied it. Would Taylor Swift really go to such elaborate lengths for her fans? This much I know: Yes, she would.

Taylor Swift Talks Googling Herself, Which Celebrity's Closet She'd Raid, and the Bravest Thing She's Ever Done:

youtube

Vogue

#taylor swift #vogue #september #2019 #cover girl

14 notes · View notes

hearyourheart · 5 years

Text

Taylor Swift on Sexism, Scrutiny, and Standing Up for Herself

“Maybe a year or two ago, Todrick and I are in the car, and he asked me, What would you do if your son was gay?”

It’s enlightening to read 13 years of Taylor Swift coverage—all the big reviews, all the big profiles—in one sitting. You notice things.

I get a sense of the whiplash Swift experienced when I notice that, a few months into this ordeal, while she was writing the songs that an interpolation of a ’90s camp classic, Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.”) Nonetheless, most critics read it as a grenade lobbed in the general direction of Calabasas.

In March, the snakes started to morph into butterflies, the vampire color palette into Easter pastels. When a superbloom of wildflowers lured a mesmerizing deluge of Painted Lady butterflies to Los Angeles, Swift marked it with an Instagram post. She attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards that night in a sequin romper and stilettos with shimmery wings attached.

Swift’s new 18-track album, Lover, will be released August 23.

Swift has had almost no downtime since late 2017, but what little she does have is divided among New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Rhode Island, where she keeps homes—plus London. In an essay earlier this year, she revealed that her mother, Andrea Swift, is fighting cancer for a second time. “There was a relapse that happened,” Swift says, declining to go into detail. “It’s something that my family is going through.”

10 notes · View notes

therpmemes · 6 years

Text

santana lopez quotes (2/2) → sentence starters

part 1 (season one-three) // part 2 (season four-six)

slightly edited in some cases to work for rp purposes. feel free to change phrasing or pronouns to fit your muse(s)!

❝ I counted the number of times you’d smile at me, and I’d die on days that you didn’t. ❞

❝ I need to tell you something that I don’t know how to say. ❞

❝ I can’t pretend that things are the way they were because they aren’t. ❞

❝ I don’t wanna be like all of those other long distance relationships that hang in there for a few months and then break-up when someone eventually cheats or things get weird. ❞

❝ I would never cheat on you but if we’re being completely honest I had.... I guess the best way to describe it would be ‘an energy exchange’? ❞

❝ She smiled at me a little too long which means she was either crazy or a lesbian. ❞

❝ Let’s just do the mature thing. ❞

❝ This is not an official break-up. ❞

❝ You know I will always love you the most. ❞

❝ That bitch is pure evil. ❞

❝ Wow. Twitter update! _____is all excited about another guy defining her life. ❞

❝ _____ always was a genius slapper. ❞

❝ Topless is as nude as anyone is ever gonna want to see you. ❞

❝ Think I could get used to here in New York. It's more of my speed. ❞

❝ Yes, I did a sex-tape that follows me around to this very day. Look me up on the internet right now. ❞

❝ You have no idea what it's like out there in the real world. No one gives a damn about you. ❞

❝ I'm clearly the hottest bitch in this lousy joint. But I'm all alone, stuck here with you. ❞

❝ I hate weddings and I Valentine's Day. It was invented by breeders to sell cheap chocolate and false hope. ❞

❝ I have been chosen, probably because I'm numb to other people's feelings, to come here and ask what you would like to do. ❞

❝ You know, we always were two ends of the same bitch-goddess spectrum. ❞

❝ Those romantic saps. They may have love, but you know what we are that they are not? ❞

❝ Look, you don’t have to worry. I’m not gonna show up at your house with a U-Haul. ❞

❝ Well, you could walk out first... or we could make it a two-time-thing. ❞

❝ I like how you guys pretend to be all accepting about everything but when your friend suddenly shows up in your home, moves in and goes through all your stuff... you're offended. ❞

❝ Okay, New York may be disgusting, especially when it's covered in gray, nasty snow, and the people may be horrible and rude, and some smelly homeless man in pee stained tighty whities might have groped me on the subway and then asked me for a dollar. But I got to say I finally feel like I have found my people. ❞

❝ You're really not gonna tell me about the stick? ❞

❝ I'm your friend. You can trust me, just tell me what's going on. ❞

❝ Oh God. You're gonna be okay. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. ❞

❝ Don't apply logic to me. ❞

❝ I have known you for years and I don't like you 90% of the time. ❞

❝ You know what? I have love for you. ❞

❝ You're my family and I haven't lied to you in months. ❞

❝ I'm smarter about other people than you, you have to trust me. ❞

❝ I don't even think you need all these beauty products, cause they're not really having the desired effect. ❞

❝ And just when you thought it couldn't get any gayer...it does. ❞

❝ You're acting like a completely different person and it's making me sad. ❞

❝ Look, please don't tell my mom. ❞

❝ I have something to say and I have tried to keep it to myself but I will be silent no longer. ❞

❝ You can't just blow past this like nothing ever happened. This is a wake-up call. This is an opportunity for you to take a hard look at the choices that you're making, where your life is heading. ❞

❝ The last thing I want to do is pay 30 grand a year to get a degree for doing something that I'm already freaking Wonder Woman at. ❞

❝ I like yeast in my bagel but not in my muffin. ❞

❝ Oh, come on. You are not playing Yente the lesbian match maker. ❞

❝ I'm getting that stinky panic sweat under my boobs. ❞

❝ Well I don’t give a hot wet monkey’s ass what you care for. ❞

❝ I have hated you ever since the day I met you. You are a horrible person. ❞

❝ He was a much better person than I am. ❞

❝ When we had sex, _____ never stopped asking me if I was okay the whole time. ❞

❝ I'm sorry, would you mind just stepping outside for a moment while I bitch-slap some sense into my friend? ❞

❝ I am loving this look on me. Lord of the bling. ❞

❝ How about we just get you an IPad.. you can't even get porn on whatever you just asked for. ❞

❝ _____ is my ex girlfriend and she just dumped me, which is why I’m even here and why I have this job. And we’re lesbians. And you know, I’ve never been with anybody like that before. ❞

❝ I’m saving up to buy a noose to hang myself. ❞

❝ You are short, you are awful, and that is never going to change. ❞

❝ I would love for things to get physical. I will hit you so hard that you won't be able to wake up until you're old enough to be Funny Lady. ❞

❝ God as my witness, I will break her down. ❞

❝ Life is very high school. Just with bigger stakes. ❞

❝ A star is a star, it doesn’t matter where in the sky I shine. ❞

❝ You suck at so many things. But not this. ❞

❝ Who gives a crap what all the other peasants think? ❞

❝ I’m just not worth it. ❞

❝ I realized the world is even colder than I am. And the only thing that can keep you from freezing to death is to have good friends around you to keep you warm. ❞

❝ I guess that means I care about you. Don’t tell anyone. ❞

❝ At least you were wearing underwear. ❞

❝ Don’t listen to her! Look at her shoes! ❞

❝ Some people love someone because they make them a better person and that's not why I love you because you've always just wanted me to be myself. ❞

❝ No matter how many times we've tried to put our thing down and walk away from it we can't because I don't want to live my life without my one true love. ❞

❝ I normally I use a lot of words when I'm saying something negative so since this is the most positive thing I'm ever going to do, I'm gonna keep it simple. Will you marry me? ❞

❝ Believe me if I could get in her head and bring her into this century, I would, and I would forgive her and have her here. She's my abuela, you know? She's, like, the lady with the big plates of rice and beans. ❞

❝ Last I heard she was on Facebook posting about her diverticulitis trolling for sympathy. ❞

❝ You taught me to be a strong Latina woman. To be bigger than the world was every going to give me permission to be. ❞

❝ You taught me not just to exist because I'm worth so much more than that. ❞

❝ She's the love of my life and I'm going to marry her and I want to share that with you because without your love, I...I think I just exist too. ❞

❝ Do you even know why a groom couldn't see the bride before the wedding? ❞

❝ I took what you said to heart, and I thought long and hard about it, and it occurred to me that you may have a point. ❞

❝ Maybe _____ and I are too young to get married. ❞

❝ Maybe that's why it didn't work out. Maybe it has nothing to do with me. Maybe it's just that you are utterly, utterly intolerable. Maybe that has something to do with it. ❞

❝ I've been bullied, outed, and misunderstood. ❞

❝ I am a work in progress. ❞

❝ I do. ❞

#rp starters #rp meme #ask meme #roleplay starters #glee starters #source: tv

35 notes · View notes

luirlar · 7 years

Text

‘Razgovor’ is very, very dear to my heart. The number is the cutest, it’s pretty much a Shaw-centric episodes with flashbacks to her cute-ass 8 year old self, we see a big bad being bigger and badder, Joss Carter continues to be a boss ass bitch, and the ending is very promising. An A+ episode to make up for the blegh-ness that was the last one.

I have watched the whole show before, so SPOILERS MIGHT HAPPEN. Big spoilers will be blanked out but references and irrelevant spoilers are going to be out in the open.

We start off at the tail end of a previous case again. This time, Shaw saves a paramedic’s life and leaves before he says thank you. Harold is concerned about her bedside manner. LOL Harry, no one cares.

We then jump to Carter’s side project, which has been to follow and investigate HR. She hears Simmons talk about a big meeting between the Russians and the boss of HR, who we know is Quinn, but she doesn’t. And then she sees someone sneaking up on her. It’s John. Carter: John, one of these days, I’m just gonna shoot you. John: I get that a lot.

John was following her following HR, and has known about her side project for a while now. He asks if she needs help, she says not yet, and they have a beer. This might seem small, but the writers could have played that as a big reveal/surprise that John was completely unaware of (which would be unlikely in my opinion, and too much work), or a condescending (and hypocritical as hell) moment of John telling Joss not to do it, or whatever, but they did not. John trusts Carter, and he is there for her. The number of the week is that of Genrika Zhirova, an 8yo immigrant who lives with her cousin after her mom was arrested and her grandpa died, and who is training to be an international spy. Some people are trying to kidnap and kill her, and Shaw is not as kind and bubbly or whatever as Harold would like. He doesn’t trust her yet and I get that, but also, she’s done this kind of work before, Harold, and she doesn’t need to be perky to do it well. Chill the fuck down.

[1993] There is a bad car crash, with a dead father and a scared child in the backseat. The firefighter asks for her name. Sameen. She asks about her dad. “Hang on, kiddo. I’m coming to you”, the dude says.

Sameen and Gen need to hide out and wait for John, and Gen, spy that she is, is trying to get intel on Shaw and what she does. She’s pretty good. Shaw tells her she doesn’t know what they do exactly, and honestly, she’s mostly in it for the dog.

Gen takes Shaw to her listening station, where we learn she has a bunch of apartments wire-tapped, which may be why the Russians are after her. They bond over being spies, and Gen asks Sameen why is she “like this” (as in, not flinching, acting very stoic, not being too good with emotions). Shaw: You know that thing that made you flinch? I don’t get that. Gen: You don’t get scared? Shaw: Or sad. Or happy, or lonely. I do angry okay, but that’s about it. She tells Gen it’s been that way as long as she can remember, and that she was about Gen’s age when she realized there was something different about her.

I dig that they brought up Shaw’s ASPD again. From her intro episode alone, we had no way of knowing if that was just a comment she made, or a thing the writers were going to play as “ha ha she is quirky and rude” trash. But here, a bunch of episodes later, she gets the chance to explain some of it herself, and we get some flashbacks. So I like it because they fleshed her out a bit more in this regard, but also that they didn’t make her personality disorder the central thing about her, because they let us know her in other ways first too. That said I don’t have ASPD so, maybe this is terrible to y’all in ways I don’t see at all. If you feel like commenting, I would love to know your thoughts.

The Russians poison the air where Shaw and Gen are so they need to run, and cover their mouths in the meantime. So Sameen rips her fucking sleeves off. Now, a shittier show would have taken this opportunity to do some fan service, by having her take her shirt off or something. But no! Instead they took the chance to make her more baddass, and did a different kind of fan service, a much more gay one, in my opinion. The bad guys still capture Gen, though, and shoot Shaw in the shoulder.

[1993] The firefighter chats with Sameen. She tells him that his dad is military so they move around a lot. (And Shaw recognized Gen’s number as a temporary immigrant one, possibly foreshadowing the later reveal that her mom was an immigrant or refugee. Ya learn somethin’ new every day.)

Shaw knocks out the guy who tried to kidnap her, and puts some construction tape over her wound (does this actually serve any purpose other than looking unexpectedly hot??). Harold asks her to please go to a doctor, that they’ll handle the case. She thinks she is being punished for not protecting Gen well enough. My heart is melting and oozing out of my body as I type.

Shaw does angry okay, indeed. She figures Gen’s cousin had something to do with her kidnapping, so she goes and questions him, and then shoots him in the knee. She is bleeding and ready to fight and I’m extremely turned on right now.

Here is a small collage of Shaw being hot in this episode (You’re welcome.):

Thanks to Gen’s tapes, and John tracking one of the kidnappers, they realize it was HR who took Gen, with the help of the Russians. They are making and dealing drugs, and Gen had proof.

[1993] The firefighter is terrible at giving children bad news. He says some bullshit about people falling asleep and not waking up, and so Sameen asks if what he means is that her dad is dead. The dude confirms, and she takes in the info, realizes she is hungry, and asks for a sandwich. He looks mildly horrified, like he’s never been made aware that different people have different responses to death, and different emotional ranges. He then tells his firefighter buddies how there must be something wrong with her, within earshot of her. What a tool.

(Quick moment to appreciate another classic Reese stunt: they’re interrogating one of the kidnappers, who has a tremor, and he puts some liquid balancing on his hand, telling him it’s highly unstable. After getting what he needs, John leaves the guy there, with the unstable liquid. Except, it’s actually just corn syrup. I live for this shit where John just trolls the bad guys, I swear. )

Shaw continues to be ready to kill everyone, and she tracks down Yogorov. He doesn’t know all that much. Because “cops might kill a kid, my people have standards”. That’s real, ’cause #ACAB #fuckthepolice etc. Side note, Yogorov is kind of hot? Like, I wouldn’t kick him outta bed.

But Shaw is way hotter, asking him all these medical questions that make no sense except if she wanted to… Yup! She is gonna plug herself in and get a blood transfusion from Yogorov, right then and there. She also gets Simmons on the phone, and asks for Gen. Shaw: Hang on, kiddo. I’m coming for you.

Shaw demands Harold to give her the tapes, unless he has a better idea. Which he does.

On another end of things, Laskey asks Carter if they can talk about a problem he is having, in private. He asks about her secret meetings and secret friends, and she calls him out on being a mole for HR. That’s right! Y’all think the queen of my heart didn’t know? Psht. And before Laskey’s dirty cop friend can shoot her, she shoots his ass dead. With Laskey’s illegal New Jersey gun, no less.

I’m so gay.

Carter: You don’t work for HR anymore, son. You work for me now. Oooooh shit. You thought you were in charge, sweet summer child? (Boss Ass Bitch plays in the background. As usual.) Back to the case, Harold has a better idea than to trade Gen for the tapes incriminating HR. Carter and John gave Laskey bad intel, driving Simmons and most of the troops away from the girl, thinking they were going to ambush the Man in the Suit, and get the tapes. Instead, Harold keeps the tapes, and John kneecaps most cops until the only one left is Simmons. They both drop the guns and fist-fight, which I don’t understand the point of, besides weird masculinity rituals. And maybe to showcase to us that Simmons can hold his own, indirectly signaling (with this, and his willingness to kill a little girl) that he is a much worthier, scarier opponent than we thought? Meanwhile, Shaw, ready to shoot everyone, gets to shoot a couple people at the drug lab where Gen is. And she rescues her! #SpyGirlSolidarity And then Harold and Sameen blow up their lab, ’cause, y’know, they were in the neighborhood.

Shaw takes Gen to a new fancy school, and Gen gives Shaw a badge that belonged to her grandpa. Gen: I know it won’t mean much to you, but it will mean a lot to me that you have it. Shaw: I’m just not wired for this kind of stuff, kid. Gen: I know. I figured you out. It’s not that you don’t have feelings. It’s just like, the volume’s turned way down. Like the sound on an old tape.

I am dying. I am dead. I just… I’m dead now. And I want to hug both of them super tight and never let go. I want to adopt both Bear and Gen and move into a big house with my wife and my children. Anyhoo… Ooof. That was a good episode, eh? But wait. We’re not done here. We go take a look at Shaw’s bedroom that night. Gen’s gift is on her nightstand. She is so beautiful, so precious. But that’s not the point. She opens her eyes and sees… Root! Looking at Shaw sleep! Like the creepy-ass lesbian that she is.

“Did you miss me?

Heck yes, we did. And we are ready. So ready.

Today I (re)watch: Person of Interest, 3.05 'Razgovor' is very, very dear to my heart. The number is the cutest, it's pretty much a Shaw-centric episodes with flashbacks to her cute-ass 8 year old self, we see a big bad being bigger and badder, Joss Carter continues to be a boss ass bitch, and the ending is very promising.

#Genrika Zhirova #HR #Joss Carter is a boss ass bitch #Person of Interest #POI season 3 #POI3X05 #Razgovor #Sameen flashbacks #Sameen Shaw

2 notes · View notes

theloverera · 5 years

Text

IT’S A SUNDAY AFTERNOON in Tribeca, and I’m in Taylor Swift’s loft, inside a former printing house that she has restored and fortified into a sanctuary of brick, velvet, and mahogany. The space is warm and cozy and vaguely literary—later, when we pass through her bedroom en route to her garden, 10 percent of my brain will believe her wardrobe might open up to Narnia. Barefoot in a wine-colored floral top and matching flowy pants, Swift is typing passwords into a laptop to show me the video for “You Need to Calm Down,” eight days before she unleashes it on the world. I have a sliver of an idea what to expect. A few weeks earlier, I spent a day at the video shoot, in a dusty field-slash-junkyard north of Los Angeles. Swift had made it a sort of Big Gay Candy Mountain trailer park, a Technicolor happy place. The cast and crew wore heart-shaped sunglasses—living, breathing lovey-eyes emoji—and a mailbox warned, LOVE LETTERS ONLY. Swift and a stream of costars filmed six scenes over about a dozen hours. The singer-songwriter Hayley Kiyoko, known to her fans as “Lesbian Jesus,” shot arrows at a bull’s-eye. The YouTube comedian-chef Hannah Hart danced alongside Dexter Mayfield, the plus-size male model and self-described “big boy in heels.” The Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon served up icy red snow cones. Swift and her close friend Todrick Hall, of Kinky Boots and RuPaul’s Drag Race, sipped tea with the cast of Queer Eye. The mood was joyous and laid-back. But by the end of the day, I wasn’t sure what the vignettes would add up to. There were shoot days and cameos I wouldn’t observe. For security reasons, the song was never played aloud. (The cast wore ear buds.) Even the hero shot, in which Swift and Hall sauntered arm in arm through the dreamscape at golden hour, was filmed in near-total silence. For weeks afterward, I tried to sleuth out a theory. I started casually. There was a “5” on the bull’s-eye, so I did a quick search to figure out what that number might mean. Immediately I was in over my head. Swift has a thing for symbols. I knew she had been embedding secret messages in liner notes and deploying metaphors as refrains since her self-titled debut in 2006—long before her megafame made her into a symbol of pop supremacy. But I hadn’t understood how coded and byzantine her body of work has become; I hadn’t learned, as Swift’s fans have, to see hidden meanings everywhere. For instance: In the 2017 video for “Look What You Made Me Do,” a headstone in a graveyard scene reads NILS SJOBERG, the pseudonym Swift used as her writing credit on Rihanna’s hit “This Is What You Came For,” a Swedish-sounding nod to that country’s pop wizards. After an excessive amount of ad hoc scholarship—a friend joked that I could have learned Mandarin in the time I spent trying to unpack Swift’s oeuvre—I was no closer to a theory. Pop music has become so layered and meta, but the Taylor Swift Universe stands apart. Apprehending it is like grasping quantum physics. My first indication of what her new album, Lover, would be about came just after midnight on June 1, the beginning of Pride Month, when Swift introduced a petition in support of the federal Equality Act. This legislation would amend the Civil Rights Act to outlaw discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. (It has passed the House, but prospects in Mitch McConnell’s Senate are unclear.) Swift also posted a letter to Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, asking him to vote yes. The request, on her personal letterhead (born in 1989. LOVES CATS.), denounced President Trump for not supporting the Equality Act. “I personally reject the president’s stance,” Swift wrote. Back in the kitchen, Swift hits play. “The first verse is about trolls and cancel culture,” she says. “The second verse is about homophobes and the people picketing outside our concerts. The third verse is about successful women being pitted against each other.” The video is, for erudite Swifties, a rich text. I had followed enough clues to correctly guess some of the other cameos—Ellen DeGeneres, RuPaul, Katy Perry. I felt the satisfaction of a gamer who successfully levels up—achievement unlocked! The video’s final frame sends viewers to Swift’s change.org petition in support of the Equality Act, which has acquired more than 400,000 signatures—including those of Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, and Kirsten Gillibrand—or four times the number required to elicit an official response from the White House. “Maybe a year or two ago, Todrick and I are in the car, and he asked me, What would you do if your son was gay?” We are upstairs in Swift’s secret garden, comfortably ensconced in a human-scale basket that is sort of shaped like a cocoon. Swift has brought up an ornate charcuterie board and is happily slathering triple-cream Brie onto sea-salt crackers. “The fact that he had to ask me … shocked me and made me realize that I had not made my position clear enough or loud enough,” she says. “If my son was gay, he’d be gay. I don’t understand the question.” I have pressed Swift on this topic, and her answers have been direct, not performative or scripted. I do sense that she enjoys talking to me about as much as she’d enjoy a root canal—but she’s unfailingly polite, and when we turn to music, her face will light up and she will add little melodic phrases to her speech, clearly her preferred language. “If he was thinking that, I can’t imagine what my fans in the LGBTQ community might be thinking,” she goes on. “It was kind of devastating to realize that I hadn’t been publicly clear about that.” I understand why she was surprised; she has been sending pro-LGBTQ signals since at least 2011. Many have been subtle, but none insignificant—especially for a young country star coming out of Nashville. In the video for her single “Mean” (from 2010’s Speak Now), we see a boy in a school locker room wearing a lavender sweater and bow tie, surrounded by football players. In “Welcome to New York,” the first track on 1989, she sings, “And you can want who you want. Boys and boys and girls and girls.” Two years later, she donated to a fund for the newly created Stonewall National Monument and presented Ruby Rose with a GLAAD Media Award. Every night of last year’s Reputation tour, she dedicated the song “Dress” to Loie Fuller, the openly gay pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting who captured the imagination of fin-de-siècle Paris. Swift, who has been criticized for keeping her politics to herself, first took an explicit stance a month before the 2018 midterms. On Instagram, she endorsed Democrats for the Tennessee Legislature and called out the Republican running for Senate, Marsha Blackburn. “She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples,” Swift wrote. “She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values.” Swift says the post was partly to help young fans understand that if they wanted to vote, they had to register. To tell them, as she puts it, “Hey, just so you know, you can’t just roll up.” Some 65,000 new voters registered in the first 24 hours after her post, according to Vote.org. Trump came to Blackburn’s defense the following day. “She’s a tremendous woman,” he told reporters. “I’m sure Taylor Swift doesn’t know anything about her. Let’s say I like Taylor’s music about 25 percent less now, OK?” In April, spurred by a raft of anti-LGBTQ bills in Tennessee, Swift donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project, which advocates for LGBTQ rights. “Horrendous,” she says of the legislation. “They don’t call it ‘Slate of Hate’ for nothing.” Swift especially liked that the Tennessee Equality Project had organized a petition of faith leaders in opposition. “I loved how smart it was to come at it from a religious perspective.” Meanwhile, the “Calm Down” video provoked a Colorado pastor to call Swift “a sinner in desperate need of a savior” and warn that “God will cut her down.” It also revived heated debate within LGBTQ communities about the politics of allyship and corporatization of Pride. Some critics argued Swift’s pro-LGBTQ imagery and lyrics were overdue and out of the blue—a reaction the new Swift scholar in me found bewildering. Had they not been paying attention? Nor did it strike me as out of character for Swift to leverage her power for a cause. She pulled her catalog from Spotify in 2014 over questions of artist compensation. She stared down Apple in 2015, when the company said it would not pay artists during the launch of its music service. (Apple reversed itself immediately.) As a condition of her record deal with Universal Music Group last year, the company promised that it would distribute proceeds from any sale of its Spotify shares to all of its artists. And this summer, Swift furiously called out Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine Label Group, for selling her master recordings to the music manager Scooter Braun. (When I ask Swift if she tried to get her masters from Big Machine, her whole body slumps with a palpable heaviness. “It was either investing in my past or my and other artists’ future, and I chose the future,” she says of the deal she struck with Universal.) Swift’s blunt testimony during her 2017 sexual-assault case against a radio DJ—months before the #MeToo reckoning blew open—felt deeply political to me and, I imagine, many other women. Swift accused the DJ, David Mueller, of groping her under her skirt at a photo session in 2013. Her camp reported the incident to his employer, who fired him. Mueller denied the allegation, sued Swift for $3 million, and his case was thrown out. Swift countersued for a symbolic $1 and won. In a Colorado courtroom, Swift described the incident: “He stayed latched onto my bare ass cheek” as photos were being snapped. Asked why photos of the front of her skirt didn’t show this, she said, “Because my ass is located at the back of my body.” Asked if she felt bad about the DJ’s losing his job, she said, “I’m not going to let you or your client make me feel in any way that this is my fault. Here we are years later, and I’m being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are the product of his decisions—not mine.” When Time included Swift on the cover of its “Silence Breakers” issue that year, the magazine asked how she felt during the testimony. “I was angry,” she said. “In that moment, I decided to forgo any courtroom formalities and just answer the questions the way it happened…I’m told it was the most amount of times the word ass has ever been said in Colorado Federal Court.” Mueller has since paid Swift the dollar—with a Sacagawea coin. “He was trolling me, implying that I was self-righteous and hell-bent on angry, vengeful feminism. That’s what I’m inferring from him giving me a Sacagawea coin,” Swift says. “Hey, maybe he was trying to do it in honor of a powerful Native American woman. I didn’t ask.” Where is the coin now? “My lawyer has it.” I ask her, why get louder about LGBTQ rights now? “Rights are being stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male,” she says. “I didn’t realize until recently that I could advocate for a community that I’m not a part of. It’s hard to know how to do that without being so fearful of making a mistake that you just freeze. Because my mistakes are very loud. When I make a mistake, it echoes through the canyons of the world. It’s clickbait, and it’s a part of my life story, and it’s a part of my career arc.” I’d argue that no heterosexual woman can listen to “You Need to Calm Down” and hear only a gay anthem. “Calm down” is what controlling men tell women who are angry, contrary, or “hysterical,” or, let’s say, fearing for their physical safety. It is what Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie says to Swift in the beginning of the “ME!” music video, prompting her to scream, “Je suis calme!” I cannot believe it is a coincidence that Swift, a numbers geek with an affinity for dates, dropped the single—whose slow, incessant bass is likely to be bumping in stadiums across the world in 2020 if she goes on tour—on June 14, a certain president’s birthday. It’s enlightening to read 13 years of Taylor Swift coverage—all the big reviews, all the big profiles—in one sitting. You notice things. How quickly Swift went from a “prodigy” (The New Yorker) and a “songwriting savant” (Rolling Stone) to a tabloid fixture, for instance. Or how suspect her ambition is made to seem once she acquires real power. Other plot points simply look different in the light of #MeToo. It is hard to imagine that Swift’s songs about her exes would be reviewed as sensationally today. I wonder if, in 2019, any man would dare grab the microphone out of a young woman’s hands at an awards show. I stared into space for a good long while when I was reminded that Pitchfork did not review Taylor Swift’s 1989 but did review Ryan Adams’s cover album of Taylor Swift’s 1989. I ask Swift if she had always been aware of sexism. “I think about this a lot,” she says. “When I was a teenager, I would hear people talk about sexism in the music industry, and I’d be like, I don’t see it. I don’t understand. Then I realized that was because I was a kid. Men in the industry saw me as a kid. I was a lanky, scrawny, overexcited young girl who reminded them more of their little niece or their daughter than a successful woman in business or a colleague. The second I became a woman, in people’s perception, was when I started seeing it. “It’s fine to infantilize a girl’s success and say, How cute that she’s having some hit songs,” she goes on. “How cute that she’s writing songs. But the second it becomes formidable? As soon as I started playing stadiums—when I started to look like a woman—that wasn’t as cool anymore. It was when I started to have songs from Red come out and cross over, like ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ and ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.’ ” Those songs are also more assertive than the ones that came before, I say. “Yeah, the angle was different when I started saying, I knew you were trouble when you walked in. Basically, you emotionally manipulated me and I didn’t love it. That wasn’t fun for me.” I have to wonder if having her songwriting overlooked as her hits were picked apart and scrutinized wasn’t the biggest bummer of all. Swift: “I wanted to say to people, You realize writing songs is an art and a craft and not, like, an easy thing to do? Or to do well? People would act like it was a weapon I was using. Like a cheap dirty trick. Be careful, bro, she’ll write a song about you. Don’t stand near her. First of all, that’s not how it works. Second of all, find me a time when they say that about a male artist: Be careful, girl, he’ll use his experience with you to get—God forbid—inspiration to make art.” Without question the tenor of the Taylor Swift Narrative changed most dramatically in July 2016, when Kim Kardashian West called her a “snake” on Twitter, and released video clips of Swift and Kanye West discussing the lyrics to his song “Famous.” (No need to rehash the details here. Suffice it to say that Swift’s version of events hasn’t changed: She knew about some of the lyrics but not others; specifically, the words that bitch.) The posts sparked several hashtags, including #TaylorSwiftIsASnake and #TaylorSwiftIsCanceled, which quickly escalated into a months-long campaign to “cancel” Swift. To this day Swift doesn’t think people grasp the repercussions of that term. “A mass public shaming, with millions of people saying you are quote-unquote canceled, is a very isolating experience,” she says. “I don’t think there are that many people who can actually understand what it’s like to have millions of people hate you very loudly.” She adds: “When you say someone is canceled, it’s not a TV show. It’s a human being. You’re sending mass amounts of messaging to this person to either shut up, disappear, or it could also be perceived as, Kill yourself.” I get a sense of the whiplash Swift experienced when I notice that, a few months into this ordeal, while she was writing the songs that an interpolation of a ’90s camp classic, Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy.”) Nonetheless, most critics read it as a grenade lobbed in the general direction of Calabasas. One longtime Nashville critic, Brian Mansfield, had a more plausible take: She was writing sarcastically as the “Taylor Swift” portrayed in the media in a bid for privacy. “Yeah, this is the character you created for me, let me just hide behind it,” she says now of the persona she created. “I always used this metaphor when I was younger. I’d say that with every reinvention, I never wanted to tear down my house. ’Cause I built this house. This house being, metaphorically, my body of work, my songwriting, my music, my catalog, my library. I just wanted to redecorate. I think a lot of people, with Reputation, would have perceived that I had torn down the house. Actually, I just built a bunker around it.” In March, the snakes started to morph into butterflies, the vampire color palette into Easter pastels. When a superbloom of wildflowers lured a mesmerizing deluge of Painted Lady butterflies to Los Angeles, Swift marked it with an Instagram post. She attended the iHeartRadio Music Awards that night in a sequin romper and stilettos with shimmery wings attached. Swift announced the single “ME!” a month later, with a large butterfly mural in Nashville. In the music video for the (conspicuously) bubblegum song, a hissing pastel-pink snake explodes into a kaleidoscope of butterflies. One flutters by the window of an apartment, where Swift is arguing in French with Urie. A record player is playing in the background. “It’s an old-timey, 1940s-sounding instrumental version of ‘You Need to Calm Down,’ ’’ Swift says. Later, in the “Calm Down” video, Swift wears a (fake) back tattoo of a snake swarmed by butterflies. We are only two songs in, people. Lover, to be released on August 23, will have a total of 18 songs. “I was compiling ideas for a very long time,” Swift says. “When I started writing, I couldn’t stop.” (We can assume the British actor Joe Alwyn, with whom Swift has been in a relationship for nearly three years, provided some of the inspiration.) Swift thinks Lover might be her favorite album yet. “There are so many ways in which this album feels like a new beginning,” she says. “This album is really a love letter to love, in all of its maddening, passionate, exciting, enchanting, horrific, tragic, wonderful glory.” I have to ask Swift, given how genuinely at peace she seems, if part of her isn’t thankful, if not for the Great Cancellation of 2016, then for the person she now is—knowing who her friends are, knowing what’s what. “When you’re going through loss or embarrassment or shame, it’s a grieving process with so many micro emotions in a day. One of the reasons why I didn’t do interviews for Reputation was that I couldn’t figure out how I felt hour to hour. Sometimes I felt like: All these things taught me something that I never could have learned in a way that didn’t hurt as much. Five minutes later, I’d feel like: That was horrible. Why did that have to happen? What am I supposed to take from this other than mass amounts of humiliation? And then five minutes later I’d think: I think I might be happier than I’ve ever been.” She goes on: “It’s so strange trying to be self-aware when you’ve been cast as this always smiling, always happy ‘America’s sweetheart’ thing, and then having that taken away and realizing that it’s actually a great thing that it was taken away, because that’s extremely limiting.” Swift leans back in the cocoon and smiles: “We’re not going to go straight to gratitude with it. Ever. But we’re going to find positive aspects to it. We’re never going to write a thank-you note.” Though people will take the Perry-Swift burger-and-fries embrace in the “You Need to Calm Down” video as a press release that the two have mended fences, Swift says it’s actually a comment on how the media pits female pop stars against one another. After Perry sent Swift an (actual) olive branch last year, Swift asked her to be in the video: “She wrote back, This makes me so emotional. I’m so up for this. I want us to be that example. But let’s spend some time together. Because I want it to be real. So she came over and we talked for hours. “We decided the metaphor for what happens in the media,” Swift explains, “is they pick two people and it’s like they’re pouring gasoline all over the floor. All that needs to happen is one false move, one false word, one misunderstanding, and a match is lit and dropped. That’s what happened with us. It was: Who’s better? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? Katy or Taylor? The tension is so high that it becomes impossible for you to not think that the other person has something against you.“ Meanwhile, the protesters in the video reference a real-life religious group that pickets outside Swift’s concerts, not the white working class in general, as some have assumed. “So many artists have them at their shows, and it’s such a confounding, confusing, infuriating thing to have outside of joyful concerts,” she tells me. “Obviously I don’t want to mention the actual entity, because they would get excited about that. Giving them press is not on my list of priorities.” REDACTED lol Swift wrote the first two singles with Joel Little, best known as one of Lorde’s go-to producers. (“From a pop-songwriting point of view, she’s the pinnacle,” Little says of Swift.) The album is likely to include more marquee names. A portrait of the Dixie Chicks in the background of the “ME!” video almost certainly portends a collaboration. If fans are correctly reading a button affixed to her denim jacket in a recent magazine cover, we can expect one with Drake, too. Lover. “We met at one of her shows,” says McCartney, “and then we had a girls’ night and kind of jumped straight in. In London we’ll go on walks and talk about everything—life and love.” (Swift has no further fashion ambitions at the moment. “I really love my job right now,” she tells me. “My focus is on music.”) Oh, and that “5” on the bullseye? Track five is called “The Archer.” Yet something tells me the most illuminating clue for reading both Lover and Reputationmay be Loie Fuller, the dancer to whom Swift paid homage on tour. As Swift noted on a Jumbotron, Fuller “fought for artists to own their work.” Fuller also used swirling fabric and colored lights to metamorphose onstage, playing a “hide-and-seek illusionist game” with her audience, as one writer has put it. She became a muse to the Symbolists in Paris, where Jean Cocteau wrote that she created “the phantom of an era.” The effect, said the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, was a “dizziness of soul made visible by an artifice.” Fuller’s most famous piece was “Serpentine Dance.” Another was “Butterfly Dance.” Swift has had almost no downtime since late 2017, but what little she does have is divided among New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Rhode Island, where she keeps homes—plus London. In an essay earlier this year, she revealed that her mother, Andrea Swift, is fighting cancer for a second time. “There was a relapse that happened,” Swift says, declining to go into detail. “It’s something that my family is going through.” Later this year, she will star in a film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats as Bombalurina, the flirtatious red cat. “They made us the size of cats by making the furniture bigger,” she says. “You’d be standing there and you could barely reach the seat of a chair. It was phenomenal. It made you feel like a little kid.” But first, she will spend much of the summer holding “secret sessions”—a tradition wherein Swift invites hundreds of fans to her various homes to preview her new music. “They’ve never given me a reason to stop doing it,” she says. “Not a single one.” Speaking of: Inquiring fans will want to know if Swift dropped any more clues about how to decode Lover during this interview. For you I reviewed the audio again, and there were a few things that made my newly acquired Swifty sense tingle. At one point she compared superstardom in the digital age to life in a dollhouse, one where voyeurs “can ‘ship’ you with who they want to ‘ship’ you with, and they can ‘favorite’ friends that you have, and they can know where you are all the time.” The metaphor was precise and vivid and, well, a little too intricately rendered to be off the cuff. (Also, the “ME!” lyric: “Baby doll, when it comes to a lover. I promise that you’ll never find another like me.”) Then there was the balloon—a giant gold balloon in the shape of a numeral seven that happened to float by while we were on her roof, on this, the occasion of her seventh album. “Is it an L’?” I say. “No, because look, the string is hanging from the bottom,” she says. It might seem an obvious symbolic gesture, deployed for this interview, except for how impossible that seems. Swift let me control the timing of nearly everything. Moreover, the gold seven wasn’t floating up from the sidewalk below. It was already high in the sky, drifting slowly toward us from down the street. She would have had to control the wind, or at least to have studied it. Would Taylor Swift really go to such elaborate lengths for her fans? This much I know: Yes, she would.

0 notes

abundantchewtoys · 7 years

Text

RE: Hiveswap '17-09-15 - JoeysRoomStuck

So, second night of playing Hiveswap!

I doubt the start menu will change background now that we've started playing.

Hmm, there is a difference though! After changing the settings to a bigger resolution, there was a big black edge around the screen, but tonight it fills the entire monitor!

Let's start!

---

N'aww, Ms. Claire was already a fine ballerina at around Joey's age! Shared interest!

So it seems her Mom isn't just a club singer, but she might be a multi-disciplined artist, which brings to mind Grandpa's over-diversified career.

I wonder if one of these books becomes relevant later on and spurs a different reaction than the one about BOOK REPORTs?

OOh, one of Joey's plushes is from the Snorkle series, heheh. Good times.

Her bed is well kept. Joey confirmed for Prospit dreamer! :P

Heheheh, the text regarding the bed is absurdly detailed, which makes me assume we'll definitely be getting a comment later on from Dammek about the same object, him not understanding what it's for. Or on Alternia, Joey might have the same reaction to Dammek's sleep spot (recuperacoon, Blaperile reminds me).

Hahahah, the plush on her bed has its own jingle, like the oven. Fake popular merch FTW! "Puppy Surprise", huh? Makes me think of a Fiduspawn. ... D'ah, Blaperile looked it up - it's actually REAL!! Dear god, or, dog, I suppose. So that's why there's an eye symbol on hovering over it, there's more to it than meets the eye!

"Puppy Surprise is having puppies!" -->

Oh dear god this is too disturbing. They selled this to KIDS? Nineties, just. Why?

Also, WHAT THE FRICK, THE CHERUB KEY IS HERE? IN HER ROOM? That's awfully convenient. And there's a different key here too. For a locker close by?

I wouldn't be surprised if this "thoughtful" gift came from Mom. Roxy. The sitter. You know who.

"some kid from school" Joey no, what are you doing, having a life outside of your house. Stop that, it's not Homestucky.

"Maybe you 'Five Puppy People' are just cut from a different cloth" The cloth being paradoxical ectoslime in this case. Well, second-generation slime, at least.

The little key's her DIARY KEY, ooh. What secrets does it lock away, I wonder? First namedrop of Jude, and confirmation he kind be big baby about things. No surprise here.

But wait! She then says the cherub key used to belong to her MOM??? Uhm. I just had the most awkward vision. Joey travelling back into time to become her own Mom, the key turning out to be a juju this way... But then, where would Jude fit into all this? Not that I really want to believe in this theory, but it would be awfully Homestucky.

I like Blaperile's theory better: the key originated on Alternia, and was brought along by the Condesce, making it so that the key is just in two places at once due to it being two different times on its own timeline! Would be neat if the same would hold for the cherub portal, as I think has been speculated before.

Joey's "inexplicable feeling" to maybe be needing the cherub key later on, is of course, plot. Plot is why.

Joey starts listing similarities to and differences to Clarissa's life, who I assume is part of a 90s soap. Then she mentions that Clarissa had a cool friend who is a boy but NOT her boyfriend! This might just be a reference to there being numerous times in that series that there's a "he's not my boyfriend" being shouted, but... I have to wonder whether maybe Joey has a boyfriend! Ya know, if Xefros is Dammek's "bro", as in moirail or something similar, than maybe Dammek also has a matesprit which Joey'll meet! To keep things similar on both ends.

Ooh, looking it up, it turns out Clarissa is a British series airing on Nickelodeon, I would have assumed it's American!

The "JUNIOR VETERINARIAN MEDKIT" reminds me of something. Maybe Jade had a junior something or other item, or maybe I'm just thinking of the echeladder rungs.

The closet prompts the command "CHANGE"!!! Maybe it's a dud, but ooooooh boy! I like Blaperile's theory, she going something like "you changed into new clothes. it's not obvious since all you've got is more sets of the same clothes, but the old ones you changed out of were sweaty so..."

Heheh, Joey wonders how Clarissa succeeds in looking great all the time. That time before you fully realize the work going into setting up the Plato cave that is fictional settings...

Pfffff, okay, Joey doesn't want to change until she has someone to do a style montage with. I suspect she and Xefros might have one then, when disguising her as a troll. Trying out all kinds of fake horn styles.

Ah come on, the reason Joey wants to be a veterinarian (or part of it) is that she wants to snuggle baby animals. Really, who can blame her?

.... The MANTHRO CHAP though. It gives us not one but TWO Homestuck references! One to "what a daring dream", and one to humanimals! I (sh)udder to think what reactions this might spur in people looking up the source for this quote for the first time, hahahaha!

Blaperile and I have acknowledged the PC and walkie talkie but we'll be leaving it for later, in case it's plot relevant.

----

On to the other side of her room! All these neat posters, a closet door missing a handle (or maybe it's a sliding door), and the first sight of the tree house and her family pictures! Cooooool.

All these posters featuring games and books. "THE STORY KEEPS HAPPENING" PFFFFFFFF. NEVERENDING STORY, I MEAN, A COMPLETELY UNRELATED STORY, COPYRIGHT-FREE AND STUFF, HAHAH. "It keeps happening" is such a thing that is real about that story though!

And a Mother 2 *cough* I mean "Second Mom" poster, hahaahahahahah! Such a relief that parody can be considered exempt from some copyright claims, so that we can have these awesome shoutouts to inspirations to Homestuck, and to cultural significant properties from the nineties!

I'm acknowledging "Acorn's Shadow" for the Homestuck reference posing as a My Little Pony reference.

What's up with the lesbian-lite dancing poster and furry anthros up there, though?

Is Canadian Campfire Spookums a standin for Goosebumps, I wonder?

Loving the Jenga and Four-On-A-Row games. And Hungy Hungry Pickle Inspectors, I mean Hippos. I wouldn't be surprised if that console (SNES?) was a gift from the sitter too!

Joey starts listing her console games, but stops after one, due to it being nausea inducing. A bad game I suppose. Hah, okay, Bobsy the bobcat, which I came across recently, maybe on Tumblr. It's on one of the posters with its mouth taped by a sticker with SHH written on it, hahah. Guilty pleasure, maybe?

Hah, so Joey's part computer gamer, part console gamer? Guess we know what the PC will usher from response! Also, meta reference, this being a computer game too! Pffff, Blaperile has a point about the FINAL BOSS she just saved before (causing her to choose not to play at the moment)! It's bound to be a Problem Sleuth reference!

Ahahahah, the television shows a clip from the Bubsy game, and Joey has a BLUH reaction to it!

Hah, so there's a kid at Joey's school claiming to have access to Second Mom in secret. Sounds like typical for Earthbound in the 90s. I can't help but wonder if it could be young Bro, though that would make him not as old as Mom, hmm... Nahhh, probably not.

... Okay, so Joey is officially traumatized by Bubsy, turning a once cherished childhood figure into a nightmare. I wonder why she hasn't parted with the poster and game then, though.

... Ah. So what I thought was an inspector with a cheese for a head is actually the Tetris standin, BLOCK HUSTLE, hahaahahah. Only a team that's tuned to Andrew's thought pattern and sense of humour can make Tetris this grisly and at the same time hilarious.

Ginger Rogers is Joey's tap dance idol. A blues-era glamourous figure, like her Mom! "and still kicking!" Well, back then, but I don't suppose in the present... *checks* Nooope! :/

Ooooh, the "anthro" poster I thought, turns out to be a Metroid poster, hahah! "The Bounty Hunter". So the white dragon must be Ridley's standin! She (the bounty hunter) kind of looks like a Power Rangers MegaZord, haahah.

PFfffffff, looking at the poster to the Neverending Story gives a reference to the Childlike Empress looking pretty smug for someone who basically has just a small role. Kind of what Trizza will turn out to be, I wonder? (The Childlike Heiress.)

Ah, so Blaperile is right. Hot Stepping = Dirty Dancing.

Hah, so Acorn's Shadow is a dark television show. Now we know what business Bro was in besides smuppets!

The poster of a deer made me think of Bambi, but it's about an anime that caters to Joey's veterinarian side, while also calling forward to when she and Xefros ride Dammek's lusus (at least in concept art)! The long title is typically Japanese... And kind of exactly like what Dammek's favorite shows might be called, come to think of it! He'd love this.

Blaperile points out that Shika has the appearance of a combination of Nepeta and Sailor Moon, which is hilarious since whatever Nepeta did to wounded animals, you can't call it "healing".

We took another gander at the ceiling, and saw that the stars and compass symbol solicit different responses from Joey! Apparently her sitter made her shirt for her, after the symbol her Mom painted on the ceiling! Guess you could say her sitter kind of functions as her *shades* Second Mom.

Looking closer at the cabinet... Next to the diary and photographs, my eye is pulled to the four-color pen! Ah yes, it's one of the first gifts I remember receiving. I had to watch over class as a grade schooler, and the kids went and gave me stuff, to get on my good side, I guess? But I had none of it. :P

Hmm, we learn that Grandpa started leaving her and Jude alone more and more after her Mom passed away. (At least, I guess she passed away.) I wonder in what way Ms. Claire was a "blue beauty", was it just how she dressed, and how it might have been her favorite colour (think of the ceiling)... Or did she suffer from depressions?

... :( The second picture illicits even more of a depressing reaction from Joey. "You really wish you knew".

The diary seems to have an animal or African theme. Pawprints and what look like bird silhouettes, together with colored bands.

We get the chance to write something down in the diary, something for Dammek to read later on, I believe!

Before unlocking the diary, we try to combine the keys with EACH OTHER... "But it fails". Hahah, hilarious response.

Using the Cherub Key on the diary. "Was worth a shot, you guess. Well, not really."

Tap dancing the diary open? Also impossible. :P Hah! "Tap dancing it off the table", though. Now there's something to imagine!

We keep the key on unlocking the diary!

So she hasn't recorded anything since October 25th, heheh. And before that, the first entry was before "last summer"! ... Her comments about Mom (not hers) and Grandpa's "adulting skills", and about missing Mom (hers) are so sad though. Sitter means well enough, but yeah, just like with raising Rose, she leaves a lot to be desired. And Grandpa... I wonder if he just doesn't feel adequate to parent them, or if Joey reminds him too much of Ms Claire? At least we get confirmation that Grandpa "just" came by a couple of weeks ago. It hasn't been years, I suppose that's all that can be said here. I guess Nanna and Dad really were the only decent parents in Homestuck. (Human ones, I mean.)

Okay, I just got these things from reading the picture, now to actually read the narration it prompts by clicking on the diary!

Joey writes in all lower caps, like John, hahah! (As opposed to the capitalized text in the picture, pffff.)

... She has no friends but the people she knows through Jude :( and even then only online. Eeeeesh. Okay, scratch the boyfriend theory! The kids at school (including gamer dude) don't believe her gamer creds, and she thinks they might be evil! Well, if she goes to school in Hauntswitch, who knows! I like that all entries are on Homestuck dates.

There's a surprisingly LARGE number of references to things from Homestuck in her room, after all!

After writing the entry that Dammek'll probably find, she hides the key again. If she put it back into the Puppy Surprise, I think it's there to stay this time. Until Dammek.

Blaperile had the bright idea of trying the shoes on the photos. Tesseract is scared of tapdancing. :( N'awww.

Yeah, I think we're about ready to fall face first into the massive pile of combinatory explosion. It shivers me timbers that there's even background info to be got from here, though. :DIARY

We'll reload from a previous save file to get the DIARY KEY back, first, though.

N'aww, using the DIARY KEY on Mom's picture. :(

Hehehe, she doesn't remember when exactly she got the CHERUB KEY. She has a good point about it being weird to be fourteen. At that young age, you've already lost a lot of memories of your earlier years. Of course, that trend continues into adulthood, just less profoundly.

... So, she didn't get the key from Mom in person, just from her jewelry box. The one visible in some of the concept art, I suppose. Hmm, Blaperile has a good point, there's no telling whether it wasn't Grandpa that put it in there, after all.

Wow, just like I thought, Mom was a prolific dancer. I don't know what style bolero and dance improvisation are.

Combining the shoes with the keys give as much of coherent responses as can be expected. :P

----

Second night, and we've... well, we got to the second part of Joey's bedroom.

That accounts for something, right? Ahahahah.

Yeah, this game will take AGES. Beautiful and beautiful ages.

#homestuck #hiveswap #joey claire #reaction #spoiler alert #upd8 #jude harley #mom lalonde #grandpa harley #hiveswap liveblog

1 note · View note