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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 2 months

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LET’S TALK ABOUT THE GENIUS OF THE INTRODUCTION!

So I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet, and shame on me for not doing it in depth if I have.

The pure beauty of the story telling when it come to character introduction in this show.

As has been said many times by the writers/directors/Oscar: They originally planned to start with Marc but then realized that the story needed to be about Steven introducing Marc to us. Introducing this world to us.

And this is a classic approach to storytelling. You typically have someone that doesn’t know anything so that the audience can learn about the world with them on this adventure/journey.

So why start with Steven?

Let’s go back to the comics!

In the comics, we start with Marc. We get Marc’s story. We see Marc’s life, his regrets and mistakes. We see him die and come back and act drastically to change.

But when we leave all of that behind, our first look at the new established life in New York is with Steven and then immediately into Jake. We don’t officially come back to Marc for some time. But that’s done at a very fast pace and you get to know Steven and Jake’s life very quickly in an introductory blurb before you even see it.

Not exactly something that can be done in a show. So we have to pick someone that the audience can follow. Someone that the audience can fall in love with and trust.

That certainly isn't Marc Spector. (It's interesting that they chose Steven over Jake, considering the personality from the comics... But that's a meta for a different day, as I have a lot to say on that).

So in the show, we first meet Steven.

(Look at this bundle of perfection)

We follow Steven and we get to know Steven. We love Steven. We would follow Steven anywhere and do anything for him.

Then we see something/someone throwing a wrench into Steven’s life and causing him problems and stress and ruining everything for Steven.

And we get our first look at Marc through Steven’s eyes.

In fact! We don’t even see Marc at first. We just see the result of Marc. The displaced jaw and people shooting at him. The bloody bodies, the car chase, the gun, the violence, the stress. We see the ruined love life, the lonely life, and the dead fish.

So we know that whatever this thing is that is causing him problems is dangerous and not to be trusted. We feel Steven’s stress and expect the worst.

Even when we first hear Marc, it’s a stressed out voice demanding that he stop. We just get to see a ghost of a man. Something dark lurking in the shadows and acting menacing. This is Steven’s view of what’s going on and this is Marc’s view of what he is to Steven at this point.

(SIDE BONUS META: The first time we hear Marc actually talk to Steven is directly after the phone call with Layla. Marc has been ghosting her and ignoring her and playing dead with her for a while now and suddenly Steven talks to her and in that one brief confusing phone call for Steven and Layla, Marc is triggered out and everything he has been setting up for both of them in what, he views, to be a perfect life without him is going down the grain. He’s stressed, he’s watching everything spiral down the same way he has been spiraling down for months now… In that one moment, of course he lets his frustration out and he yells at Steven to stop. He just wants Steven to cooperate and go back to how things used to be so that Steven can live the normal life and Marc can sit back and watch and pretend that things are okay.)

NOW we as the audience get our FIRST good look at Marc before Steven does.

What do we have here? Marc lingering behind Steven. Marc watching Steven run into danger and looking anxious, worried, and like he wants to do anything to take it all back and protect this man. Marc even looks back to check Steven’s 6. Menacing and in the shadows? Or a man that is about to risk everything just to protect Steven?

Years… YEARS of work put into making sure Steven doesn’t know about him and is happy and safe and secure… And he knows that he has to risk it all. Perhaps at this moment he is contemplating if he should. If Steven will get out of it on his own or if he really needs to find a way to step in and force Steven to black out. But Steven is scared and on to him. He knows he has to talk to Steven. Something he probably hasn’t done since they were just children.

(BONUS META: If you zoom in real good, that second reflection? The expression is just a little different than the first. The mouth is pulled just a wee bit tighter. Jake easter egg? Probably not, since the show was so careful about only hinting at a ghost of Jake… But I choose to think that we see Jake there behind Marc, much like Marc is behind Steven, looking back to watch their 6 and making sure they are safe.)

So in classic Marc fashion, he appears as a disaster and Steven sees a disaster.

Okay. That was a bad day. Marc was stressed and they were in danger. The absolute carnage that happened (Marc you really lost your cool there, buddy. You could have easily finished that jackal off and moved on. You were just angry and you lost your temper. That bathroom did not have to be so trashed.) was not Marc’s best work.

So let’s meet Marc again from Steven’s eyes now that he isn’t scared and about to die.

Yeah. Steven does not have a very good view of this man. Funnily enough, he’s seeing him in black and white, which is how he’s being presented to him at this point. He sees a violent man that is stealing his life and ruining it. All he can see is the black and white. He knows nothing else about this man.

And Marc looks right back from the black and white of himself. A man that wishes he wasn’t there. A man that only knows pain and violence. It’s almost like he’s giving up here. He’s saying “Well, I told you to stop looking and now here we are. Look all you want. You see me. Bet you wish you didn’t. If you keep going, this is what you get.”

And our previous Steven? He keeps looking. So we get a calmer less dumpster fire Marc.

No. I take it back. More of a dumpster fire somehow. He’s tired. He’s stressed out beyond reason. He’s watching everything fall apart and he has no control over any of it for the first time in his life. The one thing he thought he could control is now on fire.

And Steven sees a disheveled (handsome) man that sits alone in his storage room with his illegal things and weapons. Not a good picture. Not to mention the whole Khonshu troll bit that comes along with Marc.

Steven is not seeing Marc in good light. And the Audience feels for Steven even more. Who is this man that’s ruining this sweet cinnamon roll’s life?

So let’s give the audience another perspective.

Would you look at that! An upside down shot to show us that we we are seeing is going to be flipped upside down soon.

(I would do anything for her.)

And what cleaver writers... We see Layla instantly from Steven’s point of view. This lonely love starved man meets HER and the audience has no choice but to fall head over heels for her.

But now we are looking at Steven from Layla’s point of view.

But she isn’t seeing Steven. She’s seeing Marc being ‘Not Marc’.

We see her return to the flat and she examines Steven’s life. Before we saw everything from Steven’s point of view, but now we get to see her explore it and not just gloss over things but pick them up and examine them. Question them. Question his life.

And while she’s looking for Marc in Steven, we see Steven looking at Marc watching Layla.

She watches the fish, alone and unaware. Marc watches her, alone and mesmerized by her, desperate to see her, wanting everything in the world to be with her but too afraid to get closer. He’s in the tank for a reason here. This isn’t Steven’s fish. This is Marc’s fish. This is the replacement fish. And now, Steven is aware of what’s going on outside of his tank and Marc is the one that’s trapped.

And as the audience, we find a flicker of sympathy for this intruder. This man that watches her with the look of longing etched across his face.

But it’s quickly dashed as Marc tries to get rid of her and Steven finds out about the divorce papers. Marc’s a disgrace to try to toss aside someone as lovely as Layla. Steven has no sympathy for him.

From here we see the rift between them. We see them argue. We see Steven lash out at the images of Marc with insults. He judges Marc and Marc does nothing to try to dissuade him. Marc thinks he deserves it. He just wants to finish the mission.

But then something changes for just a moment as Steven enters into Marc’s world.

Sure, there’s the scene with the suit. The scene with the bus where he compliments Steven and acts like the impressed older brother and reasons with Steven to get control.

What changed? I’ve talked in depth about it before… But here it is again:

Harrow started talking about killing children and then asked to speak to Marc. And Steven expects Marc to demand the body again. He expects Marc to fight him for it and to be loud and complaintive like he was with Layla or like he was in the car. Clearly he can tell Marc is there and he even sees Marc watching them and Marc is talking to him too.

Yet the second child murder comes up and Harrow starts going after Marc, Steven watches Marc step back. Maybe he can sense there’s something there. Maybe he can sense that Marc needs him.

Because suddenly Steven goes on the attack. The tables flip and Steven shows his true strength. He starts to reason and show that he is always thinking things through and always picking up the little things.

In this one motion of protecting Marc, we see Marc calm down a little. This lets Marc take a minute to let Steven have his time.

And when Steven gives Marc back control, we take another look at Marc from Layla’s eyes.

She just watched who she thought was her husband having a break down and then become a different Moon Knight, solidifying that this was NOT her husband, but something ‘different’.

But suddenly Marc is there before her and she can’t pretend that maybe she really did have the wrong guy. That maybe he’s a doppelganger and Marc is out there somewhere else. Because Marc is right there before her and he’s speechless.

Yeah, that’s the look that lets him know that he fucked up.

But here we are again, not looking at Marc. We see the man in the suit with powers and control and strength.

And then he fails his mission. Not only is everything he’s been working on his whole life breaking down, but now the people he cares about are in danger and the whole reason he ran off was to keep this from happening.

And Steven comes back and the audience gets a full view of not just how Steven sees Marc, but how Marc sees Marc.

And from here, we get the hand off. The audience is now taking Steven’s perceptions of Marc and stepping over to Marc’s views of himself.

In fact, in the next episode we see the struggle between Marc and Steven, but this time we only see Marc’s side of it. Before we saw Steven and blacked out with him. Now we see Marc and we black out with him. We know Marc is trying to get things done. We see him trying to do things right and Steven is the one getting in the way.

We see a glimpse of Marc being vulnerable when he goes before the Ennad. We see that he’s a man barely in control of anything in his life. We find him broken and abused. He’s just an open wound but you don’t have the full picture. You wonder what it is about this man that tells us to trust him?

We see him fail over and over again in everything he’s been doing since we first met him!

If this was all we had, we would only see the picture of a frustrated, angry, and disaster of a man.

So what keeps us from finding Marc as despicable as he sees himself?

She’s looking at him there with new eyes. She doesn’t know what’s going on with him, but now she knows that he’s hiding things and after all his running, she’s finally cornered him and she isn’t about to give up on him.

Her persistence gives us the need to know who he is. Why does she love him so much after everything he did? She only knows part of this world and we are still going on this journey of discovery with her now.

And through her, we start to see Marc’s pain.

And honestly, it’s this scene right here that is the biggest turning point in how we see Marc.

She loves him and he loves her. You can see how much he loves her. With every fiber of his being he’s radiating such deep pain and longing as he still pushes her away and closes himself off.

And she doesn’t push back. She’s in pain too. She wants to help him and love him. Perhaps in their relationship they had struggled with this before. Him coming back from a mission with Khonshu and being in pain and pushing her away when she tries to help. She’s fallen into a pattern of letting him pull away because she knows that if she pushes too hard, he shuts down so completely.

And we go into the next scene with her letting him hold her at a distance. She’s angry at him and confused and hurt.

We see him walling himself off and she can’t reach him.

And then Steven starts to fight back again. He wants to help. He wants to prevent the violence he knows Marc can do. He wants to go home. We start to see Steven sticking up for himself, REALLY pushing back, and asserting himself.

And this next scene is still my most favorite scene there is. The first time she really sees Steven and since we, the audience, are now following Layla, this is our first time seeing Steven from her point of view. And… I would argue that this is the first time that we really see him.

(I could fall in love with both of them over and over again with this scene)

And now we are seeing Steven new all over again. We see him standing up to take on the mission instead of trying to just run back home. We see him talking to Layla and showing off his knowledge and skills. We see her falling for him and he struggles to understand what she sees in Marc, but he’s happy to be with her.

We trade off a bit when Marc and Steven continue to argue over the body. Their views of one another start to suffer again. Steven has found his strength and now he’s pushing Marc around a bit. He’s tired of being kept in the dark and pushed away.

We even get to witness Layla’s strength and that she can kick ass on her own.

And in that one scene with her and Harrow, we watch her perception of Marc shift and we follow her with new eyes. We see his guilt and regret but we see him not fight back. He is willing to throw it all away and admit to everything that she thinks of him if it means that he finally gets to keep her safe by pushing her away.

Welcome to the Duat! Or, as I like to think of it: The place where Marc’s walls are ripped away and we get to see unfiltered and pure Marc Spector. (I’ve talked about this before too).

And our perception as the audience is now playing tug of war. We follow Steven and we follow Marc on his desperate attempts to make Steven stop. He doesn’t want Steven to see him and he tries to prevent Steven, and us, from knowing him.

The more we follow Marc, the more we see his absolute terror in letting himself be known.

And at last… At long last…. Steven sees Marc for who he is for the first time.

Now, we are the audience, can see Marc. We know him. We’ve seen the real him and we know his story.

And it’s Marc’s turn to let us see Steven.

Steven the protector. Steven the capable. Steven the mighty.

And because we now know them, we can see Layla’s love.

And through them, we see her in her pain and strength.

Her determination to carry on and finish the mission for them and get a little revenge too. Because as angry and hurt by Marc as she was, she still loves him so deeply.

We’ve just watched a whole episode of Marc being hated and loathed and denied love and of Steven being lonely and without love, and now we open on Layla showing that love was always there waiting for them.

Hey look! A call back!

Only this time, she’s right-side up!

And he isn’t curled up in a little ball!

And this time, he runs to her, instead of standing at a distance.

The look on his face. Pure relief. Pure love.

The absolute desperation on her face. He’s there and the last argument they ever had isn’t the last word.

And in this moment, we are seeing them all from the same viewpoint. We see Layla the hero, Steven the hero, and Marc the hero. All three of them with their own strengths and their own love. They know the pain of the other and they can see more than what was presented to them and us at the start.

Oh… And a little bonus.

The first time Layla saw Jake:

We’ll just keep that one in mind for…you know… season 2…someday… someday…

So after all that? After all that, the audience is taken back to the start to look at them all over again. To meet them. To hold these characters in their hands so gently.

They wake up together, confirming that they aren’t alone. We see two people here working together now. (though they are very sleepy).

But They are still trapped. Two fish now, keeping one another company, but still stuck in the little tank.

At least they aren’t lonely anymore. And at least now they have love.

But maybe… Maybe the ending scene wasn’t for them. They are happy in their little tank. They aren’t the man that is lonely in a world without love.

What about the one that’s stuck outside of the tank? What about the one that is still very much alone….?

And now the audience gets the first time we see Jake:

We see him so small, framed in a little rectangular mirror watching and waiting.

We don’t yet know his story. What we do know?

His name is Jake Lockley and no one hurts his system.

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight Meta #Marc Spector #Jake Lockley #Steven Grant #Layla El Faouly #I'm back at it again #still digging #It's been so many years (2)#I miss them so much #Every time I see a gif or image I'm falling down the rabbit hole all over again #Hey it's even 1am my time while I post this! LIke old times #Why is it always midnight here #Meta now with bad screen shots!#(Hey look! A wild Meta has appeared! I'm still going on about Moon Knight MCU. I must be desperate

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rearranging-deck-chairs · 4 months

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obligatory rock murder mention

#i think someone said earlier that they had kind of a lot of mind control stories 'back in those days'#dont remember where #but now im trying to think if we have a lot of them in new who #and if theres something to that in terms of like societal preoccupations #but i guess im just gonna have to...........continue my classic who watch for that and make notes #what do we have in new who? satan comes to mind #midnight but i feel like thats..........a very particular kind it's not like the hypnosis thing you see here #or with the master #or i think sarah jane in the hand of fear?#maybe its JUST because they had the master around who kept hypnotising people tbh like that seems possible #the unquiet dead but thats ghosts more than mind control #i feel like we've got more bodies being taken over than minds in new who?#like the gas mask thing. midnight like i said. 42 with martha and 10?#love and monsters. idiots lantern. the vashta nerada. that guy who got turned into an ood. the masters thing in end of time #11 and the flesh. the god complex perhaps could be mind control? but feels different to me too #but i also havent watched really a lot of classic who so i dont know the vibe of their supposedly frequent mind control #town called mercy. asylum of the daleks. crimson horror. journey to the centre of the tardis? cybermen #it all feels more about the hijacking of the body than the mind or will or whatever #would be intersting to actually look into #if i continue my classic who watch #biggest mind control in new who might have been those mummy monks in pyramid/lie of the land?

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ministarfruit · 1 year

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day 24: “got into your nerd activity because I love you” ♡

(prompt list for femslashfeb)

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omnipotent-omnicube · 8 months

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anyways the animators did a great job of making cxs look tired and depressed as fuck in the second season. the changes to his appearance themselves are very subtle but like the whole thing is so noticeable to me.

like for the majority of season 1, he's super expressive. the only time we see him with a more stoic expression is the day after he exits chen xiao's photo, and he goes back to his usual self after the case with dou dou

but with season 2, with the exception of episodes 1 and 2 bc those were emotional rides, his expression is very diluted most of the time. he almost looks like he's in a daze half the time. his eyes aren't really alert anymore and he's definitely not as energetic as he was. sure he cracks a few jokes occasionally but it's not near as much as during the first season

#also definitely getting the vibe that he's burying his emotions now #like he exits li tianxi's photo and wipes away a tear and is like yeah ok i'm fine now #he's very clearly prioritizing everyone over himself which is a very him thing to do but it's prob destroying his mental health #we don't need lu guang backstory arc we need cheng xiaoshi therapy arc /j #link click #here fandom have my midnight ramblings #sgdlr

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wavesoutbeingtossed · 3 months

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Screaming from the crypt (or how the past haunts the present on Midnights)

I know it's been discussed so much since Midnights came out but just.

I love how there is such a clear narrative throughout the album (and perhaps especially on the 3am/Vault tracks). About questioning and regret and choices and coming to terms with all of it. It is one long story about how we're all a mosaic of the choices we make, each one taking something from us and leaving something else in its place.

(And now a disclaimer: I'm looking at this mostly through a narrator/subject lens, and trying not to dive too deeply into real-life events or speculation except for in a general sense. For this purpose I like to look at the body of work as art, like literature, because I find it makes it easier to see the common threads in the different songs and cohesion in the narrative.)

In looking at the 3am+ tracks in particular, it's fascinating how some turns of phrases or themes repeat themselves in different songs, in different contexts. (I'm only focusing on the non-standard tracks because there are too many songs and I'd be here all day but I bet I could do a part two lol.) I know many people have pointed out the parallels throughout her discography already and I’m not saying anything groundbreaking by writing this, but I love how these parallels run through in the same album, because it makes it seem like it's one long story, or at least, one long rumination on many different stories that are coalescing into a single narrative.

Battle (let’s go)

For instance, the one that jumped out at me when I started writing this post the other week was, "Tore your banners down, took the battle underground," in The Great War and "If clarity's in death, then why won't this die? Years of tearing down our banners, you and I," in Would've, Could've Should've. It's a story about staying stuck in the same cycle of reliving trauma and coping mechanisms and bad habits over and over again and fantasizing about how taking the “antagonist” out and gaining the upper hand for good would bring closure (WCS), but the truth is that nothing ever will. All that cycle does, though, is repeat itself in other situations, and in this case pushes someone away the narrator cares for (TGW). The difference is that the imagined battle in WCS is a two-way street in her mind (that is ultimately unwinnable because it was never a fair fight), but in TGW it's one-sided -- she's the one fighting dirty, taking shots, the way she'd been doing in her imagination (or nightmares) all these years. But the person in front of her isn't fighting back the way the person in her mind in WCS would, because their intentions are honourable instead of exploitative.

And that's paralleled in another pair of lyrics from the two songs, "And maybe it's the past talking, screaming from the crypt, telling me to punish you for things you never did," (in TGW) and "The tomb won't close, I fight with you in my sleep," (in WCS). In both cases, the funeral imagery makes it seem like this past event should be dead and buried in WCS, but it keeps rising from the dead, haunting her no matter what she does and in TGW, another (or perhaps the same?) tomb that won't close keeps unleashing new ways to hurt her and in turn the new person in her life. In other words, the trauma from the past continues to bleed into the present.

(Again from a literary point of view, I'm not saying the events of the two songs are linked IRL, but they're fascinating textual parallels on the album as a string of chapters, which is why Dear Reader is so compelling, but that's a whole other essay.)

To keep the battle motif going, there’s yet another parallel, this time between TGW’s "[You were a] soldier down on that icy ground, looked up at me with honor and truth," and You’re Losing Me’s "All I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier, fighting in only your army.” In the former, the subject is laying down his armour in the war she’s projecting onto him, waving the white flag, and she realizes that she’s about to destroy something if she doesn’t put her sword down too. By the time we get to YLM, the roles are almost reversed; at the very least they’re supposed to be on the same team, but in this case she’s doing all the heavy lifting, fighting for their relationship in contrast to his apathy killing it. It’s also pretty interesting (if not outright intentional) that one of the 3am+ editions of the albums starts with The Great War, where they find themselves in conflict (even if it’s in her head) that ends in a truce, and ends with You’re Losing Me signalling the end of the relationship, evidence that the resolution in the first song wasn’t an ending but merely a ceasefire before the last battle.

Putting the rest under a cut because this is waaaaay too long now ⤵️

(There’s also another metaphor there in The Great War with its battle imagery: World War I, aka The Great War, was supposed to be the war to end all wars, because loss on its scale was never seen before and when it ended, most thought never again would the world embroil itself in such battle, the horrors and implications were so devastating. Two decades later, the world found itself in WWII, with an even larger scope and more horrific consequences, the intervening time between the two a period of festering conflicts and resentment leading to some of the worst acts the world would see. Bringing real life into it for a second, there’s something a little poetic, though sad, about The Great War the song being about a fight that could have ended the relationship that they ultimately resolved and was meant to be evidence of the strength of their love, but so too did it end up being a period of détente, the greater battle coming for them years later. But that is not the point of this post.)

If one thing had been different

Another major theme in these editions is pondering the "what ifs?" of life, but I think it takes on even more significance in the broader context of the album in the lyrics of "I'm never gonna meet what could've been, would've been, should've been you," in Bigger than the Whole Sky and the repetition of would've/could've in Would've, Could've, Should've (I would've looked away at the first glance, I would've stayed on my knees, I would've gone along with the righteous, I could've gone on as I was, would've could've should've if I'd only played it safe, etc.) In both songs, the narrator is mourning an alternate course their life could have taken* and questioning what they could have done differently, in the aftermath of trauma and loss, and the regret that comes with that loss, and with the loss of agency in the situation because ultimately it was never in their hands. In an album full of questions, wondering about the path not taken, or the forks in the road that have led to a different version of your life, it's digging deeper into the contrast of choice vs. fate, action vs. reaction, dwelling on the past vs. moving on. When you're supposed to let go of the past, what do you do when it is holding your future hostage?

(*I know there are different interpretations/speculation about BTTWS which I am not getting into on main. I'm just saying that whatever the song is about, it's grieving something that never came to be. The literal origin of the song is less important to the album than the sense of loss it portrays. Whatever the inspiration is, it's crafted to tell part of the story of Midnights of ruminating over how, to borrow from her previous work, if one thing had been different, would everything be different?)

(Also I was today years old when I realized that the words are inverted in the two songs. Apparently I've been hearing BTTWS wrong this whole time.)

There's also an interesting tangent in the role of faith in both songs: in WCS, the events of the story cause her to lose her faith (e.g. "All I used to do was pray," "you're a crisis of my faith,") and question all the things she felt had been unquestionable until that point in her life (e.g. "I could have gone along with the righteous"), whereas in BTTWS, she questions whether that very lack of faith is to blame for the loss in that song ("did some force take you because I didn't pray? [...] It's not meant to be, so I'll say words I don't believe"). It's like pinpointing the moment her life changed and upended her beliefs (WCS), but as a result then leaving her unmoored in times of crisis because ultimately there's no explanation or comfort to be taken from what she used to hold true before that (BTTWS). The words she once relied upon to guide her have long since lost their meaning, but in times of trouble it leaves her wondering if that faith she once held then lost could have prevented this pain.

(Shoutout to WCS for being Catholic guilt personified lol.)

To keep on with the vaguely faith-y notions, an obvious parallel is the line in Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve about, “I damn sure never would've danced with the devil at nineteen,” and, "When you aim at the devil, make sure you don't miss," in Dear Reader. All of WCS is about her fighting with an antagonist who haunts her, with whom she wholly regrets ever becoming involved. DR could be seen as a reflection on that fall from grace, warning the audience that if you choose to go after the person (or thing) haunting you, make sure you do so clearheaded enough to be decisive. Again, these “devils” may not be related in real life: the IRL devil in DR could be speaking about her naysayers, or Kim*ye, or Scott & Scooter B, etc., meaning not to cross your enemies until you know you can win. But taking real life out of it and looking at it textually, I am intrigued by the link between WCS and DR, so that’s what I’m going with here. And perhaps that’s even the point in a wider sense; there will be multiple “devils” in your life, or threats to your well-being. If you’re going to commit to taking them down — whether it’s an actual person, or the demons inside you that refuse to let you go — make sure you have the right ammo so that they can no longer hurt you. (Of course, one lesson from these experiences is that sometimes you can’t win, and you have to live with the fallout.)

(Sidebar: I know that “dancing with the devil” is a turn of phrase that means being led into temptation and engaging in risky behaviour, as opposed to describing the actual person. Given the religious metaphors in the song, that could very well be/is the intention, particularly when it’s preceded by, “I would have stayed on my knees” as in she would have continued to follow her faith — in whatever sense that means — had she never met this person, which could also be a more eloquent way of saying she would have continued to be live her life in a way that was righteous (even naive) and seen the world in black and white. Either way, it’s a force she wholly rejects. Like I said, multiple devils, same fight.)

Regret comes up too: in WCS, she says, "I regret you all the time," obviously directed at the person who manipulated her and led to her perceived downfall, citing him as the one impulse she wished she'd never followed, because it won't leave her no matter how hard she’s tried. In High Infidelity, she tells the person to, "put on your records and regret me," and on the surface, it’s like she’s turning the tables, painting herself as the one now causing the regret in someone else, the one inflicting the pain this time. Yet the verse preceding it and the lines following it in the chorus depict a partner who is also emotionally manipulative and vindictive like in WCS (“you said I was freeloading, I didn’t know you were keeping count,” “put on your headphones and burn my city,”). It’s not so much that she’s intentionally harming the person (the way the person in WCS does to her), but rather that the venom in the subject’s feelings towards her seeps through; she’s imagining the way he’s going to feel about her when she leaves, hating her just for by being who she is. (There could be another tangent about how in both songs she’s there to be a “token” in a game for both of the men, who play her for their own purposes.) The regret is dripping with disdain. It’s as though she’s picturing how the person is going to hate her for doing what she’s thinking of doing the way she hates the person who first hurt her.

Sadness, unsurprisingly, shows up in a few lyrics. In BTTWS, “Everything I touch becomes sick with sadness,” sets the scene of a person so overcome with grief that it permeates everything around them; they cannot see their way out of it and feel like the fog will never lift. In Hits Different, it’s, “My sadness is contagious,” the result of a breakup where the person’s grief again touches everything and everyone around them, pushing them further in their despair and loneliness. The reason behind the grief in either case may vary, but regardless of the source, the feeling is overpowering and isolating. They may be different chapters in the story, but the devastation is hauntingly familiar. (As is a recurring theme in Midnights as a whole: there are situations and feelings that present themselves at different points in her journey and colour in the lines in different ways along the road. Like revisiting an old vice and realizing the hit isn’t quite the same as it was in the past.)

Death by a thousand cuts

She also writes about wounds on this album, which isn't surprising I suppose given that the whole conceit is that these are things that have kept her up at night over the years. WCS is perhaps the driving narrative on this never ending hurt when she sings, “The wound won't close, I keep on waiting for a sign, I regret you all the time,” suggesting that no matter what she does, the pain of this experience has permeated everything she’s done afterwards. (Not unlike the overwhelming grief in BTTWS, for instance.) Elsewhere, in High Infidelity she sings, "Lock broken, slur spoken, wound open, game token," and in Hits Different, "Make it make some sense why the wound is still bleeding.” Again I'm not suggesting they're about the same events; the line in HI is about a situation where a partner crosses a boundary, hits below the belt, picks at an insecurity (or creates a new one) and treats the relationship like it's transactional, opening the floodgates in turn. In HD, the wound seems to be more self-inflicted, where she's pushed the person away. (Over a situation real or imagined she feels she needs distance from.) But again, something has picked at her like a raw nerve, and just like in the past, she's hurting, even in a different time and place and person. Almost like the wounds of the past break open over and over again to create new scars. If one were to extrapolate further, it wouldn’t be the biggest leap to wonder if the wound open in WCS, then torn apart in HI makes the one in HD hurt even more.

(I once wrote a post about how I think as time goes on, WCS is going to turn into one of those songs that will be found to drive so much of her work, because it’s just… kind of the unsaid thesis statement of so much of her songwriting.)

Another repeated theme is that of the empty home and loneliness. In High Infidelity, she sings, "At the house lonely, good money I'd pay if you just know me, seemed like the right thing at the time," painting a picture of someone who may have everything they'd want to the outside world, but in reality feels metaphorically trapped in their home (or at least alone amidst abundance), a symbol of a relationship gone sour and a failure to build connection. She just wants someone to understand her, want her for her, but as she's written earlier in the song, she's just a pawn in the game, a trophy from the hunt. Home, in this case, is lonely, isolated, an emblem of her fears. In Dear Reader, she continues this thread, then singing, "You wouldn't take my word for it if you knew who was talking, if you knew where I was walking, to a house not a home, all alone 'cause nobody's there, where I pace in my pen and my friends found friends who care, no one sees you lose when you're playing solitaire." It's the same idea, admitting to listeners that the gilded cage she lived in kept her distanced from her loved ones and real connection, keeping her struggles close to the vest but feeling desperately lonely amidst her crowning success. She's pushed people away and it may have felt like the right thing at the time, but in the end maybe felt like she was trapped. And when you push people away, eventually they take you at your word and stop pushing back; you’re a victim of your own success at isolating yourself. What starts out of self-preservation then further perpetuates the underlying problems.

(There's another interesting link about "home" also feeling unsafe with HI's "Your picket fence is sharp as knives," which further leads into the theme of marriage/domesticity feeling dangerous, which is a whole other thing I won't get into here because it's another discussion and may derail this already gargantuan word salad.)

In a slightly similar vein, we have the metaphor of bad weather for a rocky road or unstable relationship, in High Infidelity again with, "Storm coming, good husband, bad omen, dragged my feet right down the aisle" and You’re Losing Me’s "every morning I glared at you with storms in my eyes.” They aren’t speaking of the same situation or even same kind of breakdown, but it is pretty interesting how the idea of clouds/storms/floods/etc. play such a role in Taylor’s music to signal depression, apprehension, fear, uncertainty, etc. In HI, I think the “storm” coming is the looming threat of commitment to a partner who makes the narrator uneasy (if not fearful). In this case, the idea of making a life with this person is not one that incites joy or comfort, but instead makes the narrator feel that dark times are ahead if she continues down this path. Perhaps in some way, the “storms” in YLM have made good on the threat in HI in a different way; it’s a different home, a different relationship, but the clouds have settled in regardless, and some of her fears have come to fruition in ways she did not expect. The person she once trusted no longer sees her or her struggles (or worse, doesn’t care), and the resentment and pain build with each passing day.

Coming back to heartbreak, one of the obvious "full circle" moments is the beginning of a relationship in Paris, where she says that, "I'm so in love that I might stop breathing," clearly enthralled in a new love that allows her to shut the world out and grow in private, capturing the all-encompassing nature of the relationship. This infatuation has consumed her in the most wonderful way (in contrast to the sorrow of some of the previous songs), and it feels like a life-altering (or even life-sustaining?) force that is so strong she may forget what it’s like to breathe. (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) By the end of the album, though, in You're Losing Me, that heart-stopping love has become a threat: "my heart won't start anymore for you." In the former, her racing heart is full of excitement, but by the latter, her heart has given out completely under the weight of the pain she bears. (YLM is full of death/illness imagery which I already wrote about awhile ago so I won't hear, but needless to say that song deserves its own essay for so many reasons.) She's gone from the unbridled joy of the beginnings of a relationship to the unrelenting sorrow of its end, two sides of the same coin.

Love as death appears elsewhere in the music too, for instance, in High Infidelity’s, “You know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love, the slowest way is never loving them enough" and You’re Losing Me’s “How can you say that you love someone you can't tell is dying? […] My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick.” Though not completely analogous situations, they both tell the tale of one partner’s apathy (or at least denial) destroying the other. In the former, the partner’s actions (or inaction) are more insidious, if not sinister; in the latter, the lack of momentum (or admission of a problem) is passive. In both cases, the end result is the narrator’s demise; it’s a drawn out affair that chips away at her morale and her health and her sense of self. (Breaking my own rule about bringing in alleged actual events into the discussion, but the idea that the relationship in High Infidelity, which was obviously fraught with unease and even fear, ended in a similarly excruciatingly slow and hurtful death by a thousand cuts as the relationship in You’re Losing Me almost did at that time must have been so painful. It almost feels like YLM is wondering why what used to be a source of light in her life was mirroring a situation that caused her such pain in the past.)

From the same little breaks in your soul

I said early on that part of what is so compelling about Midnights is that it feels like an album about ruminating — on choices, on events, on people — and the two final “bonus” tracks of the album depict that as well. In Hits Different, she sings that, “they say if it’s right, you know,” an ode to the confusion of a breakup and struggling with the aftermath of calling it quits. It’s a line that has always intrigued me, because the typical use of the phrase is in the sense of, “you’ll know when you meet the one,” but here it seems to have a double meaning, a reassurance perhaps from the friends (who later on tell her that "love is a lie") that she’ll know if she’s made the right decision in calling it off, but could also be her wondering if the relationship is right, she’ll know, and want to reconcile. In the final bonus track, You’re Losing Me, she sings, “now I just sit in the dark and wonder if it’s time,” this time leaving no doubt about the dilemma she faces, though it’s no less fraught. She’s wondering, perhaps for the last time, if now is finally the moment to end the relationship for good. They say that if it’s right she’ll know, and now she’s wondering if that feeling inside her (that once told her her partner was the one, which is why it hit differently), is telling her that it’s time to go for good. Wait Alexa play “It’s Time To Go.” These are not only the things that keep her up at night, but the things that play over in her mind like a film reel in her waking hours.

Midnights as a whole is a deeply personal album, as is most of Taylor's work, but the 3am+ edition tracks seem to dig even deeper to a lot of the issues raised on the standard album. Almost like the standard tracks are the things she wonders about on sleepless nights, but the bonus tracks are the things that haunt her in the aftermath. The regret, anger, sadness, grief, relief, even joy— they’re the price she pays for the memories she keeps reliving. Midnights might be the most cohesive narrative of all her albums, and really does feel like we’re watching someone work through her journal over time, stopping short of outright naming those giant fears and intrusive thoughts (except for when she does) but making them plain as day when you connect the songs together, and perhaps never more clearly than in the expanded album. It’s incredible how the songs stand on their own to relay a specific moment in time, but that they are also self-referential to each other (whether thematically or overtly) to weave a larger web over the entire work. We’re so lucky as fans to have these stories and to keep peeling back these layers as time passes. (And my literature-analysis-loving ass loves her even more for it.)

This is obviously by no means an exhaustive list, and I know there are more parallels and probably even stronger links (particularly when you add the standard version into the mix), but these were the ones that particularly struck me and I’m just glad I’ve had a chance to sit with this and think it through. ❤️

#writing letters addressed to the fire #me thinking too hard about taylor lyrics #taylor swift #midnights #long post #lyrics analysis #song parallels #Gabby this one is for you friend <3 #here goes nothing #Happy Friday or something idk!#(also i know i said there are things i wouldn’t discuss on main but my dms are open lol)#this is not as structured or well plotted out as I wanted it to be #and turned out to be more stream of consciousness than legit essay #but whatever at least i got my thoughts out there and it can release some plot of land in my brain for other stuff to think over lol #If anyone ever reads this thank you! And I’m sorry?#The best compliment i ever got in school #was when we were doing an analysis of a poem in English lit in college #And i brought something up casually #and my prof went ‘I’ve been teaching this class for eight years and that’s the first time anyone’s ever brought it up like that’#’and that just blew my mind’#and i was like ‘who me?’#so that’s all you need to know about me lol #Midnights: The Great War #Bigger than the whole sky #bttws #Midnights: Paris #Midnights: high infidelity #would’ve could’ve should’ve #Midnights: dear reader #midnights: bigger than the whole sky

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coastaltowned · 7 days

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ttpd song predictions: so long london

when you love someone so much that you make a space in your heart for them only to discover that the space they've made for you is getting smaller and smaller and the walls are closing in on you. when your bed used to be your sacred oasis but now you just lie in the dark wondering if it's time.

#tswiftedit #taylorswiftedit #taylor swift #the tortured poets department #taylor swift lyrics #ttpdpredictions #very :stressed: emoji about this song #i fear it will be in the vein of midnight rain and reflecting on the future she gave up when she walked away and that will kill me #also i put the romantic lyrics in here bc i also fear she will bring them back and turn them over #mine #taylor

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midnightdemonhunter · 8 months

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Alternate Times of Shadow duos from some other Once upon a time!

#neverafter #rosamund du prix #pinocchio #timothy goose #pib neverafter #gerard of greenleigh #ylfa snorgelsson #d20 #dimension 20 #midnight draws #second pic has a full paragraph now because arlo and snake were like IS HE FUCKING THE CAT??? HE IS NOT #funnily enough despite their dynamic being the most popular I have the least thoughts for gerard and ylfa here #but i DO think of pib in pottingham precanon and how he might have interacted with jack and the hubbard-gooses #and i would love to see rosamund and pinocchio interact more especially with the stepmother looming over their early interactions #i think every possible duo variation is wonderful though and would love to ponder more options

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asteracaea · 1 year

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#she wanted to tell us who her lover was #in a pseudo paris #somewhere safe and insulated in a rainbow chrysalis #just over here bawling my eyes out #paris #midnights #lover #me!#me! mv #gaylor #gaylor swift

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aquared · 5 months

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i don’t wanna tag because i’m not so sure of it now but i do wanna post it

i made this like one or two days ago i think

#shout out to ibis jpeg compression #here i go talking again #pm girl witch of hope just sounds very right to me in a way i can’t explain #i’m not the best with classpecting ! i just go through the wiki many times rereading the descriptions over and over til i’m like #yeah alright #edit:#aquared homestuck au where the midnight crew are the kids and there are some other guys too i think #adding that one

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senditcolton · 1 year

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It’s Just A Question

summary: when a party brings back memories of your past with Jack, it leaves you wondering if there are answers to the questions left lingering between the two of you.

songs: X X word count: 2k warnings: alcohol & apprehension

Your head was spinning.

Not from the drinks you had consumed. Not from twirling around on the makeshift dance floor with Nico. Not from any of that.

No, it was spinning from the fact that every time you hazard a glance over at Jack, you already found his eyes trained to you. And you felt his eyes on you even when you weren’t looking.

It was Halloween. It was the annual New Jersey Devils Halloween party. You were supposed to be having fun. And you wanted to say you were. You danced with Nico, you laughed with Gravy, you even managed to convince Dougie to take a quick lap around his cul-de-sac for trick-or-treating, coming back with a purse full of fun sized candy. But still, Jack’s eyes never left you and after hours… it grew to be too much.

Without saying a word, you slip away from the crowd, silently grabbing your purse from its spot on the table in the foyer before pushing open the door and walking into the chilled October – well, technically November – air.

There was a reason why you couldn’t handle staying a second longer. It was the same reason you were even hesitant about attending in the first place. And that reason wasn’t just Jack Hughes or the Halloween party. It was the combination of the two that killed you. Because being there felt like déjà vu.

Last year. Devil’s Halloween party. Jack’s eyes following you almost the entire night. A few drinks. A dance. A kiss. Your friend’s laughter turning to cheers as the two of you continued to kiss, the rest of the world becoming inconsequential.

And how it ended as swiftly as it began.

You pull your phone from the lining of your bag to order an Uber but sigh in dismay as the screen stays black, the battery drained long ago. You debate going back inside and finding a charger, hiding in a bedroom until your cell had enough juice or pulling Miles away to drive you home since he was your ride here. The choices bounce around in your head until a familiar voice calls out to you.

You spin to find Jack standing in the porchlight, eyes on you once again.

“Hey,” he says, the first words he’s spoken to you all night. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was just going to head home,” you explain briefly.

“Oh,” he replies and you try to ignore the little drop in his tone. “Do you need a ride?”

You sigh, weighing your options once more. You did need a ride. But did you need it that badly that you would be willing to suffer through the time it took for Jack to drive you home, the silence heavy with unsaid words.

“Yeah, I do,” you finally say, admitting that his offer was the quickest way to get you home. “If you don’t mind,” you tack on, giving him an opportunity to back out of this. Just in case he realized how fucking awkward it would be and decided to spare the both of you.

No such luck.

“Not a problem. Let me just run and grab my keys,” Jack replies before turning on his heel and disappearing back into the house.

Another deep breath escapes your lungs as you stare at the empty space he used to occupy before spinning back and wandering down the sidewalk, coming to rest against the side of Jack’s car. It isn’t long before Jack is bounding down the path towards you and unlocking door, allowing you to slip into the all too familiar passenger seat.

“You remembered,” Jack muses as he slips into the car, staring the engine, the headlights piercing through the dark night.

“What?”

“Nothing, you just remembered which car is mine,” he fumbles, concentrating a little too intently on pulling out of the makeshift parallel parking outside Nico’s house.

“And?” you ask again, not entirely sure why it was such a big deal for him.

“It’s just been a while.”

“I still hang out with the team enough to know which car is yours, Jacky,” you reply, then cringe when the old nickname falls out of your mouth without warning. Jack is graceful enough to not mention it. Instead, he just shoots a glance back in your direction as he pulls out of the neighborhood, driving down the New Jersey streets on the way back to your apartment.

The drive is quiet, exactly like you expected it to be. And, exactly like you expected, the silence was not a reprieve. Instead, it was suffocating; your efforts to keep your gaze on the passing scenery, the obvious heighted tension in the confined space, Jack’s refusal to not let his eyes land on your frame in the passenger seat every few seconds.

“Eyes on the road,” you mutter under your breath when you catch him looking at you again when stopped at a red light. A sharp exhale of laughter is the only reply you get from Jack as he turns his head back to the street in front of him. It’s quiet until he speaks again.

“Hard to help it when you look as beautiful as you do.”

You hate the way your skin heats up at his words, the compliment laced with more than just friendly praise. Your chest rises in another deep breath as you try to steady your heartbeat. It works for a split second until you feel Jack’s fingers all but innocently caress the side of your thigh.

You know that you could easily jostle your leg, throwing his hand off and that would be the end of it. But as much as you knew how it was going to end if you let it continue, you didn’t care. You missed him enough to let his hand continue to slide across your skin before it settles, his palm setting a fire against your skin and deep within you.

And in the few short remaining minutes, you feel his gaze land on you less than before.

Jack pulls up outside your apartment and you start to hop out before you hear Jack kill the engine, the sound of the driver’s side door closely shortly behind it. You look back at him, an eyebrow raised.

“Let me walk you into your apartment. Just to be safe,” he says and you swear you hear an edge of desperation underneath the suave bravado. Regardless, you give a shrug of your shoulders in some kind of acceptance and let Jack follow you as you unlock your buildings front door.

You feel his presence behind you as you check your small mailbox and even still as you climbed up the carpeted stairs to your third-floor studio apartment. He’s right there as you punch in your keycode and swing open your apartment door. You leave the door ajar, a silent invitation for him to come in, one which he silently accepts before closing the door behind the two of you.

And just like that, it’s as if you two go through the regular motions, as if arriving home together was commonplace. As if being with him was meant to be.

You kick off your shoes by the front door and wander over to your small vanity before removing your rings and placing them in the little trinket dish. In the mirror, you watch as Jack takes off his coat, draping it gently over arm of your couch before walking over to you.

His hands gently bat yours away from the nape of your neck, his fingers deftly unclasping your necklace, arms dropping to set it down on the wood of the vanity. A hand comes to rest delicately on your waist and you can’t stop the shudder that runs through you as your feel his lips press gently against the skin of your shoulder.

You spin in his arms, the tension finally becoming too much. Your hands desperately reach towards his face, grasping at the back of his neck and tangling into his slicked back hair before you are pulling his lips onto your cherry red ones.

Jack gives into the kiss easily, pulling you tighter as his tongue traces the seam of your lips, silently asking for access which you gladly accept, deepening the kiss. He blindly pulls you away from the vanity, walking you across the wooden floors before you feel your mattress hit the back of your legs. You collapse back onto the bed willingly, pulling Jack down with you, the feeling of his body weight on top of you still comforting after all this time.

Jack breaks away from your lips only to trail across your jawline, down to the column of your throat where he lingers for a moment. You relax back into the sheets, the sensation all too familiar and it is easy to get lost in the feeling of him.

But the past finally rears its ugly head, pushing into your brain and taking you out of the moment. You heave a sigh before placing your hands on Jack’s shoulders, pushing him off you and lifting yourself up into a sitting position. Jack takes a step or two back and the two of you stare at each other for a brief moment before you break the silence.

“What the fuck are we doing?”

Jack doesn’t have an answer. Neither do you. So, the question lingers there between you, a phantom haunting whatever history you two shared.

“We can’t keep doing this,” you continue with a sigh.

“I know,” Jack whispers, although in the silence of your apartment, it feels as loud as a gunshot.

“Then why do we keep finding ourselves here?” you ask.

“I don’t know.”

Another pause, the space between the two of you growing further, in all ways but physical.

“Hypothetically speaking,” Jack speaks, breaking the silence again. “What is so wrong about this?”

“Hypothetically speaking,” you reply, drawing out the words in hesitation, “it’s wrong because we know how it’s going to end.”

“And you don’t want it to end,” Jack posits.

“I don’t know if there’s any way to stop it from ending. We’ve tried it before and it’s always lead us here.” You sigh again, picking at your fingernails in anxiety.

“Is there anything I can do to prove that it will be different this time? Hypothetically, of course,” Jack asks again and you can’t stop the chuckle that falls from you at his addendum.

“Perhaps,” you muse, connecting your eyes with his. “If you can answer this question.”

Jack nods and you hate the way your heart leaps at the pure desperation in his eyes, a desire not just for your body but for your trust. The way it was obvious that he wanted to make it up to you.

“When you left the apartment of the girl that you kissed in the middle of a crowded Halloween party dancefloor in front of your friends,” you say, letting the use of these hypotheticals distance yourself from the actuality, “did you regret it? Do you regret not fighting for her?”

You let the question hang there, watch as Jack processes it, watch as he flicks through the memories of that night when you two came crashing down.

It’s a drawn-out moment before Jack looks at you, taking a deep breath before walking back over to you, standing between your legs, his hand cupping your jaw, guiding your face to look up at him.

“I’ve regretted it ever since I closed the door of her third-floor studio walkup that day,” he whispers down to you, his thumb gently caressing your cheek. He leans in close to you, ready to capture your lips in his once more. But you stop him again.

“Is it also true that you’ve been seeing someone else?”

“It’s true. A few dates, nothing official. I’ve heard the same about you.” You nod your head gently in concession. “Would it change anything if I said every time I was with her, I couldn’t stop thinking about you?”

“It might. Considering I felt the same way whenever I was with him. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“Of course,” Jack chuckles and you can’t stop the small giggle that escapes you as well before Jack finally swallows your laughter by placing his lips on yours, the hypotheticals melting away into the truth.

Whatever hardships you two had and my have, this was meant to be. You would always find your way back to each other.

#nicole writes #midnights mashups #jack hughes fic #jack hughes imagine #jack hughes angst #new jersey devils fic #new jersey devils imagine #nhl fic #nhl imagine #hockey fic #hockey imagine #not sure how i feel about this one #kind of love it kind of hate it #but i'm still getting over a cold so my head spins if i think too long about it #so here it is

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