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dadsbongos · 3 years

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Liebeskummer

Movie/Game/Show: Danganronpa: Killing Harmony Dynamic: Korekiyo Shinguji/Reader (and his sister shit but i actually take it seriously, unlike kodaka) Warnings: korekiyo’s backstory/trauma (his sister), sexual/physical/mental abuse implications (and outright said but not described in detail except the emotional and mental), anxiety in both kork and reader and mental breakdown(s?), airhead shit but it’s sad Summary: It’s all her fault. ~~~

Korekiyo suddenly turned to the girl beside him in his quiet research lab, “Have you ever heard of Jack of Fables, (Y/n)?” at her, albeit confused, nod, he continued, “Well, all those myths, fairy tales, and even nursery rhymes in reference to ‘Jack’ are actually about the same man. What this means is that Jack Be Nimble, of the candlestick, Jack the Giant Killer, who sold his cows then murdered and robbed a giant, Stingy Jack, who tricked the devil so relentlessly that he was banned from both afterlives, Jack of Jack and Jill, who cracked open his skull, Jack o’ Lantern, Spirit of Halloween and Headless Horseman, and Jack Frost, Spirit who ends autumn and begins winter are all one in the same. He made so many poor life decisions that he now serves as an immortal representation of winer with a pumpkin serving as head and flashlight. Is that not fascinating?”

“Aw,” (Y/n) grinned, nodding once again, “Like the American ‘Florida man’.”

Korekiyo sighed, disappointment palpable in his tone, “That is… actually much more accurate than I wish to admit.”

“Wait, wait,” she tilted her head, patting the man’s arm despite his attention already being on her, “So… like, was he also Jack the Ripper…?”

His eyes widened at her statement, “(Y/n), I must be grateful you were not born to the life of a woman of the night in Victorian London because I assure you, Jack the Ripper was incredibly real.”

“Oh, that’s so sad…” she pouted before clearing it back into her usual smile almost instantly, “Well, thanks for the folklore fun fact, Kiyo! I didn’t know that Jack was so dumb! God, I’d hate to be like him…”

“You do realize you’re not so bright yourself, yes?”

She shrugged, “I’m fine with that, but at least I’m not tricking the devil!”

So sweet and kind, the Ultimate Composer was. Against all expectations, she wasn’t highbrow or traditionally genius, but she was more than excellent company. And, to top it off, the idea of turning her into one of Sister’s friends was oddly… sickening.

It should’ve been perfectly fine - she was a deeply respectable young woman unlike Miu and Maki, there’s no reason he could have against her.

It just felt wrong.

“Oh! Oh!” she burst out, clapping her hands together, before turning and reaching into a bag slung around her hip. Rooting through scrapped sheet music and notes, once she found what she’d been searching for she held it up excitedly, “Boom!”

Korekiyo took the item, just barely brushing his wrapped fingertips against hers, “Cleopatra’s Pearl Cocktail… much appreciated,” he pressed the small bottle into a pocket on his uniform, “If you enjoy giving gifts, perhaps we can discuss cultural gift-giving practices?”

“Ooh, Kiyo’s gonna teach me?”

“Hmm,” Korekiyo hummed quietly to himself, “Well, perhaps… you would prefer I tell you of a composition piece in relevance to mythology, yes?”

“That’d be nice,” the girl giggled softly, rubbing the back of her neck, “To be honest, I just like when you talk… you sound so smart all the time!”

“My thanks, (Y/n),” he nodded curtly, muttering to himself before coming to speak up, “Alright, I believe that the composition for you would be The Ring of the Nibelung, of Germany.”

“Oh, I know that one!” she knew most ‘ones’, to be fair.

“I had suspected so, but have you heard of the heroic legends behind the pieces?”

“Ah, no… are those what you’re gonna explain?”

“I had planned to, yes. Alright, well, the four parts, as you know, are The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Twilight of the Gods. Nowadays, they are most commonly played as individual, separate works despite making one complete story. They were always intended as a sequence - as The Ring cycle, cleverly. Each piece revolves on a loose basis to German heroic tales and Norse legendary sagas, with the overarching tale of the magic ring forged by the Nibelung dwarf, Alberich, which grants the power to rule the world,” he paused at the sight of (Y/n) yawning, his lips pursed and eyes shot down to his shoes before flickering back up to the girl, “Ah, my apologies for taking far longer than necessary. You must find this- “

“Ah, no!” (Y/n) shook her head, waving her hands about as though it would physically prove how far from needed his apology was, “That’s not it! I’m just kinda tired, ya know?” as if to prove her point, another yawn washed over her, “I hadn’t slept well last night after Kirumi…”

“I see,” Korekiyo nodded, closing his eyes to think over his words, “I apologize for making it about myself. If you wish, I could walk you to your dormitory. Now that you mention it, it has been quite the long day.”

“You don’t have to, Kiyo, I’d hate to bother you so much in one day let alone one sitting,” the composer puffed her cheeks out, “That’d be so obnoxious…”

“I don’t find it obnoxious whatsoever, especially if it’s to aid- “ he hesitated, “to aid a friend.”

He hadn’t had friends before. People usually found him creepy and that was the end of the story - nobody approached him and he didn’t branch out. Life went on. The world spun. His loneliness was everlasting and yet nonexistent. He has Sister. Though, deep down, he knows. She’s on another plane of reality with loneliness stronger than his, that’s why he sends her respectable young women.

Just like (Y/n).

But just… not (Y/n). For reasons he personally chooses to not disclose to even himself.

“Aww, Kiyo! You care!” the girl placed a hand over her heart as if to show that the organ itself was squeezing in delight at his offer.

“Of course, I do,” Korekiyo didn’t like how quiet she made him. How jittery and nervous. And he didn’t like how it made him question the way Sister made him feel.

She also made him nervous but it felt different. He liked to pretend it was the nervousness of a love you don’t quite have yet, but he fully knows he’d be lying. She was a mean girl, a bully in school before being hospitalized. Prone to violent and outright frightening outbursts when she had the energy to do more than force him to her side.

But he didn’t like questioning those feelings for Sister. Who he was, was based on her. His uniform. His passion and talent. His hair. His perfect complexion. His life as the universe knows it is an ode to her.

It’s too late for him to go back now… he’s already done so much in her name it’d be cruel to give up now. He might as well continue for Sister.

“If you really don’t mind, then yeah, I’d like it if we could walk together… I get a little nervous going around at night, you never know who’s gonna snap…”

“And you trust me?”

Shit. That’s what gets him in trouble. It’s as Sister always said. ‘Too naive to make his choices, and once he’s free, too inept to make the right ones.’

“Well, yeah,” (Y/n) spoke as if there was hardly any thought to the answer, “All you’ve shown me is somebody worth trusting,” then, she’s quick to remember poor Kaede, “Well, maybe I’m being silly. But hey, if I have to choose between dying trusting my friends and paranoid beyond myself, then maybe I’d- “ she paused, “Ehhh, I don’t like the way that’s coming out.”

“I understand what you’re attempting to say,” Korekiyo reassured, turning towards his research lab’s exit, “Let us start towards the dormitories, yes?”

“Right!” (Y/n) nearly found herself jogging to catch up to Korekiyo’s long-strided head start, she clutched the strap of her bag as she did so, “So… you heard about Angie’s plan, right?”

“To perform a resurrection?”

“Do you think it’ll work?” she seemed antsier than was typical for her, “I mean, you’re into anthropology, so, like, has there ever been a case where that did work? Do you know?”

“No, besides, that would be more akin to history, remember?” she probably didn’t, her memory failed her at an ungodly amalgamation of best and worst of times.

“Oh, yeah,” she murmured and nodded, pretending to recall the difference between the two.

“Who would you desire back into this game, if you could?”

“Rantaro,” her answer was quick, her fingers looping together nervously, “We didn’t really talk much, but uhm, whenever we did - he was really nice. He said I reminded him of a sister of his… so that’s a good thing, right?”

Depends on who you ask, really.

“You grew attached to him so quickly?” there was no jealousy there, he tried to convince himself.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish I’d gotten to know him more. He was always running around, trying to save us, and in the end… it got him killed.”

A lot of things will get you killed.

Korekiyo shook off the thoughts racking his brain, “Your care for him even through his estrangedness and peculiarity is truly beautiful, (Y/n),” he fiddled with the locket piece hanging around his shoulders, “Even your care for myself. I’d be lying if I’d said it wasn’t endearing.”

“You’re not…” her words died out, not wanting to lie to a dear companion of hers, “You’re a little off-putting but you’re not undeserving of love, Kiyo.”

It was a complete 180 from what Sister had told him his entire life. A new lesson coming in far too late. He had to earn love. He should’ve been crawling on his knees and pleading for affection, but now he was supposed to simply receive it? It sounded so incredibly fake. A fictitious tale told alongside gumdrop fairies and candy trees.

No place for someone of realistic standard.

No place for him.

“You’re far too kind, (Y/n).”

“Maybe you just haven’t known nice people,” she suddenly stopped, slapping a palm to her mouth and muffling against it, “I’m so sorry!”

“Worry not,” Korekiyo continued walking, “I’m unphased.”

Because maybe it was true.

Maybe Sister wasn’t so nice.

There was an itch at his skin in the thought and he shook his head.

Sister was kind enough to love someone like him. Who was of rotted soul and rancid heart.

“I shouldn’t have just said that, especially since I don’t really know your life…”

“Would you like to learn it someday?”

(Y/n) was fairly shocked at how quickly he seemed to breeze by her insult to his family and friends - well, if he had any friends - but she wouldn’t refuse. It was extra time with Korekiyo! Who could turn that down?

“I’d love to.”

“Tea and cookies,” (Y/n) pumped a fist in the air, “What could be better than enjoying those with a friend?”

Korekiyo felt his lips twitch up behind his mask at the rhetorical question, he reached out for his teacup, “Perhaps freedom from this killing game?”

“Oh, yeah, huh…” she deflated, “Jeez, I can’t believe I’d say that…”

Oh, great, of course, now he’s gone and made the local ball of sunshine in this school upset.

“Nevermind that, (Y/n), it was a tease…” he gripped the cup a little tighter, cheeks heating up in humiliation at his failed joke, “I apologize if it seemed like anything other than such.”

“No, don’t apologize, it’s fine! It was kind of a dumb thing to say, now that I put some brain into it,” so it made sense she’d said it, (Y/n) frowned at the bitter thought.

“Ah,” the clink of a cup against the table caught the girl’s attention, “I must change my mask in order to properly enjoy this tea and these cookies,” as the anthropologist went to turn, he was stopped by another outburst from the girl.

“No, don’t! Uh, here!” she clenched her eyes shut, papped her palms over her face, and turned her head downwards, “See? Now I can’t!”

“You don’t have to go to such lengths, I could simply turn- “

“No, no, I want you to feel comfortable and I heard once that doing things to make your friends comfortable is, like, a way to make them like you more?” she huffed at the wording, “Just, I don’t know… I want you to know that I care. Ya get it? No need to turn yourself away like that when I can just not look.”

A tuft of air passed through his nostrils at the girl.

Sister would adore a friend like her.

Korekiyo pulled down his mask, brows drawn tight towards his eyes at the new realization. It was no longer a matter of her being respectable, it was now the knowledge that someone as tender-hearted as (Y/n) would be loved beyond comprehension by Sister.

But… no. Sister couldn’t have her. She’d understand, right? Of course. She could have someone else - the other bubbly girl, what’s her name? Angie. She could have Angie.

Korekiyo just… he just needed (Y/n). Something about her was calming and sweet. He picked his mask for eating from a pocket in his uniform and carefully adjusted it over his lips so as to not smudge his lipstick. It wouldn’t anyway, he knew this, but it usually never backfired to be too sure.

The lipstick in itself was quite the hassle. Another homage to Sister that she might not even be seeing. So was the hair. It got tangled and knotted and was hell to dry after a shower.

“Not to rush you at all, but are you done? Cuz my eyes are starting to hurt… I think I’m squeezing them too hard.”

“Right, yes, I am.”

He really shouldn’t think like that… Sister deserved to be honored.

As if she’d been reading his mind, (Y/n) leaned over slightly, pointing at Korekiyo’s hair, “Hey, hey, how do you manage that? It always looks so silky and soft and well-kept.”

“Ah, well, it is quite troublesome most days, but with patience and rather expensive products, I keep it together.”

“I was wondering, too, do you ever put it up?”

“Not usually, though, that would be… nice on occasion,” he sipped at his tea, enjoying the way (Y/n) shyly glanced away to prove she didn’t want to invade his privacy. She was too delightful to be in a place such as this, even if he did enjoy the beauties of law-absence.

“Uh, I don’t want to come off pushy or like you have to let me, but if you want, I’d love to put your hair up! To be honest, I’ve been wanting to for a while,” her eyes widened at her own statement, “Oh, that sounded creepy. I’m so sorry.”

“I am hardly one to judge,” he reached over for a cookie, “But, if you’re so inclined, I won’t protest.”

“Yay!” she bounced slightly in her chair, “Oh, that’s great, Kiyo, thanks.”

“Shall we go to your dorm after finishing our refreshments?”

“I’d like that,” (Y/n) grinned.

And to think she almost didn’t approach Korekiyo on that first day in the school. How ridiculous could she have been to judge based on looks? Sure, he was a little strange and the way he spoke was unlike any teenager she’d ever met, but he was still a person. He deserved to be given companionship.

Besides, he’d only ever shown her kindness and support.

He didn’t even make fun of her when she said something stupid in front of everyone.

She cringed at the memory of every time Kokichi or Miu or Maki prodded at her. Even Ryoma and Kaito had picked on her when she misspoke during the first trial and just brought up a point the class had already proven. It made her heart wrinkle and shrink at the mere thought. Kokichi still made fun of her for questioning Tsumugi’s whereabouts during Rantaro’s murder.

“You’re staring into your tea, it will grow cold if you only look at it.”

“Oh, yeah,” shaking her head, (Y/n) silently cursed herself for spacing out. What an awful habit of hers, it was, “Sorry for taking so long.”

“You shouldn’t apologize, I’m not upset in the slightest,” he felt his heart lighten at the tiny smile that illuminated her face, “I simply enjoy spending this time together.”

“You’re too nice sometimes, Kiyo,” she giggled, but they both recognized the tingle of nervousness jumbling within it, “If you’re not careful, I might fall for you or something…”

“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing?”

I wouldn’t mind, she wanted to say.

If you’ll have me, he wished to murmur.

Then he felt his chest tighten.

“Can I…” he tapped a finger to the table, “ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“Uhm,” she bit her lip as she thought back, “No… why?”

“How do you think it feels?”

“Like, you could be free and yourself around the person? I’m not too sure, but I think if you and someone else are in love then you’ll accept each other completely, you know? Sure, there’s flaws in every person, but I think you accept those, too.”

“I see…”

“Kiyo, why do you ask?”

“I…” his brows furrowed, “A lot has been on my mind as of late.”

“Alright, I won’t pry,” standing from the dining table, (Y/n) clapped her hands together, “Now, if you’re still down, I’d love to put your hair up!”

“As it stands, I am still, as you put it, ‘down’,” Korekiyo nodded before joining the girl and starting towards her dorm room.

“Nice!” she pointed directly ahead, “Now, onward!”

A total airhead at her truest, Korekiyo thought. He didn’t usually partake in the type, but something about (Y/n) just pulled him in tighter every time he tried turning away.

So, what’s the harm in giving in? Swimming against the tide only ever led to drowning anyway, so why fight it?

Sister… Sister was dead. Is dead. Resurrection isn’t possible and hasn’t been in human history. And she had changed so much of him. (Y/n) would never force him to bend to her ideal.

The more he thought about Sister in comparison to (Y/n), the more he realized that Sister felt like a ball and chain - and (Y/n) felt like a breath of fresh air.

Just her name inside his own head sounded as sweet as the best form of heaven.

“Here we are!” (Y/n) cheered upon their arrival to her room, “There’s probably a bunch-load of unfinished works in here so just… don’t judge them too harshly, okay?”

“I could hardly judge an unfinished masterpiece.”

“I don’t know about masterpieces…”

“If you create them with heart and soul, there’s nobody who can effectively say they aren’t except for yourself,” Korekiyo enters the room after her, legs carrying him towards her desk as she roots around her bathroom for a hairbrush and hair tie, “Sadly, this is also applicable to disasters with effort put into them. However, just from skimming these, I can tell you they are not such disasters.”

“Aw, thanks, Kiyo, you know - I know I’m the Ultimate Composer and junk, but jeez it gets so nerve-wracking when people hear my stuff. I like what I write, but who’s to say other people will?”

“I understand that. Showing others your work is extremely unsettling at times,” he followed the girl to her bed and sat between her knees on the floor, “I recall feeling that way when I would dabble in artistry.”

“You can draw?”

“I would when I was much younger,” he felt her fingers run over his scalp and through his hair and the weight looming over his shoulders practically melted off, “I haven’t held onto any of them, and they’ve likely aged poorly, but I know how I felt showing them around.”

“Why’d you stop? If you don’t mind my asking,” reaching around, (Y/n) threaded her fingers through Korekiyo’s bangs and, as gently as humanly possible, pulled the hair hanging over and around his face back into a slicked style.

“My… sister, she always rathered that I participate in anthropology with her. I wasn’t all that good anyways.”

“Aw, that’s kinda sad. Even if you weren’t good, you could’ve improved over time.”

“Do you truly believe that, (Y/n)?”

“Of course, I mean, talents are just developed over time, right? Angie didn’t pop out of the womb an art genius and I didn’t start off great at writing music, you just keep at it and eventually your skill level is way better than when you started.”

Sister always said he’d be garbage at drawing. Somebody like him could never learn.

She tied off and twisted until the bun was perfect - well, not perfect. It was presentable enough, and it was just a bun anyway! Not like they had anywhere to be.

“Sorry it’s messy,” she scratched at her cheek, feeling anxious that he’d be upset with her work.

“I…” he felt another little smile peek over him, it was indeed messy with stray hairs sticking out here and there and a few tiny bumps running over his head, but even so, “I love it.”

“You do?”

“It’s a gesture from you, why wouldn’t I?”

Standing beside Korekiyo at the mirror, (Y/n) twiddled her thumbs before spewing out her question, “It’s totally cool if not, but can I hug you? Sorry if that’s weird!”

“No… it’s…” Sister never asked to touch him, and now that he thought about it, she never seemed to care when he told her to stop, “That would be wonderful.”

As her arms slowly came around him, he felt truly at ease. With Sister, there was always this fear of never being what she wanted. That she hated him deep down. With (Y/n), it felt like finally being attached to someone you were meant to. Returning to a place of deep affection.

“You truly do care about me, don’t you, (Y/n)?”

“What kind of question is that?” she back-pedals, “I mean, of course, I do. You’re very dear to me, Kiyo.”

Maybe even a little too dear, considering the current climate of the killing game.

But even so, neither of them pulls away. Neither cares enough to wrangle themselves from indulging in the other’s touch. It feels too good against their skin.

It’s then that Korekiyo’s brain strikes the flint to create the burning thought - maybe Sister wasn’t all that great. Maybe Sister didn’t love him.

She’s only ever made him miserable, now that he recalls it all.

(Y/n) doesn’t. She makes him feel human and alive and adored. He likes the way she makes him feel. And between the two, he much rather would be praised than berated.

Oh God, what did this mean again?

Where do the creation myths go?

Who’s Princess Kaguya?

Her head throbs at the thoughts rumbling through her. She tried to get Korekiyo to get someone, anyone, but her to organize his notes.

Shuichi would love this stuff! You two should bond!

Gonta could learn about being gentlemanly from you! It’d be a great learning experience!

I know you don’t like Miu that much, but maybe spending more time together could make you understand each other more?

Anyone.

And yet, Korekiyo denied. He liked spending time with her. He wouldn’t mind answering every question she had - no matter how many times she asked it. He was a patient person, he could handle it.

(Y/n) looked at all the books and stray papers surrounding her alike, bottom lip tugged between her teeth in focus and face beating hot in vivid embarrassment. He wasn’t even looking at her, thank God, but still… it was so mortifying that she’d already lost track of what she was doing.

She tried so hard to pay attention, she really, really did!

She wanted to help so bad. She wanted to be useful so bad.

But she knew… she’s not a smart person, per se. It was beaten over her head repeatedly her entire life by her family, schooling, peers, and even her friends. She was an idiot who couldn’t do anything right.

It’s why she wanted Korekiyo to ask someone else.

But how could she say no to him? He was always so nice, it’d be downright mean to refuse him. Right?

She felt her eyes burn, vision growing blurry through tears. Setting down the papers in her hands - (Y/n) covered her eyes to keep any wetness from splotching the notes below. It was the least a fucking moron could do.

“(Y/n)? Are you feeling okay?”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

She nodded shakily, just wanting Korekiyo to ignore her and continue his work. Better yet, he’d kick her out and she could dodge the incoming humiliation altogether.

“Yeah,” her voice cracked, lips trembling.

Goddammit.

She heard papers rustling before she could feel the presence at her side. Fingertips just barely grazing her body before hesitating back, “You’re lying.”

Understatement of the year.

“I just… I’m so sorry, Kiyo. I’m such an idiot, I knew I couldn’t do this,” she whimpered, desperately trying to grab and suffocate down her bubbling sobs before they wracked her throat, “I’m too fucking dumb to do anything right… I’m sorry…”

“No, no, don’t apologize. You’ve done nothing wrong and you’re no idiot,” he’s immediately slammed with every memory of every time he’s called her such a thing. No matter how nice he tried to be about it, he still aided her insecurity, “I’m sorry for ever saying you were. Intellect is not measured by how well you can do a task nor should everyone’s mind be measured the same. Intelligence is fickle and is spread over a vast variety of subjects. You’re not an idiot for not being able to do something you’re not accustomed to.”

“I just… I- I wanted to help you but then I forgot everything you said about organizing them and then which regions are which and what even is a gorgon?”

He chuckled quietly at her question, “A creature in Greek mythology most commonly in reference to three sisters - Medusa, Euryale, and Sthenno - with hair made of living, venomous snakes that turned those who so much as looked upon them to stone,” he glanced around at what (Y/n) had gotten done, “I see that the filing in relation to music is nearly completed for your half.”

“That’s about all I’m good for.”

“And I would not have managed that so easily, music was never an incredible strength of mine - though I do admire it.”

“Don’t lie to me, Kiyo…”

“I would never,” he moved his notes away to sit more comfortably next to the girl, “In fact, if you’d be willing to listen…” his throat tightened and heart thumped in his chest, “I would like to tell you of something that’s been troubling me for quite some time.”

“Yeah,” she wiped away her tears, sniffling, “of course.”

“I told you of my sister, correct?” he waited for her nod of confirmation to continue, “Well, it’s my belief that…” his fists clenched.

What if she didn’t believe him? What if she blamed him? How do you tell someone your older sister raped and abused you when you’re barely even coming to terms with the fact yourself?

“(Y/n), I…” he stopped, gut bunching in knots before he suddenly ripped down his mask and turned to face her, “I think I need help…”

“What? You’re just wearing lipstick, Kiyo, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, no, no, no,” he shook his head, hands shaking wildly as he pulled out the ponytail (Y/n) had done up earlier and yanked through his hair, “E-everything I am is because of her! She consumes me even in death! She- she- she hurt me…”

“Oh,” the girl moved to sit up on her knees, hands reaching out but not yet touching him, “What happened, Kiyo? You can tell me, I’m listening.”

“She told me I was an awful boy, nobody but her could love someone so foul and creepy… she- “ he moved to grip his sleeves, “She touched me,” he looked into the girl’s eyes, “Is it my fault? Am I so disgusting? Why would she do this?”

“Do you want me to hold you or no?” at his shaky nod, she instantly took Korekiyo into a hug, cradling his head and shoulders to her body and stroking through his hair, “You’re more than what she made you. You’re bigger and better than her manipulation. And it’s not your fault she did what she did. It’s completely and totally on her. She took advantage of you, Kiyo, that’s not your fault.”

He grabbed her arm and pressed his face into her shirt as she held him, “Am I rotten? Am I lovable?”

“You’re the best person I’ve ever met. You’re worthy of love and care.”

His lipstick smeared over her shirt and across his cheek and neither of them minded. It would wash off eventually. Her stain on his life would come out.

“When we get out,” (Y/n) began again, “do you want to seek professional help? You can get it, Kiyo.”

He was slow to nod, beginning to grow tired from dosing out tears and trauma at once, “I do… thank you, (Y/n)...”

“No need to thank me.”

“(Y/n)?” she hummed quietly in acknowledgement, “Even if it isn’t for field work… I wish to travel the country with you. I want to show you the beauty of humanity as I know it… for our sakes.”

Looking down, (Y/n) caught the gentleness in his eyes, tender and soft and awaiting her response, she smiled softly, brushing back his hair, “I would love to, Kiyo. If it’s truly something you want to do, I would be happy to go anywhere with you.”

Nighttime was quickly approaching and with the atmosphere and turmoil of the class, (Y/n) didn’t feel very safe being out so late.

“You’re certain you don’t wish for me to walk you to your room?”

“No, you finish up here,” (Y/n) waved off Korekiyo’s offer, “Don’t be such a worry-wart, yeah? I’ll be fine! You better take care of yourself while I’m gone, though.”

He nodded, a small smile stretching over him, “I will, dear (Y/n), don’t worry.”

The girl’s eyes widened slightly before she returned his beam, “You have a cute smile, Kiyo.”

“Oh,” right, he didn’t have his mask on at the moment. It was refreshing to wake up and not trouble himself with makeup for a woman he wasn’t sure even cared - dare he say it, it was nice, even.

He’d only taken his mask off around (Y/n), it felt intimate. Sweet. Something passed only between them.

“Thank you.”

She nodded before turning back and pressing outward from his research lab, “I’ll see ya tomorrow, Kiyo! You better have the sweetest dreams, ya hear me?”

“You as well.”

He returned to cleaning up his lab, occasionally stumbling over a floorboard looser than the others. How troublesome.

That’s when her voice picked up from within his brain.

“You never loved me.”

He looked around despite knowing exactly where the voice was coming from.

“You let her do this to you. You let her take you from me.”

Pushing past them, he persisted in rooting through his notes and organizing his papers.

“She hates you. She’s scared of you. She’s just trying to be nice. You scare her. You scare all of them. You rotten, rotten boy. You’ve been ruined - only I could love a face so hideous and broken. A horrible, horrible boy lucky enough to be given the love I did.”

His hands shook, fingers twitching and heart thrumming heavy, “No. (Y/n) likes me. She enjoys my company.”

“Why would she enjoy the company of someone so lonely and depressing? So gross and foul? She probably hates you for partaking in your own sister’s touch.”

“No, she- she doesn’t… she knows it’s not… it’s not my fault…”

“Are you inside her head? How do you know? How are you certain? I’m the only one who ever loved you - and you’ve abandoned me. Left me all alone.”

“No, I- I haven’t abandoned you, Sister! Please, believe me, I never abandoned you.”

“So, you know what you must do to prove yourself to me.”

“(Y/n) wouldn’t like that…”

“(Y/n) wouldn’t like you anyway.”

She’s right, right? She’s right. Someone as wonderful and beautiful as (Y/n) could never adore him the way he does her. He loves her and she must find him repulsive. Staying out of fear.

Out of pity for the boy abused by his sister. And so, who better to return to than the more predictable of the two?

(Y/n) may have felt more like coming home than Sister - but Sister was home. (Y/n) was comfort. Sister was familiarity.

He found his foot planted against the loose floorboard once again. He knew how he had to make up for his misdeeds and abandonment.

“I’m truly relieved to see that you got to your room safely,” Korekiyo murmured to (Y/n).

“Huh? Oh yeah,” she pointed over to their local gentle giant, “Gonta and I crossed paths on my way and he wanted to walk me to my room and I just couldn’t say no to him. It’s nice to have someone you trust in this ‘game’. Well, other than you,” the elevator jumbled slightly as it dove down into Monokuma’s makeshift courtroom, “I trust you, obviously.”

She shouldn’t. And he wants to tell her that.

But as Kokichi and Shuichi take glances at him from across the elevator, he knows that she’ll figure things out soon enough.

And, during the trial, when Shuichi’s convicting Korekiyo of the murder of Angie Yonaga and Tenko Chabashira - she does. And she cries and screams and throws a fit. Demanding Korekiyo to fight back harder. Demanding Shuichi to stop lying and get serious. Because Korekiyo would never kill somebody.

He was nice. He was a gentleman. He cared about people. He had stolen her heart - and a man who managed that wouldn’t kill anybody. So, of course, Shuichi was lying.

“Do I have to remind you of what’ll happen if you don’t vote?” Monokuma bit out.

(Y/n) clutched at her hair - she knew what she had to do. But every time she went to vote for Korekiyo, her body wouldn’t let her.

Reaching over, the boy himself took her hand in his, “Allow me,” as he guided her hand over her voting panel. No matter how she swatted at his hand or tried to wrench herself from Korekiyo’s grip, he pressed her vote into his name.

She was forced to watch as he was strung up and spun. Made dizzy and sickly. She was made to watch as he fell into the melting pot. Fires eating at his body until he was no more than spirit.

As Monokuma and the sister who had harmed him so horrifically worked as one to rid the world of his soul.

Eyes went to (Y/n) as the execution subsided. Her sobs and hiccups drawing everyone’s attention.

Gonta was the first to approach, a large hand settling on the girl’s back as she cried, silently taking her into a hug.

Her heart wrenched, fingers squeezing at Gonta’s suit and throat rubbing raw with her wild wails.

He could’ve gotten help. He could’ve gotten out with everyone. If she’d just stayed with him then she could’ve done something. Angie and Tenko would be here. Korekiyo would be here.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Kaito’s voice peeked through, “Don’t cry because he’s gone, (Y/n). Move forward - for both of you.”

“I…” she shook her head, choking on a sob, “I don’t think I can…”

Shuichi placed a hand on Kaito’s shoulder, “Just give her a little time.”

As the group moved out of the courtroom, Gonta stayed by (Y/n)’s side up until she clumsily made her way into her dorm room.

Immediately, she collapsed into her bed sheets. Dreading tomorrow. And the next day. And the one after that. And the one after that. And so on. And so forth. Maybe she should’ve known better than to go around falling for a guy in the killing game. Maybe she should’ve held herself up in her room all alone.

There was no escape from this feeling. No hiding. It may get better over time - but Korekiyo would always be gone.

A buzz at the door caught her attention. Her movements were sluggish, honestly just hoping that whoever was there had given up and left by the time she finally answered.

Shuichi stood there, classically uneven, anxious smile and all, “I think there’s something you might be interested in? If you’ll follow me.”

No verbal response was given, only (Y/n) stepping out of her room and shutting the door behind her to give him her confirmation.

He began towards the casino. With a sigh, (Y/n) was about to tell Shuichi off - she didn’t need to start gambling to get over Korekiyo’s death - until he stopped in front of the building.

“I mostly just wanted you to get some fresh air,” he says earnestly before digging in his pocket and pulling out a key with a heart-shaped handle, “I got this from here. You can get your own or keep this one, I think you need it more than I do,” at her confusion he continues to explain, “It can take you into this weird dream-like state where you can see what ‘ideal’ you play in our classmates’ minds… I think you know who I gave this to you for.”

“Kiyo…”

“Yeah. You can see him again, if you want.”

She wanted to be strong and push the key back into Shuichi’s hand - instead, she just looked between him and the key in her hold and nodded slowly, “Thank you, Shuichi…”

He placed a hand on her shoulder, “Sleep well, (Y/n). I know you can grow past this.”

Because he did.

“I’ll try.”

But he wasn’t her. And Kaede was gone far before Korekiyo. And their grief was not the same.

“Thanks again, Shuichi.”

“Just take your time, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Her knees felt like collapsing under the weight of her nerves, hand falling to the doorknob of the hotel room.

She pushed through her anxiety and found herself in a red-tinted room, a large heart-shaped bed in the center with a merry-go-round circling it. Then, she found Korekiyo standing to the side.

What would his ‘ideal’ version of her be? A friend? An out-of-touch acquaintance? A lover?

Her heart throbbed at the last possibility.

“Ah, my dear, back so soon?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry…”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I’m, uhm, not sure?”

I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.

“Then don’t,” he seemed to glide across the room, taking the girl’s cheeks in his hands, “You’ve always had a problem with that, my love.”

My love? My love.

“Ah, yeah, sorry,” she huffed at her own word selection, “Oh…”

Korekiyo chuckled quietly, pulling down his mask to kiss her forehead, “I already took my medication while you were out.”

“Your medication?”

“Yes, from the doctor. You were the one who pushed me to go, have you forgotten?”

“Right! No, no, I just blanked,” she quickly lied, giving the boy a broad grin, “I’m glad, though.”

“It’s only medication, dear.”

“Still,” (Y/n) reached up to cup Korekiyo’s cheek, “it’s good that you’re following through with your meds.”

“Your support always helps,” he pressed another kiss to the girl’s forehead, “We’ll be leaving early in the morning tomorrow, I should warn you,” at her furrowed brows he explained, “In order for us to catch the first train to Iwate prefecture. Did you forget, darling?”

“Wait, wait, let me guess…” she waited for his nod before tossing out her suggestion, “We’re traveling for field work!” she was then quick to tag on, “As a couple that’s, like, super in love?”

“You didn’t forget at all, my love,” Korekiyo pulled away slightly, and sat on the bed, removing his shoes, “You play that memory of yours down too much. You’re far more intelligent than you think.”

“You think that?”

“Of course, I do. It’s not just because I love you dearly, either. You mustn’t let the words and actions of others control your opinion on yourself - you’re better than they say.”

This is his ultimate fantasy. He’s her lover. They travel and see the beauty of humanity together, just like what he said he wanted. He loves her. He thinks she’s so great.

He’s wrong.

She should’ve stayed with him that night.

He’s wrong.

She could’ve done so much to keep him with her.

He’s dead.

Because she should’ve stayed.

“Kiyo,” her eyes burned and began to soak, “I’m sorry!” her lungs rapidly expanded and contracted with her sporadic breaths, her hands clutching at her shirt. Her knees finally buckled and she collapsed to the ground, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry for being a stupid, stupid, stupid failure! Please… forgive me…!”

Korekiyo immediately stood up and rushed to (Y/n)’s side, bringing her into a tight hug as she fell to the floor, his fingers running through her hair. He kisses at her temple and cheeks, waiting until her cries settle enough for him to be audible in the room, “It’s interesting, dear, I first realized I’d fallen in love with you in a situation similar as this. I desired to comfort and reassure you just as I do now. You’re not stupid nor a failure, and I adore you above all else.”

Shaking her head, (Y/n) only began to cry harder into Korekiyo’s chest. This could’ve been their future. This could’ve been what they had to share and hold between only each other. If she’d only stayed. If she’d been with him that night.

“Oh, my dear, I’m sorry for upsetting you.”

“It wasn’t you,” she clamped a hand over her mouth, trying to keep back her cries, “I- I- it’s all my fault… it’s all my fault…”

“You haven’t done anything wrong, darling,” Korekiyo held her tighter, “I love you, my dearest (Y/n). No matter what you’ve done, I will always forgive you.”

And once again, her tears only came out harder. Her head pounding ruthlessly at the ache and consciousness fading out in her exhaustion. Korekiyo was dead. And no amount of her tears could ever bring him back.

#korekiyo shinguji x reader #korekiyo x reader #shinguji x reader #drv3 x reader #he deserved so much better :(( i wuv him #let me know if i miss anything with the warnings

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“...Where the show had sensibly added yurts and merely forgot to have any way to move them, Martin has the Dothraki live in “palaces of woven grass” (AGoT, 83) which I assume the show did not replicate because the moment someone described doing that everyone realized what a bad idea it was and moved on to something more sensible like a yurt covered in leather. Grass and reeds, of course, can be woven. However, as anyone who has done so will tell you, the idea of trying to weave what is essentially a grass basket the size of a tent in a single day is not an enviable – or remotely possible – task.

Trying to move such a giant grass basket without it coming apart or developing tears and gaps is hardly better. And at the end, a woven-grass structure wouldn’t even really be particularly good at controlling temperature, which is its entire purpose! It is rather ironic, given that unlike the show’s Dothraki, Martin’s Dothraki do seem to use at least some carts, because Viserys is forced to ride in one (AGoT, 323) and so could bring yurts with them. They just don’t.

More to the point, it is very clear that Martin imagines the Dothraki subsistence system to consist almost entirely of horses. The Dothraki ride horses, they eat horses, they drink fermented mare’s milk. The Dothraki – as in the show – are presented as eating almost entirely horsemeat. They eat horsemeat at the wedding (AGoT, 84), and Daenerys’ attendants are surprised that she asks for any kind of meat other than horse (AGoT, 129), although Daenerys herself seems to have access to a more agrarian diet (AGoT, 198) and other characters observe that the Dothraki prefer horsemeat to anything else (AGoT, 272). There is no mention of herds of anything except people and horses moving with the khalasaar.

There is also no sense that the Dothraki are hunting big game like one would in the Great Plains; Drogo kills a hrakkar – a sort of lion, apparently – as a display of bravery (AGoT, 495) but there is nothing that would suggest the kind of bison-based subsistence system (at the very least, if that was the system, Daenerys would be well aware of it, because the camp would be awash in bison-products). I found no references to larger game and the Wiki only offers, “packs of wild dogs, herds of free-ranging horses, and rare hrakkar” which is, needless to say, not enough to make up for the absence of large herds of bison, especially for trying to feed Drogo’s camp of perhaps a hundred thousand people (or more!).

They clearly do not herd sheep. This becomes painfully obvious with the raid on the Lhazareen village. The Dothraki – Khal Ogo’s men – in raiding a sedentary pastoralist settlement, kill all of the sheep and leave them to rot. Dany sees them “thousands of them, black with flies, arrow shafts bristling from each carcass” and only knows that this isn’t Drogo’s work because he would have killed the shepherds first (AGoT, 555). And we are told that the people there “the Dothraki called them haesh rakhi, the Lamb Men….Khal Drogo said they belong south of the river bend. The grass of the Dothraki sea was not meant for sheep” (AGoT, 556).

We are told that the Dothraki have “vast herds” but this can only mean herds of horses, given that they apparently take offense at any other animal being grazed on the Dothraki and look down at shepherds in general (AGoT, 83). To be clear, for a nomadic people moving over vast grassland to spurn the opportunity to capture vast herds of sheep would be extraordinarily stupid. At the very least, thousands of sheep are valuable trade goods that can literally walk themselves to the point of sale (we’ll get to this idea that the Dothraki also don’t understand commerce a little later, but it is also intense rubbish; horse nomads in both the New World and the Old understood trade networks quite well and utilized them adroitly). But more broadly, as I hope we’ve laid out, sheep are extremely valuable for subsistence in Steppe terrain.

But Martin does not even do horse-string logistics right. While Daenerys eats cheese (AGoT, 198), we never hear of the Dothraki doing so. The Dothraki do have an equivalent to qumis, but no qulut, no yogurt. Even the frankly badass bit about drinking the horse’s blood as a source of nourishment does not appear. The horses themselves are also wrong. First, Daenerys and Drogo each have one horse they use, seemingly to the exclusion of all others. If you have been reading this long, you know that is nonsense: they ought to both (and Jorah too, if he intends to keep up) be shifting between multiple horses to avoid riding any of them into the ground. Moreover, Martin has imported a European custom about horses – that men ride stallions and women ride mares – into a context where it makes no sense. Drogo’s horse is clearly noted as a red stallion (AGoT, 88) while Daenerys’ horse is a silver filly (AGoT, 87). But of course the logistics of Steppe raiding revolves around mares; in trying to give Drogo the ultimate manly-man horse, he has actually given him the equivalent of a broken down beater – a horse only able to fulfill a slim parts of its role.

Finally, the group size here is wildly off. For comparison, Timothy May estimates that, in 1206, when Temujin he took the name Chinggis Khan and thus became the Great Khan, ruling the entire eastern half of the Eurasian Steppe, that the Mongol army “probably numbered less than a hundred thousand men” (May, The Mongols, (2019), 43), though by that point his army included not merely Mongols, but other ethnically distinct groups of steppe nomads, Merkits, Naimans, Keraites, Uyghurs and the Tatars (the last of which Chinggis had essentially exterminated – next time, we’ll get to the nonsense of the Dothraki being a single ethnic group).

That is, to be clear, compared to the armies of sedentary empires of similar size (which is to say, huge) a fairly small number! We’re going to come back to this next week, but the strength of Steppe nomads was never in numbers. Pastoralism is a low density subsistence strategy, so the steppe nomads were almost always outnumbered by their sedentary opponents (Chinggis himself overcomes this problem by folding sedentary armies into his own, giving him agrarian numbers, backed by the fearsome fighting skills of his steppe nomads).

Khal Drogo’s khalasaar, which moves as a single unit, supposedly has 40,000 riders (AGoT, 325-6); Drogo is perhaps the strongest Khal, but still only one of many. With 40,000 riders, we have to imagine an entire khalasaar of at least 120,000 Dothraki (plus all the slaves they seem to have – put a pin in that for later; also that number is a low-ball because violent mortality is clearly very high among the Dothraki, which would increase the proportion of women and children) and probably something like 300,000 horses. At least. Of course no grassland could support those numbers without herds of sheep or other cattle. As noted above, Isenberg’s figures suggest much lower density in the absence of herding – just under 70,000 nomadic Native Americans on the Great Plains in 1780 (and less than 40,000 in 1877), including women and children! But more to the point, no assemblage of animals and people that large could stay together for any length of time without depleting the grass stocks.

Even if we ignore that problem and even if we assume that the Dothraki have Mongol-style pastoral logistics to enable higher population density on the Dothraki Sea, my sense is that the numbers still don’t work. Even before Drogo dies, we meet quite a few other independent Khals with their on khalasaars – Moro, Jommo, Ogo, Zekko and Motho at least and it is implied that there are more. Drogo’s numbers suggests he should be roughly at the stage Chinggis Khan was in 1201 or so – with Chinggis controlling roughly half of the Mongolian Steppe, and his old friend and rival Jamukha the other half. But Khal Drogo has evidently at least a half-dozen rivals, probably more. It is hard to say with any certainty, but the numbers generally seem too high. Having that entire group concentrated, moving together for at least nine months (long enough for Daenerys to become pregnant and give birth) would be simply impossible inside of a grazing-based subsistence system, sheep or no sheep.

In short, no part of this subsistence system works, either from a North American or a Eurasian perspective. This isn’t actually much of a surprise. Martin has been pretty clear that he doesn’t like the kind of history we’re doing here. As he states: I am not looking for academic tomes about changing patterns of land use, but anecdotal history rich in details of battles, betrayals, love affairs, murders, and similar juicy stuff.

That’s an odd position for an author who critiques other authors for being insufficiently clear about their characters’ tax policy (what does he think they are taxing, other than agricultural land use?). Now, I won’t begrudge anyone their pleasure reading, whatever it may be. But what I hope the proceeding analysis has already made clear is that it simply isn’t possible to say any fictional culture is ‘an amalgam’ of a historical culture if you haven’t even bothered to understand how that culture functions. And it should also be very clear at this point that George R. R. Martin does not have a firm grasp on how any of these cultures function.”

- Bret Devereaux, “That Dothraki Horde, Part II: Subsistence on the Hoof.”

#the dothraki #grrm critical #bret devereaux #history

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jamestaylorswift · 4 years

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My giant goes with me wherever I go: a study of the geographic metanarrative of folklore

This topic has been rattling around in my brain ever since I first heard folklore and I think it’s endlessly fascinating. Cue this lengthy but (hopefully) intriguing piece.

I’m afraid the title may not be an accurate reflection of this essay’s content, so here’s a preview of talking points: geography, existence, metanarrative, making sense of the theme of death, the “peace”/“hoax”/“the lakes” trio, history/philosophy, and exactly one paragraph of rep/Lover analysis (as a treat).

I make the standard disclaimer that analysis is by definition subjective. Additionally, many thanks and credit to anyone else who has written analysis of folklore. I am sure my opinions have been influenced by yours, even subconsciously.

Questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome, and thank you for taking the time to read :)

——

“Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me in the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

——

If Taylor Swift’s music is anything, it is highly geographic. Taylor has been a country, pop, and now alternative artist, yet a storyteller through and through—one with a special knack for developing the aesthetic of songs and even entire records through location. The people and places she writes about seem to mutually breathe life into each other.

It is plausible that Taylor, as a young storyteller, developed this talent by using places as veritable muses just like she did anything else. Furthermore, her confessional storytelling became much more geographic as she shifted to pop because of factors including (though certainly not limited to) purchasing real estate, traveling more, writing in a genre that canonically centers coastal cities, and dating individuals with their own established homes. The geographic motif in her work is so identifiable that all of the corresponding details are—for better or worse—commensurate to autobiography.

However, folklore is not autobiographical in the way that most understand her other albums to be. The relationship between people and places in folklore is likewise much less symbiotic.

The first two songs on the record illustrate this. We are at bare minimum forced to associate the characters of Betty and James with New York: the lyrics about the High Line imply a fraction of their relationship took place in this city. Even so, this does not imply Betty or James ever permanently resided in New York, or that Betty is in New York at the moment she is narrating the story of “cardigan.” Taylor places far more emphasis on James and the nostalgia of youth, with “I knew you” repeated as a hook, to develop the emotional tone of the song. Rhode Island also comes to life in “the last great american dynasty” because of Rebekah Harkness’ larger-than-life character. But Taylor, following Rebekah’s antagonism, states multiple times throughout the song that the person should be divorced from the place. folklore locations are never so revered that they gain the vibrancy of literal human life. Taylor refrains from saying a person is a place in the same way that she has said that she is New York or her lover is the West Village.

For an album undeniably with the most concrete references to location, it is highly irregular—even confusing, given that personification is such a powerful storytelling device—that Taylor does not equate location with personal ethos.

Regurgitating the truism that geography equals autobiography proves quite limiting for interpreting Taylor’s work. How, then, should geography influence our understanding of folklore?

I submit that the stories in folklore are not ‘about’ places but ‘of’ places which are not real. Taylor’s autobiographical fiction makes the settings of the songs similarly fictionalized, metaphorical, and otherwise symbolic of something much more than geography. It is this phenomenon which emotionally and philosophically distinguishes folklore from the rest of her oeuvre.

——

As a consequence of Taylor’s unusual treatment of location, real places in folklore become signposts for cultural-geographic abstractions. Reality is simply a set of worldbuilding training wheels.

Prominent geographic features define places, which define settings. The world of folklore is built from what I’ve dubbed as four archetypal settings: the Coastal Town, the Suburb, the City, and the Outside World.

Each has a couple defining geographic features:

Coastal Town: water, cliffs/a lookout

Suburb: homes, town

City: public areas, social/nightlife/entertainment venues

The Outside World serves as the logical complement of the other three settings.

Understanding that real location in folklore is neither interchangeable nor synonymous with setting is crucial. Rhode Island is like the Coastal Town, but the two settings are not one and the same. The Suburb is an idyllic mid-America setting like Nashville, St. Louis, or Pennsylvania; it is all of those places and none of them at the same time. The City may be New York City, but it is certainly not New York City in the way that Taylor has ever sung about New York City before. The Outside World is just away.

Put simply, folklore is antithetical to Taylor’s previous geographic doctrine. While we are not precluded from, for instance, imagining the City as New York City, we also cannot and should not be pigeonholed into doing so.

Note:

This album purports to embody the stereotypically American folkloric tradition. “Outside” means “anywhere that isn’t America” because the imagery and associations of the first three cultural-geographic settings indeed are very distinctly American.

While Nashville and St. Louis are relatively big cities, they are still orders of magnitude smaller than New York and LA, the urban centers that Taylor normally regards as big cities. In context of this essay, the former locations are Suburban.

In this essay, the purpose of the term ‘of’ is simply to replace the more strict term ‘about.’ ‘Of’ denotes significant emotion tied to a place, usually because of significant time spent there either in the past or present (tense matters). Not all songs are ‘of’ places—it may be ambiguous where action takes place—and some songs can be ‘of’ multiple places due to location changing throughout the story. (This does not automatically mean that songs with more than one location are ‘of’ two places. A passing mention of St. Louis does not qualify “the last great american dynasty” as ‘of’ the Suburb, for example.)

Each of the four archetypal settings must instead be understood as an amalgam of the aesthetics of every real location it could be. Setting then exists in conversation with metaphor because we have a shared understanding of what constitutes a generic Suburb, City, or Coastal Town.

Finally, by transitivity, the settings’ metaphorical significance entirely hinges upon the geographic features’ metaphorical significance. This is what Taylor authors.

The next part of the essay is concerned with deciphering geography in folklore per these guiding questions: how is an archetypal feature used as a metaphor? By proxy, what does that say about the setting defined by it? What theme, if any, unites the settings?

The Coastal Town: Water and Cliffs

The Coastal Town is defined by elemental features.

The first (brief) mentions of water occur on the first two tracks:

Roarin’ twenties, tossing pennies in the pool

Leavin’ like a father, running like water

“the last great american dynasty” introduces the setting to which the pool (water) feature belongs, our Rhode Island-like Coastal Town. It also incorporates a larger water feature, the ocean, and suggests the existence of a lookout or cliffs:

Rebekah gave up on the Rhode Island set forever

Flew in all her Bitch Pack friends from the city

Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names

They say she was seen on occasion

Pacing the rocks, staring out at the midnight sea

“seven” and “peace” also have brief mentions of water; however, note that these songs remain situated as ‘of’ the Suburb. (More on this later.)

I hit my peak at seven

Feet in the swing over the creek

I was too scared to jump in

But I’m a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm

If your cascade, ocean wave blues come

“my tears ricochet” and “mad woman” with their nautical references pertain to the water metaphor:

I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace

And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves

Now I breathe flames each time I talk

My cannons all firin’ at your yacht

“epiphany” also counts, though with the understanding of “beaches” as Guadalcanal this song is ‘of’ the Outside World:

Crawling up the beaches now

“Sir, I think he’s bleeding out”

“this is me trying” and “hoax” reiterate the cliff/lookout geography:

Pulled the car off the road to the lookout

Could’ve followed my fears all the way down

Stood on the cliffside screaming, “Give me a reason”

Finally, “the lakes” features both water and cliffs:

Take me to the lakes, where all the poets went to die

Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry

While I bathe in cliffside pools

With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief

In folklore, water dovetails with permanent loss.

“epiphany” is the most egregious example. Crawling up the beaches of a war zone proves fatal. “the lakes” describes grieving in water, perhaps for the loss of one’s life because there exist cliffs from which to jump. “this is me trying” and “hoax” mirror that idea. On the other hand, in “peace,” death does not seem to have any connection to falling from a height.

Loss can also mean loss of sanity, such as with the eccentric character of Rebekah Harkness or Taylor as a “mad woman” firing cannons at (presumably) Scooter Braun’s yacht.

Subtler are the losses alluded to in “my tears ricochet” and “seven,” of identity or image and childhood audacity, respectively. And in the opening tracks water is at its most benign, aligned with loss of a relationship that has run its course in one’s young adulthood.

The most fascinating aspect of water in folklore is that it is an aberration from water as the symbol for life/birth/renewal, derived from maternity and the womb. folklore water taketh away, not giveth.

As of now, the greater significance of the Coastal Town—the meaning to which this contradiction alludes—remains to be seen.

The City: Nightlife, Entertainment, and Public Areas

Preeminent in Taylor’s pop work is the City; New York City, Los Angeles, and London are the locations most frequently extolled as Swiftian meccas. This archetypal setting is given a more understated role in folklore.

“cardigan,” ‘of’ the City, illustrates this setting using public environments and nightlife:

Vintage tee, brand new phone

High heels on cobblestones

But I knew you

Dancin’ in your Levi’s

Drunk under a streetlight

I knew you

Your heartbeat on the High Line

Once in twenty lifetimes

To kiss in cars and downtown bars

Was all we needed

“mirrorball” paints the clearest picture of the City’s nightlife/social venues by sheer quantity of lyrics:

I’m a mirrorball

I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight

I’ll get you out on the floor

Shimmering beautiful

You are not like the regulars

The masquerade revelers

Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten

And they called off the circus, burned the disco down

“invisible string” briefly mentions a bar:

A string that pulled me

Out of all the wrong arms, right into that dive bar

In addition, “this is me trying” implies that the speaker may currently be at a bar, making the song partially ‘of’ the City:

They told me all of my cages were mental

So I got wasted like all my potential

I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere

Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here

Pouring out my heart to a stranger

But I didn’t pour the whiskey

It goes almost without saying that the City at large is alcohol-soaked. Indeed, alcohol will help us understand this location.

Each of the aforementioned songs has a distinct narrator, like Betty in the case of “cardigan” or Taylor herself, at the very least in the case of “mirrorball” or at most all songs besides “cardigan.” And because the narrative character is so strong, I posit that the meaning of this geography is tied to what alcohol reveals about the speakers of the songs themselves.

“invisible string” and “mirrorball” are alike in the fact that the stories extend well beyond or even completely after nightlife. Meeting in a dive bar in “invisible string” is just the catalyst for a relationship that feels fated. Taylor, in her “mirrorball” musing, expresses concern about how she is perceived by someone close to her. Does existing after the fact (of public perception, at an entertainment venue) constitute an authentic existence? Alcohol, apparently a necessary part of City life, predates events which later haunt the speakers. Emotional torment is then what prompts the speakers to recount their stories.

On the other hand, alcohol directly reveals the emotional states of the speakers in “cardigan” and “this is me trying.” “cardigan” is Betty’s sepia-toned memory of her time with James, in which James’ careless, youthful spirit (“dancin’ in your Levi’s, drunk under a streetlight” and “heartbeat on the High Line”) inspires sadness and nostalgia for their ultimately temporary relationship (“once in twenty lifetimes”). “this is me trying” is tinged with the speaker’s bitterness; hopelessness and regret lead them to the bar and the destructive practice of drinking just to be numb.

These observations suggest that the City is also a site of grief or loss, though not for the same reason that the Coastal Town is. Whereas the Coastal Town is associated with a permanent ending such as death, the City reveals an ending that is more transitional and wistful, tantamount to a coming of age. There is a clear ‘before’ and ‘after’ to loss related to the City: life, though changed, goes on.

The Suburb: Homes and Towns

Noteworthy though the City and Coastal Town may be, the former in particular concerning the pop mythology of Taylor Swift, it is the Suburb which Taylor most frequently references in folklore and establishes as the geographical heart of the album.

The Suburb is defined by a home and town. A “home” encompasses entrances (front/side doors), back and front yards (gardens/lawns/trees/weeds/creeks), and interiors (rooms/halls/closets). The “town” is pretty self-explanatory, with a store, mall, movie theater, school, and yogurt shop.

Observe that the folklore Suburb is the aesthetic equivalent of the “small town” that provided the debut and Fearless albums’ milieu and inspired the country mythology of Taylor Swift. While Taylor primarily wrote about home and school on those albums (because, well, that was closer to her experience as a teenager), the “small town” and the folklore Suburb are functionally the same with regard to pace, quality, and monotonicity of life. Exhibit A: driving around and lingering on front doorsteps are the main attractions for young adults. (From my personal experience growing up in a Suburb, this is completely accurate. And yes, the only other attractions are the mall and the movie theater.)

The Suburb becomes a conduit for conflict.

Conflict that Taylor explores in this setting, including inner turmoil, dissension between characters, and friction between oneself and external (societal) expectations, naturally can be distinguished by distance [1] between the two forces in conflict. As an example, ‘person vs. self’ implies no distance between the sides because they are both oneself. ‘Person vs. society’ is conflict in which the sides are the farthest they could conceivably be from each other. Conflict with greater distance between the sides is usually harder to resolve. One must move bigger mountains, so to speak, to fix these problems.

The folklore Suburb is additionally constructed upon the notion of privacy or seclusion. We can imagine a gradient [2] of privacy illustrated by Suburban geography: the town is a less intimate setting than the outside of the home, which is less intimate than the inside of the home.

I combine these two ideas in the following claim: the Suburb relates distance between two forces in conflict inversely on the geographical privacy gradient. Put simply, the more intimate or ‘internal’ the setting, the farther the two sides in conflict are from each other.

(I offer this claim in the hopes that it will clarify the nebulous meaning of the Suburb in the next section.)

Salient references to the Suburban town can be divided into one of two categories:

Allowing oneself to hope

Allowing oneself to recall

“august” clearly belongs in the first category. Hope is central to August’s character and how she approaches her relationship with James:

Wanting was enough

For me, it was enough

To live for the hope of it all

Canceled plans just in case you’d call

And say, “Meet me behind the mall”

If we interpret the bus as a school bus then “the 1” also belongs in this first town category:

I thought I saw you at the bus stop, I didn’t though

I hit the ground running each night

I hit the Sunday matinee

“invisible string” indicates that the yogurt shop is equally innocent as Centennial Park. The store represents the hope of Taylor’s soul mate, parallel to her hope:

Green was the color of the grass

Where I used to read at Centennial Park

I used to think I would meet somebody there

Teal was the color of your shirt

When you were sixteen at the yogurt shop

You used to work at to make a little money

“cardigan” and “this is me trying” alternatively highlight the persistence of memory, with a relationship leaving an “indelible mark” on the narrators. These songs belong in the second category:

I knew I’d curse you for the longest time

Chasin’ shadows in the grocery line

You’re a flashback in a film reel on the one screen in my town

James’ recollection qualifies “betty” for the second category as well. This song shows that emotional weight falls behind the act of remembering:

Betty, I won’t make assumptions

About why you switched your homeroom, but

I think it’s ‘cause of me

Betty, one time I was riding on my skateboard

When I passed your house

It’s like I couldn’t breathe

Betty, I know where it all went wrong

Your favorite song was playing

From the far side of the gym

I was nowhere to be found

I hate the crowds, you know that

Plus, I saw you dance with him

The surprising common denominator of these two categories is that conflict is purely internal in public spaces. Regardless of whether the speakers feel positively or negatively (i.e. per category number), their feelings are entirely a product of their own decisions, such as revisiting a memory or avoiding confrontation. This gives credence to the theory that the Suburb inversely relates conflict distance with privacy.

On the other extreme, the home is a site of conflict larger than oneself, and often more conflict in general. Conflict which occurs in the most private setting, inside the house, is conflict where the two sides are most distanced from each other. Conflict near the house, though not strictly inside, is closer, interpersonal.

“my tears ricochet” is just an ‘indoors’ song. The opening line depicts a private, funeral-like atmosphere:

We gather here, we line up, weepin’ in a sunlit room

There are multiple interpretations of this song floating around. The two prevailing ones are about the death of Taylor Swift the persona and the sale of her masters. In either interpretation, society and culture are the foundation for the implied conflict. First, the caricature of Taylor Swift exists as a reflection of pop culture; second, the sale of global superstar Taylor Swift’s masters is a dispute of such magnitude that it is not simply an interpersonal squabble.

For the alternative interpretation that “my tears ricochet” is about a dissolved relationship, “and when you can’t sleep at night // you hear my stolen lullabies” implicates Taylor Swift’s public catalogue (and thus Taylor Swift the persona) as the entity haunting someone else, as opposed to Taylor Swift the former member of the relationship.

“mad woman” is just an ‘outdoors’ song because of the line about the neighbor’s lawn:

What do you sing on your drive home?

Do you see my face in the neighbor’s lawn?

Does she smile?

Or does she mouth, “Fuck you forever”

It’s clear Taylor has a lot of vitriol for Scooter Braun. Though it’s probably a bit of both at the end of the day, I am comfortable calling their feud more of the ‘person vs. person’ variety than the ‘person vs. society’ variety.

Consequently, the privacy gradient claim holds for both songs.

“illicit affairs” is one of two songs with a very clear ‘transformation’ of geography:

What started in beautiful rooms

Ends with meetings in parking lots

In context, this represents the devolution of the relationship. External conflict, the illegitimacy of the relationship, defined the affair when it was in “beautiful rooms.” Relocating to the parking lot (i.e. now referencing the Suburban town) coincides with discord turning inward. Any external shame or scorn for both lovers as a consequence of the affair is replaced by the end of the song with anger the lovers feel towards each other and, more importantly, themselves.

“seven” is the best example of how many types of conflict are present in and around the home:

I hit my peak at seven

Feet in the swing over the creek

I was too scared to jump in

And I’ve been meaning to tell you

I think your house is haunted

Your dad is always mad and that must be why

And I think you should come live with me

And we can be pirates

Then you won’t have to cry

Or hide in the closet

Please picture me in the weeds

Before I learned civility

I used to scream ferociously

Any time I wanted

The first few lines exemplify ‘person vs. self’ conflict, a fear of heights. The third segment introduces a ‘person vs. society’ dilemma, shrinking pains as a result of socialization into gender norms. (I am assuming that the child is a girl.) The second verse indicates strife between a child and a father. It leaves room for three interpretations:

The conflict is interpersonal, so the father’s anger is wholly or partially directed at the child because the father is an angry person

The conflict is sociological, so the father’s anger is a whole or partial consequence of the gendered roles which the father and child perform

Both

Is curious that we need not regard sadness and the closet in “seven” as mutually inclusive. The narrator says the child’s options are crying (logical) or hiding in the closet. Both the father’s temper and the closet are facts of the child’s life, either innocuous or traumatic or somewhere in between.

But we might—and perhaps should—go further and argue that conflict in “seven” is necessarily sociological, and specifically about being civilized to perform heterosexual femininity. For, taken to its logical extreme, if only gender identity and not sexual identity incites anger, then men must be socialized to become abusive to women, who must be socialized to become submissive to that abuse. Screaming “ferociously” at any time would also denote freedom to be oneself despite men, not freedom to be oneself for one’s own gratification. Yet the child surely enjoys the second freedom at the beginning of the song. While the patriarchy is indeed an oppressive societal force, the interpretation of the social conflict in “seven” as only gendered yields contradiction. This interpretation is much more tenuous than acknowledging that the closet is, in fact, The Closet.

(Mere mention of a closet, the universal symbol for hiding one’s sexuality, immediately justifies a queer interpretation of “seven” notwithstanding other sociological and/or semantic technicalities. A sizable chunk of Taylor’s extensive discography also lends itself to queer interpretation by extension of connection with this song—for instance, by a shared theme of socialization as a primary evil. To me it seems silly at best and homophobic at worst to eschew the reading of “seven” presented here.)

It is undeniable that “seven” represents many types of conflict and places them inversely on the privacy gradient. The father embodies societal conflict larger than the young child and introduces that conflict inside the house. The child faces internal conflict (i.e. a fear of heights) and no conflict at all (i.e. freedom to act fearlessly) outside.

Reconciling “august,” “exile,” and “betty” with the privacy gradient actually requires a queer interpretation of the songs. To avoid the complete logical fallacy of a circular proof, I reiterate that the privacy gradient is simply a means of illustrating how the Suburb functions as an archetypal location. Queer interpretation is a sufficient but not necessary condition for an interesting argument about Suburban spatial symbolism. Reaching a slightly weaker conclusion about the Suburb without the privacy gradient would not impact the conclusions about the other three archetypal locations. Finally, queer (sub)text is a noteworthy topic on its own.

“betty” situates the front porch as the venue where Betty must make a decision about her relationship with James:

But if I just showed up at your party

Would you have me? Would you want me?

Would you tell me to go fuck myself

Or lead me to the garden?

In the garden, would you trust me

If I told you it was just a summer thing?

Yeah, I showed up at your party

Will you have me? Will you love me?

Will you kiss me on the porch

In front of all your stupid friends?

If you kiss me, will it be just like I dreamed it?

Will it patch your broken wings?

Influencing Betty’s decision is her relationship with her “stupid” (read: homophobic) friends who don’t accept James (and/or the idea of James/Betty as a pair), her own internalized homophobia, and the trepidation with which she may regard James after the August escapade. The conflict at the front door is external/societal, interpersonal, and internal.

The garden differs from the front door as an area where James and Betty can privately discuss the August escapade. By moving to the garden, the supposed root of their conflict shifts from the oppressive force of homophobia to James’ behavior regarding the love triangle (“would you trust me if I told you it was just a summer thing?”). Much like in “illicit affairs,” motion along the privacy gradient underscores that micro-geography is inversely related to conflict distance.

Next, the implied settings of “august” are a bedroom and a private outdoor location such as a backyard:

Salt air, and the rust on your door

I never needed anything more

Whispers of "Are you sure?”

“Never have I ever before”

Your back beneath the sun

Wishin’ I could write my name on it

Will you call when you’re back at school?

I remember thinkin’ I had you

The backyard holds a mixture of ‘person vs. self’ and ‘person vs. person’ conflict. August’s doubts about James manifest as personal insecurities. However, James, by avoiding commitment, is equally responsible for planting that seed of doubt.

The song’s opening scene depicts a young adult losing their virginity. The bedroom can thus be conceptualized as a site of societal conflict because the queer love story expands this location to the geographical manifestation of escapism and denial. James runs off with August as a means to ignore externalized homophobia from a relationship with Betty, who has homophobic friends. Yet they eventually ditch August for Betty, either because of intense feelings for Betty or internalized homophobia—the relationship with August was too perfect, too easy.

“betty” and “august” are consistent with the gradient theory provided we interpret the love triangle narrative as queer. Identity engenders conflict in these songs. The characters then confront the conflict vis-à-vis location. ‘Indoors’ becomes the arena for confronting issues farther from the self, namely concerning homophobia. ‘Outdoors’ scopes cause and therefore possible resolution to individuals’ choices.

Last but not least, consider “exile,” the song with strange staging:

And it took you five whole minutes

To pack us up and leave me with it

Holdin’ all this love out here in the hall

You were my crown, now I’m in exile, seein’ you out

I think I’ve seen this film before

So I’m leaving out the side door

“I’m in exile, seein’ you out” and “I’m leaving out the side door” contradict each other. The speaker, “I,” seeing their lover out means that the speaker remains inside the house while their lover leaves. But the “I” also leaves through the side door. Does the speaker follow their lover out? If so, then whose house are they leaving? It is most likely a shared residence. They plan on coming back.

Taylor said in an interview [3] that the verses, sung by different people, represent the perspectives of the two lovers. The “me” in the first segment is the “you” in the second. So our “I” is left in the hall too. Both individuals in the relationship are implied to leave and stay at different times.

An explanation for this inconsistency lies in the distinction between doors. A front door in folklore is symbolic of trust, that which makes or breaks a relationship (see: Betty’s front door and the door in “hoax”). It also forces sociological conflict to be resolved at the interpersonal level, lest serious problems hang out in the open. Fixing the world at large is usually impossible, and so front doors only create more issues. (The mountains, as they say, are too big to move.) The main entrance is thus a site for volatility and high stakes.

“exile” suggests that a shared side door is for persistent, dull, aching pain. This door symbolizes shame which is inherent to a relationship. It forces the partners to come and go quietly, to hide the existence of their love. Inferred from a queer reading of “exile” is that it is homophobia that erases the relationship. Conflict with society as evinced in individuals is once again consistent with the staging at the home.

Note that few (though multiple) explanations could resolve the paradox between intense shame in a relationship and the setting of a permanent shared home. Racism, for example, may be a reason individuals hide the existence of a loving relationship. Nevertheless, the overall effect of Taylor’s writing is that it is believable autobiography. It is unlikely that she’s speaking about racism here, least of all because there are two other male characters in the song. So a slightly more uncouth name for “exile” would be “the last great american mutual bearding anthem.”

To summarize, the Suburb is an archetypal setting constructed upon the notion of privacy. Taylor makes the folklore Suburb the primary home (no pun intended) of conflict of all kinds. Through an intimate, inverse relationship between drama and constitutive geography, Taylor argues that unrest and incongruity are central to what the Suburb represents.

The Outside World

The final archetypal setting is the complement to the first three—a physical and symbolic alternative.

The Guadalcanal beaches in “epiphany” (which are also alluded to in “peace”) contrast the homeland in “exile” through a metaphor about war. The Lake District in England is opposite America, the setting of most of folklore. The Moon, Saturn, and India are far away from Pennsylvania, the setting of “seven.” India quantifies the lengths to which the speaker of the song would go to protect the child character, while astronomy abstracts the magnitude of the speaker’s love.

This archetypal setting is symbolic of disengagement and breaking free from limitations. Moving to India in “seven” is how the speaker and child could escape problems at the child’s home. Analogizing war with the pandemic in “epiphany” removes geographical and chronological constraints from trauma.

The Lake District is where Taylor, a poet, goes to die. The line “I don’t belong and, my beloved, neither do you” could also suggest that this location is where Taylor and her muse break free from being outcasts (i.e. they find belonging). Regardless, the Lake District is where she disengages from the ultimate limitation of life itself.

——

How is an archetypal feature used as a metaphor? By proxy, what does that say about the setting defined by said feature?

Analysis of each archetypal feature yielded the following:

The Coastal Town is representative of permanent loss/endings

The City is representative of transitional loss/endings

The Suburb is the site of character-defining conflict

The Outside World is freedom from the constraints of the other settings

What theme unites these settings?

Though the majority of songs in folklore are anachronistic, the album has a temporal spirit. Geography seems to humanize and animate folklore: the meanings of the settings mirror the stages of life.

(The theoretical foundation for this claim is a topology of being; that the nature of being [4] is an event of place.)

The City, characterized by transition, is the coming-of-age and the Coastal Town, characterized by permanent endings, is death.

The Outside World, an alternative to life itself, is hence a rebirth. (After all, Romantic poets experienced a spiritual and occupational rebirth upon retiring to the Lakes to die. We remember them by their retreat.)

Outwardly, the Suburb is ambiguous. It could be representative of adolescence or adulthood—before or after the City. Analysis shows that this setting is nothing if not complex. Adult Taylor writes about the Suburb as someone whose opinion of this setting has unquestionably soured since adolescence. Yet she also approaches the Suburb with the singular goal of creating nuance, specifically by exposing unrest and incongruity which the setting usually obfuscates. This setting, ironically one that is (culturally) ruled by haughty adolescents, is where she explores the myriad subtleties and uncertainties coloring adulthood. The Suburb thus cannot be for adolescence because James is 17 and doesn’t know anything. Taylor intentionally situates the Suburb between the City and Coastal Town as the geographic stand-in for a complicated adulthood.

Despite genre shifts, Taylor has always excelled at establishing a clear setting for her songs. She is arguably even required to establish setting more clearly for folkloric storytelling than for her brand of confessional pop. If we can’t fully distinguish between reality and fiction, we must be able to supplement our understanding of a story with strong characterization, which is ultimately a byproduct of setting. Geography is a prima facie necessity for creating folklore.

This further suggests that the ‘life story’ told through geography is the thing closest to a metanarrative of folklore.

I use this term to refer to an album’s overarching narrative structure which Taylor creates (maybe subconsciously) in service of artistic self-expression. Interrogating ‘metanarrative’ should not be confused with the protean, impossible, and distracting task of deciphering Taylor Swift’s life. True metanarrative is always worth exploring. Also, though some conclusions about metanarrative may seem more plausible than others, at the end of the day all relevant arguments are untenable. Only Taylor knows exactly which metanarrative(s) her albums follow, if any. It is simply worth appreciating that folklore allows an interesting discussion about metanarrative in the first place; that it is both possible to find patterns sewn into the fabric of the work and to resonate with that which one believes those patterns illustrate. I digress.

folklore is highly geographic but orthogonal to all of our geographic expectations of mood or tone. Through metaphor, Taylor upends our assumptions about the archetypal settings.

The Outside World is usually a setting which represents a brief and peaceful respite for travelers. Here, it is the setting for complete and permanent disengagement. Hiding and running away was a panacea in reputation/Lover, but in folklore, finding peace in running and hiding becomes impossible.

The City is usually regarded as a modern Fountain of Youth and, in Taylor’s work, a home. However, the folklore City’s shelter is temporary and its energy brittle, like the relationship between the characters that inhabit it. The City has lost its glow.

One would expect the Coastal Town to be peaceful and serene given its small size and proximity to water. Taylor makes it the primary site of death, insanity, permanent loss. The place where one cannot go with grace is hardly peaceful.

The Suburb is not the romanticized-by-necessity dead end that it is in a Bildungsroman like Fearless. Rather, it is the site of great conflict as a consequence of individual identity. The American suburb is monolithic by design; Taylor points the finger of blame back at this design for erasing hurt and trauma. By writing against the gradient of privacy, she obviates all simplicity and serenity for which this location is known. Bedrooms no longer illustrate the dancing-in-pjs-before-school and floodplain-of-tears binary. Front porches become more sinister than the place to meet a future partner and rock a baby. Characters’ choices—often between two undesirable options in situations complicated by misalignment of the self and the world at large—become their biggest mistakes. It is with near masochistic fascination that Taylor dissects how the picturesque Suburban façade disguises misery.

If we have come to expect anything from Taylor, it is that she will make lustrous even the most mundane feelings and places. (And she is very good at her job.) folklore is a departure from this practice. She replaces erstwhile veneration of geography itself with nostalgia, bitterness, sadness, or disdain for any given setting. folklore is orthogonal to our primary expectation of Taylor Swift.

Yet another fascinating aspect of folklore is the air of death. It’s understandable. Taylor has ‘killed’ relationships, her own image, and surely parts of her inner self an unknowable number of times. Others have tarnished her reputation, stolen her songs, and deserted her in personal and professional life. She perishes frequently, both by her own hand and by the hands of others. The losses compound.

I’ve lost track of the number of posts I’ve seen saying that folklore is Taylor mourning friendships, love, a past self, youth…x, y, z. It has literally never been easier to project onto a Taylor Swift album, folks! At the same time, it is very difficult to to pinpoint what, exactly, Taylor is mourning. To me, listing things is a far too limited understanding of folklore. The lists simply do not do the album justice.

Death’s omnipresence has intrigued many, and I assert for good geographic reason. Reinforcing the album’s macabre undertone is nonlinear spatial symbolism: each setting bares a grief-soaked stage of a single life. From the City to the Suburb, Coastal Town, and Outside World, we perceive one’s sadness and depression, anger and helplessness, frustration and scorn, and acceptance, respectively. folklore holds a raw, primal grief at its core.

The geographic metanarrative justifies Taylor’s unabridged grieving process as that over the death of her own Romanticism. For the album’s torment is not as simple as in aging or metamorphosis of identity, not as glorified or irreverent as in a typical Swiftian murder-suicide, not as overt as in a loss with something or someone to blame. folklore is Taylor’s reckoning with what can only be described as artistic mortality.

——

To summarize up until this point: geography in folklore is not literal but metaphorical. The artistic treatment of folklore settings evinces a ‘geographic metanarrative,’ a close connection between settings and the stages of a life spent grieving. I propose that this life tracks Taylor’s relationship to her Romanticism. folklore follows the stages of Taylor’s artistic grief, so we will see that the conclusion of the album brings the death of Taylor’s Romanticism.

It is important to distinguish between the death of Romanticism in general and the death of Taylor’s Romanticism. folklore presents an argument for the latter.

A central conceit of Romanticism is its philosophy of style:

The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should shape all aspects of human life.…if the romantic ideal is to materialize, aesthetics should permeate and shape human life. [5]

Romanticism is realized through imagination:

The imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the mind.…The Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate “shaping” or creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or even deity. It is dynamic, an active, rather than passive power, with many functions. Imagination is the primary faculty for creating all art. On a broader scale, it is also the faculty that helps humans to constitute reality…we not only perceive the world around us, but also in part create it. Uniting both reason and feeling…imagination is extolled as the ultimate synthesizing faculty, enabling humans to reconcile differences and opposites in the world of appearance. [6]

Imagination then engenders an artist-hero lifestyle [7]. This is similar—if not identical—to what we perceive of Taylor Swift’s life:

By locating the ultimate source of poetry in the individual artist, the tradition, stretching back to the ancients, of valuing art primarily for its ability to imitate human life (that is, for its mimetic qualities) was reversed. In Romantic theory, art was valuable not so much as a mirror of the external world, but as a source of illumination of the world within.…The “poetic speaker” became less a persona and more the direct person of the poet.…The interior journey and the development of the self recurred everywhere as subject material for the Romantic artist. The artist-as-hero is a specifically Romantic type.

Taylor’s Romanticism is thus her imagination deified as her artist-hero.

Moreover, the discrepancy between perceptions of grief in folklore is a consequence of the death of her Romanticism.

We (i.e. outsiders) naturally perceive the death of the Romantic as the death of Romantic aesthetics. Hence the lists upon lists of things that Taylor mourns instead of celebrates.

Taylor seems to grieve her Romantic artist-hero. Imaginative capacity predicates an artist-hero self-image, so conversely the death of the Romantic strips imagination of its power. The projected “fantasy, history, and memory” [8] of folklore indeed unnerves rather than comforts. The best example of this is from a corollary of the geographic metanarrative. Grief traces geography which traces life, and life leaks from densely populated areas to sparsely populated areas (it begins in the City and ends in the Outside World). Metaphorical setting, a product of imagination, aids the Romantic’s unbecoming. So, imagination is not a “synthesizing faculty” for reconciling difference; it is instead a faculty that divides.

Discriminating between the death of Romanticism in general and the death of Taylor’s Romanticism contextualizes folklore’s highly individualized grief. It is hard to argue that Taylor Swift will ever be unimaginative. But if we assume that she subscribes to a Romantic philosophy, then it follows that confronting the limits of the imagination is, to her, akin to a reckoning with mortality, a limit of the self.

——

folklore follows the stages of Taylor’s artistic grief. The album ends with Taylor accepting of the death of her Romanticism and being reborn into a new life. The final trio of songs, set ‘of’ the Suburb, Coastal Town, and Outside World in turn, frame the album’s solitary denouement.

In truth, “peace” is hardly grounded in Suburban geography. The nuance in it certainly makes it a thematic contemporary of other songs belonging to the Suburb, however. And consider: the events of “peace” are after the coming-of-age, the City; defining geographic features of the Coastal Town and Outside World are referenced in the future tense; an interior wall, the closest thing to Suburban home geography, is referenced in the present tense:

Our coming-of-age has come and gone

But I’m a fire and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm

If your cascade ocean wave blues come

You paint dreamscapes on the wall

And you know that I’d swing with you for the fences

Sit with you in the trenches

Per tense and the geographic metanarrative, “peace” is Suburban and is the first story of this trio. “hoax” and “the lakes” trivially follow (in that order) by their own geography.

The trio is clearly a story about Taylor and her muse. Understanding perspective in these songs will help us reconcile the lovers’ story and the geographic metanarrative.

We must compare lines in “peace” and “hoax” to determine who is speaking in those songs and when. Oft-repeated imagery makes it challenging to find a distinguishing detail local only to the trio. I draw attention to the affectionate nickname “darling”:

And it’s just around the corner, darlin’

'Cause it lives in me

Darling, this was just as hard

As when they pulled me apart

These two mentions are the only such ones in folklore. Whoever sings the first verse of “peace” must sing the bridge of “hoax” too.

“hoax” adds that the chorus singer’s melancholy is because of their faithless lover:

Don't want no other shade of blue but you

No other sadness in the world would do

Augmenting Lover is an undercurrent of sadness to which Taylor alludes with the color blue. By a basic understanding of that album, Taylor sings the “hoax” chorus.

The fire and color metaphors in tandem make the “hoax” verse(s) and bridge from the perspective of the lover who is burned and dimmed by the energy of their partner, the “peace” chorus singer:

I am ash from your fire

But what you did was just as dark

But I’m a fire and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm

Finally, a motif of an unraveling aligns the “hoax” verse(s) and bridge singer:

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

My kingdom come undone

The “hoax” verse(s), chorus, and bridge are all sung by the same person.

In sum: Taylor sings the first verse of “peace” and her lover sings the chorus of “peace.” (See this post for more on “peace.”) Taylor alone sings “hoax.” “the lakes” is undoubtedly from Taylor’s perspective too.

Now let’s examine “peace” more closely:

Our coming-of-age has come and gone

Suddenly this summer, it’s clear

I never had the courage of my convictions

As long as danger is near

And it’s just around the corner, darlin’

‘Cause it lives in me

No, I could never give you peace

But I’m a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm

If your cascade, ocean wave blues come

All these people think love’s for show

But I would die for you in secret

The devil’s in the details, but you got a friend in me

Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?

Taylor’s lover has the temerity to die for her in secret. We can infer from the first verse that Taylor’s coming-of-age brings not the courage her lover possesses but clarity about an unsustainable habit. She realizes that she cherishes youthful fantasies of life (such as “this summer,” à la “august”) for mettle. This apparently knocks her out of her reverie.

The recognition that being an artist-hero hurts her muse frames the death of Taylor’s Romanticism. It is impossible for Taylor to both manage an unpleasant reality and construct a more peaceful one using her Romantic imagination. The rift between her true lived experience (“interior journey”) and the experience of her art (“development of the self”) is what fuels alienation from Romance. The artist is unstitched from the hero.

“hoax” continues along this line of reasoning. In this song, she admits that she has been hurt by herself:

My twisted knife

My sleepless night

My winless fight

This has frozen my ground

As well as by her lover:

My best laid plan

Your sleight of hand

My barren land

I am ash from your fire

And by others:

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

The bridge marks is the turning point where she lets go of of her youth and adulthood, both of which are tied to her Romanticism through geography:

You know I left a part of me back in New York

You knew the hero died so what’s the movie for?

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

You knew the password so I let you in the door

You knew you won so what’s the point of keeping score?

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

Of utmost importance is the very first line. The muse to whom Taylor addresses “hoax” is said to have been present at Taylor’s side through all of her struggles (“you knew”). The first line reveals that the lover did not know that Taylor left a part of herself back in New York (“you know [now]”). Taylor is only sharing her newfound realization as she stands on the precipice of the Coastal Town.

Nearly imperceptible though this syntactic difference is, it is an unmistakable reprise of the effect of the verses and chorus of “cardigan.” (Coincidentally, references to New York connect the songs.) “Knew” and “know” in both songs underscore a difference between what a character remembers (or had previously experienced) and what they understand in the current moment (or have just come to realize). Betty realizes at the very moment that she narrates “cardigan” that it was a mistake to excuse James’ behavior as total ignorance and youthful selfishness. Taylor realizes in “hoax” that she can no longer cling to youth, the romanticization of her youth, or romanticization of the romanticization of her youth. The youth in her is gone forever because she is no longer attached to the City. The adult in her has also matured for she is past the Suburb as well. The Coastal Town thus very appropriately stages the death of her Romantic.

Anyone who listens to Taylor’s music has been trained to connect geography to the vitality of Romantic artist-hero Taylor. In short, aestheticized geography renders Taylor’s Romantic autobiography. By letting go of the parts of her connected to geography, Taylor abandons the Romantic aesthetics both she and listeners associate with location. Divorcing from aesthetics also pre-empts romanticization of location in the future. The bridge of “hoax” is thus most easily summarized as the moment when any fondness for and predisposition towards Romance crumbles completely.

Lastly, we must pay special attention to micro-geography in the “hoax” chorus. We recall from “the last great american dynasty” and “this is me trying” the insanity that consumes the characters who contemplate the cliffs. The Coastal Town is not a beautiful place to die; one is graceless when moribund:

They say she was seen on occasion

Pacing the rocks, staring out at the midnight sea

I’ve been having a hard time adjusting

Pulled the car off the road to the lookout

Could’ve followed my fears all the way down

From “peace” we know that Taylor’s lover is willing to die for her, in particular if Taylor’s sadness becomes too great (i.e. if she goes to the sea).

But I’m a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm

If your cascade, ocean wave blues come

All these people think love’s for show

But I would die for you in secret

The “hoax” chorus is when Taylor’s sadness balloons. Taylor the Romantic is ready to die:

Stood on the cliffside screaming, "Give me a reason"

Your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in

Don't want no other shade of blue but you

No other sadness in the world would do

Remember Rebekah, pacing the rocks, staring out at the midnight sea. Taylor is in this same position, on the cliffs, facing the water. Why is she screaming? Taylor is yelling down at her lover, who has already died (in secret, of course) and is in the water below waiting to catch her. (“I’m always waiting for you to be waiting below,” anyone?) Taylor’s singular faith is in her lover, and Taylor wants them to promise to catch her when she falls. In the end, though, the inherent danger nullifies what the lover could do to convince Taylor that the two would reunite safely below.

Taylor examines the water and realizes that her lover’s hue is combined with the blue of the sea. The sea cannot promise to catch her. Already mentally reeling, the admixture of sadnesses—in the setting which represents the culmination of life—makes Taylor recalcitrant. The Coastal Town has too much metaphorical baggage. It is not the place Taylor leaps from the cliffs. The first line of the “hoax” chorus uses “stood,” which implies that Taylor is reflecting on this dilemma after the fact.

The outro reinforces that the Coastal Town is where Taylor the Romantic comes to term with death but does not actually die:

My only one

My kingdom come undone

My broken drum

You have beaten my heart

Don’t want no other shade of blue but you

No other sadness in the world would do

Romantic imagination cannot protect Taylor from all the hurt she has suffered in reality. A calm settles over her as the chords modulate to the relative major key. She reflects on her journey: “my only one” corresponds to the first verse which introduces her solemn situation; “my kingdom come undone” ties to the self-inflicted hurt that froze her ground; “my broken drum // you have beaten my heart” supplements the second verse about suffering from her lover’s duplicity. The last lines are again her rationale for not jumping from the rocks. Finally, after the album-long grieving period, Taylor the Romantic has made peace with her inevitable death.

Romanticism is Taylor’s giant which goes with her wherever she goes. Running, hiding, traveling, and uprooting are indeed the fool’s paradise in her previous albums. Impermanence of setting—roaming the world for self-culture, amusement, intoxication of beauty, and loss of sadness [9]—engenders an impermanence of self, which fuels the instinct to cling tightly to what does remain constant. Naturally, then, Romanticism is Taylor’s only enduring companion. It becomes the lens through which she understands the world, yet the rose-colored one which by virtue inspires problems on top of problems. Forevermore does her Romantic inspire a cycle of catharsis that plays out in real life. Thy beautiful kingdom come, then tragically come undone.

Taylor chooses to go to the Lakes to escape from the constraints of this cycle:

Take me to the Lakes where all the poets went to die

I don’t belong and, my beloved, neither do you

Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry

I’m setting off, but not without my muse

Of the death story in the “peace”/“hoax”/“the lakes” trio, it is impossible to ignore the mutualism of Taylor and her muse. Neither of them belong of this life—and ‘of’ American geography—anymore. Taylor’s last wish is to go to the Outside World and jump (“[set] off”) from the Windermere peaks with her muse, who is ever willing to both lead Taylor to the dark and follow her into it.

Taylor bids a final goodbye—appropriately, in the tongue of Romance—to the philosophy which has anchored her all this time:

I want auroras and sad prose

I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet

'Cause I haven’t moved in years

And I want you right here

Romanticism, her art and life in tandem, brought Taylor what she values: union with her muse in the privacy of nature and her imagination. The final ode holds respect.

Finally, her death. The journey of grief concludes with Taylor both accepting death and, fascinatingly, being reborn into a new life:

A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground

With no one around to tweet it

While I bathe in cliffside pools

With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief

In keeping with metaphorical geography, old life dwindling in water is exactly concurrent with new life flourishing on land.

Observe that the rebirth concerns ice frozen ground, an element of “hoax,” which is set in the Coastal Town. The rebirth must happen back in America even though the death happens at the Lakes.

Despite the imagery, this is not a Romantic rebirth. Begetting a new life is the juxtaposition of two things Taylor once romanticized toward opposite extremes—a red rose for beauty and an ice frozen ground for tragedy—with her simple refusal that either be distorted as externalities of her experience.

This final stanza is wide open for interpretation with regards to the story of the two lovers. It allows a priori all permutations of Taylor and/or her muse experiencing rebirth as the red rose and/or the frozen ground:

Taylor and her lover experience a rebirth together

Taylor is the red rose and her lover is the ice frozen ground

Taylor is the ice frozen ground and her lover is the red rose

Taylor and her lover are indivisible: they are both the rose and the frozen ground

Taylor alone experiences a rebirth

Taylor is the rose

Taylor is the ice frozen ground

Taylor is the rose + ice frozen ground

The lover alone experiences a rebirth

The lover is the rose

The lover is the ice frozen ground

The lover is the rose + frozen ground

(2) and (3) make death at the end of “the lakes” purely sacrificial. This is inconsistent with the disproportionate emphasis placed on the lovers’ mutualism. I am thus inclined to dismiss (2) and (3) as consequences of combinatorics.

There are also two interpretations of the final lines of the bridge:

Taylor the Romantic is the implied ‘I’ overcome with grief; her muse is her calamitous love with whom she bathes

Taylor the Romantic possesses both calamitous love and insurmountable grief; her lover, as per usual, dies with her in secret

It is unclear which is the truth. Still, (1) is relatively straightforward: there are two entities said to bathe in the Lakes and two entities said to be involved in reincarnation.

There need not be ‘parity’ between old life and new (reincarnated) life with respect to the lovers’ relationship status. If Taylor’s muse dies, does her relationship dissolve? Or must her muse, who dies at Taylor’s side, be reborn at her side too? If Taylor declares her devotion to her lover before her death, does that ensure that they are together in perpetuity? Or is that sentiment purely a relic of her past life, in which case her love disappears anew? Perhaps the invisible string tying the lovers together bonds them in eternal life. Perhaps the string snaps. Which is the blessing and which is the curse?

Whatever you make of ‘parity’ in reincarnation, it is important to remember that Taylor insists the relationship between her and her muse is at least a spiritual or divine one—if not also a worldly one—for it exists in conjunction with her own metaphysic.

How does reincarnation betray Romanticism?

A. Taylor is the red rose and the lover is the ice frozen ground.

Taylor as the rose does not trivially align with a bygone Romanticism, for the rose epitomizes Romance. Key, therefore, is the line about tweeting. Taylor abhors the practice of cataloguing and oversharing in service of knowing something completely—effectively ‘modern’ Romanticism.

Digital overexposure is an occupational hazard [10], but Taylor refuses to let ‘modern’ Romanticism to become invasive this time around. New life shall not be defiled by social media. It shall remain pure by individual will. Though Taylor’s rebirth into a new life happens on land in America, that it does not become a hyperbole of local Twitter is the proverbial nail in the coffin of Romanticism, distortion in service of aesthetic.

Rose imagery also draws a direct parallel to “The Lucky One,” Taylor’s self-proclaimed meditation [11] on her worst fears of stardom. The “Rose Garden” in this song contextualizes the “lucky” one’s disappearance from the spotlight:

It was a few years later

I showed up here

And they still tell the legend of how you disappeared

How you took the money and your dignity, and got the hell out

They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere

Chose the Rose Garden over Madison Square

And it took some time, but I understand it now

Emphasis on individual choice in the aforementioned star’s return to normalcy bears a striking resemblance to the individualistic philosophy of “the lakes,” as exemplified by Taylor and her muse choosing to jump from the Windermere peaks and Taylor keeping her rose off social media. Mention of a “legend” that describes disappearance and simultaneous return elsewhere is another connection to the “the lakes.”

Taylor as the rose could alternatively represent a chromatic devolution of true love (“I once believed love was burnin’ red // but it’s golden”). That is, becoming a rose suggests she may have changed her mind back to believing that love is burning red. This more generally represents returning to the beginning of a journey that began in the Red era. Perhaps Taylor sees Red as the beginning of her calamitous Romanticism. She realizes by folklore the fears which she surveyed in “The Lucky One,” so choosing a new life presents an opportunity to protect post-Speak Now Taylor from self-inflicted wounds which fester and prove fatal to her Romantic. (In essence…time travel.)

Taylor’s lover, ice frozen ground, is reborn frigid not blazing, the opposite of their raging fire. Taming the lover’s wild essence renders it impossible for them to be a Romantic muse in a new life. If the two lovers do indeed share an eternal love, then death reveals a conscious choice not to glorify it.

Additionally, Taylor’s artist-hero imagination has no power in her new life. Taylor and her lover have effectively switched spots. All we previously knew of the lover’s secrets and secret death was from what Taylor wrote, so Taylor (for lack of a better phrase) concealed her lover. The lover, ice frozen ground, is now the one concealing Taylor, the rose. As a smothering but not razing force, Taylor’s lover thus is reincarnated into the role of a public protector. Reincarnation reveals that the death of Romanticism is abetted through the death of secrecy, which always allows distortion of truth.

Another possibility: the secrecy surrounding the lover is that they were the ice frozen ground. If Taylor confirms that the lover was something ‘tragic’ before, then after the death of Romanticism they counterintuitively may become beautiful. Or, the lover continues to be tragic, and paramount again is Taylor’s choice not to sensationalize her muse.

B. Taylor is the ice frozen ground and the lover is the red rose.

Many of the themes above apply to this interpretation too.

Taylor reborn as ice frozen ground does not change her essence from “hoax.” By not ‘shaking off’ a sadness with her rebirth, she subverts the usual expectation—a product of the many years devoted to fixing any and all criticism [12]—of artist-hero Taylor Swift.

The lover reborn as the red rose means their being surfaces where they once were hidden and/or that they are not the golden love they had been in reputation, Lover, and “invisible string.” New life brings the bright, burning “red” emotions. Either what was once very bad is now very good and vice versa, or these emotions are simply not very anything because Taylor doesn’t want to sensationalize them as a pastiche of Red. If Taylor’s love is eternal, then she will be more subdued when sharing it; if it is not eternal, then she will simply move on.

This interpretation implies that Taylor’s Rose Garden is eternal love without the necessity of elevating her partner to Romantic muse status. No one being around to tweet the rose bursting through the ice means that Taylor alone gets to appreciate her lover for their pure essence before modern society does—lest the lover be perceived at all.

C. Taylor and her lover are indivisible: they are both the rose and the frozen ground

Taylor’s “twisted knife”/“sleepless night”/“winless fight” froze her ground but her lover’s “sleight of hand” made the land barren, unable to sustain life. The two lovers are emotionally at odds, but Romanticism acts as the “synthesizing faculty” which unites them in their old life.

The metaphor of the rose and frozen ground does not work without each part. It is possible that the lovers remain equally united in their new life; the lovers’ spiritual connection yields unity after reincarnation. Abiogenesis is therefore the phenomenon which betrays Romanticism. The lovers exist alongside each other naturally, not because they are opposites which Romanticism has forced together.

This is probably the most lighthearted interpretation of the last stanza in “the lakes.” Extreme hardship helps the lovers grow, and they remain intertwined through eternity.

——

The geographic elegy of folklore is that for Taylor’s giant, her Romantic, something both treasured and despised right until its end. (How appropriately meta.)

This raises the question: what replaces it?

Nothing.

folklore can—and perhaps should—be understood as a Transcendental work rather than a Romantic one. From this angle, Romanticism is that which prevented Taylor from connecting with something deeper within herself, something more eternal.

“Transcendental” does not mean “transcendent” or beyond human experience altogether, but something through which experience is made possible. [13]

Transcendentalism and Romanticism were two literary and philosophical movements that occurred during roughly the same time period [14]. Romanticism dominated England, Germany, and France in the late 18th and early 19th centuries slightly before Transcendentalism swept through America in the mid-1800s.

The two movements heavily influenced [15] each other. Transcendentalists and Romantics shared an appreciation for nature, doubt of (Calvinist) religious dogma, and an ambivalence or dislike of society and its institutions as corrupting forces. We see Taylor align herself with these ideas by the end of the album. “the lakes” holds a reverence of the natural world, disregard of predestination, and contempt for Twitter.

But Transcendentalism sharply diverged from Romanticism along the axis of faith. Transcendentalism thrived as a religious movement that emphasized individualism as a means for self-growth and, in particular, achieving a personal, highly spiritualized [16] understanding of God:

For many of the transcendentalists the term “transcendentalism” represented nothing so technical as an inquiry into the presuppositions of human experience, but a new confidence in and appreciation of the mind’s powers, and a modern, non-doctrinal spirituality. The transcendentalist, Emerson states, believes in miracles, conceived as “the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light and power…”

Romantics, for instance, viewed nature as a source of imagination, inspiration, and enlightenment, whereas Transcendentalists saw nature as a vessel for exploring spirituality. Transcendentalists believed in an innate goodness of people for possession of a divine inner light [17]. Occupied with the perverse and disparate, Romantics believed people were capable both of great good and terrible evil.

It’s tempting to scope Taylor’s shift from Romanticism to Transcendentalism to this album alone. It’s true that folklore is filled with individualism, a hallmark of Transcendentalist philosophy. However, I argue that spirituality reveals a journey towards Transcendentalism that began well before folklore.

Consider the evolution of faith from reputation to Lover. Taylor places more emphasis on personal spirituality as she becomes increasingly disillusioned with organized religion/religious dogma. In “Don’t Blame Me,” Taylor defies religious convictions in favor of chasing the high of her forbidden love. Then her quiet and private life with her lover in “Cornelia Street” advances whatever traditional religious beliefs she possessed towards a self-defined spirituality (“sacred new beginnings that became my religion”). Individual spiritual enlightenment and religious conviction become mutually exclusive by the end of Lover, for the lovers would still worship their love even if it is a “false god.”

The final scene proves most important for establishing the album’s philosophy. In the end of “the lakes.” Taylor chooses death and is reincarnated into new life, kept pure also by individual will. (It should be noted that Transcendentalism was heavily influenced [18] by Indian religions, of which reincarnation is a central tenet.) Choosing reincarnation—to the extent that one even can—reflects a greater understanding of oneself. Choice, the ultimate power granted in the self, engenders spirituality. It is the means by which one follows a divine, guiding spark (i.e. “inner light”) in search of connection with others and the natural world. The album’s ending marries individualism with spirituality, which makes Taylor a true champion of Transcendentalism.

——

Transcendentalism is considered one of the most dominant American intellectual movements. Exploring the significance of Transcendentalist Taylor Swift is a rather unimaginative end to this essay. If we try hard enough, we will always be able to connect its philosophy to any art that exists in conversation with American culture.

Perhaps a more gripping conclusion comes from the assertion that philosophy doesn’t matter…

…at least, not in the way this essay regards philosophy as the ultimate Point.

So identifiable is the geographic motif in Taylor’s work that it is nearly impossible to ignore. This is especially true for folklore, an album that would literally not be folkloric if not for the blending of reality and fiction, real location and setting elevated as metaphor. So moving, moreover, is the grief at folklore’s core that it is natural to wonder what else it could represent. Hence, this essay’s charade of poking around both to see if they convey a deeper meaning.

A strong philosophical foundation establishes the ethos of art, that with which we resonate. However, we will never know to what philosophy Taylor subscribes. The interaction between her beliefs, creative spirit, and innate sense of self will always be a mystery. Any and all conclusions about the philosophical foundations of her art thus (1) are highly subjective and (2) reveal more about the ones making them than about Taylor herself.

Ironically, it is paramount to appreciate Taylor’s (Romantic) style above all else. The ways she uses basic building blocks of literature—theme, imagery, mood, setting, to name a few—piques curiosity. After all, without those building blocks, one would not be able to cultivate (should they so desire) an interest in the metaphorical, philosophical, or otherwise profound.

——

Disclaimer: this essay references (explicitly and implicitly, by way of citing expanded theoretical work) the ideas of Emerson and Heidegger, two preeminent thinkers whose ideas have had especially deep and lasting impacts on society. They are also two individuals noted to have had poor and even abhorrent political/personal views. I do not condone their views by referencing any ideas connected to these individuals (done mostly in service of rigor). I furthermore leave the task of generating nuance to those who dedicate their lives to critical examination of these individuals’ personal philosophies and the impact of their work on society.

#folklore analysis #gaylor swift #music analysis #my post

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fudeh · 3 years

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look i understand that raya is a great first step in representation in mainstream (see: north american/generally western media) but i guess keep in mind that being the first or a big step, esp when we are exposed and educated about a lot of international history, that the movie is not free from criticism??

and keep in mind that most of Southeast Asia, like most of the colonized world, is still dealing with the aftermath of colonialism, imperialism and Western influence in general. like 90% of the region was ravaged by the west except thailand and perhaps some others which i am not familiar with, and not every country has bounced back.

ive seen some native vs diaspora SEAsian discourse and while the frustrations of both sides are valid, i feel efforts are better spent looking at the larger issue vs like saying one type of asian's experience and reaction to the movie is more or less valid than the other

like yes, this is kids media, this will objectively be a good movie because of disney pixar's track record, and it will be great for all the young Southeast Asians away from their home country to experience. seeing yourself in popular media is immensely powerful and inspiring and its a great way to bust that dam and get more stories out there

but the amalgamation of cultures into a muddied mess, the way this movie might unintentionally become a monolithic narrative of the region, the possible worsening of tokenization and gentrification of the cultures of these countries, the largely east asian casting choice (taking into account the dominance that east Asian media, beauty standards and economy has a gorilla grip on the region) ( and akwafina??? really???), the fact that Disney+ isn't available in the region (except in Singapore where i am) and the great irony that is a western media giant is essentially going to sell a SEAsian inspired story back to the region

just...

lol...

the movie can be both critically acclaimed and critically consumed, they aren't mutually exclusive

#Andre talks #Do not rb thx #I am seeing it tomorrow so i will have a clearer idea and will maybe eat my words #Also again... Singapore is SEA-lite #And i have no specific tangible culture to my ethnicity aside from food and language due to being from a Creole community that formed out #Of the colonization of indigenous malayan people from 1500s to 1800s #Malayan and Indonesian people i guess #There will be many more articulate people than me #Esp scholars #I just have a lot of thoughts about the movie #And i have a lab report which is like nails on a chalkboard so this is infinitely better to talk about than doing my work #Also i am one Asian and my opinion isn't the only one and I'm sure there will also be many seasians native and diasporic who will disagree #if someone reblogs this ur getting blocked #and like again very privilged position as a singaporean #at least we have a movie about us!!!#ya one where its personality is largely consumerist classist and capitalist...#and still very much dominated by the chnese racial majority #where the native malayan people are almost entirely excluded from in favor of chines xtians #henry golding gets a pass bc hes half iban... but also half white...

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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I’ve been keeping an eye on Europe lately, and on France in particular. As I’ve tried to articulate here previously, the era of general upheaval underway is hardly a phenomenon limited to the United States. Instead, propelled everywhere by the same fundamental forces, it appears to be playing out in a more or less similar fashion all across the Western world, and perhaps beyond. In this regard France serves as an especially instructive example, as recent events have served to highlight in striking fashion.

In short, recent national controversy over a pair of open letters directed to the government by a collection of retired and active-duty military officers has not only spawned a month of political controversy in France, but revealed deeper dynamics at work in the country that may help provide a clearer picture of what’s happening everywhere.

On April 21, twenty retired French generals published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron and the French government in the right-wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles (Today’s Values) denouncing “the disintegration that is affecting our country,” and explaining they were speaking out because “the hour is late, France is in peril, and many mortal dangers threaten her.”

…

Initially, the letter was dismissed as mere “eccentric nationalist nostalgia by octogenarian retirees,” as the British Financial Times put it, and the government appeared content to ignore it. The then head of France’s General Directorate for Internal Security, Patrick Calvar, had already warned that France was “on the edge of a civil war” as early as 2016, so this kind of thing was old news. But that changed as soon as Marine Le Pen – the leader of the right-wing Rassemblement National (National Rally) party who polls show is likely to again be Macron’s top rival in presidential elections next year – endorsed the letter, saying “it was the duty of all French patriots, wherever they are from, to rise up to restore – and indeed save – the country.”

Public conversation in France turned to politicization of the armed forces and whether the letter’s final lines were a call for a military coup d'état (the fact that the letter was published on the 60th anniversary of a failed generals’ putsch against President Charles de Gaulle in 1961 providing evidence for this in the view of many). General François Lecointre, armed forces chief of staff, stated that while “at first I said to myself that it wasn’t very significant,” at least 18 active military personnel had been found to have been among the more than 1,500 people who also signed the letter. “That I cannot accept,” he said, because “the neutrality of the armed forces is essential.” They would all be punished, while any of the generals still in the reserves would be forced into full retirement as part of “an exceptional measure, that we will launch immediately at the request of the defense minister.” Still, the government’s ministers emphasized that the signatories were nothing more than an isolated and irrelevant minority in the military.

But soon enough, on May 10, a second letter appeared, again published in Valeurs Actuelles, this time by more than 2,000 serving soldiers writing in support of the first letter’s retired generals, accusing the government of having sullied their reputations when “their only fault is to love their country and to mourn its visible decline.”

…

The second letter, this time open to the public to sign, attracted (as of the end of last week) more than 287,000 signatures.

Again came exasperated reactions from many ministers and observers. But what is most remarkable, in my view, is how little enthusiasm most seemed to have for challenging the basic premises of the letters: that France is in a state of growing fracture and even dissolution. Instead, the focus of controversy was once again on the military taking a political position.

…

But perhaps my favorite example was that of (retired) General Jérôme Pellistrandi, chief editor at the magazine Revue Défense Nationale, who prefaced his otherwise sharp criticism of the outspoken soldiers with: “Everyone agrees that society is breaking up, it’s a known fact, but…”

What was going on here? Since when do government officials reflexively agree that their country is falling apart? Well, it turns out that a rather shockingly high proportion of the French public seems to agree with the sentiments the letters expressed. The following chart, created from the results of a Harris Interactive opinion poll taken April 29, after the first letter, is in my view one of the most striking statements about the political mood in a Western country that you’re likely to see for some time:

…

So, to break this down, not only do 58% of the French public agree with the first letter’s sentiments about the country facing disintegration, but so do nearly half of Macron’s own governing party, the centrist En Marche. Awkward. Nor are those sentiments limited to any one part of the political spectrum, even if the right is more sympathetic overall. Far-left party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon may have quickly declared that the “mutinous and cowardly” soldiers who signed the letter would all be purged from the army if he were elected, but 43% of his party seem to share their concerns.

But that’s not even the whole of it – an amazing 74% of poll respondents said they thought French society was collapsing, while no less than 45% agreed that France “will soon have a civil war.”

…

And, in short, both countries are clearly facing at least one of the defining characteristics of the Upheaval: the collapse of any agreed upon and consistently accepted authority. It is notable that, in both countries (at least until recently) there is only one institution that still garners relatively widespread respect: the military. (And French generals aren’t the only ones trying to capitalize on this with controversial open letters.)

Second, there is the key detail – almost entirely skipped over in the English-language press in favor of focusing on the anti-immigration angle, as far as I’ve seen – of the “anti-racism,” “decolonialism,” and “communitarianism” decried in the two letters as contributing to national dissolution. This is rather unmistakably a reference to the amalgamated, zealously anti-traditional and anti-liberal ideology of the “New Faith” – alternately referred to as Anti-Racism, the Social Justice movement, Critical Theory, identity politics, neo-Marxism, or Wokeness, among other synonymous infamies – that I’ve previously identified as one of the key revolutionary dynamics of our present era.

Let me repeat this proposition again: no revolution has ever remained contained by national borders. The New Faith is a trans-national ideological movement, which can no more remain confined to the United States than it remained confined within the American academy where it matured (it was arguably born in, well… France). And it is more than capable of rapidly adapting itself to and flourishing within whatever national context it penetrates. But, wherever it goes, it’s just as disruptive to the foundations of social and political order.

…

Finally, what’s striking about the situation in France is that every driving factor appears set to only get worse. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the divide between rich and poor; Europe’s economic recovery has been shaky; the ideology of the New Faith is likely to prove more difficult for the French to combat than they expect (the foundation of the established order having been hollowed out over a very long period of time); and the identitarian culture war is likely to only heat up, especially with elections approaching in which Le Pen appears to have a decent chance of actually winning (an outcome that could accelerate political and cultural fracturing, as Donald Trump’s election did in the United States).

…

It is notable that every one of these trends, including climate-induced migration, is featured in the U.S. Intelligence Community’s rather ominous recent report evaluating where the world is headed over the next five years, which I’ve written on previously. (Several readers have written to me to criticize my lack of discussion of climate change as a factor in both that post and my essay introducing the Upheaval – well fair enough, though I am uncertain about how much the climate issue has actually driven the turmoil we’re already seeing so far today, as opposed to what we may see in the future.)

France thus seems set to function as an ahead-of-the-curve epicenter for the Upheaval in Europe. No wonder the French are so pessimistic…

#n. s. lyons #substack #france

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sasorikigai · 3 years

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English is not my first language I am sorry. I am asking what Hanzo would react if he learned his partner was pregnant, and had been attacked? Sorry I am French.

Random Inbox Shenanigans || anonymous || always accepting!

No worries! English isn’t my native language either, despite me being more American than Korean. I’m also a byelingual who struggles with English from time to time, but there was a bit of a confusion there with the original ask, as I asked clarification to some of my mutual native English speakers.

Anyhow, because intense feelings and emotions underpin every aspect of Hanzo Hasashi’s relationships, alongside not just a tendency towards, but a need for, what I would call ‘THREE D’S;’ DEDICATION, DUTIFULNESS, and DEVOTION. While Hanzo may have a certain air of mystifying quality and enigma to solemn austerity and intensity as an external armor he wears, his passion and sentiments are extremely genuine and utterly candor. He does not lie, lest he withholds certain qualities of his emotions, but they are, as it should be, passionate, visceral, and poignant.

Looking back at Hanzo and Harumi’s relationship, one can very much tell the fact that he is ride or die. If his partner is pregnant, you can bet on that their relationship is endgame. They are going to be ‘til death do part and even beyond. And Hanzo Hasashi also has made a clear and unequivocal decision to hold her deep in his heart, even as he gets into another relationship, and however difficult and strenuous he may become - there may be instances that he may think he doesn’t DESERVE to be in a relationship out of amalgam of guilt, fear, self-consciousness, remorse, etc. but when he does, he will become extremely protective and sometimes be a possessive and demanding lover.

Regardless of his s/o being a kombatant or a non-kombatant, as seen in the case of Harumi (non-kombatant, lest she would know how to defend herself against threats, but none like Bi-Han/Sub-Zero in canon) and Kuai Liang (perhaps the most powerful cryomancer known to Earthrealm, a formidable warrior whom Hanzo/Scorpion has defeated, but has been defeated in return by multitudes of their battles), Hanzo would get extremely worried regardless.

He would abandon any responsibility at hand and tend to his s/o. There may be magmatic, perpetual anger dwelling immolating him from within; for Hanzo will always blame himself for never being enough, considering he had lost the entire Shirai Ryu not once, but twice (if you count the MKX comics as canon, which I do), under the disadvantageous positions and dishonorable tactics (despite being a formidable, strong warrior, he did not wield elemental powers as Bi-Han did nor the Shirai Ryu prepared for the Lin Kuei’s onslaught under Quan Chi’s command, and with Blood Code, as Forrest Fox dismantled the entire Shirai Ryu from within).

#✗ obsessive cathartic (headcanon)#✗ the ineffable testimony of spawned hellfire (scorpion)#✗ seeking reconciliation with his own humanity (iii)#✗ hellfire fibrillating beneath his skin (iv)#✗ an innocuous unknown (anonymous messages)#Anonymous

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irregularjohnnywiggins · 3 years

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Kay, so I found this old story idea I had a while back but never really did anything with, and I figured hey, I've got 300+ prisoners beloved followers who for some reason put up with my garbage, so might as well inflict this upon them.

That being said, welcome to what I call The Department for the Colonisation of Childhood Whimsey.

So our story starts with a little girl called Dee.

Dee lives in the UK, in a council estate. When she was a kid, there wasn't all that much space to play or do the things richer middle-class kids got to do. Her parents house didn't have a garden, the local streets were too dangerous for a child to go out and play in, and the house itself was cramped and crowded.

Despite this, Dee had what could charitably be called an overactive imagination, an imagination she channelled into two things: a plastic triceratops toy she called Sarah, and a book - a blank book of A4 paper that had coffee stains on it and papers falling out when she got it - that she claimed had a magical power: anything written in the book would come true.

Cut to a few years later. Dee is in high school, and like a typical teenager she's moved on from her childish dreams. That is, until one day when Sarah the triceratops approaches her after school and tells her she's in danger.

So, yeah, pretty basic beginning, you've probably seen fifty books that start out like this, and that's all I wrote back when I was actually trying to make this a thing. However, one thing I always do vis-a-vis my writing style is worldbuild, and it's the worldbuilding that I'm really keen on with this idea. So, let's talk about that:

The actual premise of the story is simple: at some point in the 1960s, the British government came to the conclusion that the British Empire was more or less doomed. Not only was the post-war economy not capable of sustaining an empire, not only was the Cold War between the Americans and the Russians ravaging them, but an increased awareness of the plight of one's fellow man was inspiring many people - not just in the colonies but in England too - to demand independence. No matter how hard they tried, Parliament could not forsee a solution that the people would accept where the British Empire continued.

So, a solution was posed. For the past hundred years or so, the government had been made aware of the existence of pockets of space-time created by people with active enough imaginations. From Neverland to Oz, from the Hundred Acre Wood to Wonderland, these places had resources beyond any place on Earth - magic, especially. If the public would not countenance colonisation where they could see it, then perhaps the solution would be to colonise somewhere they could not see?

Thus, the British Empire never really died. It simply... moved.

Cut to the present day, and the Department for the Colonisation of Childhood Whimsey is still going strong. Almost every parallel world is under their control, and the profits of these regions are beyond belief. However, rather naturally for stories like this there is a resistance movement, that seeks to free the imaginary lands from the Department. Although they are small and weak, they have had several worthwhile victories over the Department in the past few months, and the higher-ups in the Department, including the shadowy and little-seen Director, want all such resistance movements stamped out.

This, rather naturally, is where Dee steps in.

Every generation, one in a million people have the ability to shape the forces of Imagination itself, and the stories these people tell, and others tell after them, become reality in the Imaginarium. These people become known as Imagineers, and Dee is one such person. However, the lack of much real output for this power has led to most of it being placed inside The Book, which has led to a fascinating feedback loop - Dee's Book not only influences the Imaginarium, it influences physical reality itself to a certain extent. Thus, the Department need simply write in the book that the resistance movement does not exist, and it will be so. The resistance, naturally enough, are not down with this, and have sent Dee's childhood friend to bring her and the book back to them, to keep them safe.

There's also a ton of other small worldbuilding touches I came up with, chief among them being the thing the Department sends to collect Dee - a Stalker, the amalgamation of that seemingly universal childhood experience of that thing that followed your car on long journeys. But a couple of words on the characters:

The leader of the resistance is Peter Pan, because of course he is, why wouldn't he be? He's much more of the capricious, vaguely fae Pan of the book, not exactly evil but very much ammoral and childish. He's mainly invested in reclaiming Neverland, the Lost Boys, and Tinkerbell, although there is the subtext of him using the Department as an example of the inevitable consequences of growing up - although he's completely forgotten Hook, like he does in the book, he's still looking for that antagonistic relationship with a grown-up.

Peter's second-in-command and the one really running the resistance is Princess Ozma, who's much more... agreeable than Pan. Oz has been colonised too, but Ozma is still in nominal control of it, and she supplies the resistance with all the resources she can, although she can't openly work against the Department because the CIA branch of it has Dorothy imprisoned and are basically pulling a 'we have your wife' scenario on her.

The third key player in the resistance is Alice Liddel, who provides the resistance with shelter and safe passage - the Department has been having little success applying the logic of supply chains and regimented exterminations to a place as willfully chaotic as Wonderland.

The rest of the resistance are mainly heroic characters from other public domain stories, although some of the heroes are working for the Department, either willingly or because they're coerced, but one of the other main characters - and Dee's eventual love interest - is a character called many things, but most commonly Insert.

Insert is... complicated. Like the Stalker, they're an amalgamation of a certain new-fangled trend - namely, they're every self-insert character that's ever been written. Naturally, they have a habit of... changing, at random intervals. On any given day, they're any gender, of any ethnicity, of any sexual orientation, and with backstories ranging from an officer on a starship in the far future to a student at a school of magic in Scotland. Given literally everything about them is eternally mutable - including their allegiance to the resistance or the Department - the resistance members treat them with some distrust, a distrust that Dee generally doesn't share. Their relationship is pretty rocky at first - Dee thinks Insert is only interested in her because she can use The Book to give them a concrete identity, Insert is angrt when she reveals this because the constant shifting is just who they are, they don't want to be bound down, and later on there is a genuine dilemma of whether or not Insert is interested in Dee by their own choice or because she's clearly the protagonist and a key part of their identity in a lot of their lives is to be shipped with the protagonist. Also, obvious joke but at several points Insert turns into Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, because of course they do.

The Department's side isn't that interesting - it's a whole load of villains, some of the more... problematique heroes, and a few hundred grunts. The most interesting character is The Director. He's never seen, even by the highest ranking members of the Department, and no-one knows anything about him other than his gender. Everyone in the resistance has a different theory of who he is - Pan has a suspicion he may have faced him before, Ozma thinks its the Nome King, Alice the Jabberwocky, and Insert fluctuates, as is their nature, although the top two choices are Voldemort or Dumbledore.

It's Dee, however, who figures out the truth, when captured by the Department. The others couldn't possibly know him, but Dee's heard his voice before, in her history classes.

The Director of the Department is Winston Churchill, made immortal by the collective consensus of him as The War-Time Leader. Unfortunately for the whitewashers of history, the immortal they created isn't the brave fighter of tyranny, but the actual Churchill, warts and all, the man who starved over two million Indians out of spite and neglectfulness. Dee being a descendant of Indian immigrants, this meeting isn't perhaps the best one.

There are side effects to the Director's immortality, however. Since the perception of Churchill is tied so deeply to his speeches, to the voice on the radio, that's all he is now. He wants The Book to give him back a body again, and the Department is basically a means to that end.

That's about all I'd concretely plotted out, otherwise I just had random ideas for sequels:

The America Book, where the resistance goes to rescue Dorothy from the CIA version of the Department, which is located under a theme park that is as close to Disneyland as it is possible to be. Naturally, the head of the American Department is Walt Disney's cryogenically frozen head.

The India Book, because a book about British colonialism has got to touch on India at some point. I haven't gotten far in this one, but one idea was that there would be an ongoing war between the native myths and legends - Hindu mythology, the Mahabharata and such - and what is derisively referred to as the 'imports' - namely, the Jungle Book. Again, no idea how this resolves itself, and frankly as a Brit myself I am in no way equipped to tell a story about India, but food for thought.

That's basically it. This isn't a 'here's something to hype up this series' thing - this is an idea I had, I did some thinking about it, but other things happened and I'm kinda splurging this so anyone else who wants to do this idea can pick it up. If you write something like this, feel free to tell me and I'd love to hear about it.

#i write things #technically the point of this is I DON'T write things #but you get the point #peter pan #land of oz #alice in wonderland

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awenvs3000 · 3 years

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My Role in Nature Interpretation

How do you learn best? I am a rather even split between being a visual and an auditory learner. If you read my previous blog post where I detail my initial exposure to the concept of nature interpretation, you may be familiar with the impact that my father had on my current passions. I spent countless hours watching wildlife with him, listening to him tell me all about the local flora and fauna, absorbing all the information I could like a sponge. This auditory method of learning, which was accompanied by getting to observe the behavior of these creatures, was incredibly beneficial to me – much of this knowledge I still hold to this day.

One of the many species my father and I would watch through binoculars as he taught me about their morphology and ecological role. Gif from David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things, 2015.

Although I learn best through the use of visuals accompanied by narration, such as is seen in nature documentaries or videos, this isn’t the same for everyone. Others may learn best through hands-on experience, and being able to accommodate for different learning styles is imperative to being an effective nature interpreter.

My ideal role as an environmental interpreter is something that I have debated extensively over the past few years. I recently became a volunteer for Wild Ontario, which is a program that uses live raptors (non-releasable educational animals) as a means to teach about conservation and environmental stewardship. This program is akin to many that I was fortunate enough to be able to experience growing up – those memories of getting to interact with various educational animals still sticks in my mind, and I’m sure that many others (maybe even yourself!) share similar memories.

An American Kestrel, one of the eleven raptor species at Wild Ontario. Photo by Kenny, 2020.

Programs such as these have the ability to accommodate for all types of learners: visual learners get to watch the animals interact with their handlers and the environment around them, auditory learners benefit from the spoken teachings about the particular species, and (in some types of animal education, such as in demonstrations done by Sciensational Sssnakes, another local organization) tactile learners get to experience first-hand, up close and personal interactions with the animal in question. Although it may not seem like it, this type of work may be more of a form of nature interpretation than you may think. To me, environmental interpretation is all about being able to teach and inspire a passion for the natural world in others, and this is exactly what the folks at Wild Ontario strive to do.

A Honduran milk snake, photo taken while volunteering at a snake showcase at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Photo by A. Wilcox, 2020.

Although I am not completely decided on what my ideal role as an environmental interpreter would be or where it would take me, I am quite confident that it would involve some amalgamation of conservation and education. I love working with kids, and being able to do live demonstrations with non-releasable animals is something that I am really passionate about, as I’ve not only been that kid who had a passion ignite by attending similar events, I’ve also gotten to experience kids’ excitement when getting to interact with such fascinating animals.

A photo from a few summers ago as I assisted with an educational animal presentation at a local summer camp. Photo by E. Little, 2018.

Despite my uncertainty about where I’ll end up career-wise (maybe continuing to work in wildlife rehabilitation, or perhaps teaching at a field school), I am confident that it will include nature interpretation in some way or another, and I am looking forward to being able to further my public speaking skills, adapting the way I teach to encompass all learning styles, and being able to gain more experience with educational animal presentations.

Thanks for reading!

References:

Kenny. (2020). ‘American Kestrel’ [Digital Image]. Adobe Stock Images. https://stock.adobe.com/contributor/207819267/kenny?load_type=author&prev_url=detail&asset_id=212845671

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thisisnotartcritique · 3 years

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What is weird?

Italian sculptor, Fabio Viale, meticulously stabbing ink into a classical marble statue — modernizing and humanizing (or torturing) said artifact? But is iconography alone meaningful enough or creative use versus appropriation?

See: Laocoön, without his sons, and his body marred by giovanni da modena’s painting of Dante Inferno — who was he to be killed by the gods and his death immortalized?)

Is this weird?

AGO special exhibition of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s grotesque and gothic mind — from props, art, books, to his own library with rain sounds — showing his creative process? Do we measure an artist by the amalgamation of their work or only their masterpieces? Is film not collaborative?

High-five: Exhibiting The Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth, 2016 — a towering monster mostly physical yet enhanced by CGI, which is the real version? Are any of them art?

Is this weird?

Last year a mystery grad student’s project inspired Daniels Faculty students (& possibly staff) to hide infinite rubber ducks around the building? A rallying cry of support and perhaps desperation? A need for absurdity — return to Dadaism?

Note: Yellow is the school’s color, yellow washrooms, accents, and now… ducks

Or this?

The pile of sand with an hourglass on top at an AGO group art exhibition of Latin American artists? A recipe for visual literacy (meaning)? To easily understand?

Maybe this?

Acclaimed Indigenous artist, Brian Jungen, creating a basketball court at the AGO and transforming Air Jordans and Nikes to resemble headdresses and masks as a statement on commodity fetishism, sustainability, and culture?

Can in-depth exhibitions truly reveal and celebrate artists, especially living ones?

Or that?

Scandal: Anonymous activist artist group, Guerilla Girls, exposing the Met’s misogyny in posters on New York public buses? Driving women/men/non-binary people insane?

See: Rejected commission, appropriated painting, ad on buses until it was cancelled for being ‘too suggestive’ — how does anonymity benefit art? How can public art be bold?

Is this weird profitable?

Art Basel Miami goes bananas! Quirky Italian artist, Maurizio Cattelan, duct tapes a banana to the gallery wall, names it the Comedian, and sells it for $120,000! First edition eaten, second sold, third coming soon!

Who’s more absurd — the artist, the gallery, and/or the buyer? Is pricing not as subjective as art? What does this say about the capitalism, money laundering, and high art?

Note: The artworks at the fair were all priced a bit outrageously

Is this weird broke? Broke- broke- broken? Huh?

Similarly to the pieces Pete and Hans chose, Lei Xue creates porcelain white cans and paint blue motifs inspired by the Ming Dynasty — modern & beautiful “trash”.

A statement on mass production & waste, handcrafting, and history? Aesthetic, but is it powerful?

Who is weird? The ones who make it or the ones who don’t? (dead or alive)

See: Exhibition projecting Vincent Van Gogh’s works all over a five-storey building in Toronto. Can we profit off a dead’s artist’s work? What is success for artists? Should we support small indie artists instead of mega corporations?

Can we de-stigmatize mental illness for artists (and not make it both a marker and hurdle for success)?

If you want to be sad tonight, listen to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxHnRfhDmrk

Am I weird? Wired? Fired?

Why else would I be writing on this blog?

Is art weird? Is this weird?

Why?

Think again.

MMXX at your service

#theme:weird #mmxx

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thehiatusproject · 3 years

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It is in the quieter moments of this book where trauma persists. Of course, there are moments of loud, clear, visceral violence in these pages as well, but I don't remember those; perhaps they have amalgamated with the news from that time, with reports and documentaries and photographs. What I remember is the fear of an American wife when her Sikh husband goes missing. What I remember is how in the dead of night, a head was shaved, a secret was spilled, a family made the other. What I remember is how a police officer in a small town went against his duty to save those that his colleagues were targeting. I remember a charred gurudwara, a missing daughter, confused family members, and fear. This is where the trauma of 1984 exists and persists. Anyone who is from Delhi or has lived in Delhi has memories - eyewitness or interited - of what happened in 1984. My parents tell me what they saw, my aunt tells me about the mobs she heard coming from the roof, my grandmother recalls the name plates that were blackened and the families that were hidden. They remember the smoke, the chants, the crowd. The Night of Restless Spirits is as much about what happened in 1984, as it is about how it is remembered and recollected. It is as much about the days of attack and assassination, as it is about the generational trauma and even the silence of it. How in the most mundane moments of life, a memory of violence from even decades ago is capable of disorienting a person. There are only eight chapters in this book, but I could not read more than one or two at a time. I am moved and haunted by the voices in these stories, as much as I am grateful that they have been documented. Do pick it up from your local bookshop!

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ask-codeearasure · 4 years

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Questions and Answers

Question: Why did you combine Dreamtale and Mafiatale together for Dream and Nightmare?

Answer:

I did so because I thought it would be fun. I like to go with the most wacky and zany ideas because to me it’s fun. Think of Treasure Planet.

How can they breathe in space? Why are the spaceships like boats? I DON’T KNOW BUT IT’S FUN AND COOL AND FUCKING AMAZING!

I love that fun shit. Fuck serious shit, let me have my fun. But, also I like to add serious tones to it but the thing is, is that too much seriousness is not fun. Think of Teen Titans, it was a funny as shit show but also had serious undertones that would seemingly come up out of nowhere but it did so in a way that let the viewer take them seriously because of how they complimented the comedy. Angst and drama works in small bursts, but you can never have enough comedy. If you don’t let yourself have fun, you are going to lose interest in your own creation and no one wants that.

Also there was a deeper reason for this. A good while ago (fuck my memory) several people were having very serious issues with a guy called ManiaKnight, and his treatment towards people during these event things where he’d roleplay as several characters, such as Ink, Error and push narratives, however he’d use the characters to gaslight and manipulate those who had joined the events.

He made it all super dark, serious and edgy in the worst way possible and people wanted him to lighten it up via Dream. However for some reason Mania hated Dream and so out of spite he made Dream an Amalgamation, and thus normal Dream became a symbol of “Fuck you Mania” for the people who were tired if Mania’s bullshit.

A former friend of mine had vented to me about this so I designed Mafia!Dream to help encourage their “rebellion”. One thing led to another and here I am! We’ve been having fun with the characters since then.

Question: Is Error obsessed with Hazbin Hotel?

Answer:

No, I made a few Hazbin Hotel jokes in OOC because I fucking loved the pilot and couldn’t help myself because I’m a massive goober. Also FYI. Error is actually obsessed with Gambling, and doesn’t know Novella exists nor would he care that it exists.

My version of Error is not much like normal Error.

Question: Why’d you make Dream and Nightmare hoomans?? Nightmare looks like a onceler >:(

Answer:

The AU that my Nightmare and Dream are from requires them to go to the human world, so they need a human disguise. Thus they use illusions to make them look human. They’re not actually humans. They’re monsters with illusion magic. The humans in their AU don’t know that Monsters exist.

Let me elaborate, sorry for Spoilers.

Nightmare and Dream’s AU is extremely different from Dreamtale.

Mafia!Dreamtale is an AU where Dream and Nightmare are from two different realms of reality that they’re named after. The Nightmare Realm and the Dream Realm. Monsters are from these realms and consume desires and only feel certain emotions.

Dream Realm: They only feel Positive Emotions and eat Positive Desires

Nightmare Realm: They only feel Negative Emotions and eat Negative Desires.

They need to go to the human realm in order to collect these desires because the human realm is in the beginning of an Industrial Revolution and sleep has been practically outlawed because people are more concerned with progressing technology. In this AU Sleep Medicine and Alcohol are outlawed and give you time in prison if you’re caught with them.

Nightmare and Dream both make and sell these products. Nightmare sells alcohol, Dream sells Sleep Medication. Which is why they need to go to the human world and why they have the illusions.

Question: Are you tryna butcher every AU sans you come across gurl

Answer:

If by “butcher” you mean switch shit up and have fun. Then yes. Yes I am. I’m not trying to be accurate to the source material. You assuming that I’m trying to stay accurate to the source material is just that. An assumption. Not the truth.

Aren’t you tired of the same ideas over and over and over and over again? Let’s get extreme! Let’s go ham! LETS FUCKING GO! FUCK, KINGDOME HEARTS!TALE LETS GO -- okay but in all seriousness. Let’s look at all the AUs that we have. Where are the more zany ones? Where are some that just go weird and shit comes from seemingly left field before doing a nose dive into weirder territory? Why not have fun?

Fuck, I’ve seen Harry Potter meets My Little Pony fanfictions that are twice as fun than some of the AUs that I’ve seen.

Outertale is just Undertale but in Space! Can we go a little bit harder on the concept? Let’s push it just a little bit further. What else can we do with this concept? Are there space theme magic? What about when the monster’s die? Do they become dust? Stardust? Why not push the concept a bit further? What if they went supernova? What about that? Can we go further or are you just content with Undertale but in space? What if we made the story take place in the year 3000?

(Note: I don’t know much about Outertale. I only used it as an example.)

Question: Why is your Horror based on Japanese mythology?

Answer:

I wanted him to be different and I like going all out with my characters. I like basing them off of different things. I wanted my versions of the characters to be different. I didn’t want to be blatantly ripping off others. I know the originals are great! But I didn’t want to feel like I was ripping them off and claiming them as my own. But I also wanted to show off some individuality. I wanted to deviate for the sake of fun. I wanted to go all out. There is nothing wrong with changing things up.

Horror is actually mainly based off of the Blood Moon skins from League of Legends. But it got my interest in Japanese mythology going again so I decided to mix that in there BUT that is also because The Blood Moon Skins are based in Ionia a region on Runeterra (the world of League of Legends) that is based off of Japan and… well.. Asia in general. So I got those two things and mixed them together and started to switch shit up. Change the Blood Moon idea into something new! I want to make things different.

Question: Is Dust based off of Assassin’s Creed???

Answer:

I have never played Assassin’s Creed. The closest thing to it I’ve played is League of Legends’ Pyke, and Ekko; and with Watch_Dogs (the second one) but I haven’t gotten past the first level because I had to focus on my college education and I haven’t had the time to play through it.

Dust is based off of Alice in Wonderland, Alice: Through the Looking Glass, American McGee’s Alice, Alice: the Madness Returns, Dr. Spencer Ried from Criminal Minds, Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bamg Theory, Ekko the Boy Who Shattered Time from League of Legends, Visual Kei, and the image in this Youtube video: https://youtu.be/jJ0qDlyrGow

It’s weird that you came to such a conclusion because everyone else keeps telling me he looks like he’s from Kingdom Hearts, which is hilarious! Dear god, I don’t see either! Someone needs to break this down to me because I must be fucking blind.

(Ps. Please send the music artists in that video love, adoration, support, and money. They’re amazing and need more of everything positive.)

Question: Killer looks like a walking JoJo reference!!! Is he??

Answer:

Nope. I didn’t even watch Jojo when I designed him -- which reminds me I still need to binge the show. Killer is actually based off of Tanya Degurechaff from Saga of Tanya the Evil, and Edward Elric from FullMetal Alchemist and FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

His story will barely even reflect this. And I know what you’re thinking “So original/sarcasm” well there is no such thing as originality. As an artist (which writing even falls under). Everything is inspired and based on something.

To quote Picasso “Good artists copy, Great artists steal”. Now this can be taken in a horrible way but it’s talking about technique. You can steal a technique and those techniques are something you are even taught in art school. You can take inspirations and those inspirations are dependent on how they are used. In this context, the technique is a trope. Tropes are dependent on how they are used and executed. And yes I might switch up Killer’s design a bit, but at the same time I like his design but I don’t think I will change it right now, I need to think about it, because now that I think about it, it’s not much of a military uniform but that’s because of his jacket. I will have to add a bit more detail to his uniform. Also the shadow behind him is a visual signifier of the Chara part of his soul (he absorbed Chara’s Soul but her soul is still active) which is awake and can still talk, but it's more like she is talking through him a voice emanating from his soul -- perhaps that’s why he looks so… Jojo-y?... I’m going to have to go through his design with a fine tooth comb to switch it up a little more.

“Question:” WHY IS BERRY TOO CUTE AND TOO MUCH OF A BABIE!! I HATE THOSE KIND OF BERRIES AND I WANNA MURDER THAT THING FGHJKL!!!!!!111!!

Answer:

That isn’t my problem bud. I don’t cater to anyone. If you think he’s too cute, that’s not my problem. Hell I made him that way because my version of Berry -- Cyber!Berry -- is literally a 3 year old who is super intelligent but still a child. I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen a 3 year old, but they look so fucking cute. But if you don’t vibe with cute things… that’s a you thing, not a me thing.

It’s your problem. Not mine. You don’t have to like my designs.

“Question:” i hate ur characters, they made me cry because of how badly designed they are hurrrr durrrrr

Answer:

Not my problem, I’m not catering to anyone. You hating my characters doesn’t mean shit. After all, let's point out the obvious… it’s just your opinion. You don’t have to like my designs. They weren’t made specifically for you. They were made for fun not for you. I’m not going to cater to you. Do yourself a favor and go away and find something you do like,or find the best discount at Macy’s, or send your favorite creator love, because those things are better than wasting your time and more importantly mine and my friends’. If you wish to stay strictly to bitch, bemoan and troll, please cry directly into my coffee mug, your salty tears give me life.

#faq post #qna #Code: Erasure

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pensola · 4 years

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I still play Overwatch from time to time, not as much as I used to due to the changes they did to my most used heroes (thus making me not want to "connect" with other heroes in case they are changed), and the restrictions to the freedom of playing the game, but I still had a lot of thoughts on Echo, both positives and negatives, and I want to let them all out so that I can move on and perhaps.

I like that Echo has a cool non-normal name hero-moniker. I know this is not that big a deal for most, but as a casual fan of comic book heroes, I am always a little disappointed when a hero's moniker is just a name, like Moira. Sometimes it makes sense, and sometimes the names are a little cool and works as a moniker (like Ashe=Ash), but I still feel a tingling sense of disappointment. So Echo having this as a name is cool.

Being named Echo WILL make it a bit harder to find her tags unless one specifies "ow echo" and such, compared to names like Junkrat and Roadhog, but it is fine.

I do appreciate that they tried to explain why Echo has that very human and feminine face projector instead of the weird camera projector thing in the early concept arts; I see it as Liao either 1) trying to make an Omnic be as human-like as possible to make people feel comfortable with them, like just how they project emotions will reflect humans unlike Zenyatta's face, or 2) she wanted to make Echo's face like how she wishes her face was, because I am NOT going to lie and say I never made 'myself' in The Sims but how I wish I would look, or 3) she designed the face after how she looked like when she was younger and more innocent, or perhaps based the face on her daughter or another young, female figure in her life. Or a combination of the three, that her face is sort of an amalgamation of various female figures she has observed.

Mind you, appreciating the explanation does not equal LIKING that Echo has such a very feminine face, and even less how very, very feminine the rest of the body is sculpted out to be. I wouldn't mind a feminine-like body, it is just HOW very feminine it is that is uncomfortable.

I will keep in mind that they made Orisa as a female-oriented omnic that did definitely not look female before they made Echo, but it still is uncomfortable just HOW Echo's body is shaped to be very obviously feminine in a sexual way.

I can understand the feeling of disappointment that Liao, the only Chinese and one of only two female founders of Overwatch, is dead when the rest, 4/5 men, 3/5 light-skinned men from various countries over the world, and 2/5 American men, survived. Even the one dark-skinned Egyptian woman initially thought to be dead was alive, but the one Chinese, female founder is of course dead so that her Omnic, forever young-looking and forever VERY female-looking with an Apple-aesthetic that some people will relate with whiteness, replaces her.

It does not help that the other female-oriented omnic, Orisa, also has a woman of colour as her creator, but both these creators are in the background while the omnic is the playable hero. That can suck. At least Efi will be a main character in the novel currently in works, and her being a young child is a legitimate reason for her not engaging in battle.

I do wish they would put some focus on who created Zenyatta and Bastian, the other omnics that have been there since the beginning. I can totally understand if they had not thought about that when the game was made, that they initially just had them be "factory-made", and when making post-launch heroes they got all into the details of the new omnic's stories.

I was thinking this randomly, but man is it lucky that Harold Winston also wasn’t PoC who died and was replaced literally to his name by Winston the gorilla. That would have made it three named people of colour that were sidelined/killed for a non-human to be in the spotlight.

I am genuinely curious who the voice actor is; if she is Asian, or Singaporean, and if she speaks other languages than English. Has any information been released yet?

So far her dubli-ult lines seem to be a mix of the original voice and her own voice, but I hope they will stick to either 1) only the original voice but distorted/autotuned to resemble Echo's voice thus making it sound like she just taped them speaking and tried to adapt it, or 2) she imitates the voice line, and it is distorted/autotuned to sound like the original user's, but again, it sounds wrong/fake. The way they are doing it now is okay, but it feels a bit half-done when they try to have it both ways, and it throws me kind of off.

(I also personally think her ult should be nerfed so that her using her dubli-ult will take her back to her original form early; thus, players would have to consider whether to use the easily gained ult early, or to use the dublication for the full 15 seconds. Even with lower ult damage compared to the originals, one shouldn't be able to see three Dragonstrikes within 15 seconds because ults are supposed feel a bit more powerful and rare than that, in my personal opinion)

#overwatch #echo #ow echo #my thoughts #how many confirmed dead named characters ARE there in Overwatch anyway?#I know Widowmaker's husband #but Mercy and Baptiste's parents are just mentioned as that #Mei's team is sort of featured and make an impact I Guess?#Oh and Harold #man imagine if Harold was PoC too #I am curious what the fandom would think if Liao had been Mina Hansen instead of Liao

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freethoughtforall · 4 years

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Geopolitical Move of the CCP

Prelude and Disclaimers:

I am not a Scientist or Political Analyst, nor do I claim to be an expert in any field related to any of the following areas noted. I do not support nor intend to promote Xenophobia, racism, or acts of violence or hatred toward any group of people. This is merely a postulation, a pondering of thoughts. There are facts, theory, conjecture, and opinion intertwined here. Some of the sites and documents used to create some of the theory are mysteriously no longer available, my links go to unavailable sites, pages, and documents. What was available several weeks ago when I started taking notes is no longer available. So do your own research and make your own opinions.

I merely suggest that this is perhaps, not entirely random. While worldwide pandemics are known, this particular one came at a convenient time in the geopolitical environment. Know also that no government is absolute, all great governments and empires in the past have fallen or shrunk to a less formidable position. Examples: The Great Roman Empire ruled for 2026 years, The British Empire in its hey day lasted 394 years and reduced to its current size, and many others either empires or large nation states. They fall for many reasons, internal revolt and dissension, external attack from a rising power, or geopolitical changes. One thing is certain, world power changes. There is no guarantee.

Presently the United States has been the major world power for a good many years. Our currency, military, and world reach have been the major influencers in the global theater for a long time. Starting in 1898 with the Spanish American War the United States entered the world stage and began the start of our world presence as a superpower.

One thing is certain, if someone has power, someone else wants that power.

So, call me a conspiracy theorist, nut job, member of the tin foil club, or just an all-around loon, I really do not mind. This is just a thought expressed out loud. Perhaps it is a purposeful attempt at world economy disruption by a government bent on domination (not the first time it has been tried), maybe it was accidentally released due to careless procedures at a lab, or just a naturally occurring pandemic. Ultimately it is your call to make. What do you believe? Many things are not as innocent as they appear. But this is the situation China was waiting for, so intentional or convenient accident? You make the Call. But I do believe this is a possibility which has been floated in our government and perhaps (most likely) we are not being told the whole truth, and our government is attempting to prevent world conflict.

1960 – 1980:

China reforms its overall government and starts to support and lift its people at great cost financially and humanitarian missteps. KEYPOINT: 1976 - Mao dies. "Gang of Four", including Mao's widow, jockey for power but are arrested and convicted of crimes against the state. From 1977 Deng Xiaoping emerges as the dominant figure among pragmatists in the leadership. Under him, China undertakes far-reaching economic reforms. KEYPOINT: 1979 - Diplomatic relations established with the US. Government imposes one-child policy in effort to curb population growth.

1980 – 1990:

Continued growth and elevation of the people, beginning to be a world market player. KEYPOINTS: 1986-90 - China's "Open-door policy" opens the country to foreign investment and encourages development of a market economy and private sector. 1989 - Troops open fire on demonstrators who have camped for weeks in Tiananmen Square initially to demand the posthumous rehabilitation of former CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who was forced to resign in 1987. The official death toll is 200. International outrage leads to sanctions. 1989 - Jiang Zemin takes over as Chinese Communist Party general secretary from Zhao Ziyang, who refused to support martial law during the Tiananmen demonstrations. Stock markets open in Shanghai and Shenzhen.

1990 – 2000:

Securely entrenched in the world market, business relocate to China, China becomes major player in technology production and advancement.

KEYPOINTS: 1992 - Russia and China sign declaration restoring friendly ties. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) ranks China's economy as third largest in the world after the US and Japan. 1994 - China abolishes the official renminbi (RMB) currency exchange rate and fixes its first floating rate since 1949. 1995 - China tests missiles and holds military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, apparently to intimidate Taiwan during its presidential elections. 1996 - China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - dubbed the Shanghai Five - meet in Shanghai and agree to cooperate to combat ethnic and religious tensions in each other’s countries. 1997 - Deng Xiaoping dies, aged 92. Rioting erupts in Yining, Xinjiang and on day of Deng's funeral Xinjiang separatists’ plant three bombs on buses in Urumqi, Xinjiang, killing nine and injuring 74. Hong Kong reverts to Chinese control. 1998 - Zhu Rongji succeeds Li Peng as premier, announces reforms in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and continued deceleration of the economy. Thousands of state-owned enterprises are to be restructured through amalgamations, share flotations and bankruptcies. About four million civil service jobs to be axed. Large-scale flooding of the Yangtse, Songhua and Nenjiang rivers. 1999 - Nato bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, souring Sino-US relations. Falun Gong, a quasi-religious sect, outlawed as a threat to stability. Fiftieth anniversary of People's Republic of China on 1st October. Macao reverts to Chinese rule.

2000 – 2010:

Chinese technology and production now supply a large world market. China builds ghost cities to support its infrastructure industry. Intellectual theft, trademark violations, and increased production of “copy” knockoff items. Major technological companies move production to China.

KEYPOINTS: 2000 - Crackdown on official corruption intensifies, with the execution for bribe taking of a former deputy chairman of the National People's Congress. Bomb explosion kills up to 60 in Urumqi, Xinjiang. 2001 April - Diplomatic stand-off over the detention of an American spy plane and crew after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet. 2001 June - Leaders of China, Russia and four Central Asian states launch the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and sign an agreement to fight ethnic and religious militancy while promoting trade and investment. The group emerges when the Shanghai Five - China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - are joined by Uzbekistan. 2001 June - China carries out military exercises simulating an invasion of Taiwan, at the same time as the island's armed forces test their capability to defend Taiwan against a missile attack from China. 2001 November - China joins the World Trade Organization. 2002 July - The US says China is modernizing its military to make possible a forcible reunification with Taiwan. Beijing says its policy remains defensive. 2002 November - Vice-President Hu Jintao is named head of the ruling Communist Party, replacing Jiang Zemin, the outgoing president. Jiang is re-elected head of the influential Central Military Commission, which oversees the armed forces. 2003 March - National People's Congress elects Hu Jintao as president. He replaces Jiang Zemin, who steps down after 10 years in the post. 2003 March-April - China and Hong Kong are hit by the pneumonia-like Sars virus, thought to have originated in Guangdong province in November 2002. Strict quarantine measures are enforced to stop the disease spreading.

2003 June - Hong Kong is declared free of Sars. Days later the World Health Organization lifts its Sars-related travel warning for Beijing.

2003 June - China, India reach de facto agreement over status of Tibet and Sikkim in landmark cross-border trade agreement.

2003 July-August - Some 500,000 people march in Hong Kong against Article 23, a controversial anti-subversion bill. Two key Hong Kong government officials resign. The government shelves the bill.

2004 September - Former president Jiang Zemin stands down as army chief, three years ahead of schedule.

2005 January - Former reformist leader Zhao Ziyang dies. He opposed violent measures to end 1989's student protests and spent his last years under virtual house arrest.

Aircraft chartered for the Lunar New Year holiday make the first direct flights between China and Taiwan since 1949.

2005 March - Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa resigns. He is succeeded in June by Donald Tsang. New law on Taiwan calls for use of force should Taipei declare independence from mainland China.

2005 April - Relations with Japan deteriorate amid sometimes-violent anti-Japanese protests in Chinese cities, sparked by a Japanese textbook which China says glosses over Japan's World War II record.

Taiwan's National Party leader Lien Chan visits China for the first meeting between Nationalist and Communist Party leaders since 1949.

2005 August - China and Russia hold their first joint military exercises.

2006 November - African heads of state gather for a China-Africa summit in Beijing. Business deals worth nearly $2 billion are signed and China promises billions of dollars in loans and credits.

Government says pollution has degraded China's environment to a critical level, threatening health and social stability.

2007 January - Reports say China has carried out a missile test in space, shooting down an old weather satellite. The US, Japan and others express concern at China's military build-up.

2007 July - China's food and drug agency chief is executed for taking bribes. Food and drug scandals have sparked international fears about the safety of Chinese exports.

2008 March - Anti-China protests escalate into the worst violence Tibet has seen in 20 years, five months before Beijing hosts the Olympic Games.

Pro-Tibet activists in several countries focus world attention on the region by disrupting progress of the Olympic torch relay.

2008 July - China and Russia sign a treaty ending 40-year-old border dispute which led to armed clashes during the Cold War.

2008 September - Astronaut Zhai Zhigang completes China's first spacewalk during the country's third manned space mission, Shenzhou VII.

Nearly 53,000 Chinese children fall ill after drinking tainted milk, leading Premier Wen Jiabao to apologize for the scandal.

2008 November - The government announces a $586bn (£370bn) stimulus package to avoid the economy slowing. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao says the effect of the global financial crisis on China is worse than expected.

2009 February - Russia and China sign $25bn deal to supply China with oil for next 20 years in exchange for loans. Hillary Clinton calls for deeper US-China partnership on first overseas tour as secretary of state.

2009 July - Scores of people are killed and hundreds injured in the worst ethnic violence in decades as a protest in the restive Xinjiang region turns violent.

First sign of relaxation of strictly enforced one-child policy, as officials in Shanghai urge parents to have a second child in effort to counter effects of ageing population.

2010 – 2015:

China is a world power, on level with the United States, Russia, and Japan. In the world market the Chinese Renminbi however is not on the same playing field with the Dollar and the Yen in the world market.

The U.S. Dollar is the world standard. Many monies are used in trade but the Dollar is entrenched.

China needs and wants world recognition as a world power and wants to be the world financial leader, but the United States stands in the way.

KEYPOINTS: 2010 January - China posts a 17.7% rise in exports in December, suggesting it has overtaken Germany as the world's biggest exporter. The US calls on Beijing to investigate the cyber-attacks, saying China has tightened censorship. China condemns US criticism of its internet controls.

2010 March - The web giant Google ends its compliance with Chinese internet censorship and starts re-directing web searches to Hong Kong, in response to cyber-attacks on e-mail accounts of human rights activists.

2010 October - Jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is awarded Nobel Peace Prize, prompting official protests from Beijing.

Vice-President Xi Jinping named vice-chairman of powerful Central Military Commission, in a move widely seen as a step towards succeeding President Hu Jintao.

2011 February - China formally overtakes Japan to become the world's second-largest economy after Tokyo published figures showing a Japanese GDP rise of only four per cent in 2010.

2011 December - Southern fishing village of Wukan comes to international attention after violent protests by locals against land seizures by officials. Authorities respond by sacking two local officials and agreeing to villagers' key demands.

China issues new rules requiring users of microblogs to register personal details.

2012 January - Official figures suggest city dwellers outnumber China's rural population for the first time. Both imports and exports dip, raising concern that the global economic slowdown could be acting as a drag on growth.

2012 April - China ups the limit within which the yuan currency can fluctuate to 1% in trading against the US dollar, from 0.5%. The US welcomes the move, as it has been pressing China to let the yuan appreciate.

2012 May - Philippines and Chinese naval vessels confront one another off the Scarborough Shoal reef in the South China Sea. Both countries claim the reef, which may have significant reserves of oil and gas.

2012 September - China cancels ceremonies to mark the 40th anniversary of restored diplomatic ties with Japan because of a public flare-up over disputed islands in the East China Sea. Talks between China and Japan on security matters nonetheless go ahead.

China launches its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning - a converted former Soviet vessel.

2012 November - Communist Party holds congress expected to start a once-in-a-decade transfer of power to a new generation of leaders. Vice-President and heir apparent Xi Jinping takes over as party chief and assumes the presidency in March 2013.

2013 January - A Tibetan monk receives a suspended death sentence for inciting eight people to burn themselves to death. Nearly 100 Tibetans have set themselves on fire since 2009, many fatally, in apparent protest to Chinese rule.

2013 February - China denies allegations by Japan that its navy ships twice put radar locks on Japanese military vessels, amid mounting tension over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.

2013 November - Communist Party leadership announces plans to relax one-child policy, in force since 1979. Other reforms include the abolition of "re-education through labor" camps.

China says it has established a new Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over an area of the East China Sea, covering disputed islands controlled by Japan and a disputed South Korean-controlled rock. Japan and South Korea both protest the move, and the US voices concern.

2014 January - China allows foreign companies majority ownership of some telecom and internet services in the Shanghai free trade zone.

2014 February - China's trade surplus jumps to $31.9bn (£19.4bn) - up 14 per cent from a year earlier - easing concerns the world's second-largest economy may be stuck in a slowdown.

2014 May - The US charges five Chinese army officers with industrial cyber-espionage, in the first case of its kind.

A disagreement with Vietnam over disputed islands escalates, as ships from the two countries collide in the waters of the South China Sea. Chinese workers flee Vietnam after the incident sparks anti-China riots.

China signs a 30-year deal worth an estimated $400bn for gas supplies from Russia's Gazprom.

2014 September-October - Protests against Beijing's plans to vet candidates for elections in 2017 grip Hong Kong.

2015 – 2020:

KEYPOINTS: 2015 January - China's economic growth falls to its lowest level for more than 20 years - 7.4% percent in 2014. Government revises growth targets down.

2015 September - President Xi pays official visit to the United States to seek investment in China; agrees to renounce economic cyber-espionage.

2015 October - China expresses anger at US naval ship sailing by artificial reefs Beijing is building among disputed Spratly Islands in South China Sea.

The Communist Party announces it has decided to end the decades-old one-child policy.

2016 January - Economic growth in 2015 falls to lowest rate in 25 years (6.9%, down from 7.3% in 2014), and International Monetary Fund predicts further deceleration over next two years.

2017 January - The country's slow economic growth continues, with the 2016 marking its slowest growth (6.7%) since 1990.

2017 April - President Xi urges trade cooperation with the US at his first official meeting with US President Donald Trump in Florida.

2017 June - The government passes a new cyber security law, giving it more control over the data of foreign and domestic firms.

2017 July-August – Increased tensions with India over disputed area of Himalayas, where China says Indian troops were trespassing.

2017 October - Communist Party votes at its congress to enshrine Xi Jinping's name and ideology in its constitution, elevating him to the level as founder Mao Zedong.

2018 March - National People's Congress annual legislative meeting votes to remove a two-term limit on the presidency from the constitution, allowing Xi Jinping to remain in office for longer than the conventional decade for recent Chinese leaders.

2018 April - China announces it will impose 25% trade tariffs on a list of 106 US goods, including soybeans, cars, and orange juice, in retaliation for similar US tariffs on about 1,300 Chinese products.

2019 June - Hong Kong sees start of months of anti-government and pro-democracy protests, involving violent clashes with police, against a proposal to allow extradition to mainland China.

AND NOW:

China is becoming increasingly agitated with its inability to break into the world financial market and feels undervalued. They continue to build their military and test the waters to see response and ability of the U.S.

China realizes it is beyond its capability and would involve a major long and drawn out military conflict with U.S. to approach taking the U.S. dollar out militarily. They also do not have a legitimate reason to attack the U.S. militarily and world response to an unprovoked attack would be catastrophic to their cause.

China knows in order to elevate itself in the financial market the U.S. dollar must be crippled to the point it can no longer be trusted as the world standard used in trade.

Trade with the U.S. becomes strained as the Trump administration implements trade restrictions to bring in line the almost 300-billion-dollar trade difference between the countries.

China can no longer stand back and wait. Inside information shows that the United States and other countries are ill prepared to react to a pandemic. China investigates biological warfare to cripple the U.S. and the world market, allowing them a way in, on devalued world currencies.

China knows that it can not directly employ a biological weapon leading to human rights and Geneva Convention violations. Any attempt to do so could be easily traced back to China. China researches knew an unknown biological would work if the source was found to be organic. They also know that they cannot directly engineer a lethal biological as the genetic modifications to the biological will be found out when the biological is studied.

China in the past has been the host of many viral outbreaks and reports have shown that their “wet” markets are a ticking timebomb for another major outbreak. They find a Virus and study the effects on the host animals. They Identify it and cultivate it. They know that a direct genetic modification will be traceable and may not lead to them directly but will show that the virus has been artificially modified with DNA studies.

Genetic modifications can and do happen due to mutations as the virus spreads and adapts. This can take years. China knows it does not have years. Recent impacts from trade restrictions implemented by the United States and a growing watchful eye on Chinese economic development have the Chinese government on a fast track. At the time, the Level 4 containment lab in Wuhan was known to be working on a Corona Virus derived from a strain found in bats. Many papers written and published on it document this work. The lead scientist in this endeavor had been working with this virus and studying its transference preference, life cycle, and biologic attack method in the host. The virus is promising, it shows easy transference to humans and similar infection and mortality to the already existing SARS virus. However, though the virus transmits easily to humans, it lacks the receptors to invade human cells, thus not infecting humans. The known SARS virus and this new virus are genetically almost identical, a forced lab mutation can combine the easy transmission of the new virus with ability of the existing virus to infect humans. This provides a virus without gene modification markers and appears to be wild and a NOVEL strain of a similar virus already known to exist. There are only two potential reasons to perform this type of research. One, to weaponize it or Two to create the virus and the cure and be the sole purveyor of the cure for financial gain. Or a third, BOTH.

Once they have the mutated virus, they cultivate it. They then release it to the wild. Depositing it in wet markets where it is thought the next major outbreak may start. They have not thoroughly studied it enough to know how it will react in the wild nor do they have a cure. They do know it is not 100% lethal, but it is devastating. Releasing it in their own country gives it a point of origin, it also proves that the wet market theories were correct. China is willing to accept a large hit of civilian deaths in order to show that they were victims of this as well and it is no more than a tragic outbreak.

October 2019:

They release the virus in Wuhan. They watch hospital intake and study the spread and lethality.

November 2019:

Mid November they report a new illness, they can no longer keep it quiet, but they show it as contained to limited environment.

December 2019:

Mid December doctors are reporting increased cases and that they do not know how to treat this illness. They see it as a new outbreak of an unknown virus. China informs the World Health Organization (WHO) they have a new illness, but it is not transmitted human to human, it is not airborne, and it is isolated to a specific region.

Meanwhile they have determined it is human to human transmittable and they have already limited travel in and out of the affected region. China now is restricting citizen travel and keeping the infected source area completely isolated. Important to note, that they have actually known this for about 2 months and allowed international travel in out of Wuhan.

Late December they announce to the WHO they cannot contain the virus and it may be in the wild outside the country.

This has been their intent all along. Get the virus in the wild and allow it to proliferate long enough to bring worldwide impact.

They know that U.S. response will be slow, and the virus has been in the country for at least two months and spreading.

They under report their fatalities, hide cases, and show a massive response to prove to the world they are just as much under attack by this virus as all other nations. Meanwhile knowing the true affects, and that it primarily affects the old and those with underlying conditions. They know the young are less susceptible and exploit this, reporting that the young are immune, knowing that they can be asymptomatic carriers. They have studied the transmission and effects in their own country, they have unlimited resources to do so, as they can skip political and corporate interference and eliminate all evidence that they knew what the virus is capable of.

January 2020:

Early January the U.S. is told by the WHO and China that this is contained, and outside exposure is possible, be on the alert, but it is easily treated.

U.S. response is cautious but not effective.

Mid to late January world cases start to emerge and are noted. Italy and Spain note increased cases and deaths.

February 2020:

Due to increased cases and deaths in Italy and Spain and an apparent pandemic the WHO lists it as a pandemic. Mind you they know from reports that this was already taking place in early January or late December.

The U.S. responds by placing travel restrictions from China. Unknowingly assuming it is not already worldwide and spreading.

President Trump is attacked as being racist and xenophobic for blockading China and China responds in kind, supporting the racist claims. Chinas part of social discord and creating division.

Social distancing and lockdowns are postulated but not implemented. China already knows that our “social society” is spreading this disease. Major cities run by Trump opposing politicians support the racist claims and xenophobia telling people to go out have fun enjoy. China was hoping for this division.

March 2020:

Social distancing and stay at home orders start at the advice of the CDC through the president.

China knows the American people will not accept this, and states are slow to comply.

Know that China has already studied our possible reaction and that we are a consumer nation with unrestricted travel throughout our country. It will be near impossible to stop commercial air travel and vehicle travel around the country, thus the virus will continue to spread. Will it kill millions? No, but that was not their intent. The intent was to cripple the economy and devalue the U.S. Dollar.

The Shut Down of small business and any community interaction, have caused supply runs by panicked citizens. Major metropolitan areas like New York City and New Orleans who have seen recent events drawing people from around the country and the world are now reporting major cases and hospital overload.

Running Theory:

While China has a formidable military, this is not an arguable statement, while technology may differ and military implements are different, they have a massive number of bodies to throw into a battle. They do however know that in a face to face military battle they are at a heavy disadvantage due to tactics, overall equipment, and the ability to deploy worldwide.

China also knows that in order to take on the United States militarily they would need to prove the U.S. implemented, planned to implement, or physically attacked China. Without this world opinion would not be in their favor and would likely only have the support of limited communist block countries, and even they may not fully support China if world opinion and the U.N. is not on board with the reason.

Was the intent to create a war, kill millions of Americans, or provide a direct attack on U.S. soil? No, absolutely not. The intent was to create worldwide panic, worldwide financial distress, gage reaction to a pandemic, and collapse the U.S. Economy.

Why would that be important? If the initial virus does not cause the U.S. economy to collapse gaging the United States political response, civilian compliance, and medical ability to react will be vital in a second “mutation” and more virulent outbreak.

Why would the collapse of our economy be important? If the dollar becomes devalued and loses status as the primary world trade currency a new currency can be proposed and put in place. China wants this, financial superiority over the United States. They can then buy and back our currency which will make it dependent on China, making the United States dependent on China.

The United States is already heavily dependent on foreign production with China at or near the top of that list for many things. If the United States were dependent on China financially and for production, we would lose any of our current perceived independence.

So we move our production back here? Right? Well China now has us between the proverbial “rock and a hard place”. We can and they may even encourage it, but how? Our money is weak and China will gladly back our change, but in doing so, they will own a great deal of the production placed back here in the U.S.

In short, the Chinese intent was to take the United States place on the world financial stage.

The virus is now known not be naturally occurring. It was manipulated in a lab. It is also known that the level 4 lab in Wuhan was working on this exact virus. Papers written on the virus by scientists working at the lab were published and are available. Concerns were raised by the scientific community when scientists wanted to explore human transmission and creating a virus which could infect and be transmitted by humans. The question is raised, why? Weaponization? Creation of a virus and a vaccine which they would solely benefit from? Either or both would suit the need for crippling the world.

Chinese response and reported cases are under much scrutiny and their story keeps changing, which leads us to wonder where did it come from and how much is the Chinese government trying to cover up?

Origin in Wuhan is a given. Was it an accident? It could be, but the amount of cover up and reports of massive civilian losses and the deaths or disappearance of scientists and other officials is questionable and makes an accident highly suspect. Was it intentionally released in the market? This is potentially very plausible. It gives a definite source, it gives the Chinese Government plausible deniability, it allows the virus to spread unchecked, and is a prime distribution point.

Why kill their own people? Plausible deniability. This gives them the ability to push the narrative that they were victims as well and this was natural, then it was an accident which will ultimately end up being the final narrative, because they will not admit to an intentional release. Why hide the real numbers? Tracking and releasing the real numbers would identify a lot about the nature of the virus and expose the unlikelihood of a naturally occurring or accidental release.

Still you ask, why kill their own people and don’t they care? The short answer is, no, they do not. The Chinese government over the centuries have shown they have the will, ability, and general history of violating their people’s rights and committing massive atrocities. The Chinese government continues to deny all human rights violation accusations. The Chinese communist mantra promotes the sacrifice of the people for the good of the state. The population of China is almost 1.5 billion, so a few million lost for the good of the state? Well that is a loss they can absorb, only a 0.2% loss of their population and shows an equally affected country.

China currently only reports 82,719 cases and 4,632 deaths. Is this due to massive and quick response? No, as the site of a rapidly emerging contagion this would not be the case. Their response would have been far behind by the time they realized it was a problem, their losses would have been far worse than ours, they would have been asking for world help. Are they under reporting on purpose and hiding their dead, which is highly likely, as leaked information leads to the conclusion that many people have disappeared and are not included in their death tolls.

Why would they do this? To appear on top of the virus. To gain world support for all information they push in relation to this virus. There are reports circulating out of China which show they may have a vaccine in trials. So soon? They may have had it already. They are just going through the motions to promote and provide the cure to the world, at a cost. And why wouldn’t countries pay for something that would help their people. The world will be held hostage by the Chinese Government, and the United States crippled financially into submission.

The Dollar has been the world reference currency and in the reserve currency for over 60 years. Presently one Chinese yuan renminbi is only worth 0.14 cents in U.S. dollars. Add to that trade restrictions placed by President Trump and it becomes clear why China wants this to happen.

Do not believe there are not U.S. politicians salivating over all this. With a heavily weakened U.S. economy and skyrocketing unemployment and business failures, the left will be pushing heavy social programs to “help” the people. This will only be a conversion to government reliance. Once the population is reliant, laws will change and rights lost in the name of saving people, national security, and stabilizing the country. China is hoping for this, an America under socialist control will comply more easily.

Is this possible? Sure, China needs Trump out of office to gain any of this. If the economy fails, people are hungry, unemployed, and only provided minimal financial aid they will turn in mass on the government they believe created this situation. Led by Chinese propaganda, American Mass Media, and the Democratic parties demonizing of Trump, they could gain enough of a majority to vote Trump out.

In his place we will get a puppet politician controlled completely by his party and with no ability to control any part of his office.

This new government will pair with China as sign of faith and the need to stabilize the dollar and the Economy. China will then attain their goal by manipulating the U.S. Government and financing national reconstruction through deals made with the U.S. Government to back programs. Our restructuring will take on massive Social programs, we will become increasingly socialist, democratic socialists, ring a bell?

All in all, this was not an accident, a natural bug, an act of nature, or Gods vengeance. It is a massive Geopolitical move by China.

FTFA,

P. Bleu Chapman

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