#but certain people who hate taylor swift are OBSESSED with her and what she does

[usedtobemygirl]

some people who hate taylor swift are so weird, ive seen so many people post her lyrics out of context or say they “hate” her new record, but why are you posting lyrics from like … track 23 if you hate her so much? what you doing even getting that far girlie? 😭 someone doth protest too much I think

[masterthespianduchovny]

If I have Taylor swift mutual, you’ve managed to avoid my criticism of her for years bc I tend not to post about her on here at all.

I don’t hate her, but I fucking loathe her brand and the following it’s cultivated. And it bothers me so deeply because she exploits her fans and society with victim narratives, which plays into white supremacy ideologies. If you’re skeptical of this claim, ask yourself why someone who doesn’t old nazi ideology has such a loud and vocal neo nazi/white supremacist following?

Usually this type of vocal support originates when the artist shares far right wing ideologies and is public about it. Taylor is a Democrat and largely support left wing beliefs. They didn’t randomly attach themselves to her, she exploited certain beliefs and identities and attracted the wrong type of fan.

But this post isn’t about those type of fans, but rather, why the way she operates is loathesome and I’m sick of how society, fans, and people coddle her.

This all started with a black man daring to say a blonde haired, blue eyed white girl wasn’t deserving of an award.

Before anyone says, “you’re defending Kanye.”

Fuck Kanye!

However, the 2009 mtv vmas conditioned people how to treat and perceive Taylor, which is as a victim.

Now I know someone is outraged and is thinking, “Taylor WAS a victim.”

While that is true, does anyone honestly think that moment should’ve been as big as it was? Let’s be for real. Should the media have milked that moment for an entire fucking year and people still talk about it 13 years later.

An award about a fucking basic ass music video. And I don’t care for the single ladies music either, so it’s not like I have any skin in the game.

It was a bad moment, but it should’ve only lasted a moment.

Y’all want to know why we still talk about it? Why Taylor can still milk and exploit that moment, which she does?

Because she was a blonde hair, blue eyed white girl and this was a scary, arrogant black man.

Back then, people argued that Kanye targeted her because she was a girl. That this would’ve never happened if it had been a man. The racial implications are clear.

This signified to the nation that she needed to be protected.

For those who are wondering why I’m stressing blonde haired, blue eyed white woman that’s because it’s important: it’s who nazis believe are the perfect and superior beings.

For people who believe that Kanye targeted Taylor for this reason, keep in mind: this the same man who said, “George bush doesn’t care about black people” on national tv in front of a bigger audience. Why would he specifically target Taylor or be afraid to confront a man if he literally called out the most powerful man in the world at the time?

If this had been James blunt who’d pulled that stunt, it would’ve died out. But it was fucking Kanye. And the media obsessed and obsessed about it. Because they already hated him and he was already polarizing, but still a fucking superstar. They made sure we never forgot what happened that night. And instead of people asking, “why are they making this such a big deal”, people ate it up. Like they were asking this man what he recently deceased mother would think about what he did when one: he was only drunk as a result of his mom’s death and his difficulty in dealing with it two: again, this man called out a president on tv, Taylor was small potatoes in comparison.

Like this moment should’ve been akin to when lil mama got on the stage with Alicia keys and Jay z. It’s a moment we randomly remember, but largely forget about.

Admittedly, taylor was young and presumably overwhelmed with everything that happened that night and what came afterwards. However, taylor never sat and thought, “although Kanye ruined my moment, that situation was completely overblown.”

No. I’m text, she constantly leans into or plays into that night whenever given the chance. She loves to play into narrative that Kanye hates her and is feuding with her. That’s she trying to ignore him and get over that ordeal.

Thing is: anyone who has listen to Kanye’s music can tell you that if Kanye is beefing with someone you’ll know it. He’s very obvious about it. Kanye flat out apologized to her, referenced the incident in a song, said he was pressured into apologizing a specific way, and then rarely if ever referenced it again until 2016. And that timeline is important. Because Taylor was the one making songs or references to him/that night, yet claimed that he’s the one who can’t let it go.

Now before we get to 2016, leading up to this, most of Taylor’s popular songs or moments was about her being a victim (of a bad relationship) or fighting bad against someone who “wronged” her. In some way, shape, or form there was a victim narrative happening.

She was very loud about the exes that wronged her, but when she was clearly and the only one in the wrong, she’s quiet about it with her music. She sings about it, but does make a big to do about it. It’s not the centerpiece.

During this time, Kanye sends her flowers, she presents him an award, and they have one or two other good moments—they also publicly compliment each other.

Then, “Famous” happens.

But wait, I’m going to backtrack again. Remember how people said she was receiving unfair criticism for singing about her relationships and exes and that if she were a man she’d be praised?

Funny enough, there’s a genre about relationships whether it’s failed, successful, reminiscing over whatever and that’s R&B. The R&B girls (and guys) have been singing about exes and shit since foreva and they didn’t receive any of this criticism. Hell, literally every Adele album is about relationships or heartbreak and, at least, three of them are about real relationships.

What’s the difference between them and Taylor?

We almost always know who she’s talking about and that a huge problem.

She’s lucky that most of her exes are famous—well, no, they’re lucky. Can you imagine being a regular Joe and being attacked because a relationship didn’t work out and Taylor wrote you out as the bad guy? Because lets be real, do we believe that every relationship (not every bc we know she did Tom and Taylor dirty, which she receives very little to no criticism about from her fans) she was not at fault for and they were the only ones to do wrong?

Because if you don’t believe they, you should have an issue with how she operates—no longer past tense—and that her exes get harassed and attacked because of her music. Because we sure as hell would have a problem if the genders were flipped.

Or how she wrote bad blood about some fucking backup dancers that left to perform for Katy, and then made a video with all her famous friends, which is effectively bullying. Yet, that’s ignored.

So we get to 2016 and Kanye calls and asks for her blessing. Taylor seems to be genuinely receptive of this conversation, which is important to note because people claim she was being agreeable not to anger him or whatever. When he asks her approval, she basically says that it’s okay for him to say whatever he wants bc it’s his music. And this conversation is important, but not for reasons Taylor stans believe.

When the song drops, taylor gives the impression that they didn’t talk or really talk, which is false. Kanye was trying to have that discussion with her and they did to an extent. He didn’t call her to just discuss her putting it on her Twitter account, her wanted her to be okay and not offended by it. Why would he ask her to put the song on her TL and expect her not to listen or be offended by it??? What sense does that make?

People make this about her being called “that bitch”, which is why her essentially telling Kanye he didn’t need her permission and that he should write what he wanted is important. She didn’t hear the added like, but she did give him carte blache to say whatever he wanted. This doesn’t mean she had to be okay with it, I get why she was offended. But she could’ve said, “we did discuss the song and I knew he was going to say some risqué things, but I don’t feel comfortable being called a bitch.”

This acknowledges that a conversation happened and she knew he was going to say controversial shit, but that revisions were made.

Also, the line about them having sex…she was completely okay with that during the phone call. Yet, when it was released not only did she fake outrage, she made a Grammy speech addressing it. And let’s be clear: fame doesn’t equal success or acclaim. For someone who is an acclaimed lyricist, she should know better and does.

This was her exploiting her image and goodwill vs Kanye’s image and perception.

She misrepresented that conversation and made up a narrative all while being asked to be kept out of it. Then to claim that Kanye secretly recorded her to embarrass her???

Although there was no way for her to know, presumably, that Kanye’s been recording his life since the fucking 90s to flat out confidently state that he only did that to hurt and harm her was deliberate. Like, she factually stated that as if it was known only for a documentary to be released 5-6 years later that proved Kanye did record all aspects of his life.

And for people who need this explained to them: part of the conversation around this time was how he was targeting and harassing her, which this “secret” recording was evidence of. Because when you actually listen to the conversation to understand and not take sides, this appears to be a communication issue, esp culturally.

Although it makes sense why Taylor would take insult at being called a bitch 1. Some women don’t 2. Rap is very misogynistic and bitch is sometimes perceived as a compliment as well as the idea that a woman would reward them with sex for whatever reason. But again, Taylor never objected to that line during the call. Was not offended and just said others (I believe feminists), but that she’d be in on it and would surprise people after it was all over. And we can say she was saying this to placate him, but wouldn’t you say that’s on her and not him. He asked her opinion and was genuine?

Despite this back and forth, who is the one writing and singing about this?

Taylor.

She says she wants to be left out of the narrative and left along, yet she brings it up.

And we have to ask why it’s so bad for others to discuss their dealings with her, but it’s okay for her to obsessively talk about her dealings with others. She wants to be left alone while not leaving them alone and knowing her fans will harass them.

Like she’s rehashing old shit (relationships) in midnights. Why??? I know the concept behind it, but it still seems childish, obsessive, and like she can’t let anything go, which her fans seem to be fine with.

And can someone tell me if she ever addressed slutshaming her ex’s then girlfriend who was then harassed by her fans? Because while she may have been going, thats still fucked up.

Or how that situation with her masters was not only misrepresented, but her later going on to discuss Scooter’s divorce is weird as fuck. And before someone argues about how she has a right to own her masters, my point of contention isn’t that. It’s the fact that most artists don’t own their masters and she tried to position it as sexism as to why she was denied to ability to own hers. And that the only reason scooter got investors to buy it with him was to spite her.

This is all her exploring white woman tears and white supremacy ideology. How is she both a shrewd business woman and a poor victim taken advantage of??? Can both exist? Sure, but not in the narrative that she’s crafted.

She always need some person, powerful figure, expectation to fight against and conquer. She may have taken a break with Evermore and folklore, but she’s back at it and people just eat it right up.

She’s petty, spiteful, vindictive, and refuses to let anything go, despite her success and not needing to relying on this shit.

And you can’t say shit about her without someone feeling offended and personally attacked.

Now some may think I’m a huge fan of Taylor’s because I know so much and have opinions or obsessed with her, but I’ve successfully avoided most of her music for years. I keep up with pop culture and can tell you a lot about many artists without actually listening to or keeping up with them. Esp when their fans obsess about their all of the time.

But ask yourself why you’re so protective of her in comparison to the other girls. Why is she the only one worth defending like this?

[locklylemybeloved]

are you still a swiftie?

complicated answer tbh

i am very much still a taylor swift listener. i love her music. i connect to a lot of it. certain parts of the fandom are still AMAZING and genuinely some of the loveliest, sweetest, most creative and kindest people i've met on here.

that being said. there are a lot of really toxic swifties. i tried to stay away from them even as a hardcore diehard swiftie but its impossible. a lot of the fandom feels so toxic and hard to be in because it feels so high maintenance. so much is expected of you. i don't like that.

also. as for taylor herself. i have a lot of love and awe for her in some aspects. what she's created musically and culturally is incredible. the eras tour was truly the best performance i've ever been lucky enough to see live. she is a musical powerhouse and i think her ability to transcend a lot of misogyny and shitty people -- especially since she got big around the 2010s -- provides a lot of hope and inspiration for a lot of people (including me!!)

that being said she is still a privileged white person. this is not something she can change. that is ok. white ppl do not suck because they are white. the problem is when things like white girl feminism, performative activism, and blatant hypocrisy come up.

especially having a political activism era, going completely silent and then profiting off of that is not ok to me. i get that celebrities are not the golden standard for political activism, but if u are going to claim to be an activist. be an activist. yes, silent support is sometimes necessary (donations or whatever. i get its probably annoying to be questioned whether or not you do something. "oh she's doing too much" "oh she's not doing enough") but again. if you are going to claim activism and draw in a larger crowd and have ppl defend you because of that, you have to actually act on your words. performative activism just. it really annoys me.

furthermore, certain things she can't help and i get that. if her boyfriend is on the cheifs she's allowed to support him. but idk the cheifs supporting israel is really shitty. sure she's allowed to date whomever she wants but as a human being everyone has the responsibility to be a good person especially if you live in the public eye. matty healy was genuinely a terrible person, whether she dated him or not, and associating and openly supporting those kinds of people is never ok.

not even mentioning the fact that she claims to really really care about her fans but didn't say anything about pride until pride month, even when her trans fans were yknow being fucking harassed at her shows for their bathroom choice.

anyways there's a lot to unpack, and i don't think anything is every truly black and white. i'm absolutely not saying she's a terrible person. she is also not the most amazing person to ever live. (and i get that's ok i mean i sure as hell am not perfect and my grammy count is 0)

(also i think ppl who hate taylor swift for no other reason than they hate pop music should go fuck themselves. or just yk 'cause she's mainstream or whatever. there's a difference between being able to critique her/not liking her music so just living ur life and attacking and bringing her down)

also she's so fucking gorgeous like yeah i'll admit it she's azshfjwe,zthgfiueak,jsmngtuflhkajwem,zsf

also, i have just in general become way less obsessed with her personal life bcs genuinely i don't care. and that's ok. travis kelce does not interest me (but if he does interest you that's also ok!!! you're allowed to care about whatever you want as long as you do not invade anyone's privacy or treat anyone without basic human respect unless they don't deserve it)

so to answer your question fully: it's complicated :)

[troop-scoop]

Mistakes & Regrets I

Summary: When a trip to your Dad’s hometown of Hawkins goes wrong, you end up in the year 1983, and have to learn how to cope with being stuck in the past.

Pairing: Steve Harrington / Future!Reader (Slow Burn)

A/n: This is my first stranger things fic, I’ve done other fandoms, and i’ve been itching to get this idea out, let me know if you liked the first part, and if you want to be tagged! (Pls be nice, i’m shy lol) (Also, I had this on a side blog, that I decided to bring to my main blog)

•••

The 1980’s were weird, that was your final opinion. Mainly because it was so much like home, they had phones, they dressed almost like you were used to, they had music you’d grown up on, like The Clash and Elton John, but a lot of the songs that were decades older than you, were new to them.

And while you knew every lyric to ‘The Safety Dance’ and ‘Come on Eileen’ everyone around you was still trying to learn them, and would jumble them from time to time. But at the young age of two, you were dancing along to The Clash while your dad laughed and danced with you.

Knowing that some songs you loved wouldn’t come out for up to twenty years later made you upset, not being able to listen to Nirvana. Suddenly you wanted to be in the car, listening to your dad try to sing along to Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift. It was always amusing seeing his reaction to the newest songs on the radio while he drove you to school.

There was another thing about this time period that you found weird. They actually had lockers. All of the lockers from your school had been taken out in the late 90’s when a kid hid a gun and drugs in his, so no one had lockers except for in the locker room. So having to remember two different combos was a pain in your ass.

“L/n!”

A heavy sigh escaped your nose as your lips went thin in fake annoyance even though he hadn’t fully approached you.

“What do you want, Harrington?” You questioned, turning from the open grey locker to see him just a few feet away.

He gave you a look of fake offense as he leaned against the locker next to yours a hand over his on his chest, sadly were the latch of your own was, so you couldn’t use the door as a shield,

“Hey, now, who said I wanted anything? I just wanna talk to my friend.”

You were kind of friends. He was nice, at least to you. Though you’d seen him be a douchebag to other students. The cliche you’d seen in a movie of highschool. The popular guy who only cared about popularity and the people he was around. And you didn’t know why he thought you were a good person to be around, because when you were six you accidently set your curtains on fire while the babysitter fell asleep. And you were pretty sure you gave off ‘crazy bitch’ vibes.

You turned back to the locker and shook your head, grabbing your English textbook and looking back to him, a hand holding onto the door while you leaned into it. “Okay, why do you want to talk to me?” You questioned with a fake smile.

“Alright, grumpy. Tommy H, Carol, and I wanna hang out at yours tonight. My parents don’t leave for three more days, and  Carol’s mom hates Tommy, and you know how Tommy’s dad is.” He explained, looking down at you.

You hummed in amusement. “Not happening.” You responded, grabbing the hood of his hoodie and placing it in his locker, closing the door in on it. “Have fun.”

“Y/n!” He exclaimed in a sudden panic at being stuck in your locker, not being able to pull himself loose. “This isn’t funny, I will tell Mrs. Click!” He threatened as you stepped back, a genuine grin on your face as you looked up at him.

“A tattle tale? Didn’t think you’d stoop that low, and also, Mrs. Click? You think I’m scared of my History teacher? She’s afraid of saying ‘Wench’ out loud while we reading historical texts. She’s not intimating.”

Steve nodded a bit in thought. “Yeah… Okay, maybe I didn’t think that through, I’ll go to principal-”

“If I get suspended, I get suspended.” You shrugged. “Find a way to get me something to listen to music on, and something that has music on it, and then I’ll let you go.”

“Are you… Are you bribing me? Y/n L/n is bribing me? The new girl is bribing me.” He said in awe, still grasping onto his hoodie, looking at you with his mouth agape and his eyebrows raised.

When you only tilted your head he groaned, pulling on the cotton material. “Fine, Walkman or Record Player?”

“Hmm… Walkman.” You replied.

“Queen or Blondie?” He questioned, a smile coming across your face as you reached up to the lock.

“Both.”

Steve rolled his eyes as you unlocked your locker, setting him free. “That wasn’t fair, you look innocent.” He grumbled.

You mimicked his eye roll, closing the locker and walking away through the hall. ‘Fair’ being repeated in your head. Nothing was fair anymore to you. You’d been normal, just an annoying kid who was obsessed with Grey’s Anatomy, and history. That was what you had to your name. Your friends had once watched the bad uneducational tv show with you just to try and understand your obsession, you dad even had given it a chance, only saying that most of the characters were annoying.

But you only had history now. And some of the things you were supposed to learn in AP European history haven’t even happened yet. And it was freaking you out.

What was freaking you out more? Knowing you had a ‘classmate’ in your History class, who sat next to you, and was your relative. Your dad’s brother.

Sitting next to him was strange. Because he was your uncle. He’d been the one who bought you your first bike, and watched you fall off and break your wrist after your dad had let go of the bike.

To say that being his partner on a history project was weird, was an understatement. Because the entire time you felt like hitting your head against the desk, because he didn’t really change.

“What’s so important about a quote?”

“Are you serious?”

“As serious as the Titanic.” You responded, brows furrowed.

He stayed quiet for a moment. “I don’t know.” He admitted, receiving a chuckle from you as you watched him flip through the book. “I don’t even understand this project.”

“Come on, we have to choose a quote from a historical piece of fiction, We were assigned Romeo and Juliet.” You said grabbing your book and flipping to a certain page. “Romeo, oh Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” You teased, knowing that the page you were on didn’t have that in there.

The boy was technically older than you, but right now, you were the same age, and he was shaking his head with a smile. “It’s like she wanted him to be stalking her.” He responded.

“What?”

“She’s asking where he is.” He shrugged. “It’s weird, cause he still doesn’t come out when she asks that.”

“That’s not what she means. It’s early modern English. Phrases were different. She’s asking why he has to be Romeo. In modern words it’d be ‘Romeo, oh Romeo, why does it have to be Romeo.’ She’s upset because the guy she likes is in the enemy’s family.”

The boy looked at you, eyes scanning your face for a moment, looking for any hint of you joking, but he didn’t he finally spoke. “You could teach this class better than her.” He said in a hushed voice to make it so Mrs. Click didn’t hear.

“No-”

“L/n!” The two of you snapped your attention to the older woman who was scowling. “Back to work!”

You rolled your eyes and looked back to him as the bell rang. “That’s our cue.”

The 80’s were weird, and you didn’t like them. What with being so similar to home. With your uncle in the same history class as you, and being close to your dad, but older than him and not seeing him as your dad. And knowing people around you who were almost Baby Boomers, and in your time, would reprimand you for the jokes you made and your views of the world.

Being 16 in your time had been easier, able to cheat off websites for homework, and texting, which seemed to have been taken for granted by you.

Here, you couldn’t say you didn’t have a mom, but rather two dads. Because it was the 80’s and you knew the comments you’d get. You also couldn’t say your full name. That the dad you were genetically related to was the one who gave you the second last name that your uncle had and everyone would question it, and it pained you not being able to go by it, because he’d taught you more things than anyone else ever had. He’d taught you how to ride a book, and said that he’d be disappointed if you ever got ditching class, and that if you were going to do it, not to get caught for his sanity.

You would regret ever coming to this town with him, and you would regret the choice to ever run out of Enzo’s after your other dad yelled at you for being drenched from the rain after you ran in, finding that it was a formal restaurant and not a casual one. You’d regret going into the woods and getting lost, because all you wanted, was to be held by your dad and have him tell you it was going to be okay, You wanted to hear him walking down the hall late at night when he couldn’t sleep and you were hiding under your blankets with your phone, tying not to get caught for being up late.

But you had the fear that you’d never see your dad, as your dad. That you’d have to continue growing up in a time that has been written in history books. That you’d have to watch as technology progressed, and that you’d be conscious and aware for the year you were born.

You were still a kid, even if you didn’t look like it. Just six year ago, you’d been in elementary school, and you still got nightmares and went to your dads’ room because you were still scared of sleeping alone. You hadn’t been since, until now. You could barely sleep at night in the unfamiliar room of the motel you were living in, without your parent’s room down the hall.

But you were trying. And you wanted to redo everything, if you could build a time machine, you would. But that hadn’t even been available in your time, let alone 83’.

[mrchalamet-mrstyles]

*A MUST READ:*

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart never broke up. Indeed, their split was merely a distraction for the press that would guarantee the former Twilight stars privacy. In the interim period, where Pattinson got engaged to FKA Twigs and Stewart dated a series of women, including St. Vincent, the pair were actually living in wedded bliss. Their PR game was so effective that it helped to hide no fewer than two pregnancies for Stewart. Now, the Pattinson-Stewart family are happy together, laughing at the ignorance of the press and public who believe they broke up years ago and moved onto fulfilling and happy relationships with other people.

Of all the weird celebrity conspiracies that pollute the internet, the Robsten fandom may be my favourite one. It has everything: Press conspiracies, outlandish theories that would put Moon landing truthers to shame, the inability to tell reality from fiction, and of course, bad photoshops. Every now and then, when I see Pattinson and Stewart in the headlines, I go and visit the tin-hatters’ sites for that potent combination of entertainment and fear for my life. It’s astounding that they’re still keeping up this façade. 

As time passes, I wonder more and more if they truly believe it or if they’re going full My Immortal with the scam. It’s too outlandish to be real, yet the emotions behind it clearly are.

Sadly, this is nothing new for the world of shippers, nor is it limited to the breeding pair of Twilight. Name a prominent pop culture property and the chances are there are hardcore shippers whose interest goes beyond a fizzy hobby. Some fans truly believe that Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson are a real couple, which is hysterical because their chemistry levels in the Fifty Shades series are sub-zero. The stars of Outlander face the same shippers. Taylor Swift and Karlie Kloss are secret lesbian lovers, according to a subset of their fandom. Cate Blanchett will eventually leave her husband and children for Carol co-star Rooney Mara, thus freeing her from an exploitative bearding relationship with Joaquin Phoenix. The Larry fandom have yet to admit defeat, even as both Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson admit the fan delusions over their supposed secret romance hurt their real-life friendship. The Supernatural guys may never shake those conspiracies.

It isn’t all romance related either. Spare a thought for poor Benedict Cumberbatch, whose already overzealous fan-base includes a portion of people who think he was trapped into marriage and fatherhood by his wife, who they paint as the modern-day iteration of Medea. They don’t even think his kids are real. Apparently, one of them is clearly a doll.

I could go on, listing the many other fandoms I’ve come across with these near identical conspiracies of secret relationships, hidden children, public relations bullying, and so on. From Scandal to Orange is the New Black to The Hunger Games, it’s as big a part of fandom as cosplay and dirty fanfiction. A lot of the time, the celebrities being obsessed over don’t even know it’s happening. 

If they call it out, as Robert Pattinson did, or mock it, like Armie Hammer recently did on Instagram after someone DM-d him to claim he should be gay like his character in Call Me By Your Name, then they write that off as simply proving their point. The majority of fans deride and condemn this behaviour, partly because it reflects badly on everyone else but mostly because it’s blatant bullshit that should be treated as such. What is most striking about these myriad conspiracies is how eerily similar they all are in terms of tone and content.

The basic set-up for a tin-hatter shipping conspiracy is thus: The pair are in love, the pair are in a serious relationship, but they have to hide it from the world because of ‘evil PR’. The nature of this shadowy public relations organization is never made clear. It’s mostly rooted in conjecture and a hazy understanding of how the entertainment industry has worked over the decades. 

Historically, publicists and studios have operated with a certain degree of shadiness. In the Golden Era of Hollywood, where studios reigned supreme, a star’s image could be kept on a tight leash and their indiscretions hidden from the public. Fixers like Eddie Mannix (made famous in the Coen Brothers’ movie Hail, Caesar!) could clear up all manner of problems if the occasion called for it. Pregnancies could be hidden, illegal abortions procured, marriages annulled or concealed, and even the occasional murder dealt with (allegedly). We know this stuff happened, and we know that today, publicists do a lot of work to keep their clients happy. That probably doesn’t extend so far as to covering up marriages and multiple pregnancies and fake babies.

The psychologies behind these tin-hatter conspiracies tend to be remarkably similar too. There’s always massive amounts of paranoia at the heart of their delusions. Arrogance is key as well. You need infallible ego to maintain repeatedly debunked fantasies. They talk of their conspiracies as if they’re the most obvious truths in the world, deriding the ‘ignorant masses’ who refuse to see the reality in front of them, which they’ve kindly circled in MS Paint. The mentality is frequently rooted in a strong brand of self-victimization: They tie their theories to social issues like homophobia and claim anyone who opposes their belief that the One Direction guys are in love are clearly bigots. Even when the people in question call out this nonsense, they’re written off as poor closeted prisoners of invincible publicists. The game of tin-hating shippers is designed so that they never lose.

That’s the sad part of this all. They won’t be proven wrong simply because they’ve invested too much of themselves into this fantasy. They run around in circles, desperately claiming everything is against them and only they are smart enough to know the truth. 

If Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan insist they’re just friends, it’s only to throw everyone off the scent. When Tony Goldwyn talks of his love for his wife, it’s just to distract everyone from his romance with Kerry Washington. If Robert Pattinson is smiling in public, it’s because he’s thinking of Kristen; if he’s looking a bit down, it’s because he’s thinking of Kristen.

When the fantasy does begin to crumble, the tin-hatters get violent in their rhetoric. Taylor Schilling’s rumoured boyfriend briefly deleted his social media after receiving harassment from her fans who think she’s with Laura Prepon (who just had a baby with Ben Foster). Rooney Mara’s so-called fans called her a disgrace for dating a man and claimed she was letting down LGBTQ+ kids everywhere because of it. Robert Pattinson’s then-girlfriend FKA Twigs faced all manner of horrific racist and sexist abuse for simply existing. It can be easy to laugh people like this off, but we’ve also seen what happens to celebrities when their obsessive fans decide to invade their lives. A 19-year-old fan of Lana Del Rey drove cross-country to her house, broke into her garage and tweeted about it. An obsessive fan of Paula Abdul committed suicide outside her house. Rebecca Schaeffer’s stalker shot her on her own doorstep.

Real person shipping (or RPF) doesn’t bother me in theory. If you just treat it like any other fandom hobby - safe, private, clearly fiction - then go for it. There’s a major difference between liking two actors and writing silly fanfiction about them and going to extremes to prove they’re actually married. 

The people who cross that line are a minority, but they’re a loud and insidious minority who shouldn’t be written off as mere ‘crazies’.

This phenomenon is undoubtedly fascinating and reveals a lot about various intersections of celebrity, media, the internet, fandom, and so on. It’s worth keeping an eye on, if only to ensure nobody gets hurt, because it’s not unique to internet culture. This stuff breeds, and that should concern us all.

Now, when do I get my shadowy PR conspiracy cheque?

[purpletalewasteland]

After reading many discussions involving Taylor, its abundantly clear that the connection between her music and the muses she wrote certain songs for is an *integral* part of her brand.

Entire novels have been spun to show the paternity for each song, particularly in her early years. There are many fans who could tell you each and every boy that matches up to each and every song on Speak Now. There are many fans who have a detailed post in queue, just hoping for the chance to be asked: "tell me every guy Taylor has dated, had a fling with, or even crushed on".

It makes me wonder how some of these rumours came to be "fact" over many years of retelling. Ask any decade-plus seasoned Swiftie who Enchanted is about, and 9 times out of 10, they will say Adam Young from Owl City. But how interesting that the song is about a crush, Taylor has never gone on record to confirm who the supposed muse is, and yet this has become absolute folklore in her fandom. And this was just about a crush, a fleeting moment. Nevermind the idea of an entire album inspired by Harry Styles or Jake Gyllenhaal.

We are aware of the oversimplified, unfair claims that some people make when someone comes out, or is speculated to be in the closet. "They lied to us", "they hid the truth from us", etc. I personally consider this to be some thinly veiled homophobia as well as blatant ignorance toward the plight of being closeted. But it has occurred to me that if Taylor were to come out and actually say that her past relationships were not real, whatsoever, that it would be absolutely devastating to a large number of her fans, and not necessarily stemming from a place of ignorance or bigotry.

Now, hear me out. For some people, I don't think it's the fact that they would have to come to terms with these songs actually being about women (save for the fact there will always be hateful close minded people). It's that they would have to come to terms with the fact they didn't know Taylor at all. That all the folklore was just that - rumours circulated over and over again until they became engrained with the culture of being a Taylor Swift fan.

Taylor has dug herself a very interesting hole in that the thing that has arguably made her such a huge household name is perhaps not even a part of who she is at all. Taylor was known to pen songs inspired by boys she liked, loved, or those who hurt her. She jokes about that media narrative now (every guy I was pictured with was given a warning - "watch out she may write a song about you"), and while that's persona isn't necessarily true, it doesn't have to be true to be reality. A few years ago, if she was simply seen with a guy, chances are we would get a song a few months later that could be connected to that person. But here's the kicker - it didn't have to be about them or even hint at them. Both the media and her fans would do the work for her. Connecting the song to a person would in turn create interest and conversation about her music, which would only increase its popularity. So she can mock that caricature all she wants, but it doesn't make it any less real, nor does it change the fact that she could have stopped that from happening but she chose not to. A song may not have been wrote about a particular individual, but once the tale is spun that doesn't matter - it becomes canon anyway.

If Taylor didn't come out and simply said "I never dated those people, I just pretended for the sake of my career", I expect there would be backlash and I don't think everyone would believe her. The basis of some fans worship is rooted in those "relationships", to the point where some treat the rumours as absolute fact, with no room for error. Conversely, if Taylor did come out, allowing the notion that perhaps those songs weren't actually about all those people, I still believe that many people would refuse to believe those songs to be about anyone other than the currently accepted paternity.

Taylor is a confessional songwriter. That's her brand, that's her connection to her fans. One of her greatest talents is her ability to describe ubiquitous, universal emotions and experiences in a way that makes them feel unique and personal. And then in turn, she makes her own unique and personal experiences feel ubiquitous and universal. But she's trained us to feel that way. She sang about that famous scarf, a minor detail that most of us can't relate to directly. But then with the knowledge of that scarf being connected to Jake - that the scarf was left at his actress-sister's house - it suddenly makes the lyric more accessible and easier to relate to. Some fans haven't experienced an All Too Well level breakup, but they don't have to because they "know" that Jake gave Taylor that kind of heartbreak, and that knowledge is enough to relate to that level of heartbreak. Even with her most recent albums that were released under the knowledge that they're "most certainly about Joe", the conversation becomes more detailed - the possible order of events that transpired, the potential overlap of her relationships, how the relationship progressed from friends to lovers to partners. When knowing who the song is about isn't enough, it obsessively becomes "which song came first in the timeline".

It would be näive to think that as fans we "know" Taylor. But her brand has been to make us feel just that. She markets herself to make us feel like we are her friends, to make us feel like we know so much about her we can name every guy that has inspired her to write beautiful music. So yes, heteronormativity has deep roots in her brand, her career, and how her music is interpreted. But it's about more than just a heterosexual narrative, it's about having such a deep rooted narrative at all.

All this to say that Taylor is in a precarious position. I can't think of any other pop star whose entire body of work is so intrinsically connected to their perceived sexuality, due to the way their public narrative has shaped their career. For Taylor to come out, she wouldn't just be telling her truth, essentially saying "what you think you know about me is false". She would also be saying "what you think you know about my music is false", and that is what I'm sure she struggles with.

[klaushargreevesofficial]

call my bluff, call you “babe”

steve harrington x robin’s best friend!reader

requests: heeey could you write steve harrington x fem! reader where she is robin’s best friend and she had a crush on steve during high school but he never notified her but one day she went visiting robin during her work and steve falls in love with at first sight (like she has a different personality from robin, she has like a bubbly personality) ijkohghjjkk thank you so much !!

Steve falling for robin’s best friend and her being skeptical bc she liked Steve in high school

title from taylor swift’s “it’s nice to have a friend”

word count: 4,381 (!!)

warning for cursing because i have the vocabulary of a 12 year old boy

“so you don’t care about me, is what I'm hearing.”

“god, you’re dramatic, y/n,” robin laughed, trying to pull on her shoes while navigating around her room. she was failing to maintain her balance, and every clumsy hop around her room served as punctuation of your premature loneliness. Robin was heading to work, an early morning after your late night sleepover. curled up to your ears in her sheets, your eyes followed her around the room. 

“I can't believe you’re leaving me to go hang out with steve harrington.” you punctuated your statement with a faux gag. Robin replied with a noncommittal hum and leveled her eyes with yours, serving to agitate you more. 

“I'm not hanging out with him. I'm trying to make money so I can afford all of the expensive candy you like for movie nights.” finally dressed and ready for work, robin sat on the edge of her bed. “and you,” she poked your head, “would like him, he’s not that bad anymore! annoying? yes! but an asshole? not at all.” 

listening to her lift steve up made you uneasy. all through high school, steve had been your dream boy. hadn’t he been everyone’s? with the hair, the eyes, the swagger in his step as he walked past you in the hallway...you just about died thinking about it. how embarrassing, you thought. having a crush on steve, the untouchable asshole of your formative years, was about as out of character and cringey as you could have gotten. he never spoke a word to you except to ask to copy off of your homework, and even then, he called you by the wrong name. but god, that boy was pretty. 

after graduation, you did your best to avoid steve at all costs. not that he would notice or care, but rather for your sake. it was embarrassing to recall the amount of times you had imagined him choosing staying at your house over a party, or fantasized about running your fingers through his hair. it was your character flaw that you decided to ignore and actively suppress. steve was an asshole, and you recognized that. thus, the active forgetting of steve harrington.

 the plan to gradually forget about your schoolgirl feelings for steve had been working, working really well. you’d stopped obsessing over that one time he had accidentally bumped your shoulder in the hallway (and walked away without apologizing, thank you very much), and you couldn’t even remember what color his eyes were. then robin sauntered into your house with her spare key and an unperturbed way about her, proclaiming she landed the mall job and “y/n, you’d never believe who my co-worker is.” and then the humiliation that came with liking steve came rushing back.

 did you resent steve? not at all. but at certain points, when you were at your lowest, you wished he could feel as lowly and unimportant as him and his adolescent goons had made you feel. sometimes, though you would never admit it, you wished steve harrington would pine after you, simply so you could brush him off and crush his pretty boy heart as he had crushed yours in high school. but thoughts like that made you feel bad, and were definitely not feasible. the only time nowadays that you had a vague hatred towards steve was when robin went to work. screw him for winning over your best friend too. 

“go to work, buckley. when you come home, i’ll be here, in this spot, borderline comatose. wake me up then.” you turned to your side and closed your eyes.

“maybe you could come see me at work, y/n! i’m sure my parents would much prefer that, rather than you lounging in my house all day.”

 “mmm, they love me,” you replied, already slipping back into a half-asleep state.

 ------------------------

“y/n!” robin exclaimed. “wait, is that my shirt?” you stalked into scoops ahoy, dark circles under your eyes. you had awoken after another 3 hours of sleep, and after 30 another minutes of being alone in robin’s house, you decided to finally bite the bullet and visit her at work. there was no motivation besides boredom, loneliness, and the hope that robin’s offers of free ice cream when trying to coax you to come still stood. 

“i’m exhausted. can i get a vanilla cone?”

 “i don’t see you opening your wallet to pay, y/n,” she said, her motions towards the freezer contradicting her words. she scooped a cone for you and one for herself, and you guys chuckled at how quick robin was to shell out ice cream that would probably come from her paycheck. leaning against the counter, you reveled in the silence that settled as you ate your ice cream. you cherished these moments with robin, where you guys could just enjoy each other’s presence, words unnecessary. for as much as the two of you talked, they didn’t occur often, but when they did, they were peaceful. 

robin and you both were enjoying the serenity of the moment, and then there was steve. loud, doors swinging, calling (or shouting, rather) for robin. instantly, you were on edge, and robin sensed it. she was aware of your past feelings towards steve, but unaware of how vast and intensely they spread. she was there when you’d comment quietly to her how nice he looked in his jeans, but absent for the doodling of “harrington” in hearts on the margins of your papers. 

seeing steve was a gust of wind in your hair and a suckerpunch to your gut, simultaneously. rigid, ice cream dripping down your hand, you turned to robin, who, despite being engaged in a conversation with steve about their break schedules, was subtly keeping an eye on you, making sure you were okay. “uh, robin?” both heads turned towards you, the first time steve had acknowledged you. the “ahoy” on their sailor hats was so aggressively there and ugly, it only served to make you more anxious. 

“is this…?” steve gave robin a look as if to communicate something to her, something secret, and you knew immediately what---or who, rather---he was referencing. stacey.  he thought you were stacey. stacey was robin’s beau, who you had listened robin talk about, cry about, gush about, for weeks. you felt blessed, as robin’s best friend, to be able to coach her through her first relationship, which you understood must be extra difficult as a closeted gay woman. robin never had any shortage of stacey related topics to talk about, and you were glad to serve as a sounding board. you’d always just assumed you were the only one robin could bounce her thoughts off of, especially because of her sexuality.

 steve thought you were stacey. which means...steve knew robin’s best kept secret. of course steve knew. robin had been preaching about how great and un-assholey he’d become since graduation, something that would only be tested and tried by robin’s candid confession of who she loved. you felt stupid for not having figured it out earlier. steve knew.

 “no, harrington,” you piped up, finally regaining your ability to speak for the first time since steve had kicked open the door to the Scoops backroom. “my name’s y/n, and we actually went to high school together. i’d say i’m surprised you don’t remember me, but you were an asshole back then, so….” you let your voice trail off, expecting a snarky remark back from the boy in front of you. steve knew. 

the only person behind the counter to pipe up was robin. “steve, this is y/n, my best friend, who is acting, surprisingly, much like one of those assholes she constantly proclaims to hate.” although she was addressing steve, her eyes were locked with yours. there was a jovial tone to her voice, she was clearly not upset with you, but you tilted your chin out in defiance, and tossed the remainder of the ice cream cone away. steve knew. he was quiet. “y/n,” robin began, her voice calm, “i’ll meet you at the Gap on my break. 2:45. go cool off, please?” you took a peek at your casio calculator watch. you had 45 minutes to kill. you gave her a curt nod, and completely disregarded silent steve as you walked out of the ice cream parlor. what had just happened? 

no, you didn’t mean to completely be a dick. it was hard to dissect your feelings. it certainly wasn’t fair for you to be upset that robin told steve her secret. you were proud she felt safe enough to share that important part of herself with him. if anything, you were more upset that of all the people in Hawkins, she chose your self-proclaimed, one-sided enemy.  but still, unfair. and...you sighed. steve hadn’t even said anything to you. could you blame him? he didn’t remember you, y/n, get over it, you thought. how long were you going to let your internal struggle with steve dictate your actions? especially now that there was a chance at a...mutual friendship of sorts, through robin. had you not fucked that up by the scene you’d just caused.

 seeing steve dredged up a lot of negative emotions, you realized. it was embarrassing, especially because everything you and steve “had” was fabricated in your brain. one sided, imaginary, call it what you want. and yet, here you were, harboring real, genuine hurt. at what point does an adult let go of these childish fantasies and quit playing the victim? had you only hurt steve’s feelings (which you weren’t entirely sure you did, seeing as he was just so quiet), maybe you wouldn’t have had the mindset shift, but you could tell robin was upset with your petulant behavior. and quite frankly, you were tired of holding on to high school. you turned on your heel, chuck taylors squeaking against the shiny mall floor, and walked back to scoops ahoy.

 the parlor was empty. no one lounging at the tables, cheerily eating a sundae. you assumed this was why steve and robin were huddled in the back room, having a hushed conversation that you could only hear remnants of. you chose to ignore steve yet again, but this time simply to give you the guts to ring the service bell repeatedly. if you pretended only robin could answer, it was easier to be annoying. she was used to you. so, with a heavy hand, you rang the bell. ding. ding. ding. ding. as you poised to ring it once more, steve opened the backroom door, scooper in hand.

 he let out a breath of what you marked as relief. maybe he’s just glad you wouldn’t actually be ordering ice cream, you thought, until he said, “i was hoping it was you.” 

“oh?” you spluttered, forgetting your whole purpose for returning to the ice cream shoppe. 

“yeah, y/n, i just,” he sighed as if to organize his thoughts. “you were right when you said that i didn’t remember you from high school because i was a pompous dick.” 

“i didn’t say those words!” you defended, then gestured for him to continue. 

“well, you might as well have. i just wanted to apologize, because i really sucked back then. i’m working on it.”

 were you ever expecting an apology from steve? no. maybe a few months ago you would have revelled in this, would have eaten it up and made him beg for forgiveness. but at this point, you had changed, and you felt that he didn’t even have to apologize. well, for much, at least.

 “you’re good, steve. i’m sorry for caring so much about social hierarchy. it probably isn’t even fair for you to apologize to me.” you shrugged.

steve leaned his elbows on the counter, next to the register, and thought for a moment. “fairness is subjective though, isn’t it? like, what’s fair to you might not be fair to me, or vice versa.” 

--------------

after you and steve had apologized to each other in the parlor of Scoops Ahoy, you, him, and robin had been inseparable. no outsiders would ever be able to tell that there was ever a time when you and steve weren’t on good terms...or on any terms for that matter.  as time progressed, you’d now easily call steve one of your best friends. you rarely were not at scoops ahoy, hanging out in the backroom and avoiding their managers. steve had an open invitation to your movie nights, now, although he wasn’t yet granted key privileges like robin was. (you were sure your parents would kill you if you ever gave steve harrington a key to your house.) you’d sat backseat in steve’s car as he and robin scream-sang songs you didn’t know the words to. steve and robin had a bond that you could never begin to understand, and you and robin had one steve could never understand.

 where did that leave you and steve? working on it, for sure. he was funny, intelligent, and quite personable. he was a great friend to robin, and a great friend to you. you felt bad for writing him off so soon. nothing was difficult with steve. you guys had split and shared plenty of burgers at the local diners, and often the two of you would go to the video store, where you educated steve about movies and their importance. steve was clingy, more so onto you than robin. he always wanted to come over, or wanted you to come hang out, or begged for you to tag along when him and robin went on an adventure. 

once, steve had sat you down with a very serious look in his eye, visibly nervous, and declared that you were his best friend. he didn’t know what a best friend felt like, he said, but since you were the person he liked to spend time with the most, it must be you. before you could reply with a similar sentiment, he had added “and robin. but she knew that.” 

so, yeah, things were good. and they remained good for months.

and then the switch flipped, and steve started skipping trio adventures, and calling off of work on days robin worked. calls were fielded, and whenever you caught him in the streets, he brushed you off with a “hey y/n” and a “gotta go.” you were worried, because he was isolating himself with no explanation. there was hardly a ghost of him in the spots the three of you frequented “what’s wrong with steve?” you had asked robin when you first noticed his prolonged absence. robin hadn’t brought steve up for a week, which was odd. normally conversations were peppered with his name, although you and robin had always tried your hardest to pass the in real life bechdel test. 

robin’s response of “i don’t want to talk about him,” confirmed your sneaking suspicion that something had occurred for steve to become so cold. robin and steve were two of the most easy going people you had ever met, so for them to have had an argument seemed far fetched. robin’s stoney features after you had mentioned his name, however, made it obvious to you that an altercation had happened. 

----------------

“what are you doing here?” steve stood behind his door, keeping it open only a hair so you couldn’t wedge yourself inside. 

“what is going on with you?” you asked coldly. the time for reaching out gently had passed.  “you’ve been absolutely ignoring robin & i, and for what, you asshole?”

 “oh shit, is she here?” his eyes scanned his front lawn frantically, in search for robin. “you shouldn’t be here, y/n.”

 “good thing you aren’t in charge of telling me what i should and shouldn’t do, dad. if you don’t talk to me...i’ll..i’ll scream!” 

“go away.” he motioned to shut the door. 

surprising him by how compliant you were, you turned on your heel and trotted down off of his front porch into the lawn. pleased with himself for getting you away so easily, he closed the door and turned the lock. as soon as you heard the lock click, and watched steve skate away through the window, you planted your feet and took a deep breath. 

and then you were screaming. god, you hoped his parents and neighbors weren’t home, because here you were, in steve harrington’s front yard, wailing. you were screaming bloody murder, pausing to catch your breath with all of the cadence of a baby’s cry. you started from a yell and transitioned into a scream. you screamed in every musical scale known to man. you screamed loudly, and you screamed even louder than loudly. your voice box was your portable “ring for service” bell. so, you exercised it.

it felt like years, although it was only 30 seconds of sound until steve came running out into his front yard. he was trying his best to be angry, asking you “what the actual fuck, y/n,” but he was stifling laughter. 

“i told you i would, steve.”“you’re so infuriating!” he let out a frustrated chuckle, and carded his hands through his hair, tugging. “and i’m,” he sighed, facing you with a hollow look in his eye. “i’m in love with you. god, i’m in love with you, and robin’s pissed. so i took a step away for her to cool off, and for me to,” he shrugged,”i don’t know, for me to get over it i guess.” 

for all of that screaming you had done earlier, you were now speechless. moments and moments, it felt like a million moments passed and there was nothing but silence. what were you to say? how do you respond to such a candid confession? finally, after what felt like three years of silence, steve cut his sad and unwavering eye contact and headed back into his house, leaving you there, feet planted, stunned into silence and stagnance.

 you waited a beat in his lawn, processing. then the only thing on your mind was robin. you made a mad dash to your car, shaking your key ring in an effort to start the engine faster. after speeding an ungodly amount, you reached robin’s house. you parked haphazardly in her driveway, shifting into park before you even braked to a stop.

 as you unlocked robin’s door, with your key labeled “robin’s” in big bold letters, she heard the lock jingling and came to the door. “y/n, i was just about to leave and come to your house! i want to go to a movie, is there anything good out?” 

“steve’s in love with me?” you spoke silently, feeling small, the gravity of the confession finally hitting you.

 “well, that’s not exactly a movie,” she tried to joke, but noticing the sullen look in your eyes, she sighed and took a seat on the couch. “yeah, he is.” 

“what the hell, robin?”  you took your usual seat to the left of her, sprawling your limbs out. “he told me you were pissed off.” 

“well, yeah! you broke your own heart in high school over him, and you were sick for years. imagine if he actually broke your heart? you’d be inconsolable.”

 “for him to break my heart, i’d have to feel the same way, dingus.” you poked her arm. 

“are you stupid?” she deadpanned, causing you to let out a shocked laugh and sit up straight.

 “robin!” you gaped. “i am not in love with steve!” 

“okay, you’re stupid,” robin said again, sending the two of you into a fit of giggles. you loved robin so much, that sitting there, laughing and talking about boys was enjoyable, and you almost forgot the two of you were talking about steve. your best friend steve. robin always knew you better than yourself, though, so her implications about your feelings for steve made you think. were you in love with steve? every memory the two of you had shared flashed through your brain like a movie montage. you and steve ordering two different entrees, and then splitting them. steve sneaking you into his house, past his parents, so you could lay in bed and read comics. steve letting you cling onto him during scary movie night, robin calling the both of you pansies in the background. that one time steve called himself daddy and your stomach did a little flip. 

“oh fuck, robin, i think i’m in love with steve,” you groaned, burying her head into her shoulder. everything was made complicated by this realization, you knew. robin and steve weren’t even on speaking terms because of this, and you hadn’t even been involved at that point. and you didn’t even respond to steve when he told you. he was probably so upset. further than that, what would robin think if you and steve were to like...try and get together? would she be mad? what would that mean for the three of you as a unit?

you relayed all of these feelings, thoughts, and questions to robin. although she was close to the situation and probably biased, you still trusted her the most to give you accurate and smart advice. her answers always were right, because she knew you better than you knew yourself. robin assured you that her and steve hadn’t explicitly fought, per se, but she had let him know how she felt about the situation and advised him to step away and sort himself out. but no argument had occurred, contrary to your imagined idea. there were no “bad terms” between the two of them, and robin said she felt like if she saw steve this weekend, they’d fall back into their normal relationship and banter. this soothed you. 

“but if...if steve doesn’t hate me, and something like, happens, how would you feel?” 

“first of all, y/n, you’re dramatic,” you nod in agreement. “as long as he’s not an idiot, and you’re not an idiot...i suppose i will be okay. as long as you’re not, like, gross or anything. but i trust both of you.” 

and that, honestly, was all you needed to hear. after pinky promising you would come back to robin’s house later and tell her everything, you left as quickly as you had come, whipping out of the driveway and going back to where your day’s adventure had first started: steve’s place.

 you felt like you were walking on eggshells around steve, and although you were so excited you wanted to scream (again) and bang on his door, you channeled all of your nervous energy into a doorbell ring and rocking back and forth on your heels. when steve came to the door, he looked sadder than you left him. his hair was wild, his eyes red.

“i love you,” you stated simply, but you felt like your words fell short. how do you put so much emotion into 3 words? there was no way that this could encompass what you felt for steve. you paused. “there’s no way that those words can encompass what i feel for you.”

 ------------

“you’re fucking annoying, steve,” robin stated, tossing a piece of popcorn at him as she stood up to leave. it was movie night at his house, and although he wasn’t really doing anything, him and robin were engaged in some playful banter. steve had made some comments about the poor cinematography of the movie robin had chosen, and she was displeased. you were situated snugly in steve’s lap, his arms wrapped around your waist. you vocally agreed with robin because, yeah, steve was annoying, and he gave your hip a pinch, making you jump.

 “asshole!” you yelped, peeling yourself off of him. 

“you love me,” he commented, not incorrect. 

“yeah, but you’re annoying.” you and robin were a united front, always, despite what you and steve’s relationship status was. you wrapped your arms around her tightly. “drive home safely, please.” she nodded and tipped an invisible hat. 

“i always do, y/n. you two lovebirds have fun, but not too much fun, because we have work tomorrow morning, steve!” she made a hand motion indicating that she was watching him, moving two fingers from her eyes to point at him. 

“aye aye, captain! get some rest, you’ve got a lot of ice cream slinging to do tomorrow. i’m thinking i’m going to hang in the backroom for a little bit.” he grinned as robin groaned, letting herself out of the front door with a sing-songy “goodbye.” 

“c’mere, love,” steve said, looking up at you from the couch. you gave him a big smile and returned to your seat in his lap, straddling him. 

this was the only thing that was different about movie nights now. you and steve would spend the night together afterwards. steve was your boyfriend now. could high school you believe it? you ran your fingers through his hair, giving him a soft kiss on his forehead. “i know you have work tomorrow, and i wanna spend as much time as possible with you, but i’m really tired,” you mumbled, laying your head on his shoulder.

 he nodded with a smile. “that’s okay, baby. let’s lay in bed, we’ll kiss a little, and i’ll let you sleep.” he pressed a kiss to the side of your head.

 as soon as the two of you were situated, face washed, pajamas on, covers pulled up to your chins, steve turned to you and pushed a piece of hair out of your face. “i can’t believe i have the coolest girlfriend ever.” “i can’t believe you’re this cheesy, harrington,” you replied, but his words made your chest warm. you were the farthest thing from cool, and all you had ever wanted was steve to think you were cool. although he was, at this point, not a very good judge of being “cool,” because he had evolved into less of a high school king and more of a loveable dork, you were still elated to hear this from him. steve thought you were cool. and you weren’t, clearly, but he wasn’t either. you pressed a kiss to his lips gently, a smile permanently etched onto your face. “i love you, dingus.” 

[fizzingwizard]

I finally saw the Cats movie the other day.

After the alarming trailers and the bad reviews after the premiere, I was pretty much desperate to like it. Just to like it, enough, as a Cats fan. I thought, “ok, if the normal people dislike it, that doesn’t mean there aren’t enough nuggets and even pearls to sustain us true fans.” Trust me, I am a fan of X-men comics, I am very very used to doing that. (It’s the entire reason I can stomach the Dark Phoenix movie at all.) So my bar was, I thought, appropriately low.

Oh how wrong I was.

iT’S THE WORST MOVIE I EVER SAW GUYS. And it gives me no small amount of pain to admit that. It marks the first time in my life I considered walking out of the theater, not out of outrage, just boredom. And Cats has never bored me before. So I must rant.

Before I start, though, I have to say I just can’t blame the cast for any of this. It’s the movie direction. As far as I can tell, the actors acted and danced their hearts out truly believing when it was finished this movie would be something resembling a movie. The resemblance is there, but... faint.

1) The CGI. A while back I suggested that once the CGI was finished and polished up, and moreover, when we could watch it continuously and not in stitched-together bits for a haphazard trailer, then the CGI cats wouldn’t look as jarring. For the most part, that was the case for me. But I’m certain it wasn’t the case for everyone. It was freakishly reminiscent of that live action Cat in the Hat movie (and that’s not exactly a compliment).

It didn’t bother me too much, because I thought from the beginning that costumes or CGI, it would be impossible to design human cats who don’t rub a lot of people the wrong way. It was a sacrifice I was okay making because I saw it as an inevitability. But the hairier cats like Old Deut and Gus (ie, the cats whose costumes were more reminiscent of the theater) definitely looked better, though. (Speaking of which, who on EARTH shaved poor Rum Tum Tugger!?)

But aside from the cats. Those rats FREAKED me out. If those had been in the trailer? My hopes would have been dashed much, much earlier. Eek. No. And... the rats came back a second time... and then a third!!! Meanwhile the beetles were just... people in beetle suits. Mr. Hooper, what are you smoking? I need some right now.

Also. Why, WHY don’t the cats have cat noses? That bothered me the whole time!!

2) The choreography. When I saw the cast, way back before even trailers were out, the first thing I thought was “um, do these people secretly have classical dance training and it just isn’t widely known?” Because Cats is basically a variety show. You can’t do Cats without amazing dancing in multiple styles, from ballet to tap to freaking gymnastics.

There were some dancers, including Victoria. I wish I could say more of them. It’s not that they aren’t talented. I’m sure they are. It’s just that, between the choreography being incredibly changed, and then on top of that edited with CGI to “improve” the feline poses and stunts, who knows where the actual dancing is. Not me. We don’t even get one fouette from Mistoffelees. I mean. Come on. Not even in CGI! Why would you do this to Cats. Why. Why.

It’d be one thing if the movie choreography clearly improved Cats the movie, which, after all, wasn’t going to be an exact replica of Cats the musical. Unfortunately, it, uh, doesn’t.

3) The music. I haven’t seen this touched on a lot, but did anyone else notice the music sounded like someone was just playing the soundtrack for the 90s film on a boombox somewhere in the background? It wasn’t crisp. It wasn’t even loud. The electric guitar that makes you shiver when you hear it live? Barely discernible. At the very least, I thought they’d do something interesting with the music, although I guess I should thank my lucky stars that they randomly decided to leave well enough alone in this instance... But it’s a MUSICAL. How do you half-ass the (amazing, by the way!) score in a MUSICAL?!

4) The singing. Yes, this needs its own separate section, because WHY COULDN’T ANYONE SING. Even people who can, in fact, sing!! Jennifer Hudson is GREAT singer. Her “Memory” isn’t terrible, but it is drastically overacted and far from joining my list of favorite “Memory” performances. Taylor Swift’s “Macavity” was fine, I guess. I’d probably be more positive about it if the rest of the movie didn’t suck. James Corden was fine too, “Bustopher Jones” is not exactly a challenging song, but Rebel Wilson’s “Old Gumbie Cat” was breathy, weirdly sexualized, and couldn’t end fast enough for me. I’m not too familiar with Jason Derulo but I am sure he doesn’t sing like an idiot all the time, and neither should Rum Tum Tugger. What was that about?

And no one expected Judi Dench to sing but she sure tried. I admire her for it, but sorry, Mr. Hooper, I don’t agree that Old Deut can get away with a poetry reading version of “The Moments of Happiness.”

“Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer” was pretty good but difficult to understand because all the scene-changing made the lyrics hard to follow (and I know them by heart). “Skimbleshanks” more or less the same. I wouldn’t have complained about these if the movie had been a little better overall.

“Magical Mr. Mistoffelees” is more about the dancing than the singing, but it’s such a climactic number that the way it’s so slow and, er, anticlimactic in this movie is just a huge letdown.

5) The unending fat jokes. I know James Corden and Rebel Wilson are both perfectly comfortable with poking fun at themselves, and do it pretty much all the time. I also know they’re both okay being gross. I suppose people thought the two of them together would be movie magic. Instead, their powers combined to create The Ultimate Apocalyptic Unending Gross Fat People Joke Machine. Some of the jokes were a little funny. They got less funny the more they occurred. And just when you thought they would stop. THEY INCREASED. It’s like I was secretly in a Spongebob Squarepants movie where they obsessively make fun of fat people and their bodies while eating everything in sight. It had a mood of “fat people power!” but a stench of “we couldn’t think of any good jokes so we just did some gross shit!”

6) I hate Munkustrap! This one has no appearance of objectivity, I just can’t stand him. He looks weirder in the CGI than most of them (not his fault, but). I hated his singing voice. And he got to sing way too much for how enjoyable he was. He looked a little stoned, to be frank. Maybe that’s what they were going for. BTW, I absolutely adore Munkustrap in the show. I wasn’t exactly expecting Michael Gruber again, and yet, I sort of was.

7.) Victoria’s original song. Actually. Actually. I liked this song. It was a nice song! I enjoyed listening to it in the credits. (lol?) They clearly spent much more time making it sound nice than they did the actual Cats music. But why... why was there an original song... in a musical that already has more than enough songs? What did it add? I get that it was supposed to explain Victoria’s motivations and show her connection with Grizabella. I just don’t think it was necessary. Because. Because. There’s already an explanatory song in the musical! the little known number... “Memory!” And its variations. As a well as the not insignificant “Glamour Cat” song. Victoria doesn’t have a song. That’s true. Jemima/Sillabub does though. If you’re going you erase the juxtaposition of Jemima and Grizabella and force Victoria into a similar role, why couldn’t she have just sung “Moonlight”? IIRC she did in the end sing the interlude during “Memory” anyway. Then they forced more reprises of the original Victoria song on us, even made Judi Dench sing it. It’s a nice song. WHAT IS IT DOING HERE.

(More in another post because it is late and my complaints are many.)

[rabbithole86]

WHAT TAYLOR SWIFT'S ALLYSHIP MEANS TO HER FANS — AND THE LGBTQ+ FANDOM

By Carson Mlnarik xxxx

I learned about the gospel of Taylor Swift through my mom, whose car stereo was permanently tuned to country radio. Her first single, “Tim McGraw,” sparked something in me, and I was immediately obsessed  — to the point where my family was calling Taylor “Carson’s girlfriend” within weeks. I was 11 years old; it would be six years before I told anyone that I was gay. And it would take even longer — and for Taylor herself to proclaim, “You can want who you want / Boys and boys and girls and girls” — for my family to learn that I didn’t want to date Taylor Swift, I wanted to be like Taylor Swift.

As I became more accepting of my sexuality, it helped that Taylor was growing into an LGBTQ+ ally. And as the years went by, her music, frankly, got gayer.

When she debuted in 2006, Taylor was my middle school confessional queen. She always knew what it was like to be an outsider at the lunch table (“The Outside”) or to dramatically pine after someone who wasn’t into you (“Teardrops on My Guitar”). And while anthems like “Fearless” and “Speak Now” encouraged listeners to live their truths, I was only beginning to realize my truths: namely, that the fixation on male friendships that took up 113 percent of my brain was most definitely a manifestation of some same-sex attraction. I took note, but stayed closeted, especially given that I was navigating my own identity in conservative Arizona.

The fact that Taylor got her start in country music is not lost on me, either; the genre’s current focus on Christian faith, heteronormative imagery, and popularity in states that often vote red (no relation to the album) have garnered it a reputation as the “Republican genre.” You’d be hard-pressed to find mainstream country music by out LGBTQ+ artists, and, until recently, little solidarity with the community by its biggest stars. Thanks to open allyship from artists like Kacey Musgraves and Luke Bryan, that’s changing, but for the most part, they’re still the exception.

Taylor was always an icon in my eyes but it wasn’t until she went pop that her allyship seemed to take form. While “icon” status is a term some people seem to apply like chapstick, “ally” involves putting in a certain kind of work. Taylor had never come out against the community but was an unlikely ally nonetheless, especially considering she came from country and scrubbed a potentially homophobic line from her discography early on. Her first solidly pop entry, however, found her empoweredenough to shout out the community and even arguably earned her gay Twitter’s respect. The Reputation era found her taking on a more active ally role: it was then, ahead of the 2018 midterms, that she finally stated her pro-gay rights stance, encouraged fans to vote, gave a Pride Month speech on tour, and made pro-LGBTQ donations.

“I’ve always seen her as someone who’s really accepting of everyone,” Gia, a fan who identifies as bisexual and lives in Scotland, told MTV News. But even she has noticed an uptick in active and affirmative allyship, from both Taylor and her fans.

In the LGBTQ+ community, having an “active ally” — a friend, co-worker, or acquaintance who not only believes in equality but does so visibly with empathy, patience, and recognition of privilege — can make a huge difference. Allies not only promote acceptance in the greater community but can also be sources of information and help. In schools with gay-straight alliances, 91 percent of LGBTQ+ students in the club felt supported enough to further advocate for other social or political issues, andworkplaces that have openly supportive senior staff or a company culture of acceptance help employees feel more comfortable in being professionally out.

“Within the last year, I’ve seen a lot more pride [within the Taylor fandom], especially when I attended the Rep Tour and saw other [people] with pride flags,” Gia added.

Gia said she truly realized the extent of LGBTQ+-identifying individuals in the fandom after seeing hashtags like #LGBTQSwifties and #GayForTay. Stan Twitter and Tumblr bios boast rainbow emojis and pride flags, which aren’t necessarily decisions that Taylor had any part in making, but still affirm that there isn’t just space in the fandom for LGBTQ+ fans — we’re welcome here, too.

Jeremy, a Twitter user who identifies as bisexual, has been a fan of Taylor’s since 2006. While he is “definitely happy that she has been more explicit with her stances,” he says her message of “self-love and [embracing] that self loudly and passionately” has always been a source of comfort for him.

“She always inspires us to be proud of who we are, and to ignore those who tell us to be different,” he told MTV News.

For me, that pride took a while to establish, and even longer to give voice to. Still, Taylor was there for me every step of the way: In my junior year of high school, she released a mixed-genre foray into pop that gave us bops like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “22,” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and I didn’t just enjoy the Redalbum, I felt it. The emotional LP provided inspiration as I became student body president and big man on campus, but kept my sexuality a complete secret. It would become a source of comfort after I came out to close friends and family but lacked the confidence to do so on a larger scale. It would even become a guide to love and heartbreak after I got — and then broke up with — my first boyfriend.

He left me with bitter parting words: "I’ll never be able to listen to another Taylor Swift song without thinking of you.” I may get that inscribed on my tombstone.

As I started my freshman year of college, I was tired of feeling splintered about my identity. I started introducing myself as gay and going out on dates with guys, with the newly-released 1989 as my companion. While Taylor’s pop departure alienated some people, I found lyrics like, “I got this music in my mind / sayin’ it’s gonna be alright,” take on new weight in the midst of finding myself. If Taylor could start anew, so could I. Besides, what gay doesn’t love a good bop?

We make connections to music based on what we’re experiencing when we’re listening for the first time. Even if it’s beyond what the songwriter intended, their work can often become shorthand for certain times, places, and feelings — it’s chemical. It’s a phenomenon Taylor has even penned about, and while her lyrics, for the most part, describe heterosexual relationships, they do so in such a raw and confessional manner that it never mattered to me. Whether she was calling a boy out by name on her albums or scorning her bullies at the Grammys, there was an echoing theme of never hiding your feelings.

And through her vulnerability and openness, the singer has nurtured a fandom of people like myself who not only unite to feel seen and validated by her music but see and validate each other.

For Grace, who lives in Tennessee and has had a stan account since 2017, having a network of allies and openly LGBTQ+ people in the Taylor fandom has helped her in her own self-acceptance.

“I think a big part of it was just seeing how open other people were about their own sexuality and everyone was super supportive and loving towards them,” she said. “It’s not something that I had ever really seen much of before and it made me feel comfortable enough to accept myself and be open about it. I’m not sure I would be as secure in myself as I am now without it.”

When Taylor donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project to fight against the state’s “Slate of Hate” legislation, Grace felt directly moved. “I cried at the fact that someone I have admired for so many years of my life was fighting for me directly,” she said.

Arthur, a bisexual trans man from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, said he grew up seeing a lot of “bigoted people in the fandom,” but since Taylor has become a more active ally, he has seen a huge shift. An activist since age 14, he started following Taylor around 2012 in her Red era and knew when she eventually spoke up, things would start to change.

“LGBTQ fans are gaining space, as [are] fans of color, which is so great to see,” he said. “Taylor being more politically engaged helped [make] this change happen.”

Taylor has not only made her stance clear but continues to affirm it. She kicked off Pride Month this year by creating a petition for the Senate to pass the Equality Act, a sweeping policy that would protect LGBTQ people against sexuality-based discrimination. She also shared a letter she wrote to her state senator urging them to pass the bill and encouraged fans to do the same.

“While we have so much to celebrate, we also have a great distance to go before everyone in this country is truly treated equally,” she tweeted.

Taylor is hardly the first pop star to encourage their fans to get political. But as discussions arise around Pride becoming branded and straight people co-opt events, she’s proving to be a pretty good model of what it means to be an active ally in this political climate.

That’s not to say we’re there yet. We’ve still got a long way to go, and Taylor’s even acknowledged it. But as a former purveyor of yee-haw music and a current pop queen, she’s doing what she’s always done best for many of her gay fans: helping us feel seen and heard.

[gryphons-of-aentha]

The Approximate Plotline of the Gryphonverse (pt. 1)

Because like. I’m never gonna actually write this shit in any form, it’s gotten too convoluted and weird and pretty much officially exists only as a collection of ideas and drawings, and I guess this blog now.

This is gonna be long as fuck, just so you know what you’re getting into behind this readmore.

The whole thing starts out as fairly standard, fairly tropey high fantasy-type stuff and takes place entirely on Aentha, centered around the country of Andolia, a fantasy-feudal country with a vaguely German bent, with added notes of French and Celtic. It’s populated almost entirely by aquei, which are the closest thing Aentha has to humans (and they are very close, I just couldn’t think of a reason to have actual humans evolve separately on a completely different planet when Earth and actual humans are also canonically a thing). It’s bordered on one side by sea and all others by wilderness that, for various reasons ranging from “it’s impassable and useless” to “it’s literally cursed and/or protected by powers we don’t want to fuck with,” remains virtually untouched by civilization and is at best halfheartedly disputed over with other nearby countries. There’s trade by sea but otherwise the country is fairly isolated from its neighbors. Anyway, Andolians don’t like gryphons. The ‘why’ of this situation isn’t really established, but they’re a rather xenophobic bunch, more so the further you get into the heart of the country. The people who occupy villages/homesteads closer to the borders are sometimes more chill about them, which is fortunate, because that no-man’s-land that the aquei don’t want is full of gyphons, because gryphons are both well suited to impassable mountainous regions, and not afraid to fuck with powers most other people won’t. The latter trait is probably a lot of the reason Andolians are wary of them at best and actively hate them at worst.

So at a certain point, circa 1980 in Earth time (which won’t become relevant for a long while yet but does matter since everything in this lore canonically occurs in real time alongside our world), a half-gryphon baby ends up in the custody of a small Andolian town. It’s too large and central to have had any previous contact with gryphons but still small and out of the way enough that nobody in the capital gives two shits what goes on there, so the existence of this gryphonic child goes largely unnoticed. What exactly happened to his parents is still not established and honestly doesn’t matter, but it’s Andolia, so the likely answer is “nothing good.” Gryphons who do venture into the country proper frequently meet unfortunate ends and people who willfully associate with them don’t do so great either. In any case, it’s likely that the aquei parent’s family were residents of this town and took in the kid, who was subsequently named Talon, because Andolians don’t really do subtlety with their naming conventions. The town proves to be a surprisingly supportive environment to grow up in, mainly on the logic of “if we raise this kid right we will never have to deal with the local bandit problem again because we’ll have a gryphon and nobody will want to fuck with us.” Incredibly, this Timon and Pumbaa logic actually works out, and Talon finds himself more welcome among small town Andolians than any gryphon has probably ever been because he’s quickly developed a reputation as a “good” one and turned into a local hero (though one that everyone in the region keeps kind of quiet about so as not to draw attention from the capital or anyone else who might not like it). 

Eventually, some time in the late 90s Earth time, he meets Iadra, a full-blooded gryphon. They form a bond, eventually becoming definitive life partners, and Talon also reconnects more with the gryphonic half of his heritage through her. The townsfolk aren’t really thrilled about Iadra, and she’s not really thrilled about them, but they adopt an attitude of “I guess if Talon likes you, you can’t be too awful, guess you can hang around” to which she basically responds “appreciate the unbridled confidence in my character, but no thank you” and mainly stays on the outskirts and never really gets involved in aquei affairs to the extent Talon does, especially since the interspecies tensions are getting worse lately.

Meanwhile, as all this was semi-quietly going on in a small town nobody cared about, other things were semi-quietly going on directly in the Andolian royal court. The king, Shale, was really hitting it off with a woman who had just kind of shown up in the capital one day calling herself Ember. Through a combination of charisma and political shrewdness she managed to endear herself to most of the court and take on an unofficial advisor position, and also have an affair with the king. Eventually, circa 1989, this led to a son being born, who they named Ash (meanwhile, on Earth, Taylor Swift was being born, which isn’t important to this story it’s just something I realized just now and thought was really funny). The king had no other children at the time, so his first reaction was “hey, free heir” until it came to light that Ember was not wholly aquei, and in fact had some gryphonic heritage and so, by extension, did Ash.

A prudent move here might have been to cover this up, accuse whoever exposed Ember of slander, and just let the kid inherit the throne anyway. Sadly, prudence was not a trait King Shale possessed in abundance. So what he did instead was lose his shit over it and very publicly throw Ember out of his court, after which she quickly fell prey to any one of the many people who were pissed at her for the deception, and was killed. Shale then denied both the affair and the fact that Ash was his son, but made a show of magnanimously “adopting” the gryphonic bastard child and allowing him to remain at court. This was an entirely political move in response to the fact that the gryphons on Andolia’s borders were getting tired of exactly this kind of shit, and he hoped that he could use Ash as a kind of “how can you say I hate gryphons, look at this one who I raised and keep around out of the goodness of my heart” card.

Unsurprisingly this did not work out nearly as well as Shale imagined it would, and instead of a loyal walking virtue signal/gryphonic liaison, what he ended up with was a resentful and confused teenager who had been raised with the combined knowledge that A) gryphons are terrible, dangerous creatures with few redeeming qualities and nobody likes them, and B) he was part gryphon. So, not unlike Taylor Swift, he responded to everyone’s expectation that he would be a shitty person by turning into a shitty person. This uneasy state of affairs carried on until Ash was around sixteen, at which point he accidentally stumbled across the fact that he was actually the king’s son, and not the son of a random courtier with poor judgement as had always been vaguely implied. He also found out what exactly had happened to his mother. He immediately confronted Shale about this. Shale, who had always been paranoid about Ash trying to usurp him, entirely missed the point of the confrontation and instead of addressing the lying or the unofficially sentencing Ember to death thing or the general environment he’d made Ash grow up in, angrily doubled down on the fact that Ash would not be heir to the throne, ever, because he’s still a gyphon and that’s not a thing in Andolia, and even if he wasn’t he’d never be fit to rule and was clearly an ungrateful little shit. Ash, who up to that point hadn’t remotely wanted to rule, immediately decided out of pure teenage spite that fuck you, he was going to usurp his asshole of a father and do exactly that, so he set about stirring up dissent and delving further into his gyphonic heritage, with which he quickly became mildly obsessed since obviously his aquei side wasn’t doing anything for him. In the course of this research he came across records of an unrelated full-blooded gryphon named Kyran who had been executed by the king on trumped-up charges as a political maneuver some years prior and, since he no longer wanted to use an Andolian name and didn’t know his mother’s real name, he decided to adopt that one.

Cut back to Talon and Iadra, who are among the gryphons getting edgy over the king’s increasing levels of bullshit since it’s putting Talon’s town and everyone he associaties with at risk, and making things even more difficult for the local gryphons, who are having trouble even venturing into the outskirts to trade unless they’re very stealth about it. Iadra starts to think that maybe they should take some direct action and go after the king directly, a plan Talon is extremely dubious about since they have zero meaningful political allies and he doesn’t want to paint a target on the assorted farmers and villagers who would back him. That is until Kyran shows up and announces his plan to overthrow the king himself, along with a grandiose plan to change things for Andolia’s relationship with the gryphons once he takes over. And Kyran does have political allies (though not many, and not without substantial effort on his part). Talon decides that’s enough for him to go along with the idea, so he and Iadra join forces with Kyran’s rebellion and know what this is too long I need to make this a multi-part thing.

[demonsdarling]

lover first listen thoughts

some things about me: i love words. i write my feelings and my thoughts as much as possible. i’ve never been in love. i’m in love with the idea of love. i’ve been obsessed with miss swift since i was seven. i’m eighteen. this album has reinforced those incredibly strong feelings. i have fallen in love with even more of taylor’s words, and i hope my words help express my feelings about this wondrous album. it fills my heart and breaks it and makes me jump up and down and makes me wanna laugh and scream and dance. please enjoy my brain words.

i forgot you existed- relatable bop, love the lil spoken word bits. really enjoy miss swift’s voice, singing and speaking.

cruel summer - lyrically is so gooooood. HE LOOKS SO PRETTY LIKE A DEVIL. i think this might end up being a fav. so so catchy, please put this on the radio. i wanna scream to this at a party or with my friends.

lover - you already know i love this song soooo much. i am a sucker for love songs, and this is quite possibly my favorite one ever. definitely a contender for all time favorite song. might be my favorite taylor song.

THE MAN. - goes HARD !!! holy shit!!! taylor!!! wowie. miss swift SNAPPED!! sonically amazing! brooo im loving this. also little detail i love the way she says “i’m” in the chorus. love the bridge too!! snapped. went off. no one else could ever.

the archer - when it comes to track 5, this might be my favorite. actually the only other track 5 that compares in my heart is ayhtdws (sorry guys i just have taste. sad upbeat bops and loving slow songs are everything to me!!)

i think he knows - when the snaps started i was surprised! i thought it’d be slow. this is sexy. i relate to this one but he does not know actually. this is so hot. OH THE BRIDGE! OH! i wanna be in love, wanna be touched.

miss americana & the heartbreak prince - the verse like a poem. it’s full metaphor and i love it. sounds just like i expected. the chorus reminds me of rep! i love the high school vibes, it’s my first night at college. sounds like a mix between king of my heart and i did something bad. i really love this. i’ll be saying that for the whole album i think. i really enjoy the cheering in this it really emphasizes the high school vibes (go! fight! win! miss swift left the bleachers and is now cheer captain).

paper rings - AHH!! i love thèse vibes. this is so me. so so me. it sounds like the early 2000s. oh god i want this i want this so bad. this is love this is FUN HAPPY LOVE. this is dancing and laughing. sliding around on the floor in fuzzy socks. gently laughing kisses. definitely a favorite. i’m so in love. i feel this pulling at my heartstrings.

cornelia street - this is the second time she’s said drunk in the backseat. i will think about that later, for now i like the story this is telling me. i feel the fear of losing someone. i feel the pain that comes with that fear. to me, the beat attempts to mask those feelings but they shine through with her words. i can hear the worries of the biggest heartbreak ever. it’s terrifying to feel you’ve found true love and to be scared of losing it. the bridge sounds like another song i can’t place rn because i am too busy listening to this one. i feel like i heard her voice crack around 3:40. this holds the strongest emotions so far.

death by a thousand cuts - i wasn’t thinking this could be about love but of course it is!! the sounds in this are so unique and lovely. i love the chimes and the cowbell sound. one is in each ear right now. wow second verse wow. hey i like the guitar and vocals being on their own. i want to share this one with everyone i meet.

london boy - hey wow. i feel like this is worldwide love. DARLING I FANCY YOU. wow. she just keeps mentioning british things i’m smiling so much. someone take me to dance around london please. worldwide i love you taylor swift. i guess all the rumors (but probably spelled with a “u”) are true.

soon you’ll get better - i think i am not prepared. we will see. oh no oh god. i’m scared. this is a mom song. oh i can’t handle those they make me cry so much. oh my god i am crying. i love my mommy so much she is my best friend. i can’t imagine what it’s like for taylor. “you’ll get better soon, cause you have to” is the most important thing i ever have heard. i will take that and make it my own. “i hate to make this all about me...” hurt me hard. i love my mom. oh her deep breath about 30 seconds to the end.

false god - maam i cant switch that QUICKLY. it’s good as heck though. i got distracted at the beginning, thinking about should i send soon you’ll get better to my mom. OH LO-O-O-O-OVE. OH THATS GOOD. OH!! this album is showing really the trials and tribulations that exist even in true love, and i think that’s so important.

you need to calm down - this is a forever bop. i don’t have many new words for this one, but i love it oh so much! people don’t appreciate her as much as they should.

afterglow - one of my already fav songs is called afterglow, so i’m biased toward it already. this is really nice. i love the sound of this, and the emotions that shine through with the words. “meet me in the afterglow” is a beautiful line. i love it oh so much. i want to say it to a certain someone.

me! - i think i’m one of the few who genuinely enjoys this song. it will forever remind me of driving with my friends, all of us yelling “me hee hee hoo hoo hoo”. i have one specific memory, in the backseat, it’s sunset and i’m with two of my best friends and another i’m so grateful to have found this past year. three people i love singing along to a fun song by another person i love. i will cherish that forever. HEY KIDS SPELLING IS FUN IS GONE?? i was confused by that but okay.

it’s nice to have a friend - this is so very different from everything we’ve ever heard from taylor before. i’m really feeling this actually because i love and miss my friends so freaking much!! they mean so much to me. and i have this one new friend, my first college friend, who i’m so grateful to have and so glad she wants me to be her friend. i know that’s not the point of the song, i won’t be marrying her, but it is what i’m thinking about right now. now to the real words in it. the love in it is really warm. it was a really short song but i think it works. this feels like mary’s song. love you logan.

daylight- STEP INTO THE MF DAYLIGHT AND LET IT GO!!!!! love this so so much already. oh this is pulling my heart. oh wow. it’s golden. you are golden. we are golden together miss taylor. thank you oh so so much. she said step into the daylight and let it go. omg the voice memo- oh i love that. you are what you love. wow. the most beautiful way to end an album.

[swiftpng]

❥ — get to know me task.

“I wanna be defined by the things that I love. Not the things I hate, not the things I'm afraid of, the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. I just think that you are what you love.”

tw: mentions of cancer, food, sexual assault. 

does your celebrity have any nicknames? She does indeed have a few nicknames. Her brother calls her Teffy, but her friends call her anything from T, Tay, T Swift, T Swizzle, or Tay Tay. Though, she’ll admit she thinks Tay Tay makes her feel like she’s twelve years old. A select few will call her a snake, but Taylor wears that nickname like it’s a badge of honor. 

is there a certain smell that takes your celebrity back to their childhood, really remind them of ‘back home’? The smell of fresh snow on the ground always brings back nostalgic memories for Taylor, because it reminds her of when she was a little girl. Her favorite days were when school was called off and she would play around on her family’s Christmas tree farm with her brother, playing make believe.   

what would you say is your celebrity’s most prominent physical feature? Definitely her cheekbones. She has very defined cheekbones that are noticeable when she’s smiling. But… she also has very long legs that she loves to show off. She used to hate being so lanky and tall, and just wanted to blend in but now she’s more than happy to slip on a pair of high heels and show off her toned legs that she worked so hard for. 

would you say that your celebrity leads with their heart or their head? do their emotions get the best of them, or are they controlled? A mix of both, definitely. From a career/business perspective, she leads with her head with every decision that she makes. Taylor holds a lot of determination. She always finishes whatever she sets her mind to. There’s no stopping her, no matter what it comes to. Before she got signed, she performed at open mic nights and various community talent shows almost every weekend. It’s how she actually got discovered by her former label, Big Red Machine. And even before that, she got signed by another label, RCA, when she was a pre-teen but decided to risk everything and walk away because she knew she wasn’t going to be happy there if she stayed. Whenever an A&R guy would tell her his opinion, she would stand her ground and do what she wanted to do. There’s been times when her heart gets the best of her and she winds up doing something spontaneous like writing a letter to Apple about paying artists fairly. And her heart is definitely what leads her in love and relationships. It doesn’t take much for Taylor to get attached to people. Although she has been more careful about wearing her heart on her sleeve these days, she still does get attached way too easily. She gets invested in her friends’ emotions, treats fans like family, and worries about individuals day in and day out even if they aren’t thinking of her. She tries to get to know someone before jumping into a relationship with them, but sometimes her heart gets in the way and she jumps in without looking. Most of the time she has her emotions on lock because she knows there’s nothing worse than a screaming match about who can scream the loudest, so she tries to speak in a neutral tone when she’s in an argument. When she was younger, she used to play dangerously along the lines of gaslighting herself because she didn’t know if what she was feeling was valid or not. She used to have a tendency to forget that she's allowed to express how she feels. She had tried one-too-many times to suppress any sadness or anger. She could never remember that it is okay to feel how she feels and focus on her issues. She used to blindly disregard herself, but after everything that’s happened in her life she needed to learn and program it in her brain that she is valid. Taylor is someone who freezes when she’s feeling something that makes her uncomfortable, and then a few minutes later she knows how she feels. In the moment, though, she has a whole conversation with herself on whether she’s overreacting or if she’s perfectly valid for feeling the way she does. Before, she would either say the exact thing on her mind, or she would stay silent and then go over what she wanted to say when she had the chance at a later time. As she’s gotten older, she’s been able to say how she feels in a way that doesn’t feel combative or like she’s trying to start something unnecessary. Now, she’s very straightforward. If she feels a certain way, she lets it be known, regardless of the consequences that might arise from it. This is in every aspect of her life, not just petty things. If she’s interested in someone romantically, she’ll make it obvious without any regrets or reservations. Plus, when she’s feeling something intense like heartbreak or happiness, she writes about it in a poem, a song, or her journal. She gets through everything by writing about her feelings, and it helps her process them by doing that.

is there anything special or unique about any of your celebrity’s names? were they named after anyone? did the name have specific inspiration? Taylor Alison Swift is a pretty simple name, but it holds a lot of meaning. Taylor, her first name, comes from the legendary James Taylor. Her parents raised her on his music, so it’s cool to her that she’s named after someone who shaped her artistry. And getting to perform with him a couple of times means a lot to her. Taylor gets her middle name from her aunt Alison, and lastly, her last name is Swift. A name she got from her dad, of course.

what makes your celebrity feel insecure? Award shows or performing in front of people who will judge her for her live performances. While she knows she’s not the best vocalist in the industry and has not sought out to be the best singer of all time, she still wants to give her all when she’s performing and will overthink all of her performances before, during, and after them. She’s her own biggest critic and knows that she can improve with each performance that she does. Whenever she hears herself miss a note or forget the lyrics, she’ll tear herself apart and will obsess over it. She’ll put on a mask and give thanks whenever someone says she did fine, but deep down she’ll think about it until her next performance.

does your celebrity have any tattoos or piercings? Tattoos, no. When she was a teenager she really wanted to get a small heart tattooed on her foot, but her dad influenced her against it. She’s happy she listened to her dad. Piercings, yes. She has her two earlobes pierced, but she doesn’t have anything else on her body pierced. Even though she has no tattoos and minimal piercings, she thinks they’re extremely cool and an awesome way for self expression.

got any pets? if your celebrity has pets, tell a little bit about them; if not, what kind of pet would they like to have, or why don’t they have any? She does have pets! Three cats to be exact. While growing up, Taylor had her fair share of pets, and most of them were dogs. It wasn’t until she was in her early twenties that she got her first cat, Meredith, who is named after the iconic Meredith Grey from Grey’s Anatomy. The second cat she has is Olivia Benson, who is named after Olivia Benson from Law & Order: SVU. Those two are both Scottish fold cats. The most recent cat that Taylor adopted is Benjamin Button, named after the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. Benji is the one she fell in love with at first sight after meeting him during her Me! shoot. Meredith is a bit snooty and has an attitude, but when she likes you she’ll let you pet her and cuddle her for as long as she lets you. Olivia just wants you to love her, while Benji doesn’t care as long as he has your attention. Meredith is coordinated and sophisticated but loves you fiercely when she decides to. Olivia walks into walls, drools, and flops around, but is ready to love you at first sight. Benji is a mix between the two. He loves to have his own space, but he also loves to be held like a baby and treated like a king.

what does it take for someone to be ‘unlikable’ to your celebrity? what’s the final straw that makes them give up on someone? For Taylor, she judges people mostly on their moral code. The people she wants in her life are people who have and regularly exercise loyalty, empathy, understanding, honesty, trust, and open communication. If you betray your friend, talk about them badly when they’re not around, degrade them for any reason, or talk down to them, she has no interest in keeping you in her life. She’s been known to give second chances to people who never deserved them, and it bit her in the ass. She can’t stand when people use or take advantage of their so called friends. If you’re in her life, it means you both have a mutual respect of one another. 

how would you describe your celebrity’s sense of style? Taylor has always been a person who loves to experiment with fashion. For her, it’s a form of self expression and she loves to represent herself through it. Her style isn't limited to one thing, it’s actually pretty much all over the place. Some days she'll wear pastel colors or all black, or a mix of color. It really just depends on how she feels during the day. In addition to that, she loves to go through phases. She went from cowboy boots to Oxfords to high heels. She went through the phase of loving vintage dresses to the phase of loving crop tops. She may not always top the best dressed lists every week, but she loves to wear what she thinks is cute and fun and shows her style. When it comes to performing, she likes to wear outfits that are easy to perform in. Taylor's stage outfits are generally very short and shiny, so it's easy to dance in. There’s some skin showing, but not too much. Over the years, her main collaborators for stage outfits have been designer Jessica Jones, along with her main stylist Joseph Cassell. 

what is the most positive and supportive relationship that your celebrity has in their life? Her mom. Taylor’s mother is her best friend, and she tells her everything. They talk every day and see each other almost every day. Taylor’s mom has seen and heard it all, whether it’d be about a break up, a career setback, or just how her day is going, she knows it all. Taylor’s mom is like her personal therapist, and she’d be lost without her. Her mom is her everything. A few years ago, her mom was diagnosed with cancer. Taylor was ready to give everything up and stay with her mom. In fact, she insisted, but her mom’s insistence that she go chase her dreams and tour around the world was stronger. She is scared that something will go terribly wrong, and suddenly the cancer will multiply a lot faster and take over her mom’s body, while she’s somewhere else in the world. Taylor’s priorities have changed a lot through the years, which is why she’s been spending more time with her family rather than doing year long tours. She wants to take advantage of all the time she has with her mom while she’s able to. She’s just so grateful for her support and knows that not everyone has a strong bond to their mom like she has with hers.

how does your celebrity see themselves vs. how others see them? When Taylor looks into the mirror or thinks about how she sees herself, she sees a woman doing what she loves. A woman who is happiest when she’s on stage. A woman who is most at peace when she’s writing, and most alive when she’s performing. A woman who’d do anything for her fans, and still can’t believe she has fans. A woman who wants to change the world. A small town girl who wants to inspire at least one person who’s struggling, because if she can make it this far, so can they. She thinks of herself as someone who holds onto hope. Even when she’s unhappy, she does all she can to prevent others around her to feel the same. She’s an open optimist but a closeted cynic. She doesn’t always know what she wants but she knows what she needs. She’s a woman who sees the beauty in all of the little things. She loves to love, and she has a lot of it to give away. She appreciates all the little favors and remembers every single polite thing someone has ever done for her. She forgives (most of the time) but never forgets; a strong believer in a moral code. She’s filled with affection and passion. She does her best to be as impartial as possible, just wanting the best for everyone no matter the cost. She puts others first, and forgets that she too could use the help of others. She’s the calm after the storm or the storm herself. She has the potential to be so much more than she sees, but she’s clouded by her own insecurities, and doesn’t know how to get rid of them. She’s very aware of how others see her. They may paint her out to be a manipulator, a liar, and a bitch but she knows how the people she loves see her. She knows that she’s not the conniving woman that most people think she is, and hopes that people can see who she truly is. She’s someone who loves with all of her heart and is fiercely loyal to her friends and family. While others may see her as someone who loves feuds and drama, Taylor thinks of herself as just someone who stands her ground and doesn’t take shit from anyone. Love her or hate her, you can’t deny that she’s a lover and someone who feels with everything in her. Mostly, she wants to be thought of as being a kind person, someone who is trying to see the best in other people. She wants people to know she is really trying in everything and anything she does, and she wants to be a bright and glowing presence in someone’s life.

did your celebrity have a conventional upbringing and family life, or live life outside the box? Growing up, she had a very conventional life. She was born and raised in a small town in Pennsylvania, and she had a pleasant childhood there. It was a nice upbringing, and she wouldn't change it for the world. Her dad was a stockbroker while her mom stayed at home, and Taylor’s parents never had to worry about any financial issues. Once Taylor realized her dreams of being a singer-songwriter, her entire family packed up and moved to Tennessee. Even though she’s now spent most of her life away from Pennsylvania, she considers it her home state.  

education; how far did your celebrity go with it, and did it help them land where they are in life right now? She has an education all the way up to a high school diploma. She actually didn’t go to her graduation ceremony as she had an award show that night, so she had her diploma mailed to her. She’s been fortunate enough that she didn’t need to go to university since she started her career as a teen. Still, she sometimes wonders what it’d be like to go back to school and get a degree in something.

is your celebrity a planner, or into spontaneity? When it comes to her career and business ventures, she definitely plans everything and thinks about everything. Now, being able to own any new music that she makes, she feels like she’s able to record and release songs whenever she wants to. In her personal life, she loves spontaneous plans. Calling up a friend and just driving all night long or flying to a different country for a day and exploring it always sounds like a good time to Taylor.

introvert or extrovert? how has that hurt or helped them on their current life path? Extrovert all the way. Put her in a room with someone and she can guarantee you that she’ll be able to find a way to connect with them. She gets it from her dad since he’s a talker, too. Taylor’s never one to shy away from introducing herself to people and she loves meeting new people. It’s definitely helped her career because she’s been able to make herself relatable to her fans and build a connection with them. Her social skills have helped her make good (and sometimes bad) connections in the industry.

what is your celebrity’s outlook on love? do they believe in soulmates? love at first sight? monogamy? Taylor has way too many thoughts on love as a hopeless romantic, but she thinks it’s a terrifying risk that is completely worth it. And that stands true regardless of what kind of love it is. For her, love is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, things in this world. There’s nothing like love – the pure joy, happiness, just complete elation. Being on cloud nine is the best feeling in the world. And yes, love also has its down sides and they’re some of the hardest downs. When you crash and burn from love, it really hurts. It’s the most agonizing heart-wrenching pain, but the fact that you can feel that type of emotion is something so special, too. The fact that you cared so deeply about someone and someone cared that deeply about you is really special. Love is a very sacred thing to Taylor and one of her biggest wishes is that everyone in this world experiences it at least once. Because even when it sucks, love is such a beautiful thing and worth having and fighting for. Now when she thinks about romantic love, the first few words that come to mind are: golden, pure, respect, adoration, connection, empathy, light, indescribable. Love is the ultimate beauty in all its best forms, and romantic love is no exception. There is the first glance feeling, the breathlessness of state change. You think you’re fine by yourself and then they come and ruin everything. There is fear and worry but the instant you’re with the person you love? You let go (of your fears and your ghosts). It’s a breath of fresh air you didn’t know you needed. It’s like the feeling of rediscovering all of your favorite songs, again and again and again. It’s being enchanted at the first meeting and being enchanted forevermore. It’s not that your life will become a fairytale because it won’t. You’ll both have days when the world is dark and your minds are cruel and your soul aches. You’ll both make mistakes. You’ll both be human. But the feeling of golden warmth in your heart that you thought would fade away stays and makes itself at home. And they stay. And they love you, too, because they’re here for every part of you just as you are for every part of them. And it’s easier than you ever dreamt possible and it’s lighter than air and you’ll never know how you got so damn lucky. It’s golden, it’s pure, it’s respect, it’s adoration, it’s light, it’s indescribable. It’s love. That’s what love is to Taylor. Maybe it's because she reads too many romantic books and watches too many rom-coms, but that's what she fantasizes about. Does she believe in soulmates? To an extent, yes. She thinks that two people could be connected so deeply that no one else in the world could understand their bond like they do. It’s a cool concept to think telepathy is real and it exists between soulmates, platonic or otherwise. She thinks it’s fun to believe in things like fate and soulmates and all of those things that are guided by some invisible force greater than we as humans. She believes in love at first sight, but knows that that kind of love is most likely disguised as infatuation that slowly turns into love. Love requires a mutual, deep intimacy and understanding amongst all parties. It’s complex, and doesn’t just happen within a first sight.

who would your celebrity give their life for? Her family, for sure. The love they give her is unconditional and the moments she shares with them are always in her heart. Whether she’s laughing, crying, or whatever it may be, they’re what keeps her together. Her friends are also people she would give her life for. They’re another source of what keeps her together. Her friends back home (the ones she managed to keep over the years) and the ones she’s met through the industry are what made her days brighter despite the dark clouds that loomed over her head during a dark period in her life. She’s thankful for them every single day and for the new friends she hopes to make. When she went through the #taylorswiftisoverparty in 2016, she had a phase where she was extremely upset and kept thinking she didn’t have any friends left. But she was so wrong. She’d never been more wrong about anything. Selena, Blake, Ryan, along with the friends she’s made here in Bayview like Delta, Melissa, and Daisy have become more than friends and more like her family. It’s those people she’d do anything for and she knows are also there for her no matter what.

when it comes to forgive and forget, how fast is your celebrity to do either of those things? one over the other? or hold grudges forever? Over the years, she’s learned that you don’t have to forget and you don’t have to forgive to move on from something. You can move on from a situation without any of those things happening. She usually lets things go, but it’s always going to be there in the back of her mind as a reminder of what they’ve done to her. As for holding a grudge, it depends on the severity of the wrongdoing, most of the time she’s just relieved that the person revealed their true colors so she can go on without their negative presence in her life. The media has been known to spin a feud of hers into something of a spectacle, and paints her as someone who overreacts and doesn’t leave things be. In reality, it’s mostly the other party who can’t keep her name out of their mouth and she just lives her life peacefully. But if she has to defend herself then she will.

any certain spot in bayview that your celebrity goes to when they need to clear their mind, cheer themselves up, just get into a better mood? Bookends, definitely. Just being surrounded by books is an oasis for Taylor. Whenever she needs time to herself or needs to brighten up her day, she’ll pop over to the little bookstore, grab a bite to eat, and sit in one of the chairs with an old book in her hand. She frequents the place so much that she’s on a first name basis with all of the staff and they all know her order by heart. It’s one of her favorite little corners of Bayview.

who is your celebrity’s role model or hero? is there any specific reason for that, or are they just someone they look up to? Ethel Kennedy. She inspires Taylor to embrace the unpredictable side of life, to find delight in every new experience. Ethel herself has taught Taylor that to really live, you have to jump in, you have to take chances. You have to embrace the unpredictability of life instead of fearing it. Meeting Ethel herself was really one of the rare times Taylor has been starstruck, and getting to spend some time with her has been one of the biggest highlights of her life.

does your celebrity have any secrets? anything that they would absolutely hate for anyone to find out about them? Hm, Taylor would say there’s a lot that people don’t know about her, naturally, because she can’t talk to everyone that knows her name. However, a secret of hers would be that maybe that she’s not as put-together as she comes off. She’s noticed that a lot of people approach her with the assumption that she’s a well-rounded, deeply intellectual person with some strong grasp on the path of her life when she’s just another person trying to figure things out like anyone else. A bit boring, but true! But… we all have our demons, don’t we? Things that weigh us down, despite the optimism we may have. And one of her fears that she doesn’t want anyone to know is that she’s scared that she is going to end up all alone someday. Whether it’s romantically or platonically, Taylor is scared that she’ll never be good enough, or really that people will realize that she isn’t good enough and just leave her. She’s had it happen before, and she’s scared that all the noise in her life will make them leave one way or another. 

it’s a gala night and your celebrity has to dress up; are they way into it, or counting down the hours until they can put sweats back on? Taylor definitely loves to dress up for a night and get all glammed up, but she’ll pack an extra pair of shoes so she doesn’t have to worry about her feet hurting all night. There are times where she has to force herself to get the motivation to sit in a makeup chair and get ready, but she usually thinks it’s all worth it once the night is over.

when it comes to your celebrity’s love life, how do they feel about it? are they happy? Taylor’s notorious for loving love. It’s her brand, quite literally. If I could give an example of how Taylor feels about her love life, it would be equivalent to how Jenny Slate explains in her book when she says, “I am a lovely woman. Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me?” because Taylor wants love so much that she doesn’t know what to do with herself sometimes and she feels like it might not be in the cards for her. I always picture Taylor being like Lara Jean from the TATBILB series because she’s always been the girl who daydreams about finding ‘the one’, and what true love might really be. She feels too much and sometimes thinks that’s her vice. Despite all of this, though, she’s really, really happy with her love life. She has her friends, and finds romance in that. She loves her independence and isn’t going to sacrifice it for just anyone. If she does fall in love, the most important thing is that who ever she falls for has a special kind of connection with her. She wants to feel a spark, but creating a fire takes some time so she’ll wait. She has some patience. And honestly, it’s easy for her to fall for someone -- she can fall in love with anything. She falls in love with the way the sun shines into her room every morning, she falls in love with the flowers in the yard, the smell of fresh rain… she falls in love with the sound of people’s voices, their faces, their interests, just everything. Whoever she falls for has to put up with her just loving… everything. She’s probably in love with at least one quality about everyone. Taylor’s a lot to put up with, she loves easily and she falls harder. She can be intense, like, she’s never been that deep in love with someone, but she knows she can be. She trusts too easily and she ends up getting hurt a lot of the time. She just wants someone who’s in love with her mind, her goals, her ideas… she wants them to see her in their dreams like she would see them. She’s very, very happy with her love life, but God, does she want to know what being in an actual serious, committed relationship is like.

if your celebrity had to leave the house in a rush, what three things would they grab on their way out? (people and pets excluded!) Taylor doesn’t need much when she leaves the house. She carries around a handbag, which holds just about everything she needs for the day or even for the ten minutes to two hours she’s away from her house. She can’t leave without at least these three items in her bag, and it’s really the necessities that she tosses in there. The first thing in her bag is her Iphone and portable charger. Her phone holds everything. It’s not really in her bag as it’s more in the palm of her hand instead. She tends to waste a lot of her battery very quickly, so just in case she must charge her phone, she has her handy dandy charger at her disposal. She needs her journal and a few pens because unless her phone is unavailable to use to make a note of something or write down whatever muse she’s feeling, she has her handy dandy pen and paper to depend on when she needs it most. Lastly, she always holds on to a picture of her family. Somewhere in her bag she’d have a picture of her, her parents and her brother. She wouldn’t be where and who she is without her family’s love and support, and at the end of the day she loves them more than anything and is always thankful for their strong presence in her life. She likes to be reminded of who she is and where she came from because staying true to herself, although hard, is her number one goal.

does your celebrity have any bad habits or quirks that they just can’t kick, no matter how hard they try? Not taking care of herself would be the biggest bad habit she has had. It's hard for Taylor to accept that sometimes, she needs help. She truly is independent to a fault. She is used to taking care of others and helping them that she sometimes forgets about herself. She hates feeling like a burden to someone else and takes being independent to a whole other level. Over the years, she's learned to stay off of social media when she's in a bad mood and she's learned to only value the opinions of people she cares about. She's never been to therapy, and knows she probably should, but feels as if she doesn't need to because she has her mom to talk to. Ways she takes care of herself when she's feeling down would be lighting a new candle, reading some poetry, watching a TED Talk, or painting with her watercolors. Eating what she wants when she wants is also something she's learned to do, too. She used to use food as a coping mechanism. Whenever she felt like she didn't have control in her life, she would deprive herself of basic meals so could could feel some control. These days she's been better at eating what she wants without feeling guilty and has learned to have a healthy relationship with food. 

what are your celebrity’s thoughts on kids? do they want any in the future, if they don’t already have any? want more, if they do? When Taylor was younger, she used to dream of having that fantasy of a white picket fence with a family. Over the years, it’s changed a little bit. Whenever she thinks about bringing a child into this world, she worries about their privacy and how they would survive with people watching their every move. She can’t imagine having paparazzi following them around, trying to get a glimpse of them. She wants kids, for sure, but doesn’t want them to face unfair scrutiny or having cameras in their faces 24/7 just because one of their parents is “famous”. 

does your celebrity have a favorite room in their home? Probably her room because it’s the only place in the world where she can be comfortable. She loves spending her days in her room just watching TV and lounging around with her cats. If she’s decided to spend time in her room, she probably has ordered some type of comfort food like Chinese or pizza, put on a face mask with her hair tied up, done some online shopping, taken a nap or just lied down, listened to some vinyls – just anything that lets her breathe and relax. 

it’s a free day. completely, from morning until bed time – what would your celebrity like to spend it doing? Her perfect day would be spent with her family. She would have invited her family over to her house, letting them spend the night. In the morning, she would make them breakfast. She’d have them tour the town, and would take her mom antique shopping for a bit while her dad and brother have their own bonding time. They’d get lunch by the ocean, and then she would drive them around each neighborhood in Bayview. By dinner time, they would go out to eat somewhere in the Downtown area and then walk around the park. At the end of the day, they would go back to her house and watch a movie or play a game before they all retired to bed for the night. That sounds like a perfect day to Taylor.

to this day, what has been the hardest thing for your celebrity to come up against or overcome, whether personally or professionally? In the past thirty years Taylor has been through a lot, from a career point of view and a personal one. In her personal life, having to go to court in 2017 to face the man who sexually assaulted her was one of the hardest things Taylor has done. It was tough for her to do, and even though she spent many sleepless nights during that week, it was all worth getting the justice she deserved. From people mocking her about her body to not believing her side of the story, Taylor will never forget those who supported her during that whole ordeal. She's happy that more and more people are able to come forward with their stories despite the backlash they might get, and will always believe someone's story because she knows how hard it is to do. We all probably know what Taylor's hardest career obstacle was... the disaster of the 2016 Kimye incident. That whole year, especially that summer, was an emotional rollercoaster for Taylor and she learned so much from that experience. She was so, so scared that she wouldn't be able to make art anymore and that the 1989 era would be her last. Luckily, her fans stuck around and have always had her back. To Taylor, her fans are so important. They are the reason she's still making music to this day and the reason why she gets to present her songs to the world. As someone who has only ever dreamt of being able to share her art with others, the people who have really made it possible are the people who truly support her for it. Taylor's “fans” are more like friends, and friends to her are like family. They are people who’ve supported her for what she loves doing most and she can’t thank them enough for it.

ten years ago, did your celebrity ever think that they would be where they are now? are they happy with that spot in life? what do they hope to achieve yet in the future? At the beginning of the decade, Taylor was coming out of her teens and coming in to her twenties. If you told her that she would’ve released five albums, gone on four tours, won Album of the Year at the Grammys twice, moved to New York City, lose her curls and cut her hair short, been in more relationships that one hand couldn’t count, gotten a few cats, gone through one of the most humiliating things publicly, gone to court, and moved to Bayview all in the span of ten years, she would’ve laughed in your face. Despite all that has happened to her, she would take none of it back and is very happy with where she is in life. Taylor loves her life. Sure, there could be changes but other than that there’s nothing else she would want. She’s happy with the morals she grew up with, and happy with the people who’ve been kind to her and all of the lessons she’d learned over the years. The move to Bayview is a memory she wouldn’t trade for the world. She’s had the chance to travel and meet new people on the other side of the world. The chance to come to Bayview is a milestone in her life she would never trade. Sure, she still has issues with being away from her family, but by far it’s been one of the most amazing experiences in her life. If she didn't move to town, she wouldn’t have people she could connect to, she wouldn’t have met or befriended most of the people who lived here, and she wouldn’t know how to step out of her comfort zone and do things she never knew she needed to do. Bayview changed all of that. In the future, Taylor hopes to still be making albums, hopefully gaining back all of her masters or at least be done with re-recording all of her older albums. Maybe she’ll fall in love and raise a family of her own. Maybe she’ll write a novel about her life. Maybe she won’t be in Bayview still or maybe this is town is her forever home. The most important thing that matters to Taylor is being happy with whatever she’s doing, whoever she’s with and with herself. Because who knows what the future holds, y'know? Nothing else really matters as long as you love your life.

[ts1989fanatic]

'SHE ALWAYS INSPIRES US TO BE PROUD OF WHO WE ARE, AND TO IGNORE THOSE WHO TELL US TO BE DIFFERENT'

MTV NEWS STAFF

2h ago

By Carson Mlnarik

I learned about the gospel of Taylor Swift through my mom, whose car stereo was permanently tuned to country radio. Her first single, “Tim McGraw,” sparked something in me, and I was immediately obsessed — to the point where my family was calling Taylor “Carson’s girlfriend” within weeks. I was 11 years old; it would be six years before I told anyone that I was gay. And it would take even longer — and for Taylor herself to proclaim, “You can want who you want / Boys and boys and girls and girls” — for my family to learn that I didn’t want to date Taylor Swift, I wanted to be like Taylor Swift.

As I became more accepting of my sexuality, it helped that Taylor was growing into an LGBTQ+ ally. And as the years went by, her music, frankly, got gayer.

When she debuted in 2006, Taylor was my middle school confessional queen. She always knew what it was like to be an outsider at the lunch table (“The Outside”) or to dramatically pine after someone who wasn’t into you (“Teardrops on My Guitar”). And while anthems like “Fearless” and “Speak Now” encouraged listeners to live their truths, I was only beginning to realize my truths: namely, that the fixation on male friendships that took up 113 percent of my brain was most definitely a manifestation of some same-sex attraction. I took note, but stayed closeted, especially given that I was navigating my own identity in conservative Arizona.

The fact that Taylor got her start in country music is not lost on me, either; the genre’s current focus on Christian faith, heteronormative imagery, and popularity in states that often vote red (no relation to the album) have garnered it a reputation as the “Republican genre.” You’d be hard-pressed to find mainstream country music by out LGBTQ+ artists, and, until recently, little solidarity with the community by its biggest stars. Thanks to open allyship from artists like Kacey Musgraves and Luke Bryan, that’s changing, but for the most part, they’re still the exception.

Taylor was always an icon in my eyes but it wasn’t until she went pop that her allyship seemed to take form. While “icon” status is a term some people seem to apply like chapstick, “ally” involves putting in a certain kind of work. Taylor had never come out against the community but was an unlikely ally nonetheless, especially considering she came from country and scrubbed a potentially homophobic line from her discography early on. Her first solidly pop entry, however, found her empowered enough to shout out the community and even arguably earned her gay Twitter’s respect. The Reputation era found her taking on a more active ally role: it was then, ahead of the 2018 midterms, that she finally stated her pro-gay rights stance, encouraged fans to vote, gave a Pride Month speech on tour, and made pro-LGBTQ donations.

“I’ve always seen her as someone who’s really accepting of everyone,” Gia, a fan who identifies as bisexual and lives in Scotland, told MTV News. But even she has noticed an uptick in active and affirmative allyship, from both Taylor and her fans.

In the LGBTQ+ community, having an “active ally” — a friend, co-worker, or acquaintance who not only believes in equality but does so visibly with empathy, patience, and recognition of privilege — can make a huge difference. Allies not only promote acceptance in the greater community but can also be sources of information and help. In schools with gay-straight alliances, 91 percent of LGBTQ+ students in the club felt supported enough to further advocate for other social or political issues, and workplaces that have openly supportive senior staff or a company culture of acceptance help employees feel more comfortable in being professionally out.

“Within the last year, I’ve seen a lot more pride [within the Taylor fandom], especially when I attended the Rep Tour and saw other [people] with pride flags,” Gia added.

Gia said she truly realized the extent of LGBTQ+-identifying individuals in the fandom after seeing hashtags like #LGBTQSwifties and #GayForTay. Stan Twitter and Tumblr bios boast rainbow emojis and pride flags, which aren’t necessarily decisions that Taylor had any part in making, but still affirm that there isn’t just space in the fandom for LGBTQ+ fans — we’re welcome here, too.

Jeremy, a Twitter user who identifies as bisexual, has been a fan of Taylor’s since 2006. While he is “definitely happy that she has been more explicit with her stances,” he says her message of “self-love and [embracing] that self loudly and passionately” has always been a source of comfort for him.

“She always inspires us to be proud of who we are, and to ignore those who tell us to be different,” he told MTV News.

For me, that pride took a while to establish, and even longer to give voice to. Still, Taylor was there for me every step of the way: In my junior year of high school, she released a mixed-genre foray into pop that gave us bops like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” “22,” and “I Knew You Were Trouble,” and I didn’t just enjoy the Red album, I felt it. The emotional LP provided inspiration as I became student body president and big man on campus, but kept my sexuality a complete secret. It would become a source of comfort after I came out to close friends and family but lacked the confidence to do so on a larger scale. It would even become a guide to love and heartbreak after I got — and then broke up with — my first boyfriend.

He left me with bitter parting words: "I’ll never be able to listen to another Taylor Swift song without thinking of you.” I may get that inscribed on my tombstone.

As I started my freshman year of college, I was tired of feeling splintered about my identity. I started introducing myself as gay and going out on dates with guys, with the newly-released 1989 as my companion. While Taylor’s pop departure alienated some people, I found lyrics like, “I got this music in my mind / sayin’ it’s gonna be alright,” take on new weight in the midst of finding myself. If Taylor could start anew, so could I. Besides, what gay doesn’t love a good bop?

We make connections to music based on what we’re experiencing when we’re listening for the first time. Even if it’s beyond what the songwriter intended, their work can often become shorthand for certain times, places, and feelings — it’s chemical. It’s a phenomenon Taylor has even penned about, and while her lyrics, for the most part, describe heterosexual relationships, they do so in such a raw and confessional manner that it never mattered to me. Whether she was calling a boy out by name on her albums or scorning her bullies at the Grammys, there was an echoing theme of never hiding your feelings.

And through her vulnerability and openness, the singer has nurtured a fandom of people like myself who not only unite to feel seen and validated by her music but see and validate each other.

For Grace, who lives in Tennessee and has had a stan account since 2017, having a network of allies and openly LGBTQ+ people in the Taylor fandom has helped her in her own self-acceptance.

“I think a big part of it was just seeing how open other people were about their own sexuality and everyone was super supportive and loving towards them,” she said. “It’s not something that I had ever really seen much of before and it made me feel comfortable enough to accept myself and be open about it. I’m not sure I would be as secure in myself as I am now without it.”

When Taylor donated $113,000 to the Tennessee Equality Project to fight against the state’s “Slate of Hate” legislation, Grace felt directly moved. “I cried at the fact that someone I have admired for so many years of my life was fighting for me directly,” she said.

Arthur, a bisexual trans man from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, said he grew up seeing a lot of “bigoted people in the fandom,” but since Taylor has become a more active ally, he has seen a huge shift. An activist since age 14, he started following Taylor around 2012 in her Red era and knew when she eventually spoke up, things would start to change.

“LGBTQ fans are gaining space, as [are] fans of color, which is so great to see,” he said. “Taylor being more politically engaged helped [make] this change happen.”

Taylor has not only made her stance clear but continues to affirm it. She kicked off Pride Month this year by creating a petition for the Senate to pass the Equality Act, a sweeping policy that would protect LGBTQ people against sexuality-based discrimination. She also shared a letter she wrote to her state senator urging them to pass the bill and encouraged fans to do the same.

“While we have so much to celebrate, we also have a great distance to go before everyone in this country is truly treated equally,” she tweeted.

Taylor is hardly the first pop star to encourage their fans to get political. But as discussions arise around Pride becoming branded and straight people co-opt events, she’s proving to be a pretty good model of what it means to be an active ally in this political climate.

That’s not to say we’re there yet. We’ve still got a long way to go, and Taylor’s even acknowledged it. But as a former purveyor of yee-haw music and a current pop queen, she’s doing what she’s always done best for many of her gay fans: helping us feel seen and heard.

[thesinglesjukebox]

TAYLOR SWIFT - YOU NEED TO CALM DOWN

[3.65]

The one that's on our mind, 365, all the time...

Will Rivitz: The Singles Jukebox -- Corrections, June 21 2019: The author of this blurb has previously stated that the selection of Meghan Trainor as LA Pride headliner would forever be the nadir of Pride-related programming. The author regrets the error. [1]

Joshua Copperman: The discourse for "ME!": "What does this mean for Taylor's next era?" The discourse for this lyrical clusterfuck: "What does this mean at all?" It's a much more interesting production, without stock horns and with some nice "Royals"-y vocal layering, but it's the most incoherent thing she's ever released. Is it about stans? Is it about homophobes? Is it a coming out song? Did Taylor throw the first shade at Stonewall? What is HAPPENING?? I'm sorry, I need to calm down. [3]

Will Adams: Taylor said "Gay Rights!" Kind of! Sort of. Well... it's complicated. Not necessarily because of her status as a cis straight woman, but because the message itself is so damn muddled. Stans and trolls and bigots and music journalists are lumped in the same mass of "haters," and while it's worth noting that this by no means the first anti-haters pop song to exist, the overt political text here results in lots of crossed wires. The song suffers as a result too, throwing half-formed catchphrases at the wall to see what sticks: the chorus is a melodic void (odd considering Taylor's songwriting strength); the "gowns" reference is too subtle to register; the patter results in odd scansion throughout ("like it's PUH-trón"); and "snakes and stones never broke my bones" is no more clever than "don't need opinions from a shellfish or a sheep." Speaking of Katy, also wrapped up in all this is a resolution of a beef that never seemed that important except as something for either party to mine for big single launches. It's all too much, especially for a not-bad track that fizzes just fine on its own. It'd be churlish to ask Taylor to take her own advice; for now all I ask for is coherence. [4]

Jonathan Bradley: Taylor Swift has always had a talent for deploying sharp and piquant phrases, the sorts of lyrics that tell blunt little stories like animated gifs. It's an opportunity for her to go broad and get funny: "Some indie record that's much cooler than mine," for instance, or "I can make the bad guys good for a weekend," or "I don't love the drama, it loves me." "You Need to Calm Down" is like an entire song built from these lines, and it whirls by like a Twitter thread or an Instagram story. Taylor sass is a lot of fun, and many of these ripostes are satisfyingly catty in their insouciance ("I'm just like, 'hey... are you OK?'" might be the best of these). Swift has shrugged off detractors on "Shake It Off" and "Mean," but she is more single-minded this time, and that focus paradoxically dilutes the intent. Swift's greatest strength as a songwriter is her interiority; she's adept at examining and interpreting her own feelings. But a consequence of that is that she is far less certain when she needs to step outside the bounds of her own head. The worst song she has ever released was a charity single called "Ronan," in which Swift sung in the voice of a mother who had lost her child to cancer; so talented at realizing her personal traumas, she proved incapable of reconstructing her sympathy for that bereavement in her own voice. "Calm Down" has some things to say about homophobia, and in this terrain outside her own experience, Swift's words are not so much unpleasant as awkward and a bit superficial, particularly in their uncertain invocation of "shade" as bigotry. (If stan theorists needed evidence that Swift is indeed as straight as she publicly presents, it's here: a queer Taylor would not have written a second verse as disengaged as that one.) But even diluted, Swift singles are still constructed tight. This one continues finding the pastel inversion of Reputation's skeletal synth sound, and echoes "ME!" with a hook of vowel sounds as palilalia -- "oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh..." this time, rather than "me-hee-hee." It's a tic that works -- in moderation. [7]

Alex Clifton: (Puts on music critic hat) It's stronger than "ME!" (which isn't hard but worth noting), I'm glad she takes swipes at homophobia but equating that with personal shots is a little bit weird, it's super catchy but the lyrics are still a little lacking, and I still can't remember all the words even though I have the melody memorized. (Takes off music critic hat, puts on bisexual Swiftie stan hat) EVERYTHING IS RAINBOWS AND MY BRAIN WON'T STOP SINGING THIS AND I WOULD MARRY TAYLOR SWIFT, HAPPY PRIDE!!!!! [5]

Alfred Soto: I'm sure it will sound fine on the radio, especially played beside "Bad Guy" and "Old Town Road." The maximalist intentions behind the Everest-sized synth bass and her rat-tat-tat delivery bespeak a mind that recognizes it's the one needing calm. Except for the "parade" line, I wouldn't have known this alludes to Pride if I hadn't watched the video. I don't feel pandered to as a queer man because, after all, a Pride parade is superficial performativity anyway. [6]

Katherine St Asaph: Give her this: the stacked-up arpeggio in the chorus is an absolutely brilliant hook, particularly the second time when it goes over the top. The rapid-fire prechorus is pretty good too. But the beat is the same freezer-burned "Paper Planes"/"With Ur Love"/"Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" chill, the accents are so far from the right syllables they've filed a misSING perSONS REport, the conflating of trolls with professional critics with the literal Westboro Baptist Church is bad (as is the weird class shit in the video, as if you can't be anti-gay and present like a Pleasantville star), and all this was done much better on "Mean." [5]

Katie Gill: In a way, this song is hellishly brilliant. Taylor Swift has provided her standom with a weapon, something that they can wield against any form of criticism. Want to write an article criticizing the fact that Swift seems to put "homophobia" and "me having internet bullies" on the same level, the fact that the video tactlessly paints rural Americana as the enemy of LGBTQ+ people instead of the Mike Pences of the world, or the fact that the second verse leans way too close to the sort of tactlessness that only aggressively woke allies can pull off? Expect a flock of Twitter replies telling you condescendingly that "you need to calm down" and "you're being too loud," as people ignore the half-assed condemnation of standom during the song's third verse in favor of using Swift's lyrics as a cudgel against any perceived haters. For all that Swift is trying to shed the sneaky snake image, traces of it still linger between the lines. [3]

Edward Okulicz: The people who said "Heartbeats" by The Knife was the future of music were right in 2003, and based on this, have now been right for 16 years and counting. That enormous synth-bass takes a song that should have been awful on paper (ugh, a thematic sequel to "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things," which itself is why we can't have nice things, like good Taylor Swift songs), with the second verse featuring the worst lyrics Swift has ever written, and makes it frisky and playful. The "uh-oh uh-oh UH-OH!" hook is legitimately her best in years. Obsessing about someone is tedious, obsessing about those people is even more tedious, but for once, Swift sounds like she's legitimately above it, even if I don't think she knows what "shade" is. I wanted to hate this for its posturing, but I can't, because of the "uh-oh" bit. But just between you and me, I liked Katy Perry's last single more. [6]

William John: I'm always happy to hear songs that approximate the "Heartbeats" melody, and the layered vocals here sound lovely, but Dorian Corey didn't keep a mummy in her house for fifteen years for "shade" to be misinterpreted so flagrantly. [3]

Danilo Bortoli: Is it fair to demand political accountability from artists? The question remains thorny these days, but when Taylor Swift blatantly goes after pink money, the answer is yes, loud and clear. The case made for "You Need To Calm Down" has pulled the identity politics card (as usual, The Onion put it better). That is, Swift's song oversimplifies an ancient struggle for recognition, making up a narrative that isn't Taylor's to call her own. But what is more infuriating is the sugarcoating: the fact that pride should come only from within, and the naive and painful suggestion that a homophobe would go silent after a line as awful as "shade never made anybody less gay". That is to say, when it comes to protest, I prefer it the French way. Which is why all of this begs the question: Would you tell Richard Spencer to "calm down"? No, of course you wouldn't. [2]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: There are probably 2300 words elsewhere in this post about the politics and rhetoric of Taylor's words here (and I'll get to that), but first I feel obligated to talk about how "You Need To Calm Down" works on a purely musical level. It sounds like ass. It takes the bag of tricks that Swift used on "Ready For It?," the most musically captivating of Reputation's singles, and sands off all of their weird edges. Yes, there's a bass thump to welcome you in, but without the distortion it just sounds like Taylor's doing "Royals"-lite (I mean, Joel Little did produce.) And with the fangs off the verse, the lift to the chorus fails to land. It's all just sound, an undifferentiated, imperial wave of midtempo banger signifier without a real hook. Even Swift's vocals, which have always been her most compelling tool, can't sell the song's vibe -- she's confused not giving a fuck for calm. Of course, it's not entirely clear what "You Need To Calm Down"'s vibe, or point, even is. It's trying to be clever, with its winking references to stale LGBTQ and feminist symbology, but by conflating (or at least juxtaposing) those struggles with the problems that Taylor Swift has as a widely hated famous person, it ends up saying nothing at all. In the end, "You Need To Calm Down" is less a coherent song in itself than a Potemkin village to situate endless thinkpieces in. Make it stop. [3]

Ashley Bardhan: I know the title is "You Need To Calm Down" but there are no human words that can aptly describe how much I hate this song. Think of a young pigeon cooing as it flies through a fish market, weaving over and through the glistening crates of silver-scaled fish and ice. Oh no! There's a problem with a shipment! The owner angrily tosses a fat fish into the air, and its scales glint as it smacks the pigeon mid-air and onto the ground with the full brunt of its weight. The pigeon sees the fish market, its final flight, behind its closed eyes in a hurried blur. It weakly wheezes its final birdsong, and then... nothing. Yaaas, hunty. [0]

Iris Xie: 🤷 This is so tired, I can't even be that mad about it. The only question I have, because this song and MV isn't even worth a QTPOC-centered thinkpiece from me is this: when is the Post Malone + Swae Lee + Taylor Swift collaboration happening? This sounds so much like "Sunflower" and is just as deadening. Even the excitement of one of my besties sending me an ~*urgent*~ text message about Katy Perry and Taylor Swift making up over their imaginary feud, once they realized it hurt both of their fanbases, can't even ignite an ounce of care from me. (Bless your heart, my dear friend.) If she really wanted to pander to the gays, she could've just written a sequel to "Look What You Made Me Do" and become a slicker conduit for the less graceful parts about being in queer scenes, which can be about petty, messy drama, rather than being the subject of rage and apathy about being another harbinger of happy happy HAPPY gaypropriation. Like, whatever, she can have her extremely meaningless self-declared ally medal. I've been calm, just give me actual music. [2]

Isabel Cole: It's like this: A while ago I was catching up with an ex who mentioned he'd recently come back into contact with someone we'd known in high school -- acquaintance of his, frenemy of mine, a few sparkling months of giggling BFF-ship deteriorating across a year I spent defending her while she shit-talked my fashion sense in the girls' room to the local blabbermouth -- and he told me, with an ironic arch of the brow, that when my name had inevitably come up she'd said, "Isabel and I used to be so close; I wonder what happened." Reader, I spent like a week losing my mind, repeating the story and relitigating the history to anyone who would listen while bitterly making fun of her internet presence. Was this because I am petty and emotionally volatile? Yes. But it was also because there is a certain level of willful detachment from reality which I do not have the cognitive capacity to process adequately. Taylor Swift having the gall to tell any human on earth to calm down makes me feel insane the way it makes me feel insane to see someone citing as evidence of their incurable adolescent unpopularity the dorky AIM screenname they picked based on an affectionate joke I made. Taylor Swift saying "take several seats" makes me feel the same combination of spiteful and enraged as reading a line recycled from Livejournal in 2005: please learn like everyone else to disguise the extent to which the human brain is a machine wired to seek validation, the transparency of your desperation is making all of us uncomfortable! God, I wanna snub her in a lunchroom so bad. The song is unappealing in ways that barely merit mentioning -- verses that sound like they were reverse-engineered from a MIDI file of the superior but hardly sublime "Gorgeous," chorus that throws in the plodding piano of roaring bravery -- but even beyond the equivalency it implies between Twitter making fun of her and, like, hate crimes, I find the bridge particularly embarrassing, because of how artlessly it reveals its origin: Taylor Swift literally read a Tumblr post (or, the algorithm we call Taylor Swift processed several hundred Tumblr posts) from 2011 saying "stop pitting female artists against each other [handclap emoji etc.]!!!!!!!!!!!" and thought, Wow! Feminism! As for the possibility that this is another masterful turn from Taylor the troll (or troll!Taylor as there is a distressingly high chance she'd say) and by falling for it I've let her win: (1) Taylor Swift is always already winning, this is exactly what Marx was talking about (2) Let me kick it back to my ex one more time: when I asked what she was like these days, he considered and said: "I thought she'd developed self-awareness, but then I realized it was just self-identification." Yeah. [1]

Scott Mildenhall: You know sometimes, when you read the annotations on genius.com, how their deductions and inferences appear to have been made by algorithm? For instance, the notion that this being released on that loud American guy's birthday "seems to support the theory" that one line is about him? This is what would happen if that algorithm was tasked with writing a satirical song. [5]

Stephen Eisermann: My take? This is more lazy allyship than commercialization of pride. Plus, it's kind of a bop. Sucks, then, that Taylor completely misunderstands what shade is -- but did we really expect any better? [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[thisselflovecamebacktome]

How do you feel about this Kaylor obsession? i find it disrespectful

I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve thought of 20 different ways to write this as to make sure it didn’t come off in a way I didn’t mean it, but I’ve realised just I’m probably going to get criticised either way so writing what comes to me is probably easiest.

To start this, I want to speak a bit about myself. It’s not directly relevant to Kaylor, but I think it’s important in understanding where my perspective comes from. I say that because I will be the first to admit that I come from a very privileged position in comparison to most. I’m a white, cisgender bisexual girl who grew up in a rich, pretty forward thinking city and even though we were definitely poverty line poor, we never went without the essentials and thanks to the government scheme, I was able to go to university along with not having to worry about going to a “worse” school in my childhood because schooling is not as heavily linked with location here as other places. I mention this because with the exception of the church, my catholic grandparents and one or two assholes, I have rarely had issues with my sexuality. 9 times out of 10 if it’s brought up, it is me casually saying it. Most of my friends are queer, and while my family have their less than perfect moments with it (mostly ignorant comments), I have never been at risk of homelessness or abuse or suicidal ideation over my sexuality and have never felt like my parents nor siblings nor friends loved me any less because I wasn’t straight. That’s not to say where I live doesn’t have queerphobia because friends of mine have faced abuse and/or homelessness and/or committed suicide over it, but once again, I have been so privileged to have not. Once again, this is not directly related to Kaylor, but I am well aware it is a very different perspective than what most people have and I definitely feel it shapes and contextualises what I’m about to say so it’s important to say.

Kaylor is a very nuanced topic for me… moreso than any other ship, real or not,  I want to say that I personally don’t believe any romantic relationship Taylor had was fake. Do I think she had deeper feelings to some over others? Yes. Do I think her and/or certain partners knew that their relationship would give them extra publicity and that was an added bonus to the relationship? Sure. But I do not think she went into any relationship being like “The only thing I’m getting out of this person is their publicity”, especially after the world starting in on their “Taylor Swift is the problem” rampage. In saying this, I think Taylor showed us with Joe that it is possible for her to only show the relationships she and the other person wants to show and it wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t the first. I feel I should also mention that in my younger years, I was a major Swiftgron shipper… not to the extent that I feel every RED song + Better Man is about Dianna, but I definitely shipped it hard and believed it happened. Likewise, I got the vibe with other females Taylor hung around at certain points even if I didn’t ship them as strong as Swiftgron. So, as you can imagine, I’m not opposed to the idea that Kaylor had something other than a platonic relationship at one stage. If they came out today and said everything the Kaylors said was right, I’d support their relationship. However I am not someone who believes that they are this massive romantic love story that’s included beards for years, especially not ones related to the Trumps. Perhaps they had something for a short time in the past, and hell, I’d even believe Gorgeous is about Karlie, but I do not think that they are secretly together when lets be real, Taylor isn’t particularly getting anything out of Joe promotion wise if he is a beard. And before someone says “she got someone who she can say her Reputation love songs are about”, there are a total of 3 songs on that album that she couldn’t spin to be about someone else, as a platonic/family based love song or a general observation on her anxieties. Of those, one of them could have easily been reworded to be about friendship/family over romantic love. Like it just really does not make sense to me that they would play their cards that way when it’d be simpler to just keep her “single” if her and Karlie were actually together. It especially doesn’t make sense now because quite frankly, Taylor has done nearly everything she can to make it clear that even if she has conservative followers, she is not a conservative person and is very ready to defend and support the queer community. And yes, I know that coming out is very different than giving support, but with the seemingly genuine “I don’t care what anyone but my loved ones think of me” attitude she’s been giving off in the last year or two, I genuinely feel like beards are off the board if indeed they were ever on it.

Regardless of how I feel about the ship though, I don’t like that Kaylors cross boundaries. I want to make it clear though that it is not just the Kaylors that do this. I didn’t like how Tayvin fans constantly spoke about Calvin’s dick and made comments about the sex they were supposedly having, Same with Joe/Taylor fans. I didn’t like hearing how Haylors (and other shippers) tracked Taylor’s plane. And in general, I hated how this fandom kept making “Not 10 months sober anymore!!!” jokes. As a whole, I think this fandom has crossed a lot of lines it shouldn’t have and in part that’s why I am grateful for the Reputation era because it somewhat forced us to take a step back and reconsider that stuff. And I say us because I will fully admit that in my younger days (early to mid teens) while I didn’t go as far as some other fans, I was far too obsessed with Swiftgron for my own good and crossed a lot of lines because of it. But as I’ve aged I’ve realised two things. 

Firstly, it’s invasive as fuck and goes against my “treat people how you would like to be treated” way of life. I was talking to friends a few weeks ago and I mentioned that I would hate to be famous because I know that because of the way I am with my friends, I would have fans being like “[insert female friend here] isn’t really with [insert boyfriend of 5+ years here]. Clearly her and Jess are in a relationship! Here’s the receipts!” or “[insert brother’s ex girlfriend here] and [insert brother here] were never in a relationship in their teens. Jess and [insert brother’s ex girlfriend here] clearly were in love but couldn’t be together because of the age difference so [insert brother here] stepped in to be a good ally and said he was dating [insert brother’s ex girlfriend here] instead!”. And here’s the thing, I could probably laugh that off as a “oh those silly shippers” thing, but I also know that I have a few closeted friends who would be literally scared if a rumour like that got thrown around about them just because they associated with me. I have other friends, both queer and not, who would lose family over it. And in general, the remainder would be rightfully annoyed that their relationships were constantly being belittled and being accused of lying about them. And people can make the argument that they’re just trying to uncover the truth so Karlie and Taylor can live their “authentic” lives, but like it’s not your place to do that. It’s not anyone’s place but Karlie and/or (preferably and) Taylor’s if in fact they are in a relationship. If they are romantically involved and hiding it, they have done it for a reason and that should be respected.

Secondly, and somewhat tied to the first point; it doesn’t matter. Look I love Taylor, I do, but at the end of the day, whether Kaylor are together or not does not matter. Same with Taylor/Joe, same with Sweeran, same with Swiftgron and same with literally any other ship you can think of. The world is and always will be bigger than Taylor and her partner. Would Taylor showing off a female partner be nice given how big she is? Yes. But the truth of the matter is in a hundred years, almost nobody is going to give a fuck about who Taylor’s partners were and which songs are about who. Like I genuinely believe that who Taylor is with, male, female or otherwise, is never going to make history like just say Ellen and Portia. The world moves way too fast for that and to be honest, at least where I live, we’re not really in a moment of time where Taylor coming out would be seen as a big deal to most people for more than a few months. To her fans it obviously would be, and I get that, I really do. It would be incredible to think that I have something so formative in common with Taylor and could look up to her in another way. But at the end of the day, not only does Taylor’s partners not matter in the sense of I don’t know these people and it doesn’t and shouldn’t impact my life, but it’s not Taylor’s job to be that person a lot of fans want her to be. Obviously if she so chooses to be and is said person then I would welcome it with open arms, but I would rather use my time being that person and supporting artists like Janelle Monae that are that person than trying to force Taylor to be that person when at this point in time, she has chosen not to openly be that if she is at all.

Anyway, this is far longer than I intended it to be, but that’s basically all my thoughts on the topic.

[clairebeauchampfan]

Meeeow! Why are we obsessed with cats?

Claws out! Why pop culture clings to the crazy cat lady

Lucy Jones, The Guardian newspaper

Mon 16 Apr 2018 16.48 BST

For years, women with cats have been portrayed as lonely, sexless and eccentric – but why does this stereotype endure? And can millennial ailurophiles reclaim the purr-jorative?

Did you hear the story about the old woman from Ohio who was arrested for training her 65 cats to steal her neighbour’s stuff? The Columbus police department found thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery in the 83-year-old lady’s house and discovered she taught the cats to bring back “anything that shined”.

The news story went viral at the end of last year. How do you picture her? Unkempt hair, dressing gown and slippers, living alone, rarely leaving the house? The “crazy cat lady”, in other words. In fact, the story was fiction on a satirical website, but people bought it and shared the story thinking it was real.

The crazy cat lady is a common, recognisable trope in contemporary culture: think of Eleanor Abernathy in The Simpsons. After a promising career in medicine and law, she experiences burnout, starts drinking and gets a cat. Next minute, she’s talking gibberish, looking dishevelled and throwing her army of felines around. Then there’s Robert De Niro’s predictably bonkers elderly Christmas cat lady in a 2004 Saturday Night Live skit: she “had dreams and then she was kicked by a horse and now she has cats. The end!”

The younger version of the stereotype is usually associated with being single, kooky and weird; after her relationship with Carol Burnett comes to a head, 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon acquires a cat. “I can fit Emily Dickinson’s whole head in my mouth,” she tells a concerned Jack Donaghy. You can even buy a Crazy Cat Lady action figure online, complete with deranged, staring eyes.

To understand why this trope exists – and why it may be on its last legs – let’s scoot back to the middle ages and the earliest perceptions of women and their cats. Even before witch-hunts, cats had a bad rep in the western world – with associations with heretical sects and the devil. Medieval types conflated feline sex lives with lustful, sinful, female sexuality: cats were seen as “lecherous animals that actively wheedled the males on to sexual congress”, according to the historian James Serpell. Although, in recent pop culture, cat lady has evolved into shorthand for a lonely, sad, sexless woman. Too sexy, not sexy enough: can’t please ’em.

The earliest cat ladies in the west were, of course, witches. In Malleus Maleficarum, the landmark medieval treatise on witchcraft, a 13th-century folk story is recounted, whereby three witches turned themselves into cats, attacked a man on the street and accused him of assault in court, showing the marks on their bodies. From then on, witches were believed to have cats as familiars, or to change into felines at night.

Why would cats get such a satanic rep? We can only guess. Cats are mysterious. They come and go. Unlike dogs, they refuse to obey and be domesticated. They’re nocturnal. The Ancient Egyptians worshipped Bastet, a woman with a head of a cat. Although the Bible does not specifically mention cats, early Christian pilgrims were highly suspicious of other religions, and they deemed the black cat to be so demonic that being seen with one could be punishable by death.

Although the 18th century saw people beginning to question superstitions – such as the belief that a woman’s wart was a teat suckled by Satan – negative connotations of the relationship between cats and women remained. The Victorians switched witches for old-maid stereotypes – for single women without children: “Old maids and cats have long been proverbially associated together, and, rightly or wrongly, these creatures have been looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion and aversion by a large proportion of the human race,” wrote a journalist in the Dundee Courier in 1880. The Old Maid card game was often illustrated with a dour woman and her cat, the “friend of the friendless”, as it was described at the time. In the 1900s, anti-suffragette propaganda used images of cats to portray women as silly, useless, catty and ridiculous in their attempt to enter political life.

The inception of the “crazy” moniker is harder to pin down, but its connotations of hysteria are an old gender stereotype. Added to this, the extreme end of the modern “crazy cat lady” stereotype has more than a few cats, which is unusual. Eleanor Abernathy, for example, has cats dripping off her: she is, essentially, portrayed as a mentally ill, alcoholic, compulsive hoarder.

There may be some truth in the idea that animal hoarding is more common in women. A study in Brazil found that, while generalised hoarding disorder affects men and women equally, nearly three-quarters of animal hoarders were women. Since 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies compulsive hoarding as a psychiatric disorder, with animal hoarding as a subtype.

Another recent theory is to do with a parasite called toxoplasma gondii. This tiny critter infects rats and mice and changes their behaviour by, scientists believe, creating an attraction to cat urine, so it can wind up in the stomach of a cat, where it reproduces. It also infects between 30% and 60% cent of people. Scientists are exploring evidence that toxoplasmosis could create behavioural changes in people, leading to lots of excited articles wondering if the parasite is a clue to explaining the phenomenon of “crazy cat lady”. The parasite contains an enzyme that creates dopamine, which is associated with risky and impulsive behaviour, among other things, but so far the data is inconclusive.

But, really, the concept of the crazy cat lady tells us more about societal perceptions of women than anything else. It has long been a pejorative term and a device for transferring shame and judgment on women who challenged traditional roles, or were hard to domesticate and keep in line. Here is the co-creator of Batman, Bob Kane, explaining his creation of Cat Woman: “I felt that women were feline creatures and men were more like dogs. While dogs are faithful and friendly, cats are cool, detached and unreliable … cats are as hard to understand as women are,” he said. “You always need to keep women at arm’s length. We don’t want anyone taking over our souls, and women have a habit of doing that.”

But millennial ailurophiles have had enough. Over the last few years, there have been multivalent efforts to debunk the crazy cat lady stereotype and project a positive view of women and their cats. Pussy is striking back.

From glossy fashion magazines celebrating the feline-human relationship – Cat People, Puss Puss – to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry’s unashamed adoration of their feline pets, the stereotype is being recalibrated. CatCon Worldwide, a new conference celebrating cat culture, has, as its core value, the desire to “change the negative perception of the crazy cat lady and prove that it is possible to be hip, stylish, and have a cat”.

The book Cat Lady Chic (2012) offered elegant images of cat-owners Audrey Hepburn, Georgia O’Keeffe, Diana Ross and Zelda Fitzgerald as an antidote to the Eleanor Abernathy archetype. And Girls & Their Cats, a sophisticated series of photographs of women and their feline companions, was created by Brooklyn-based fashion photographer BriAnne Wills to help dismantle the stereotype.“It just wasn’t representative of any of the cat ladies I personally knew, who are all independent, cool, career-driven women who really love their cats,” she said. “Also, there are more than a million cats euthanised each year so if women (and men) are afraid to adopt because of negative stereotypes it definitely hurts cats in the long run.”

In the memorable short story Cat Person (2017), Kristen Roupenian inverts the cat lady trope by giving her male protagonist, Robert, a couple of pet cats. She employs the presence of Robert’s felines as a symbol that Margot uses to construct her image of him. “We decide that it means something that a person likes cats instead of dogs,” said Roupenian in an interview. But there is something sinister going on. Margot never sees the cats, and wonders if Robert has lied about them. So what is it about pretending to have cats that might endear Margot to him in a sexual setting? Is he using his cats to lure her in?

But perhaps the moment the crazy cat lady motif truly jumped the shark was with the song Buttload of Cats on an episode of the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend earlier this year. Rebecca Bunch walks herself down to the Lonely Lady Cat Store. “The smell is overwhelming inside / This is the future smell of my house / It’s the smell of my dreams that have died,” she sings. “When you’re a permanent bachelorette / It’s mandatory that you go out and get / A buttload of cats / Oh, yeah!”

The song made a mockery of the hysteria projected on women who own cats. So is the notion of the crazy cat lady over? Wills believes there is still work to be done to change perceptions, but she hopes that her photography project will help. “It is 2018,” she says, “and women are tired of defending themselves.” And their love for their cats.

AND I LOVE CATS TOO. ESPECIALLY SIAMESE (but my dog hates them)