You’re Ruben Hopclap. You’re a teen rock star headlining a local festival. Your interim principal attempts to kill you multiple times. The elusive crush you wrote all your songs about vanishes with some other kids and returns covered in gore. The most popular guy in school jumps fifteen feet in the air, turns to you with a smirk and says, “I’m actually a huge fan,” and spears said principal through the core. Your crush boards a bus going who knows where. Someone gets on a mic and tells everyone to go home. It’s been four minutes.
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Okay.. let’s hear it! Initial thoughts of the new album!
Ugh sorry for the delay on this. I listened to the (first) album when it dropped at midnight, finished it and saw her say “double album, 15 more songs!!” went “that’s nice. I’m going to bed” fully intending to spend most of today listening and relistening to fully take it in, but then there was a crisis at work and I suddenly had a shitton to do in a very little amount of time which was not a conducive environment to fully digest these *very* dense songs. I still haven’t sat down and done nothing but listen to half the songs on the anthology, so. I am never more jealous of west coast time zoners than during new music drops. 😂
I immediately logged off the internet when I heard it had leaked Wednesday so I truly went into this blind. My initial thoughts are… well… okay! I don’t dislike it. But I don’t love it, you know? The songs are very dense but I still don’t think it’s her best writing (and I’m a Bruce Springsteen girlie; I love a cryptic lyrically dense album). There are a whole bunch of songs that I really enjoy and some REALLY good lyrics. But I remember hearing Cardigan or YOYOK for the first time and how that felt and I just don’t get that on anything here. I also cannot acknowledge the implications of how many goddamn songs are about Matty Healy and how in love with him she was without risking a mental breakdown!!! The idea that CARDIGAN was written about him… I cannot do this… take me back to when we thought The 1 was for sure about Harry Styles. I was present for the Gillette rain show “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been” psychotic break and I STILL was not prepared for the amount of psycho behavior on this album regarding the rat man!!!!
I think I have two main problems with this album. 1: it is too goddamn long. I am not one to complain about getting more content but I feel like a lot of these songs are just saying the same thing and not doing it in a way unique enough to justify having both of them. Like I think we could have EASILY trimmed a lot of fat and gotten these both into one 20-ish track album that would have read better. I feel like a lot of this has to do with the social media culture now of more, more, more, always racing towards the next thing— like how a day after we got 1989 TV the swifties were clamoring for rep TV. Like we just got 5 new songs!!! Slow down!!! I would have preferred quality over quantity lol and this album very much felt like quantity, quantity, quantity.
And then 2: I miss when she used to really push herself to try different things and to get better at her craft. Not that I want her to be attacked and get backlash, but her insane levels of fame have made her so untouchable that no one can say anything remotely constructive without being crucified and I feel like it eliminates some of the drive she has to push herself to be better and write better (hello Speak Now and Red!!!). I saw Rolling Stone gave this album a perfect 100 score like???? Hello???? The album is not bad, but to grade it as perfection compared to others? Over Red? Over Folklore? Over 1989??? Let’s be real. And I feel like this album has a lot of “well it’s good enough” moments where I’m like… but is it good enough? Could we have worked to make this better? I feel like she needs new collaborators too. She does great work with Jack and Aaron but I feel like they know each other too well and it’s getting to the point where they’re not editing or pushing her as much as they should be. A lot of the songwriting here just felt complacent. Get Liz Rose back in the room I am begging!!!!!
Now that I’ve typed all that out I feel like I am being increasingly harsh, but idk. It’s a fine album. There are some songs I enjoy and I’m sure it’s gonna grow on me more as I listen and really digest, but it doesn’t really have any super stand out moments to me right now. I saw a tweet saying this album is not to top the charts, not to draw in new fans, this is for the swifties who know and care about Taylor’s lore and want to listen and know what was going on during this period of her life, and she just needed to get it out there and say it so she can move on. And I do enjoy the lore, don’t get me wrong, but I kinda hope that’s the case and the next album is a clean slate, because… other than the lore, there’s nothing really new or interesting here, sonically, lyrically, etc. I really hope her next album she takes a big risk and does something different. I also feel like she needs a BREAK. Like I don’t want any new music for the entire year of 2025. Go recharge and take a break and come back to us with your best work, queen. I feel like the rerecords and the constant churning out of new music and content is just watering down her undeniable talent.
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, but you know. C’est la vie. I never was a big poetry girlie anyways, and I’ve seen some people say they love the album (and to them I say I’m happy for you I clap I cheer and i’m gonna let you rock!!) but for me… idk. We’ll see how I feel in a week. But throughout the day today I kept feeling the temptation to put Chappell Roan back on, so… I think that sort of sums up my initial feelings on the whole thing. 😂
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am i going to spend money on magic the gathering cards tomorrow just because i saw there was a nine-fingers' card? maybe. am i weird? definitely. do i have an excuse because i've played tcgs in the past and want to collect cards again? no. but that won't stop me
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Disclaimer im just processing some thoughts im not cancelling the show
have almost thoughts about how i find the like....narrative on here that if you have chronic "zebra" conditions youd want a doctor like House and wouldnt sue for malpractice bc at least youd have a doctor that cares about whats wrong with you but lets take it one step further. so often he does NOT give a shit about the patient and actively endangers them frequently with his god damn heoric era of medicine approach? non zero amount of times he gets a diagnosis but it comes too late, or he gets a diagnosis after their first wrong 3 guesses of the episode shut down the patients kidneys and they either have to get a transplant or they are just, doomed due to other preexisting conditions etc? idk. i know ppl are almost certainly exaggerating and just letting off steam about the very real failures of our current medical systems and the ableism baked in and All That Shit. i just think its weird how ppl romanticize House who STILL, FREQUENTLY, MULTIPLE EPISODES will actively dismiss shit in the exact way that is a problem in our current system, especially when hes being Forced Against His Will To See Clinic Parients, he loves to be dismissive as fuck of symptoms and if he was a real doctor i think he'd be fucking 50/50 on cases he Notices Something To Dig Into vs cases he dismisses as an Anxious Hysterical Woman Who Wants Attention, the only reason he's Right so frequently in his snap judgements is cos it reinforces the narrative. its like a crime drama that has the mastermind serial killer masterfully using "loopholes" and lawyering up all sneaky and dodging Justice and if only our poor little cop protags were allowed to do A TEENY BIT of Justified Police Brutality, they could Save Lives!
and like sometimes in the show they will have a patient die despite his efforts to narratively punish him. not to mention, i think its been at least mildly brought up and glossed over how much they absolutely do not think about insurance costs for these ppl for the insane amount of tests that find nothing and Wrong Medications To Force A Diagnosis they use? i think it was brought up once in the episode following a day in the life of cuddy where she had to fight a lawsuit bc a guys insurance like didnt cover his thumb being reattached but chase reattached it anyway while in surgery cos it was The Right Thing To Do and the guy didnt have the money to cover it and the insurance wouldnt pay unless he sued the hospital or whatever. thats like the only time its come up. whereas like frequently the doctor I go to for osteopathic manipulation tries to check in with me and make sure im covered by insurance etc and that im not going to go broke or get buried in medical debt seeing her.
idk. just some Thoughts. not a defense of our current system and all the flaws it enables and enforces etc. his approach to medicine is really reminiscent to me of what I know of the Heroic Era Of Medicine which i dont...love? and hes framed on here as being an asshole but would kill for his patients to get them a diagnosis etc. but hes definitely extremely paternalistic to patients ? and despite some good clippable lines about ableism and being against eugenics, it honestly feels like his stance on that is kind of a toss up.
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darling, this was just as hard
a Smallville Lex/Lana fanfiction
He knew a lot about loss, painful lesson after painful lesson, a thousand truths accrued over his lifetime. He knew about having things torn from his grasp. He knew about clinging to a precipice, digging his fingernails in, and falling anyway. He didn’t know a damn thing about letting go.
check reblogs for link
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bigstupid ramble/rant incoming feel free to ignore//cursing cw
it’s actually very disturbing to me how many people in the monster high fandom think it’s ok to say that abbey & twylas g1 sculpts are “ugly” or “offputting” because they have strong/square jaws & the new molds are sooo much better bc they no longer have them. like i really really really try to be nice here & pardon my language but are you fucking stupid? did you miss literally everything monster high was trying to teach you? did you miss the whole “everyone is unique & beautiful in their own way” thing? or did you just forget that the features you’re calling ugly are features that real people have? genuinely asking because it’s baffling to me how many people who praise g3 for it’s body diversity are foaming at the mouth excited over characters’ unique features being replaced with conventionally attractive ones. u don’t like strong jawlines? awesome, people who have them still deserve to feel beautiful & have gorgeous dolls that look like them & the fact that mh had that & got rid of it is objectively bad. like first of all, a franchise that preaches accepting ppls differences SHOULD have characters with both body types & facial features that aren’t considered “conventionally attractive”. that was one of the issues w g1, their message was about everyone being different but everyone had the exact some skinny body type. & now g3 has greatly improved on body diversity (pls give us an actual plus sized doll tho) yet they’ve been removing diversity in facial features. it fucks me up bc WHY can’t we have rep for diverse body types AND rep for diverse facial features?? and second, bro they are literally monsters. they absolutely should have features that challenge traditional beauty standards because hello she’s a yeti, she needs jaw space to house those bigass tusks. and if those unconventional features look strange to you? GOOD. bask in their strange weird abnormal beauty!! i literally don’t care if u think abbeys new face is cuter & her old jaw was ugly, if you see a person with a prominent jawline & think “hm not aesthetically pleasing enough” unpack that with your therapist, don’t post it on the internet where impressionable kids with those exact features get to see it & gather more fuel for their insecurities. this goes for literally any facial feature or body part btw. basically, bottom line, if it’s a feature that real people have that they can’t control, don’t fucking say a WORD about how aesthetically unpleasant you find it. criticize the fashion, criticize the quality control & messed up face screenings, criticize the weird continuity errors & questionable representation, but if your issue with a doll is their body type/facial features look ugly to u, shut the fuck up!!!!!!
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