#i'm reading blog posts from 2008 about me

[elenadoeslife]

💔

[underwhelmingalchemist]

So apparently the version of the "Isn't It Bromantic" interview that gets passed around isn't the full thing

So after seeing a tumblr post I can't find, about two and half hours of intensive internet digging, and one purchase from a sketchy second-hand site later (full story under the cut, I promise it's interesting, but also long), I got the physical magazine and scanned it

So here you go: the full "Isn't It Bromantic?" TV guide interview with Robert Sean Leonard and Hugh Laurie

Feel free to repost wherever you want- I want people to be able to find the full thing

SO, as for how I found it:

I saw this tumblr post forever ago that I can't find anymore because tumblr is just Like That with a cropped screenshot of an interview with Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard. In the interview, they're asked about the "bromance" between their two characters. Leonard makes an annoyed comment about how "everyone [is] obsessed with homosexuality", followed by the interview apologizing and Laurie immediately jumping in with, "No, no, let's talk about it. Wilson and House have an unusual relationship so you have to explore…" and the screenshot cuts off there. Cue funny comment from the OP about the interaction, roll credits.

Except, as these things tend to do, it ended up becoming a bit of a brain worm, and I wanted to find it again. But I couldn't find the tumblr post. I looked absolutely everywhere, and in the process of looking everywhere, I found what I thought was the original interview- a blog post with the full quote from the actor. I didn't think too much about it, I figured it was just a short quote given to a popular blog in 2008. There's a magazine cover above it, but I don't think too much about it, because I'm focusing on the quotes in the article instead of the rest of it.

So I send screenshots to a couple friends to make jokes, and it probably should have died there.

However, late at night I end up thinking about that interview again, because of course I did. I start to think about how it's weirdly formatted for, what I assumed at first reading, was just an entertainment news blog reaching out for comment and getting a response. So I pull up the screenshots of the article (because weirdly enough, the old-ass blog only loads on mobile) and look at it again.

This is when I realize that this isn't an original piece from a blog interviewing these two after reaching out for comment. This is a blog post quoting and commenting on a full interview from a magazine, which I had originally thought had just been the inspiration for the piece.

So naturally, I go looking for the magazine.

Luckily, the name of the magazine is displayed on the cover, and so is the title of its main piece. This should be easy to find, right?

Wrong.

This is an interview in a physical magazine. From 2008. October 13th, 2008, to be exact.

I know this exact date because searching the article title and magazine name leads me to an archive on the TV Guide website.

Of covers.

And nothing but covers.

I spend like forty-five minutes searching everywhere I can think of on the web. Internet Archive, the TV Guide website, any search result that comes up when I search any combination of the words "House" "Interview" "Bromantic" "Bromance" "TV Guide" "Archive" etc. Over and over, all that's coming up are that original blog post and the cover from the official gallery.

The only things I could find online were:

The cover and date of the issue on the TV Guide website

The original blog post that was screenshotted in the original tumblr post

Another blog post that had a much shorter version of the quote, references something Leonard says from later in the article, and makes a comment on the nature of his reaction to the term "bromance"

An entry on Leonard's IMDB page's "interview" list mentioning it in title only

And:

5. A single listing for the issue on what seemed to be a second-hand site that looked like it hadn't had its UI updated since the mid 2000's, with a listing with no date or additional information besides what issue it is.

This is the only listing anywhere. I checked every other second-hand site I could think of, and then some that only came up through google searches. There's not a single listing for that issue on any of them. There were plenty of listings of TV guide magazines, including one that seemed promising because it included issues from that year, but it was missing all of October.

It seemed like the only listing for this issue on the entire internet was this one copy on this one obscure website. For all I know, this was listed in 2008 and abandoned, and just never got marked inactive. It could also be a complete scam.

A few quick google searches show that that website seemed to be legit, albeit a bit loose on quality control (which makes sense, this website seemed like the kind of thing you'd have to use the Way Back Machine to access). It also had an option to pay via PayPal, which meant I could file a chargeback if need be.

It was $11.50 when you include shipping.

So at about half past midnight, I bought the listing.

Naturally, about an hour later, I manage to actually find a scan of the interview. I had to follow a link in the comments of a post on FanPop, taking me to an old wordpress blog, and I'm sitting in front of the damn interview at last.

But something doesn't make sense. Why would their cover story only be two pages of text that aren't even full pages, and why would it cut off so strangely? There was no concluding sentence or paragraph, even though it started with a fairly long lead-in. It also led right up to the edge of the page, which felt like there should be more to it. There were more images in the interview than text, and the fact that there are so many of them and they clearly did a whole photoshoot indicated that they had them on hand for a while. The silly string one, for instance, I imagine probably had to require a couple takes, which means cleaning off Wilson's hair and face, adjusting makeup, etc. for it. Meanwhile, the conversation itself seems like it could have taken ten minutes total. I could have been totally wrong and that was where the article ended, but I couldn't shake the feeling that there might be more.

So I hold tight. A couple days pass with no update, and then the PayPal purchase gets updated with a tracking number. Promising, but it could still be a scam. Whether or not I get the actual magazine becomes a source of anxiety for the next week.

Until today, when I get told it was delivered. And when I opened the envelope it was sent in: there it was.

When I tell you I was happy stimming in my bedroom just holding the damn issue in my own hands... And then opening it and finding out that I was right, there was a missing page... I was elated. I still am, just typing this.

So I spent half an hour getting my scanner to work, and I give you the above issues.

Like I said above, feel free to repost however and wherever you want. I want all this to mean something.

In the meantime, I have two more House-themed TV Guide magazines coming to try and get articles from.

[writingmochi]

ｌｏａｄｉｎｇ ｉｎｔｅｒｆａｃｅ．．．

you've found a discovery: cinema experience

lissie: greetings! not going to lie, i didn't expect to achieve this milestone in the quick manner that it is (shout out to laurel hell for that like i still am baffled). thank you for taking a chance in reading the fics, giving it a like, giving a reblog and/or comment, and for following the blog. as with the other discoveries found, i'll be sending back to the community and what is not a good way to do that by hosting an open collab for writers who write for ateez, txt, and/or enhypen.

what is cinema experience?

from the youthful stories of call me by your name, to the adventures in star wars, the horror depths of friday the 13th, to the exuberant tales from the princess bride. here is the cinema experience.

cinema experience is a fic collaboration project centred on adapting stories from cinema and creating your own twist and take on it. so, any movie you want to adapt, from the indie to the blockbusters. to the oldies and the newest. give it a twist to your liking, a horror version of the breakfast club with hongjoong in mind, or lost in translation with a sci-fi twist for sunghoon.

this collab is open for anybody that wants to / is writing for ateez, txt, and/or enhypen and will last until the end of 2024. if you decide to join in, your name will be listed on this post.

if you are interested in joining, the guidelines will be below the cut:

guidelines:

this project is for ateez, txt, & enhypen fics

the fics can be either reader insert x idol or oc x idol (no idol x idol pairing)

minimum word count is 1000 (1k)

though i love timestamps, headcanons, drabbles, and reactions, this project is for full-length works only.

plagiarism is extremely prohibited, especially if you are plagiarizing existing works. believe in yourself that you can create something great!

smut and suggestive are allowed but no smut for jungwon and no suggestive and smut content for niki (as per following my blog's guideline)

all written works will be added to a masterlist that i'm making by the end of the year (december 31st, 2024)

if you want to join:

reblog this post with your member of choice and the movie your fic will be based on

tag your work with #discovery: 400 or tag me @/writingmochi when you are have posted it so i can put you in the masterlist!

the groups and the movies:

ATEEZ

@/writingmochi | san | wall-e (2008)

@pyeonghongrie | hongjoong | the phantom of the opera (2004)

@fureastel | yeosang | robin hood (1973)

@hotteoki | yunho | to all the boys i've loved before (2018)

@prodsh00ky | mingi | pirates of the caribbean franchise

@miirohs | seonghwa | how to train your dragon franchise

@vampiriirot | wooyoung | the devil wears prada (2006)

TXT

@/hotteoki | beomgyu | spirited away (2001)

@/writingmochi | soobin | bridge to terabithia (2007) and tigers are not afraid (2017)

ENHYPEN

@/writingmochi | jay | fallen angels (1995) and millennium mambo (2001)

lissie: i'll be looking forward to reading your works! once again, thank you so much for the milestone <3

our other discoveries:

discovery: 300 send me a fake fic title and i'll make the premise for you!

discovery: 100 ask me questions about my wips and/or writing process!

[adachimoe]

Random stuff from the Persona Club P4 book

I leafed through the Club book and more of the meta and setting stuff stood out to me than the character stuff. 🤓

The origins of Yasoinaba: The meta developer corner notes that Yasoinaba gets its name from the Hare of Inaba legend. Yaso comes from Okuninushi's brethren who are collectively called the yasogami. Samegawa is also a reference to the Hare of Inaba. In the myth, the hare went on the backs of sharks to reach the territory that would eventually be called Inaba. "Same" is shark, and "kawa/gawa" is river. The animal mascot in Inaba is the rabbit. Not because of the myth, though, but because there's a bunch of rabbits somewhere if you follow the Samegawa lol. The town plant is broadleaf cattail.

Tatsuhime Shrine: It's noted that Toyotamahime is the enshrined deity at Tatsuhime shrine. This is a kinda indirect reference to the Hare of Inaba. Toyotamahime was a sea creature who could transform into a human. Her sea creature form was said to be similar to that of a crocodile or a shark (see the above about the Hare of Inaba). Actually, my first blog post on here was about Toyotamahime and the woman at the shrine.

The staging area of the TV world: The design of the people on the ground on the floor of the staging area when you enter the TV world from Junes is the result of the main characters having murder on the brain when they first enter the TV.

The location of Junes: The Yasoinaba branch of Junes is located near the highway so it brings incidental business to town because people who are driving through will also stop there, not just Inaba locals.

Junes wages: Start at 690 yen per hour for high school students, and 900 yen per hour for others. (Per Google, this was like $6.67 / $8.70 per hour in 2008 when the game came out.)

Yosuke's dad's name: Yoichi Hanamura (花村陽一).

The origins of Konishi Liquor: A member of Atlus's battle team is named Konishi and their family actually owns a liquor store. Early on in development, the team just called the place "Konishi Liquor" as a placeholder after the developer and the name stuck. (The text specifically says this is about a Konishi on the battle team, so it's not referring to the composer who is also named Konishi.)

The in-universe history of Inaba: Yasoinaba developed as a mountain castle town with ties to Takeda Shingen. (This is a reference to the actual area in Yamanashi where Atlus drove to and used as a model for the shopping district.) Later, it became a coal mining town. But the coal mine has since closed. (I believe the coal mine part is fictional and isn't supposed to correlate to Yamanashi.)

Mayumi's Room and Saki's Shopping District: Originally, Mayumi's room and the shopping district with Konishi Liquor were a lot bigger and more similar to the size of the other dungeons in the time period after they were pushed into the TV. Once inside, they became lost in the maze and had to confront their shadows. But once the person who created these spaces/images died, these two places shrunk in size, hence the smaller areas you see in-game. The smaller parts are like "cores" of these once larger areas that remain behind. The book likens the small spaces / "cores" to ghosts that haunt the spots where they died.

Magatsu Inaba and Magatsu Mandala: Unlike the other dungeons, which sprung from repressed thoughts, Adachi's Magatsu Inaba was intentionally created to lure in the Investigation Team and confuse them. From the yellow caution tape, you can sense that a part of him still knows he's a detective.

The bit about the caution tape, I think you can read it also as an explanation to why he sends you the letter about the true ending - there is still detective'ing to be done. But like, I'm just gonna pretend I didn't read that. The tape says CAUTION KEEP OUT WARNING because babygirl has a hard time with feelings and people. Fuck you Atlus. Also, I guess his place being "intentionally" created is related to why he got to pick the entrance being in Mayumi's room.

Shadows: The shadows in Persona 4 aren't really the same as Persona 3. The book tells you to think of them separately as the ones in Persona 4 don't really directly harm people - they remain in the unconscious rather than appear in reality and shank people. Shadows in the TV world attack Persona users because they sense danger from Persona users and just instinctively know to attack them. Compared to Persona 3, there are more silly shadows because the Midnight Channel is influenced by the people who watch it.

Mitsuo Kubo's backstory: Mitsuo was a student at Yasogami High until Morooka caught him messing around in a downtown area, after which he was suspended from school for a week. This wrecked his ego / pride so badly that he dropped out of Yasogami High and held a grudge against Morooka. Btw, Hashino also mentions in this long interview that Mitsuo was originally not going to kill Morooka.

References to the Kirijo Zaibatsu: When Dojima tries to reach Nanako in November, he gets a pre-recorded message about the KJ phone service and Nanako's phone being off. "KJ" stands for "Kirijo". Additionally, when Naoto mentions that she did research and found info about shadows becoming Personas, this info was leaked from a Kirijo research lab.

Did Kashiwagi seriously book the kids at a love hotel?: The love hotel on Shirakawa from Persona 3 was renovated (kind of) into a regular hotel by the time of Persona 4.

Yomenai Bookstore: Yomenai means "unreadable". The owner's last name is actually Yomenai, and they didn't realize their last name wasn't a good match for running a bookstore until after they opened up business. School kids started making fun of the store, which bothered Yomenai at first, but they left the store open and now stock mostly books related to their own hobbies. In other words, the majority of the books at the store are "unreadable" to regular people.

[clonewarsarchives]

Hello there!

I just wanted to write in to express my gratitude and ask a couple questions.

Long story short, I gave up on both the EU and Disney Star Wars canons some time ago, instead choosing to vet the works myself and add them to my own list. This has brought me much joy and breathed new life into this franchise for me, because now, anything I don't like, I can just ignore.

My focal point for vetting is involvement from George Lucas, and so naturally The Clone Wars (Seasons 1-6, anyways) got accepted, and is a huge part of my own canon.

But in doing the research for this project, I have discovered so much more Star Wars to take in than I ever had before. Case in point is the webcomics for The Clone Wars, which I had no idea existed before doing the research for all this in the past year or so.

I was looking for these webcomics in an idle way for a little bit, and finally sat down with Google, and what should I find but your blog?

It's a treasure trove of all materials related to The Clone Wars, so I wanted to say thank you! I am especially grateful to get to read these webcomics, since they were tied to Adobe Flash in some way on the official website, and cannot be viewed there any more within the limits of what I'm willing to do, and so I had accepted that that was lost for me. But your blog has made it not so! So thank you very much! And now, my questions:

Do you mind if I save the webcomics from your blog onto my computer?

Do you happen to have, or know where I could read, copies of Bait, Act on Instinct, or The Valsedian Operation? These were the only complete comics that I could not find on your blog.

Could you tell me more about the UK Magazine? This is another thing about which I know nothing and would love to learn.

Are you aware that the last two pages of webcomic #6, The Fall of Falleen, seems to have the last two pages swapped?

Is there a page missing from your post of Hunting the Hunters, Part 1? Parts 2 and 3 have the pages with the game tease lines at the bottom, but then have another page afterwards, whereas Part 1 does not.

Regarding both the Dark Horse monthly series and the graphic novellas, do you know if these have been collected anywhere, if they remain in print, and where I could buy them online that isn't Amazon?

Thank you very much, and clear skies!

Thank you for the message! Glad to be of help. To answer:

Is it okay to save posts from this blog on my computer?

Yes! Please save anything you like on this blog rather. I started this to offload my hard drive and prevent them from being lost media lol

post issues:

Bait should be the S1E11 accompanion? I did post it just forgot to tag 😅

I swear a few years ago Act on Instinct and The Valsedian Operation were availabe just on dubious free read comic online sites... don't seem to be anymore. here you go

Fixed the pages in Q4 & Q5. Thanks for telling me!

UK Magazine

Its proper name is Star Wars: The Clone Wars Comic. UK got a Clone Wars magazine because the publisher, Titan Comics, is a UK-based company, the one that makes Star Wars Insider.

The monthly issue features episode guide, games and an original comic strip. It was later reprinted in the US as a bi-monthly. The blog followed the UK publishing order since that's chronological and collected in full. Some issues were left out in the US reprint.

Dark Horse series

Both the monthly series and novellas started in Sept 2008 but the monthly series only lasted to Jan 2010 while novellas continued every few months until after the Disney buyout.

No omnibus were made or planned. So if you want a print version, you could only look in the library or the second-hand market.

dubious free read comic online sites have the full set fyi

[punisheddonjuan]

Not to be a guy who asks "are the zionists okay" but I scrolled through the blog of one who I used to know in irl and he's??? Reblogging from troll accounts that are disguising fucking blood libel as pro-Zionist between actual legitimate Zionist posts completely uncritically?????

Honestly anon? No I don't think that they are okay. The longer this drags on and the more that the images and videos from out of Gaza (or the West Bank for that matter) run completely counter to the U.S./Israeli propaganda narrative, the greater the cognitive dissonance that is necessary to claim the usual liberal Zionist talking points like "Israel is only acting in self-defense" (then why have they killed hundreds in the West Bank where Hamas is not in power), that "things would be better if the Palestinians just embraced non-violence" (they have on multiple occasions, the Israelis keep fucking killing them), or how the "IDF is the most moral army in the world" (then why is there mass looting of Palestinian homes by IDF soldiers). The collapse of these narratives has been so swift and so complete with every new things we learn about what happened on October 7th and afterwards that I think it's really short-circuited a few people's brains. There's been the revelation that many civilian deaths were the result of IDF following orders to institute the Hannibal directive, the forty beheaded babies story being a lie dreamt up by a fanatic, to the collapse of the NYT story on mass rapes (turns out the lead journalist was former Israeli intelligence), the story that Al-Shifa Hospital was some sort of terrorist base, and the lie which has had the most consequence: that UNRWA workers were directly involved in Oct. 7th the evidence for which is so flimsy as to be laughable if the consequences hadn't been so dire.

The speed at which these narratives have collapsed and how quickly Israel has run through any goodwill following Oct. 7th is honestly astounding. It took the Americans around two years give-or-take following 9/11 to exhaust the world's goodwill, Israel managed to speed-run this in less than two months. When boomer left-libs like my parents are starting to say things like "I don't know what's wrong with the Israelis" that's a new thing. I'm a little older than many of my followers so I remember things like the 2006 Lebanon War and watching it thinking "this seems excessive, what aren't they telling us?" It took years before the existence of the Dahiya Doctrine became known. And the images from Operation Cast Lead in 2008 (the conflict which was impetus for me to really dig into researching the conflict) weren't coming this fast or this graphic. This has got to do numbers on your psyche if you're a typically "progressive" person but also supporting the Israeli cause. It's like that Eli Valley cartoon riffing on the Incredible Hulk. I think the way some of them are coping is by telling bigger and bigger lies, becoming more extreme, retreating into more closed off bubbles. It's fear, fear of being wrong.

If you ever want to read some truly delusional posts I recommend checking out the "jumblr" tag (there are also some very brave and very intelligent anti-Zionist Jews also posting in that tag who have my admiration and respect for fighting the good fight, I've followed several of them in the past weeks) where you can find Zionists making such convincing arguments as "what Israel is doing to the Palestinians isn't genocide because a genocide requires intent and incitement, and Israel hasn't expressed intent, besides the word genocide has lost all meaning anyway because of leftist anti-Semitism, it's really more like ethnic cleansing which can be voluntary". An assertion contradicted by the words and actions of Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, senior Israeli military officials, members of the Knesset including the deputy speaker, Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, an open Kahanist, the Hebrew language media, Israeli civilians, Israeli artists, active duty personnel in the IDF, Mossad run Telegram channels, President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They also like bringing up the existence of Arab Israeli citizens "oh they have equal rights!" (an easily disprovable claim) as a shield against the charge of genocide. It gets ugly too, I came across a post the other day of some American Zionist claiming that Hind Rajab could not possibly have been killed by the IDF because there would be no benefit in it to them, she must have been killed by Hamas who then blamed it on the IDF.

And because it's Tumblr it's all so frequently delivered in either that cutesy and twee cry bully tone of "oooh but I'm just a small little guy =uwu= and everyone is being mean to me!" or in the voice of the condescending gifted child "I am much smarter than you and this is why". It's frequently paired with a picrew avatar and queer identity flag. A few of them have "leftist" or "BLM" or "antifa" in their bio without a whiff of self awareness (no guesses as to the political ideology undergirding one of the groups from which the ruling Likud party claims descent). I'm not as hostile to identity politics as some leftists are, I think they can be a valuable tool to agitate for the needs of specific groups, but I can't help but see it as a damning indictment of the shallowness of the sort of "progressive" identity politics popular on here. It was developing a politics rooted in material analysis that lead me into criticism of Israel and if you don't have that, well, shallow identity politics aren't going to save you from being on the wrong side of history.

[marnz]

since i'm one of those people who watched tsn in 2023 (i was 12 when tsn was broadcasted) so it gave me this weird mixed feeling whenever i read markwardo fanfic because knowing how bad these people actually are irl and not some uwu precious baby but i can't blame fanfic writers in 2010-2011 for thinking zuckerberg and saverin were cool because during that time facebook was indeed cool and the internet was younger at that time too, the fic are good i admit but sometimes i need a moment to rethink why am i reading irl capitalists fanfic, it's so hard to distinguish between tsn and irl material most of the time too and not to mention tsn was just a story written based on irl saverin pov of fb and he was also an asshole. The only fun time to enjoy tsn was probably 2010-2011 because fb was cool, the cast was close and now even the cast of this film probably don't even contact each other anymore despite being so closed in 2010, sorry for rambling i just think it's amazing that people who enjoy tsn in 2010 still post about it in 2024!

well anon. Like I said. You had to be there. Look I love context and you said you were 12 in 2010 so here is some context: yes the internet was younger and yes fb/meta had not destroyed democracy yet but I also think there was more of a sense of hope related to technology, as opposed to dread. A lot of tech and social mainstays had not happened yet, politics were drastically different, Chris Hughes (cofounder of fb & communications guy) helped Obama get elected, people didn’t think global warming was real, society was MUCH more conservative and homophobic, etc., and the internet was the place to be.

when you say the internet was younger I’m interpreting this to mean that FB had not come into its final form yet, which is true, but also it & the internet was such a radically different experience. It felt limitless. You weren’t corralled in as much. You could go anywhere, you could find anything, you could make your own websites very easily, you were not assaulted by pop ups and apps were not mainstream because Apple didn’t launch the App Store until 2008. It was so easy to learn how to code. The operating systems between Apple and Android were SO distinct. Twitter launched in 2008/2009 but wasn’t quite so relevant until idk 2014? Fandom had just migrated from LJ to Tumblr but Tumblr was also hotter with the aesthetic girlies and porn blogs. “The algorithm” didn’t run the world. Yesterday I tried to find an article by searching for it and both Google and DuckDuckGo completely disregarded my request and did not turn up anything relevant. I can assure you that would not have happened in 2011. So there was SUCH a sense of optimism because the internet felt like a social good instead of an obligation that is increasingly privatized, surveilled, constrained, and decayed.

Which is why TSN got made and why there was an interest. It was a source of profound social change. But anyway. FB/Meta has ruined lives and it and all other social media apps that elevate divisive opinions to prompt as much engagement as possible (have you heard of the awful Isabel Fall twitter scandal? I recommend this article) are awful! And yet there’s an expectation of being online because a lot of communities now organize online, a lot of services require being online, etc., fandom has become less centralized/less unified, which is its own post.

Out of curiosity, what led you to watch the film? I do find it fascinating that there’s been a resurgence of TSN fandom. If this article had not been written I would not be posting about it but there’s still a lot of fic being written and fanvids being made to Taylor Swift songs. But it’s fandom devoid of all this context. So it is very strange, because you know what FB and all these people in it will become. I think I would have the exact cognitive dissonance you described if I watched it for the first time last year and tried to read fic. It is SO deeply fictionalized, so much of it is radically untrue, but you as the reader carry the truth in your mind. Which is why I cannot and do not engage with these days. And why I hold TSN in my mind curtained off. I spoke with many ppl from the original fandom yesterday and trust me, no one wants this.

I think, realistically, whatever movie Sorkin wants to make will probably be very good. It’s probably a good story to tell & explore. But I won’t be watching it. I lived that shit

[one-additional-time]

Daft Punk in Chronic'art 2007/2008 - scans & translated interview

Here it is, the long-awaited monster interview that sat untouched on my bookshelf for 6 years. I bought this magazine on eBay in 2017, fresh off the Grammys performance with The Weeknd, and I was really excited when I realized it was a huge 10 page spread... Until I started translating and realized the content was extremely in-depth and complicated. So, it got put to the side and accidentally left there for many years.

Anyway, here we go. Buckle in for a long read! Please note that I did not translate the extra sections of the article titled "Discovered" and "Very Disco" as these are just basic information about DP's discography and samples they've used- they are not part of the interview.

My usual disclaimer- I am not French, nor am I fluent in French, so some of this may be incorrect or interpreted differently than the author intended. If you find any glaring errors, my ask box is open for feedback and I can update the post/files as needed. (Post updated May 2023 with corrections)

Feel free to repost to other platforms/social media sites, but I humbly beg that you link back here or give me credit because I really spent a lot of time slaving over this (like 50+ hours).

Thank you so much for sticking around my blog after so many years. I really appreciate this fandom and community and I'm excited to experience new music with you all soon!

(Trigger warning for discussion of suicide [Electroma] in the interview!)

Download full scans and translation at my Dropbox.

Full translation below the cut.

In ten years, from Homework in 1997 to Alive 2007 and Electroma, the electro duo Daft Punk have popularized electronic music, launched fads (the French Touch, filtered house, monumental live shows), and transformed a simple music project into a verifiable universal, even metaphysical, concept. Are Daft Punk dropping the helmets?

BY: WILFRIED PARIS & OLIVIER LAMM | PHOTOS: © MAUD BERNOS

SCANS AND TRANSLATION BY STEPH @ ONE-ADDITIONAL-TIME.TUMBLR.COM

(Please see the downloadable PDF file for translation notes/comments)

Everyone has been hearing about Daft Punk for the last two months, because their live CD (Alive 2007, from EMI) and the DVD of their robotic road-movie Electroma are being released for the holidays. We wanted to go a little bit beyond the obligated promo, and the repeated wooden language found in all the media, by trapping Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo for an hour and a half in a restaurant in the Latin Quarter, subjecting them to questioning, and if possible, making them drop the helmets a little bit, over ten pages and many questions.

We’re not going to harp on what you already know (the French touch, the robot helmets, the live pyrotechnics), we’ll just say that we wanted to do this thorough interview with Daft Punk because they’re more than a CD or a DVD, more than music, more than any current pop group. They are an essential symbol of our post-post-modern times, speaking in a very clear yet always paradoxical voice (between hedonistic joy and profound existential sadness) on the human condition, no less. Over the ten years of their career (Homework, like Chronic’art, again, decidedly, appeared in 1997), Daft Punk have invented a new way of presenting music to the world. The robot helmets reveal (social uniformity) more than they cover (buried humanity) and have given them perfect anonymity, which seems like the anonymity of those who succeeded, not in annihilating the self, but becoming self-less. This anonymity accentuates the dominance of the art over the artist, and it has made Daft Punk a universally well-liked and famous group.

A conceptual, pop, philosophical, even metaphysical group, Daft Punk mixes Andy Warhol (seriality, pop art, emptiness) and Friedrich Nietzsche (the man who wanted to die in Electroma, the superhuman for and against technology), mass culture (disco, Albator, Star Wars) and esoteric symbols (the masonic pyramid), the dancing body and thinking brain. In that respect, they are a purely manufactured product of our culture and likely represent the completion of the pop figure began by the Beatles: fragmented culture (the sample) and repetition, theatricality and abstraction, universalism and experimentation, technological innovation and advanced marketing, refusal of the embodiment and worship of the personality…

The current tour (Alive can also mean “en vie”) also refers to an interstellar voyage, like Discovery and Interstella, which seemed to mean that humanity is, by nature, dispossessed, that humans do not belong on Earth but came from Heaven and are destined to return there, that they are “stardust.” They themselves [Daft Punk] are probably not aware of the symbolic and almost metaphysical significance of their creations, and they always prefer to talk about “emotions” rather than thoughts, the heart instead of the head, and they act as the “guinea pigs” for their own experiments. Listening to them, we realized that Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo do not really theorize their work, their music, or their image, but that they react to the infinite accumulation of data from our culture of abundance, that they are indeed the guinea pigs of an experience that has outrun them, marionettes played by “high culture,” pop culture, and the entertainment industry. Maybe Daft Punk really are robots, and no one is pulling the strings, certainly not them.

Chronic’art: Between Homework, which would correspond to your schoolwork or your learning phase, Discovery, which would represent your adolescence, the discovery of the world, microscopic to macroscopic, and Human After All, a moment of reset before a new cycle, it seems to us like you have come full circle, which would be represented by the mirroring of your two live albums, in 1997 and in 2007. Could you have scripted your career?

Thomas Bangalter: It’s strange. We have never written out any part of our career, because even ten years ago we didn’t think we would do this for a long time. After the fact, without having planned it, we realize more that we had sort of reset prior to the live show from 2007. For us, these concerts, this tour, this CD, they are more of a new step than a conclusion. We had not done concerts for 10 years, and there was something very exciting about doing things that weren’t technologically possible when we started. With the last live, we wanted to produce something original, that could predict what might become the norm of tomorrow. We know that we’ve done certain things in the past that were five years ahead of their time, and we are happy to be trying something no one else has done right now. We feel like, during each album, we’ve started back at zero and have had to create a new process, even if it’s true that there is a consistency which emerges in the straight line of our career. But this consistency is not defined a priori, we just emphasize working on projects that can become sort of a realignment of everything we’ve accomplished until now. Interstella was consistent with Discovery, the live show was consistent with our third album compared to the two previous albums, but each step represents, in the moment, the desire to start a new cycle. As for Human After All and Electroma, they’re about something darker, less celebratory… Maybe the live show is a loop; our record label released a Best Of last year, but the concert itself and the way we worked on it is more a way of combining things and expressing them in a new way, rather than celebrating a sort of anniversary or something from the past. We definitely didn’t want to give people the impression that they were in 1997, in a continuation of past music: we instead wanted to give them the chance to feel like they were really in 2007.

During the live shows, you mix together your own tracks, referencing and quoting yourselves. It’s like being simultaneously and precisely between 1997 and 2007, as if the past and the present were merging. All of your songs evolving in a sort of loop…

T.B.: It’s almost the third generation of sampling: us sampling ourselves. At the same time, it’s like having created a universe and an aesthetic that is more than the music, or that the music isn’t actually a central vector. Our approach isn’t at all demonstrative, it’s entirely sensory. There isn’t another message to understand. That being said, there is a desire for cohesion, to make sure that each element added to the structure resonates with the others, with the little mythology that governs this universe. It’s a bit like in a video game, each new element opens a new level in a new environment rather than replacing an older element. We wanted, for example, to break these things with Human After All, but in the end we realized that the album was very cohesive in the continuity of our work.

There is a very strong sense of nostalgia, mixed with a strangeness, in the timeless juxtapositions listeners are subjected to in the tracks. They seem to be complementing and responding to each other, as much musically as thematically… 

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo: It’s especially very exciting to see that twelve or thirteen years after our first maxi, our music has not aged too much. There is a sense of nostalgia1, but it still works in the present, and it’s very strange to see that we can mix four tracks from four different eras simultaneously, and not a single one kills the mood. Right after we started making music, we were seeking timelessness. It’s the same with Electroma. At our core, we are fans of timeless things. If you listen to the Beatles, aside from their very first period which is a little bit stuck in the past, you notice that time doesn’t touch their music. We are following that: we are trying to move through time without getting stuck in it. In the same way, we are trying to make sure that our music can be listened to by a lot of different people, without having to worry about languages or genres.

The Beatles were, for that matter, the first group to reference themselves, for example in All You Need is Love, where John Lennon sings She Loves You… 

G-M.H-C.: We don’t compare ourselves to the Beatles, either… 

T.B.: The idea is constructing a cohesive universe from a series of spontaneous attempts. If you watch Star Wars, people don’t seem to come from when the film was made. It’s as if the 70s have no effect on the film’s universe. Its atmosphere is its own, even if mixes a lot of things together. For about five or six years we have tried not to let the times we live in make an impression on us.

You are very privileged to be in a time when everything moves so fast, or everything ages so fast, right in the middle of acceleration. For example, you did a massive world tour without having an album to promote… 

G-M.H-C.: The day before the first concert of the tour, at Coachella, we were terrified, we weren’t sure of anything. Every time we try something new, we start back at zero.

T.B.: It’s the live show that sparked the craze, I think, truly. The success was really unintentional. Separate from that, being immersed in a certain underground before our first album taught us a lot. We’ve seen all the trends come and go—jungle, speed garage, electroclash, new rave, French touch, revival—and we are really surprised to have slipped by all of that. We didn’t want to be specifically concentrated on music, we only released three albums in 15 years, and we had a lot of luck. The legitimacy of our music, the future of our music lives in the combination of different forms of expression, the scope of influences, the mixing of techno with funk, with metal, the intermingling of rules and cliches. A lot of important decisions have been roughly made; also by means of spending time solidifying this roughness in order to share it. In fact, electronic music, in the 90s, put you in a state of experimentation, urgency, innovation, it literally prohibited you from repeating yourself. Electronic music was still very elitist, because it was expensive—you had to go to the library to find out about these musicians, you had to go to Beaubourg to make photocopies of books on filmmakers, you had to go to small shops to buy old drum machines. We know what changed, we’re familiar with the saturation that followed. We were also lucky because actually there wasn’t much of that happening when we started out.

The permanence of Daft Punk is also really linked to your image. People don’t only dance to your music, they dance with your personas, with the robots, like you predicted the fatal characteristic of the embodiment of rock (John Lennon, Kurt Cobain). With your robot helmets, you have made the entire process of love, requisition, and the sacrificial reclaiming in your place impossible. You come across as impersonal and therefore verifiably impossible to sacrifice. Not gods, rockers, heroes, nor rulers. The helmet prohibits any kind of identification process. When put on, they show the listener-viewer their own reflection. By giving nothing, the helmet says (silently), “Know thyself.” Can your work be considered an invitation for people to know themselves?

G-M.H-C.: Yes, I agree with that interpretation. At least, that’s what happens with our concerts. Audience members, rather than being lost in the view of a far-off guy, Mick Jagger or another inaccessible idol above the audience, find themselves between us, or even with themselves. It’s kind of like a rave, without superstars, like in the era of anonymity. The robots don’t give the audience much except music. There are robots in a pyramid, but the audience enjoys it in a more selfish, more self-centered way.

T.B.: It’s a mixture—the chance to show the listener their own reflection, to respond to a question with another question, but also the opportunity to go back to a fiction, in a cult that isn’t the cult of a personality, but of an art, of an image, of an aesthetic. Without personification. Then we can let ourselves to be two robots in a pyramid of light. If our faces were uncovered, it would be the most megalomaniacal thing in the world; with the helmets, no one sees us because we stay within the fiction. And without wanting to make a joke, there is also a degree of separation, a distance. A distance from the reflection, like in Electroma, or a distance from the entertainment, softer.

All the lines from Human After All work in the same way. They recall Kraftwerk, but Kraftwerk developed a precise message about celebrating, in a way, the immediate future. Your messages are a lot more ambiguous: are they critical, ironic, devoid of meaning? Like we see so well in Electroma, your helmets are, above all else, mirrors…

T.B.: Ambiguity is good, because it allows for a certain interaction between the viewer and the artist; between what the viewer interprets and what the artist is trying to depict. It’s very participative, and that comes from a desire to go against the demonstration. We are the first consumers of our music, and we hold the view that we can’t make any judgement values by calling things into question. In speaking about technology, about consumer society, which completely inhabits our art, we don’t want to teach a lesson, or offer a point of view or a judgement, we just want to find paradoxes and point them out as is. For example, we’re dependent on consumer society and it’s so appealing, productive, optimized, and at the same time totally terrifying, horrible, and very funny.

Your work is dialectical: sometimes it seems to denounce a sort of robotic totalitarianism (like in the Technologic video which depicts propaganda of a robot on top of a pyramid) and at the same time it plays with this imagery, strikingly. The video for Around The World also shows how robots surround and surveil the population; they are in the last circle, and they are the ones who chant the phrase “Around The World.” Does the video denounce the surveillance of us by nonhumans, or does it condition us to accept it? We never know if you’re denouncing a conspiracy against humanity or if you’re participating in it. You use of language is equally dialectical. Your language is refined, born from catchphrases and words of totalitarian order (Technologic), and if taken literally, it’s this: the phrase “Television Rules The Nation” can be taken as the assertion of an established fact. It then becomes constraint, manipulation. At the same time, the distance imposed by the performance can give the words a double meaning, and adds to them a critique of this established fact, even the denunciation of a totalitarian power. This recalls the “doublethink” in Orwell’s 1984: the capacity to simultaneously accept two opposing points of view and thereby put critical thinking on the back burner. Where do you situate yourselves in this in-betweenness?

T.B.: But it’s inside this paradox where we progress. In terms of our experimentation, we are in fact the heart of the system; it would be totally obscene to lean more to one side or the other, to claim to be part of a totalitarian system, as if we were giving lectures. It’s because this is so interesting that we refused to do any promotion for Human After All, because there couldn’t be a willingness on our part to encourage people to buy the album, because of this paradox. Because it’s like an unbiased opinion on technology, on consumer society. The video for Technologic actually gives you the keys to derive an ironic and scary message from the track, but it has since been used by Apple in a commercial for the iPod, and there the lyrics turned into blind praise for technology! It’s funny seeing to what extent the double meaning has effectively functioned. That’s why we so often refer to Andy Warhol who had an experimental approach through his connection to pop culture that, depending on the project, had as much a place in very elitist and private circles as it did on supermarket shelves. Creating with perplexity, in short.

Nevertheless, you use very strongly significant symbols, like the robots or the pyramid. The pyramid that you use on stage is a Masonic symbol. It is on the dollar bill, with George Washington and the note, “New World Order.” The pyramid represents the structure of society, from the masses up to the elites and the leaders. The cornerstone with the “all-seeing eye” surely represents the summation of technology which, though it could be plainly operational, will make sure that the “New World Order” can truly start coming forward and establishing itself on Earth. Some interpret it like the construction of a new technology, a technologic eye that would see all, through a generalized surveillance. With that said, the presence of robots like operators of this pyramid makes a lot of sense. How do you fit in with regard to these symbols and this story?

T.B.: We work a lot with the senses, with the power of symbols on the subconscious, and the pyramid, in effect, is a very heavy symbol, in terms of the senses. We don’t want to discuss the details of the symbolism, but to question its power without its history. The pyramid has become a symbol because, geometrically, harmonically, it’s a magical, occult, mysterious object. There is also this mysterious and occult, on the verge of paranormal, power in music. No one can really theorize about the effects of music on the body and mind, so it’s incredible. We just try to pass on that magic in a rather empirical way. Moreover, we could carry out experiments on the way in which light or sound intensity acts on the body and on crowds, to see which types of sensations or emotions are provoked by one frequency or another. But we could never really explain the reason for these effects.

G-M.H-C.: We are the guinea pigs of our own universe. We managed to create a sort of self-sufficiency between the two of us, which lets us experiment with a consistent voice, and what works for us tends to work for the audience, it’s like a small miracle. We put a pyramid on stage because we think it’s cool, and it makes everyone trip out.

When you talk about guinea pigs, it’s as if you were manipulated from the outside, by a mysterious third-party, as if you were also puppets. There is a determinism there, but one that serves humanity. According to the Laws of Robotics by Isaac Asimov, it’s humankind who constructed the robot, and the robot is at its service…

T.B.: Above all we want to express a paradox on the discussion of human dependency on technology. We’re not virtuosos and we rely on technology like a crutch. We could never do it without technology, and at the same time, we try to value, like any artists, the human element in our work. The process we’ve used for these fifteen years has been to try merging the machines and us. We are the operators of these machines, the editors of the experiments: we select them, we choose them, and we decide to keep them or not. Daft Punk is the product of a tug of war between human and technology, always questioning the place of technology in the project.

Electroma addresses this discussion between human and machine, in a sort of grand general inversion. Electroma seems to be the account of a traumatic experience: in the world of robots, the two characters presented a human face to the others, in openness, generosity, expressiveness. The result of this demonstration of humanity leaves them ostracized, chased, and reduced to aimlessness and suicide. Do you think that showing your humanity is dangerous?

T.B.: Yes, that’s the background of the film. But speaking more broadly, formally, it’s part of the same approach as what we’ve been able to do before; to know how to create emotion while using machines, in a creative process. Without actors, without a script, without a real plotline, but with photography, color, framing, made from machines, objects, just like a still life. We began with creating an environment around the spectator, who is almost like the only actor in the film, and wondering how to make them experience these emotions, which are not the same as those on the dancefloor, but aesthetic emotions, where the spectator can project onto themselves. The film is totally open, and we thought a lot about Magritte when making the plans. What you can see in Electroma is essentially sensation, that’s a lot more at the level of the gut or the eyes than of the brain…

Robots After All by Philippe Katerine was clearly inspired by your album Human After All and touches on the idea that human society has attained such a degree of conditioning and conforming that humanity became a species of robot, a determined creature, ruled by automation, in their language as much as their everyday comportment. When we recently asked what he thought about your music, Katerine told us, “I hear nothingness in it, so I want to find a place there.” Is the universality of your music due to the fact that it’s also, in a sense, empty?

T.B.: It’s empty because it’s more sensory than significance, yes. Theoretically devoid of sense, it allows people to see something from nothing and project themselves there. We just heard Katerine’s single. Our music is open, it can be interpreted and taken in different ways.

The musical abstraction and loops that by and large make up your music allow each person to take possession of the music and go beyond it. There is a shamanic aspect in this usage of emptiness and repetition. As a matter of fact, musicians like Animal Collective, who were inspired by shamanic trances, now cite you as an influence. Also, you could interpret the end of Electroma, when the two robots die by explosion and combustion, as referring to shamanic initiation rituals, in which one goes through a symbolic death by division of the body or self-combustion. Could you say that the end of Electroma represents, in some sort, this symbolic and initiatory death? In other words, do you perceive a shamanic side to your music?

T.B.: Yes, it’s a trance: the loop, the heartbeats… We use samples to express the desire of prolonging a strong sensation that comes during one or two seconds in a track, and wanting to repeat this sensation, not only feeling it for ten minutes, but also seeing what consequences come from ten minutes of that feeling, how everything unfolds. Visually, with Electroma, our desire is the same: to create images or an assembly of images that produce a physical sensation, a feeling of hypnosis, wandering, or weariness; in any case a state of mind that you can only reach by feeling this sensation for a certain time, for quite a long time. 

Wandering, loss of identity, and expropriation are pop themes in a sense. If you think of the Beatles, the “Magical Mystery Tour,” the transformation of the Beatles into the “Lonely Hearts Club Band.” As of now, you are a group that “turns,” that travels, to those “lonely hearts.” Is there a “trip” pop?

T.B.: It’s true that during this tour, we felt a little bit of a psychedelic thing: there are people who saw and re-watched the concert multiple times, almost like a Grateful Dead concert, with this idea of there being, during the concert, something imperceptible that you can never capture on disc or on film: an experience which was unique and can only live in reality, at a time where everything is virtualized. We felt like people wanted happenings, concrete experiences, which could consequently be produced by advanced technology: we could multiply the giant screens, have a very strong sound, and combine everything into these unprecedented audiovisual processes, which had never been seen anywhere before. Even a film projected in an IMAX theater could be no more than the “ghettoblaster” from another experiment with new technologies. Our music is moving: it was within an industrial system which ended, it was dependent on the economy. And the economy was destroying itself, it influenced new formats and new ways of creation, like the tours we’re doing currently.

Today, music needs to find new ways for distribution, with the death of the record industry and the virtualization of music. The live show, as a unique experience, is a response to this situation. You were the first to start a download site on the internet, with the Daft Club in 2001, which didn’t work out. Was it five years too early?

T.B.: Being current five years too early is really better than we can hope for. It’s good to be precursory, it’s almost our principal objective. Speaking about the musical economy, I think that music has never been as important as it is now, and the concert isn’t a response to difficulty selling CDs nowadays, because live shows are also very expensive. Economic upheavals are interesting: I read a book recently by Jacques Attali, Bruits, which talks about the musical economy and its power since the Middle Ages, and if you look at the place of music in the world in the last 2 thousand or 3 thousand years, the place of the record and pop music industries will have not been an end in itself, compared to music as a whole. It’s interesting to try to find out where music will go and what it will generate, in the sense that it is often a precursor of the relationship to come between social and economic powers. But we define ourselves less as musicians than as artists and creators, in trying to combine things and experiment with new formats and new technologies. We aren’t uniquely musicians.

Homework represents a sort of pinnacle of the age where a certain technologic novelty was expressed directly through music. You could literally hear knobs being turned. Does Daft Punk necessarily have to excel technologically in an age where all these methods have become normalized? Were the concerts from your new tour sort of like an advantage?

T.B.: It’s not an advantage, it’s a set of challenges that could be technological, actually. You wind up with a concert that looks sort of futuristic, like a remake of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or a mix of a Grateful Dead and a Kraftwerk concert. Making something that we couldn’t make before. We pick up the tools, we manipulate them, we try to progress. Electronic music in itself, in 2007, doesn’t seem to me to be very conducive to experimentation from a strictly musical point of view. I’m waiting for the new generations to prove to me otherwise… We pay attention to technological developments because we’re interested in them, and because they are at the heart of our art. Musical instruments are advanced technologies which have continuously reinvented music.

Since Human After All was released online, there were a lot of rumors about the album, which was an indication that people were waiting for you. In that context, are you able to feel free as musicians? Have you produced things in reaction to the public’s expectations?

T.B.: Actually, we aren’t free relative to our own expectations. We can’t totally set the public aside, but we have our own demands and we respond to our own vision of what we make, while taking into account paradoxes, contradictions, restarts, new beginnings. But we don’t think about the public: it’s both selfish and more respectful for people because we don’t have the pretentiousness of putting ourselves in their shoes.

G-M.H-C.: We are our own fans. We work until we find moments of pleasure in our work, and when we save those moments and explore them on an album or in a film which we release, that resonates for people. But within those moments, which are like lightning, we are like spectators—we feel like we’re revealing something, and discovering something we created at the same time. In this way we are ourselves in the position of spectators and fans. I imagine that this process is even more evident in painting: you have a piece of canvas in front of you, and there is a tangible process of creation. Creation is a mystery and you can really speak about magic when it comes to music or art.

Could the image of the pyramid that you use be a graphic representation of your music? With its foundations, progressions, ascents, and its climax? Bercy, it so happens, also has a pyramid shape…

G-M.H-C.: Not all of our songs follow a progression. We have flat songs, square songs, round songs… And in the live show, there are a few final moments where the tension comes back down. Bercy really does have a pyramid shape, but the top is missing. And it’s true that we would have really liked to play on top of it (laughs)…

[words-after-midnight]

Writeblr Introduction (finally): N. Roy / words-after-midnight

Because I've been here since December and still haven't posted one of these.

[Updated 22-07-2023]

About me:

I'm Nico (he/him), a 32-year-old chemist moonlighting as an author of dark adult contemporary crime fiction and horror. I'm based in Tio'tia:ke, colonially known as Montreal, where I live with my 10-year-old cat Saturday and most of my chosen family and friends. I plan to publish under a pen name similar to the one on my blog (ie. not my real name - I like to keep my different "lives" separate). You can read more about me here. I love tag games and ask games and interacting with folks on here! I especially love the Find the Word and Last Line/Heads Up Seven Up games, so please never feel like you're annoying me by tagging me in those. I also love any and all music tags!

What I write:

My novel-length projects - 95% what I talk about on this blog in terms of my writing - are predominantly (though not exclusively) in the realm of adult contemporary crime fiction, usually in combination with horror, thriller, docufiction, and/or psychological fiction. All of my novel-length works take place in the same universe, and are all - either directly or indirectly - connected to each other.

My short fiction is typically either contemporary litfic, slice-of-life, crime/procedural, or experimental horror. Most of my existing short fiction is currently being submitted for publication (or in the process) to various literary periodicals.

I write and submit freestyle poetry on occasion.

My forte is writing well-developed, messy, typically queer characters who exist on a continuum between morally gray to morally bankrupt, as well as complex, intense, and/or dark relationship dynamics. Other things I love writing and featuring in my stories include:

Small casts (I typically focus on 1-3 central characters)

Symbolism, motifs, and foreshadowing

Found/chosen families and homes

Exploration of dark real-world themes, including themes involving mental illness, trauma, and recovery

Intense and/or introspective narration

Faster-paced narratives

Trope subversion

Social commentary

Experimental narrative styles

Unconventional formatting

Genre-blending

Complicated endings

What I read (with some exceptions here and there):

Crime thrillers/dramas

Psychological thrillers/dramas

Contemporary horror (not into supernatural or fantasy horror unless the premise and/or themes are very intriguing)

Litfic with darker plots/character relationships

Mysteries (especially murder mysteries)

Dystopian and/or realistic speculative science fiction

My projects:

I currently have three active WIPs, which you can read more about under the cut. You can also find general information about all my projects here.

Active WIPs:

🌙 Life in Black and White | Adult contemporary | Psychological thriller | The love of my life | Querying as of Fall 2023

Draft start date: June 7, 2008 Draft completion date: February 12, 2011

Status: Line edit + prepping query package

Comps: THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS (Nemerever) x GIRL ON THE TRAIN x CATCHER IN THE RYE

Summary: At the dawn of early adulthood and fresh from a childhood fraught with instability and loss, Gabriel's life revolves around outpatient psychiatric treatment, his own rigid routines, and trying to find purpose. But when his best friend moves in with the alluring Jeff, a former fellow patient, and Gabriel reluctantly befriends him, everything changes. After a fateful choice permanently estranges them, Gabriel is left to pick up the pieces of his life and identity, while all the while, a growing obsession lurks beneath the surface... Major themes: Control, choice, obsession, mental illness and recovery, stigma/social perceptions of mental illness, inevitability, grief, trauma, the butterfly effect.

WIP intro post Story playlist Pinterest (cw: violence, gore, some disturbing and/or suggestive imagery)

Tags: #libaw, #call it midnight (for inspo reblogs)

💀 The Dotted Line | Adult contemporary | Experimental horror/Dark comedy/Crime | Camp NaNoWriMo project - July 2023

Banner image source

Draft start date: July 1, 2013 Draft completion date: TBD

Status: Drafting

Comps: THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION x A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

Summary: A young, emotionally challenged inmate nicknamed after an Al Pacino movie navigates the bizarre and dangerous world of a medium security American state prison while plotting his escape.

Major themes: Survival, reinvention of self, abolitionism/overt anti-carceral messaging, institutional abuses and corruption, trauma, the darkest recesses of humanity.

WIP intro post M&S Camp NaNoWriMo Directory post Story playlist Pinterest (cw: violence, gore, some suggestive imagery)

Tags: #tdl, #the jungle (for inspo reblogs)

🔵 Supernova | Adult science fiction | Dystopian/Speculative/Science fiction | Introduced as part of Moon & Seraph Pitch Week in March 2023

Draft start date: TBD Draft completion date: TBD

Status: Pre-production (zero drafting/outlining)

Comps: FRANKENSTEIN x BREAKING BAD

Summary: What if you held the key to the Earth's salvation... and its potential destruction?

An eccentric Montreal chemistry professor is rumored to have isolated a dangerous theoretical compound with powerful implications for the energy sector. Despite her many warnings, her new PhD students, seeing strong potential for a solution to the advanced climate crisis threatening life on Earth within a few decades at most, decide to investigate the claims. By doing so, they ignite the spark to an unstoppable chain reaction of passion and pride, power and corruption, and unintended consequences they never could have anticipated.

Major themes: Scientific responsibility and ethics, unintended consequences, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, advanced climate crisis, discrimination and social inequalities.

WIP intro post Moon & Seraph Pitch Week post Inspo playlist

Tags: #sn, #hexa (for inspo reblogs)

[omegalomania]

i would like to hear more on the patrick vs brendon vocal ability discussion if you would maybe want to rant 👀 👀 (hshsgehdv also I've recently come to know that mr urie is Not that great of a Person so appreciate you for making that post <3)

all right so full disclaimer: the last time i had any notable vocal training was like about 10 years ago. i did get some vocal training but i have undergone hrt since then so most of what i did know is pretty useless since ive never taken the time to actually relearn my range. my understanding of this stuff is old and limited so if anyone whos actually up to date on this shit can weigh in thats always great. im doing this because im a salty mccuntnugget whos had too much honey jack daniels for one night and that apparently is what supercharges me to write emo bandmember cringe compilation posts. somehow.

this got long so im throwing it beneath a cut. click for more if you wanna read about one guy on the internet having Opinions about which of these two dudes sings better

so once again: this is MYYYY OPINION im not your mom you are free to disagree or whatever i literally do not care. but an anon asked so im going to answer. here we go.

FIRST NOTE. comparisons between patrick and brendon have been going on since the dawn of the fucking age but brendon his own damn self decided to act like patrick was copying him vocally so that means i can be as mean as i want cause he started it. we’re doing playground logic here cause this is my blog and i do what i want and also cause hes that much of a cunt.

so i want to start things off with a reminder that patrick stump did not set out to be a singer! he was not picked out of a lineup for his vocal ability. he mostly just wanted to write songs, and it was joe and pete who made a point of saying "no actually you should sing." and it takes patrick a while to actually grow into his range and gain confidence as a singer since his real love is composition. it's not until infinity on high in 2007 that you really hear him growing into his own as a vocalist and it's not until the hiatus/posthiatus that you really hear his vocal confidence.

brendon got to be the singer for panic because bassist brent wilson knew him in high school and he thought his vocal ability was top notch. the rest of the band agreed. it also took brendon a while to grow into his voice. in fact in the early days before panic actually took off (aka before ryan ross badgered pete wentz into signing a band of mostly high schoolers), people on old fob forums legitimately thought that brendon WAS patrick. old articles refer to panic as fall out boy clones for probably that reason.

brendon actually made his vocal debut on a fall out boy record, from under the cork tree (which was released may 5 2005, whereas panic's debut a fever you can't sweat out wouldn't release until september 27 2005). he does a little part in 7 minutes in heaven (atavan halen) on the chorus (he does the second "i keep telling myself, i keep telling myself i'm not the desperate type") and it's genuinely something a lot of people miss, because he sounds a lot like patrick here. later in 2008, this would happen again on 20 dollar nosebleed, which gave brendon a much bigger vocal part (again he splits the chorus with patrick) but in which their vocal inflections are very very similar to the point where a lot of people don’t realize he contributed vocals there.

so there are a lot of similarities, particularly when these two guys were still growing into their voices. it was during fob's hiatus that these started to diverge, and by 2017 they would be wildly different.

patrick readily admitted a lot that he never really intended to be a singer and it wasn't until infinity on high (2007) that he made a genuine attempt to be a singer in earnest. this reticence would often show live. it wasn't until the hiatus and then posthiatus that patrick, and also the rest of the band, had a consistent live presence imo. fob had a lot of infamously sloppy shows - fun to watch, but sonically kind of all over the place - and patrick wouldn't always be the most consistent vocalist. he'd be strong one night and breathy the next, and it wasn't until the hiatus that he started taking vocal lessons.

but the improvement really really shows now. patrick is a much more consistent and powerful vocalist posthiatus, and he's reportedly incredibly diligent in taking care of his voice. that's why you often see him making these kinds of faces in backstage videos; he's doing vocal trills, which are a specific kind of warmup that helps limber up the voice preshow. they look and sound a little silly, but warmups are important to make sure you dont damage your voice. patrick has specific warmup routines and also goes on vocal rest and doesn't do a lot of talking prior to doing a show.

so brendon does double shots before every show. i’ll be honest here i tried to do more research into what goes into warmup routines before panic shows but i Cannot deal with hearing this man talk about himself more than i already have tonight so if anyone else wants to source whatever he does. please do. i would not be surprised if he treats his voice fucking atrociously but even if he doesn’t...his upper register (which is basically his one party trick in live settings) is starting to sound awful strained on studio vocals as of 2022, which is not a good look.

i also want to emphasize that even if his technical ability took time to really come into its own, patrick has always been an incredibly emotionally versatile vocalist. from under the cork tree is really the first time you get to see this shine, where patrick swings from cocky tongue-in-cheek irony (our lawyer made us change the name of this song so we wouldn't get sued) to aching vulnerability (i've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says you should shut your mouth) to snarling anger and accusation [get busy living or get busy dying (do you part to save the scene and stop going to shows)]. factor in the bonus tracks and you get patrick at his most ruthless (my heart is the worst kind of weapon), his most raw and desolate (star 67), and a rare appearance of some borderline unclean vocals (snitches and talkers get stitches and walkers).

posthiatus this is even more apparent. save rock and roll in 2013 demanded an incredible depth of emotional and technical range, and patrick was noticeably a little gun-shy about actually committing to doing those kinds of riffs live, since he wasn’t sure he was going to have to perform those songs live. by 2018′s mania, i want to emphasize that you can actually HEAR patrick smiling in "sunshine riptide." on mania, you also have songs that demand a diverse range of tone and vocal depth: “stay frosty royal milk tea” is a snarling, punchy opening track that reminds you that patrick was a drummer first, but this is also paired with the eclectic edm-soaked “young and menace,” the crooning doo-wop style ballad “heaven’s gate,” the reggae-flavored “HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T,” and the closing track which, full disclosure, is probably one of my favorite songs of all time, “bishops knife trick.” and patrick pulls them all off! the best display of this was that he was able to do young and menace live in both its original incarnation and in the somber, stripped-down piano version.

also, as a note: fall out boy songs are really fucking hard to sing. the vocal range they demand is absolutely insane even if you’re not some drummer who got strongarmed into being a singer. the fact that patrick can replicate these vocals live and maintain a rich emotional diversity in tone is really, really noteworthy.

panic songs are also pretty hard to sing. they require a lot of vocal acrobatics, which was an ambitious thing for a band composed of mostly high schoolers when they started out. early performances were really rough because not only was brendon struggling, the rest of the band was struggling to perform songs live that ryan ross wrote on his computer lol.

so now is the part where i start drinking heavily so i can talk about brendon vocals. brendon has the technical talent, even if, like patrick, it took him a while to grow into it. but his emotional versatility is, imo, sorely lacking, and that was evident in early days but it would only get more glaring as time went on. a fever you can’t sweat out in 2005 had a lot of really intensely emotional moments and emotionally charged songs, but it took me a few listens to really grok that because brendon sings them all with the same upbeat energy. and you can put that down on him being an inexperienced singer still figuring his way around this whole “being a frontman” gig, but the trend actively continues and in fact gets worse over time. i think 2008′s pretty. odd. gave us some insight into this due to the pronounced vocal role that ryan ross gets on that album. he takes lead vocals on “behind the sea” and gives us some audible backing vocals throughout in a way that suggests to me that, on some level, the band was aware that they needed someone with more emotional range to counter brendon’s straight-on belting.

so it’s...kind of uncomfortable seeing brendon do said full on belting and also a borderline striptease dance to “camisado” live (which, for those not in the know, is a song ryan ross wrote about his life with his abusive alcoholic father). and i’m not gonna pretend i have any say in whether or not ryan was okay with something so ruinously personal being performed in that kind of way when he was no longer in the band, but it SURE does sit kinda weird with me!

cause brendon is a belter, and that’s just kind of his one mode. this really got more apparent after vices and virtues (2011), and too weird to live, too rare to die (2013), because there was a little more emotional range there. but that pretty much dies out after those records and brendon kind of has these two moods for everything released here on out: it’s either “i love weed” or “i love my wife” and there’s not a lot of range between. he doesn’t have much in the way of moderation. my one single experience in attempting to see panic live (in 2019, no less. it wasn’t a good time lol) was just kind of...relentlessly high-energy regardless of the song, because again, that seems to be brendon’s one setting. he frantically climbs the scale and hits really high notes to keep the energy up without ever actually letting it dial down at any point. it’s not about playing to the song; it’s about reminding the audience, constantly, of what a vocal powerhouse he is, at all times. this does nothing whatsoever to counteract how emotionally flat he is as a performer.

remember that point i made about the differences between patrick’s performance of the high-energy original flavor young and menace and its acoustic piano version? well, you get a superficially similar instance in brendon’s renditions of “this is gospel” in both its original incarnation and the piano version, but i want to point out the difference in tone here. or rather, the fact that there kind of isn’t one. contextually, “this is gospel” is a pretty somber song. it was written for and about spencer smith and his struggles with addiction before his eventual departure from the band, but it’s kind of hard for me personally to reconcile that with the way brendon vocalizes it, even in what is supposed to be a slower, more intimate rendition of it.

this got more glaring in 2018 on pray for the wicked, which gave us “dying in la” which...is i guess, brendon’s attempt at some tonal diversity on an album that was basically back to front “CHECK OUT THIS WILD PARTY I’M AT” but it doesn’t really go anywhere, imo. it builds to something, but...doesn’t actually resolve. i’m gauging this all on vocals, not lyrics, because that’s the point of comparison i’m making - lyrics are a whole other kettle of fish. it’s just like, the guy cannot dial back even for a second and as a result there is NO variation in the way he performs, studio or live. after it’s been long enough, it just kind of starts to wear at you.

another very telling difference is how different patrick and brendon’s backing vocals are. backing vocals by definition need to be much more restrained than if you're taking lead. here's patrick backing travie in 2010 - he's very understated here. distinct and audible, giving us some nice vocal harmonies, but he keeps the spotlight very truly and deservedly on travie. this is also true for studio vocals, like on the lupe fiaso track "little weapon" from 2007 in which patrick isn't even one of the vocal features. he's audible if you know what to listen for, but most of his touch comes from the track's production and composition. more recently, here's patrick doing studio backing vocals in 2017 for a cover of "same drugs" with matt nathanson. once again, he's very good at dialing things back because he's not the lead here and he knows it.

let's contrast this with the cover 2010 panic did of "skid row" from little show of horrors, wherein dallon is meant to be the lead. fortunately dallon manages to shine regardless, but it's...a little jarring that brendon is ostensibly meant to be the support here but vocally and stylistically is belting like he's front and center. another telling instance is this performance of “america’s suitehearts” featuring brendon. in fairness, both patrick and brendon sound pretty rough here since this is a hard song to pull off! but brendon is supposed to be pulling support, and he’s riffing like he’s center stage. and it’s not particularly good riffing either lol.

“what a catch donnie” is the most egregious example of this though. i’ve said this before, but brendon REALLY sticks out in a not great way on what’s supposed to be a soulful, honorary vocal feature. the rest of the fueled by ramen guys singing along are doing their guest spots in a very understated, tonally consistent fashion: distinct in their own rights, if you know what to look for, but definitely doing what they can to fit into the tone of the song. brendon comes barreling in singing DANCE DANCE like this is his fucking show, and it sticks out so badly because he’s doing nothing whatsoever to conform to the tone of the piece.

a couple more points of comparison that i personally find really interesting:

“one of THOSE nights” off of the cab’s debut album whisper war (sidebar: GREAT ALBUM. i miss this band so fuckin much man) features both brendon and patrick; brendon is heard doing the post-chorus, and patrick does the final bridge and can be heard on the final chorus. both of them are belting here, but patrick’s got a strong emotion that suits the finish without being too overpowering and also crucially doesn’t just stay...flat.

patrick actually does backing vocals on a couple other tracks on whisper war, like “i’m a wonder,” and in both that track and “one of THOSE nights” you can hear how much technical and emotional dexterity he has. the former has him belting and the latter has him doing a very restrained backing falsetto.

folie a deux era gave us two gentle lullaby pieces for pete’s first kid. the first is “lullabye,” the album’s hidden bonus track. the second is “bronx’s lullaby.” patrick does the first, brendon does the second. the first sounds very gentle and tender, and the second sounds...i mean, i can tell what he’s going for. but it just kind of sounds ominous to me. so basically i can see why most people will talk about the former and ignore the latter lol lol

did you guys know brendon was on broadway. im kidding im kidding he has literally not shut up about being on broadway and seems to have made that his tertiary character trait since kinky boots. anyway here’s brendon sounding like brendon on kinky boots and basically performing the song like any other panic song. here is patrick covering rocky horror and nailing tim curry’s part. i don’t have any live covers of patrick to have a more accurate point of comparison (he’s in his studio here so he had the luxury of picking the best take) but i just think its fucking wild that patrick wasnt the one of them to go on broadway. fucks sake man.

i COULD compare the two of these guys covering queen but that just seems mean because fob was doing a whole entire studio session and brendon was just doing it over zoom and nah im just kidding i really am that petty. anyway here’s fall out boy covering under pressure and patrick dueting with himself and managing to nail both freddie mercury and david bowie’s parts without losing his own distinctive touch. here’s brendon doing his cover of under pressure and thanks i hate it.

lastly, cause i did my fuckin research here. here are some vocal coaches taking notes on live vocals for patrick and brendon respectively. you might note that they have a lot more notes to give to the latter, a lot more cautionary tales about how much brendon pushes his voice. if they do have critique to offer patrick, it’s in regards to clips of his prehiatus performances (or for that one 2013 thnks fr th mmrs performance when he was sick lol).

the bottom line for me is that patrick, stylistically, just has more range and more versatility. he can do virtually any genre - dancehall, rock, pop, rnb, hardcore, ska, funk, and SO MANY FUCKING MORE - and he can still sound distinctly himself. and for me, brendon only ever sounds like he’s singing the same song in the same genre; molding the song to suit his tastes and his range, and not the other way around.

all right thats all ive got steam for. patrick has always been a much more distinct and capable vocalist in my opinion and it kinda sucks that general public opinion seems to favor brendon so heavily cause brendon’s basically only got one emotional setting and couches the fact that he has no vocal dexterity in a lot of high notes and everyone just eats it up. it’s a diverting tactic and it’s worked. but that kinda seems to be brendon’s m.o. these days since he’s trying to shake low opinion of him by drumming up controversy and writing a song about a dude who hasn’t been in the same band as him in 13 years so

[chungledown-bimothy]

About losing followers...not sure, but it could be because of the pro-Palestinian post with a lot of really horrifying responses in a very complex and terrifying time. I haven't looked through your whole blog to check, but in the part that I did scroll down, I didn't see any denouncement of the massacre of innocent civilian jews on one of our holidays.

you mean this post? the one that simply states that the titanic submarine got more aid than the people in Gaza?

i'm not qualified to talk about the politics of the situation with any sort of authority. instead, let's look at some numbers, some hard data.

per the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, between January 1 2008 and September 19 2023, 3,803 Palestinian civilians and 177 Israeli citizens were killed. TWENTY ONE TIMES more Palestinian deaths.

i've not seen credible numbers breaking down civilian vs combatant casualties in the last few weeks, so indulge me as we zoom out to total numbers to touch on recent events.

let's take the UN's 6,407 Palestinian deaths and 308 Israeli ones and add in the deaths since October 7th, per Al Jazeera. another 5,087 Palestinians and about 1400 Israelis.

11,500 Palestinians, 1,700 Israelis, give or take less than 10 on either side. (plus those who were killed in between 9/20 and 10/6, but i do not want to use data i'm not sure is credible)

who is being massacred, again?

(i looked up injury and displacement numbers as well, but they made me sick to my stomach to read, and i think the data i've given makes the point well enough)

i said up top that i'm not qualified to talk about the politics. and that's true. but Amnesty International is, and, directly quoting the conclusion of their 280 page report in February of 2022:

"The totality of the regime of laws, policies and practices described in this report demonstrates that Israel has established and maintained an institutionalized regime of oppression and domination of the Palestinian population for the benefit of Jewish Israelis — a system of apartheid — wherever it has exercised control over Palestinians’ lives since 1948.”

here's a well sourced article from Duke University adding more context and statistics

so no. i'm not going to handwring about people fighting back against their oppressors. no amount of religious identity politics can change the facts.

if that's why i lost the followers, good.

[tslightninginabottle]

We Are Reputation

Or, An Argument For The Reformation of Community Subculture

Two Days Ago The Tortured Poets Department for Taylor Swift dropped. I have friends who like Taylor Swift. I have friends who love her. I’ve tried to explain to them what this album makes me feel and the more commentary I see online from Twitter, Threads, TT… I feel like, while no one needs my opinion, I want to say it online. So this post is going to be long. If you don’t want to read it, if you don’t care, scroll away. It’s anonymous, because at the end of the day, I doubt I’ll come back to this blog.

I've shifted between posting or deleting for days. This is not very well edited. It's mostly rambling and I understand that. Some points may be connected vaguely. It might seem like I'm contradicting myself. It's messy and raw, and I'm just tired. But if I’m going to do it at all. I’m going to do this as right as I can.

Thus it’s in the form of an academic essay. Unlike other Academic essays, it is not riddled with an intense amount of quotes or sources. This is an opinion piece. But I think for the sake of the TTPD release, the structure is very… fitting.

Introduction (I.E. the TLDR for those of you who don’t understand how an academic paper is structured)

Taylor Allison Swift, has been Taylor Swift (capital T, capital S, with the TM brand symbol) since the age of 16 years old. She has gone through a cycle of expectations three times, and now she is tired. She is begging her fans to listen, and many of them refuse to do so. She is capable of creating great art with great vulnerability, we as fans are no longer equipped to handle it. Ultimately there is a chance that she is afraid of shaping her own ability, because of us. The only way we as a fandom can change is if we redefine our community now before it’s too late. And if she stops after album 13 it will not because she does not want to, it will be because we have destroyed her. 

Taylor Swift (TM)

For those who are reading this, and have made it thus far, chances are you know who Taylor Swift is. Whether that means you know where she grew up (Christmas Tree Farm), when she moved to Nashville (14), the names of her cats, her mother’s medical history, secret sessions, VMAs, easter eggs, accidents, eating disorders, a myriad of too many details that we know about a person we have never met, and the loves of her life. Whether this is friends or relationships, you probably know, all of their names. How each one came and went in her life. Through songs and through tabloids, screaming her name, screaming their names, trying to defend her honor when the world calls her childish for only singing about the heartbreak. You know. Thus, this message is to you: for all you know about Taylor Swift, have you stopped to think of who Taylor Swift is? Truly? Not projecting your own thoughts onto her. How using your long list of check boxes and check marks and “I’ve been here this long and I’m a better fan because I know this much.” Have you, do you, know her? Because I don’t. 

When I got my first iPod in 2006, I had five songs on it that I bought with my own money: Thnks fr th Mmrs, Umbrella, Fergilicious, Our Song, and Tear Drops on My Guitar. In 2008 I had my who family memorize the lyrics to YBWM because we listened to it too often. I saw the 2009 VMAs happen live on television. In 2010 I was screaming Mean in the shower when I had no reason to; I was happy. In 2012, I got my choir to sing a mashup of IKYWT. In 2014, I was racing down the aisles of Target at Midnight to get 1989. I was a bystander during Snakegate. I was sitting in my car in 2017 reading potentially my favorite prologue I’ve ever seen. Then I was subsequently let down by the album as a whole. I was likewise disappointed in 2019. When Folklore came out, it was the first album I ever sent to my non-tailor swift friends. They loved it. I did it again with Evermore. Midnights came out and I sat in my living room with my brother and his girlfriend, screaming, talking, the first listen party I ever had where it was not just me alone. When TTPD came out, I was alone again. 

Don’t come for me and say I’m not a real fan. It’s okay to admit disappointment. I never expected her to change to my will, however. I never yelled about it online. I simply accepted that it wasn’t for me and moved on, waiting to hear the next thing to see if it was. I stood by her, not because I loved her or I idolized her, but because I resonated with her, and sometimes that resonating wasn’t perfect but I accepted that. 

Or maybe do call me a fake fan. I really don’t care what you think of me. I just need you to know that I’ve seen this. I know this. I know what you know, if not more. But all the same, despite me reading the tabloids, reading the magazines, having the posters, listening to all the music, I have never thought I actually knew Taylor Swift. And yet… 

There are people online right now, being critical about this album. Some say it sounds bland, the same as what has come before but not as electric and ground breaking. Some say she needs an editor. Others say she is trying to recreate catching lightning in a bottle and failing. There are those online who are giving the paternity tests to the songs right now, proving to me that you never bothered to actually read, let alone understand what TS is saying to you. 

You were too focused on  “If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn’t sensationalize or sexualize that-right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.” That you MISSED: “I had become the target of slut-shaming-the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath, The media co-signing this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt. / It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hand out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the victorian era.” 

Go reread the Reputation prologue for me real quick. Or actually better yet, here:

Here’s something I’ve learned about people. We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them they have chosen to show us. We know our friend in a certain light, but we don't know them the way their lover does. Just the way their lover will never know them the same way that you do as their friend. Their mother knows them differently than their roommate, who knows them differently than their colleague. Their secret admirer looks at them and sees an elaborate sunset of brilliant color and dimension and spirit and pricelessness. And yet, a stranger will pass that person and see a faceless member of the crowd, nothing more. We may hear rumors about a person and believe those things to be true. We may one day meet that person and feel foolish for believing baseless gossip. This is the first generation that will be able to look back on their entire life story documented in pictures on the internet, and together we will all discover the after-effects of that. Ultimately, we post photos online to curate what strangers think of us. But then we wake up, look in the mirror at our faces and see the cracks and scars and blemishes, and cringe. We hope someday we'll meet someone who will see that same morning face and instead see their future, their partner, their forever. Someone who will still choose us even when they see all of the sides of the story, all the angles of the kaleidoscope that is you. The point being, despite our need to simplify and generalize absolutely everyone and everything in this life, humans are intrinsically impossible to simplify. We are never just good or just bad. We are mosaics of our worst selves and our best selves, our deepest secrets and our favorite stories to tell at a dinner party, existing somewhere between our well-lit profile photo and our drivers license shot. We are all a mixture of our selfishness and generosity, loyalty and self-preservation, pragmatism and impulsiveness. I've been in the public eye since I was 15 years old.   On the beautiful, lovely side of that, I've been so lucky to make music for living and look out into crowds of loving, vibrant people. On the other side of the coin, my mistakes have been used against me, my heartbreaks have been used as entertainment, and my songwriting has been trivialized as 'oversharing'. When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test. There will be slideshows of photos backing up each incorrect theory, because it's 2017 and if you didn't see a picture of it, it couldn't have happened right? Let me say it again, louder for those in the back... We think we know someone, but the truth is that we only know the version of them that they have chosen to show us. There will be no further explanation There will be just reputation.

You don’t know Taylor Swift. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve read her lyrics and you’re sure. I don’t want to hear another person say “She’s giving us her diary.” She is curating it. Editing it. She is a poet. She is shaping her image into exactly what she wants it to be. She is showing us the worst parts of herself on purpose, because it feels as if she is tired of hiding the full maltifaceted person that she is.

However, she is a marketing genius. She is a billionaire. She is not the girl next door, your very best friend, the girl you’d give your kidney to. You don’t know her. You don’t know anything about her relationships other than what she says on her songs — and the tabloids that are like 90% wrong anyway. We only know what she is giving us, analyzing the lyrics and coming up with more incorrect conclusions than correct. You don’t know her. You only know her reputation.

And every time you chant. Reputation! Reputation at her concerts, in the comments, in the theories, the more feral you are over it, the more you prove her point. At this point, it feels like people care more about her reputation than her. And it seems as if she’s tired of explaining it to us, because all we care about is the show. “Breaking down, I hit the floor. / All the pieces of me shattered / as the crowd was chanting “more!” (TTPD, ICDIWABH)

The Cycles of Hate

We all know the story of reputation. Snakegate. Kanye. Kim. The social media blackout. The comeback of a century. The KYS. I wish Taylor Swift was Dead. She’s just a bitch. I knew she couldn’t be trusted. 

Fun fact. That was Taylor Swift after 1989. Taylor Swift during the Era’s tour could eat that Taylor for breakfast. Her fame is astronomically bigger, full on universal. If you didn’t know this, IDK where you’ve been, but it’s the truth. We’ve seen her grow from that It Girl Popstar. To THE Generation defining popstar. Taylor Swift was named Artist of the Decade for the 2010s because she was the artist of the decade. And to the haters out there, this post is not meant for you. I don’t want to hear it. You can in fact walk down the street and start the song Love Story and people will know the song. Even in other countries. People know Taylor Swift (TM). 

In the cycle of popstars, newer shiny popstars often replace the older ones. And Taylor Swift, one day, will be no exception. The difference is, unlike most of those other women and men— I’d dare to say that none have gone through the torment that Taylor Swift has. In 2009, after the VMAs, the world turned against Taylor. Publicly and through the media, people were criticizing Kanye West. But Taylor said herself that she thought people were booing her on the stage. There were think pieces about how she ‘wasn’t good actually.’ This is when the true hate train began for Taylor Swift. The: she only writes about love and boys. The: she dates too many of them. The: she doesn’t write her own songs (even though her whole brand was built on it). When Taylor Swift released Speak Now, it included the song Long Live. Based on the lyrics, Taylor thought this album could be the end of her career. “Will you take a moment? / Promise me this / That you’ll stand by me forever / But if God forbid fat should step in / And force us into a goodbye / If you have children someday / When they point to the pictures / Please tell them my name.” 

I like to tell my friends that I see Taylor Swift has having three cycles in her career so far. We are living in the third. This isn’t based on music genre, completely. Because for argument sake, Taylor has touched on many subgenera. But it is based on Main Genre, and the cycle of vitriol towards Taylor Swift —i.e.l over saturation. 

Cycle 1: Debut - Red; Country

Cycle 2: 1989 - Lover ; Pop

Cycle 3: Folklore - TTPD; Folk/Folk Pop

The Cycle goes as follows: Taylor Swift has massive world breaking success after catching lightning in a bottle. People get outraged. She has to respond, in order to defend herself. The world gets more angry and irritated. TS is everywhere. There are horrible things being said online, everywhere in every way. People want her to DISAPPEAR. She writes an album for herself, and the fans cherish it. Then she says, it’s time for something new. The Cycle repeats. 

To most, non-fans, that I have met or seen online. They seem to agree that Taylor has only ever had three “good” albums: Fearless, 1989, Folklore. What do all three have in common? They were smash successes. Before Midnights, they were the only three that won AOTY. People around the world know their songs. She has been given critical acclaim for them by people who don’t listen to Taylor Swift. They are all sonically cohesive. They are all lyrically creative, and musically engaging. And, most importantly, they were genre defining (at least for her). 

I ignore Debut here, because Debut was her setting the ground work, and while Debut and Fearless are similar and close, it was not Debut that started the cycle. Debut started her career. For this reason, Debut classifies as an Album 0. It is the album zero, ground zero by which the whole cycle was built. 

In the Cycle that I’ve defined, after the smash success for Album 1, there is a string of vitriol and some sort of incident. She then writes an album response either to it, or about it, trying to prove herself as an artist and that she deserves what she has and where she is: Speak Now, Reputation, Midnights. Each one of these albums are Taylor Writing to prove herself, as being allowed to exist, and create art, her snapping back in some way. This may be the most esoteric in regards to Midnights, but the concept is the same. The big vitriol after Folklore/Evermore was that she could write deep songs, but not deep pop songs. So she made a concept album about the sleepless nights of her past and made an anthology of well crafted lyrics and considerations, thoughts and prayers, and proved she could do it. Midnights shouldn’t have gotten AOTY. It was good, a world wide smash success, but that’s because she has a bigger fan base no than she did years ago. It wasn’t lightning in a bottle. It wasn’t genre defining. It was a good pop album. But ultimately, Midnights is an Album 2, it is a continuation.

Now many people may say, but Evermore was the album after Folklore. It wasn’t. It was written at the same time as Folklore. She didn’t have time to process anything. It is, for all intents and purposes, a double drop with Folklore. The two are one, the same mindset. Midnights was different. 

In the case of Album 2 it is, or was, always a failure. Before Midnights, at least, with both reputation and Speak Now, even though she poured her heart out and made excellent music, and yet for some reason it did not receive the same accolades or awards — or maybe was even ignored by the general public. She did not catch lightning in a bottle again. I would argue this is the same for Midnights, but the difference is that her fan base is so much larger than it was before. 

Now, after Album 2, there is always the ramp up. The actual over saturation. It grows and grows and grows and the world begins to fully hate Taylor Swift. Yes, I know Snakegate had everyone turn against her, but look at the way people said things to her during the Lover era. Once again she thought it was the end after Reputation, that her career was over. Red, Lover, and TTPD are Album 3s, or the “this one is for the fans” album as the fans like to say. The “You don’t get it because you don’t understand Taylor like I do, album.” The Album Taylor writes for herself. Red was the only breakup album. The heart wrench album. The sing it and scream it in your car album. Lover was, at the time, unapologetically, a be you album. The be in love, be happy, it’s okay to be “me” album. TTPD is the I’m falling apart, please see me album. It is the I’m going to have to be okay on my own album. The I’ve healed and move on from this part of my life, but you don’t know me, album. And each and every time general society says it is not great, fans say that they simply don’t understand it because they’re not fans. 

Rinse Repeat.

Album 1: The Critical, Genre Smash Success. Album 2: Is the Critically overlooked Concept Album. Album 3 is the: This one is for the “Fans” (herself), Album that is critically panned. 

Dear Reader

Right quick, go reread the lyrics for dear reader for me. Follow that up with YOYOK and ICDIWABH. Come back to me when you’re done. Good? Let’s go. 

Are you listening yet? Are you hearing her yet? Taylor Swift fans are realizing this now, but TTPD was written for Taylor and it was written for us. The fans. We don’t know her. We don’t know her life. She is begging us, on her knees. Crying to us. She is messy. She is far from perfect. She makes bad choices. She is not a good person. She is simply a person and she is asking us to stop the idol worship.

“Please. / I’ve been on my knees. / Change the prophecy. / Don’t want money. / Just someone who wants my company. / Let it once be me. / Who do I have to speak to. / About if they can redo. / The prophecy?” 

And you may say, but that song is about love. It is. It’s about us. The greatest love Taylor has ever known. She said that. To us, at the Eras tour. We are the longest relationship she’s ever had. We’ve been there with her through the good and the bad. The ugly and the sad. The beautiful and the change. 

“You, who saw that I reinvent myself for a million reasons. And that one of them is to try my very best to entertain you. You, who have had the grace to allow me the freedom to change.”  (1989 TV)

But are we?

“This is a story about coming into your own. And as a result… coming alive. I hope you know that you’ve given me the courage to change. I hope you know that who you are is who you choose to be, and that whispers behind your back don’t define you. You are the only one who gets to decide what you will be remembered for.” (1989)

What is the legacy we are currently leaving behind for her?

“I want to be remembered for the things that I love, not the things that I hate, not the things that I’m afraid of, not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. I just think, you are what you love.” (Daylight, Lover)

Stop and think. For a moment. Every time we bring those men up. We bring the possible relationships up. We bring the heartache up. We attack the people online. When we hold her to impossible beauty standards, and impossible moral standards. We speculate and wonder and question… yes, there is a level of media literacy that comes from asking these questions. But there is a vocal majority, a large subsection of people online who are doing it again. Who are asking when she’s going to get married and have babies. Who are trying to burn Joe or Matty or Harry or any of the other boys before to the ground. Who are taking us back to 2012, the “she only writes about hs and heartbreak.” The fans who hang on her every word, every breath, and aren’t allowing her to change.

Taylor Swift (TM) has always been about change. But how many times have you seen or heard people scream, “this isn’t like folklore?” Some are like, they’re not real Taylor Swift Fans. But they’re comparing everything to it. And they are, her fans, and they’re not allowing.

Some of you may be like, but other artists don’t change. Don’t branch out. Write the same thing over and over and over, and maybe she wants to do that. Yet, girly has shown us time and time again that she actually likes challenging herself to write other genres. She likes doing it. If she didn’t. Reputation would have been more like 1989. Lover would have been more like 1989. Folklore and Evermore wouldn’t exist. I do think there is an argument to be had that expecting her to change and forcing her to do it is wrong, but I’m saying that we aren’t even accepting the chance that she may want to change for herself. Whether that means into a stable sound that never changes from album to album or into a wildly different genre. RN the FANS are dictating what should and shouldn’t be, and that’s… messy.

How many of you breathed in relief at 17-31 because it sounded like Folklore and Evermore? How many of you liked 1-16 because it was like Midnight’s sister? How many of you were waiting to hear the heartbreak about Joe? How many of you have given the songs paternity tests? It’s only been 48 hours. You can be honest. 

We are Taylor Swifts greatest love, if things are to be assumed, and the muse in TTPD is strangely many people in one — because we are a part of the problem now. She had to plead manic insanity to us, in her prologue for this album. 

How many of you look at the rerecordings and have forgotten the reason for them? I mean, I know you know the reason, but it’s not supposed to be a count down, doubting everything, pushing her, pressuring her, to give us her art. She is trying to reclaim her art, for herself. It’s called Taylor’s Version. Not the audience version. Yet, you scream Reputation at her concerts. Reputation. Reputation. Give us everything you are Taylor. Give us, your love Taylor. Entertain us Taylor. 

All she has left are her name and reputation. She’s already given away her reputation once. Do you think she wants to give it away again after she’s finally reclaimed it? Do you think she wants to give her name away again? When it’s finally her’s? 

And don’t get me wrong I think that reputation (TV) and Taylor Swift (TV) will come, and the world will be excited for the vault tracks, and be angry that it doesn’t sound identical to the original. And feel betrayed that it’s not 100% perfect the exact way they wanted. They’re tired of her failing them. Gaslighting her into believing she’s not good enough. Threatening to quit her and leave her behind because she’s disappointing them, by doing the one thing she’s good at but it’s not good enough anymore.

Oh sorry, not the world.

Her fans. The love of her life.

Critical Critique

The thing about giving good feedback and critique is that it needs to be helpful. You can’t simply say, I hate this, and expect someone to use it. 

Taylor Swift is not above critique. She is not perfect. She is a human being, it’s legitimately impossible to be perfect. Yet we ask her to be perfect. Now I’m not saying perfection with saying one thing (that she cares about social justice) and then doing the opposite. I’m not saying she’s above critique of her private jets or being a billionaire. These can all be valid critiques. I think we should be critical of her billionaire status, and white feminist tendencies, and marketing exploitation. This is looking at an idol and holding them to human standards that you may have for yourself.

I don’t think that being critical and holding someone accountable is toxicity. I do think it’s toxic tho, that we are starting to read into everything. Search for clues in everything. Showing up to weddings we were never invited to. Stalking her across venues. (And I don’t mean the plane guy, I mean you weirdos who show up at her house and her recording studio and scream at her to tell you about her latest breakup). Looking over photos, like you’re a tabloid editor from 2010, like “Where’s the ring?” “Is that a baby bump?” 

And when she tells us the truth we say no, I don’t believe you. When we, her fans, hear her say with her whole chest “I’m not perfect, stop defending me.” and we turn around and say… mmmmmm I’m not going to do that. You are my perfect little baby who can do no wrong. You must be confused. You must be shocked. Let me correct you. She knows she’s making bad choices and she has a whole marketing team to fix what she does. 

Taylor Swift fans have been demonized by media as ravenous brain dead worshipers, and in some ways we are. We defend her at every turn, at everything she does and justifies it, but this is more than that. And yet is also only that. I am defending her when she doesn’t need me to. But more than that, I feel like I need to call out the fandom cuz we are toxic. We have secret sessioners leaking albums. We are gate keeping. We are screaming at each other when people don’t agree with are arbitrary and subjective opinions. We say that the real critiques of her work aren’t actually listening to her— they are, you’re not listening to the critiques. Like the 1830s line. There are so many ways the same sentiment could have been written, better. No one is saying Taylor is a racist. They’re saying she needed someone to check her on the line and be like, is there a different way to say this? 

To everyone we talk to, we are hated. There are think pieces about how toxic we are to others online, how we attack everyone who dares to actually be critical of her. How we attack eachother, like the snake eating its tail. We defend her like its or dying breath and then turn around to Taylor and say, look I was a good fan, give me what I want and only what I want. People hate us. Outsiders hate us. Casual fans hate us. We hate each other. Taylor swift says she sometimes hates us.

Welcome to the age of Aquarius, the downfall of celebrity. We shouldn’t worship people, like idols and gods. However, we should judge people as people and we aren’t doing that either, to the random person on the street saying “see me” to the girl with the lyrics crying “hear me.” 

Social Media Literacy

Hate Taylor swift if you want to, whether that is because she’s over saturated or because you have grown disillusioned. But Taylor swift has built a brand about being relatable, and as much as people may say she’s manufacturing it now, I don’t think she is trying to. I personally think she’s trying to do it the way she always has, and it’s backfiring. 

Not because she’s less relatable, but because we as a society have lost what it means to accept other people. We are holding everyone to a high near high level of perfectionist accountability, where you must be perfect and never change, and never make a mistake. There is a fact to be said that billionaire mistakes hurt millions of people, and that everything you do cosigns another terrible thing. However, we are not building a community. We are not holding people accountable and then pulling them back into the community to help them change their mindset. We are not creating a network of support, we are snipping away at the web at every single point. Saying, you’re wrong, and isolating further. And while this can be said about everything and everyone, it is more apocalyptic for Taylor Swift, because her entire brand is a microcosm of society. 

This is happening to everyone, not just Taylor swift. Everyone. Nuance is gone. Grace is gone. Understanding, just like media literacy and critical thought, is disappearing. People are making value assessments of others based on the media they consume. And that alone should be a concern for all of us.

We are saying if you aren’t perfect, you are kicked to the outside. Immediately. No remorse. We are saying, if you aren’t exactly the way I think is morally right, just, or perfect, you are forbidden from anything ever again. And I’m not talking about Taylor Swift. I’m not talking about critique. I’m talking about us. The fans. Who attack each other. Who demonize each other. Who send hate threats to each other. Who call each other crazy. Who joke about other’s demise. 

Oh, that’s just an issue of Taylor’s brand. No. This is a wider spread issue, it’s just magnified in the Swiftie fandom, because the swiftie fandom has always been a parasocial relationship with Taylor. From the day she began on Myspace, the Swiftie fandom has broken down clues together, kept secrets together, been a community together, in a way that most others have not been. And it’s falling apart, just as Taylor swift’s brand of relatability. Because we as a society, and we as a fandom have snipped away the entire network of support. The only way down is through, and there is no one to catch us at the end of the fall.

Parasocial Relationships, have been seen to become toxic very fast, as soon as a person thinks that they have some sort of control or are heard by the person they follow. For the longest time, Swifts staid back, followed the clues like rabbits and it was a game. She left us a puzzle, and we went to solve it. Now we are trying to solve puzzles that don’t exist. We made the game bad. We have made it awkward for everyone. The Parasocial relationship we have always had with Taylor, which was kind and filled with space and grace, has fallen apart. We are the worst parts of toxic parasocial relationships.

We are screaming for more. Ignoring what has been given. Skipping too fast and onwards to the next thing. All while saying, this thing that you’ve given me? It’s not absolutely perfect. Do more. Be better. Oh but that’s too many now. How about this one thing instead. 

I know with my heart of hearts that when Reputation (TV) comes out. It’s going to be hell on fire. Because there is such a pent up image of this special album in everyone minds, that they keep saying things that are wildly untrue. That it’s going to be release randomly, because “there will be more explanation. There will just be reputation.” 

Go read the prologue AGAIN. I’ll wait. 

Don’t Blame Me, Love Made Me Crazy

We are not capable of listening anymore. And I know that many people of the world won’t read this, won’t understand this, won’t even know it exists. 

But we, are the most toxic love affair that Taylor Swift has ever had.

It was good, when it was good. But we’ve turned on her time and time again. And there are some of us, myself included, who will say, we’ve been here the whole time! Supporting her, even during lover when her concerts were at the lowest. But. 

We are tearing each other apart. We are tearing her apart. We are holding her to impossible standards we don’t even hold ourselves too. Our very real critiques of her are being ignored and some fans say it’s just hate instead. Critiques to her, become massive amounts of backlash at her, that is visceral and appalling. We say, “I love you.” She says, “It’s ruining my life.” 

We say we love you, and then turn around and say but I hated that. We say we support you  but we need “MORE.” We say take a break, but you had better not disappear on us. We say we want you to be in love, but on our terms. We want you to be happy, but the way we want. 

And it has gotten more and more and more, as she has skyrocketed to the Eras Tour level of fame she has right now. Our reactions to her are millions of times over across multiple countries. Where people are saying, she shouldn’t have become a public figure if she couldn’t handle it. She shouldn’t have opened up her life to us and written her songs like a diary, if she couldn’t handle it. She shouldn’t be a human being if she can’t handle being hated for being human. She created this parasocial relationship, it’s her fault it’s toxic. She talks about the men and love, she should handle when we judge her for it. You wouldn’t even judge your friends. Will you say, that’s just the way they are? And ignore the ways they are hurting you and others? And if you did, will you hold grace for them to change and grow or will you cut them out immediately and leave them isolate? Will you forget community? 

And it’s all divisive and anonymous online. This virtual signaling, and hate towards one person, when you can’t even hold your own families accountable. When you can’t even hold yourself accountable. When every moment that this relationship of us to Taylor continues, it proves that we are the worst parts of humanity. 

I’m not immune to that. This post is antagonistic and anonymous. I see the irony. I know the hypocrisy. 

And there are reasons the jokes aren’t funny about us on the internet, but that they’re true. They’re true, what outsiders and non-fans think of us. We are a rapid fan base that gets worse and worse each year. We are not only the good parts, the friendship bracelets and joy of the eras tour. We are all the terrible parts as well. We are the racist, homophobic, terrible parts. We are getting worse and worse the more and more we love her, that we are starting to scare people even more than we ever had. It’s my way, or you’re out. And if you, another fan, don’t agree with me then you’re not actually a fan at all.

Some people, fans, have said that the Eras Tour feels like the end. That she’s saying goodbye. She burned down the lover house. TTPD is alienating people. Taylor Swift is everywhere and she is so oversaturated that people are concerned.

And look. I can’t blame TS for what is happening right now. If she’s feeling alone. Afraid. Lost. Unsure what will happen if she puts one foot out of line. She’s given us this messy album that is filled with the dirty and worst parts of her thoughts and feelings. It’s not edited it’s raw. It’s angry. It’s saying “Fuck you.” Because we made her crazy. And I’m pretty sure we sure as hell aren’t letting her feel like she can change. She can’t trust us to let her change or to become something else. She can’t even trust us to be there as a support network. 

Even if the Cycle dictates that she should do it.

Maybe she’s grown up. Maybe sh’s found her genre and want’s to stay here forever. Maybe Taylor is tired. Maybe she just needed to get all the emotions out and away so she can move on and be fully happy. Maybe she’s terrified of what will happen this time when she falls from grace. She saw it in 2009-2012. She saw it in 2016-2017. 

I don’t know. I don’t know her. But I know this:

When you’re standing at the tallest peak, how far does the valley look? Especially when the wings you built through years of blood sweat and tears are burned by the very people who helped you make them.

There Will Be No Explanation. There Will Just Be Reputation.

We all know the iconic opening sequence from the Reputation Stadium tour. Where she took the media commentary and made it the opening. For years. Taylor has been in a war with the media and the powers at be. When the media slut shamed her. When the media made paternity tests. When the MEDIA said, look at this woman and all the stupid shit she does.

Guess what? The media loves her. 

Taylor Swift reclaimed her reputation from the media in 2017. 

But now who does she have to take it back from?

For as much as Taylor has made a commentary about how women are constantly told to reinvent themselves, to become something new and shiny, in this way and that way for “me.” The greatest changes Taylor has ever made in her music career have been for herself. 1989, was because she wanted to go Pop. Folklore was because she needed to process and try a new type of songwriting style. 

And yet, now Taylor’s fans look at all her clothes and choices and say “ah this is a new era.” This is “reputation era coded.” The fans are now adding paternity tests to every single song. We are going after the exes online and in person. We are asking Taylor to reinvent herself constantly over and over and over to entertain us. We shout “MORE!” over and over again. The fans are feral for reputation. Ignore everything else. 

And with TTPD she said, we need to chill that we don’t know her. That she’s going to make up her own choices and fuck up. And the line about “you should see your faces?” that is about US.

We, the fans, are now in the place of the media. We are the ones that are dictating her reputation in a way that she does not agree with. When Taylor Swift reclaims her reputation again, it will not be from the media, it will be from the fans itself.

We are now giving paternity tests. We are now the ones asking if she’s going to get married and when. We are the ones constantly wondering if she’s pregnant. WE are saying and doing and acting the same way that the media did for YEARS. When before we used to tell the media to back off and ignored it all. We have become the very thing we used to hate. 

And now we, as fans are saying to Taylor Swift that she MUST “Be new to us, be young to us, but only in a a new way and only in the way we want. And reinvent yourself, but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting, but also a challenge for you. Live out a narrative that we find to be interesting, to entertain us, but not so crazy that it makes us uncomfortable.”

This time when Taylor Swift reclaims her reputation, she’s going to be reclaiming it for herself, from the men who stole it from her. From the media who dictated it. From the world. From her fans. For herself. (Taylor’s Version)

Lightning in a Bottle

I was always of the opinion that she’d continue making albums after 13. Now I am not sure. I think she’ll write music, but I think 13 might be it. There is a chance, she is preparing to keep coasting. Get 12 out while she’s still at the high. Ride out this Cycle longer than it should. Get 12 out to critical acclaim, face the fall and release 13, her Magnum Opus. Say goodbye for good. People will look at it and wonder what happened, who she is, but she’s been warning us since Long Live that this could happen. 

However.

Taylor Swift is capable of bending lightning. 

To many fans, each Taylor Swift Album is perfect. To some each album is something new that she hasn’t tried before. To me, Taylor’s albums come in the form of a cycle. Where, when she changes for herself and is embraced for that change, she is able to create something no one has ever done before. She defines a generation in a healthy and productive way. 

She’s done it once with Country. She’s done it twice, with Pop. She’s done it thrice with Folk. In each instance she was raw, she was curated. She was honed in on the concept, on the lyrics, on the vulnerability, on the genre itself. Taylor Swift can capture lightning in a bottle when she’s trying an entirely new genre. When she goes all in on everything for the genre, in a new form, and learns and masters that form well. And most importantly, when she decides to make this leap of faith not because she’s reinventing herself to make the world entertained, but because she wants to make the change- the choice- for herself.

I’ve always hoped and prayed for that Rock album. I thought it would be 12 (or 11, in a world where Evermore was not Folklore’s sister/twin). I’ve always thought that if Taylor was going to catch Lightning in a bottle again it would be in rock. I don’t think we’ll ever get it. And that’s okay.

I always hoped that album 13 would be about us, the fans. The coming of age story of Taylor Swift. Her relationship with us and the music industry. The album that has pop and rock and country and folk. Songs that remind me of Girls Just Want to Have Fun, I Want to Dance With Somebody, and This Ones For the Girls. I hoped it would be for us. For her. For the love of it all. And album that said Long Live, with a capital TS, that touched on every era she ever did, recreating the sound perfectly. Into 13 perfect songs and not a song more. I doubt it’s going to happen. And that’s okay. 

I won’t be disappointed. I’ll be here for the ride. I’ll critique her as much as I always have, and hold grace for her to change as a person. I’m going to build my community with the paradox of Tolerance in mind. And if I’m wrong and she continues after 13, I’ll be there too. But I think that right now, The Taylor Swift fandom is not in the place to be able to catch Taylor if she makes a jump, a change, a decision that is not tailored for them or considers them. We can't even talk with each other without getting into fights.

Ask yourself how much of our community is left:

When the parasocial relationships Taylor built, is weaponized against her and ourselves. Like some sort of awardshow, where you get a gold star for being the best.

When we are giving her a paternity test at every lyric.

When we see our faces at every new lyric. 

When the games aren’t fun anymore. 

When we scream more. More. More. More. But only the way I want and in the way I deem appropriate.

When her reputation has been stolen from her again. AGAIN by the people she trusted most. 

When we only book mark her life by failures and endings. Gossiping like old women asking how did it happen this time?

When we won’t even remember ALL the things that she loves. 

When that’s all she’s ever asked for us to remember her by. 

When she says we, her fans, "are the love of my life."

But “The Story of Us, sounds a lot like a tragedy now.” 

Because "the story isn't [hers] anymore."

Yet, we're all she’s ever wanted.

I think that with TTPD, she is processing but she's telling us, that this is it. She's going to make the first change of her life not knowing if we're going to support it.

Cycle 4 is coming. Whether that is with 12. 13. With the end of the Eras Tour. With the burning of the lover house on the first night of the Eras Tour. Cycle 4 will end the Cycles. Will end the Eras. 

One more fall from from the precipice. But this time not from the public. Not from the media. From her fans. I think Taylor Swift is ready to take that leap with or without her fans. With or without the safety net. With or without the wings we built her that got her this far. One more fall from the pedestal. One more descent into the horrors that Taylor Swift has ever known. This time into uncharted waters, facing the one true love of her life. The change that is going to shatter the fandom. 

What happens then?

Change

So how do we fix it? How do we, as a community, come together and fix this toxicity? Because we have to be the ones to do it. If we don’t do it now, then there is a chance we’ll never do it in the future. We have to change, and reclaim our own reputation as Swifties.

How? I wish I had all the answers, but I do have a place to start.

Stop sending death threats and hate and KYS to people you don’t agree with. 

Stop arguing like you’re so smart because you understand her lyrics. If someone says they don’t interpret something the same way as you, maybe listen. There is no One Way to read a Taylor Swift song. There just isn’t. 

Tolerance Paradox: Support differing opinions of your own. However, we can not accept intolerance. Those who wish to spread hate, those who wish to spread anger, we can’t support them. We have to call them out. We must call out the racists and the homophobes and the literal nazis and white supremacists who find our fandom home. 

We must be critical of her AND our community. Whose voices are we not listening to? Take a self inventory on why the critique of her bothers you so much. Legitimately. 

We must take inventory of what we have done in the past and take accountability for the ways we’ve hurt others.

We must stop asking for more, legitimately. Stop asking for more Folklore like albums. Stop asking for more 1989 like albums. Stop begging for reputation.

We must be kind to those who are new. Gatekeeping can only be so far as to keep the space a place of tolerance. 

We must support each other in hard times, in times of need. Be the community that comes together to say, I have your back. We must start helping each other, legitimately.

We must hold our ground, and stop the leaks IMMEDIATELY.

Stop speculating, and I don’t mean analyzing of reviewing easter eggs. I mean speculating. We aren’t with her 24/hrs a day so stop acting like we should be.

Easter Eggs are only fun, when people aren’t having full break downs about being wrong. Maybe we should chill. 

Hold space for your opinions to change and for others to change. Validate those changes, and the processing. 

Remember our roots. We are the fandom who has stuck together through everything, who believes in the magic of connection. Draw those 13s on the back of your hands and make a wish. Long Live.

Ending

In the end, there is nothing great about this essay. I’m really not saying much to anyone. I'm saying this for myself because I'm changing the way I engage with Taylor Swift and other Swifties. I’m tired of creating a network of hate. I’m tired of feeling like I don’t belong in this community, because I am not perfect. Or because I don’t agree. 

We, as fans, are the new enemy that we have always fought against.  

I might not be able to fix everything, but I'm going to do my part to change the prophecy. 

[that-wildwolf]

Get to know your fanfic writer!

Thank you @callista-curations for tagging me!

When did you post your first ever fanfic?

Circa 2008 I think. Let me tell you those were the wild days. FF.n wasn't really that popular and AO3 straight up didn't exist yet. You would make a whole ass entire blog. And you would post your fic on that blog. And people actually found that shit???? Wouldn't work now.

First Character(s) you wrote?

OCs actually, in the PJO fandom. I don't really enjoy writing OCs now but that's what was cool back then 😅 The first canon characters I wrote were Sarah Jane and the Doctor from Doctor Who.

Main Character(s) you're currently writing?

Well I've always got that Shakarian brainrot, don't I? Also like. Saren and Nihlus I guess.

Character(s) you haven't written about before but plan to soon?

Jolyne and Jotaro Kujo! I've still lowkey got that Eyes of Heaven brainrot, and isn't it cool to write characters that are biologically parent and child as having a sibling relationship, but I'm aware that the target audience of that fic would be uh. me. so I'm not in a rush.

Fandom(s) you're currently writing?

It's mostly mass effect. Even the WIPs I have of other fandoms are scarce among my mass effectses.

Platonic Pairing(s) you're currently writing?

Jotaro and Jolyne, definitely. Shepard and Saren is always a lot of fun to write, though my Kryterius fic mostly focuses on Shepard and Nihlus. Also fun, but not as much.

Romantic Pairing(s) you're currently writing?

Shakarian and Kryterius. I mean what did you expect? a magic trick?

Your top AO3 tags?

Interspecies Relationship(s) absolutely sweeping at 32 fics. Followed by Fluff (19 fics) and Post-Canon (18 fics). Like I said I have no idea where this idea that I'm an angst writer came from, I'm all about the fluff--

Current platform you use for posting?

I guess I might as well officially say that since finishing up my first contact Shakarian AU two years ago, I am no longer posting my fics on FF.n anymore. It's all AO3 now.

Snippet of the WIP you are currently working on?

"Saren." Nihlus is immediately at his side, one hand on his cowl and another grabbing his good arm. "Saren, you're not going to die. I'm getting you out of here. I swear."

"Shepard will never allow that."

"She doesn't have a say in this. You're my responsibility." Nihlus nearly growls at the thought of anyone getting in the middle of that. After everything he's done, the Council will have to agree if he asks. Damn what Shepard thinks. "She doesn't have the authority."

"Nihlus..." Saren shakes his head at him. His subvocals, as always, remain infuriatingly silent, but Nihlus has learned to read his body language to make up for that. He doesn't like what he's seeing: Saren's eyes are completely vacant of any emotion and his shoulders drooped. There's nothing left in him, no fight, no hope. He's given up already.

And that's something Nihlus can't accept.

“I’m getting you out of here,” he promises again. This time, he receives absolutely no reaction.

It nearly breaks his heart to leave now, but he has to. He has to get Saren out of this as quickly as possible, he can’t allow this to go on. So he quietly slips out, silently hoping that Saren isn’t looking. He wouldn’t bear to have that hopeless gaze on himself right now.

Shepard is waiting for him just outside the holding cells. Of course she is. Nihlus doubts she would ever allow anyone to make a decision about Saren that she didn't approve, or at least know, of.

Which is probably going to make things very difficult for him from now on.

"You can release him," he says simply.

Shepard, to her credit, doesn’t say a word. She just looks at him like he's just done the worst thing she could imagine. In all honesty, the flicker of rage, disappointment, and disapproval that lit up her eyes almost made him pause.

She slowly shakes her head and walks away without as much as a single look back. Nihlus isn’t sure how he feels about that.

He just hopes he hasn't just made an enemy he won’t be able to deal with later on.

Tagging (but you guys know my tags are no pressure. I won't be upset if you don't do it.) @whiskynorocks @milkywayes and @nicolasadrabbles

[snifflesthemouse]

Readers, we need to have a talk...

This author must clarify a few things before one can feel comfortable moving forward. While this author values every single reader, whether critic or fan, it is important to understand a few things.

I have been following this craptastic royal saga since 2016. I have read the darkest of rumors, and I have researched most every lead I can. I've been able to find their mortgage documents and how they put their house in a trust owned by City National. I have even posted them here. I've also posted a ton of their business documents and movements. Evidence is king.

I have researched her degree from Northwestern and know for a fact there is no such thing as a dual-degree. I even have the college catalog for courses pre-2008 showing you couldn't get a dual degree with international studies and theatre. Theatre was her major. But everything out there is suspisciously filtered. Does this author believe there have been manipulations made? Absolutely... but I am getting off track here.

The whole point of this post is to explain to EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU LOVELY PEOPLE that I have heard, read, and seen it all. I am well aware what people say about those children. I am well aware of all the videos of the swaying moon bump. I have seen all the stuff. Remember, Ashli was a dear friend (in the sense we knew one another online).

I would actually recommend people go back and watch all of her videos, as she brought a lot of good intel to light. Some of it though, was a little out there.

If Ashli were alive right now, she'd be the one on the TVs. Not the other people we see, as she called most all of this stuff long before most. But again, I am off track.

The whole point of my post is to say that I am well aware of more than I write about. There is a reason I don't repeat those things.

There are reasons I don't repeat those rumors that Markus and Meghan have Harry blackmailed into a threesome. Or the rumors that Markus fathered the two kids via surragate as Harry is sterile. Rumors that the Clintons or the NWO put Meghan in place to destroy the Monarchy. Or the rumors Doria was a drug dealer in prison. FYI... I HAVE HEARD WORSE. FAR WORSE.

I've heard rumors that Doria killed her own father to take his home and buy out her half-brother. I've also heard the Royal Family are shape-shifting Reptilian demons who pass their spirits down into the next generation, that Diana was forced into a ritual by Lady Furmoy where the Queen and Philip essentially planted a seed in her or some nonsense (That is a sloppy, most-errored recalling).

There is so much more I could say, but I don't and won't.

My glasses aren't darkened or muddied...

If you don't understand by now how I operate, let me tell you. I use their behaviors to call them out for conning techniques that are tricks of the conning trade. I write about the things I have PROOF to write about. If I don't have proof, I STRESS REPEATEDLY AS DONE BEFORE THAT IT IS HEARSAY AND RUMOR.

If you don't like what or how I write, that is your right as a human being. I could care less. I'm not here to bend my blog to people too lazy to write one for themselves.

The insane stories make the stories that are probably true even muddier. Repeating the craziest of the conspiracy theories take away from our credibility.

All of those stories could be true, but I choose not to accuse other people of being drug dealers when I have searched the public records that all convicted felons cannot escape... each state determines what felonies can be expunged, and most times... they aren't capable of being expunged. Especially drug charges.

There is a difference between me seeing one of them using actual conartist tricks to manipulate others, and then exposing that... and me just repeating what others have already said.

Now, I feel my readers deserve fresh content and perspective that looks at the truth of both of them and who they are. I am experienced, and I am credentialed in human behavior.

I used to be experienced and behaviored in spewing nonsense that sounds like a coke binge, but I refuse to do that here.

Do you all not deserve better from me?

If that is your schtick and you want to do that, I will gladly read and support you for it. WE all have the right to say or express whatever we want.

And if that is the vibe I do send, maybe it's time for me to stop writing on this blog at all.

I'm not bashing anyone, but don't come on here telling me what you think I know or don't. There are reasons I write the way I do, and I am perfectly content with it. If you aren't, gladly remove this blog from your list and have a wonderful day!

That is all.

[vintagelacerosette]

Tag Game catch up ✨️

I was tagged to do these awesome tag games made by our shining star Macy @celestialmickey & was also tagged by these angel pies Evie @energievie Julissa @heymrspatel Jay @surviving-maybe Harvey @mikhailoisbaby Willow @ian-galagher Kaka @stocious Auds @auds-and-evens Michelle @michellemisfit Leah @whatwouldmickeydo Vey @look-i-love-u Julia @juliakayyy Ri @tanktopgallavich thank youuu 🥰

Name: Myn

Age: 26

Where in the world are you? Sydneeeyy

The meaning behind your URL: the mash up of pretty words & when i began this blog i had aspirations of being a pretty vintage type aesthetic blog lmao

Your second favourite color: Periwinkle

Any pets? My doggie Roxy

Favourite season: Currently, I'll say it's autumn but it varies bc I barely have any distinction with the season living in Australia lol so I'm happy as long as it's sunny & not blistering heat with a light breeze haha

Last thing you read:

Got fics in rotation at the moment haha but I'm rereading

Let the bodies to the talkin' by the magnificent Jane @captainjowl

My Nine Lover by the sensational Anna @annatrow

Last of a Dying Breed by the terrific @wildxwired

For a book I've started Be not Afraid of Love by Mimi Zhu that is a collection writings about the author's journey of relearning to love again after experiencing a violent relationship

Last song you listened to:

I'm getting familiar with the new FOB album 💕

What are you wearing right now? Black cardigan, brown pleated mini dress with pastel green low heels

A hobby of yours: Paper quilling

Your comfort show or movie: Currently Shadows and Bone (gotta get that Six of Crows spin off lmao)

and finally, what are you up to today? Dinner at restaurant I planned to catch up eith my old workmates bc I didn't get to do a farewell dinner when I left in December 🥰

TAG GAME: FANDOM EDITION 💖

Your Name: Myn

Your Age: XXVI

Your First Fandom(s): I think Violet x Tate from American Horror Story

Your Current Fandom(s): Gallavich & Wesper (my book babies got adapted to tv y'all 🤧💕)

How did you first get into fandom? I think i got i more into the fandom culture in 2012 but i did take a break for like maybe 3 years bc I had no idea how the site worked or how to make friends haha. So i missed many of the iconic tumblr moments.

How long have you been engaging with fandom spaces? I remember reading animr fanfic since year six or year 7 so in 2008/2009 & I joined tumblr in 2012 as a more passive participant spam reblogging bc I had no idea how the site worked at first lol. Then I became a more active participant in the gallavich fandom in 2022 when I decided to post my first gallacrafts in feb 🥰

How often do you read fanfics? Every single day & every spare hour I can spare

Top 3 characters from your current fandom(s):

Mickey my beloved Milkovich, Ian sweetface Gallagher & Sandy darling Milkovich

Wylan Van Sunshine, Jesper hotshooter Fahey & Kazzle Dazzle Brekker

Have you ever written a fic for a fandom? if so, shout it out! Not yet, but I oh so plan to I got wips summaries coming out the wahzoo

Have you ever drawn fanart for a fandom? if so, shout it out! Yess i am so happy to have made some fanart for our lovely Macy's fanfic Your Message Has Been Received, Gallavich × Good Omens fanart for Gallacrafts & other art found in the tag #Myn's art

Share a personal headcanon that you feel very strongly about:

Ian gets the fucking Monica boobs tattoo fixed omfg it'll be a touching tribute to her not whatever the fuck that was. Also Mick gets Ian's name fixed too. They could do it together & then get tattoos that symbolise each other on their bods

You’re trying to convince a friend to get into your current fandom(s) with you. what episode, clip, or scene are you showing them? Ohh CLUB KISS CLUB KISS CLUB KISS

Shadow and Bone

Under carriage scene! Recognised his man by being on top of him. The muscles memory of it all 😏

And finally, what does fandom mean to you? Fandom gave me back my creative passion back. Something I thought I had lost & desperate wanted back but had no idea how, but by finding all of you beautiful, amazingly sweet & brilliant minds that came together out of the love our soft & sensitive husbands I found a safe place & a home where I can share what I create which is my love. So thank you all forever for being in my life 🥹

Also this Picrew too & this is basically my outfit for dinner just a lighter brown dress with plaid & minus the frog hat sadly 😔🐸

I'll tag these dearhearts if they wanna play @scarcrosseduntouched @andthatisnotfake @adakechi @skies-below @ lingy910y @imikhailotakeyouian @babygirlmickey @too-schoolforcool @gardenerian @creepkinginc @demontargaryen @chicanomick @suzy-queued @tomorrowillmissyou @ intotheblindinglight @lalazeewrites @tellmegoodbye @jomilky @darthvaders-wife @flamingbluepanda @crossmydna @depressedstressedlemonzest @gallavichgeek @gallavichsbitch @shameless-notashamed @callivich @sickness-health-all-that-shit @bravemikhailo @7x10mickey @sleepyfacetoughguy @suchagallabitch @iansw0rld @ deathclassic @grabmyboner @y0itsbri @grumpymickmilk

[boyswanna-be-her]

that was truly an insanely out of pocket ask. anyway it makes me happy to hear about what makes you happy, and how your day to day is going, and what you're excited about. hope you have a good rest of your day <3

Thanks! Their apology meant a world of difference to me. The ask also lead to me reaching out directly to FIVE different long time IRL friends who had seen me in the past three days before receiving the ask. Getting a temp check with people who have known you a long time and seen you recently is definitely helpful, and although the ask made me spiral for like 2 hours, it also generated some unexpectedly affirming conversations, where people who have all known me since 2005-2008 all independent of one another basically said that they had indeed noticed that I'm more talkative and outgoing lately, but that it hadn't pinged them in any sort of concerning way. I fuck heavily with the opinion esp of 3/5 of the people in this regard because that proportion of this group had previously reached out to me in a panic worried about me because they perceived me as so sad/detached. Two of them in particular got me engaged with environmental volunteering immediately after all my 2018 bullshit where I was in super heavy PTSD territory, and I can directly credit them for a lot of connections and drives I have today. And 2 of them have also conducted mandatory wellness checks when I didn't communicate with them often enough via text for them to be comfy. And I love them for that in ways they'll never really understand.

Anyway. The general message was that nobody had been alarmed, the ask seemed out of left field to them (they don't read my blog, but they're all aware of it and tumblr-smart), and that they'd all been happy to be happy for me this year.

No ragrets. If nothing else, being able to reach out to so many friends who have been with me for so long but also so recently was validating, and that none of them were worried about me is great. I don't think I would've had any other impetus to request all those low-consequence feedback seshes had I not received the ask. None of the people pinged have anything to gain from lying to me and again, in the past, the majority have not had a problem expressing concern about my mental health.

So like. Yeah that shit threw me super hard yesterday and I immediately re-evaluated the way that I express myself here and elsewhere. I feel like I had recently re-channeled my early days of tumblr where everything was highly unfiltered, capslock and screaming in tags was quite normal, I was a small fish in a big pond, etc--because that's when it was an exciting era for me as a creator on here. I miss a lot of that energy.

And full disclosure, in my relationship before last, the one that really and truly broke my heart on top of losing Jonathan to suicide, we didn't share ANYTHING publicly. And I was so deep. And then they broke up with me horribly a month after Jonathan died and I found him!!!!!... well, how could anyone on the outside mourn a relationship they didn't know about when my RECENTLY (for my safety lol) ex-husband had just died horrifiecally? They didn't know. The scale was so weird for everyone but me. Only a handful of people even knew I was in a new relationship that i perceived as supportive and, like, a soulmate type gig. I was so sure of everything that I didn't share ANYTHING and that super fucked me over in the end.

It was awful and alienating and I wished all along that we had shared more. So I don't wanna do that shit anymore. I'm excited about shit in my life and people in my life and meeting people and finding gigs and I don't want input on that, so please treat me like the 38 year old human being I am. I have been through more bullshit than you could possibly understand, even if you read every post I ever made here, even if you were my best friend who I told everything to (doesn't exist but good concept). Assumptions are unwelcome. I'm old and I'm angry and I have energy and that's what's up. I just want people to be on board to see this middle aged piece of shit maybe like find a reason to live again and not die alone.