#it also has been suggested that while life COULD have existed on venus at some point

[jestiamy]

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this before, but Venera's name actually means venus. which, while not seeming overtly necessary information at first glance, actually is something I was losing my mind over yesterday because. the three brightest objects in the sky, in order, are the sun, the moon, and venus.

[lilacstro]

astro observation part 9

well, lets go, I dont have much to rant about lmaoo, i hope you all are doing good tho!! also I love when some of you comment/reblog my posts with your comments, I LOVE LOVE IT HAHAHA

i would love to hear your thoughts/suggestions about my blogs, astrology and paid readings if you have any, send them on in asks :)

1.I read a chart for a girl here on tumblr, and she had pluto, moon and venus, ALL in first house, a literal beauty attack, but apart from this, either of these planets in first house gives you so much beauty and appeal.

2.Wherever Neptune is in your birthchart can mean multiple different things. It can mean in what matters of life you look with delusion and think with haze and might think in feels, with unconditional love (neptune is higher octave of venus). Example, Neptune in 4th house, You can be absolutely be in illusion with your family life, over prioritizing it, making decisions around it with lots of emotions and love care. Can make another post on this one maybe. Neptune in 2nd house might not think clearly about spending money, or may lend money to people easily at time, or to the ones they love.

3. Often seen people with mars in extroverted houses often dont mind lashing out in public or calling someone out on the face, no matter what kind of introversion other aspects suggest in their chart. They are likely to stand up for themselves and/or others. Gives me the vibes "speak the truth even if your voice shakes"

4.People with Neptune in 2nd house could be really good fictional writers, or writers in general, a very good talent comes in poetry and fiction.

5. Neptune/Moon in 4th house makes a very devoted mother. Mother is likely to be spiritual, and unconditionally loving with Neptune, and very motherly and warm and understanding with Moon.

6. I have often seen, people with mercury-neptune/venus aspects have a potential to sing. In hard aspects, this can usually mean this potential is untapped and exists and needs to be channelized and worked upon.

7. Your Moon sign can show how you see your mother. With Moon in Leo, your mom could be protective over you, give you tough love but you must feel safe with her in all aspects, share your thoughts and feelings and even at some point, seek her validation. Moon in Libra could be that you feel a little unfair with your mother at times, though it can also mean the love you gave felt reciprocated, sometimes you couldve felt superficial about your relationship but it must look good on papers to others. Moon in Gemini, could be either its very good when good and very bad when bad, like two extremes.

8. Chiron aspecting MC can mean that often others see you as someone who has been through something in the past/ or when you are going through something, people might be able to see it. Not exactly the contents of it, but just an idea and feeling.

9.Check your Saturn to see where you will experience nudges and "tough love" with life until you learn your lesson. For example: Saturn in 8th? Lessons around coming out of the shell, and learning how to trust/who to trust and building close connections.

10. Indicators of doing well in academia/ as a professor: Sag stellium, Sag rising, Sag/Jupiter in 9th, PoF in 9th, Academia(829) in 9th/10th, Saturn/Jupiter in 10th, Sag/Capricorn MC

11. Your second house ruler can show how you like to keep your money/spend it. People with 2nd house ruler in 8th might like to keep their money at hidden places and/or spend it on astrologers, spiritual stuff or save it for hard times etc. In 1st house it can show someone who isn't afraid to show their money, and may spend on themselves, like skincare, things for their liking while in 11th house it can show someone is very generous with their money and might like spending it on their friends.

12. IC in Aries/Scorpio could mean you saw some kind of violence with your mother or childhood growing up. It could also mean your childhood made you competitive in some ways, or it was complicated, and something that has indeed transformed you. It could also be you can very much carry resentment for your childhood even afterwards.

13. very random but, sabrina carpenter's lyrics give me such STRONG leo vibes lmao "don't you stand there staring honey, try to move your feet, if you think they're looking at you, they're looking at me" lmaaoo

14. People with Uranus retrograde in their charts, would often find themselves thinking differently, wanting different things than their family or most, and if they ever stop/try to fit in the normal despite this life would usually steer them into some direction that will force them to this.

15. People with Pluto in second house often have sexy eyes or their eyes may look intoxicated lmao. They may often use eyes to express themselves/having expressive eyes or use their eyes a lot when they are mad/wanna assert power in situations. My mom has this placement, and one of my friends too and its true for both of them lmao.

support me on ko-fi :)

paid readings are open <3

i love youu xoxo

[mysticstronomy]

DID MARS EVER CONTAIN WATER??

Blog#428

Saturday, August 17th, 2024.

Welcome back,

While the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn contain water, Mars remains dry. Despite dozens of space missions, the Red Planet has yet to provide convincing proof that it conceals significant water reserves beneath its surface.

Yet Earth's little cousin hasn't always been so secretive. Various studies have shown that a little over 4 billion years ago, it experienced a "watery" era when lakes, rivers and perhaps even oceans could maintain themselves on its soil. Branching valleys and ancient terrains rich in hydrated clays are evidence of this blissful period of abundance.

Subsequently, the loss of part of the Martian atmosphere led to a reduction in the greenhouse effect followed by a gradual disappearance of water. The question is how long this process lasted and under what conditions. This is what the American Space Agency's (NASA) Curiosity and Perseverance spacecraft have been trying to establish since their arrival in 2012 and 2021 in the Gale and Jezero craters.

"Lakes occupied these depressions 3.5 or 3.6 billion years ago," explained Nicolas Mangold, a director of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) Laboratory of Planetology and Geosciences in Nantes.

By studying the sedimentary and clay deposits left by the former and exploring the ancient river delta that fed the latter, the aim is to determine whether the climate at the time was wet and cold, or dry and hot. The Perseverance rover is also collecting samples, to be brought back to Earth as part of the MSR mission [Mars Sample Return, NASA-European Space Agency (ESA)]. They should provide precise information."

For the moment, things are hazy. If water has flowed on Mars, where has it gone? Was it sucked up into space with the Martian atmosphere or did some of it remain on site, buried underground? Many teams around the world are working to find answers by searching for clues to its presence other than those offered by polar ice caps and glaciers.

As water cannot remain in a liquid state for long on the surface of Mars, these investigations often consist of spotting recent traces of its passage using instruments placed in orbit. This opens the way to all kinds of controversy about how to interpret observations of this world, whose morphology is radically different from that of Earth. "Some of these controversies, such as those concerning gullies – ravines 1 or 2 kilometers long, discovered by the hundreds along certain landforms in the early 2000s – have finally been settled," said Susan Conway, a CNRS researcher at the Laboratory of Planetology and Geosciences in Nantes.

Her team recently demonstrated in the journal Nature Communications that seasonal deposits of dry ice explain the phenomenon, and not water flows.

Other clues continue to fuel debate and even controversy among scientists. The nature of "equatorial dark flows," the background noise of radar signals suggesting the existence of an underground sea beneath the North Cap, the presence of possible channels in the ejecta of impact craters and the hypothetical formation of "rides" in areas of glacial retreat. If water exists on Mars, it is well camouflaged.

Why not deep underground, frozen in the cryosphere? Or preserved in liquid form in aquifers, or inside the thin film of perchlorate brine that supposedly exists at the base of the permafrost that covers Mars at high latitudes? The Marsis and Sharad radars of the Mars Express (ESA) and MRO (NASA) probes have pinpointed promising regions. And when NASA's Phoenix lander dug a few centimeters into the frozen ground just after it arrived in 2008, it immediately uncovered blocks of water ice – a further reason for hypothesis and speculation.

Originally published on https://www.lemonde.fr

COMING UP!!

(Wednesday, August 21st, 2024)

"DID LIFE EXIST ON VENUS??"

[crepes-suzette-373]

Another conspiracy theory posting.

It has been mentioned that the Nerona in Imu's name might be a reference to Nero. Or perhaps specifically, a painting titled "Pochodnie Nerona", which depicts Christian martyrdom.

Now, if this is correct and not coincidence, this specifically makes Jupiter's naming choice very very strange, because his name strongly alludes to Saint Peter the Apostle.

Jupiter's full name was Shepherd Juu Peter. Peter is Peter directly. The "juu" is written in kanji like this: 十. Literally it means the number 10, but it's also the shape of the cross. Cross-shaped objects, including the Christian cross, is referred to in Japanese as "juumonji", or "the shape of the kanji juu".

The Bible narrated that Jesus left a personal message to Peter alone. The wording may vary depending of the translation, but one of the forms used says "shepherd My sheep".

Apostle Peter was, according to tradition, executed by the order of Nero.

I've seen some comments in the fandom suggesting that someone among the Gorousei might actually be a turncoat, and I'm not sure what the existing theories were, but I wonder if this means that Jupiter is the one.

Certainly there's a few things about him that makes it feel like he's the odd man out. His beast form is not a "traditional Asian folklore beast", but a Western one. Possibly a relatively modern invention, even, since I wasn't able to find anything like a "sandworm" in older mythology. Far as I can tell, this was based on or adopted from Dune's sandworms.

The other Gorousei's faces were very very similar to their real life inspirations. Venus being based on Gandhi and Mercury based on Gorbachev is so dead-obvious it's not even funny. Jupiter's supposed "reference" was Abraham Lincoln, but unlike the other 4, the resemblance is not intuitive. I'm even personally of the opinion he doesn't look like Lincoln at all. There is the entire possibility he's not actually based on a real person at all, and if so, that's singling him out as different again.

And now for the wild guess that is mostly based on conjecture. I previously wrote that by the zodiac alignment, Jupiter's "beast" form should have been a dragon. You can stretch it and suppose that "sandworm" maybe counts as a "dragon" somehow (because wyrm and worm sounds similar), but unlike the other 4 this is not really intuitive either.

I have posted a couple of times saying that I have this theory that maybe before the World Noble Tenryuubito established themselves, there were a race of "real dragons" who may have lived on Red Line alongside the Lunarians. Maybe Jupiter's strange naming and his zodiac alignment hinted that he is actually a real dragon, and he's been hiding his true form to avoid being hunted.

It's not yet really explained why Lunarians are hunted, but it's not entirely off base to make a conjecture that: 1) there could be other ancient races on the red Line, and 2) they might have been hunted just like the Lunarians were. In which case, hiding one's identity is necessary.

Not to mention the strange scar he has on his neck. Sure, Saturn has a scar too, but the scar being on his neck really makes me wonder. I half-jokingly theorised that maybe he was the dragon Ryuuma cut down all those years ago.

The wording says "cut down" 斬り捨て. While this tends to imply "kill", this does not actually directly mean kill. It's just slashing the opponent with a critical blow. This still leaves the slimmest chance of the opponent being able to survive the strike.

The direction of the diagonal scar also is consistent with a standard samurai slash. Or any right-handed sword slash, even, since Zoro's scar from Mihawk also goes the same direction. I'm not entirely serious with this theory, but it's not impossible.

[miqoquest]

Season Two Ahki: The Adventurer

(Uh, this was done by my friend Raiko who has way more filters than I do. Bless.)

I've been reworking my character for a bit because she felt a little lost and I was brand new to the lore and the game so there was some inconsistencies with her backstory and themes. So this post is solely for me to map out a course of where I want Ahki to go. Honestly, I really highly suggest roleplayers do this with their characters to help tighten their focus. Sometimes venue and social RP, while fun, can make your character feel a bit "lost" so it's always good to keep little stepping stones planned ahead for your character so that they always have goals and motivations and feel real and sound interesting and... You get it. This is not a complete fleshed out backstory of who Ahki is, just a roadmap.

Quick Changes and Retcons

I didn't have a tight idea on Ahki's family and witch coven. I originally thought I'd trace them back to the Mhachi as a descendant splinter group. The Halloween Events hint at these groups existing. But, it just ended up being really convoluted so instead of the Mhachi, I switched the coven to be part of the Lambs of Dalamud which better compliments the Black Shroud and Keeper of the Moon lore.

By roleplaying, Ahki managed to find a mentor to teach her Shugendo which is why she has the robes and all. It turned her into a weeb, which was funny, but I'm scaling that back to fit her more original concept as a Cottagecore, Cute Shroud Witch. The mentorship isn't going away, the roleplay isn't going away, what she learned isn't going away. Ahki will just begin to apply and mesh those philosophies with her witchy skills she grew up with.

I want a proper witch look for Ahki. I don't quite have the glam for that yet. I also don't think she's earned it yet. She's going to ditch the Shugenja robes and opt in for a more casual, humbled and down-to-earth adventurer look for now.

Were Season One Ahki's goals completed?

Escape the Shroud from her Evil Family. Yes.

Get stronger to one day come back to her home and save her family from the evil voidsent pacts that curse them. In Progress.

Find friends and family and find a stable, healthy foundation to learn and grow??? Yes.

This was one of the reasons why playing her was starting to feel a bit lost on me. Her goals were vague because it was a starting point, I was brand new to the game, I didn't know the lore, I didn't know anybody. So I kept it very simple. Now that I have found more structure and have made those friends and RP connections, its time that Ahki have a mind of her own and have her own goals. She doesn't need to lean on people for help anymore. While she still preparing to save her family, she has that foundation to support herself now.

She...

...Is learning Shugendo and other Eastern disciplines to get a better understanding of magic and the world around her. She's not completely devoted to Shugendo, but her faith has been expanded and she has a more powerful connection to the spirits around her.

...Moved to the Mist in Limsa Lominsa to work for the Dalmascan Adventurer's Guild, Babylon. She lives there, has been gaining experience through guild leves, makes potions for adventurers, and has picked up a handful of handy skills.

Season Two Goals

Ahki needs to do more witchcraft and magic. I've been dropping the ball on this one. She just needs to be more witchy and druidy.

Ahki wants to learn more offensive techniques and learn how to fight to not only save her family in the future but to help her adventuring friends and defend the helpless! "I'm a healer, but..."

I want her to be helping out as an Adventurer a lot more. Before she was a little apathetic to wanting to go on adventures (she just wanted to save her family) but now she's grown used to it and has found that she has a bigger purpose in life.

Ahki should start a small business in potions?! A little side-hustle? This could make her a quest-giver and she can tell people to collect ingredients for her in the most hostile of territories.

I want her to defeat her evil family soon. There is a big "What Now?" moment once that goal is finished that should propel her into a more interesting character and that will bring us Season Three Ahki! (...Maybe Witch Ahki?)

Ahki in "season two" is still learning and honing her skills, but she's becoming more a capable and competent adventurer. I started roleplaying Ahki back in mid-February so that makes Ahki only 6 months old! Not bad. Maybe I'll check in 6 months from now and do this again and see where she's at.

[newstfionline]

Monday, August 5, 2024

Hurricane Debby to bring heavy rains and flooding to Florida, Georgia and S. Carolina (AP) The center of Hurricane Debby is expected to reach the Big Bend coast of Florida early Monday bringing potential record-setting rains, catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge as it moves slowly across the northern part of the state before stalling over the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina. Debby was located about 100 miles (161 kilometers) west of Tampa, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph). Forecasters warned heavy amounts of rain from Debby could spawn catastrophic flooding in Florida, South Carolina and Georgia.

Mexican army acknowledges some of its soldiers have been killed by cartel bomb-dropping drones (AP) The Mexican army acknowledged for the first time Friday that some of its soldiers have been killed by bomb-dropping drones operated by drug cartels. Defense Secretary Gen. Luis Cresencio Sandoval did not provide exact figures on the number of casualties suffered in the attacks, almost all of which occurred in the western state of Michoacan. The army had previously acknowledged that soldiers had been wounded in Michoacan by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Sandoval did not say when the attacks took place, but suggested they targeted patrol units. He said the army was acquiring anti-drone systems to combat the threat.

Maduro victory sparks fears of new exodus of Venezuelans (AFP) A despondent Jose Vasquez, 31, has decided to join a mass exodus of Venezuelans seeking a better life elsewhere, having lost all hope in his future with the contested reelection of President Nicolas Maduro. “There is no light at the end of the tunnel. I’m leaving,” the 31-year-old told AFP. Some 7.5 million people have already left the country in the last decade to escape the oil-rich nation’s grave economic crisis, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). And surrounding nations are bracing for another exodus after Maduro was declared the victor of Sunday’s election. The opposition claims it was the rightful winner and the dispute has sparked deadly protests, leaving at least 16 dead. Vasquez studied to be a teacher, but now works as a salesman, as salaries in his chosen profession were so low “that they are useless.” Ahead of the vote, pollster ORC Consultores had found that 18 percent of Venezuelans were considering emigrating within six months if Maduro remained in power.

The ‘cheaper’ Paris Olympics (Yahoo News) There are very few cases where something that costs nearly $9 billion can be called “cheap.” The Paris Olympics is one of them. While the 2024 Summer Games do carry an enormous price tag, it is significantly lower than other recent editions of the event. The numbers can vary wildly based on what’s counted as an Olympic expense, but the most recent high-quality estimate puts the cost of Tokyo’s 2021 Games at $13.7 billion, Rio in 2016 at $23.6 billion and London in 2012 at $16.8 billion. Recent Winter Olympics have also come with staggering price tags, with estimates for the 2022 Games in Beijing running as high as $35 billion. So relative to those examples, Paris really can argue that it hosted its Games on the cheap. The primary way the Paris organizing committee kept costs down was by relying on existing venues for the competition, rather than building a series of brand-new arenas as previous hosts have done. Roughly 95% of the competition will take place in venues that already exist or in temporary ones that are much more affordable than the permanent locations that other hosts have built—which often become little-used “white elephants” after the Games are completed.

Ukraine hits airfield, fuel depots, sub in overnight drone attacks on Russian regions (New York Post) A massive drone attack walloped the military command center Russia is using to wage its war against Ukraine on Saturday. The overnight barrage destroyed ammunition plants and fuel depots in Russia’s Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions. Among the successful targets was the Morozovsk airfield, where Russia keeps its fighter-bomber jets. The Russian airfield has played a crucial role in the Kremlin’s operations against Ukraine. Russia also lost its B-237 Rostov-on-Don attack submarine, which was sunk Saturday outside Sevastopol in Ukrainian bomb strikes. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense noted on X the sub was now resting at “the bottom of the Black Sea.”

Dozens killed as anti-government protests resume in Bangladesh (Washington Post) Violence erupted between Bangladeshi security forces and anti-government protesters Sunday, killing at least 57 people, according to a Washington Post tally of reports from hospitals and police. Local media placed the toll even higher, saying nearly 100 people had died. At least 14 police officers were among the dead, Enamul Haque, a police spokesperson, said in a statement. Hospital officials in several districts, including Magura and Sirajsganj, said many of the victims they received had bullet wounds. Sunday’s protests are the latest bout of unrest in the South Asian country—where some 200 people were killed last month in clashes between security forces and student protesters.

Bombs Rain Down in Myanmar as Junta Evades Sanctions to Buy Jet Fuel (NYT) The family ducked for cover when junta jets roared over their home in central Myanmar. U Har San and his wife crawled under a table, and their daughter, eight months pregnant, hid under a bed. Bombs rained down, he said, even though no rebel fighters were in their village. Their daughter died. The attack last month on the village of Lat Pan Hla is a feature of Myanmar’s brutal war strategy. Unable to defeat the rebels on the ground, it has increased its indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets to terrorize the population. The airstrikes have also taken a heavy toll on resistance fighters. But the resistance fighters continue to make gains on the ground. In recent weeks, rebel armies seized a prison in Shan State, freeing hundreds of political prisoners, and on the opposite side of the country, another rebel army captured a civilian airport in Rakhine State. The escalating attacks on civilians have made it clear that Myanmar is evading sanctions aimed at blocking the flow of jet fuel that the regime needs to keep its bombers, fighter jets and helicopter gunships in the air. In separate attacks, the junta recently bombed a wedding and a monastery, killing some 60 people.

With Smugglers and Front Companies, China Is Skirting American A.I. Bans (NYT) In the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, a mazelike market stretches for a half-mile, packed with stalls selling every type of electronic imaginable. It’s an open secret that vendors here are offering one of the world’s most sought-after technologies: the microchips that create artificial intelligence, which the United States is battling to keep out of Chinese hands. One vendor said he could order the chips for delivery in two weeks. Another said companies came to the market ordering 200 or 300 chips from him at a time. A third business owner said he recently shipped a big batch of servers with more than 2,000 of the most advanced chips made by Nvidia, the U.S. tech company, from Hong Kong to mainland China. As evidence, he showed photos and a message with his supplier arranging the April delivery for $103 million. The United States, with some success, has tried to control the export of these chips. Still, The New York Times has found an active trade in restricted A.I. technology—part of a global effort to help China circumvent U.S. restrictions amid the countries’ growing military rivalry.

Countries urge nationals to leave Lebanon as Mid-East war fears grow (BBC) The US has urged its citizens to leave Lebanon on “any ticket available”, amid worries of a wider conflict in the Middle East. An increasing number of countries issue similar warnings, including the UK. Iran has vowed “severe” retaliation against Israel, which it blames for the death of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday. His assassination came hours after Israel killed Hezbollah senior commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Western officials fear that Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militia and political movement based in Lebanon, could play a heavy role in any such retaliation, which in turn could spark a serious Israeli response. The UK, Sweden, France, Canada and Jordan have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon, as a growing number of flights are cancelled or suspended at the country’s only commercial airport, in Beirut.

In Gaza, Even Poetry and Toilets Aren’t Safe From Thieves (NYT) As he perused a market selling everything from stolen children’s shoes to battered plumbing pipes, Mahmoud al-Jabri was surprised to find something familiar: his own book collection. Among the collection was his first published work of poems, with his handwriting scrawled along the margins. Even more shocking than seeing the book he had toiled for years to create was that the vendor wanted a paltry 5 shekels, or about $1, for it. The salesman suggested using the pages for kindling. “I was torn between two feelings,” he said, “laughter and bitterness.” In Gaza, even poetry books can become a source of profit for enterprising thieves. A pervasive lawlessness has emerged from the rubble of cities obliterated since Israel launched its all-out offensive on the enclave in retaliation for the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7. “Thieves’ markets,” as they are called by locals, have proliferated across Gaza, selling loot plundered from homes, businesses and even hospitals. With Israel blocking the flow of most goods into Gaza, the markets have become important places for finding household necessities. And visits to the markets have become a weary ritual for Gazans seeking to reclaim stolen pieces of their lives.

Israeli raids in West Bank cities help fuel militant violence (Washington Post) Israeli raids targeting Palestinian militants in the West Bank are taking an enormous toll on daily life in the territory, leaving hundreds dead and neighborhoods destroyed, tactics residents and local fighters say are feeding resentment and causing more unrest. Since the Oct. 7 attacks, Israeli forces have killed 554 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the United Nations, which is higher than any annual total since the United Nations began counting in 2005. Thousands more have been arrested or wounded, in sweeping operations backed by drones, warplanes and helicopter gunships. Israel, which occupies the West Bank, says the firepower is necessary to prevent attacks on Israeli citizens. But the forays into Palestinian cities and refugee camps have done little to subdue the militants. Instead, the violence is helping grow their ranks, furnishing new recruits angered by the conflict. “They are destroying all the infrastructure, the electricity, the shops,” Ashraf Jaradat, 42, said just hours after Israeli forces withdrew following a raid on Jenin on July 5. An airstrike targeting five militants that day shattered Jaradat’s windows and cracked the water tank on his roof. “We get sick and tired of this,” he said. “The children are traumatized.”

[spacenutspod]

I have lost count of how many times I have given public lectures and explained the temperature differences between Mercury and Venus. How Mercury, surprisingly isn’t the hottest planet in the Solar System and how that badge goes to Venus, thick atmosphere blah blah blah.  Mercury and its complex surface geology does of course get a good chunk of time but a recent paper has rather caught my attention and turned what I thought I knew about Mercury on its head! In short, a team of scientists have announced evidence for salt glaciers on Mercury! Planetary Science Institute (PSI) scientists; Deborah Domingue, Bryan Travis, Jeffrey S Kargel, Oleg Abramov, John Weirich, Nicholas Castle and Frank Chuang are the co-authors of a paper that made the announcement. Their discovery of Mercurian glaciers (which are made of salt rather than the glaciers composed of water ice we are familiar with on Earth) are believed to have formed under the crust in Volatile Rich Layers (VRLs). The glaciers are then exposed by asteroid impacts. Salt glaciers are a rare phenomenon on Earth but have been seen in areas like the Zagros Mountains in Iran. The irregular dark patches are the salt glaciers. Satellite image of the Zagros Mountains in Iran (Credit : U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey) The team went on to suggest formation processes for these salt glaciers and the chaotic terrain that Mercury is well known for and at mechanisms that can explain the VRL formation? They studied the Borealis Chaos region near Mercury’s north pole, a region rich in chaotic terrain. Asteroid impacts have to all intents almost wiped out the craters in this region, many dating back to the early days of the formation of the planet. Underneath this layer lies ancient cratering that was discovered through analysis of localised gravitational fields.   The placement of the two layers suggest perhaps that the VRLs may have in some way developed on top of an already solid terrain.  The chaotic terrain at the antipode of the Caloris Basin on Mercury (Credit : NASA) Previous theories suggest the different layers formed through mantle differentiation where minerals separate out into layers but now a new theory is emerging. It seems the evidence points to some sort of global event, perhaps even from the collapse of Mercury’s fleeting hot atmosphere shortly after the formation of the planet.  An alternative theory suggests that escaping volcanic gas may temporarily create pools of water or dense, highly salty steam which could have deposited salt. Significant amounts of the water would have swiftly been lost into space while some could have been trapped in minerals leaving behind a clay and salt rich layer.  The discovery of the glaciers on Mercury is in itself fascinating yet what has really captured my imagination is the impact this has on the potential for areas of habitability on Mercury – or any other planet for that matter. On Earth, the existence of certain salt compounds in what would otherwise be inhospitable locations has given life a foot hold. We often talk of the Goldilock Zones around stars, the distance at which liquid water can exist and therefore has the potential for life.  Yet the discovery of subsurface volatiles (which would ordinarily have evaporated out into space) suggests perhaps depth is also a key criteria for a hospitable environment. The surface of Mercury seems inhospitable to life but perhaps, life may get a foot hold underground.  Okay this may seem far fetched but it does add an interesting dimension to the debate around a planets suitability for life.  Source : Unveiling Mercury’s Geological Mysteries: Salt Glaciers, Primordial Atmosphere, and the New Frontiers of Astrobiology The post There Were Glaciers… on Mercury? appeared first on Universe Today.

[fantasia-monogram]

hi <3, according to their charts, what do you think the boys will be attracted to (or search in a partner)? have a nice day!

EDIT: this was written BEFORE I knew Dawon and Zuho disclosed their possible birth time, so PLEASE don't correct me on my guesses of their 7th house ruler and/or rising I included in the post below. I get these messages/comments correcting me a lot. I'm up to date now!

Hi! That’s an interesting question, thank you for asking!

I looked at their Venus and Mars placements (approach to relationships, the drive to go into them, and style of action), as well as their 7th house ruler, the latest being my educated guess because we don’t know their exact birth time. I’ve been into astrology long enough to spot telltale signs of somebody’s rising sign, and thus more or less deduct their house rulers. 7th house, a.k.a descendant (DC), being the opposite to the rising sign, indicates what qualities a person might be ultimately seeking in a partner (not necessarily in a romantic way).

Disclaimer: astrology is all about interpretation, so my approach might be different than what you might get from somebody else. Also, I’m an intuitive, so my knowledge might differ from what you can learn about astrology from widely  available sources!

That being said, let’s go! It came out softer than I expected so I might do some naughty readings in the future, what do you think?

Youngbin

♏ Venus, ♐ Mars, ♏ DC

Youngbin would be attracted to someone who doesn't mind constant change (that idol life!), and is laid back, forgiving and cheerful in general. 

The abundance of Scorpio energy tells me he'd have possessive tendencies though, so being faithful and reassuring him that he's the only one would be a must!

Inseong

♊ Venus, ♍ Mars, ♈ DC

Inseong would definitely search for someone who is better organized than him. Boy has his head up in the clouds and needs a partner who'd take care of all the mundane matters😔 At the same time, he needs to be intellectually stimulated, so somebody just as witty and outspoken as him would be a perfect match.

Judging from his 7th house ruler, his ideal partner would also need to be the one to initate things. To sum it up: somebody please take good care of him 😔

Jaeyoon

♎ Venus, ♊ Mars, ♊ DC

Lots and lots of air energy! Jaeyoon just wants to have fun and do everything together (Libra just can't exist without somebody by their side). He'd love someone who'd spend hours on DIYs with him and be patient enough to go through his monologues. 

He might stumble with his delivery, but he probably loves long talks just about everything, so he'd be searching for a person who'd be a good conversation partner for him.

Dawon

♋ Venus, ♎ Mars, ♑ DC

Dawon is really sensitive under the loud facade 😔 He'd search for somebody he could show this vulnerable side to - and it surely takes a lot of effort to gain his trust. Someone who'd be able to appreciate all the fine and expensive things in life would be perfect, too!

Not gonna lie, his Mars placement tells me he'd definitely be a visual person, probably with a particular type of looks he's attracted to.

Rowoon

♊ Venus, ♋ Mars, ♈ DC

Rowoon most likely has a list of qualities he's attracted to and won't settle for anything less. He's looking for someone warm-hearted who'd love to establish a family with him in the future, but stay secretive about their personal life at the same time.

With his pretty submissive, mellow character, he'd love a partner who'd take some of the responsibility off his shoulders - someone with a dominant personality (in more than one way!).

Zuho

♊ Venus, ♊ Mars, ♌ DC

Zuho, yet another fun loving guy. Might not be interested in long term relationships at all until much later, unless he finds somebody able to keep up with his busy, extroverted lifestyle and be his co-star at all the parties. If he does, he will never let them go!

I wasn’t supposed to go into the spicy territory, but that Gemini+Leo vibe tells me he’d definitely want someone kinky as hell  👀

Yoo Taeyang

♓ Venus, ♎ Mars, ♉ DC

Taeyang seems to care for everybody around in more or less subtle way, so his perfect partner should be able to understand that no, him being emotionally invested in everybody's problems to the point of pushing the romantic relationship aside doesn't mean he's gonna jump ships. He bonds for life, he just needs a bit of understanding for his unusual ways.

Other than that, he'd definitely be attracted to someone who shares his artistic passion and likes the same things in general. Most likely believes in soulmates!

Hwiyoung

♋ Venus, ♎ Mars, ♒ DC

With the same Venus/Mars placement as Dawon, Hwiyoung has a sensitive side to him under the cool facade, and gaining his trust takes a while. This artistic soul would love a partner who'd not just appreciate, but also partake in his creation process.

His 7th house ruler suggests he'd be attracted to a partner with unusual views, possibly educated on social issues, or just someone with an otherworldly look to them (or both!).

Chani

♐ Venus, ♓ Mars, ♋ DC

How do I explain this? Chani would be looking for someone very sociable, but with dreamy, watery energy. Someone to go to an event with, but afterwards agree to take a nap with him without making any fuss 👀 

He'd definitely want a nice meal and cuddles to come back home to as well, so his ideal partner would need to be a good homemaker too!

[1ddotdhq]

☀️ Mon 26 Oct ‘20 Part 1 💙

Tell us a story about love, Harry, the fans demanded, and give it a happy ending. In a way, he did that, but it isn’t what you’d expect. Instead of creating a standard love story, the Golden video was an ode to joy: goofy and joyful and playful and FUN which is really what a good love story should be - a true love letter to the song! It dropped at 12 pm EST (which was an hour EARLIER than Sony Italia said it would) and was entirely Harry goofing off and running (literally running) around the Italian coast. Earlier today, AP dropped an interview with him talking about Golden, among other things, and he’d said about the song, “it’s one of the first songs when I was making the album and it's always been a source of joy for me. And I wanted to make a video that encapsulated that. I’d like to think it will maybe cheer a couple of people up. Cheered me up!” The video cheered me up immensely, too, and I particularly liked the costumes: alongside the Steven Daley floral pants and fisherman’s hat we saw the other day, he included a blue (yes, that blue) blazer over a striped blue and white shirt, complete with tattered vans on his feet, the flowy shirt we’d seen him wear in filming, and his swim shorts! And don't worry darlings, it is still a Harry video, he IS submerged in water at one point (as is the camera, giving us some nice Eroda!fish POV shots.) Remember those pap shots of him and Molly Hawkins at the pool where everyone was like “we CAN’T TALK ABOUT IT the paps INVADED HIS PRIVACY”? Well, no, actually, it was for the music video - He’s even wearing that blue daffodil Eliou necklace in both the video and the picture! There were no other characters to introduce in the video, it was just him joking around, except for a motorcyclist with a neon green helmet and a few old women at the very end who’d car Harry decided to climb. You can sort of see her waving at him to get off of her car and him just...giggling at her and popping his ankle into the air like the queen he is. What was notably MISSING from the video was: the boat scenes, the purple gown outfit, and the vespa! I wonder what happened to those shots? I’d very much like to see that footage if HSHQ wants to release a director’s cut for the video, but as we know that Ben Winston had a hand in producing this, and given his history of withholding footage, I wouldn’t hold my breath….

Is that it for Harry? *Checks notes* why NO it is NOT! Well, okay, first, let’s talk about the reaction to the video: fans love it! It’s everything we wanted but never expected! Parallels have been made between the outfit he wore in Golden and WMYB wayyy back in the day, and it’s true: semi-longhaired Harry wearing striped shirts HAS made a comeback almost ten years later! It’s like his own little version of the ‘how it started...how it’s going’ memes going around. Harry Lambert posted tons of behind the scenes shots, including one of Harry in a feathered Steven Dayler hat, and Harry himself posted a picture to his instagram of him throwing up the middle finger by biting the lace glove and pulling it off of his hand! He’s in the Louis blue blazer and it's a very funny and cute picture and it reminds us that Louis does NOT have a monopoly on middle finger pictures: Harry can pull them off too THANK YOU VERY MUCH! This picture was a super popular one; it was liked by Helene Horlyck, Gene Gallagher, Sandy Beales, Harry Lambert, and even Micheal Blackwell (Louis’ guitarist!). Harris Reed - who can’t help themselves, they’re as in love with that color blue as we are - “The colour of dreams 💙” . They were not the only blue heart in the comments, lots of people chimed in with their 💙💙 love - MTV even made a (joking) post speculating that it was Louis in car that Harry crawled on, and Eliou was discovered to sell both middle finger candles (suggested color: blue) and peace sign candle (suggested color: green). I...want them both. Helene Pambrun then added to the Harry praise by celebrating her third anniversary with the team (“~ 3 years ago [Harry] opened a new chapter of my life”), thanking him for the opportunity, but also perhaps saying goodbye? She says, “There is still a long way to find who I really am and what I want/need to be...what I know, though is that I certainly miss all of those faces who I’ve been...sharing the last 3 years [with]”. I guess we’ll find out sooner or later if she’s still around, but her pictures have been a joy! 

And now for the news I don’t think anyone was expecting: Harry is investing in a new stadium in Manchester that aims to add jobs to the economy, engage the community, and create a space that musicians would want to play at as well as a welcoming space for fans. He mentions how much he misses live music (hey we have a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert video for you!) and how Manchester was his hometown, which made this a very personal investment for him. Building a new arena may seem highly counterintuitive at a moment when arenas are shut down indefinitely due to contagion concerns, but it seems to us that building new music venues at this time, while not possible for most people or places, might be kind of optimal; a new venue can include conscientious future-looking measures incorporating ventilation and seating innovations for the times we live in in a way that's hard to retrofit to existing spaces. We don't know yet if it WILL, but it COULD! It's being built by Oak View Group, an Irving Azoff enterprise, and we're told that Harry “will take more than just a capital interest, he will also be actively involved in the development of the project.” Getting ahead of the curve and building the first contagion conscious arena sounds very Azoff and like something Harry would throw himself into: we're eager to hear whether it's the case. “As long as everything's in order by 2023, hopefully they’ll let me play there. If I haven’t messed it up yet,” he says: yes we all hope so too!

[petri808]

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33-Epilogue

— I just wanna say thank you so much to everyone who followed along, your comments and suggestions along the way really helped to bring this story to life! It’s my longest fic to date, and to think it started as a one-shot for nalu day 2020 lol. YOU GUYS HELPED MAKE THIS HAPPEN! 🥳🥰🥰 ILY YOU ALL!💜💜💜💜

@mcornilliac special shout out for you help with the toughest part 😘

Even after all these years, riding on a train still brought a small flutter to Lucy’s stomach as she remembered the long ago evening when she’d met her husband. From an innocent meeting to a death defying experience, talk about a roller coaster ride. And yet, if she had to do it all over again, Lucy wouldn’t change a thing. Crazy sounding yes, for why would anyone not want to avoid what she’d gone through? Touka had truly pushed her sanity to the breaking point, but well, the therapist was right in the end and Lucy felt almost invincible now. All that pain, all the struggle she’d pushed through had made her the strong and resilient woman she was today. Happily married to Natsu with their fraternal twins Nashi and Ryuu. Mrs. Natsu Dragneel, Lucy smiled to herself, there was no way she’d change a thing.

Of course, it hadn’t been easy. After Natsu proposed and Lucy had accepted, there were still a lot of work to be done. But that measure of acceptance and affection did wonders. Any worries she’d had that he wouldn’t want a broken woman melted away and gave her the confidence to get better. With each passing therapy session, her strength grew, and by the time they graduated college, Lucy could honestly say she’d been cured to a functional degree. No longer struggling through nightmares and panic attacks, her anxieties were under control and the debilitating depression a distant memory where it belonged.

Yeah... Lucy sighed happily as she watched the landscape pass by from her train seat. Meeting Natsu was the best thing to ever happen in her life, well, aside from the kids. They’d married about a year after graduation on the anniversary of their meeting. It was a beautiful affair at an indoor venue, with close friends and family to join them. They’d gone a more modern route for the ceremony but did take pictures at a garden dressed in the traditional attire for sentimental reasons. Lucy wore the shiromuku white kimono while Natsu a montsuki haori hakama. And no, it wasn’t train themed! Levy was the Maid of Honor and Gray was the best man. By then, Levy and Gajeel were also married and Gray in a serious relationship with a girl named Juvia Lockser. Lucy was so happy for them both. All of their lives were moving in the right direction.

Everything was perfect. Great jobs in their fields of interest, lives settled into a comfortable routine, when 5 years later Lucy was pregnant with fraternal twins. It was a total surprise since twins didn’t run in either of their families. Always the jovial optimist, Natsu joked that they’d been doubly blessed because of what they’d gone through, and Lucy couldn’t help but love such a concept. Of course, once the euphoria of the motherhood prospect waned, reality set in that she was having twins! Two! Double the babies meant double of everything, from the pregnancy concerns to raising them. Growing up without a mother and as an only child, Lucy didn’t have a lot of experience with small children. But Natsu patiently assured her, that she’d do just fine. Think of it as a new challenge, and after overcoming one pretty tough situation, this would be a walk in the park. On the bright side, Levy was also pregnant with the couple’s first child so the two best friend’s kids would grow up together.

And Natsu was right, there were a few bumps in the road but nothing too difficult. During her fourth month Lucy was diagnosed with gestational diabetes as well as some minor gastrointestinal issues, so Natsu swayed the doctor to put her on bed rest. Better safe than sorry. The babies were healthy, but by the 7th month, she really couldn’t move much, and she was miserable being stuck at home all the time. Lucy missed her job because she genuinely enjoyed working for the magazine. But in the end, it had been a good thing. She could manage her health easier that way and it gave her time to do something she’d thought about doing as part of the healing process. With Natsu’s support and permission, it was time to put her writing skills to good use and write a book about their experience.

It became an instant hit, especially with female readers. The book was not only an autobiographical reflection of what had happened to them but focused on shining a light on the dangers of stalkers, as well as the importance of taking the warning signs seriously. Lucy didn’t hold back in her re-telling, even pointing out the serious flaws in Japan’s laws in protecting citizens from stalkers which at the time were nonexistent. Feminist organizations working to change those laws used her story with permission for their cause. She had no intentions of becoming a poster child for the movement, but in the end her role may have played its part, because 2 years after the publishing, Japan finally adopted anti-stalking laws making it easier for police to string together harassment cases, as well as for victims to get the help they needed.

Her life was nothing but exciting to say the least! And with two young children, now age 10 certainly kept them on their toes. Their daughter Nashi was just like Natsu, very outgoing, friendly, but a bit of a daredevil while her brother Ryuu born 4 minutes after her was the quieter of the two. He preferred books like his mother to adventure. Of course, that never stopped Nashi from dragging him into shenanigans! But the best part was how close they still were and fiercely protective of each other. Lucy and Natsu couldn’t be prouder of them and hoped this would continue throughout their lifetimes.

Fifteen years... come to think of it, their wedding anniversary was coming up shortly. With Natsu now a senior fire inspector for the Tokyo prefectural government, he was often busy. Lucy did mind it, because frankly it gave her some peace and quiet. She chuckled at the thought. Not that it was all that peaceful with the twins. But she digressed. His success meant their lives were very comfortable, and her own journalism successes while not as financially based, were still celebrated in their relationship. Natsu never waned in being the dutiful and supportive, always loving husband that Lucy felt blessed to grow old with.

‘Two more stops, pick up the kids from school, stop at the grocery store for dinner...’ Lucy tapped out on her phone a to-do list of ingredients to pick up at the store. Perhaps katsudon... ‘Mmm, or maybe nabe,’ hot-pot soup since it was expected to be a bit chilly that evening.

Lucy looked up briefly, really just spacing out in thought when someone catches her eye. At the other end of the train car, she noticed a woman facing slightly away, but enough to where she couldn’t quite see a face. It couldn’t be... Lucy looked away not wanting to stare, but somehow... for some reason the woman was awfully familiar... looking exactly like Touka. Well, not exactly, but enough to make the hair on the back of her neck stand up. It was a blonde, with a different hair style— and that could always be changed. Similar body type, the facial side-profile features that Lucy could see resembled Touka...

Now despite being better, her anxieties still bubbled up from time to time, so she immediately switched to her coping techniques to calm them down. ‘You’re fine,’ Lucy talked herself through it, ‘no point in getting riled up.’ The woman hadn’t done so much as looked in her direction, so it must be okay. Contrary to popular belief, things like depression and anxiety never fully goes away, especially when someone has experienced a severe level of it. Those emotions and irrational thoughts are forever programmed into the brain, but there are ways to keep them at bay and Lucy’s successfully done just that for 15 years.

‘Just go back to what you were doing. Katsudon or nabe? And don’t forget you need to pick up milk...’ But, fifteen years... could Touka have been released by now? Lucy shook the thought away again. ‘Stop it! Everything is fine. It’s not her!’ The train was semi-full of passengers all minding their own business... including the woman. There was no reason to start panicking now. Lucy adjusts her position on her seat away from the woman’s direction. If she couldn’t see her, she could pretend she didn’t exist. ‘Maybe I should pick up ingredients for both, that way I don’t have to shop tomorrow.’ Lucy thought to herself, and with the kids with her, they could help in carrying the shopping bags. ‘Yeah, we’ve got a plan…’

After figuring out her shopping list, Lucy pulled up social media to keep herself distracted and for a few minutes it did the trick. Silly videos of entertainers never got old. The train reached the next stop and she felt it come to a stop. Since it wasn’t hers, she didn’t pay it any mind as she scrolled through her feed. But as the disembarking passengers funnel past Lucy, her eyes pick up on a pair of pink high-heels peeking from over the edge of her phone. Her body instantly stiffened up from the similarity to the ones worn by the woman, while her curiosity slowly got the better of her. ‘Breath, act nonchalant!’ Lucy’s eyes tracked the high-heels moving past her until they left her periphery. She then slowly sat back up, pretending to readjust her position, when she caught a pair of eyes looking back. Lucy’s breathing hitches with a shaky exhale. “Oh, my god—"

Standing at the doorway with one hand on the frame, the blonde woman smiled at Lucy then winked before stepping off the train.

It was Touka!

[jamestaylorswift]

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

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

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

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

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

——

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

——

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——

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

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

Each has a couple defining geographic features:

Coastal Town: water, cliffs/a lookout

Suburb: homes, town

City: public areas, social/nightlife/entertainment venues

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

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

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

Note:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Coastal Town: Water and Cliffs

The Coastal Town is defined by elemental features.

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

Roarin’ twenties, tossing pennies in the pool

Leavin’ like a father, running like water

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

Rebekah gave up on the Rhode Island set forever

Flew in all her Bitch Pack friends from the city

Filled the pool with champagne and swam with the big names

//

They say she was seen on occasion

Pacing the rocks, staring out at the midnight sea

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

I hit my peak at seven

Feet in the swing over the creek

I was too scared to jump in

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

If your cascade, ocean wave blues come

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

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

And so the battleships will sink beneath the waves

Now I breathe flames each time I talk

My cannons all firin’ at your yacht

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

Crawling up the beaches now

“Sir, I think he’s bleeding out”

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

Pulled the car off the road to the lookout

Could’ve followed my fears all the way down

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

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

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

//

Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry

//

While I bathe in cliffside pools

With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief

In folklore, water dovetails with permanent loss.

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

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

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

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

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

The City: Nightlife, Entertainment, and Public Areas

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

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

Vintage tee, brand new phone

High heels on cobblestones

//

But I knew you

Dancin’ in your Levi’s

Drunk under a streetlight

//

I knew you

Your heartbeat on the High Line

Once in twenty lifetimes

//

To kiss in cars and downtown bars

Was all we needed

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

I’m a mirrorball

I’ll show you every version of yourself tonight

I’ll get you out on the floor

Shimmering beautiful

//

You are not like the regulars

The masquerade revelers

Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten

//

And they called off the circus, burned the disco down

“invisible string” briefly mentions a bar:

A string that pulled me

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

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

They told me all of my cages were mental

So I got wasted like all my potential

//

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

Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here

Pouring out my heart to a stranger

But I didn’t pour the whiskey

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

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

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

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

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

The Suburb: Homes and Towns

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

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

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

The Suburb becomes a conduit for conflict.

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

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

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

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

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

Allowing oneself to hope

Allowing oneself to recall

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

Wanting was enough

For me, it was enough

To live for the hope of it all

Canceled plans just in case you’d call

And say, “Meet me behind the mall”

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

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

//

I hit the ground running each night

I hit the Sunday matinee

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

Green was the color of the grass

Where I used to read at Centennial Park

I used to think I would meet somebody there

Teal was the color of your shirt

When you were sixteen at the yogurt shop

You used to work at to make a little money

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

I knew I’d curse you for the longest time

Chasin’ shadows in the grocery line

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

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

Betty, I won’t make assumptions

About why you switched your homeroom, but

I think it’s ‘cause of me

Betty, one time I was riding on my skateboard

When I passed your house

It’s like I couldn’t breathe

//

Betty, I know where it all went wrong

Your favorite song was playing

From the far side of the gym

I was nowhere to be found

I hate the crowds, you know that

Plus, I saw you dance with him

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What do you sing on your drive home?

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

Does she smile?

Or does she mouth, “Fuck you forever”

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

Consequently, the privacy gradient claim holds for both songs.

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

What started in beautiful rooms

Ends with meetings in parking lots

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

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

I hit my peak at seven

Feet in the swing over the creek

I was too scared to jump in

//

And I’ve been meaning to tell you

I think your house is haunted

Your dad is always mad and that must be why

And I think you should come live with me

And we can be pirates

Then you won’t have to cry

Or hide in the closet

//

Please picture me in the weeds

Before I learned civility

I used to scream ferociously

Any time I wanted

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

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

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

Both

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

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

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

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

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

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

But if I just showed up at your party

Would you have me? Would you want me?

Would you tell me to go fuck myself

Or lead me to the garden?

In the garden, would you trust me

If I told you it was just a summer thing?

//

Yeah, I showed up at your party

Will you have me? Will you love me?

Will you kiss me on the porch

In front of all your stupid friends?

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

Will it patch your broken wings?

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

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

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

Salt air, and the rust on your door

I never needed anything more

Whispers of "Are you sure?”

“Never have I ever before”

//

Your back beneath the sun

Wishin’ I could write my name on it

Will you call when you’re back at school?

I remember thinkin’ I had you

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

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

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

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

And it took you five whole minutes

To pack us up and leave me with it

Holdin’ all this love out here in the hall

//

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

I think I’ve seen this film before

So I’m leaving out the side door

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Outside World

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

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

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

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

——

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

Analysis of each archetypal feature yielded the following:

The Coastal Town is representative of permanent loss/endings

The City is representative of transitional loss/endings

The Suburb is the site of character-defining conflict

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

What theme unites these settings?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——

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

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

A central conceit of Romanticism is its philosophy of style:

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

Romanticism is realized through imagination:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——

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

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

Our coming-of-age has come and gone

//

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

If your cascade ocean wave blues come

//

You paint dreamscapes on the wall

//

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

Sit with you in the trenches

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

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

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

And it’s just around the corner, darlin’

'Cause it lives in me

Darling, this was just as hard

As when they pulled me apart

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

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

Don't want no other shade of blue but you

No other sadness in the world would do

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

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

I am ash from your fire

//

But what you did was just as dark

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

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

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

//

My kingdom come undone

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

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

Now let’s examine “peace” more closely:

Our coming-of-age has come and gone

Suddenly this summer, it’s clear

I never had the courage of my convictions

As long as danger is near

And it’s just around the corner, darlin’

‘Cause it lives in me

No, I could never give you peace

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

If your cascade, ocean wave blues come

All these people think love’s for show

But I would die for you in secret

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

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

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

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

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

My twisted knife

My sleepless night

My winless fight

This has frozen my ground

As well as by her lover:

My best laid plan

Your sleight of hand

My barren land

I am ash from your fire

And by others:

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

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

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

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

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

You knew the password so I let you in the door

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

You knew it still hurts underneath my scars

From when they pulled me apart

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

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

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

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

They say she was seen on occasion

Pacing the rocks, staring out at the midnight sea

I’ve been having a hard time adjusting

//

Pulled the car off the road to the lookout

Could’ve followed my fears all the way down

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

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

If your cascade, ocean wave blues come

All these people think love’s for show

But I would die for you in secret

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

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

Your faithless love’s the only hoax I believe in

Don't want no other shade of blue but you

No other sadness in the world would do

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

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

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

My only one

My kingdom come undone

My broken drum

You have beaten my heart

Don’t want no other shade of blue but you

No other sadness in the world would do

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

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

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

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

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

Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry

I’m setting off, but not without my muse

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

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

I want auroras and sad prose

I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet

'Cause I haven’t moved in years

And I want you right here

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

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

A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground

With no one around to tweet it

While I bathe in cliffside pools

With my calamitous love and insurmountable grief

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

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

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

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

Taylor and her lover experience a rebirth together

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

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

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

Taylor alone experiences a rebirth

Taylor is the rose

Taylor is the ice frozen ground

Taylor is the rose + ice frozen ground

The lover alone experiences a rebirth

The lover is the rose

The lover is the ice frozen ground

The lover is the rose + frozen ground

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How does reincarnation betray Romanticism?

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

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

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

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

It was a few years later

I showed up here

And they still tell the legend of how you disappeared

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

They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere

Chose the Rose Garden over Madison Square

And it took some time, but I understand it now

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many of the themes above apply to this interpretation too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——

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

This raises the question: what replaces it?

Nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——

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

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

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

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

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

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

——

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

[kisekinodrabbles]

helloo! i'd like to request something for the prompt game please :D kasamatsu + band!au + strangers to lovers + dialogue number 14 if that's okay? thanks, sam! and welcome back~

ofc!!! i tried to keep it shorter but im a bit rusty w my kasamatsu hehe hope u enjoy! wc: 2.3k

Kasamatsu admits that balancing his band and college work isn’t exactly an easy task. Between late evenings spent at gigs and all nights at the library, he is on the brink of his sanity, standing right at the tipping point. He yawns as he enters his nine am mandatory calculus class, another mistake made in his overconfidence that he would somehow be able to get his shit together.

You, on the other hand, are a closeted fan of his band, sitting three rows behind him in class. Every Tuesday and Thursday, you watch him drag his feet in and his hand lifting to his mouth in a yawn. Quickly, you duck behind your book as if Kasamatsu would ever give you the time of day. The brunette is well-known on campus with his successful group and good looks, not to mention he also dabbles a little in basketball while also maintaining a decent grade point average across all his classes. Triple threat, they call him.

When you first came into class and saw him there, shocked is an understatement. You’ve been following his band his high school from across the country. To see him in the flesh, so real and so human with his tired eyes, it almost feels like a dream. One you hope nobody would ever pinch you awake from. Thus, you made it your goal to be there before him every morning, which is a feat in itself. Kasamatsu may be grinding through the night and falling asleep in lectures, but he’ll be damned if he shows up late to class.

Throughout several weeks, you’ve seen girls come up to him left and right, shot down almost immediately by his intention to focus on the professor’s words. He lets them down easy and makes it clear that he pays thousands of dollars to study, not play IRL Tinder. This man gets sexier everyday.

You take your time packing your things when class is over, mainly because you’re too distracted watching Kasamatsu do the same. He is blind, or chooses to ignore, the whispers and shy glances thrown his way. Perhaps this is why you haven’t approached him yourself. You’re just one of his many admirers, a stroke in the massive painting of his life. Sighing, you pick up your pitiful self and make your way to the dining hall where you’re supposed to meet your friend for breakfast.

When the two of you settle on a table, you begin your weekly rambling about how beautiful Kasamatsu looks in the morning. Moriyama, being the good friend that he is, nods and listens intently.

Moriyama is an intriguing character. The two of you met because he had tried a line on you. In your perpetual state of flustered embarrassment, you had stupidly confessed to him: “Sorry, my heart belongs to Kasamatsu Yukio.”

In another twist of fate, he revealed that he had actually gone to high school with the guy and knew him pretty well.

“You know I can introduce you to him, right? No need for all this pining and drooling from three feet away.”

“It’s not the same,” you argue, “he’s practically a living legend on campus. I’m too intimidated to even breathe in the same air as him.” Your obsession has perhaps taken you too far, but if you expect to continue being his fan, the last thing you want is to scare him away.

“You’re so overdramatic,” Moriyama rolls his eyes. Coming from him, this sentence means a lot.

“What? It’s not my fault Kasamatsu’s so hot. He could bang me so hard backstage then pretend I don’t exist and I would still pay to watch his next show,” you groan, spooning yogurt into your mouth.

In that moment, several things happen. Moriyama’s eyes widen and fly behind you. Footsteps sounding at that same spot suddenly cease completely. You, realizing what possibly just happened, feel the heat flare up your cheeks.

Kasamatsu, in his sleep deprived state and probably completely delirious, had stopped in his tracks. His head whipped around to the source of the comment, finding Moriyama sitting with someone who looks distinctly familiar, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.

“Kasamatsu—”

Before Moriyama can even finish his sentence, Kasamatsu is already blurting out. “Okay, maybe I’m crazy but did I just hear you say that out loud?”

You want to crawl into your hole six feet underground and never see the light of day again. Ducking your head, you don’t even want to chance a glance up. The utter mortification is chewing away at your bones and you wish you could just evaporate into thin air.

Moriyama quickly interjects with a quick laugh, “Hear what? Also how have you been, man? I haven’t seen you in forever. Come join us for breakfast.”

Kasamatsu’s brows pucker. Maybe he really is going insane. And horny. Which is a very bad combination. Nevertheless, he slides into the empty seat next to Moriyama. He stares at you for a few seconds, squinting, before snapping his fingers. “Oh, I remember now. You’re in my calculus class.”

He knows you? “How do you know me?” you squeak, cursing your fangirl self for losing your voice. You never speak up in class, always choosing to come up to your professor for questions at the end of lecture. You’re quiet and tucked away behind him, so you never expected him to recognize you.

The smile he sends you is blinding. Even with shadows under his eyes, he still looks gorgeous. “You’re always first to arrive and last to leave. Figured you’re a hard worker in class and probably acing it.”

Your mouth dries. Kasamatsu noticed you. He actually noticed you. “Oh, um, I’m okay. I’m okay in class, I mean.”

“The question you should be asking is her name, Kasamatsu,” Moriyama scolds, smacking his back.

Kasamatsu pinks sheepishly. “Sorry, yeah. I’m Kasamatsu Yukio, by the way.”

Idiotically, you blurt out “I know” before your name. When you finally introduce yourself, you also clarify, “I’m a huge fan of Blue Devils. I mean, I’ve been following you guys since like high school. Absolutely love your music.”

The man actually reddens even further, but still he beams proudly. “Thank you! That’s crazy. Have you been to our shows?”

Almost all of them. “A couple, yeah.”

“We have one tonight in an actual venue. Are you coming?”

“Ah, it was sold out before I could get a ticket, actually.”

Kasamatsu blinks, “Oh, you’re more than welcome to come. I can get you a pass. Both of you—if Moriyama’s interested.”

“That would be amazing!” You grin, “Is there anything I can get you in return? I don’t want to just accept a gift from you for free.”

“Well, if you are good at calc, I wouldn’t mind some extra tutoring,” he suggests with a teasing grin.

Moriyama rolls his eyes, “Just ask her out instead of using tutoring as an excuse.” The two of you sputter, face colored a dark shade of red. You’ll kick his ass when you get the chance.

—

That one mistake turned out to be the greatest opportunity of your life. In addition to attending his show that night and meeting all of his bandmates, each one more good looking up close than then other, you manage to have weekly study sessions (you’re holding off on calling it dates) with Kasamatsu. The two of you take turns booking rooms at the library to cram, which mainly consists of you reexplaining concepts to the man. Although he isn’t a bad student, he’s also still struggling a bit to keep up.

“Hey” is what you hear before you feel a warm surface press against your cheek. You look up to find Kasamatsu with a steaming cup in hand. Gratefully accepting it, you catch a whiff of freshly brewed tea. You take a sip and smile. Black tea, no sugar. “Just the way I like it.”

“Noticed you never add anything to your tea,” Kasamatsu says almost proudly.

You raise the cup to him in thanks. Both of you go through your usual routine—you focusing on reviewing material for next week while Kasamatsu pores over his notes from this week, occasionally poking you to ask questions.

Honestly, a big part of you still wonders if this is all a dream. This guy you’ve been crushing on for years is sitting in the flesh right across from you. You peek at him from time to time, watching the way he frowns at his book. His blue, almost grey, eyes shine underneath the flickering lights. Even the way his lips curl unhappily is cute.

When he catches you staring, you quickly drop your gaze back to your laptop, missing the way he smiles quietly.

“Will you come to our show this weekend?” He asks as the two of you pack up.

“Ah, I have a shift at my part-time job.”

He looks surprised, “That late?”

You shrug, “Food never sleeps, I guess. It’s at the burger diner by campus.”

“Oh, are you guys open late?”

“Close at one.”

He nods, “Maybe I’ll see you there after then. The guys usually get really hungry after a gig so we can drive some business your way. I’ll make sure they tip well too.”

Your heart warms at the thought. It’s a thoughtful gesture but you’re even more thrilled at the prospect of seeing him. “Sounds good.”

True to his word, Kasamatsu brings the guys to your workplace at midnight after their show ended. They order quite a spread, practically everything on the menu. Kasamatsu goes as far as to help you carry orders to their table. You shoot him an appreciative smile.

Over the time your friendship has bloomed, Kasamatsu has been nothing but a gentleman. He walks you home to your dorm if you’re studying late into the night. He meets you in class with a muffin or a cookie from his early Starbucks runs. Surprisingly, he begins placing himself next to you each session. “This is better anyway,” he mutters. “Two birds, one stone.”

His vague words had you tilting your head in question.

“I don’t have random people coming up to me to sit with me and, well, I get to enjoy your company.” It’s a nice thought—him enjoying your company, that is. He had blushed a little when he realized what you said, but chose to direct his attention to the slides pulled up before him, missing the way you hide your smile behind your sleeve.

Now, you hear the rowdy boys chattering on as they devour their meal as if it’s their last. They speak through mouthfuls of burgers and fries, but you find the sight endearing, mainly because you’ve never seen Kasamatsu so relaxed. It’s quite refreshing really. Your attention is piqued when you hear one of them ask: “So doing it tonight huh?”

Kasamatsu retorts with a “shut the fuck up” and flings a fry his way. The way the other guy wiggles his brows suggestively has you freezing. What if he was meeting up with someone tonight? What if he was going to do the deed?

Somewhere in the distance, you hear the faint cracking of your heart. Of course, Kasamatsu is popular. It’s no surprise he’s got his nights covered as well. You sigh dejectedly, feeling the hope inside you crumble into dust. The rest of your shift goes by rather uneventfully, but you try to avoid going to their table too much, lest you hear more details about Kasamatsu’s planned tryst. The man himself steals glances your way, wondering if you’ll be checking on them anytime soon.

“Your check,” you smile as you set the bill on the table, “I got the owner to give you a discount since you guys ordered a good amount.”

All of their eyes seem to sparkle as they thank you in unison, their synchrony almost puzzling. As you move to pick up the bill and change, Kasamatsu catches your hand before you move away. “What time does your shift end?”

“Half an hour. Why?”

The other guys are already packing up their things and giving you little waves as they exit the restaurant, leaving the two of you alone. “I’ll walk you home, it’s late,” he murmurs, fingers still wrapped around your wrist.

“Oh, you don’t have to! I usually take the bus back anyway so it’s no big deal.” You want to confirm whether he had plans that night anyway. You’d hate to be in the way of that.

He shakes his head, “I insist. Also, um, are you doing anything tomorrow?”

“Catching up on studying most likely.”

“Oh,” he pauses, “if you have time tomorrow night, do you want to catch a movie with me? Maybe dinner after?”

You blink at him in surprise. Now that you’re looking at him properly, you notice that his cheeks are several shades darker than the red neon glow of the diner sign. He’s shifting on his feet and his other hand finds purchase on the strap of his bag, fidgeting with the material. “Um, like a date?”

“Y-yeah,” he stutters slightly, his throat moving as he swallows. “Sorry, I probably should’ve made that clear,” he coughs, “b-but if you don’t want it to be the we can also go as friends.” Perhaps you’ve tortured the boy long enough but you can’t help but relish in his awkward chuckle as his hand lifts to rub the back of his neck nervously.

Biting back a huge grin, you nod. “It’s a date.”

Kasamatsu’s eyes light up and a pleased grin spread across his face. “It’s a date.”

The hollering outside the building has the two of you whipping to face the window where his bandmates have their faces pressed up against the surface, laughing and smiling to congratulate and embarrass their friend. Kasamatsu flushes, “I’ll see you later to pick you up.”

You nod but he’s already out the door, leaping to kick his friends away. “You stupid idiots!”

Laughing, you watch as the group makes kissy faces at Kasamatsu all the while the man fruitlessly attempts to shut them up. He really is cute.

[architectuul]

Mapping the Margins

Christina Serifi is an architect, researcher and urbanist. She is a co-founder of TiriLab, an initiative which explores multi cultural heritage related to techniques, technologies and culture specifics from communities in northern Greece. Christina is associate researcher in Terreform, where she has coordinated various publications regrading indigenous knowledge, alternative educational models and self sufficiency. 

Photo © Norman Posselt

Her work investigates forms, collective memories, typologies and local practices, focusing on urban fragments, in-between spaces, as well as osculation of architectural and social space, Christina has been awarded with the Fulbright fellowship and Urban Design Award ’14 from CCNY, she is also a Future Architecture Platform Fellow and Digital Research Fellow of Architectuul. 

Mapping the Margins is a series of maps and documentations, identifying, for the first time, all the women associations, local agriculture cooperatives as well as abandoned buildings in Thesprotia province, in order to create an active platform where many cooperatives can find a space to grow. Through these rural commons, we aim to merge formal, non-formal and informal learning models and create encounters with artists, local institutions and inhabitants from and for the region.

Berlin, New York, Athens, where is your basis?

CS: The truth is that I develop my professional practice through constant collaborations with local initiatives, professionals and different institutions. I am a Digital nomad I would say. If you ask about my physical basis is in Berlin, where I spend three or four months. The rest of the year I travel a lot, try to be as close as possible with communities that I work with.

Christina, please talk about  your work in Terreform with Michael Sorkin. He has been a very important mentor and friend who has influenced your work a lot?

CS: Yes, this is true and I am happy that you are taking me some years back. This is a very sensitive matter for me because as you know we lost Michael a year ago because of COVID and since then all Terreform members are mourning for this loss. 

I joined Terreform team after my Masters studies in New York, when we started to work in Yachay in the North of Ecuador, which was a new Technopole that the government was planning to build from scratch in one of the most fertile lands in the country. We started to investigate during my Masters this topic and Michael suggested me to join Terreform team, which was for me an amazing experience. Not only we manage to focus deeper on Technopoles, but we also travelled to Ecuador, we developed a lot of alternative plans, we talked with the local municipality how to support the local communities and protect this territory. We developed alternative plans, on how many new educational functions can be re-located in the existing near town called Ibarra. We also investigated a lot the integration between formal and informal knowledge. I don’t like to use words scientific or non-scientific, because I believe that this distinction has to do more with power and less with the production of knowledge. We were trying to highlight the local knowledge. This was one of the most interesting project that I was working while I was in Terreform.

Terreform Why Yachay. | Photo © Christina Serifi

We worked in Gowntown, where we interrogated the expansion of the Columbia University in Upper West Manhattan. I also worked in this amazing project that Michael initiated ten years ago called New York City Steady State where we investigated how New York can be self sustainable and self -sufficient in its own boundaries. For me the most important lesson that I’ve learned in Terreform was regarding the work ethics and this amazing environment that we built together. Michael was a very generous and open person. He managed to bring together people from different places around the world and involved them on projects that were really interesting. He was very generous in this sense, offering his knowledge, his guidance, giving the space to every person who wanted to investigate, publishing books from independent authors or people that they couldn’t find publishers. In this sense he was a true mentor and a real light.  Although, I left New York four years ago I really miss his light.

Another part of your professional life is TiriLab?

CS: TiriLab is something I was dreaming many years and have imagined since I left Greece and moved to New York. I had this dream of how to return to my hometown, in Morfi, a smaller village where I was born, be closer to nature, work with the community there and different women initiatives. In TiriLab, we work mostly with women through our recent projects. These projects challenge traditional gender norms in rural areas, rediscovering narratives of women from different ethnic groups. Everything started, when I invited 35 amazing friends from all over Europe to come and spend some days in the village. They stayed with local families and we managed to create food encounters, where we were cooking together and meeting different women initiatives from the area. We called it Summer of Nothing. The idea was not to propose solutions as professionals but to go to rural area, stay, listen and understand the life that unfolds in such areas. This was the beginning of TiriLab.

Mapping the margins in Thesprotia by Tirilab. | Picture © Christina Serifi

A lot of local initiatives were organised by women, these small informal or formal groups managed to keep these villages alive during the economic crisis and they are also responsible of the cultural life of these villages. We wanted to empower these women initiatives, give them visibility and foster their multi-layered identity.  A big step was last year when Tirilab got selected to be part of Future Architecture Platform encounter in Ljubljana, where I met different other groups and exchanged experiences. After that TiriLab expanded. 

Mapping the margins in Thesprotia by Tirilab. | Picture © Christina Serifi

Oikeiology, Satellite Kitchens, Epirotopia - could you explain me these projects briefly?

CS: They are ongoing projects that started last year after I returned from Ljubljana. Oikeiology started as a pedagogical experiment, we wanted to bring to the forefront all the livelihood relationships between communities and natural bodies. It came to our minds in May, when the Greek government passed a law of abolishing the protection of NATURA 2000 areas in the whole country. Specifically in Thesprotia, in the region where we work in Tirilab, more that 45% of the natural areas are protected. The new law will leave these areas without any legal legislation for protection. We wanted to bring to the attention of local municipalities and also neighbourhood communities how to keep these ecosystems alive, how to involve the idea of eco-pedagogy into the schools and learning programs because the relationship of the communities with the natural environment there is really strong. Their food culture, their economic activities are related to the natural landscape. These pastoral communities use the natural resources in a regenerative way and they strongly support their protection. This dialogue is very important.  In a bigger scale, with Oikeiology we wanted to examine the connection between urban and rural environments through shared experiences, knowledge, skills, ideas and resources of solidarity. 

Satellite Kitchens, Paraskevi Demetriou | Photo © Angel Ballesteros, Muzungu

Satellite Kitchens, Dora Tzani | Photo © Angel Ballesteros, Muzungu coop

With the support of 5th Istanbul Design Biennial we created the project Satellite Kitchens. Through this project we had an amazing chance to collaborate with Muzungu, a group of video producers and journalists based in Madrid and Athens. We spent a month of documentation and researching on exterior kitchens. In this area a lot of women have built their kitchens, where whole communities were created around them. These communities were more pastoral and nomadic. After the 1960s they become more stable and you can see that many houses were developed around the exterior kitchens.  We started documenting, drawing and understanding how these kitchens were evolved as spaces and also as places of storytelling, sharing different experiences and stories of women that have inhabited them so long. We saw a kitchen not only as a laboratory but also as an assembly space, as a common space and also as a space of resistance. They are more that 40 communities in the area and we managed to document 15 of them. For me, personally, it was an amazing opportunity to understand and come closer to a lot of these women that I knew since my childhood.

TiriLab’s Summer of Nothing. | Photo © Emanuel Dominguez, Zuloark

Epirotopia started when Zuloark, invited us to create the first parliament talking about the rights of the people in the area. We managed to bring together people from the municipality, local initiatives, inhabitants of different villages and young groups that create interesting projects. We invited them in a first digital encounter last December to envision together different socio-political imaginaries for the area. It was challenging moderate this huge parliamentary session but very rewarding! We are planing to create a physical meeting in August and discuss some of the local issues in depth. We also plan to make it regularly every year. The idea is that each inhabitant could reply to each of the 3 questions: what to protect, what to eliminate and what to bring new in the area.

What about the Future Architecture Platform and the Digital Research Fellow as a part of Architectuul’s joint venue?

I am super grateful having in my professional and personal life both platforms. Through Future Architecture Platform I meet Architectuul, where we started developing an amazing professional and personal relationship. It was a unique opportunity that through FAP we managed not only to bring TiriLab into life but also to create further exciting collaborations. 

Christina presenting TiriLab at the Future Architecture CEx2020 Matchmaking Conference, 12. februar 2020, MAO | Photo: Iztok Dimc

I was also very happy to be nominated together with 45 degrees as a Digital Research Fellow and work with Architectuul. We continue with mapping all the best practices that we started in Greece and bring it in another scale, to start highlighting a network around Europe. I was imagining Architectuul as an active knowledge platform where practitioners, activists, researchers, local initiatives and practices can interconnect and create synergies. 

Your theoretical work and research is very much integrated into the core of different communities, you use new digital methodologies and technologies to enable forgotten communities?

CS: This is a hard question! My work is balancing between theory and practice. When I work close to local initiatives I am trying to understand their ways of living and producing and how to deliver this message to reach wider institutions and more specifically educational institutions.  When I was working in Terreform, we started using multiple digital mapping techniques, integrating GIS in our research, collecting not only quantitative but most importantly qualitative data. Since then, I had this obsession on creating active digital maps that can operate as an open encyclopaedia or platform of practices, methodologies, local techniques and knowledges. I am really grateful of having the opportunity to be part of a new research project between TU Braunschweig and Central Saint Martins “Architecture after Architecture: Spatial Practice in the Face of the Climate Emergency” where I can explore these mapping methodologies together with an inspiring group of educators and researchers.

But you are still not finished, I heard about some UAU?

CS: UAU! is an amazing collaboration that we started recently and stands for Urban Activation Unit. It’s a joint venture between collectives, professionals, practitioners and educators. The three of us whom initiated UAU! don’t see it as a project that belongs to us. We see it as a bigger platform that can embrace alternative pedagogical experiments and qualities of third landscapes as ecosystems. 

With UAU! we want to challenge the established way of transferring knowledge and we see it as a moving open pedagogic parliament. It starts its route within the Balkans because the three of us come from the Balkans. Our idea is to bring together people from urban and rural geographies, local residents with students, each time on a different program addressing issues that have to do with water recuperation, food production and local educational practices.

Its launch will be at the summer school Informal City: Temporal-Autonomous Utopias in Koper, Slovenia from 1-10 September. During this event we will co-build the Table on the Future, where participants will share food, exchange ideas and open new cultural dialogues regarding lively practices. This table will become an infrastructure where the production and distribution of food will be celebrated to address how can we establish ecological conscious communities. More news will follow from UAU! so stay Tuned! 

[fayewonglibrary]

Wong’s Way (2011)

An anomaly in the cookie-cutter world of Cantopop, FAYE WONG has paradoxically found success by playing against the rules. Prestige Hong Kong follows her down the road less travelled

FIVE YEARS MAY not seem like that long, but it can be a lifetime in an entertainment industry that feeds off the right-here and the right-now. So it came as a surprise when, half a decade ago, Faye Wong decided to step back from the limelight and resume as much of a normal life as might ever be possible for a woman whose music has sold in the millions and who has combined that side of her existence with an acclaimed acting career.

From an existence playing before tens of thousands, what the Beijing-born Wong longed for at that point in time was a life tucked away in the peace and tranquillity of home – and after almost 20 years in the spotlight, and with her every move followed by a fan base that can be tallied in the millions, who could really blame her?

But as an artist who in an age of corporate conformity flatly refuses to play to any predetermined stereotype, Wong has always preferred to play by her own rules. It may come as a surprise, then, to find out that Faye Wong was not always “Faye” – diehard fans will remember a period in which the artist was known as Shirley Wong Ching-man, an affectation suggested by her record company early in her career, because of the stigma associated with the hip factor (or lack thereof) of mainland Chinese artists and names.

Even Wong’s early hits weren’t what you would call “original” – her first few albums were filled with formulaic Cantopop: collections of saccharine, predictable tunes that failed to properly utilise her delicate, lilting soprano. When she broke out of that shell in 1992, after a short travel hiatus, she finally found success, initially with a cover of a Japanese chart-topper in Cantonese, “Fragile Woman.”

Despite her disinclination to be impacted by her local contemporaries, Wong was not without her influences. She covered songs by The Cranberries, took quirky style cues from Björk and collaborated with the Cocteau Twins. The further she strayed from Cantopop, the more fame she found, penning her own songs and admittedly self-indulgent lyrics. She rapped on “No Exit,” yodelled through “Di-Dar” and even won the hearts of nerds by wailing the English-language title track to the hit video-game Final Fantasy VIII, “Eyes On Me.”

Even when her albums weren’t critical or commercial successes, her fame continued to grow, exponentially and uncontrollably. Her handful of acting roles, including in Chungking Express and 2046, showcased a curious, simultaneous aloofness and magnetism, an infectious, ravishing oddness.

In 2005, two months before she married actor Li Yapeng, she announced that she would take a break from show business. And so for five years there have been sightings, the occasional public appearance and the work for her own charity, but otherwise it’s pretty much been silence from Wong, as her fans – and the world at large – waited.

With that in mind, we should not have been surprised at the reaction to the news that Wong would finally be reemerging, to stage comeback concerts that started in Beijing last October, then took in Shanghai and Taipei before coming to Hong Kong, the place where Wong’s career was launched, for a series of shows in March. Tickets – for all nights, at all venues – sold out in a matter of days and the critical response has been overwhelming.

The headlines said it all: “The Diva is Back.”

What the Wong faithful have found is that their idol has lost none of the passion for the music that forms, as she puts it herself, part of her fate. They’ve been treated to nights filled with the songs that have formed the soundtrack for the lives of a generation here in Hong Kong – and beyond.

When Prestige Hong Kong found the interview-shy 40-year-old, she was in between shows and letting that fate take its course. What Wong wants the world to know is that throughout her storied career there has, she says, never been any real plan. She’s simply a woman who lets the cards fall as they may.

Can you talk a little about your return to the stage and playing live? What brought about the decision to play your recent concerts? I consider this a natural move for me. I’ve been doing several commercials as well as releasing some new singles over the past few years. So this was a natural progression back to live performances. It’s all part of my career.

How did you go about deciding what form the concerts would take and the songs you played? There’s no special form or arrangement that’s deliberately conceived for my concert. I believe my singing is the main source of interaction between the audience and me. Every show is unique and my mood is different, depending on the atmosphere. It’s not my practice to talk much with people or have any planned speech in my concert, because I don’t want the conversation to ruin the whole integrity and mood of the arrangement of the concert. I hope my audiences can indulge themselves with my music, while also digesting the message my show is delivering.

After the recent concerts in Shanghai and Beijing, what’s your feeling about coming back on stage? It feels so good to see all my fans again.

Do you have any plans to work on a new album? If so, will you be writing songs yourself? There’s no plan to work on a whole new album. But there is a possibility to release singles, and maybe I’ll write some songs myself.

How different to you is the experience of playing live now as compared to when your career began? What have you learned and how much has the experience for you changed over the years? I’ve been working with different sets of crews, composers, producers etc since the beginning of my career. Each of these collaborations has opened up a whole new experience and been an amazing inspiration for me. Call it a fireworks feeling.

What was it that initially drew you to the music business? What was it that you found most exciting? I believe singing is my destiny, and it’s fate that this became my career. I find it gratifying that I’m able to touch people’s lives with my songs. It’s a form of good karma.

Have your musical tastes changed or evolved as you matured as a person and as an actress? I admire different types of music and things depending on the different stages of my life.

Did becoming a mother change how you approached both your singing and your career? There was no change. I still sing with the same commitment and feeling, and it’s the same with my career.

And how much, do you think, did this change you as a person? The process of raising a child is part of my evolution as a human being. If you’re not a parent or don’t fully involve yourself as a parent, you’ll never realise this traditional, fulfilling role of parenthood. As a parent, it’s natural to want to show your best side and provide the best example to your child. However, sometimes it’s hard to break habits that may surface from time to time. It’s a painful cycle, because even though you realise your own faults, to change yourself completely requires a lot of courage and determination.

We’re curious about a typical day for Faye Wong. What’s your routine when you’re not performing? What time do you go to bed, what’s your favourite meal and what activities do you share with your kids? Basically, I go to bed and wake up the same time as my kids do. I got used to enjoying the regular pattern of a healthy lifestyle, but that won’t happen coming back to work.

Frankly, there’s so much to do when you take charge of a whole household. My life in the past few years was completely occupied by family and there was no time for me ever to feel bored. Sometimes I feel that I was even busier than when I was working as a singer.

Do you think your children share the same character as you? When I look at my kids, it’s like looking into a mirror and seeing the deepest side of myself.

What are the things that make you most happy now, compared with when you were younger? What do you now cherish most? I cherish everyone and everything. I’m fortunate to appreciate what I have and the people I know.

How do you see your image now? Are you an artist who is careful to control her image, or is it more a case of come what may? The most effortless style suits me best. I aim to be the most natural, honest in my approach. I want it to be pure, not something that seems too contrived or created just to fit the latest trend.

What are you most passionate about? To find the real meaning of life, and share it with lots of people.

What about acting? Is this something you’re keen to pick up again as well? If so, what kinds of films and roles might interest you? Right now, I have no plans on filming.

What are the challenges you see ahead in the next few years? What can your audience expect? My life has no planning, and I’m not a person who conceives everything in advance. It always depends on what’s being offered and what I feel like doing at that moment. There’s no pressure on myself – I leave everything to chance and fate.

The Smile Angel Foundation was founded in Beijing in 2006 by you and your husband, Li Yapeng, after your own child was afflicted with a cleft lip. It’s helped a lot of other children suffering from cleft lips and palates. Has the foundation changed your life or your character in any way? My contribution to Smile Angel Foundation is not as much as my husband’s involvement. He’s very busy working on plans to support the foundation. For me, basically, I’ll attend annual charity events and activities to lend my support.

On this project, we started everything from scratch and are very gratified to see how much it has accomplished. My husband is definitely the driving force behind the foundation, and I really admire his passion, courage and capability.

At your current stage, do you think you have evolved in your perspective of things compared with when you were younger? Can you share your road of growth a little bit? I was a bit stubborn, objective and capricious when I was younger. I’m now more willing to be open-minded and flexible, and always try to remind myself about this. It’s quite difficult to stop old habits surfacing from time to time. But I’m trying hard to accomplish it.

Do you have any advice on how to maintain a woman’s beauty and charm after the age of 30? First of all, you have to accept your age. I believe everyone has their own unique way to create their own charm and maintain their beauty, which is sometimes a very personal approach. One should find one’s own best way; there really is no standard formula for everyone to maintain their beauty. I believe the most natural side of a person is the most beautiful.

You’re acclaimed as a pioneer of alternative music. Does that mean you won’t compromise with the commercial market? I never define my music as “mainstream” or “edgy” or “alternative.” I just do what I like.

Photography / Shameless Eye Production AG Styling / Titi Kwan Hair / Alain Pichon Make-up / Zing Wardrobe / Céline Spring 2011 collection

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

SOURCE:  PRESTIGE HONG KONG

[thesolitarystripe]

Writing Prompt 10: history of a building told through the perspective of the door. PT 2.

Consider today's entry a bit of therapy for me. As I had said in part 1 of this prompt that this was easy to write because I am living through this; this is my admission that I am also struggling with the process. I have a difficult time with change, as many humans do. I get very attached to people, places, objects and this home I am currently living in has been no different. While the idea of moving has been easier for Jason for reasons I completely understand, it has been very bittersweet for me. When we talked about it and I inevitably cried, he reminded me of how happy our new home will be to have us there, which only made me cry more (because imagine if inanimate objects actually had feelings). He suggested that I write about this door, my door. The big green door that is so much more than a door. This home has been the longest place I have lived since leaving my mom's house. It carries a lot of good and bad memories and like I say in the piece, I have hated and loved it. This is absolutely a piece that let me vent some of my feelings about it. Think what you will, perhaps it is a bit silly to tie so much emotion to drywall and wood but, this place means a lot to me. I am sad to leave it but I am excited at the prospect of building a home together, with Jason.

They had always known their time would come. The time when they were no longer needed. They were a steppingstone in the lives of their owners. Well, they were not technically owners but renters. Where the big green door lived, the house it was attached to and all the others built around it, they were rental homes. Most of them, anyway. There were a couple houses that had been lucky enough to have been purchased, like the green door’s neighbor. That family had lived there for over thirty years, raised a daughter, nourished their marriage, and now they had just brought home a new puppy. The green door had thought that perhaps its current tenant was the one who could stay but deep within the fibers of its wood, it knew she would leave. While the mutual feeling of being a home was nurtured by both parties, the Forest Home would not be her permanent home. That was okay. The green door loved all its renters but cared most for the woman who had stayed for so long. Together they built a home away from home despite the comings and goings of others, of pets, of friends, of lovers—The home stood tall and sheltered them all.

The green door and its drywall and studs were there during the rocky years, the ones where love did not fill every corner of the home. While it could shelter their girl from the wind and rain, it could do nothing against the hurricanes inside but offer quiet spaces for her to breathe a little easier when she was alone. When she looked in its mirrors and told herself that this was her forever, the home reflected her true image; it showed her the weariness under her eyes and the pain etched in her brow. This was not her forever. Not with this partner and not in this home. The green door did not wish for her to leave but to open her eyes to a life where love was possible. Much to the home’s pleasure, the second tenant left their walls shortly after he had moved in. It was just her and the green door now. The windows knitted themselves tightly. The locks strengthened their resolve to keep their precious cargo within, safe.

There were darker days within the home as their tenant reeled in the aftermath of that man’s destruction. The home could do nothing but keep the space warm and protected as she healed. Every day, the green door stood vigilant, solid as strangers walked over the home’s stoop. There was one night after the home had watched their tenant leave, they received an unannounced guest. The individual beat down the storm door that protected its green counterpart. When their tenant returned home, new puppy in hand, the green door wanted to reach through the airwaves and tell their girl who it was, what had happened, but language was not afforded to the house when it was built. It toiled endlessly; their tenant was locked out because of the damage to the outer door. It was getting dark, much too late and the green door could not swing open to let its girl inside where she belonged. Panicked, just like the woman who sat outside with this unfamiliar black dog, the green door waited. That was all it could do. After an hour with the woman unable to come inside, a man appeared. The green door recognized the face, he had visited quite a few times. The home was skeptical of his intentions still. After that first one, the green door, the walls, the floor, the yard, they all had the right to be wary.

The man was able to free the green door from the outer one and the wooden door was all too eager to swing open and allow the pair inside. Even through the chaos, the green door stood tall. There were whispered thanks in the middle of the night. A common little prayer their tenant lifted to all the house. ‘Thank you for keeping me safe, for sheltering me from the storms and those outside with bad intentions.’ The green door would cinch his wood a little tighter, a bit prouder. They kept her safe with everything they had. This new guy stuck around, he moved in. The green door was staunchly opposed as the shower had only just started to wipe away the woman’s tears a little less over the last six months. They were healing. Yet, limited in ways of communicating, the door could do nothing but open on its hinges and allow him inside.

Homes were not psychics or fortune tellers, they had as much insight as those that lived within them. The man that moved in, the one that every wire and vent first opposed, was a breath of fresh air within their walls. The green door felt that familiar creeping warmth, the crawl of a new feeling entering every nook and cranny. Suddenly, there was laughter and light in the home. Love was draped over everything, and the green door was happy to have been wrong. Much to the home’s surprise, they were invited to an incredibly special event, one they did not often get to see because other venues took more precedence. The green door watched as the man fell to a knee and asked their girl to marry him. The whole house rippled with excitement, almost as much as the family and friends who were present did. There was electricity within the home for the months following.

When the joy of the news began to simmer and dull, the green door came to the realization that this was the home’s sign. The change was coming. The girl would move, almost assuredly, she would. That is what most did when they were starting a family. The Forest Home was never her forever. It knew that. While it felt like their truth, the green door had always known better; so, when she found a new home with her husband, it did not come as a shock. Although, it did hurt a bit more than the others who had come and gone. The green door did not fret. The home felt her apprehension mixed with excitement, all balled up into a bittersweet feeling. It was time to grow and subsequently, time to go. The tears the home had fought to keep from her, returned. While it had not been her husband’s home for exceptionally long, and in the grand scheme of life her time within the Forest Home was only a blip—those several years had lifetimes packed into them. She hated and loved the home. Hated it for the dark memories first made within it, and loved it for the healing and growth it saw her through. It was the birthplace of her new love, of those first precious memories together. She had wept tears into the floorboards, pressed laughter into the ceiling, and let bouts of anger flow out of the windows. This was home. It would always be home so long as the Forest Home stood. When her fingers ran across the doorknob, the home felt every ounce of her appreciation for its existence; the front door only wished it could express the same.

On the final day, when she had packed all her belongings and stashed them away in a van, she stood outside and looked at the green door. The trees that had been her peace, swayed in the wind as if to reassure her that wherever she went, their consciousness would follow in every root and stem. She would not be alone. Yet, her hand lingered on the door as she felt the pull of home within the wood. She could not bring herself to speak but patted the green door as silent tears fell down her cheeks. One last time, the home wished it could protect its tenant, soak up her tears and see her into the next day, a happier day. But it was no longer the Forest Home’s duty, even though it wanted the honor of doing it. The green door pressed against her hand one last time before her skin drifted away and she turned to leave, on her lips was one last ‘thank you.’ Then she was gone.

The green door watched with a heavy heart but knew that wherever she went, she would be protected. It was the grandest duty of every home and all of them were eager to fulfill it. The trees would guide her way. Despite the door’s confidence, as his tenant had done so many times, it gave its thoughts to the ethers in hopes it would reach her destination.

‘To the next home, protect her from the storms both physical and metaphorical. Let love invade every plank and fixture. Take care of her like we did.’

Then the green door settled its hinges, resting in the silence that followed. It looked out into the forests, a somber aura around it but it was also hopeful. Soon, they would be home to a new heart. A steppingstone. A place to call home away from home. Painful as it could be the green door would not have had it any other way.

[crqstalite]

19. — fireworks for kodelyn and kallan? i'm intrigued by them :0

Fireworks

-

Shepard,

I was informed there was to be a light show somewhere on the strip later tonight. Lt. Vega compared them to something called fireworks. I am unsure of what that means but curious. If you’re free, I would enjoy the chance to watch them with you.

- Kallan

----

Kodelyn initially hesitated over the request, reading over it for any hints towards non-benevolent intentions. A light show on the Citadel seemed innocent enough, something friends would do. She hadn’t seen them in some time.

Yet this was an assassin that asked her to see it with her. Yes, she had plenty of friends who were, by definition, mercenaries and assassins like her. Every single one of them had used their respective guns more than once. 

Except Kallan Gautheir was in a league of her own, and not by her own doing. Not a few days ago, this was the same woman that had attempted to kill her. The same woman who wore her face with contempt. The same woman that tried to steal her life right out from under her.

Understandably, Kodelyn’s a bit suspicious. Light shows with your own clone didn’t come with a manual. Or an explanation.

In the moment, it had seemed like the right decision. To grab her hand and pull. To tell her she had more of a purpose than to be...well, her.

It felt like staring at a mirror in that split second Kodelyn had leapt forward and wrapped her fingers around her wrist. As if she were talking to herself, trying to talk her down from squirming out of her grip. To a point, she thinks she was. Projecting, that was. Kodelyn had surprised herself. She was angry. Furious. Brooks, Cerberus, to an extent even the Illusive Man had convinced this woman she was good for nothing but what they’d set her out to do. Convinced her she could never be her own person, follow her own passions. Her entire personality was wrapped up in becoming something she wasn’t.

Or something she was, technically. Kodelyn has to remind herself sometimes that she is really a complete copy of herself. As far as any DNA scanner was concerned, she was Shepard. Well, they both were. Kodelyn was the real one. The alpha prototype, as it seemed. She knew that. The average passerby did not.

Saving her seemed like the right thing to do. The only thing to do.

Those dark, but somehow bright mahogany eyes had widened upon realizing Kodelyn didn’t intend to kill her outright. Surprise painted her entire expression when she was offered to live what life the Reaper’s invasion would allow her. Speechless, when Kodelyn had told her she was free. As if she’d been speaking in tongues or another language, completely spaced out just on that idea alone.

Had she ever been offered a choice like that before? Something says she hadn’t. Something says her short life had been nothing but being told what to do without even a second thought. Kodelyn wants to rectify it, even if she’s fumbling trying to figure out how.

But at the same time, and a little more selfishly, she doesn’t think she could’ve sat back and watched herself die. Watched herself fall to her death among the Citadel wards. That may have haunted her for much longer than she could’ve handled.

Lately Kallan had been staying in the apartment, shut up in the room she’d claimed for herself, closest to the door. Kodelyn had expected her to want to explore, but she’d made herself scarce. When she wasn’t doing that, she was occasionally giving heart attacks to the crewmates that came over to visit. It was a little amusing. EDI was currently the only one successful at knowing which was which upon first glance (which Joker claimed was cheating, rightfully so with her biometric scans), but Kallan had managed to confuse the rest of them. Kodelyn couldn’t help but laugh when James had come over, and Kallan had come out of her room to grab something from the kitchen. All in good, unintentional fun for those on the Cerberus SR-2 crew as they got to know the not-her.

But short of that, Kallan had never made a request to go out somewhere with her. She’d been silently observing, quietly answering questions when prodded. Sitting at the kitchen counter in the mornings with her nose in her omni-tool, or staring out the big picture window in the living room. But the last day or so, she’d been showing some sort of fledgling personality. Curiosity about things outside of the Reapers, mostly a fascination with EDI, but also an academic one of the biotics on the crew. She’d gone out with Miranda earlier in the day, presumably so that Miranda could compile more data on her, but she’d seemed pleased when she returned.

Kodelyn can’t read her. Maybe that speaks more volumes about her herself than it does about her clone.

Placing the datapad back down on her nightstand, she slips a sweatshirt on and pads downstairs. Would it hurt to grant her request? Probably not. Kallan would know better not to start anything, especially in the middle of a gathering. It could be worth giving her the benefit of the doubt, after all, until the party all they have is time. Maybe Kodelyn just wants to sate her curiosity about her as well.

Kallan herself is watching one of the vidscreens with great curiosity, her head slightly tilted to the right. Kodelyn isn’t sure what she’s watching, most likely a drama off one of the vid channels, but she taps the woman on the shoulder. It’s almost as if she’s electrocuted her, the biotic jolting and whipping her head around to look at her. 

“Don’t freak out.” Kodelyn holds her hands up, “Just wanted to see what you were up to.”

It takes her a moment, a critical eye roaming over her form but Kallan relaxes back into the couch, “Then...I am up to nothing. I was curious what entertainment the Citadel had, but I’m not quite pleased with what I’ve found. There are...a lot of inaccuracies in the vids that portray the Alliance.”

“I’m not surprised.” She answers, leaning her forearms on the couch’s back. To a point, she wonders how Kallan can tell the difference, but just how much she knows about their military is an unknown, “People love a good story way more than they do facts.”

“That seems counterintuitive. How could you build a story on a shaky foundation of skewed details?” Kallan furrows her brows, gesturing at the screen. Her reaction makes Kodelyn smile, how many of these had she ever seen? She doubts Cerberus would’ve been showing her entertainment media. Maybe Tali could show off Fleet and Flotilla to her before they had to ship out again, “Regardless, is there something you needed?”

“Got your message. Can’t say I saw any adverts for the show, but lead the way.” Kodelyn nods towards the front door, “I’ll have to admit, I’ve never seen one on the Citadel before.”

Her eyes brighten, pushing herself up from the couch, “You haven’t? I thought they were common.”

“I don’t spend a lot of recreational time down in the wards. This shore leave is one of the few times I’ve been for longer than a day or two.” She answers, “Could be fun.”

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think it was.”

-

Childlike wonder. That’s the only word Kodelyn has to describe the look on her clone’s face when they’d arrived to the venue, watching the show with wide eyes.

Another one of the lights flashes over the strip, crackling with artificial pink and blue fireworks. Kodelyn had been pleasantly surprised, they weren’t nearly as loud as she’d thought they’d be, but just as bright. It seemed to be part of one of the nearby establishment’s routines for the weekend crowd, Kallan had just managed to catch it a few hours prior to them lighting it.

Her excitement was infectious. It’s a little odd, seeing her own face brightly smile in a way she knew she hadn’t in years. Seeing anything flying over head that weren’t bullets was...probably a new experience for her. When she’d said blank slate, Kodelyn hadn’t taken it as seriously as she should have.

She nudges the other woman’s shoulder with her own during intermission, “Good view, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Better than good.” She pulls her jacket tighter around her, turning to face her, “I’ve...never had the chance to see something like this.”

Then she was right. Kodelyn prods the question, “How much of the galaxy have you seen, Kallan?”

Like a wilted flower, the question makes her expression fall, “Not much. The strip, the archives...even the Normandy. All new places in the last couple of months. Before then, I’d never been off the station where they woke me up.”

Kodelyn feels like she’s understandably stunned, “You’ve never been to the Citadel before?”

Kallan is silent for a few moments, other pedestrians passing behind them, “I’ve been cooped up in a Cerberus facility for most of the time I’ve been alive. Brooks kept me there, taught me what I needed to know. Walking, talking, learning how to exist. There wasn’t time for vids or games or whatever else, I was learning how to be you. I’m probably the most mal-adjusted thirty year old to ever exist, to be entirely honest.”

She isn’t sure how to answer that. Her clone was mature, probably recreated with similar neural pathways to put her right at the mental age of thirty, but her memories aren’t there. They aren’t her’s, and she’s...

Still a person. A person with no idea of friendship, comradery, even love. If she did, it was probably skewed by Brook’s treatment of her.

“I’m sorry.”

Kallan raises an eyebrow, “Why? It isn’t as if you were the one that created me.”

“No. But...” What answer even is there? She feels a bit guilty, as if there was something she could’ve done or should’ve done to prevent what’d happened, but there isn’t anything she can think of short of not coming back at all, “It’s not fair what happened to you.”

“I don’t think fair mattered when they woke me up.” Another lightwork goes off, the crowd roaring with excitement. Kallan’s expression lifts into something more wistful while the green lights plays with the shadows on her face, “I don’t have childhood memories, and sometimes I don’t know where you end and I begin.”

“You’re your own person now, Kallan. You’re free to do whatever you want now.”

“I’ve never known true freedom.” The other woman leans against the railing again, rocking back and forth on her heels, “To be entirely honest, I’m not sure what to do with it. It goes against everything I was trained to do.”

“Nothing wrong with breaking a few boundaries.”

“Maybe so.” Kallan says. She gently pulls at the hair on her head, “That freedom does spell something other than looking exactly the same as you now.”

“Got any ideas on what you’ll do?”

“Nothing yet. Lawson -- Miranda, she suggested a new hair color. EDI suggested something far more drastic, but I’m not partial to artificial eye colors. Or tattoos.” Kallan says, softly smiling, “Red maybe. Or blue. Or maybe I should shave it all off. If I had any credits, I might buy something that’s not black or Alliance blue.”

“I’ll see what I can do about it. I don’t have many of my own I can offer you, but I’ll transfer over some funds.”

“Oh.” Her surprise is genuine, yet the idea seems to please her, “That’s very kind of you.”

“It’s the least I could do. I wouldn’t toss you to the wolves like that for fun.”

“I suppose I should think more highly of you.” Kallan tilts her head skyward, “Regardless, I should actually be thanking you for what you’ve already done for me.”

“I’d think I’d be one of the last people you’re thanking.”

“I’d be spattered somewhere in the wards if you hadn’t stopped to help. If you’d let me go.” Kallan says, “If the roles were reversed, I don’t think I could have done that. You’re a good person, Shepard. Guess I wish I was too.”

“Well, you didn’t take the opportunity to kill me in my sleep last night. I think that’s a step in the right direction.”

Kallan chuckles, “That’s only because Alenko would have noticed.” Seeing Kodelyn’s stunned expression she crookedly grins, “But you’re right. If I wanted to, I would have.”

“Kallan, I’m not sure how to take that. You did try to kill me, on my own ship. Only a few days ago.”

“I’m serious, believe it or not. If I killed you, I’d be blamed, and then where would we be? It wouldn’t benefit me at all.” She shrugs. Her voice gets softer, “I wouldn’t want to kill the only person who’s shown me any real respect.”

“Yeah. I trust you won’t try anything against me, and hopefully not my crew either.”

“It’d be the same outcome. I might not have your mind, but I am smarter than that.” She steps away from the railing, glancing around at the people nearby, “Fun how I’m only discovering this side of life at the end of the world as we know it.”

Lightworks crackle above their heads, bathing them in white light speckled with red. Kodelyn puts a hand on her shoulder, “Better late than never.”