#wine is fruity

[cursed-man-prayers]

Like a Wine-Stained Dress I Can't Wear Anymore

A queer analysis of wine mentions in Taylor Swift’s discography (1989, Reputation, Lover)

You’re still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore.

The first time alcohol is name-dropped in Taylor’s entire discography is in Clean. I think there’s a lot of meanings to Clean, but when it comes to queerness, it implies that this loss has left a mark that can’t really be washed away. It's a stain she can't get rid of. Clean feels like a desperate attempt to convince herself that she is clean, that she is pure. But the naming of alcohol, and wine specifically, implies maturity and loss of innocence. She can't wear the wine-stained dress because it would be proof that she isn't a "good girl," the persona she desperately clung to, especially before and during the 1989 era. We can see wine as metaphor for queerness, a symbol of Taylor diverging from the image projected onto her from day one.

I’m spilling wine in the bathtub, you kiss my face and we’re both drunk.

When it came out, Dress was one of Taylor’s sexiest songs. As we know, Dress is also one of Taylor’s gayest songs (especially when paired with the performances of it on Rep tour, including bisexual lighting and a dedication to Loie Fuller). There’s the inherent queerness of the song (“I don’t want you like a best friend,” “All of this silence and patience, pining and desperately waiting,” “There is an indentation in the shape of you”). There’s also the contextual queerness of the song (“Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo,” “Everyone thinks that they know us, but they know nothing about all this…” “Our secret moments in a crowded room”).

Spilling wine in the bathtub is a really interesting visual and metaphor. If you spill wine in the bathtub, nothing gets stained. It’s washed away. It remains in secret. When they’re in the crowded room, no one knows about them because the wine (the romantic/sexual nature of their relationship) is carefully hidden and washed away. Additionally, the placing of these lyrics immediately after “and if I get burned, at least we were electrified” implies death. Being in this relationship brings the threat of death (metaphorically or literally). Now, in what world does a white woman being with a white man bring the threat of death?

“Only bought this dress so you could take it off” is also a reference to Taylor’s good girl, highly feminine brand, especially prior to Reputation. While she traded the 1950s housewife dresses of the Red era for the crop tops and short skirts of 1989, Taylor was still a beacon of classic femininity (“I’ve got that red lip classic thing that you like/good girl faith and a tight little skirt” in Style). In a queer context, “only bought this dress so you could take it off” shirks the traditional view of women’s fashion throughout history. “I’m not wearing this dress to impress men. I’m wearing it for you.”

Spilling wine in the bathtub, in secret, where it is washed away before anyone can see it, means that Taylor can get away with being the best best friend of someone without the general public thinking twice about it. Additionally, the placement of a lyric mentioning wine in a song called Dress directly calls back to the wine lyric in Clean.

My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust; trying to find a part of me you didn’t take up.

Death By A Thousand Cuts, iconic sad bop, brings wine back into the picture. DBATC also has the lyrics “I get drunk but it’s not enough.” Where before drinking and getting drunk were representative of loving in an uninhibited way, here it is used to try and forget the lover. Lover is an extremely anxious album. Cornelia Street, Cruel Summer, the Archer, Lover (the song), Afterglow, and False God all express anxieties about a potential break up. I don’t know if DBATC is theoretical or literal, but I don’t think one is likely to write this many songs about fearing the loss of an impossibly beautiful love if that love is “stable.” At the very least, DBATC became literal ("now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club" vs. "I washed my hands of us at the club" plus the rest of Hits Different).

In this song, wine represents an integral part of who Taylor is. It’s a stand-in for queerness, as it was in Clean and Dress. The lover consumed her. She can’t look at herself and not see her lover, this person who defined her life for so long. She cannot truly separate herself from the lover, no matter how hard she tries to. Even the drinking reminds her of her lover. She's stained by the love.

Make confessions and we're begging for forgiveness. Got the wine for you.

Ah yes, the somehow sexier, gayer sister of Dress. False God is one of my favorite songs on Lover, and I truly hated it when I thought it was about a man (and also was a purity-culture stricken baby gay). Once again, we have inherent queerness (“We were crazy to think that this would work,” “We might just get away with it,” “Religion’s in your lips/the altar is my hips even if it’s a false god), and contextual queerness (“I’m New York City/You’re the West Village.”) While False God is not the first instance of queer love as religion (see Don’t Blame Me), it’s a very direct iteration of the theme. The false god is their love. It’s heretical and sinful, but they want it anyway. They’ll still worship this love.

Making confessions for forgiveness paired with “got the wine for you” is a metaphor for makeup sex. When things feel wrong, they touch each other (“I know heaven’s a thing”). Hell is when they fight, when they feel like the relationship might end. “But we might just get away with this” is so queer coded I can’t stand the thought of people using this song in a hetero context. You don’t “get away” with a heteronormative straight relationship. That’s literally the norm. The thing keeping them together while everything tries to tear them apart is their love, romantic and sexual. The twist of wine being gay and religious is incredible to me as a religiously traumatized homosexual. While the relationship is “wrong,” they love each other anyway. They still worship this love.

In short, wine = gay. A playlist of Taylor songs that mention wine leaves you with a fruity-ass playlist.

In the next part, I'll look at the lyrics mentioning wine in the 1, august, willow, ivy, and Maroon. I think Maroon is the culmination of what wine means in Taylor's music, in terms of how wine = queerness and the relationship we see evolve and devolve from Reputation to Midnights.

[jupiterslifelessmoons]

[satans-knitwear]

sometimes im a bit of fun 🐉🙀

Treat me ~ Tip me ~ More of me

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

One of the reasons I believe a lot of people are so aggressively threatened, freaked out, and even offended by the concept of a gay or bi Mike is because then they’d have to face the fact that queer people are just people. Which, duh. Of course, they are! But Mike Wheeler, at least in the first season (and sorta the second season), is THE main character. He’s THE guy.

It’s what turned Finn Wolfhard into a heartthrob and fast-tracked him to starring roles in movies like It and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. For people who grew up loving 80s childhood adventure movies, on which the Duffers based their show, Mike Wheeler is Elliot from E.T. He’s Mikey from The Goonies. He’s Marty from Back to the Future. He’s Luke from A New Hope. In other words, he’s the kind of young sci-fi hero every boy dreamed of becoming. I mean, who wouldn’t want to find out that magic/the supernatural is real, go on an insane, life-changing adventure with their friends, stand up to bad guys, and fall in love with a girl with superpowers in the span of a week?!

Other than being nerdy/into D&D (which is honestly not that far from being a theatre kid, tbh)/hj, kinda melodramatic, and somewhat unathletic (affectionate), there’s nothing about Mike Wheeler that radiates gayness on the surface. Plus, he’s the protagonist! In Season 1 we experience most new things through his eyes. That makes him the audience surrogate character, so how can the audience surrogate character be (gasps) GAY?! That’s OBviously impossible. He’s just a guy. He’s just a dude. He’s just a person. He’s just the boy next door.

And if queer people are just people, then that means ANYONE could potentially be queer. Even your younger sister. Even your best friend, who has no stereotypically gay traits, plays football, and has a girlfriend. Even your children (gasps). Even you (am I gay quizzes? were born from fears like this). That’s terrifying for people who expect the world, and the media they consume, to be black-and-white.

People like boxes. They like things that are safe. Every time general audiences are introduced to a new character they fully assume the character is straight, even if they aren’t shown to have any interest in girls (like Will) unless they are an obvious stereotype, say the words, “I’m gay,” or explicitly make out with a boy (even then, some people will still try to claim they’re confused or simply “struggling with their sexuality”).

Kevin Keller from Riverdale. Kurt Hummel from Glee. Patrick in The Perks of Being a Wallflower (as much as I love that movie). Carlos in HSMTMTS. These are all characters that are Gay™️. They are almost always the comic relief sidekick, or the gay bestie for the main female character, or some variation of common tropes. Audiences (even homophobic ones) are increasingly used to seeing these types of characters on their screen, but a gay Mike Wheeler would be a different type of character entirely. 

“Mike being gay or bi would just be OUT OF NOWHERE and would be bad writing done just for woke points.” Okay. Aside from the fact that it would simply NOT be out of nowhere (gestures wildly at the Byler Proof Slides), let’s unpack the phrase “out of nowhere” for a second. Why is something only considered “out of nowhere” when it’s gay and never when it’s straight? Was it out of nowhere for Dustin to find a girlfriend while at camp? Is the resurrection of Stancy out of nowhere? And to the people who are still somehow convinced that Will Byers isn’t gay, just “maturing slower than his friends,” I guarantee you they wouldn’t call it “out of nowhere” for Will to suddenly have a female love interest, even though it clearly would be. They would encourage it, even if it was someone especially ridiculous like El, who is literally his sister, or Max, with whom he’s had almost no on-screen conversations. This is why you see people on TikTok and YouTube who genuinely believe Will’s painting is for the random girl he danced with at Snowball. Talk about out of nowhere!

“But Mike just isn’t gay. Don’t be delusional. Don’t be unrealistic. He is straight. He has only been shown to like El and has one of the most extreme cases of romantic tunnel vision in fiction I’ve ever seen.” Okay, let’s push aside the constant lip stares, the romantically charged conversations with his best friend, the fact that he can’t say or even write, “I love you” to his girlfriend, the ways the Duffers have consistently framed the Will/Mike/El dynamic with love triangle imagery and drawn our attention to this for the entire show, and more (gestures wildly at the Byler proof slides once more!!) for one second. 

The emphasis on “just isn’t” betrays them and their underlying perspectives. Let’s be clear. You can say Robin just isn’t straight because she’s been explicitly confirmed in show and out of show to be lesbian and into girls. You can say Will just isn’t straight because his sexuality has been all but confirmed as well. But you can’t say Mike “just isn’t” gay if the only concrete “proof” you have for this is his (turbulent) relationship with Eleven. Keep in mind. Without Vecna, we don’t have access to the innermost thoughts of any of the characters. All we have to go by is their actions, their words, and the intentional ways the Duffers have coded their characters. Ultimately, people who say this are saying that Mike Wheeler “just isn’t gay” because he doesn’t fit their pre-conceived, ignorant, myopic notions of what a gay person is. Mike “just can’t be” gay in these people’s minds because he hasn’t done any gay “actions,” whatever that even means (that’s why they believe Will- sweet, innocent Will- is a predator/homewrecker because they associate gayness with freakish deviance and see it as something inherently sexual, whereas if Will were a girl with the exact same feelings towards Mike, they’d never in a trillion years see it this way).

In both real life and in fiction, despite all the progress we’ve made as a society, straight is something you’re allowed to just be, by default, regardless of whether you’re dating someone. Gay is something you have to PROVE or “fall into,” and even then it’s treated with incredible suspicion (this is why people who ship Stobin believe Steve can “fix” Robin and make her into boys). Bisexuality is tragically either erased altogether, treated as a joke/a phase, or completely misunderstood (I heard someone say Mike could never be bi because he’d never date Will and El at the same time - what?! That’s not how bisexuality works). And comphet is something entirely baffling to straight audiences. You might as well be saying 2+2 equals armadillo. 

They’d rather believe that he’s just become an asshole, or that Finn Wolfhard has suddenly become a bad actor. Because accepting that Mike Wheeler isn’t straight means accepting that he can be the cool, brave, valiant, kind, caring protagonist of seasons 1 and 2, AND also be madly in love with his best friend. That feels like a bait-and-switch to some people because they don’t see queer people as “normal,” even if they claim they aren’t homophobic. They see queer people as “the other,” as something alien. [Insert Visibly Stereotypical Character Here] can be gay, not MY Mike Wheeler. He’s straight. STRAIGHT.  He’s madly in love with El. He and Will are just friends. JUST friends. Sound like someone?

That’s one of the reasons that Byler will be such powerful, meaningful, representation (aside from just being the only logical explanation for Mike’s weird actions). Byler becoming canon will give hope and provide a voice for the millions of LGBTQ+ kids out there who don’t fit a stereotype or society’s pre-conceived notions but who just happen to not be straight. Mike Wheeler will join Nick Nelson as one of the best LGBTQ+ teens EVER on screen. It will be a cultural reset. And it will hopefully open people’s minds to the beautiful tapestry of humanity. A love story so pure, so beautiful, and so overwhelming that the boy who tried so hard to be “normal” and to deny his feelings for his best friend and the boy who survived bullies, a week in a hellish alternate dimension, and a possession that took over his mind and body had no choice but to go crazy together.

[buckley-simp]

not me listening to The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess on repeat for the past twelve hours 😅

[velvetwyrme]

I have a headcanon that all the Papyri/Papyruses have a bad habit of not knocking before opening doors. When Frisk is in Sans’ room Papyrus barges in without knocking. Sans usually keeps the door locked so Papyrus is used to door unlocked = ok to enter. I think all it would be the same in the other aus too. Older brother used to locking their doors to keep younger brother out unfortunately teaching them not to bother knocking. I think is a fun headcanon to exploit to create silly scenarios. What do you think? Does it hold water?

*kicks in the door* HEHE YES that's a really fun headcanon!!! Lots of opportunities for ✨shenanigans✨!

I also think it'd be interesting if all the Papyri had the same habit but for different reasons.

e.g. Classic!Sans gave up on teaching Pap to knock because Pap kept getting too excited/annoyed and forgets to knock, Swap!Pap just can't be bothered much to his brother's chagrin, UF!Pap starts off similar to classic but it becomes a thing of not-knocking as a way to catch people off guard (no time to hide things if you aren't expecting someone!), Swapfell probably depends on your interpretation/which version, but you get my drift lol.

SAYING THAT THOUGH... we do unfortunately have evidence that Papyrus is a polite boy and knocks in canon (sometimes) 😔. He knocks on Undyne's door, when he brings Frisk/the player to her house so they can become friends!

I think it's a super fun headcanon even so, but if having this one instance bothers you, there's plenty of ways to work around it. Not to mention we only have like... 2 and a half instances of door opening action (half from that pic from the newsletter that has Papyrus slamming into Grillby's when he's looking for Sans) which isn't enough to conclude much of anything from either way lmao.

Again, I still think that your headcanon holds up, but it got me thinking about ways to incorporate Papyrus knocking on Undynes door into things... sticking with your existing reasoning, you could always have a situation where all the Papyri keep that assumption, (unlocked means it's ok to come in and locked means stay out) and Undyne has simply learned to lock her door lolol. That does bring to mind the image of Papyrus just... jiggling the doorknob for doors that are locked though. Let him in!!! (Now I think about it... this is actually just how doors seem to work in games generally. Most doors are unlocked, and you enter as you please... if they're locked you either try again/find a key or knock LMAO)

Or maybe he knocked because he wants to be a good role model for Frisk... (this pairs well with a headcanon that I've seen where Papyrus putting on a show/playing things up a little [like the date] for Frisk since they're a kid)

TLDR: that's a FANTASTIC headcanon, I love it, and also do whatever you want forever!!!

[jrueships]

THE RICH LESBIAN WINE AUNT JUDGEMENTAL STARE

[vamp-a-day]

day 59

i think the strawberry in their jam is like the iron in our blood

[goldheartedsky]

*judges you in French*

Thank you so much to @laviejaguardia for letting me snag the funniest reference suggestion in the world. It's what Booker deserves 😌🤣

[outsidersandlostboys]

Songs that remind me of the Lost Boys:

I’m going off sort of the vibes they give me so this might be mostly punk, rock or even a little metal. I also tried to include some 70’s, 80’s and 90’s rock. There’s also a mix of some other genres as well :)

-

Time Bomb - Rancid

We Called it America - NOFX

Got the Time - Anthrax

Yankee Rose - David Lee Roth

The Logical Song - Supertramp

Angeleyes - ABBA

Kill the Dj- Green Day

Breakfast in America - Supertramp

Sunglasses at Night - Corey Hart

When Doves Cry - Prince

Armed and Dangerous- Anthrax

Countdown to Extinction - Megadeth

Black Velvet - Alannah Myles

Girls, Girls, Girls - Mötley Crüe

Die, Die My Darling - Metallica

-

I forgot to mention this earlier, when I first posted this. But I’m going to add more songs when I either remember them or find them. :)

[cursed-man-prayers]

Lost in Your Current Like a Priceless Wine

A queer analysis of wine mentions in Taylor Swift’s discography (folklore and evermore)

Rose’ flowing with your chosen family.

Chosen family is a very queer concept. Rose as a lighter version of red wine (literally), and also that it’s casually flowing refers to how this person (who was not “the one”) is able to freely express queerness around their chosen family, whereas Taylor is still digging up the grave another time. We’ll come back to this when I analyze Maroon (your roommate’s cheap-ass screw-top rose). 

August sipped away like a bottle of wine.

God this fucking song. I saw someone say that, since the song is from August's perspective (I know Taylor said "Augustine" but i think August is a prettier name), she’s saying that she herself was sipped away like a bottle of wine, carelessly. When you get to the end of a bottle of wine, you’re drunk and surprised that the bottle is already empty. The song as a whole is about a relationship that was unexpected, wrong, desperate, secret. “Are you sure?” “I’ve never done this before.” (Never have I ever as a teenage party game paired with “seven years in heaven” on happiness.) 

August is a retrospective. It’s nostalgic in lyrics and production. “Wanting was enough, for me it was enough” harkens back to False God and the desperation to stay for the sake of wanting each other. August remembers; she wonders if her former lover does to “do you remember when I pulled up and said get in the car…” The repetition of the outro reminds me of All Too Well 10 Minute Version. It was rare, I was there, I remember it all. Wind in my hair, you were there, you remember it. Wine is so fleeting but it leaves a permanent stain, as we first saw in Clean. 

“Meet me behind the mall” implies a youthful secrecy. August as a part of the cardigan/betty lore solidifies it as a song themed around adolescence. I want to write more on this later, but I believe the queer concept of “second adolescence” plays heavily into folklore, whereas evermore is the end of that adolescence.

Lost in your current like a priceless wine.

I think I’ll do a full queer analysis of willow someday, because the lyrics are actually devastating. The set-up for the song is that this person came into the narrator’s life unexpectedly and derailed her plans dramatically. We have secrecy (“wait for the signal and I’ll meet you after dark”),  the lover feeling exceptional from others (“as if you were a mythical thing”), and desperation for the lover to stay as they’re leaving  (“Wherever you stray, I”ll follow; I’m begging for you to take my hand”).

Here in the first verse, Taylor says she’s “lost in your current.” She didn’t mean to fall, but it’s “like a priceless wine,” the most meaningful love she’s had. The most meaningful, but once the bottle is open, that wine gets sipped away. It’s the best thing that’s ever been hers, and it’s almost gone. The rest of the album is about loss and endings.

And drink my husband’s wine.

Ivy is almost universally believed to be sapphic (though non-gaylors will call it fictional). It’s very Emily Dickinson (I watched all of Dickinson on Apple TV+ to get to the moment this song plays). Ivy is about an extremely risky affair, one that will inevitably end in fire and destruction, but one that is beautiful. There are so many queer themes included in the lyrics. What is more “magnificently cursed” than being queer and forced to hide it?

In ivy, to “drink my husband’s wine” means drinking it both secretly and in a way that takes from said husband. This wine is supposed to be the husband’s, but now it represents what the illicit lover can’t have. (i’ll mention here that I also think wine could also be a metaphor for pussy. tried to find a more delicate way to say it but u get it.) If wine represents sexuality, the context of it being her “husband’s wine” implies that, while they may continue to be together in secret, there will always be the shadow of this man looming over them. They’ll never truly belong to each other as long as the narrator is forced to stay in a heteronormative relationship.

Summary: here, wine is used in the context of loss. The end of the bottle is the end of the relationship. What was once full and beautiful and light has become sour and empty.

[spideyhexx]

re: your post about turning 22

THE WAY IN WHICH I FEEL U SO DEEPLY ABOUT FEELING BEHIND. i turn 23 in a little over 2 months and i feel as if i havent done NEARLY enough as i should have by now. and it’s like no matter how many times i tell myself that it’s ok to go through life at your own pace i still feel like crap.

all of my irl friends have already graduated college, and im about to start my second semester tomorrow 😭 and whenever i see my irl’s post pics of them at clubs w/ their other friends im like… dang.

and it’s so funny bc im *not* a club person whatsoever so i wouldnt even enjoy myself anyway LMAO.

anyways idrk where i was going with this but i guess i just wanted to let u know that you’re not alone in feeling this way. and hey, maybe one day we can get together for a humble glass of wine and mourn the act of aging together 🫶

your first paragraph I feel in my bones🫶🫶🫶

and yeah I know for a FACT I’d hate going to a club and I don’t even drink either but I still get….ahhh…when I see people from school doing it lmao. So same boat there! I am literally a homebody, I like going out to do things but never stuff like that :/

yes I know so many others feel similarly and it’s nice to know! And YES, who knows, n we can also talk deeply about sej and coryo cause that’s more fun🫶

[noblesvacation]

Tidbits about Food

What we've learned about everyone's food preferences!

Lizel

likes: tea and fruit water

dislikes: cheese, but he can eat it

cannot drink alcohol at all

Gil

likes: meat, alcohol

dislikes: chocolate and sweets. can't stand even the smell. mushrooms

Eleven

likes: sweets, alcohol, pretty much everything. stomach is a bottomless pit

dislikes: ?

he has a habit of biting the rim of his glass

[raventhekittycat]

Huzzah! A Japanese Christmas dinner for one!

[crimson-nail]

Tell me some Elendira headcanons please. I feel like you get her like I do.

while she may look like she has the refined palette of a professional wine connoisseur her favorite drink in actuality is a fruity little beverage with a paper umbrella and a cherry in it. she’s here for a fun time, always

[steddiebylerfixation]

Robin being the realest one of them all: a thread.