#you will have to deal w me wanting this

[nothingbutloveforyou]

i'm so sleepy and i just want to be held by someone who makes me feel safe

[humbuns]

birds of the same feather?

[averlym]

litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

[sandinmybed]

can i be fr for a minute?? sending abuse to people online for holding different views than you is not activism and in fact actively hurts your cause. most people are not extreme in their viewpoints, you can give them a new perspective if you're willing to spend some time explaining shit. if someone is saying something you disagree with and you rush in there to condescend to them and call them disgusting and subhuman and dont even TRY to explain calmly why their views are harmful, they're going to shut you out instantly and double down on their views.

most people are simply genuinely ignorant to the issues they're talking about - they just pick their views up from the news and the world around them and express opinions because that's what every person does. if you run in there and tell them they're scum for it, what then? if someone does that to you, are you going to think "maybe i should do some research" or are you going to think "this person is an asshole, im blocking them." a lot of you think you're activists and then refuse to do any kind of actual WORK to support your cause.

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Actually, the best part of being a "chosen one" is you don't have to send in a resume and write a coverletter. A magical scroll or mysterious stranger or flock of ravens just show up and give it to you.

[codacheetah]

If I made some kind of post related to my mirasif/miraisiloop thoughts would you guys trust me. Would you trust in my arospec sieve of projection. Would you guys kill me

[queendomkey]

If you just want the song analysis, skip to the next banner. However, I do think the context added by my rambling is at least interesting.

Hey, so remember how yesterday, I opened my analysis post with a comment about how I try to analyze the songs without analyzing Taylor Swift's life, because I feel it's limiting to my ability to understand the song. It's not a form of analysis I'm very good at either, frankly.

I feel like that comment goes especially so for But Daddy I Love Him. Because I was certainly there for the rat-filled fortnight, as in, he literally played guitar for Phoebe Bridgers at my show. And there's a lot I could say that has already been said, more eloquently and by people far more qualified.

I'm a biology student, not a sociologist. But as an Indigenous woman, there is a level of hurt that comes from the people we admire tolerating racism within their spaces, and how that can often play into revealing a pattern of behavior. On the opposite hand, I can see the annoyance (and indignation) that she was held more accountable for his actions than he was. Indeed, I believe that this is what the line "[My good name] is mine alone to disgrace" refers to. On the other, other hand, the whole situation leaves a powdery, bad taste in my mouth.

And now to never talk about that again, because I don't feel qualified to give you a conclusion on it. I'm still listening to the music, after all. The rest of my analysis will be from the perspective of the song as a story, not as diary, my preferred modus operandi.

I wanted to say all that as set up in: I didn't know what to think about this song. I was unsure what angle I wanted to talk about this song from, because divorcing it from the backlash was hard. She literally says "Scandal does funny things to pride," and we'll talk about that later.

Initially, I thought about covering against the grain readings. Recontextualizing the song completely, giving it a new meaning. I thought about maybe covering the history of forbidden romance as a genre (and its many evolutions, from ironically, interracial love stories to queer romance.) I even thought about talking about the Little Mermaid, tying the song into one of the pieces of iconic fiction, and tying that back into the idea of forbidden romance as a queer reading of straight fiction (Howard Ashman, the lead lyricist for Disney, ostensibly the heart of the Disney Renaissance, was a gay man whose partner accepted his Oscar after he had passed due to AIDs.)

And... none of that worked. There are like, five versions of this post in my google docs that will never see the light of day.

Sitting in standstill traffic trying to leave last night's Hozier concert, I finally came to a conclusion. Well, I didn't. Jean, who's previously helped me on both Little Tortured Poet's Department and My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys, made a comment that "Without the rest of the album, [But Daddy I Love Him] reads like any 2003 emo song about a sleazy bassist. Sure, we know better, but the singer doesn't."

And that got me thinking: TTPD is an album that is very much in conversation with itself, and Taylor's discography as a whole. I said, "How much does not knowing that wider context change the song?" That's an angle to analyze, baby!

alternative title that wouldn't leave my mind: Dark AU!Love Story, don't like don't read

But Daddy I Love Him is, out of the whole album, the song that benefits from context the most. It is petulant, petty, the speaker digging in her heels on the subject of true love. Indeed, Scandal does funny things to pride. I jokingly referred to it as "Dark Love Story," but the songs are foils ( and likely intentionally, since both songs have to the singer begging "Daddy" to let her have her lover. It also makes sense to foil one of her most popular songs, so that general audiences are likely to make the connection. )

We, the audience, know that the Speaker's romantic interest isn't good for her. We don't like him, because likely, we've already listened to the previous songs on the tracklist, and he's already clearly hurt the singer. The prelude (in the CD and Vinyl booklets) refers to the album as one story, which helps set up this framework in the listener's mind.

However, even in the context of the song, there are scant hints of this. The Speaker, with her rose colored glasses firmly on, still refers to her lover as "crazy."

There's also an interesting tie to her older works, known affectionately on Reddit as Car Lore in the use of cars as metaphor for romance. To quote the seminal essay by u/Alex_Demote, "But for Taylor, being in a car is often the same thing as being in a relationship."

Here, the speaker's lover "[floors] it through the fences" at her request and they only hear "screeching tires and true love" His actions are incredibly dangerous. Even if she's told him to slam through the fence, anyone who actually loves her would say no. A joy ride isn't worth risking your life.

By literal laws of physics, screeching tires are tires that aren't moving. Whether the speaker knows it or not, this romance won't go anywhere, or if it does... well.

I'm an Aston Martin that you steered straight into the ditch (imgonnagetyouback) / Loving him is like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street (Red) / You were driving the getaway car, we were flying but we’d never get far (Getaway Car)

Though, do we know it's a car? Obviously, this is Car Lore I'm applying here, but our only other references to a land vehicle (aside from the Aston Martin, which is The Speaker) are in So High School, which has it's own parallels to But Daddy I Love Him, see below, and in imgonnagetyouback:

Whether I'm gonna be your wife or / Gonna smash up your bike, I haven't decided yet

And here comes my main point: Driving a car through a fence is reckless, yes, but not likely to be fatal. A bike? A bike? It's only with the context of the rest of the album that the danger our speaker was in comes into clear view. In the song itself, the Speaker only knows he's a bit of a troublemaker, but doesn't mind. She is either blind to the truth of the matter, or looking past it. After all, my boy only breaks his favorite toys. She'd rather burn her whole life down.

But, at the end of the song, her parents "came around" and while the "wine moms are still holding out," the Speaker seems quite happy to be "his lady." Time does give some perspective, but this song doesn't: though the final chorus could be reframed as about a new lover (as she says "Fuck 'em, it's over,") it still reads like everything worked out with her "wild boy."

Like I said on Down Bad, the songs on TTPD are slices of time. This song is the Speaker in a state of blind love, a poisoned honeymoon phase, and without the rest of the album of hindsight, the song just reads... Mean. The teenage prank of "I'm having his baby," refusing to "come to [her] senses," and even referring to herself as "not growing up at all," slamming through fences that someone else will have to fix. It's the exact kind of pettiness that a sixteen year old might pull.

Hey, speaking of sixteen: So High School. If But Daddy I Love Him is a dark take on forbidden love, So High School is its antidote, is that quintessential Boy Meets Girl, and plays deeply into high school cliches. It's also the only other mention of a land vehicle, to my knowledge. The speaker's infatuated with how her lover, "Got [her] car door, isn't that sweet?"

The other, very teenager-y love song on the record is so opposite. It's cheerful, and most importantly, the singer realizes it too. So High School serves to further contextualize But Daddy I Love Him as the speaker's attempt at a rebellious stage, and the rest of the album is her showing how it all crashed and burned.

Conclusion? Her daddy might love him, but he does NOT have land vehicle proficiency. And context can give far more perspective than time ever could.

also hey WDYM GET BACK HERE—

[synonymroll648]

from a vibes perspective, i totally understand why so many people look at keefe and go ‘this guy would be the male equivalent of a wine aunt when he’s older’. 

but. but. 

taking lore into consideration, in my heart, he’s terrified of alcohol (even if he tries really hard to hide it). because. like. his first exposure is almost guaranteed to be through cassius, and cassius canonically threw a glass extremely close to him at least once when he was, like, 8. maybe cassius wasn’t always extra nasty when he was drunk, but there’s gotta be a correlation in keefe’s brain between risking getting seriously hurt (emotionally or physically) and alcohol consumption that’s really hard for him to shake. 

[astranauticus]

in light of the new episode this joke i made once is feeling a lot more relevant

[v7n5]

Feel like pure shit, just want a smutty multi-chapter Howard Hamlin fanfic that recounts the many secret sexual affairs that he has had with different people throughout the course of his life, most of which he sought out to recompense for the lack of intimacy in his marriage because both him and Cheryl were iron-closeted and only got married out of familial pressures (things took a turn for the worse after the fight that ended with Howard moving into the guest house). Ultimately, none of them could fulfill his wants and needs because they're all cold and distant in their own ways: there were the handsome strangers he met at some gay bar like Nacho who were emotionally unavailable and only wanted to dick and dash like they're in denial themselves; Jimmy whom he was smitten with and trusted to be able to keep a secret, but it didn't take him long to realize that Jimmy being selfish and cruel and rougher than Howard had liked and not paying any mind to Howard's own pleasure in bed was his way of getting back at him for being a jackass of a boss; Chuck whom he'd got especially close with ever since he was still studying pre-law, so close that he would make up any excuse to be alone with him and suck him off in his office from time to time to seduce his mentor because the daddy issues that had been developing throughout his father-absent youth came to fruition the moment a wiser and older man gave him a sliver of attention, Chuck allowed him to live out his fantasy but never reciprocated in that sense but they remained really good friends, hence Howard's desperation for his approval and affection and the idea of "I still have a chance" kept brewing in his mind even when he could see Rebecca out of the corner of his eye (the incident at the end of ss3 scarred him for life and talking about the intimate details of their relationship before it in therapy did not help). The latter half of 607 didn't happen because he decided that he was in fact the bigger person and the right thing to do was to drink himself into reflecting back on his life choices and wallowing in his own self-pity. Though he didn't storm Mcwexler's condo, the whole ordeal was still his Joker moment, so he put his foot down, got a divorce and resigned from his CEO position because fuck you, he deserves to do that. And maybe after a year or so, he met a certain Salamanca who got out of a certain shoot-out unscathed (haven't determined if Howard happened to stumbled into El Michoacáno or he went back to the gay bar), their chemistry was through the roof, they bonded over the loss of families/ lovers and "being a nepo baby is oh so hard", their romance blossomed because Lalo was textbook definition of charming and exactly Howard's type. One date led to another, and Howard ended up getting the best pipe he'd ever had while trying to hold back the tears stemmed from indescribable emotions. Would Howard find out who Lalo actually was? Would it matter? Would they last? Those are problems for future them.

Like literally that's all I want tbh.

[deus-ex-mona]

biannual reminder that this event sure was a ✨thing✨

[fallingbyjuleecruise]

every day i think about the ansur plot in act 3 could've actually had emotional weight if larian studios gave a shit about wyll. damn.

[anotherpapercut]

working with children really will make you examine your thought processes and emotional reactions like nothing else. I've found myself being so much more thoughtful in my daily life about how I respond to my emotions and environment, as well as the reasoning behind why others behave the way they do

[averlym]

May I please request some soft parrlyn please

morning vs night gfs

[tvckerwash]

a yet to be fleshed out scene from my ct lives au is more or less just ct going "I cannot believe I have to go on a mission with these 2 strangers whom I don't trust in the slightest because my former teammates mercilessly slaughtered all of my boyfriend's teammates so now his boss doesn't think he's qualified for field work anymore"

[anti-transphobia]

What it's like being a narcissist in a group chat with other narcissists