#for anyone who survived the

[ohgaylor]

IT MUST BE EXHAUSTING (AN ANALYSIS)

Hi. Taylor’s the problem. And she knows it. (affectionate)

All right friends. It’s time to dive into an analysis again. I’ve been reflecting on a lot of Midnights and Taylor’s ever-present self-deprecation this era and in my regular fashion, I had to make an extremely long-winded analysis post about a certain motif of hers that I’ve noticed has only grown more apparent this time around. and essentially that is her self-awareness toward her ever-ambiguous signaling in regard to her identity, and where she is positioned in the complicated and delicate journey of coming out, as well as the plethora of emotions that surround that for both herself and her fans and those of us who pick up on the queer coded subtext of her music and art.

to kick off this analysis, may I remind you of this beauty of a quote from Taylor’s 2018 reputation tour pride speech that prefaced Delicate?

I want to send my love and respect to everybody who in their journey and in their life hasn't yet felt comfortable enough to come out ... and may you do that on your own time and may we end up with a world where everyone can live and love equally and no one has to be afraid to say how they feel. When it comes to feelings and when it comes to love and searching for someone to spend your whole life with, it’s all just really really delicate.

That is quite possibly my favorite thing she’s ever said. and what inspired this tag.

Now I need to clarify up front — I am never insinuating a need or even desire for Taylor to come out. Because that’s not our place to say. If you’ve been around my blog long enough, I would hope that nuance would be apparent. I simply point out regular motifs and patterns within her art and how it correlates with queer-coded themes of closets, of almost coming out, of outright queer coding, of rainbows, of keeping a love secret and safe, and on and on and on. The signs are there if you know what to look for (re: “I gave so many signs”) and that’s what I explore on my blog. The point is, I will never demand she come out. But I will stand with her in this complex journey she appears to be on. It’s entirely her journey and however she wishes to navigate that is hers to decide.

but that doesn’t detract from the reality that for those of us who see this beautiful queer subtext of her art and music and visuals and work and self, the ambiguity and constant back-and-forth when it comes to her identity (and the idea of coming out) can in fact be a lot to try and process and understand and ultimately to reconcile as we root for her. Trying to understand where she stands is much like chasing a moving target. (not that she owes any explanation to us, because again, she doesn’t.) her art and creativity are her place of expression and catharsis. however, watching her navigate these complexities and trying to root for her in this sometimes messy space is also, dare I say, exhausting.

hence, the title and general theme of this analysis.

so let’s begin.

First, we have this verse in Anti-Hero which is the perfect setup to illustrate this specific motif,

I should not be left to my own devices They come with prices and vices I end up in crises Tale as old as time

This is essentially the thesis of Taylor’s message, the feeling that her own judgement and actions might be the very cause for certain crises she finds herself in, however enticing those vices and choices may be. In choosing to straddle a glass-closeted lifestyle as an artist at her status and level of fame, all the while heavily queer-coding to her (receptive) audiences, only to be seen by most others as the hallmark of straight women as per her highly publicized bearding, juggling this all can be overwhelming. But it’s also a space that she has essentially curated and perpetuated herself.

An anti-hero is a central character in a narrative who conspicuously lacks heroic, moral qualities:

Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that are morally correct, it is not always for the right reasons, often acting primarily out of self-interest or in ways that defy conventional ethical codes.

Identifying herself as the anti-hero in this sense comes as a candid confession, as though she is admitting that maybe she is driven by self-interest. (which again, she is entitled to as we all are in our own lives.) (re: the jokes weren’t funny, I took the money, my friends at home don’t know what to say) Alternatively, and perhaps additionally, acting out of self-interest in this context may mean concealment of parts of her identity for the sake of self-preservation. The nuances behind why she hasn’t chosen to come out are at play here and I doubt any of us can fully comprehend what that is exactly.

I never had the courage of my convictions, as long as danger is near

Pouring out my heart to a stranger but I didn’t pour the whiskey

Combat, I'm ready for combat. I say I don't want that, but what if I do? 'Cause cruelty wins in the movies. I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you … Dark side, I search for your dark side. But what if I'm alright, right, right, right here?

You can easily grasp the intense oscillation as she goes back and forth between these decisions while juggling a myriad of reasons and factors, all of which are incredibly weighted. She knows it’s exhausting for us because it’s that much more exhausting for herself.

So, she elects to pursue a route all too familiar to closeted individuals in the public eye, one of bearding and concealing their identity.

I had some tricks up my sleeve … Perched in the dark, telling all the rich folks anything they wanna hear, like it could be love, I could be the way forward, only if they pay for it … the skeletons in both our closets plotted hard to fuck this up

I took the money. My friends from home don't know what to say.

The cost at which this lifestyle comes is worthy of an analysis all on its own. But Taylor seems to be indicating that she has found safety and security in her self-made cages and closets of sorts.

I prefer hiding in plain sight

‘Cause shade never made anybody less gay

If the shoe fits, walk in it 'til your high heels break

My town was a wasteland, full of cages, full of fences*, pageant queens and big pretenders. But for some, it was paradise.

In the darkest little paradise

(also, note the *fences. I’ll come back to that later.)

She brings focus to the fact that her town was full of cages and fences, which initially may carry a negative connotation. But here’s where she turns it around and says that for some, it was place of paradise, that the self-made cages brought security and freedom. That the idea of “forever” is in fact the sweetest con. That the good life she was hustling for through the tricks she had up her sleeve is within grasp. That this could be the way forward. Tell me that doesn’t scream a queer-coded experience?

But knowing Taylor and the complicated nature of this deeply personal topic, there is also a level of remorse regarding the said-cages and choices that had put her in crisis.

I cut off my nose just to spite my face, then hate my reflection for years and years

I’ve got a hundred thrown out speeches I almost said to you

I’d pay if you’d just know me

Now, despite the way she has managed to remain glass-closeted, a large subset of her fans and the general public completely miss what she is signaling in regard to her queerness. (re: “I gave so many signs / you didn’t even see the signs”) but it appears she is feeling some remorse for the devices she’s used and the way she’s navigated things because she knows that she’ll be the one paying for it.

So again, Taylor fully acknowledges she’s the problem. She endlessly dances around the topic, sometimes to an extreme (re: “bent the truth too far tonight,” Bettygate and specifying a male perspective despite widespread interpretation of the alternative; similar thing with Lavendergate, etc etc) She writes from “male perspectives” so as to have a way to write female pronouns. She uses pseudonyms for similar motives. She equates herself with gay pride and places herself adjacent to the community repeatedly, and dances in Gaylor Park and rainbow kaleidoscopes. She dresses in rainbow attire and gives speeches emphasizing the delicacy of coming out and on and on, all while also remaining straight-passing. It’s complicated and messy and indeed exhausting.

sending signals to be double-crossed

I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror. It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

no doubt these devices and choices have come at a cost. first, the personal cost of remaining closeted (or in the very least, glass closeted) by her own making. The nature by which she has driven her career, of “taking the money” and pursuing a career (and by extension, following heteronormative cultural standards of remaining closeted), all point to the self-made cages she twists in.

recall the Delicate pride speech…

I want to send my love and respect to everybody who in their journey and in their life hasn't yet felt comfortable enough to come out ... and may you do that on your own time

That is a major theme for her. The idea that through a closeted state, certain freedoms can coexist.

We know Taylor has made a point to emphasize the comfort she has found in keeping elements of her life to herself post her apocalyptic summer. And the way she has largely receded her personal life from the public eye is telling. In an effort to protect the “real stuff”, she is withholding from others and has found safety in that.

Privacy sign on the door and on my page and on the whole world, romance is not dead if you keep it just yours.

She knows it’s not always a world that some would choose to be a part of. She describes it as a wasteland, likely desolate, harkening back to cowboy like me. A place where hustling for the good life, perching in the dark as con artists (or pageant queens and big pretenders) and telling all the rich folks anything they want to hear like “it could be love” is all too familiar.

It’s a painful dichotomy she fully explores in The Archer, recognizing that maybe it’s her lot in life to straddle these lines of staying where she is, perched in the dark, while wanting to step into the daylight and let it go.

and that’s where the second cost comes in — in how those of us who see her for what she is signaling herself to be, are ultimately left to ourselves to make sense of it.

It’s the same kind of essence of this fantastic analysis regarding coney island and her apology of not making us certain subsets of her fans and communities her centerfold.

Being left to her own devices, she has ultimately crafted a duplicitous persona, of which she has spoken about specifically when discussing mirrorball…

Everybody else feels like they have to be on for certain people. You have to be different versions of yourself for different people. Different versions at work, different versions around friends, different versions of yourself around different friends. Different version of yourself around family. Everybody has to be duplicitous, or feels that they have to in some ways, be duplicitous. And that’s part of the human experience, but it’s also exhausting. You kind of learn that every one of us has the ability to become a shape-shifter. But what does that do to us?

Is it self-preservation? Or self-made self-destruction? (re: “they told me all of my cages were mental” “what a shame she’s fucked in the head” “lost in the labyrinth of my mind”)

Among the various anxieties that plague her in regard to this subject, Taylor makes one fear very clear. And that is for some inevitable day where we will leave her after we’ve had enough of “her scheming”.

'Cause they see right through me, they see right through me, they see right through. Can you see right through me?

I wake up screaming from dreaming One day I'll watch as you're leaving 'Cause you got tired of my scheming For the last time

These desperate prayers of a cursed man spilling out to you for free, but darling, darling, please, you wouldn't take my word for it if you knew who was talking if you knew where I was walking

Will you forgive my soul when you're too wise to trust me and too old to care?

She will get as close as she can to the topic, (“Gay pride… everything that makes me me!” to name just one) only to pull back or leave it ambiguous and devoid of clarity…

I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror

And I cut off my nose just to spite my face Then I hate my reflection for years and years

…only to feel guilt for skirting around the topic…

You said I was freeloading … I bent the truth too far tonight, I was dancing around, dancing around it … Your picket fence is sharp as knives, I was dancing around, dancing around it

This to me is the a significant price that comes from her being left to her own devices. Yes, there is freedom that comes from closeting/bearding. But glass closeting brings a more painful mess of emotions for both the closet-er and those seeing it for what it is. This is what she addresses in Anti-Hero with painful clarity.

And sometimes this can come at a painful cost. Take YNTCD for example. In this video, she positions herself within the queer community, dancing in Gaylor Park, and boldly declares herself an advocate for LGBTQIA rights.

But as we know, the video was met by many as out-of-touch (re: “freeloading”), performative and whatever else critics were spewing.

motion capture put me in a bad light. I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone, trying to find the one where I went wrong. writing letters addressed to the fire

Now for a detour.

I want to talk about the purple / blue / lavender glitter for a minute. Here, in the Directors on Directors interview, Taylor describes the glitter as being a metaphor for herself...

It’s supposed to be a metaphor for like, I bleed glitter, I’m not normal, there’s something wrong with me, I’m not a person, I don’t belong, I don’t fit in anywhere.

Recall how I said chasing a moving target?

Let’s talk about the significance of this scene and a handful of others in terms of the lavender glitter.

[For some queer context regarding glitter]

I’d first like to point out Hayley Kiyoko’s purple glitter jacket above, from the YNTCD video. This is Hayley Kiyoko we’re talking about. The proclaimed Lesbian Jesus. And in this moment, while she is wearing the purple glitter jacket, she is aiming an arrow at a target, signifying The Archer. This moment is key.

And then you have the Miss Americana documentary, wherein Taylor explicitly equates herself with gay pride, while talking about the Me! music video.

It’s a line of dialogue that screams at me with such intensity. Irrefutable. As a film editor, I know that every line in a film is deliberately placed and thought out and meticulously addressed. And therefore we can trust that Taylor intended for this line to make it into the film. I can tell that surrounding dialogue is seemingly trimmed and crafted in a delicate way. And part of that is the very direct statement that “Gay pride…everything that makes me, me!”

And it’s within this music video that we again witness a massive “ME!” literally jumping out at us on screen, in none other than purple glitter.

A handful of others could sense that the conclusion of Miss Americana felt as thought it was headed in a different direction than the one it ultimately took. And that for whatever reason, Taylor’s political advocacy took center stage while a deeper analysis regarding her LGBTQIA advocacy did not.

Cut back to the Anti-Hero music video where we get The Archer aiming right for Taylor, and striking her, causing her to bleed, yet again, purple glitter.

Pierced through the heart but never killed… did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism, like some kind of congressman

My covert (secret) narcissism (ME!) I disguise as altruism like some kind of congressman (the political turn and advocacy present in Miss Americana)

In other words, covering up who she is (“gay pride… everything that makes me me!”) under the guise of a film almost exclusively focused on her journey of discovering her political (“Vote for me for everything” pin) activist voice. And what scene depicts this with near precision???

this one.

motion capture put me in a bad light. I replay my footsteps on each stepping stone, trying to find the one where I went wrong. writing letters addressed to the fire

'cause cruelty wins in the movies, I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you

The subsequent look on her face of absentminded agony says it all. She knows the confusion that comes from rooting for her as (especially if she is seen as an ally who maybe crosses one too many lines if presumably as straight.)

The inner-turmoil on display for us in The Archer has transformed into a tone all too exhausted in its own right within Anti-Hero. She knows we’re tired. She’s tired too. In a self-deprecating jab, she admits that she is the problem and she knows that everybody ultimately agrees with her on this. Shielded within a pop anthem, her vulnerability is on display. And so, in Dear Reader, with equal parts desperation as well as wit, she concludes…

You should find another guiding light, guiding light. But I shine so bright.

And so it is ultimately within this utterly messy, exhausting, complicated, ever-changing and nuanced journey that Taylor reaches out to those of us who do in fact see through her and who ultimately simply see her, that she asks us in all sincerity…

Who could stay? Who could stay? Who could stay? You could stay.

And I, for one, will stay.

[enjoy my other analyses here]

#myanalysis #mine #anti hero #analysis #how duplicitous of her #taylor’s authenticity problem #this is as convoluted and complex as the issue itself and I am just going to leave it at that because it’s 2am and I’m crying over glitter #enjooooooooyyy #for anyone who survived the #lover era #and the #reputation #era #and made it out alive this one’s for yooou #glitter motif #gaylor #taylor swift #anti-hero #yntcd mv #because coming out is in fact a very delicate thing #closets #taylor honey your gay is loud again #the archer #high infidelity #midnights #dear reader #pride speech

[stil-lindigo]

Bisan is calling for another global strike!

I saw some posts just outlining Jan 21st, and wanted to clarify that Bisan has called for a full seven days of action.

What a global strike would look like is:

calling in sick to work

purchasing bare essentials ahead of the week so you can observe the general boycott of goods / buying as little as you genuinely can

putting in a concerted effort to elevate Palestinian voices and make it clear that this strike is in support of a permanent ceasefire!

For those who will have to purchase necessary goods during this time, please observe the brands that the BDS movement is asking us to boycott!

♢♢♢

Right now is also a good time to mention some better uses for your money during this week.

Available e-sims in Gaza are running low!!

Mirna El Helbawi and her team are working round the clock to continue to connect Palestinians as Israel does its best to cut them off from the rest of the world.

You can learn how to purchase and send e-sims here, and below you’ll find a list of what is currently needed (the areas in brackets indicate what region you should select to buy e-sims in).

--

CareforGaza is an organisation that does verifiably good work, distributing supplies directly to Palestinian families.

They have a Gofundme set up at the moment, but because of Gofundme’s poor track record regarding refusing to transfer funds to Palestinians, I’d recommend continuing to donate directly to their PayPal here.

Good luck to all of you. Don't turn away from Palestine!

#i know that for some people their first instinct will be to scoff. how can anyone just not buy things for a full week? #what about groceries? rent? #and personally. i wanna say yes. there are some things that we have to spend money on to survive. #but it is possible still to make a concerted effort in your life #to carve out seven days where you can minimise that amount of money #i know its a lot. #for some people who are living on a tight budget. i know its not possible and i dont fault you for that #but i know for a fact that so many of us would be able to take out a few daily purchases in observance of this strike #do your best #dont turn away from palestine #free palestine #palestine #from the river to the sea #call to action

[cracklewink]

Harmony Syndrome Part 5/5

The last chapter of my mlp infection AU! Thank you to everyone who followed along. Some final thoughts on my twitter @cracklewink if anyone's interested : )

#mlp #my little pony #mlp infection au #mlp infection #twilight sparkle #Sorry for leaving the ending open ended but I genuinely couldnt decide on just one way for things to turn out and I liked the idea of #leaving it open the most #in my mind sunset's final message is like we found a recording from the later days of the infection and we dont know what happened in the #end because the recordings stopped/ended #In any case I think they were able to put twilight and the others to rest #but who knows who survived the “final battle” and who didnt #also yes Twilight created harmony syndrome but not on purpose lol #it was the result of her botched attempt to create a spell that makes ponies immortal #obviously it backfired lol #and the irony is that twilight ends up dying before any of her friends #if they didnt want me writing my little pony horse tragedy they shouldnt have left mlpfim off on the note that all of twilight's friends #were growing old without her #ending thats been haunting me for five years #if anyones seeing this this is an open au btw so feel free to adopt any of the ideas if you like! : ) #tw thanatophobia #thanatophobia

[reasonsforhope]

You don't need to believe that people as a whole are good or well-intentioned to be an optimist about fixing climate change.

A lot of the time, it's enough to trust in this: people hate being screwed over. And even more than that, they hate feeling screwed over.

Climate change is actively screwing over almost every single person on this planet, whether they know it or not. We just need to keep making sure that people do know that they're getting screwed over, along with all their loved ones, and who's doing it.

Spite and righteous anger will honestly do a lot of the rest.

#hope #good news #hope posting #climate change #climate optimism #life #not news #advice #me #human nature #like. obviously this is imho. but also I'm genuinely convinced that I'm right #spite and anger are powerful motivators #there are scientists who argue that anger's whole evolutionary purpose #is to keep us from being screwed over #because that's so vital to our survival #and what's more vital to our survival than a liveable planet??? #channel your anger into action #do not let anyone tell you that optimism or being an activist or being part of a healthy community means never being angry #that is so so untrue #and if you find a way to channel your anger and pain and grief to do GOOD in the world #to help people #then that will also do a lot to stop your emotions from eating you up inside #hopepunk #anger #spite #optimism #hopeposting #humanity

[axolotlclown]

We need to remember that Shubble stated that Wilbur would manipulate and gaslight friends and family. With this, we must be patient with streamers that were close to Wilbur. This was likely surprising and shocking for them. They may need time to come to terms with what has happened.

I have been vocal about how important it is for men to be critical about abusive behaviors. However, Wilbur had many close friends—some would even consider him family—and now they may feel they hardly knew him at all.

There is a deep stress felt by viewers. It is difficult to think we have given any amount of time or money to an abuser. Could you imagine a close friend right now? The pain and betrayal must sear. They need time to understand what has happened and come to terms with it. Many of them may not be live in the coming days (weeks even).

That being said, as time passes, criticism may be necessary. Complacency is not an option. Men that are willing to ignore abuse to protect an abuser are just as pathetic as the abusers themselves.

Let's give this situation time to breathe. I ask that we give patience and courtesy to those close to Wilbur at this time. But please do not forget that this happened. There may be a few streamers hoping to lay low and then drop a collab in a few months. Do not let them. This is too important.

#for now #the best thing we can do is spread awareness about abuse and offer support to domestic violence victims #i also want to add #that any previous art made about him was made with pure intentions #obviously its up to each individual to decide where the line is #but maybe lets not support him monetarily moving forward #that seems to be the move #anyway #please be kind to each other and give each other space #especially domestic violence survivors that may be here with us #and those who may have realized they were/are abused from shubbles story #i want to offer her and everyone around as much support as i can #if any domestic violence survivers have any stories they want to share #my dms and askbox are open #if anyone suspects that someone in their life may be abusing someone #this offer is open to you too #we need to talk about this #thoughts of dante #wilbur soot #shubble #im tagging this under shubble even though the post isnt really about her but i want the tags of this post to reach #whoever needs to read them

[kagoutiss]

din’s champion

#tloz #ocarina of time #oot #ganondorf #din #um #ganondin #…..does anyone here ship them ha. hahaha #i mean their whole thing is funny actually because she didnt even choose him but he managed to steal her triforce and #so then hes her ‘chosen’ by technicality. but with her virtue being power it’s maybe kinda one and the same #and anyway beyond that ​point i feel like she loves shaking him around like a mortal dog toy #but like in some way she also must have believed in him enough to give him Power in a different lifetime. so he’d survive his own execution #i;m just saying there is so much you can interpret about their relationship. despite her being #literally an unseen 4th dimensional being who is the embodiment of power and fire and change amd earth itself etc #like what do they think of each other. what does she think of this tiny mortal who somehow stole a piece of her and now theyre bound by it #take my hand walk w me thru mortal x god hyperdimensional traumatic power imbalance situationship. and youre both girls

[worstlovesong]

I am feeling totally normal about this

#golden retriever mascs who play guitar ruining my life yet again <3 #I just want to say I’ve seen this from another angle and juliens leg placement… I’m going feral #this and the Jo/Lucy kiss were literally insane #how did anyone who saw them live recently survive silk or salt tbh #Muna #josette maskin #boygenius #julien baker #munagenius #queue are the sunshine of my life

[egophiliac]

(it probably wasn't actually Idia's fault)

(or was it)

some quick initial reactions to celebrate Diasomnia Day One! it felt like a bit of a short intro, but oh, what a tasting menu of things to come.

#art #long post #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland spoilers #twisted wonderland episode 7 spoilers #twisted wonderland book 7 spoilers #it's been thirty seconds and already #lilia is sending himself to a farm upstate where he'll have lots of rabbits to chase #malleus does a whole flashback to his most embarrassing childhood memory #ponytail lilia CONFIRMED we have a CONFIRMED SIGHTING everybody #idia does a surprisingly good crowley impression. this is not important to the plot but it's important to me personally. #also silver is probably a cursed prince or something WHO CARES look at these COOL ACORNS #the mental image of silver and lilia having that little heart-to-heart about the ring #while sebek is five feet away sorting laundry #absolutely incredible #meanwhile yuu continues to just have no survival instinct whatsoever #if a horned man approaches you at midnight and goes 'wouldn't it be nice if we never had to say goodbye to anyone ever?' DO NOT SAY YES #also if he starts bragging to you about his sorcerer ancestress DO NOT be like 'yeah but...did she maybe kind of suck' #'was she just super unlikeable personally speaking' #we are so lucky that for some reason malleus is really into all of our weird bullshit #okay shutting up now i promise #i just have so much to say and so few tags to do it in

[novelconcepts]

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets spoilers #yj meta #long post #shauna shipman #lottie matthews #taissa turner #van palmer #misty quigley #natalie scatorccio #the question not being how do you survive the wilderness. the question being how do you come BACK. #the way each of them tries so hard to keep moving forward #unable to untangle the girl in the woods from the adult suffering in polite society #how the world doesn’t want to hear about the pain or the night terrors or the sleepwalking or the addiction #the world wants the bright colors and the flash-bang headlines #the world doesn’t want who they are. who they had to be. it wants pretty perfect tragedy #that specialized environment lives on in each one of them every day #but it’s not a place anyone else can ever go #how do you feed that for so long and then just…stop? #constantly thinking about nat saying we didn’t make it out. none of us. #because no. no they didn’t. the girls died the minute that rescue chance did. what came back was risen from those ashes

[rassicas]

I'm not counting a player character that you made and never thought about further. i mean like. It can be your player character but at least one that has a name (or you intend to name) and some semblance of a story that you've thought about. bonus points if you've been continuously using this character for several years

#splatoon oc #splatoon #my expectations is that a lot of people made ocs in 2018 #also i wonder how many s1 era folks are still making ocs or have been using the same one lol #or if theres anyone who was crazy enough about squid game to make an oc after e3 LOL #anyway i made cress in 2016 i consider him my first proper oc. he didnt have a name for several months tho #he as well as a few other characters i made at that time started out from concepts that i thought were stupid or funny #all the others i drew like maybe once or twice and got scrapped but cress the shitty headphone squid survived and got Deep Lore

[bluuscreen-png]

wild dog

#doctor who #the master #simm master #saxon master #fanart #blood cw #he’s soooo dog coded to me #not in a golden retriever happy lap dog way #in a stray fighting to survive and snapping at anyone who tries to help him way #do u understand

[hanadoesstuffwrong]

Thinking abt the air nomads:

What if, after the war, once the dust has settled a little, Aang goes back to travelling, hoping that maybe he can find at least some trace of surviving airbenders. As an added bonus, he gets to do more of the exploring and wandering that he had to put on hold.

Toph goes with him ofc. She only just got a taste of real freedom and it was overshadowed by ever-present impending doom. While she's on speaking terms with her parents, she isnt quite ready to be back under their roof on a permanent basis. The rest of the gaang have their individual homes and responsibilities that they get back to, though they join for the odd field trip or adventure when they can.

So anyway, they're touring all over the world and over the years they notice just how displaced so many people have become. EK citizens who barely escaped the blaze but lost everything; FN military now decommissioned with no idea how to carry on; people looking for a new start in the hard-won peace. Maybe it starts with Toph heading back to Earth Rumble, where a group of young runaways scrounge for cheap fights to make a little money.

At each turn they find more and more people with no homes to return to and no family to protect them; runaways escaping the roles the war forced them into. Gradually, Aang and Toph start to see that they aren't so different from themselves. They just want a new start.

So they decide to give them one. They clean up the temples and set up villages in the surrounding areas (helps to be master earthbenders), where people can arrive and stay as long as they need. Travellers and refugees pass through in droves, sometimes choosing to stay and rebuild their lives there, sometimes continuing in their wandering with a guarantee that they'll always have a place to return to should they have the need.

Over time, the lemurs grow in number and even some flying bison calfs (hybrids with a relative species maybe?), can be seen in the skies. Whenever the founders visit, it isn't the same but Aang feels a little more at home.

The first time someone asks Aang to teach him his philosophies, and expresses his desire to become a monk, how can he refuse? Maybe it's a former soldier, somebody who's done terrible things, looking for a path to redemption. So Aang teaches him, and then he teaches others. And though they may not be airbenders, they are as earnest and faithful as any nun or monk Aang knew before. The temples become filled with new faces: Firebenders, Earthbenders, Waterbenders and non-benders all wearing Air nomad orange and yellow.

Aang always feared that it would be his responsibility to have airbender children, and the idea of forcing that on someone he loved terrified him. Maybe that's why he waited so long before acting on his feelings for his best friend, his travelling companion, his fellow-village builder and temple-restorer. How could they have a truly happy relationship with this pressure hanging over them? He wishes he could be content with the new way of things that he and his friends have created. But he knows that he can't be the last airbender forever...

Nobody knows why some children can bend the elements and others can't. Is it blood? Is it blessing? Is it the land in which you're born? Or is it the simple allocation of fates decided by the values and norms you're raised believing in? Is it enough to be surrounded by the culture and beliefs of the Air Nomads? Nobody knows...

All they know is that nobody sees it coming when the six-year-old daughter of two non-bender villagers from the Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe sends herself flying twelve feet into the air with a sneeze.

#oops it became a taang au how did that happen #i just think it wld be neat if the air nomads worked more like irl monks/nuns #not necessarily celibate but still made up of people who choose to follow the way of life #instead of the iffy implications of all monks/nuns having no choice because they were born airbenders #i dunno it's iffy to me #taang #my posts #atla #atla headcanon #do we need to rewatch Ice Age 2 ppl?? #repopulation is not a good reason for two people to be together! #avatar: the last airbender #i do also think that given them being nomads the fire nation probably want able to wipe the air nomads out completely #bu they just had to survive in hiding/ in a very diluted form #maybe like the sun warriors do #airbender!Ty Lee my beloved #also wld reflect the themes of unity vs division well if there were more than just airbenders among the air nomads #like how a waterbender can be a ruler of the Fire Nation or a Firebender can run a tea shop in the Earth Kingdom #toph x aang #edited cos someone got upset at my introduction and while i reckon they were willfully misreading i didnt want anyone to misconstrue #to clarify -> any child of aang's wld be an air nomad but there's no guarantee they wld be an airbender #esp if he had a child with an earth or waterbender #and we see how this had a negative effect in canon #hope that clears things up xx

[kabutoden]

bug trolls… i am interested in kankri vantas. if that isn’t too much trouble. your buggy guys are so silly and interesting and i am a fan

here is kankri and his baby brother…. they don’t get along!! i wish they did though id love to see these two go on an adventure together where they look out each other. since kankri is a beforus troll and a vegan, his shell is pretty thin because he’s not getting enough iron. on the other hand, karkat’s shell is heavier then it should be due to stress. thanks for the RQ!! im soooo glad ppl like my sillies :D

#kankris picking up karkat because karkat said fuck you im going to come over there and cram my scythe down your ignorance shaft #kankri said no you arnt. you’re not going to do that. im not letting you do that. #karkat vantas #kankri vantas #homestuck #trolls #buggy trolls #want to see these 2 depending on each other to survive in alternia. i think it would be very hard for them to do #but i think they could grow and develop in interesting ways if they got to be brothers who fight #enrichment in the isopod tank #redbloods #these two are natural drama that’s engaging story!! ive never really read a fic i liked that rlly got into their companionship as brothers #like there’s quite a few abt dirk and dave as brothers #most fics that have both of them focus more on their bonds with the sufferer #if anyone has a recommendation I’d love to hear it #give them crabdad no sufferer make them struggle in this cruel world. highly protective kankri grumpy wrathful karkat #they can’t stand each other but also rely on each other. redblood moment #given that isopods are comparatively social and good natured to many of the other troll buggy species I’ve picked out #that’s what I’m SAYIN #^silly #ok bye

[kittenfangirl20]

I hate this meme so much. They act as is you leaving without any support system because all you have known in life is the Jedi Order is a good thing because the Jedi Order builds a statue of you. Look at how hard life became for Ahsoka when she left the Jedi Order. Do you think a statue is going to help her survive? The only reason why Count Dooku didn’t suffer financially is because he came from an aristocratic family. Others are not so lucky, some don’t even know about their family because the Jedi took them when they were a baby. If I was someone who had left the Jedi Order because I became disillusioned by it and now have struggle to survive, I would be insulted that the Jedi Order had built a statue of me instead of helping me find a way to survive outside of the order.

#star wars #jedi critical #pro jedi dni #a statue is not going to help anyone #tired of this shit #this meme is so stupid #who cares if you are struggling to survive you get a stupid statue #i can’t believe that this is an actual argument pro jedi people are using

[headphonemouse]

#dcst #dr stone #sengen #bat bastard #bokchoy bastard #as an apology to anyone who survived the sengen cave spam the first time #art tag #digital #edit: excuse me. sengen DEN

[vaguely-concerned]

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

#the unwanted guest #the unwanted guest spoilers #the locked tomb #ianthe tridentarius #augustine the first #pyrrha dve #palamedes sextus #this series is going to make me lose my mind completely one day (affectionate) #the locked tomb meta #the fact that ianthe seems to have had some genuine admiration for augustine makes my head spin. of course though. #of course she sees the person who looks the most like he's successfully made himself impervious to the world #utterly untouchable and impossible to hurt because he isn't even really there #and she believes it! even after seeing the john mercy augustine mess at the end! because it's such a seductive idea #when you've stuck yourself in an inevitable ocean of pain to think you could make yourself numb enough that it doesn't matter #it's the emotional equivalent of 'oh there's water all around? well I just won't breathe in then. easy lmao get on my level' #she holds on to that thing from him even when it's been proved to be both impossible and ultimately untrue even in him #because uh. oh I'm about to be kind of sad for ianthe what the fuck is going on. he might actually have been the closest thing #to parental and especially paternal affection she's ever known. certainly known enough to try to model herself after #IMAGINE how fucked up the nine houses must be when augustine the first registers for anyone as a model of psychological survival #ianthe do you really want to be yourself completely so much that you're willing to be nothing. I mean yeah probably but. oh my god #gaining nothing at the cost of everything