master of none

i am so happy for you and your ugly fucking boyfriend im serious

can’t wait for spotify wrapped to tell me that i’ve listened to the same three songs all year but in a fun powerpoint graphics kind of way

it’s always “how are you” and never “i thought our story was epic, you know. you and me. (epic how?) spanning years and continents. lives ruined, bloodshed. epic. (you really think a relationship should be that hard?) no one writes songs about the ones that come easy.”

came back wrong trope but the character knows that they came back wrong. they’re so acutely aware of how different they are now from how they were before that it drives them fucking insane. they’re stuck trying to return to somebody that’s long dead. they can never be the person they once were. everybody around them knows it. deep down, they know it too, but they’re trapped in a cycle of their own making. of trying to revive someone that no longer exists.

oh so people have been making their nails look like pretty and polished stones, why am I only finding this out now!!!

i had some thoughts last night in bed about long live making a subtle reappearance in folklore because i’ve decided to interpret it for the most part as a retrospective of her own life and career and how her fame and success have changed her, not necessarily for the better. long live was a celebration of “look what we achieved” and i think there’s subtle nods in folklore’s lyrics to this achievement and her general career trajectory.

“the kingdom lights shine just for me and you” -> “my kingdom come undone” where in addition to the relationship interpretation (“the kingdom inside my room”) this is about the kingdom she once ruled but now no longer feels in control of. what she created for herself became detrimental, toxic, dangerous. also cheeky nod to tiwwchnt “i don’t like your kingdom keys, they once belonged to me” which you can potentially interpret as taylor again talking to her new self from the perspective of her old self. fame changed her for the worse, but she had marvelous time doing it.

“i had the time of my life fighting dragons with you” -> “my winless fight” / “when i’d fight you used to tell me i was brave” - there are so many lyrics about fighting in her music it’s literally super hard to pinpoint which specific fight she’s talking about, but in the context of long live she fought so hard for her chance at this career and to do it her way, and has kept fighting to maintain it, to stay on top, to break all those records (you know she does that on purpose, it’s no surprise). but it sounds like she’s tired of it, tired of constantly fighting herself because at this point in her career her only competition is herself. despite herself, she’s so tired of it. she can’t ever win.

“bring on all the pretenders, i’m not afraid” -> “i’m a mirrorball / the masquerade revelers” AND “you turned into your worst fears” she went from not being afraid to be herself in an industry full of fakes and phonies to becoming one of them. we are the mask and the wearer. when you’re always performing when do you know which version of you is the real one? she’s lost herself in the performance, she no longer feels capable of being “authentic” because she no longer knows what that means. she’s become another masquerade reveler.

“you held your head like a hero on a history book page” -> “you knew the hero died so what’s the movie for?” is just “you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain” taylor killed her old self (the hero, “you had to kill me but it killed you just the same”) and became the villain (“i’ll be the actress starring in your bad dreams”/“so light me up”). she said reputation was a character she played but again, mask and wearer.

“all the years that we stood there on the sidelines wishing for right now” -> “drove my car off the road to the lookout, could have followed my fears all the way down” if you interpret the line from this is me trying not literally, but instead as taylor pausing to take stock of her life, her career, and contemplating whether she should desert the top spot she fought for her entire life. she turned into her worst fears so she would rather be back at the bottom, have a normal life again. if that could ever be possible. she knows, however, that despite herself she will keep aspiring to climb higher, do better, outdo herself, beat herself. “i’m here in your doorway” - despite herself she will keep holding on to her career, she will keep showing up at your party.

“may these memories break our fall” -> “when she fell she fell apart” & “watch my shattered edges glisten” ok fine the first one is a rep poem line but it’s literally been stuck in my brain since last night, because the memories didn’t break her fall because when it all comes down to it, the fame, the applause, the fans, the success, it all won’t save you when you’re at rock bottom with only yourself to reckon with. when you strip all that away, the things you convinced yourself would keep you afloat, and then you sink? you fall anyway? what happens then?

@lookingoutatthecity love this

thinking about the interpretation of our song that posits that they didn’t have a song b/c all the love songs on the radio were very straight and nothing represented their relationship 

annakiki fw20

The Sexual Drama of Nick and Gatsby by Edward Wasiolek   👀

We Need To Talk About Nick: Sexual Divergence, Characterization and the Hardcover Closet in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby by Bill Danielsson

If you only read one of these, you ought to make it this one: It Eluded Us Then: Nick’s Sexuality and Unreliability in The Great Gatsby by Sara Decker

Fortune Teller Art Nouveau 1899 Austrian Postcard  

I don’t even go here but I’m still so angry about what happened to Hunger Games. The CLEAR allegories and political messages that were swept to the side and/or completely ignored in favor of a cool sci-fi dystopia story and a love triangle. The casting of a white adult Katniss. The REMOVAL of all (or nearly all) disabilities from the movies. How every fucking YA book jumped on the hot new trend of Rebel Girl Against Evil Society yet NONE of them managed to grasp that the Hunger Games dystopia wasn’t MADE UP based on some bullshit Hogwarts House sorting type system. And it wasn’t some bullshit teenage wish fulfillment fantasy about being Special and teenagers being The Only Smart Ones but rather Katniss is caught up in a groundswell movement that is so much BIGGER THAN HER. How when the movies came out corporate America started making fashion & beauty “Capitol” lines in a hilariously devastating display of irony. How nobody liked Mockingjay because it was “too dark” as though that wasn’t PRECISELY the point. How Katniss Herself was written off as though she’s just a Mary Sue action hero and she was “annoying” and not uniquely gifted because she had STRUGGLED and STARVED and learned how to survive the hard way and she was ANGRY. It basically inspired a new genre and yet all of these books were so pale and uninspired in comparison and the movies though they largely follow the plot somehow STILL managed to miss the point and the whole message was lost because of both these things.

The Goddess of Spring (1934)

Salvador Dali - Divine Comedy - The Archangel Gabriel