So here’s an interesting little detail I noticed while rewatching some of the Beacon arc:

Out of all the various disposable pawns, patsies and stooges we’ve seen utilized by Salem over the course of the show (not counting the stooges who make up her inner circle), it’s funny how the only one who seems to actually recognize how much of a pawn he really is, is TORCHWICK of all people.

Like when you look at Roman’s scenes with Cinder and her minions, and particularly his final fight with Ruby in Volume 3, it’s pretty clear that he was always acutely aware that he was a very small piece of a MUCH larger game.

Just compare that to the likes of Adam, Leonardo, Jacques and Ironwood, who by all rights were all COMPLETELY oblivious to how much they were getting played, or just how little they mattered to Salem.

And that gets even more interesting when you consider that Roman was probably the smallest piece in terms of both status and overall significance compared to Salem’s other pawns. Like I actually don’t think for a moment that Torchwick ever actually met Salem or even KNEW about her by name. I imagine all Roman knew was that there was some boss/mom that Cinder was reporting to.

Instead, Torchwick was able to look at everything Cinder was doing and plotting, between manipulating the White Fang, securing several warehouses of stolen dust, planning a full-on grimm-incursion of Vale during the Vytal Festival with the ultimate aim of toppling one of the four Huntsman Academies. Not to mention I imagine Roman had at least an inkling as to the whole Maiden business that Cinder was after, plus the fact that she seemed to be able to control grimm to a degree. Maybe even guess that this was a plot years if not decades in the making.

And it’s pretty clear that Roman took one look at all this and rightly surmised that he was a bit player in a truly MASSIVE game. As he implies to Ruby during their final fight, Torchwick may not have known much about Salem or her plans, but he knew ENOUGH that he didn’t want to be standing AGAINST her.

Again, just compare that to someone like Adam Taurus, so-called big-shot revolutionary with his big plans to topple the oppression of the humans… who seems to have had no fucking clue that his new ‘friends’ were fully intent on sending him and his followers out to die as a DISTRACTION for their own plans.

Or of course, James Ironwood the big, strong (self-appointed) defender of Atlas and (also self-appointed) last, best hope for humanity, who to his dying breath seems to have been ENTIRELY oblivious to just how completely Salem and her minions were playing him like the cheap kazoo he was.

Or just Jacques Schnee the big-shot corporate overlord who wasn’t even important enough to know about any kind of scheme. All he needed was Watts dangling an election win like keys in front of a baby to be a dutiful little pawn for Salem.

Though funny enough, to Jacques’ credit; the moment he hears about the heating grid going down he does seem to immediately catch on that Watts played him for a chump.

And it’s rather amusing that this is more than can be said for the likes of the ‘Faunus Revolutionary’ who bent the knee to a human girl who kicked his ass, or Ol’ Jimmy the Child-Shooter himself.

The Tortured Poets Department - Taylor Swift (Part 2)

9. Guilty as Sin? - you cheeky little minx, Taylor!!! I’m not sure she’s made me blush like this before! A song about…fantasizing outside of your relationship that sounds like the first day warm sun hits your skin after a long, cold winter. And I personally love a song with some good old fashioned yearning, so the bridge really takes it over the top for me. 5/5

Best Line: I really love a lot of lines here, but if “Drowning in the Blue Nile, he sent me ‘Downtown Lights’” is such a killer opener.

10. Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?- this song is an insane, showstopping moment. Edgy, raging, biting, and even still a little witty - “So tell me everything is not about me. But what if it is?” WAOLOM strikes such a good balance of being self-aware of her image and faults with genuine anger. Being the biggest pop star doesn’t make everything just roll off your back. Perfect production that builds and escalates exactly as it needs to. 5/5

Best Line: “I was tame, I was gentle 'til the circus life made me mean. ‘Don't you worry, folks, we took out all her teeth’”

11. I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) - I really like the pseudo-western vibe going on and that lower register is always welcome in my books, but lyrically this doesn’t do a lot for me. It’s building to a punchline we all know is coming. She can’t fix him, shocking, and there’s not enough for me to root for the protagonist being delusional. Ending with just, “Whoa, maybe I can’t” is funny, but it’s not satisfying. If a common complaint is that this album is too long, this song doesn’t feel essential, story-wise. 2.5/5

Best Line: I said all of that, but I do really like the second verse, the best part being, “His hand so calloused from his pistol/Softly traces hearts on my face”.

12. loml- I had a really hard time picking a best line for this song. I almost made a list but decided that would be a little obnoxious. There’s references to her other work expertly weaved in to really great wordplay and metaphors and imagery. The development of the story in the three times you hear the chorus is stunningly good. It’s a pretty simple piano in the background with additional vocal layers right where they are needed for emphasis. There’s something a little bit missing from this song for me to give it a full 5, but I can’t quite put my finger on it and I also think loml really is a grower that’s not meant to be gobbled down in one bite. There’s a lot of lyrical details to be noticed and anything additional might take away from that. I vote this song most likely to be my favorite in 6 months that I don’t understand how it took so long to fully click. 4.5/5

Best Line: I had to do two, from the very beginning and end, that echo each other so it’s kind of like I only picked one then, right??? “Who's gonna stop us from waltzing back into rekindled flames if we know the steps anyway?” —-> “Our field of dreams, engulfed in fire. Your arson's match your somber eyes” Kill me (complimentary). The never before, never since turning into never before and ever since is also brilliant.

13. I Can Do It With a Broken Heart - This song is great. There’s a long history of Miss Swift making bops tinged with depression and anxiety and this may be her most unhinged version yet. A celebration of putting on a brave face when you’re going through some shit. Chanted like a mantra she tells herself, we get a peek behind the curtain of reaching glittering professional peaks not seen in this generation while her personal life was crashing. But no one can ever say Taylor Swift is not a professional - I love the delivery on the outro where she laughs off being miserable and ends with a little spoken zinger. Try and come for her job, indeed. 5/5

Best Line: “I’m so depressed, I act like it’s my birthday everyday. I’m so obsessed with him, but he avoids me like the plague,” tickles me so. This her comedy album. Inevitably going to go viral on Tik Tok at some point.

14. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived - An absolutely killer bridge. It builds the drama up until the very end. Unfortunately, the verses could use a little stronger melody, the first half of the song is a little forgettable and feels a little clunky. 3/5

Best Line: “You kicked out the stage lights, but you’re still performing” is a close runner up but had to go with the opening of the bridge. “Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?” is such a perfect escalation and so descriptive of a feeling without saying any feeling words.

15. The Alchemy- I really enjoy some parts of this song but I unfortunately have the desire to hire someone to dub over every single football reference so I can fully get into it. It’s too much, it’s too on the nose. I like the verses, I love the way she says, “I haven’t come around in so long,” and I think “who are we to fight the alchemy?” is a great line. There are just parts that feel like football Mad Libs in a way that makes this song pretty unlistenable to me. 1/5

Best Line: “This happens once every few lifetimes. These chemicals hit me like white wine”

16. Clara Bow - She’s known for writing about relationships and that has let the fact that songs about her relationship with fame are consistently top tier (despite being unrelatable to almost anyone since she is the most famous person on the planet) slip by mostly unnoticed. One of my favorite Taylor tricks is when she alters the lines a bit each go-round and/or flips the script in some way in the final chorus and this song is really an excellent combination of some of the best Taylor moves. I’m not going to pretend have known who Clara Bow was before this record, but it works and I don’t mind an album that makes me do a little Googling to understand some things. The Stevie Nicks reference is perfection. Saying her own name in a song really snaps you to attention. And I think this is a perfect album closer. She’s reckoning just as much with her own desire for notoriety and the consequences that go along with it as she is with former lovers, if you’re listening. 5/5

Best Line: “Crowd goes wild at her fingertip. Half moonshine, a full eclipse.” I’m not even sure I should include the first part. “Half moonshine, full eclipse” is one of my favorite things she’s ever written. (Side note as this is the most appropriate place to put it: the fucking personal poem from Stevie in the liner notes??? Stevie being a loud YOYO,K stan??? I weep at the coolness. Which is the opposite of cool and continuing to comment on it is even worse, sorry!)

Part 3 on the way!!!

feetman

you will all forgive me for drawing Zenos with big frankenstein neck stitches

growing up on tumblr and believing in my own moral superiority for not fitting the "dni criteria" < cumming a little every time i see myself in ur dni criteria for stupid petty baby shit that you're not even educated enough on to have an intelligent conversation about

Black Sails is just a continuous string of

“Can you BELIEVE this guy is Like That??” — guy who is also Like That, but slightly to the left

when i voice my discomfort brought on by something related to my neurodivergency (overstimulation, headache brought on by specific thing) or my allergies i need everyone to understand that it’s either relatable or funny

What fic do you think best shows your style of writing?

this is such an interesting question! i partly don’t know at all because i like to experiment a lot and i do like to think that sort of experimentation is a part of my style

with that being said i do feel like i really grew into my own with metamorphosis in terms of multichapter writing, and i feel like i was able to do a lot with the structure and feel of it. however, im obviously not always writing multichapters, and i do think i have a different sort of style for shorter fics which i think shows through in stuff like the definition of insanity or doa that relies on snippet-y sections that kind of blur the lines between time, character, and emotions

but honestly i don’t know! i feel like everyone else would be able to say what’s me better than i can :”)

thanks for asking!!

always think its funny when people are into a particular rpf ship but get antagonistic/hostile/morally superior towards other rpf ships like girl we are all in the same house here

I love the Goncharov meme conceptually. It feels like classic academia perhaps, definitely like studying ancient philosophy at times. You get a fragment (knockoff boots), a general context (Martin Scorsese films existing), and then a very long discussion about nothing starts. But the nothingness isn't entirely nothing, and there are still limits to what can and cannot be said framed by both the existence and non-existence of that which is being discussed. Hilarious, truly, and the fact itself so very interesting to analyse in so many ways.

Would y’all. Be mad at me if I said I got really into South Park

Thinking about the dance scene in Emma. (2020) and once again, really admiring the choreography and cinematography, because after watching it the first time, I had no idea why it was as compelling and intimate as it was, but I could tell it was.

The obvious thing going on in the scene is the fact that neither Emma nor Mr. Knightley are wearing gloves, while everyone else is. However, the way this emphasis is conveyed is more subtle than just zooming in on their hands, though that helps. The choreography of the dance emphasizes a few things: hands, approaching, and then withdrawing. So there’s one early-on moment where the characters approach each other and hold up their hands without quite touching, and then withdraw. The choice was made to have the couples withdraw in turns, so while one couple is close, the others have pulled back, which allows for an alternating focus on Emma and Mr. Knightley. If you didn’t catch the gloveless thing the first time, you see it happen again, which helps the message sink in.

I don’t have the knowledge or trained eye to know what’s happening with the camera work, but it works very well.

Then, there are moments where all of the dancers put a hand together and turn. This is the first time it’s clear that everyone else is wearing gloves, so the first time we’re given that information is part of the “withdrawing” or “distancing” part of the dance, so it’s not super in-your-face (which. 2005 P&P is fun but it’s also not trying to be subtle). By the time it’s clear that this is not just an Emma or Knightley thing, but an Emma and Knightley thing, the characters themselves are beginning to cotton on to what’s happening.

Like I mentioned earlier, I didn’t even notice the gloves thing happening in my first watchthrough, but I subconsciously picked up on what they were getting at. I really appreciate that you can pick up on subplots in the dance if you’re looking for them (e.g. Harriet’s blissful, delightful smile and stare the whole time), but they’re also very second fiddle to the main event going on.

I don’t think this is unique to Emma., but I do appreciate their look of concentration the whole dance. There’s one moment where they both sort of notice what’s happening and lose rhythm of the dance, then rush away without leaving-leaving. Then they have to confront each other again, which feels much more appropriate than one moment of “ah, we get it now and we’re both okay with it.” After realizing what’s going on, they now have to live with that knowledge. After the dance is over, they just kind of stare at each other (and it’s really quite funny to me, because they give each other a very intense look but they’re also both a bit bothered. Like, “him?”  or “her??” Really quite funny.)

how many times babes, latine is not an ethnicity

i could not care less about yotsuyu right now I liked her awful messy end ……

thinking about that person who was saying that lucaya made them blind to how bad gmw was and that they were scared to look back on their rina days in a few years and think the same thing about hsmtmts

the kens being portrayed as the villains in barbie is kind of giving the same as fantasy racism (like when the oppressed ethnic group are oppressed as a kind of revenge for something bad they did in the past) like it's pretty whack that the happy ending in barbie is the oppressive matriarchy regaining absolute power again