Taylor Came On At 8:09 Bitches

I think Matty Healy is awful but I’m still proud of Taylor putting “but daddy I love him” on the record.

There are songs on the album about her realising he love bombed her and manipulated her. Realising she fell for all of it, she was never going to fix him, and he was never going to be her saviour. She is scathing towards him, but also towards herself for falling for it. She could have left it at that and maybe copped less criticism. Instead she acknowledges the backlash and the defiance she felt in that moment.

It makes me feel the same way her putting Ours on Speak Now does. Grateful that she is open to sharing her stories even when the muse isn’t deserving of the words she wrote, even when releasing it fans the fires of the “I told you so” crowd.

And much like Ours is not a defence of Mayer, BDILH is not an acquittal of Healy. The phrasing she uses is not “he’s a good man they just don’t know him like I do”, it’s “I’m not coming to my senses” “I’d rather burn my whole life down”. The message of the song is not her trying to convince you he’s a good person (he’s not), it’s about a woman stumbling through a crisis and her desperate need to be able to make her own decisions, and that includes her own mistakes - which she seems to be acknowledging Matty was.

It’s fine because I’m actually using a secret technique called writing it in my head and nowhere else.

Of course I know what I'm doing, I'm a writer! (Hurriedly patching a massive plot hole with duct tape and pins)

Today I explained why I can't really travel to Florida right now to my dad & watching him get increasingly frustrated with the realization that Transphobia Exists was honestly something else.

him: "well if you're not allowed to use the men's bathroom, just go to the women's! that'll show them."

me: "yeah but I'm just as likely to have the cops called on me for 'using the wrong bathroom' in there. have you seen me lately?"

him: "but if one of the options is wrong and not allowed then the other one has to be the right option. what do they want you to do?"

my grandma, helpfully: "I think they want trans people to not go to Florida"

my dad: spluttering frustratedly

me: "I think the thing is that you are more logical and reasonable than Ron DeSantis."

the face of a semi-reformed(?) conservative when realizing with dawning horror that laws can be unfair on purpose is truly special tbh

Katniss describing Peeta:

“Medium height, stocky build, ashy blonde hair that falls in waves over his forehead.”

“For the first time, I look at him and realize that ablaze with the fake flames, he is dazzling.”

“He looks so clean and healthy and beautiful.”

“I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with strokes of ink…”

“I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don’t notice because they’re so blonde. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window, they’re a light golden color and so long I don’t see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks.” (girl you’re obsessed)

“My eyes travel up to where the flames licked across his forehead, singeing away his brows but just missing his eyes. Those same blue eyes that used to meet mine and then flit away at school. Just as they do now.”

Katniss describing Gale:

“Gale does look striking in the uniform, I guess.”

For Novice Writers: the quick test for Are You Being Scammed Or Not...

I read a sad case today of a young writer who had had her story rewritten into illiteracy by a so-called publisher, who then abused her in email when she wrote to complain. She wsn’t getting paid for her story – instead she was actually buying copies of the anthology to show people that she had sold a story. And I thought, it is time to remind the world, and to enlighten young writers, about…

Yog’s Law: 

Money flows towards the writer.

That’s all. All writers should remember it.  When a commercial publisher contracts a book, it will pay an advance against royalties to the writer. Money flows towards the writer. Literary agents make their living by charging a commission of between 10 and 20% on the sales that they make on behalf of their clients, the writers. When advances and royalties are paid by a publisher the agent’s percentage is filtered off in the direction of the writer’s agent but the bulk of the money still flows towards the writer. If a publisher ever asks for any sort of financial contribution from a writer, they’re trying to divert money away from the writer, in direct contravention of Yog’s Law. If an agent ever asks for up-front fees, regardless of what they call them (reading fees, administration costs, processing fees, or retainers), then they are trying to divert money away from the writer, in direct contravention of Yog’s Law. It’s a brilliantly simple rule. We should thank James D Macdonald for it in the best way there is. Buy his books

Money flows toward the writer.

No, that doesn’t mean that the author should get paper and ink for free, or that he won’t pay for postage. It does mean that when someone comes along and says, “Sure, kid, you can be a Published Author! It’ll only cost you $300!” the writer will know that something’s wrong. A fee is a fee is a fee, whether they call it a reading fee, a marketing fee, a promotion fee, or a cheese-and-crackers fee.

Is this perfect? No. Scammers have come up with some elaborate ways to avoid activating it. But it’s still a good and useful tool, and will save a lot of grief. Any time an agent or publisher asks for money, the answer should be “No!”

sometimes u just gotta clean your room and apply an elaborate skincare routine and pretend that’s equivalent to getting ur life in order

when youre writing but you forget a word that was in your head milliseconds ago so you just die for the next 93 years

Taylor calls herself crazy all throughout TTPD, but maybe I’m just as insane because I actually think she’s quite normal? Because if I ended a once happy 8 year relationship because the love was gone and we were both no longer in love to then get with a situation-ship who has been pinning for you for years only for them to abandon you when they finally got you, I’d commit full arson.