{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "the breakout single of Lover is gonna be Paper Rings, which is about kink replacing Christianity as the idiom by which non-elite...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/187342235088/", "html": "

infraredarmy:

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kontextmaschine:

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the breakout single of Lover is gonna be Paper Rings, which is about kink replacing Christianity as the idiom by which non-elite white people form default bonds

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this is gonna be fucking amazing

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explain

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Okay this is maybe a bit overblown, it triggered existing ideas in my head about #sexual media and all that, a little overenthusiastic \u201coh my god, if SHE sees it too, it\u2019s real and I\u2019m on the right track.\u201d So maybe it\u2019s better taken as an example of her writing things so specific yet so open-ended that everyone can see what they want in it.

But I can defend it.

Okay to start with this song feels like a sequel to Stay Stay Stay - bouncy healthy, resilient relationship positivity that uses language that\u2019s kind of therapeutic (\u201cyou should never leave a fight unresolved\u201d, \u201cwho always took their problems out on me\u201d, \u201cI think that it\u2019s best\u201d) and somewhat colloquial (\u201dI just like hangin\u2019 out with you\u2018), distant from the core Taylor Swift character. You\u2026 get a sense this couple owns at least one Funko Pop. Now. First off, the refrain:

I like shiny things/but I\u2019d marry you with paper rings

There are two ways I can see that, first like \u201cthe formal bridezilla accoutrements of a wedding sound nice but we\u2019re poor and I\u2019d accept just you.\u201d

Now that\u2019s specifically not the coastal elite model of marriage as a \u201ccapstone\u201d once you\u2019ve got the rest of your lifepath sorted. Especially when you factor in the painting the brother\u2019s wall - these are people who didn\u2019t move away from home.

The second is that they retain a respect for the symbolic meaning of marriage - either the \u201cblue\u201d one as a capstone of self-constructed life trajectory, or the \u201cred\u201d one as the sanctified beginning of family and household formation - but that aside, what they really want is just you.

And the last decade in Portland honestly I\u2019ve been seeing that from both sides - couples who moved from the mountain and interior west who have no \u2018Merica god, guns, or country in them at all, but who still take it as normal to marry at 22 and have a kid at 24; people who in my generation would have been blue coastal strivers but no longer expect a rise-to-power plotline and might as well settle anyway, into a relationship based on mutual support without external referents

I hate accidents/except when we went from friends to this

Okay but here\u2019s the thing, the song opens with a description of how \u201cthis\u201d happened \u2013 \u201cthe night we first met/went home and tried to stalk you on the internet\u201d, \u201ccat and mouse for a month or two or three\u201d.

That does not sound like an accident, and it goes straight from that to \u201cnow I\u2019ve read all the books beside your bed\u201d without a stop at \u201cfriends\u201d in between. (also that\u2019s a great example of her words=sex thing that she establishes they\u2019ve been sleeping together by saying she\u2019s been reading his books)

So what is it? It\u2019s a counterfactual. It\u2019s roleplay. Or it\u2019s a romantic idiom so prominent in Funko girl\u2019s mind she puts it under that even if it doesn\u2019t apply - the \u201cfriends to lovers\u201d trope that Taylor Swift has been writing all this time, and the acccidental setup that finally brings them together.

OR, she knows it doesn\u2019t apply, but that\u2019s the idiom of \u201chow to get a man\u201d that she grew up internalizing (you ever think about how odd it is that the great 2008 friendzone anthem was written and performed by a woman?) so she was secretly aiming for it the whole time, and as far as he knows that\u2019s what happens but the first lines were the calculations only she saw.

I want your complications too, I want your dreary Mondays, wrap your arms around me baby boy

Like, that\u2019s hurt/comfort, that\u2019s depression reassurance, that\u2019s ASMR, they\u2019re not \u201ckink\u201d per se, but I increasingly see stuff suggesting the old saw is true and women don\u2019t seem to have such a firm distinction between romance and erotica or physical sex acts and relationship power dynamics. That\u2019s also finished off in a gender-swap of \u201cbaby girl\u201d, the sub counterpart to \u201cdaddy\u201d.

The other thing is the recurring \u201cdirty dreams\u201d as the context for how she wants him and in the outro that resolves to \u201cin all my dreams\u201d

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