A joint research effort of u/sc127 and u/lemonsaltwater
Throughout Seasons 2 and 3, swans are a recurring theme in Colin and Pen’s story, both in terms of explicit imagery/sound and allusions to swan behavior and stories. There are so many allusions that it is clear the showrunners, and Julia Quinn,* want us to make these associations, as every detail is intentional.
(\while neither of us have read the books, but based on character names, as well as references to the books on this sub, we can assume this. If you've read the books, please comment with more swan references! We do not present this as something hidden/new but rather for the fun of finding all of the references.)*
The biggest allusion to swans is how swans mate for life and form into bonding pairs quite young, well before mating age. Trumpeter swans bond as young as 20 months — but then wait several years and don’t mate until at least the age of 4-7. Colin and Pen meet at a young age and form a friendship but it then takes several years for it to become romantic.
Let’s plunge our beaks underwater and dive into how these associations play out for Colin and Pen individually and then as a couple.

Colin’s character as a swan

Colin has always been a swan, even if he didn’t lean into it. It shows up in a variety of character traits throughout the seasons.
Male swans are fiercely protective of their partners. We see Colin’s protectiveness over Pen show up multiple times. I did a longer post on the evolution of Colin's protectiveness a few weeks ago, but here are some scene highlights:

• Ep 1x01: After Penelope beams at how happy she is to be wearing a pink dress, Cressida then spills her drink on her. Colin feels defensive of her, and rejects Cressida's bid to dance (big social no-no!) and dances with Penelope instead
• Ep 2x07, 2x08 (Cousin Jack’s scam): He not only gets angry at Mondrich for insulting the Featherington family, but also at Cousin Jack for taking advantage of the Featherington women

https://i.redd.it/3fwzxihqji5d1.gif

• Season 3 has multiple examples of Colin protecting Pen: after his dating help is revealed, balloon, protecting her from a mistake. It is notable that the few times we see Colin angry, they are all related to Pen’s feelings.

https://i.redd.it/u18mhwo8ri5d1.gif
We'll likely see more of this in Part 2 (and various book spoilers indicate this as well).
Male swans are also one of the few species of waterfowl that take an active role in rearing children. Male swans will sit on the eggs and protect them, unlike other waterfowl. In Seasons 1 and 2, Colin is often seen playing with his younger siblings. We see the male swan’s interest in child rearing most obviously in S2 E2 when Eloise recoils from Daphne’s baby and Colin swoops in to tenderly and lovingly hold him.
https://i.redd.it/vce8xkfeli5d1.gif
Swans are known for mating for life and for being dedicated partners, unlike other species of waterfowl. Colin “My Wife” Bridgerton, hello. But even before Season 3, we see this in Season 2 when Colin is the only one in the front row who appears happy at Anthony and Edwina’s wedding, and according to Luke, Colin is actually crying because he loves love so much. He delights in love.
https://i.redd.it/xgsjjbu1mi5d1.gif
Afterwards, Colin finds himself somewhat depressed and “searching for answers at the bottom of his flask” after their “bungled nuptials.” For someone who sees love as "the one thing in life that holds genuine meaning," to see an engagement broken off at that point is deeply distressing. (We'll return to Anthony's wedding later.)
His recurring appearance changes after his extended travels: Swans shed all of their feathers during their annual summer migration period. After his travels between S1 and S2, he returns with facial hair. After his travels between S2 and S3, he returns with new clothing.

Penelope: Duck => Swan

Penelope, meanwhile, needs to go through a transformation in order to become a swan.
(There are a lot of motifs used for Penelope throughout the show: butterflies, cake, etc, but here we’re going to focus on ducks and swans.)
Let’s start with her name. To get all Colin-season-2 for a moment, “Penelope” is believed to derive from the Ancient Greek word penelops, which means “duck.” In modern language, “pen” is the official name for a female swan. And her last name is Featherington.
Something that starts as a duck and becomes a swan… that sounds a lot like the HC Andersen short story The Ugly Duckling, which is about a duck who is cast aside by society for being ugly, only to later learn that the reason it looked different was because it was actually a swan.
While Colin and Pen are more likely to quote Byron than Danish fairy tales, the allusions to The Ugly Duckling are quite strong throughout Penelope’s character arc. (And indeed, fantasy plays a huge role in their worldviews.)
This is directly referenced in the book:

“I thought you believed in me," she said, "that you saw beyond the ugly duckling.”

For a brief refresher on The Ugly Duckling, let’s take Wikipedia’s summary and annotate it:

After a mother duck's eggs hatch, one of the ducklings takes longer to hatch and is bigger and perceived by the other animals as an ugly little creature. It suffers much verbal and physical abuse from its mother and siblings, and has an absent father. It wanders from the barnyard and lives with wild ducks and geese until hunters slaughter the flocks. It finds a home with an old woman, but her cat and hen tease and taunt him mercilessly, and once again he sets off alone.

Penelope is the youngest of three children. From the first episode, it is clear that her mother regards her as less desirable and less beautiful than her sisters. She is repeatedly subject to unkind comments and treatment by her mother and sisters. To take just one example, when suitors come over to meet Marina, and her mother closes courting hour, she says “Please feel free to bid farewell to Phillipa or Prudence, or even Penelope.” (Colin is the only one to take her up on this.)
Portia also insists that Penelope wear bright yellow dresses even though she herself prefers pink. Yellow is the color of baby ducks. Portia tends towards green, often in iridescent fabrics, which roughly maps to the coloring of several types of adult ducks (even females). (In the Ugly Duckling, the ugly duckling is gray rather than yellow like it’s siblings. However, they’ve taken a bit of artistic license here to reinforce the duck imagery.)
We don’t have a direct literal correlation to the cats and hens, but we can interpret “leaving the barnyard” as Penelope being too early presented in society, and the “cats and hens” being the multitude of carry comments and “clucking hens” (judgmental, gossipy mothers) of society.
It’s also interesting how Cousin Jack is presented quite clearly as a hunter in Season 2, and the gun rack on the wall clearly makes Portia uncomfortable. There aren’t direct references to duck hunting, yet that was a common hobby. (We admittedly don’t know anything about rifles and can’t figure out if any of them he displays on the wall are specifically for duck hunting, but would love it if someone knew!) Cousin Jack, of course, nearly destroys their family.

The duckling sees a flock of migrating wild swans. It is delighted and excited but cannot join them because he is too young, ugly, and unable to fly. When winter arrives, a farmer finds and carries the freezing duckling home but he is frightened by the farmer's noisy children and flees the house. The duckling spends a miserable winter alone outdoors, mostly hiding in a cave on the lake that partly freezes over.

We can read this as being when Pen watches Colin leave for Greece, and when she looks at the happy Bridgerton household. She is also too young and immature to fervently declare her feelings as she states one should. Nicola plays her as immature (the little hop when she speaks, high voice), and she is trapped in her mother’s house.
The allusion of the migrating swans is also interesting as one could see all of the Bridgertons as swans who glide gracefully on the surface of society (“pretty Bridgertons”). While not all of the Bridgertons exhibit swan-like behavior, Violet and Edmund do (but more on that below). Note how in 3x02 Penelope says the place she feels the most comfortable is/was the Bridgerton Drawing Room at Sunday tea -- surrounded by the flock of swans.
We could be a bit literal with our interpretation here and say that Colin’s protection of Pen with the Ruby scam is equivalent to the farmer’s care, and then is scared off not by children but his own friends. But I think we can look at it more broadly to say that Penelope goes from thinking she will be cared for — as Colin says during their dance in 2x08 — but then feels cast aside.
She then spends a miserable summer alone, without Eloise or Colin. We know she was miserable by how she is dressed and carries herself in the beginning of 301: hunched over and back in an old gown with her protective helmet of curls.

The duckling, now having fully grown and matured, cannot endure a life of solitude and hardship anymore. It decides to throw himself at a flock of swans, feeling that it is better to be killed by such beautiful birds than to live a life of ugliness.

When we first meet her in 3x01, it is clear she has had an awful, lonely summer. She is shown in her old clothing -- notably more pink but still yellow, a sign of the impending transition -- and looking shy and hunched over.
https://i.redd.it/b1fn60pwqi5d1.gif
But she resolves to fully break free of her family and marry. Her first dress is iridescent emerald green — the color of peacocks, which is likely the most direct motif given she hides behind a peacock in the garden, but it is also the color of adult mallards and several other duck species.
She throws herself into the fray at great personal risk rather than having to continue to live with her family of ducks that reject her. However, she is still awkward and unsure of herself. While she walks down the stairs with confidence, once she's on the floor, she's isn't fully carrying herself with confidence, and sort of slides her feet along the floor in a slouchy manner. She then proceeds to bungle her conversation with the lords who approach her. In other words, she still sees herself as an ugly duckling -- or perhaps ugly duck since she's grown. But Colin is able to see beyond that and has the first glimmers of starting to notice her as something different than everyone else.
https://i.redd.it/i2dcbfb1qi5d1.gif
Part 2 speculation:

The Ugly Duckling is shocked when the swans welcome and accept it, only to realize by looking at his reflection in the water that it had been not a duckling but a swan all this time. The flock takes to the air, and it spreads its wings to take flight with the rest of its new family.

Penelope is shocked when Colin has feelings for her, and according to the trailer, is welcomed with open arms by Violet and the rest of the swan’s family (except Eloise, who does not exhibit swan-like behaviors herself, but that's a different topic). Given the focus on mirrors so far this season, perhaps this combined mirrougly duckling/swan theme will reappear. Penelope will then integrate herself into the Bridgerton family and identify more with them, rather than her family of birth. She thus gets both self-acceptance, a husband, a loving family, and freedom all at the same time.
Given the use of mirrors this season, I expect Colin will literally and figuratively help Penelope see herself in the mirror the way he sees her, in a parallel to what Colin says in S2 E2 about her letters:

Your letters were so encouraging. I thought, if Penelope can see me this way, then surely I can too.

A brief note on Penelope's clothing
We can see hints of this in her clothing. Over Season 3 Part 1, Penelope’s clothing changes from Featherington green to Bridgerton blue. Yet in the kiss scene and Colin’s dream, she’s wearing dresses that are such light blue/green that they almost appear to be white, and she doesn't seem to wear these dresses in other scenes. (The dream one is similar to the market scene, but the sleeve detailing is different -- it's much more feathery. Hmmm.) While white dresses can imply wedding, perhaps another thread to pull here is their swan-like whiteness. The moment when they kiss is the first time it occurs to him to see her romantically, and it is also the first time he sees her in a white dress. That she is in white in his dream reinforces the idea that he sees her a swan.
(Yet they aren't fully white — so there is still evolution to happen.)
https://i.redd.it/498qr6joqi5d1.gif
https://i.redd.it/a02jcjq5ti5d1.gif
Colin calling her Pen — "swan" — from the very beginning
And lastly, back to her nickname. The first time we ever see Colin talk to Penelope is in S1 E1 after Colin visits the Featherington house during courting hour for Marina, he refers to her as Pen. He refers to her again as Pen when they dance later in that episode. The viewer thus sees her transition from Penelope, a duck, and then becomes Pen, a swan. Colin has thus always seen her as a swan, even if he didn’t realize it.
(We have not done a full analysis of the times he calls her Penelope vs the times he calls her Pen, nor of other people using her nickname.)

Audio and visual swan motifs

So, Colin is always a swan, and Pen transitions from duck to swan. Several times throughout the seasons, we see direct and indirect nods to swans in terms of imagery, dialogue, and other scene elements when Colin and Pen are together.
It’s notable that, as far as we can tell, swans and swan noises largely only show up when Colin and Pen are together. (There is one exception, discussed in the next section.)
The most obvious is in 2x05:

COLIN: After all, everyone else is finding some purpose to their lives. Anthony is to be married. Benedict has his artistic pursuits. And, well, here I am... feeding the ducks. [Looks at a swan as he says this]
PENELOPE: I am sure the ducks are most grateful.

https://i.redd.it/53fkdvblui5d1.gif
https://i.redd.it/0lqr6dxnui5d1.gif
The implication being, of course, is that Colin does not realize he's not looking at a duck but at a swan. His feelings for her aren't romantic yet. But he is really looking at a swan — Pen. And that she, not the ducks, is grateful for his company and conversation.
Interestingly, quacking is heard in the background. It’s hard to say whether it’s ducks or swans — perhaps it’s intentionally ambiguous.
Singing swans = courting activities? Or a shift in feelings for Colin?
But let’s pull that thread a bit, as swans singing comes up several more times. Swan songs have historically had an association with death, yet “their sounds are more distinguishable during courting rituals and not correlated with death.” We could then interpret hearing swan songs as times that are courting-esque, or perhaps moments when Colin’s perspective on Penelope is starting to shift.
In 2x06, Penelope has a heated conversation with Eloise about Eloise’s feelings about Theo. Eloise asks her if she’s ever felt the torment of feelings for someone, and Penelope says she could only imagine it. She then looks over at Colin and swans are heard in the background.
A few moments later, when Penelope walks over to Colin for the “purpose” conversation, swans are again heard in the background. (Listen very closely as she walks over to him.)
In 3x01, when Colin and Penelope talk in the garden after the presentation, swans are heard in the background as Colin looks at her while she looks away. In this scene, Colin is wearing his beautiful embroidered vest, which features a duck near the collar. It also features a parrot. (Shout out to u/EverEarthling for this amazing deep dive on the vest!) Perhaps when Colin bought this vest in Paris, he still viewed Penelope as a duck, and himself as a parrot (i.e. one who parrots the behaviors of what society expects). Given this, we might not see this vest again, as gorgeous as it is.
https://preview.redd.it/9r4qb648wi5d1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=facbf720d29560adad66b31923c1646ab7fc66c8
While we might think these were coincidences because they happened to be near water, it seems unlikely, as there are a lot of garden/park/outdoor scenes where no swans are seen or heard.
In 303, at the end of the Willow scene, swans are heard in the background as Penelope leaves. Swans then re-appear the Hawkins Balloon Fair. There is a giant wicker statue of a swan, decked in lilacs and light pink roses, off to the side of the balloon. (Lilacs being the favorite flower of the Bridgertons and light pink being the Bridgerton color of first love.) While we don’t get an obvious camera angle of this, based on body positions, Penelope would have been looking at this swan statue the entire time while talking to Debling.
https://preview.redd.it/x25logl1wi5d1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3e95b51b6a6cf37cfb0010ea699158f5bfd12b86
Here's Nicola goofing around with said swan statue.
https://preview.redd.it/j1n4t28svi5d1.jpg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75bfa6f3a86aa6890d9ee9f8afc296b1762b77e2
In 3x04, the Queen has dancing swans in her wig. And, this is the first time in the season when Colin and Penelope dance together.
https://preview.redd.it/kmvtrgniki5d1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6caac598ac9992cd65b278059a1da22caa214e23
We also have a small wink in terms of grass. Swans who have not yet begun mating, even if they are paired, will gather in flocks in fields of grass. Paired swans who are too young to mate will move throughout the flock socially yet still be paired — much like the environment of a ball. In 2x03, Colin mentions how he once spent meditating for hours on a single blade of grass, and in 3x03, when trying to impress Debling and looking directly at a swan, Penelope says how she likes grass.
(Perhaps we can also interpret this to mean that Eloise is not a swan: she says she’d rather watch grass grow than talk to other debutantes. But, again, that’s for another post on Eloise being different than her siblings.)
Interestingly, at these swan social gatherings, “some individuals will have several courtships with other members of the flock, whilst others, tend to stay away from densely populated parts of the herd and do their own thing.” Sounds like Colin and Pen!
From the book, there's a mention of a "swan song:" (credit to u/leadwithlovealways)
https://preview.redd.it/4rui2ve22j5d1.png?width=3405&format=png&auto=webp&s=e0b63ac184f171f44735d9e58d2e43aff311383f

Colin + Pen = Swans

Let’s talk for a moment about the behaviors of bonded swan pairs and their mating behaviors, as there are a lot of parallels.
One important part of the beginning of the swan courting ritual is that both will drop their wings completely to their sides, and not puff themselves up at all. We can see this literally in terms of Colin and Pen in the carriage (both have their arms down at their sides), but also metaphorically: they are both at their most vulnerable, their least puffed-up, in the entire season.
https://preview.redd.it/2jmk55zcxi5d1.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c3d3ce9c8046d8dacadf0254090ba5b2d6db57b
When swans are bonded, they will press their chests together and bend their necks together and rest their foreheads against one another, forming a heart shape. In their first kiss, we see Colin rest his forehead against Penelope’s ever so slightly — somewhat tentatively, almost, and his chest is not pressed to hers. (It is in his dream, though.). We see the forehead-resting and chests pressed together more times in the carriage scene.
https://i.redd.it/dqaj33bbyi5d1.gif
https://i.redd.it/unk6l20fyi5d1.gif
Mating dances
First, watch this video of swans doing a mating dance. (Or read, if you prefer.) Note how look away from each other and then back with intense eye contact.

They will stare at each other during the up and down motions of the necks and will sometimes raise both heads together at the same time to look at each other with sideways glances as they turn their heads from side to side.

Now, let's pivot back to Bridgerton -- and to another couple. In 2x05, Anthony and Kate’s pivotal dance when they can no longer ignore their feelings for one another resembles the courting dance of swans, with their arms interconnected and circling around another. While one could say that’s true of most dancing, this one is particularly striking, and perhaps it's when Anthony drops his rakishness or ability to think about others and starts to accept his committed, swan nature (though it takes him some time). You can also see echoes of the swan mating dance in how they pass one another side-by-side in Simon & Daphne's dance when they're truly in love, though the Kate/Anthony dance is much clearer.
The closest we’ve seen to Colin and Pen dance like this is 2x08, yet that dance is much more tentative than Kate and Anthony’s, and only bears a very faint resemblance to the swan mating dance. They make eye contact, but it is not intense or focused. Colin also refers to her as "Penelope", not "Pen," during that dance, and they barely touch. Distance is implied in multiple ways. But back to the topic of this post, one has to wonder whether we’ll see Colin and Pen dance in a way similar to a swan mating dance in Part 2.
Swan mating rituals
Now we're going to dive a bit deep in terms of parallels between swans and intimacy. Yes, this is completely fucking unhinged on an already unhinged post. I’m sorry if you will never be able to look at swans the same again.

• Swans will keep intense eye contact during courting and mating. Yup, check.
• While mating for most birds lasts only a few seconds, for swans it can be at least 20 minutes if not up to an hour. Seems fitting given the mentions of a 10-minute long intimacy scene in Episode 5!
• Right before swans engage in the act, the male swan will drape his neck over the female swan’s. We seem to be getting hints of this in the trailer, with Colin standing behind her in the mirror.
• We're going to skip over specifics of swan sex positions. That would simply be too unhinged.
• Right after mating, swans stay close together and echo the head turning/tilting of the courting ritual. One can hope this means we get lots of after-sex cuddling. If not, it’s totally in headcanon now.
• After mating, swans will clean one another. We can see this in how Colin lovingly puts Pen’s dress and hair back in place before straightening his own clothes in the carriage scene.
• Swans also tend to mate many more times than is necessary in order to fertilize eggs. Based on this, and based on what we’ve heard about Part 2, we’re probably going to see this parallel, too.
• Male swans eagerly build a nest once they’ve decided to mate. This matches what we’ve heard about Colin quickly buying a house for him and Pen.
• Swan couples that are new to a territory/nest usually don’t lay any eggs for the first year, so maybe they’ll wait a bit before having children. But that seems unlikely with these two given that birth control didn’t exist…

Looking forward

Given that swans mate for life, we can be guaranteed a happy ending here.
As the show goes on, one can predict that swans will represent the two of them in various ways, and that we might expect to see swan motifs in the decoration of their new home. (In the Part 2 trailer, in the wedding scene, the walls are decorated with a swan motif.)
https://preview.redd.it/yhtphnem1j5d1.png?width=2436&format=png&auto=webp&s=3dab8825cccd5db6cd6c8f35c1f9f8605a4e68b1
In terms of children, swans keep their children close to them during their early life. We therefore might be able to predict that both Colin and Pen will likely be very attached to their children, and we will be unlikely to see them without their children once their children are in the picture. Even though Colin loves to travel, we could also predict he’ll quickly want to settle down and delight in being at home with their children, just like a swan.
Since male swans actively participate in child rearing, we also hope we’ll get to see lots of heart-warmingly adorable scenes of Colin bouncing their babies on his knees and taking care of them in future seasons. Maybe we’ll be lucky and even get a Regency-ified version of baby wearing with Colin wearing their baby wrapped around him with a shawl!

Bonus: Press tour Easter eggs!

In the Netflix India Bollywood/Bridgerton video, Luke wore a duck sweater. u/sc127's read on this:

Black Swan theory regarding Nicola's outfit: Do you think it's alluding to Colin and Pen getting married? In the eyes of the Ton, they would consider the Polin relationship as a Black Swan. It fits the criteria of being a surprise, having a major effect, and can be rationalized in hindsight.
Pink Ducks on Luke: I think the symbolism is more straight forward compared to Nicola's outfit. Pink is Pen's favorite color and it is the Bridgerton color of first love. Colin is in love with a duck named Pen :)

https://preview.redd.it/mrxy2a7v1j5d1.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=2c4d919cbd7c18dab681e5516098c540e7d79b12

Before we begin, let me say I love the Jewish people and Christians, and I consider all of them my brothers and sisters, as I do all people from all religions and walks of life. We are all God's beloved children.
I thoroughly cherish the ancient wisdom contained in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and in the sacred books of other faiths as well.
Yet over the course of several decades, I discovered several inaccurate teachings which I would like to review. It may not be what most people consider a "conspiracy". Nevertheless, these misconceptions must be revealed for the truth to be known.
Egyptian origins
Judaism - the Jewish religion - originated in ancient Egypt. A mixed group of people from multiple nationalities, including Egyptian, were expelled from Egypt, taking Egyptian beliefs and practices with them, including Egyptian temple designs.
This theory has been around for nearly a hundred years. Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis who lived from 1856 to 1939, wrote about Judaism's link to ancient Egypt in 1939, the final year of his life.
From Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten:
"One of the first to mention this [theory] was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, in his book Moses and Monotheism.[235] Basing his arguments on his belief that the Exodus story was historical, Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest who was forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death. Freud argued that Akhenaten was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve.[235] Following the publication of his book, the concept entered popular consciousness and serious research.[240][241]"
In this post, I will provide my own arguments supporting Freud's proposition.
I started thinking about the link between ancient Israel and ancient Egypt many years ago during my Bible studies. I was also fascinated with the histories of ancient Egypt, Sumer, Babylon, and others.
Over the years, I began noticing some very significant overlapping beliefs that cannot be dismissed. Some of these points are already known and hotly debated; others are my own observations.
I will be brief, however. This topic is absolutely huge in scope - covering history, archeology and religion. If I were to cover the topic to its fullest extent, it would be a book. I will spare you that torture and simply give you the abridged version.
My purpose? I put this out there for debate and further research.
The exodus out of Egypt
In the late 1300's BC, a large group migrated out of Egypt in what is known as "the exodus".
The exodus out of Egypt
Who were the people who left Egypt in the exodus?
The Bible claims they were almost all Israelites who were living in misery in Egypt. But there is good reason to believe the majority were actually Egyptians, as I explain later.
Black box - where the exodus settled
The group who left Egypt eventually settled between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, forming the nation of Israel.
Three major similarities
Several similarities exist between ancient Israel's religion and ancient Egypt's religion. These similarities are so striking, I propose the Jewish religion actually originated in Egypt, and was brought out of Egypt in the exodus.
• 1) Let's start with the most glaring similarity... the temples.
Ancient Egyptian temple
Key features of the ancient Egyptian temple:
a) outer courtyard, b) two large pillars at front entrance, c) a grand hall, d) an inner shrine with statue.
Left - Moses' tabernacle / Right - Solomon's temple
Key features of Moses' tabernacle and Solomon's temple:
a) outer courtyard, b) two large pillars at front entrance, c) first hall called "the Holy Place", d) an inner sanctuary called "the Most Holy Place" where the Ark of the Covenant was housed.
The similarities between ancient Egypt's temples and Judaism's designs are too similar to dismiss. I conclude those who left Egypt in the exodus brought with them Egypt's temple designs.
• 2) Animal sacrifice is another similarity I propose was brought out of Egypt in the exodus.
"...some of the earliest archeological evidence suggesting animal sacrifice comes from Egypt." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sacrifice
• 3) Lastly, in agreement with Sigmund Freud noted above, I propose Jewish monotheism (worship of one god) was also brought out of Egypt by the migrants who left in the exodus.
Monotheism from Egypt? Wasn't Egypt polytheistic, worshipping multiple deities?
Not always. Egypt had briefly experimented with the worship of one God who was without form. And this period of monotheism in Egypt lines-up perfectly with the time of the exodus.
Egypt's brief experiment with monotheism
There was a brief period in Egypt's history when monotheism flourished. This was during the reign of Akhenaten, around the middle 1300's BC.
Prior to this, Egypt had always practiced polytheism. But Akhenaten reformed Egyptian religion, focusing on one god instead - "Aten" - who was elevated to supreme god, and "the sole god of the Egyptian state religion". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aten
There is much debate over exactly how monotheism was practiced during that time. As Wikipedia explains - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten:
"The views of Egyptologists differ as to whether the religious policy was absolutely monotheistic, or whether it ws monolatristic, syncretistic, or henotheistic.[14][15] This culture shift away from traditional religion was reversed after his death."
For this post, it does not matter how narrow or how broad Akhenaten's monotheism really was. What matters in this discussion is that Akhenaten's reign was an interruption in Egypt's religious system. Akhenaten reformed Egyptian religion, which did not sit well with the traditional priestly class.
After Akhenaten died, Egypt returned to its previous religious system. Akhenaten was vilified, his images chiselled and defaced. Wikipedia adds:
"They discredited Akhenaten and his immediate successors and referred to Akhenaten as "the enemy" or "that criminal" in archival records."
This is why today he is described as "the heretic king", referencing how he was considered after his death.
Exodus from Egypt
I propose Moses was a high ranking member of Akhenaten's court, perhaps even a prince as the Old Testament describes him. Moses likely took over the leadership of the population of monotheists after Akhenaten died.
As Wikipedia notes (already quoted above) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten:
"Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest [a priest of the god "Aten"] who was forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten's death."
I conclude these were the migrants who left Egypt in the exodus. They were Egyptians who practiced monotheism, lead by their high priest, Moses - who was also an Egyptian and priest of the god "Aten".
The monotheists had become unwelcome in the land of Egypt which had returned to polytheism. Akhenaten's son - the famous King Tut - even changed his name to disassociate himself from his father and the monotheism he had introduced. King Tut's original name was Tutankhaten, which he changed to Tutankhamun after Akhenaten's death.
As Wikipedia explains - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun:
"The cult of the god Amun at Thebes was restored to prominence and the royal couple changed their names to "Tutankhamun" and "Ankhesenamun", removing the -aten suffix."
The suffix at the end of their names indicated whom they worshiped, or the god they were associated with. Akhenaten's suffix was "aten", taken from the god "Aten" whom he associated himself with. Tutankhamun's suffix was "amun", taken from the god "Amun" whom he associated himself with.
King Tut thus changed his name to show he was not connected to Akhenaten or the monotheists who worshipped Aten. Egypt's brief experiment with monotheism was over.
Clearly there was a lot of hatred for that brief experimentation with monotheism. What would the atmosphere have been like for the followers of that monotheistic system after Akhenaten died? I imagine there would have been widespread persecution, or at the very least, discrimination.
I propose this lead to the expulsion of a large mass of people out of Egypt in the exodus. They were the monotheists of Egypt - composed mostly of Egyptians, but likely included foreigners living in Egypt who also practiced the monotheism introduced by Akhenaten.
Moses led this group of fellow monotheists out of an angry Egypt that clearly resented the upheaval Akhenaten had brought into Egyptian life. It must have been a forced expulsion, for they were driven into the desert where they were left to roam and fend for themselves. They would not have chosen to go there on their own.
The dates match
And the dates match. Akhenaten reigned from about 1352 to 1335 BC. Moses lived from about 1391 to 1271 BC. (The Bible writers claim he was 120 years old when he died. Could be true, I suppose.)
According to the Bible's account, Moses was 80 years of age at the time of the exodus, dating it to about 1311 BC. That somewhat fits, putting the exodus some 24 years after Akhenaten's death.
Personally, though, I do not see that it would have taken 24 years to expel a group of monotheists who were no longer welcome, whose founder (Akhenaten) was vilified, defamed, and so vehemently hated. I propose the monotheists were expelled right away, perhaps a year or two after Akhenaten's death.
King Tut - Akhenaten's son noted above - was only 6 years of age when Akhenaten died in 1335 BC, much too young to rule as Pharaoh on his own. It wasn't until 3 years later in 1332 BC when Tut finally ascended to the throne at the age of 9. During this brief interval of 3 years, Egypt's rulership was in contention. There was likely a power struggle. I propose it was during this 3-year period of upheaval when the monotheists were expelled.
Another link placing the exodus at the end of Akhenaten's life is a regional plague which struck Egypt and a large part of the Middle East during the last 5 years of Akhenaten's reign.
As Wikipedia explains - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten:
"Following year twelve [of Akhenaten's 16-year reign], Donald B. Redford and other Egyptologists proposed that Egypt was struck by an epidemic, most likely a plague.[127] Contemporary evidence suggests that a plague ravaged through the Middle East around this time,[128] and ambassadors and delegations arriving to Akhenaten's year twelve reception might have brought the disease to Egypt.[129] Alternatively, letters from the Hattians might suggest that the epidemic originated in Egypt and was carried throughout the Middle East by Egyptian prisoners of war.[130] Regardless of its origin, the epidemic might account for several deaths in the royal family that occurred in the last five years of Akhenaten's reign, including those of his daughters Meketaten, Neferneferure, and Setepenre.[131][132]"
Sound familiar? The Bible's story of the Exodus includes a plague which affected all of Egypt, killing even one of Pharaoh's children.
When Moses led the monotheists out of Egypt, he took with him many elements of the monotheistic system that Akhenaten had introduced. I propose this is why Moses' tabernacle looked so similar to Egyptian temples, with even more similarities showing up in Solomon's temple.
Joseph was Imhotep
Yet the Old Testament borrows more from Egypt than just its religious concepts. I propose it also borrows a very famous person... Imhotep.
Multiple similarities exist between Imhotep (a high ranking administrator in ancient Egypt) and the Biblical Joseph (who lived in Egypt before Moses). I propose, as many others do, that the Joseph of the Old Testament was based on Imhotep of ancient Egypt for 3 reasons:
• 1) Let's start with their names...
In "Imhotep", the 1st vowel is "i", the 2nd vowel is "o", the 3rd vowel is "e", followed by a "p".
The name Joseph in Tiberian Hebrew is "Yoseph", and in Aramaic is "Yosep". In both cases, the 1st vowel is "y" (pronounced as short-"i"), the 2nd vowel is "o", the 3rd vowel is "e", followed by a "p" - just as in "Imhotep".
Even the "t" in Imhotep and the "s" in Yosep use similar movements of the tongue.
• 2) Next, their status...
Imhotep occupied a very lofty position in Egyptian court. He was "chancellor to the Pharaoh Djoser, possible architect of Djoser's step pyramid, and high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep
Joseph, for his part, is described in the Bible as having been elevated to the 3rd highest position in Egypt.
• 3) Finally, their great works...
"Imhotep was one of the chief officials of the Pharaoh Djoser. Concurring with much later legends, Egyptologists credit him with the design and construction of the Pyramid of Djoser, a step pyramid at Saqqara built during the 3rd Dynasty. [17] He may also have been responsible for the first known use of stone columns to support a building.[18]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep
Similarly, the Bible describes Joseph as having supervised the construction of numerous large stone granaries in which to store "all the grain of Egypt".
Though granaries and pyramids differ in design, we have to acknowledge the similarity... both men were in charge of building massive stone structures.
Also, to the Israelites living after the exodus, when the Old Testament was written, the pyramids of Egypt likely looked to them like the remains of giant granaries of long ago. Thus, where the ancient Egyptians credited Imhotep with constructing pyramids, the Israelites credited Joseph with constructing the same structures - which they thought were old ruined granaries.
Yet there is one gaping hole in this theory that Joseph was Imhotep... they lived in different time periods. Imhotep lived in the 2600's BC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep), while Joseph lived in the 1800's BC.
Indeed, they lived centuries apart. But let's keep in mind that the writers of the Old Testament did not have such detailed information as archeologists have today. The writers may have placed Joseph in the wrong century, but they were right to place him a few hundred years before the exodus... just as Imhotep also lived centuries before the exodus.
The Old Testament writers were also correct in the phonetics of the name, the occupation, the works, and the elevated position of importance. I propose the Old Testament writers took Imhotep and claimed him as their own as Joseph.
Claiming Egyptians and others as their own
We can see why the writers of the Old Testament wanted to claim Imhotep as their own, as an Israelite.
Between 1550 and 1077 BC (which overlapped the time of the exodus), Imhotep was worshipped as a "demigod" - one of only a handful of non-royals ever to be deified. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imhotep) He was the equivalent of today's superstar. To claim Imhotep as a fellow Israelite gave them a tremendous boost of pride.
They also claimed Moses as their own. As the Old Testament account goes, Moses was born an Israelite, was sent adrift on a river to escape slaughter, was rescued by an Egyptian princess, and was raised as a prince in Egypt's court.
They also claimed Abraham as one of their forefathers, a Mesopotamian who lived in the city of Ur by the lower Euphrates river near the Persian Gulf.
Noah, too, was claimed as an even more distant forefather, when in fact the story of Noah, the ark, and the flood were copied from the ancient Sumerian text "The Epic of Gilgamesh". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
In The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king Uta-napishtim survived a flood by building a large vessel which he filled with animals. As Wikipedia explains - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utnapishtim:
"The story of Uta-napishtim has drawn scholarly comparisons due to the similarities between it and the storylines about Noah in the Bible."
But why did the Israelites claim all of these people as their own?
• The ancient-Sumerian Uta-napishtim (whom they renamed Noah),
• the late-Sumerian Abram of Ur (whom they renamed Abraham),
• the ancient-Egyptian Imhotep (whom they renamed Joseph),
• and the later-Egyptian Moses?
I propose it was to give the Israelites a sense of national identity. They were about to form a new nation.
Forming a new nation after Babylon
In 597 BC, Babylon besieged Jerusalem, taking several thousand Israelites captive to Babylonia. More Israelite captives were taken during the following 10 years. In 587 BC, Jerusalem and its temple were ultimately destroyed. Israel was no longer a nation; its people were captives in Babylon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_captivity
Nearly 50 years later, in 539 BC, Persian king Cyrus the Great and his armies conquered Babylon. As per his tradition, he benevolently released captives.
"Cyrus was particularly renowned among contemporary scholars because of his habitual policy of respecting peoples' customs and religions in the lands that he conquered." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great
The Israelites were about to be freed. We can picture Cyrus' officials gathering the Israelite priests and leaders together, telling them to prepare themselves for their return back to their homeland west of the Jordan River.
After nearly 60 years in captivity, the Israelites needed to organize themselves into a new nation. They needed laws, a history, and a national identity. I propose this is when the first section of the Old Testament - the Torah - was written... in 539 BC in Babylon, just before returning to their ancestral land west of the Jordan River.
The Torah comprises the first 5 books of the Old Testament - Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
What makes this significant for the Israelites living in Babylon is that these 5 books cover everything they need in forming a new nation - a national history, a code of laws, a structured religion, and a pact with God for his protection - as explained in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torah:
• Of the book of Genesis:
"At God's command ... Abraham journeys from his home [in Mesopotamia] into the ... land of Canaan. ... The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God..."
This book was important, as it paralleled the journey the Israelites were about to make, leaving Babylon (which was Mesopotamia) on their way to the land of Canaan - just like Abraham had done himself some 1,200 years before. Yet they ought not be fearful, for they were the beneficiaries of multiple covenants with God.
• Of the book of Exodus:
"...modern scholarship sees the book as initially a product of the Babylonian exile, 6th century BC..."
In other words, it was initially compiled in Babylon during Israelite captivity.
"Carol Meyers, in her commentary on Exodus, suggests that it is arguably the most important book in the Bible, as it presents the defining features of Israel's identity: memories of a past marked by hardship and escape, a binding covenant with God, ... and the establishment of the life of the community and the guidelines for sustaining it.[31]"
In other words, the book of Exodus gave the Israelites valuable guidelines to forming a new nation.
• Of the book of Leviticus:
"...rules of clean and unclean ... the laws of slaughter and animals permissible to eat ... various moral and ritual laws ... a detailed list of rewards for following God's commandments and a detailed list of punishments for not following them."
In other words, Leviticus instructs the Israelites on matters of worship, cleanliness, and diet. Again, important information for a people about to form a new nation.
• Of the book of Numbers:
"Numbers is the culmination of the story of Israel's exodus from oppression in Egypt and their journey to take possession of the land God promised their fathers."
This parallels their situation at that time, in 539 BC, as they too were about to leave oppression in Babylon on their journey back to take possession of the same land.
• Of the book of Deuteronomy:
"One of its most significant verses is Deuteronomy 6:4 ... which has become the definitive statement of Jewish identity: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one."
In other words, the Israelites leaving Babylon were reminded of their most identifying characteristic... their monotheism.
Borrowing from Babylon
Yet in preparing the first 5 books of the Old Testament - the Torah - the Israelite priests in Babylon borrowed much from Babylon itself.
They borrowed details from Babylonian creation stories, and copied the flood story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh_flood_myth
They also added a code of laws copied from Babylonian laws, as noted in Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi :
"The Code of Hammurabi and the Law of Moses in the Torah contain numerous similarities."
Hammurabi was a king of ancient Babylon in the 1700's BC, some 400 years before Moses' time, and 1,200 years before the Israelites resided in Babylon. It wasn't really the Law of Moses, but the Code of Hammurabi - tailored, customized, and re-branded as the Law of Moses when the Torah was written in Babylon.
Preparing for the journey home
The purpose for compiling the first 5 books of the Old Testament was quite simply to prepare the Israelites living in Babylon for their journey back home.
This is why they referred to the land they were returning to as "the Promised Land", "a land flowing with milk and honey", and their "inheritance".
This is why the Torah contained examples of others who had left one land to go to another. Through the stories of Abraham and Moses, the idea of leaving behind a land they knew to go to a land they did not know was packaged and presented to the Israelites living in Babylon - who were now being asked to do the same thing themselves.
Abraham was born and raised in Ur, near the southern Euphrates river in Mesopotamia. That's the land of Babylon, the same land the Israelites were now living in. Yet he moved out of that land and went to the land west of the Jordan River, and the account tells how God blessed him for it.
In the time of Moses, a great many Israelites were born and raised in Egypt. Yet they moved out of that land and went to the land west of the Jordan River, and the account tells how God blessed them for it.
Do we see the recurring theme? After more than 50 years in captivity, most of the original captives were no longer alive. By the time of their release in 539-538 BC, most Israelites had been born and raised in Babylon. Babylon was the only land they knew. Most did not know the land to which they were going, west of the Jordan River.
But if Abraham and his family living in Mesopotamia did it, if Moses and the Israelites living in Egypt did it - that is, left a land they knew to go to a land they did not know - and it went well for them... then it would also go well for the Israelites being asked to leave Babylon, the only land most of them knew, to go to a land almost none of them knew.
And thus, I propose... The Old Testament was written to organize the Israelites exiled in Babylon into a new nation, encouraging them to pack their belongings and go to the land west of the Jordan River with zeal and courage.
This is why they took several persons from other cultures and made them their own... including Uta-napishtim (whom they renamed Noah), Abram (whom they renamed Abraham), Imhotep (whom they renamed Joseph), and Moses - giving them a sense of national identity and pride.
Many of the Old Testament's accounts, laws, and people were adopted from external sources, modified, tweaked, and repackaged to give the Israelites courage on their return to "the land of their forefathers" and the "Promised Land" - a testament and promise that God would be with them just as He was with Abraham and Moses and all the families who made similar moves so very long before.
I contend...
Yet I contend the most important piece of information was withheld from the Israelites living in Babylon... that their religion was started by an ancient Pharaoh of Egypt whom they didn't even know... Akhenaten.
I contend their leader Moses was not of Israelite descent, but was Egyptian, a high priest of the Egyptian god Aten.
I contend the early Israelites were not descended from Abram of Ur in Mesopotamia, but were descended from Egyptians, monotheists who were expelled from Egypt when the founder of their religion - Akhenaten - died.
I contend the Israelites were first told they descended from Abram in 539 BC when the Torah was written, as they preapred to resettle west of the Jordan River. I further content the only reason they were told they descended from Abram of Ur was to draw a parallel between Abram's leaving the land of Sumer (same land as Babylon) to go west of the Jordan - just as the Israelites were being asked to leave Babylon to go west of the Jordan in 539 BC.
I contend Jewish religion was shaped by Babylonian mythology, and their nation was built on Babylonian laws. I further contend that had the Israelites not been taken captive into Babylon, they would not have had the law code they had, nor the same story of creation, nor the story of Noah's flood - for these were all Babylonian.
Even their temple and their monotheism were not entirely theirs, but were Egyptian.
As much as I cherish the ancient wisdom found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, I must draw attention to the religion's origins... it originated in Egypt, with significant restructuring in Babylon.
Joseph Cafariello

Recently, Taylor has been using the phrase “dear diary” to describe her music on the Eras tour. Prior to the release of TTPD, she was using language like “excruciatingly autobiographical” and “live-streamed public autopsy” - which, in retrospect, seems like a hint towards the concept of TTPD as a “post-mortem.” In changing this language, it stands to reason that she may be hinting at something new.
I started to wonder if she might be pointing us back towards the Lover diaries. She’s also been mentioning the number 4 - “Dear Diary, I felt a feeling for 4 seconds” - and how many Lover diaries are there? 4! Taylor Nation also recently posted about the Lover diaries. (Credit to u/Different_Hedgehog16 for sharing the screen shot in the megathread!)
https://preview.redd.it/5hoae7tyrg5d1.png?width=432&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc428aa24495806db3c12dc5b53b0878c25f10a7
There have also been theories swirling that we might get a redo of the Miss Americana documentary, like this post. I’d argue that the diaries and documentary, as longer story-telling mediums, were essential to the fabric of the Lover era as a vehicle for a coming out. And if she were to re-do that coming out, she might also revisit those same story-telling mediums she attempted to use during Lover.
So, I decided to take a look back at the Lover diaries in a post-TTPD world to see what we can glean. There are quite a few interesting things, but what struck me first and foremost were connections to ME! and how those connections intersect with our current position on the road to "meet me at midnight." So, that is what I am going to largely focus on in this post.

Intro: Significance of the Lover Diaries

Taylor’s music has long been branded “diaristic.” But it’s one thing to write diaristic music; it’s another thing to release your diary. Sharing your diary signals a new level of confession, unveiling something that is typically kept private under lock and key.
Of course, the diaries she released are not her literal diary. They are a curated selection of entries she chose to release and potentially edited for public consumption. These diaries are art pieces, packaged together as an accompaniment to the album. And as art, it doesn’t matter how literally “true” the diaries are. What matters is the meaning they convey. I’d argue that these diaries can tell us a lot about the Lover era.
As a concept, the first and most obvious thing the very existence of the diaries tells us is that the Lover era was intended as an era of authenticity and confession. This won’t shock anyone in this corner of the internet, but I think the very fact that she included her diaries to accompany the album lends credence to the failed coming out theory.

Opening the Diary Drawer in the Lover Era

Taylor has never used the word “diary” in a published song, but she did use the word in her poem for reputation, If You’re Anything Like Me:

If you’re anything like me,
You never wanted to lock your door,
Your secret garden gate or your diary drawer
Didn’t want to face the you you don’t know anymore
For fear she was much better before…
But Darling, now you have to.

Here, she describes how she never wanted to lock her diary drawer - never wanted to have to hide parts of herself from the world behind a locked (closet?) door, behind a gate in a secret garden. It’s telling, then, that with her next album release, she unlocks the diary drawer. This signals an intention to step out from behind the door and into the daylight.
The next few lines of the poem are relevant here, too. She describes not knowing herself anymore and not wanting to face herself - a self who she fears was much better “before.” Before what? Before she became estranged from herself, perhaps? But now she must face this self she is estranged from. The implication seems to be that after she locks the door, she is alone with herself - and then she must face herself. This idea of facing herself in isolation is reinforced in the next stanza where she speaks of her “own little golden prison cell” and says, “But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.”
She describes meeting herself behind a shut door on reputation. And Lover, in opening the diary drawer, represents an invitation for the world to meet her, too.
Of course, it doesn’t happen, and she finds herself shutting the door again. In that light, it’s interesting that this conception of what it means to meet yourself seems quite opposite to how she describes it in the Midnights foreword: “For all of us who have tossed and turned and decided to keep the lanterns lit and go searching - hoping that just maybe, when the clock strikes twelve…we’ll meet ourselves.” On Midnights, she isn’t shutting the door to meet herself. She is stepping out with lanterns lit to search for herself. And her hope to meet herself is directly tied to an invitation for the audience to meet her, too: “Meet me at midnight.” This shift might suggest a realization that the isolation of the closet is in fact not a place where one can truly encounter themselves. You don’t meet yourself in a prison cell; you lose yourself. To find yourself, you have to open the door. The diary drawer.

Lover as a Return to Herself, Through the Lens of the Lover Diaries

The diaries are a central part of the Lover foreword, the very first thing she mentions. She seems particularly drawn to the diaries from her childhood and teen years; she writes, “What shocked me the most was how often I wrote about the things that I loved.” This becomes her central inspiration for the concept of the album, as she goes on to explain it: “This album is a love letter to love itself.” And further, it serves as the inspiration for a decision she describes making about how she wants to define herself and her identity: “I’ve decided that in this life, I want to be defined by the things that I love - not the things I hate, the things I’m afraid of, or the things that haunt me in the middle of the night. These things may be my struggles, but they’re not my identity.” These words are so central to the thesis of the album that they bookend it: opening the album in the prologue and closing it in the outro of Daylight. And these words are rooted in the spirit of the young Taylor she describes encountering in the pages of these old diaries.
Lover Foreword
This is especially interesting when we think about the death of the “old Taylor” in reputation. Lover was an era of rebirth - not of the Taylor Swift personas she killed off in the reputation era, but of her original self. It was a return to her roots. A return to herself. Consider this quote from Rolling Stone where she says she’s never “leaned into the old version of myself more creatively than I have on this album.” (Credit to u/courtingdisaster for this find!)
https://preview.redd.it/mmn5p2vbug5d1.png?width=432&format=png&auto=webp&s=cb876b96cfa6a1a0734cbdae4882d6a034ff3a2e
This proves out when examining the contents of the diaries. The entries she chose to include are primarily from her youth. There are 51 total entries across the four diaries, spanning 2003-2017. Of these, over half (51%) are from her teenage years. Another 45% are from her early 20s (ages 20-24). Only two entries are from age 25+.

The Lover Diaries and ME!

Looking at the contents of the diaries, the first thing that jumped out at me was the quote she included on the first page of Diary #1 and signed “Me!”
Opening Page of Lover Diary #1
It seems reasonable to think that the concept for ME! was inspired, at least in part, from this process of combing through her old diaries and facing the person she once was. These first pages from age 13 represent a celebration of herself. Her pride in her doodles, branding them “Taylor designs 2002.” Her belief that she would be a big star, that her signature might be worth money someday (hehe). Defiance in the face of anyone who would tell her she “[doesn’t] deserve what [she] want[s].” And a celebration of her words, featured right alongside Kenny Chesney’s. There’s a youthful wisdom in these words that she seems to return to in ME!, a song about celebrating everything that makes her who she is.
There are also visual parallels between the diaries and the ME! lyric video. The ME! lyric video is stylized as handwritten; we actually see her hand writing these words, and she is writing on paper with a Taylor Swift letterhead to boot, leaving no doubt about whose words these are. This in and of itself feels noteworthy, given it’s not a typical style for her lyric videos. The handwritten ME! lyrics tie the song directly to the diaries, also handwritten.
ME! Lyric Video
Additionally, the lyric video is full of sweet childlike doodles that also parallel the diaries - hearts, stars, smiley faces. Some of the imagery from her diary doodles also makes it into the ME! music video.
Left: Young Taylor in the Lover Diaries Right: ME! Lyric Video
If you’re in this corner of the internet, you likely understand ME! as deeply meaningful to the Lover rollout. And these ties to the Lover diaries, which Taylor made central to the thesis of the album in the foreword, lend further credence to ME! as one of the most important touchstones of this era. ME! as a self-love anthem inspired by and dedicated to her younger self, who once wrote: “The world is as big as you make it, never be shameful to fly.”
\"Never be shameful to fly.\" - Taylor Swift in the Lover Diaries, age 13

Connections to TTPD

The Lover era was characterized by a handwritten aesthetic - in the diaries and beyond, most notably in the ME! lyric video. This handwritten aesthetic is not typical for Taylor's work, but where do we see it pop up again? On TTPD, of course. The summary poem is specifically printed to look handwritten, but with none of the flourish of the Lover era. The color has been drained out.
TTPD Summary Poem
We also have a call-back to the Taylor Swift letterhead from the ME! lyric video in the TTPD era's "From the Desk of Taylor Swift." The fonts are not identical, but similar enough to suggest a connection. Both albums come directly from the desk of Taylor Swift.
Left: ME! Lyric Video Letterhead: \"Taylor Swift, Born in 1989, Loves Cats\" Right: Letterhead from TTPD Journal (Merch): \"From the Desk of Taylor Swift\"
These are of course not the first call-backs to ME! and Lover that this community has noticed on TTPD. This is an addition to a long and growing list of connections. I'd argue this is a noteworthy connection because, fundamentally, the excavation of the Lover Diaries - a central part of the fabric of the album and especially of ME! - represented a return to her most authentic self, before she learned civility, and an invitation for the public to encounter that authentic self emerging from her unlocked diary drawer. The Midnights foreword suggests we might now be on a mirrored journey towards "meet me at midnight," and TTPD might represent a pit stop on that journey. (If you're interested in more thoughts on this journey and how it connects to diaristic confession, I wrote this post about it!)
And if that's the case, if Taylor is coming back for herself, it just might mean coming back for the Lover Diaries and the 13-year-old girl found in their pages, who once wisely said, "May you never be scared of goodbye." Judging by a recent mash-up, perhaps Taylor is preparing to take her advice: You're on your own, kid, you always have been. So, take a deep breath as you walk through the doors.

Per Pete's post a couple month's back I'll try and give some background to my journey, that in my eyes has only really just begun. I would be remiss to not give anything back because truthfully, RDT has changed my life entirely. So thanks, Hari & Pete and everyone who contributes to this fantastic Community, especially the mods for putting up with me over the years. Trading can be lonely, so why go it alone?
For those who don't know me I've been around RDT since ~Jan 2022 previously lurking and eventually making call outs in the Live Trading daily chats that were on the subreddit. Today, I'm pretty active in the RDT discord and have been full-time since Dec. 1 of last year. Always happy to chat, but be prepared because I'll give it to you straight if you ask.
My wildly inaccurate Kinfo, if you care: https://kinfo.com/p/ryderlive
Alright, buckle up I can get wordy... sorry.
My Background - I grew up middle class in the suburbs of Chicago, if you know the one that everyone makes fun of, yes that's the one. Both my parents have always been buy & hold (forever) investors for most of their lives, instilled by their parents and raised me to live a very frugal lifestyle. I'd eventually come to learn we were literally the millionaires next door type (in fact I know for a fact my parents read that book) - they still clip coupons to this day. My dad used to say “Unless you get lucky, the only way to make real money is by investing”. I played lots of sports growing up, eventually focusing on soccer and played competitively at a high level and into college forcing me to grow some pretty thick skin when it came to criticism. After college, I spent ~10 years working in tech for an ecommerce platform building out different parts of the customer journey. Now in my mid 30's my wife and I live in SoCal enjoying/paying for the weather, we love to travel, and love to golf. If you hang around the discord long enough you'll probably catch me comparing the mental game between Golf and Trading, the similarities are uncanny. All this to be said, I'll be the first to acknowledge my privilege and recognize that my starting line was likely a few lengths ahead of many others.
My Journey - In the mid 2010s on my commute via the Metra into the city I would listen to The Tim Ferriss Show and he loved to talk stoicism and would sometimes bring up investing and discuss it with some of the individuals he was interviewing in particular Kevin Rose and that sparked my interest.

• Dividend Investing - Following my parents buy & hold forever strategy, at first I was obsessed w/the idea of building a dividend investing portfolio. I wanted to build a portfolio that I could live on passive dividends into perpetuity so starting in 2017 I built a massive google doc and tracked dividends etc. all the way until Jan of last year!

Dividend Tracker - https://imgur.com/bhMrvoA
I still am a long-term investor, buy and hold good companies which that accounts for a large % of my book (and helps prevent any fomo in my short term trading). I just no longer track it like this because its not worth my time and I don't focus on the dividends really anymore. The biggest takeaway here was I spent all my extra money on stocks, and so I became a chip off the frugal block of my parents.

• WallStreetBets - I've always been an avid gamer as well we're talking CS 1.6 and LoL (alpha in college), meaning in turn I spent my fair amount of time on reddit. So in ~2018 queue stumbling into WSB, I will say that place was very different back then from what I remember to how it is today. Names like AMD and MU were being thrown around, I had built a pc when I was younger so I knew a little about these companies and I was already dividend investing and I heard about this cool app I could invest on my phone called Robinhood, so off we went. My risk profile was pretty low and I was still busy working, but I was starting to dip my toe into options and short-term trading. Nothing crazy, however I started tracking all my trades manually in that same google doc going back to the very beginning all the way till August of last year!

Early Journal - https://imgur.com/HdvIGMI
At this point I still considered this just a fun supplement to my real job and the dividend portfolio continued to take priority. Then March 2020 covid hit - our offices closed, I remember packing up all my stuff and going home logging into my TD account and shorting the shit out of the market. On 3/11/20 I made ~10k in a few hours. On 3/13 I gave half of it back and then proceeded to have mixed results into the end of 2020 coming out with a couple grand profit.

• ThetaGang - In 2021 still wfh, lots of time on my hands I found ThetaGang and realized I could take the other side of the trades. I would still take some "wsb" trades here and there but look at SPY in 2021 during the covid recovery. I sold OTM naked puts that whole year and did 10x what I had with strictly WSB style trades in 2020. It works till it doesn't, but looking back it was great to get an understanding of writing options and the greeks. Mind you I was still working full time, but I had picked up golf as well so I wasn't working that hard ;)
• RealDayTrading - Into 2022 I'm not sure exactly how I stumbled into RealDayTrading but from what I can remember it definitely had to do with this guy named HariSeldon being booted out of daytrading. I only had ever been interested in stocks because of my parents so this just seemed like the right place to be and a cool community - with a guy who was like a drill instructor in the Live Trading Chat lighting people up when they made dumb moves (it reminded me of my soccer days). I loved it. I still remember mixing it up with a lot of the people here in the discord still today and Hari would regularly be placing great trades and giving great feedback. I learned so much just lurking in there and eventually making rs/rw callouts. Thinking back on it now after reading Trading in the Zone I was sharpening the blade, in a way you could call this my 1 share/1 contract phase and of course I had mixed results. I continued to track and expanded on my performance now weekly as I wasn't "working" very hard at my day job (thanks covid), but my loses I could cover because of it.

Performance Tracking - https://imgur.com/asF9wgv
Journal Excerpt - https://imgur.com/MY5klNg
Things continued like this through 2022, a mixed bag, I had a bad August and lost 5 figures in a month for the first time so I took a break but still turned a solid profit for the year. My Gf, now wife, and I had packed up since we were both remote and moved out to California to help take care of my Grandmother who lived alone and I eased back into trying to both trade and work full-time. It was a lot to manage and after avoiding a bunch of layoffs I finally got the call in June 2023, right in the lead up to our September wedding and in the midst of my worst performance to date. I had a ~25k drawdown that summer, as I was leveraging my dividend portfolio trying to pay for a wedding/honeymoon. Luckily I got a significant severance and said now is the time to try trading full-time for real. I had a decent September, went on our Honeymoon in Japan/Korea and traded mainly SPY options (because market first right? don't do this kids... but cloud lines wow.) the whole trip. We'd spend the day adventuring then at 10:30pm I'd either trade on my phone or jump in a pc cafe and trade for a few hours - fortunately had a fantastic month doing so, paid for the honeymoon and then some.
We got home, I jumped back into RDT, now the discord, and said let's try this again and here we are since Dec. 1 of last year I've done more (taxes included) than I would of all last year at my tech job. I'm still learning, I still put on shitty trades here and there. But, I've turned a corner for certain - now its about protecting my capital and scaling appropriately.
https://preview.redd.it/ogdnpsx0wf5d1.png?width=272&format=png&auto=webp&s=f024e20a107f24ced2131ae681335db2b60add83
This community is a special place. We should equally protect it as we should invite new blood that is willing to put in the work to benefit from it and keep it fresh/challenge those of us that stick around. Be tough on each other, and be your own biggest critic. I haven't really talked much about my style, feel free to dm me I'm typically available to chat - especially this weekend as I'm cooped up pumping paxlovid. I'll say I like to think of myself as a cowboy options trader, circa Hari 2021/2022. If you made it this far I hope it can give some insight what it took for me to sharpen the blade, some days I see rs/rw and put on a trade faster than I can even recognize - "so this is the zone" it works till it doesn't. I'm far from the finished article, there's so much more I could expound upon here but instead I'll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes:
Be ruthless with your introspection and your performance against a plan.
It’s never too late to dig yourself out of a hole if you have the discipline to make changes.
How you feel about failure will to a very large degree determine your growth and life trajectory in virtually every aspect.
And my personal favorite golf related ofc - but spins to everything:
The way you love yourself on the golf course is the way you're gonna love everyone else in the world as you watch them make mistakes.
See you space cowboy... Ryder
Oh yea - RTDW

I am the underdog, and I want to prove that one can follow one’s dreams despite all the flaws and setbacks.
Winnie Harlow

I’ve been recovering from depression for several years now. But sometimes, I still struggle. Recently, it has been one of those times.
I find my mind wandering to places that cause me anxiety — the hurting places. Instead of being 100% focused on what I’m doing, I wonder what the point is. I’m dwelling on past adverse events, and the things I enjoy feel blah.
I know that when I start to ponder the meaning of life and come up short, it’s a sign depression is catching up to me. Unlike in the past, I’m ready for it now. I’ve fought it off before, and I can do it again. I know what I have to do to keep myself as safe as possible.
Image by mikkelwilliam on iStock

This, too, shall pass.

The biggest lessons I learned were probably the times where I had the biggest setbacks and the biggest challenges — when I had the biggest jumps forward and lessons learned.
Michelle Kwan

I don’t panic because even my worst depression passed. By not panicking, I keep everything realistic. I’ve been here before, and I know mental health recovery doesn’t go in a straight line. Like the stock market, setbacks and downswings are part of the process.
A trap I used to fall into was frantically searching for a reason why I felt depressed. Sometimes, there was no reason, and there was no reason this time. My relationship is better than ever, I am financially secure, my writing is going well, and my mum is healthy. We’re even adopting a dog this week. If I had a garden, I’d have a white picket fence. There’s nothing in my life that’s going badly.
And yet, I still feel the pangs of depression.
So now I accept it. I don’t fight or try to understand. I let it wash over me and hunker down for the storm.

Look out for the warning signs.

Failures and setbacks are inevitable for all of us.
Alex Smith

After many years, the warning signs of a depressive episode are clear to me — searching for the meaning of life, wondering why I’m here, and not enjoying my usual activities.
When these signs appear, I could ignore them, but then I risk making it worse. When you bottle things up, they explode. You don’t know when or how, but the pressure can’t hold forever. That’s when bad things happen.
Looking out for the warning signs prepares me for what may be ahead.
Another warning sign is that I feel anxiety for no reason. Most people fear something tangible. They can complete the sentence “I’m afraid because of.” That’s not me.
I’m afraid, and I have no idea why, so my brain looks for things to be scared of. Have you ever noticed that murderers are always terrifying until they’re caught? You imagine some mythical monster going around killing people. Then they’re identified, and they always look like a sad, pathetic loser. The fear goes when you see the banality of evil, but until then, your imagination goes into overdrive.
The problem is that my brain attaches my fear to the wrong things. I recognize it playing tricks, so I never trust my first instinct or react to my first emotion. Instead, I wait a while and see if I still feel as strongly 30 minutes later. Usually, it’s a different story.

Take it easy.

Obviously I’ve had my setbacks, but those have enabled me to be the man I am today.
Daniel Jacobs

People who don’t know better tend to think the best way is to push through mental health setbacks — to “tough it out.” They believe in not quitting and see everything as a battle.
The reality is that the best way for me to deal with setbacks is to rest and take life easy. Fighting and pushing my comfort zone is for when I’m healthy. Taking the pressure off and lounging around for a few days in my pajamas is reserved for the bad times.
If you broke your leg, you wouldn’t expect to run marathons. They would come when you had healed — it’s the same for your mind.
So, I let the productivity gurus discuss it while I watch rugby. After a couple of days, I’m ready to go again.

Keep perspective.

I believe my past setbacks are part of what it takes to build a champion. After all, how can you fully appreciate winning without knowing what it’s like to lose?
Roderick Strong

When I first suffered depression, I thought this was it for the rest of my life. Doctors even told me so when they said I was 100% permanently disabled.
Now I know better. The cliche that “a bad day doesn’t mean a bad life” is true. I know that as awful as my life seems when I’m depressed, that feeling will pass. It’s all tricks my mind plays on me. My job is to weather the storm.
Don’t make any rash decisions in the fog of mental illness. I’m working on not reacting to my first feelings about anything — even when I’m well. Intuition and gut feeling don’t apply to me — they are distorted and usually wrong. Instead, I reserve judgment until I’ve thought about a situation. Doing this has saved me arguments and guilt by the bucketload.
Even at my worst, when I felt like taking my life, I reasoned that I’d wait until tomorrow, and if I still wanted to die, so be it. As you can tell, my desire to live always came back. I learned never to make impulsive decisions.

Conclusion.

Time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.
Denis Waitley

Bad days are rare for me now, but they do happen, and I need to know how to survive them in advance. Instead of pulling away and fighting them, I welcome bad times like a friend I must endure. They annoy me and outstay their welcome, but then they move on.
I remain unbroken because I’ve learned to listen to myself and what I need. I know the warning signs, and I know the worst storms, like everything, come to an end.

TLDR: The ordeal of doing a custom powdercoat finish on a Freewrite Smart Typewriter. And I ask what color I should attempt next.
The Pastel Turquoise Freewrite Story
A few years ago I got the (not-so) bright idea to create a one-of-a-kind custom-color Freewrite and it blew up in my face. Let me go back to the beginning...
In 2014 when Astrohaus introduced what was then called the Hemingwrite on Kickstarter I got wind of it and followed its journey. In 2015 I trekked to the Astrohaus Manhattan office with a friend to see an early production version. I was at the radio station WFMU at the time and had this vague idea of talking the Astrohaus marketing department into giving the station a Freewrite to use as a prize during an upcoming fundraising Marathon. We could put the device in front of a ton of professional writers while getting ourselves a kick-ass prize. We were led to a conference room where the first iteration of the Freewrite awaited us. I tried it out, then my friend. We kept our thoughts to ourselves as the marketing rep talked up the machine.
"It's distraction-free writing. Built for one purpose."
Yes, but will people pay for what appears to be a glorified word processor?
We left the Astrohaus offices and my friend and I expressed our reservations.
"Still, if we could get them to donate one..."
We couldn't. They didn't see the value in accessing WFMU's artistic community.
"Oh well. Good lucking selling your machine!"
All the while I stayed on the Astrohaus mailing list, searched for used Freewrites on EBay, read every online review and watched all the YouTube videos. I wondered if a device guaranteeing distraction-free writing could help with my concentration. When I'm writing on my MacBook or iMac there's always something that gets through: email notifications, texts, breaking news. I never remember to mute notifications or use Airplane Mode. Again and again I go down various rabbit holes, spending ten or fifteen minutes replying to emails (mostly trashing junk emails), responding to texts, checking the news, or wasting time on social media. But I kept putting off the actual purchase of a Freewrite, despite my love of typewriters and memories of my mother's hulking black Royal upon which I learned to type. Then the Hemingwrite came along. Astrohaus revived the original name of the Freewrite but this time it was authorized by the Ernest Hemingway estate. When I saw the first photos of the polished aluminum exterior and green keys I thought "That thing is sweet." But even with the extras–the carrying case, etc.–I couldn't see ponying up the asking price, even for a "limited-edition" of "only" 200 pieces.
"That's what I paid for my Macbook a few years ago."
But the emails from Astrohaus kept coming and I kept opening them. On the cusp of a milestone birthday I decided to indulge and buy a Hemingwrite as a gift to myself... and a future investment.
"I can finally write that book about the Nihilistics..."
The Nihilistics is the New York Hardcore band I founded and named at the end of the '70s. I'd written a few short pieces about the band, centered around my relationship with the bass playelyrics writer Mike (RIP). I referred to him as "...the booster rocket that helped me achieve escape velocity, falling back to earth in the process." One of my short stories about the band got published and I had a boutique publisher interested in the full story.
"I'll write the book on the Hemingwrite!"
When the box with my new distraction-free writing tool arrived (within a day or two of ordering) I moved it around from our porch to the office to our dining room but couldn't bring myself to open it.
"I don't deserve this thing. I can't justify the cost. Is it too late to return it?"
This went on for six weeks.
"If it IS too late to return it maybe I can put it on EBay. I should be able to get my money back. But I sure would like to see it first."
Then I finally freed the Hemingwrite from its box (I thought of doing an unboxing video but didn't). I gingerly cut open the tape on the box and extracted the leather carrying case from its bag. I opened the case and thought "This thing is sexy." It hadn't occurred to me there wouldn't be enough of a charge to use the Hemingwrite out of the box. But I started typing on it anyway, figuring I could charge it overnight and get the full experience in the morning.
"It's like mom's IBM Selectric..."
My mother owned one of the early Selectrics with the swappable type element (I still have on of the elements: the typewriter is long gone, as is the Royal). Typing on the Selectric was a fully tactile experience, just like the Hemingwrite. There's even the same delay between key-strike and "imprint," as I discovered the next morning after a full charge.
"I guess I'm not sending this back. Or selling it on EBay."
Since it arrived and I finally decided to use it, I've been on my Hemingwrite every day, cranking out a weekly newsletter and my book distraction-free. Every once in awhile I admire the bare aluminum case and remind myself I earned this damn thing and plan to keep it and pass it on to some deserving soul many years from now. There are things I'd change–could there be a spellcheck function, for instance? – but those who scoff at this tool haven't spent enough time with one. They don't "get" it. I got it. And I'm glad I did.
Fast forward a bit and Astrohaus decides to sell more "limited-edition" Hemingwrites. I wrote to the company, reminding them what their own Marketing department said about only producing 200 pieces. They responded with a bullshit excuse: this is not the same machine as yours, we've updated the internals. Well, no one bought it for the internals. It felt like a betrayal and I questioned how I could go about creating a custom-color Freewrite of my own and perhaps sell my Hemingwrite to recoup my costs. I managed to buy a stock black Gen. 2 Freewrite for $350 and $25 shipping. Before I could think about disassembling the Freewrite a friend expressed interest in it and I brought the machine to him, where it sat boxed under his couch for almost half a year. He was going through issues with the health of his parents and finally decided not to buy my Freewrite, so I went and retrieved it. Then I revived the idea of putting a custom color on it and selling my Hemingwrite.
There are no online instructions for taking a Freewrite apart, so with great trepidation I brought the Freewrite out to my garage workbench and proceeded as carefully as possible. It's a bit harrowing, thinking you might destroy a machine for which you've paid $$$. But after an hour of stomach-churning, detail-oriented work I got the aluminum shell separated from the innards of the machine and put all the electronic parts safely away in the Freewrite box. Because I didn't fully power down the Freewrite first, a black bar appeared across the E-Ink display and I was convinced I destroyed it. I kept calm and carried on. Next, I did some research online on removing a powder coat finish from aluminum. Initially, I thought the shell could be media-blasted (they don't call it sand-blasting any longer) but you can't media-blast aluminum without potentially dimpling the surface. It's suggested you use a powerful paint stripper and I opted for Jasco (approx. $28) based on discussions in a powder-coat forum. The Jasco stripper is nasty stuff and the only way to use it safely is outdoors while wearing heavy disposable gloves, eye protection and a respirator. I took the Freewrite to my backyard, put it on a folding aluminum table and began brushing it with the Jasco stripper. When done I let it sit the suggested twenty minutes for the Jasco stripper to do its work. Then, using a plastic scraper (you can't use a metal scraper on aluminum) I began trying to remove the powder-coat finish. It didn't go well. I removed some of the finish but most of it remained and I was confronted with three choices: sand the rest of the finish off, try another application of the Jasco stripper or bite the bullet and get it media-blasted anyway. I decided to try another application of the Jasco stripper the following day, this time leaving it on for thirty minutes. Then I went at the powder-coat with the plastic scraper again. I had to use a combo of large and small scrapers to get into all the recesses of the Freewrite's shell. But the Jasco stripper is not a miracle worker and much of the powder-coat stubbornly remained. I pivoted to multiple grades of steel wool, from 0 to 0000. This took several hours of meticulous work but when I was done I was presented with something that looked very much like my Hemingwrite. Believe me, it stung to know Astrohaus is selling a raw-finish Freewrite (sure, it's "hand-buffed") with green keycaps and accents at a substantial premium and I thought of stopping there and using a spare set of green keycaps I own to create an ersatz Hemingwrite. But that was never my intent, so I pushed on with the custom color idea, posting a poll to the Freewrite community on Facebook, asking which color they'd like to see on a Freewrite. Astrohaus, in addition to the Hemingwrite, produced and sold a blue Freewrite and a cream Freewrite (this is before the Mint and Lemon editions) that garner a premium on EBay. The poll revealed "Green" to be the favored choice for a custom color so I did a Photoshop mock-up of red and green Freewrites and put them on the Facebook group. The response was positive. I called around to a bunch of local powder-coating places only to find they concentrate on automobile rims and little else. I even drove the Freewrite shell to one place only to be quoted a price of $150, which seemed a bit much. Then I remembered a place I used previously, up in Kingston, NY, a two hour drive north for me. We have friends in the Catskills and decided to cart the Freewrite to Kingston and stay overnight. A week later we returned to Kingston and retrieved the Freewrite, paying $50 for the Pastel Turquoise powder-coat it received. Now I had to put it all back together. THAT was a nightmare. Believe it or not, the spring on the power button gave me the greatest difficulty. I labored over THAT thing a solid hour to get it functioning properly. The rest of the reassembly was fraught as well, and there was still the issue of the black box on the E-Ink display. Luckily, this went away after I let the Freewrite charge overnight and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
After posting pictures of the newly-finished Freewrite to the Astrohaus Facebook group and garnering an enthusiastic response, I decided to sell it and earn back what I spent in time, materials and labor. To me, a fair price would fall somewhere between $600–$700, based on recent EBay sales of stock Gen. 2 Freewrites ($325–$425), the cost of materials (Jasco Stripper, $28, powder-coating, $50), hours of disassembly, stripping of the finish, driving four hours round-trip to/from Kingston, reassembly, taking of pictures and posting an EBay listing. All that work is apart from the fact I produced a one-of-a-kind (AKA TRULY limited-edition) custom-color Freewrite. When I created the EBay listing I chose to start at $400 and not set a reserve price (EBay wanted $52 for the reserve price in addition to a final value and listing fee), hoping the enthusiasm in the Facebook group would reflect in healthy bidding activity. It did not. One person bid on my Pastel Turquoise Freewrite and I was faced with the prospect of selling it for $425, a price I might've seen if I'd left it black and not gone through all the effort to transform it. So I cancelled the sale and refunded the buyer's money immediately. I've been buying and selling on EBay almost 25 years and did not take this step lightly. The buyer, understandably upset, took to the Facebook Freewrite group and expressed his profound disappointment. Someone else decided to wade in and run down my character, describing what I did (cancelling the sale) as "borderline scammy behavior." Wow. I'm not sure who he thinks is being scammed but I'd like to see a show of hands for anyone who's wiling to work for free, what I'd be doing if I accepted $425 for my custom-color Freewrite. Yes, I could've and should've handled things differently. I might've offered the Freewrite on the Facebook group, setting a price I felt comfortable with. Or used a higher starting price or set a reserve on EBay. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. But in no way, shape or form was I trying to "scam" anyone. Eventually, the buyer and I came to an agreement and he paid what I consider a fair price for the custom-color Freewrite. I also fell out of love with my Hemingwrite, due to the horrid software and ergonomics (I was getting bad neck strain from looking down at the screen for hours) and kept pestering Astrohaus, going further up the foodchain until they took back my Hemingwrite and issued a full refund. Now another Freewrite has fallen into my lap (it’s a friend’s who can no longer stand the machine’s peccadilloes) and I'm on the cusp of possibly creating another custom-color Freewrite to increase its value for a sale. I’d love to be talked out of it, BTW.
Thanks, Chris T.