u/SeriouslyNotSerious2

Genuinely just curious, but ill allow debate since it makes for more interesting conversations 🫰

The title says it all.

Why are there some stories of NDEs where the beings and/or the Light seem very insistent on you having to come back to this life?

Ngl é stata una delle politiche che mi ha lasciato piú ambivalente nella mia memoria recent 🫠

I apologize for the parts split but Reddit forced my hand in doing so. The resolution of the original document made it unreadable once posted.

Hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless! 🙏

I apologize for the parts split but Reddit forced my hand in doing so. The resolution of the original document made it unreadable once posted.

Hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless! 🙏

Review of Petal, by Ariana Grande

A DIARY MADE ALBUM, TO SAY GOODBYE

These are just my thoughts about the album after a first listen, aided by the help of the official visualizers because, yes, people complaining about muddled production when it comes to harmonies and enunciation do have a point. However, I feel like this album is quite peculiar and almost does not feel like it should be judged as a classic pop album as that is not what this is trying to be. At all. 

In my mind, Positions was Ariana Grande’s last popstar album, and with eternal sunshine, she moved towards a more mature self, where she finally sang about personal things without the overwhelming grief that had characterized thank u, next, and with the ability of accepting what may come next in her life, both in the good and the bad. And petal, to me, feels like she has realized that music and the industry is actually ‘the bad’ for her, and has now decided to reject it completely. 

The album is very cohesive musically, but that also means that few were the standouts songs that actually stick with you, as most feel—just like the title implies—like small excerpts of diary entries turned songs. This unfortunately has an impact in the lyrics that feel split in odd ways and don’t really flow all that well, while also having moments that try too hard to sound lyrical while feeling out of place. Looking at you ‘I feel so aquatic,’ and ‘hold hands with so much complexity.’

Still, as I said before, there is something deeply personal about this album, more than any other that came before, as if Ariana just wanted to get her deepest feelings and thoughts out in the open, no matter how they did come out, and even if that meant not sounding like a pop album for the charts. 

Kiss me, Stay, Oh Well, and Big Feelings are the weakest songs and have left me nothing at all. I just did not connect with them, and they felt like there was not enough theme to sustain a whole song. 

Like I Do was great musically, but I don’t think it conveyed the album’s theme as well as others. Same thing when it comes to another song, Never Get Over Me. 

But, I feel like a lot of the other songs in the album convey a clear message, and a worrying one too.

One that rejects fame and those that treat her like a doll to entertain themselves or live vicariously through her in their diva fantasies. Yet, most of all, a destructive path that she may be accepting, while also mentioning death, and endings, and things ending badly and being tired quite a lot.

Hate That I Made You Love Me is clearly almost regretful at having reached such levels of fame that such pressure and parasocial dynamics are now solidified and seemingly attached to her forever. 

Petal felt like the true piece of ‘unfiltered rage’ that Ariana mentioned when talking about the state of mind in which she wrote the album. In it, she laments about how people might feel like she cannot complain ever since she’s so blessed and she is famous and as long as she’s getting that (‘the ovation’) than she cannot suffer (‘heartbreak won’t bite, this is paradise), while also stating that she does consider herself blessed, but she is also tired of whatever this is and that this is goodbye.

Freak is the most antagonistic song, and in a good way, and to me felt like a clear rejection of all those fans that do want her to behave in a certain manner to appease them, such as the fan(atics) that keep insisting on pony-tail Ari having to come back otherwise she’s bad etc.

Bad Thing (Bunny Hop) some have said that this might be a song to reference going back to Ricky, while others have also proposed a theory that it might actually mean going back to Mac, which makes the album especially worrying. Particularly so, with the lyrics:

Yeah, I like your butterflies

Thе kind you've been making with your hands / if she means Mac’s pose that she still does

Yeah, I can see them finally 

Can't bеlieve they've been right there

You know you make a real good boyfriend

In my dreams, and in real life

Meet you by the staircase where we

Fell in love, let's do it twice / she mentions death a lot in this album, let’s do it twice is worrying.

Lastly, Warning Signs feels like a cry for help masqueraded as an interlude, where she cries that you can see her and listen to her everywhere but nobody is actually listening. And Nowhere, Nobody struck me as maybe a hope that leaving music behind will be ok. Or, in a more worrying note, that she is on a path of self-destruction where she is done with everything, and is now accepting going into the direction of that ‘perfect ending’ despite her favorite stories ending in catastrophe. 

TLDR - Petal feels more like a diary made into album, which means that a lot of the lyrics suffer with odd splits or odd phrasings, a lot of the song have similar sounds which helps cohesion but also hurts differentiations of each song, but it does feel like her most personal album yet. One that should be listened to as something Ariana Grande, the person, is telling the world and anyone who wants to listen, and not a pop album made for charts or to be listened to in the background. 

RATING: 75-80 out of 100

My last post hit a wall at merely 2k views, so I’m testing the algorithm again. I was seriously considering a full rewrite of A New Frontier and The Final Season too, but I don't have the time as August approaches and if nobody will see it anyway.

Would you guys actually read the others? Let me know if you want to read ANF and TFS too, and I could continue working on them like I have so far. 🛐

I'll do AND and TFS later on, hope you like it!

I'll do AND and TFS later on, hope you like it!

Additional Statement and Source

"The fight against child sexual abuse continues. But not at the expense of privacy.

Parliament supports bringing back temporary rules protecting kids online, and it has kept your privacy in mind.

Here’s the story: Since 2021, platforms could voluntarily scan for child abuse material.

It was always meant to be temporary while the EU drafted permanent laws.

But negotiations take time, and the old, temporary rules expire earlier this year, leaving a legal gap.

So, Parliament members supported bringing back these protections until April 2028 - with one key change:

Encrypted messages like WhatsApp conversations are now excluded from scanning. Why? To balance child protection with privacy rights.

These rules were necessary to bridge the legal child protection gap while the EU works out the permanent rules.

But it’s not final: EU governments in the Council will decide next on Parliament’s changes."

https://www.instagram.com/europeanparliament/p/Dani1W9CF3m/?hl=en